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| Muslims Don’t Go ‘Bowling Alone’: a New Paradigm for Thinking about Citizenship and Civil SocietySom |
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Since the publication of Tocqueville's 'Democracy in America' many thinkers and writers have contributed to the view that the strength of American democracy is more profound than the written terms of its constitution and the freedom of its citizens to elect their legislative and executive bodies. The performance of these bodies and the quality of public life are intimately bound to the involvement of America's citizens with these bodies and with themselves in many spheres of associational life that balance private interest with the public good. The role of the citizen and a value called civic virtue, which first concerned the early Greeks is now a subject of great interest to social and political theorists. In order to provide a mechanism for measuring civic engagement and social connectedness, social theorists such as James S Coleman and latterly Robert Putnam developed the term 'social capital', which in Putnam's words refers to: 'features of social organization such as networks, norms and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit'; 'Life is easier', he continues: 'in a community blessed with a substantial stock of social capital. In the first place, networks of civic engagement foster sturdy norms of generalized reciprocity and encourage the emergence of social trust. Such networks facilitate coordination and communication, amplify reputations, and thus allow dilemmas of collective action to be resolved'. In his much-discussed article, 'Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital', Robert Putnam argues, based upon an extensive analysis of American social capital that: 'the vibrancy of American civil society has notably declined over the past several decades'. He evidences this partly through political disengagement: declining voter turnout, down by nearly a quarter between the 1960s and 1990; attendance at public meetings on town or school affairs, down by more than a third since 1973; the proportion of Americans who respond that they trust their government in Washington only 'some of the time' or 'almost never', up from 30 percent in 1966 to 75 percent in 1992. Moreover, he charts the significant decline in involvement of Americans within a range of secondary associations from church activities and parent-teacher associations to traditional women's groups, the Red Cross, Boy Scouts and a host of fraternal organizations from the Lions to the Masons. Whimsically, Putnam looked also at bowling and found that more and more Americans are going bowling, while collective league bowling decreased by 40 percent between 1980 and 1993 and hence the title of Putnam's article: 'bowling alone'; bowling is significant because a third more Americans went bowling in 1993 than attended the 1994 congressional elections and the figure for the number of Americans who go bowling, about 80 million, roughly equates with those who attend church. While Americans are now going 'bowling alone' what of Muslims in the Middle East? Bowling is not very popular there yet, not even in post-invasion Iraq, but if it were Muslims would not go bowling alone because sociability and political engagement are important features of Islamic thought and practice.
While civil society is on the retreat in America, Americans are looking at ways of promoting civil society in the Muslim world as a means of establishing a democratic base there. That is not to say that civil society has vanished from American life, far from it; despite Putnam's main contention of decline he does point to potential countertrends, such as the expansion in various types of 'support group' like Alcoholics Anonymous. Putnam identifies and measures a huge range of different forms of social capital including the family, which in his words is 'the most fundamental form of social capital' and such studies could be conducted systematically in the Muslim world. Judging the impact of social capital on civil society and the prospects for democracy, however, would be problematic. Perhaps the main difficulty is that these social concepts have been developed in a western context and have been assumed to be universal. Following on from this is the fact that these concepts have meant different things at different times in the west and currently are the subject of some debate.
The term 'civil society' concerns citizenship and what makes a good society; it is to do with the shaping of individuals to benefit the public sphere of life and can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle. When Bernard Lewis claimed that there is no concept of citizenship in Islamic political thought and practice he drew his own definition from Greek antiquity: '... citizenship, in the sense of being a free and participating member of a civic entity. This notion, with roots going back to the Greek polites, a member of the polis, has been central in Western civilization from antiquity to the present day.' Much of the modern western discussion of civil society, including Lewis' is one sided because it ignores Plato's vision of society and borrows instead from Aristotle's view of the democratic 'polis' of the ancient city state which was the 'association of associations' where individuals achieved 'human virtue' by sharing in ruling. The self-governing city state of Aristotle's time, however, where all citizens shared in government was a very short-lived affair and the modern polis, even in democratic countries, resembles Plato's vision at least as much as Aristotle's. For Plato, as outlined through the character of Socrates in his 'Republic', the chief concern is the attainment of a just political order or 'civic justice'; he considered this to be the 'master virtue', which was necessary for citizens to enjoy the best life. For a city to be just, three additional virtues were necessary: it must be 'wise' (well governed), 'courageous' (well defended) and 'temperate' (self-controlled). For Plato, the attainment of civic virtue by citizens was necessary for achieving justice: the chief end he envisioned for political association that was necessary for human fulfilment. The ancient Greeks had quite different visions of citizenship and Lewis is selective when he presents his view of citizenship as 'central from antiquity to the present day' because while he is partially correct in saying that 'the idea of the people participating not just in the choice of a ruler but in the conduct of government, is not part of traditional Islam' he could just as well say that Islam has more in common with a reading of Plato's philosophy than Aristotle's or that Plato's character Socrates had no concept of citizenship! Civic virtue, nevertheless, is very much alive in the citizens of Plato's Republic and it is also very much alive in Islamic political thought which makes no pretence that the citizens should be directly involved in ruling. If Lewis's definition of citizenship were adhered to it would exclude even western states from laying meaningful claim to a concept of citizenship; how many citizens in London, New York, Frankfurt or Paris share the decision-making processes of ruling? Where Lewis writes that the people, in Islamic political thought, do not participate in the conduct of government he is not entirely correct because the 'conduct' of government is broader than ruling; it includes consultation (shura) and accountability (hisaaba) in all the citizens. This contrasts with most readings of Plato's Republic, where the specialisation of citizens into different orders of social activity seems to preclude what Plato calls 'worker' and 'soldier' classes, who lack a philosophical education, from the political concerns of accounting and consultation. These two concepts are firmly established in classical Islamic political thinking and practice and much of Islamic teaching aims to inculcate these two civic virtues. Accounting the ruler is central to the maintenance of the just Islamic state because political life in classical Islamic thought is not constructed as an end in itself or a Hobbesian necessary evil but as a means of implementing the people's Islamic ideology and safeguarding it; where the ruler fails in this task he is to be removed by a special type of judge, called the 'qadi madhalim' in classical Islamic thought. The Islamic Khilafah state, like any state, is an executive body whose strength or weakness depends upon the civic virtues of the citizens. As for the lack of an Arabic word for 'citizen', another of Lewis' points, there is no need for such a word because the civic virtues entailed by citizenship are subsumed by the word 'Muslim', which means 'someone who has submitted his life to obedience to God'. The classical Islamic texts have outlined the public obligations of the individual within the state to such an extent that the Qur'anic injunction to 'enjoin the good' and 'forbid the evil' are frequently mentioned alongside the pillars of the Islamic faith itself; these injunctions go as far as removing the ruler for failing in his trust. Taking rulers to task is not an everyday matter, but the concept of guardianship over each other for shared values operates at the local and family level as well as the governmental level. Some of the early 'social contract' theories presented the state as a vehicle to protect property and equated the state with civil society as opposed to a hypothetical pre-civil condition of chaos and savagery. Without lessening the importance of the state in Islamic thought, guardianship and public responsibility functions at all levels in Islamic socio/political life. The prophet Mohammed said that 'each one of you is a shepherd and is responsible'; these responsibilities extend to strangers: examples include the obligation to show hospitality to travellers and the removal of obstacles in the road that could cause harm. Islam aims to achieve a harmoniously functioning societal life, and citizenship at the local level is an essential element of Islamic civilization.
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