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If not rule by the 'demos', then rule of 'theos'?
Does the place of the Shariah - a divine law - in the Islamic political system render the Caliphate a theocracy? The role of a divine text in ruling marks, for the western mindset, a return to medieval Europe when the excesses and abuses by kings and princes were justified by references to sacred Christian texts. As interpretation was the preserve of the literate Christian clergy and those in power frequently justified their status as acts of divine will, there were no means of challenging official interpretations of sacred law or accounting abuses of power for they would represent a challenge to God's will, no less an act of blasphemy. It is for this reason that some consider the Islamic ruling system to be concerned principally with the piety of the ruler: if there are no workable mechanisms of checking power in a 'religious' state then citizens of a Caliphate, similarly, can rely only on the piety of the Caliph to ensure he does not abuse his position.
Applying this western matrix on the Islamic political system however fails to acknowledge a number of key points: the Caliphate is neither a theocracy nor its practice similar to medieval Europe. There are some very important differences. Firstly, the head of state in a Caliphate system is not divinely appointed nor can lay claim to divine merit: the people appoint the head of state. The post of Caliph is open to anyone who meets the criteria for a ruler without reference to divine privilege. Secondly, a corollary of the first point, while the head in a theocracy is beyond reproach because of claims to divine right, the Caliph is monitored by numerous institutions, the independent judiciary of which has not just the right but the duty to remove him if he violates the terms of the bayah contract, force him to repeal the adoption of a particular law, demand compensation, declare policy invalid amongst other powers. He is thus not beyond the law, but subject to it as any other citizen. The Islamic political system does not rely on the piety of its head alone as the principal mechanism of accountability as it is a system designed for human beings understanding the potential for human error and malevolence.
Thirdly, the Caliphate is not rule by clergy, or by a religious elite that claims to have a monopoly on interpreting Islamic law. The head of state may be a jurist or a legal advocate by training, but that is not a condition for assuming the role. And the origin of law being from a series of divine sources, principally the Qur'an and the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad (sunnah), does not mean there is a limited, or no, role for questioning, debate, disagreement and challenge. The Qur'an is not the constitution of the state as such - it is a source of the constitution. Law has to be derived for new problems; to tackle new issues which have not previously been judged requires the extraction of law from Islamic sources through the mechanism of ijtihad, a process open to all those qualified and is not the preserve of a privileged elite. Ijtihad undertaken by different jurists may result in differences of opinion, disagreement and debate, and in Islam, there is no concept of a Pope to make a declaration of divine preference. The Caliph, as head of state with the responsibility for adopting law, will adopt one opinion to bind society to a set of common standards within a declared legal framework, but that does not prevent further debate and amendment.
In all, the Caliphate is a system run by fallible human beings who implement law derived from the divine sources of the Shariah over society, removable from office if they violate the terms of their agreement - not rule by 'theos'.
Surely dictatorship?
Amongst the fanfare that surrounds democratisation in this post 9/11 climate, it is often easy to forget that a number of western political philosophers had their own reservations about its workability. Rousseau thought democracy would only work if one could guarantee that the public would always vote in the interest of the collective - the 'general will'- not selfish, individual interests and went on to articulate a rather stringent, almost unworkable, set of social conditions he believed would achieve that. Despite his elaborate works on a theory of direct democracy, he nonetheless says: "If we take the term in the strict sense, there never has been a real democracy, and there never will be. It is against the natural order for many to govern and the few to be governed."10 John Stuart Mill believed a democracy should afford the intelligent and educated greater voting power to protect society from the tyranny of the ignorant majority for that would be the result of simple majority rule, and his proposed representative - over Rousseau's direct democracy - is for its critics no less a move away from the essence of democracy itself. But while Rousseau, Mill and others tried to fill the gaps, one of the biggest critics of democracy per se was Plato. His guardianship by philosopher-rulers - or 'benevolent dictatorship' more crudely put - was he believed better at delivering good governance and justice than a democracy because in classical Greek, the word 'demos' is the 'mob' as much as it is the 'people', and so democracy is no less the rule of the mob than it is the rule of the people. Of relevance to our discussion, such theories represent nodes on the spectrum of western political theory, with democracy at one end and - because of his wholesale rejection of democracy and thus thought to represent the alternative - Plato's dictatorship at the other: if not democracy, rule by the people, then the alternatives are considered either rule by theos, the few, or one.
The Islamic political system's rejection of democracy does not render it a form of dictatorial government, as one may conclude if confining its study strictly to the above spectrum. The Caliphate is not a dictatorship for authority lies with the people not the head of state; nor is it premised on the belief that the office of the Caliph is a privileged position beyond the law, the occupant of which can be trusted to manage the affairs of the society without being accounted for how he does so. The Caliph, like every other citizen, is a subject of the law, not beyond it, and an independent judiciary can act to curtail his activities and even remove him. Sovereignty belongs to divine law, but humans understand it and apply it; this human exercise, though entrusted to the Caliph to make final legal adoption, is subject to considerable human accountability and herein lies the distinction between the Caliphate and the totalitarian dictators that were the scourge of the last century.
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