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| Islamic Politics and the Problem of Universalism |
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The question remains of what incentive there would be for non-Muslims to accept such a constitution. The most fundamental appeal would be a systematic account of why core moral values are justified. There always has been an embarrassing gap between the utility and success of liberal democracy and the awkwardness of its intellectual underpinnings. Liberal theorists have produced contractarian fantasies or narrow propositions about individual psychology to fill the lacuna. This does not detract from the high degree of practical freedom and prosperity that liberalism has generated in developed nations, but it does put into question how and why these values are to be pursued. The US Declaration of Independence (1776) declares 'these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness'. However, this depiction cannot explain where these evident truths are to be seen or where the process of divine endowment has occurred. Actually, seeing such proclamations as definitional arguments is misleading - they are better understood as arbitrary poetic statements justifying the distribution of power. The arbitrary foundational propositions of an Islamic constitution are at least explicit. All that is necessary is for its prospective citizens to admit that they could be true and to judge such a constitution by their experience of its values in action. The point is that in principle the foundations of an Islamic constitution are no more arbitrary than those of its liberal rival. What matters is the practical experience of the people who agree to live under it. This means that any Islamic system would have to adapt its mechanisms drastically in order for its invitation to be intelligible to contemporary expectations.
To begin with, all citizens - whether Muslim or not - would have to be given the chance to become experts in Islamic jurisprudence and to participate equally in all political processes such as elections. This means that Muslims must be prepared for the eventuality of being judged by non-Muslims, albeit under Islamic law. I confess I do not know whether this would be theologically tenable. Another aspect presents difficulties in the current context: namely the compartmentalising of legal systems according to residual confessional identities. Most nominal Christians and Jews today would resent the imposition of rule by bishops or rabbis even more than the ulema. All citizens would expect to be guaranteed their dignity, which means that discrimination in any sphere, including that of taxation, is not acceptable. If non-Muslims were to be required to pay a special tax then Muslims would have to pay more in other ways so that the overall burden is fair.
What has to be demonstrated to non-Muslims is that the principles of Islamic jurisprudence are better for social and public welfare as understood by the community than current secular ones. This obviously requires a major effort of explanatory renovation. Muslim experts need to produce convincing accounts of the way in which contemporary economic, cultural and ecological concerns are likely to be handled. Islamic law needs to show itself capable of treating complicated scientific and technical issues, and modern dilemmas of social justice. At present, Islamic law has quite frankly a dreadful image in the west, and an awful record where it has been ostensibly introduced. 3
The necessity of demonstration connects to the hegemonic or 'islamicate' approach, where the focus is on values and persuasion. Political action under this model seeks to change attitudes and particular policy within existing secular structures. Indeed, one can say realistically that the first scenario, if it is to happen at all, must be preceded by the dissemination of an Islamic cultural and intellectual environment. That is, the sense of the community must be moved - a social process rather than simply one of individual piety - before it will acquiesce in the transformation of its laws. However, the attempt to spread an islamicate culture is feasible whether or not the formal constitution ever materialises. It is consequently more interesting as a prospect of practical politics.
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