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The Caliphate, however, does not rely on institutions alone to provide inherent checks and balances but depends upon the politicisation of its citizenry as its fundamental layer. Holding the rulers to account is a duty - an obligation - upon every Muslim, and citizens are encouraged to do so in a direct and open manner. Examples from the Caliphs that immediately followed the Prophet Muhammad - whose consensus (ijma) is a source of Islamic law - demonstrate that they proactively encouraged forthright accountability. This obligation is not restricted to the individual, but stipulates a requirement for the permanent existence of political parties tasked with 'enjoining the good and forbidding the wrong', a political activity designed to challenge error and incompetence. These civil bodies undertake activities without interference from the state and, as the Islamic political system has no concept of a 'ruling party', neither do they have any association with the state; their purpose is principally to highlight inadequacies in state conduct and in the condition of society. While various schools within western political theory have long struggled with the question of justifying 'political obligation' - whether the utilitarians or social contract theorists or others - Islamic obligations such as 'enjoining the good and forbidding the wrong' take on a unique dimension for the Muslim citizen: they are considered good in their own right and an act of worship, not measured by their expediency or purely by the effect they yield.
From institution, through political party to individual, the mechanisms for accountability in the Caliphate provide the backbone to what is a considerably rule-based society. The Caliph is not beyond the law nor protected by special exemption that provides him immunity from prosecution; if he commits a crime he will be punished, if he transgresses the terms of the bayah he will be eligible for removal. Unlike monarchies and authoritarian governments who place monarch or premier beyond the constitution with the sole right to interpret or alter it, no individual in the Islamic state's apparatus, from clerk to Caliph, is above the law and an independent judiciary monitors the Caliph's legal adoptions with the power to demand revocation.
From 'total' to 'totalitarian'?
For some commentators, the comprehensiveness of Islam in articulating both a spiritual and a political system renders a government founded upon its law, totalitarian. The 'total' nature of Islam is thought to suffocate progress through seeking to 'control' every element of a citizen's life and denying an autonomous space for science and cultural pursuits. This logic bears little relevance outside Europe's experience with the excesses of the Church, for the history of the Islamic state demonstrates that being founded on the Shariah did not impede scientific or technological progress, or excellence in legal, intellectual and cultural pursuits, but rather acted to propel them.
Whilst Islam is a comprehensive system, the Shariah confines the Islamic state's remit to managing only temporal matters. The state can only adopt law in matters that relate to its responsibility: managing the affairs of society and achieving the goals of the Islamic state. The head of state therefore is not allowed to enter the privacy of the home, adopt law that stipulates matters of personal life or interfere in the private affairs of the citizen, whether Muslim or non-Muslim. If it does, it is considered to have transgressed its jurisdiction, for which the judiciary may take action if it finds the state to have committed an act of oppression (dhulm). This principle arises from numerous Islamic texts that deal with the subject of remit and responsibility that do not permit the assumption of a responsibility one is not originally charged with, whether spouse, parent, child, relative, head of state and so on.9
The Caliphate bears no resemblance to a totalitarian state therefore, but to understand the error in believing Islam's comprehensive nature impedes progress, there is a broader point to appreciate. Islam does not, nor came to, define reality or to dictate sensory perception. That is to say, whether the earth orbits the sun or vice versa, whether water boils at 100 degrees Celsius, whether HIV leads to AIDS and other such judgements on reality are for the human mind, and for scientific and intellectual inquiry to decipher human sensory perception. The role of the Shariah is to provide solutions, guidance and a legal framework in which to conduct human activity whether personal, social, economic or political, and is in this sense comprehensive. Thus, the universe, life within in it and the material world is analysed purely through human observation and rational tools, whilst mapping appropriate human activity is determined through principles and rules extracted from the Shariah. The Shariah therefore does not interfere with nor inhibit progress through insisting people believe, say, the world is flat or that the earth is the centre of the universe but articulates a system through which individual and society can best structure their environment and tackle common human problems, dilemmas and challenges.
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