Peace Be Unto Those Who Follow Right Guidance.

I have finished reading Who Needs an Islamic State? (Second Edition) by Abdelwahab El-Affendi (London, Malaysia Thinktank: 2008). In what follows, I will reproduce verbatim a number of extracts from what is, IMHO, a brief yet important work on Islamic political theory.

(NB: This is a long post, but one that, IMHO, affords great insights to the careful and patient reader.)
Breaking The Grip of Shame

One cannot be a beggar at the door of the West and a judge on its actions simultaneously. (p.124)

Toward a Post-Nationalist Muslim Socio-Political Agenda

For a community that views itself as 'a witness over mankind', the issues must be radically redefined. Self-interest must be transcended in favour of global responsibility. The key is to reduce dependence on the outside world, not simply by attaining that elusive self-sufficiency, but by achieving self-reliance through renouncing claims over what others possess and use as weapons against Muslims. There is much that humanity can do without in the consumer madness that has engulfed us in modern times. Muslims are prisoners of the West precisely because, like their opponents, they have developed an insatiable appetite for luxuries. In our fast-depleted planet, Muslims can again offer an example by wanting less in a world where everyone is asking for more. Then they can offer an alternative to an international order based on the egotistic nation-state, which is in turn a collection of self-interested individuals and groups. (pp.124-125)

Saints and Sinners: Rules for Restraining Tyrants

A major flaw ... in the traditional Muslim perception of the Righteous Caliphate was the erroneous belief that the rules of government must be designed to fit rulers who were almost saints - saints do not need the rules anyway. The rules laid down by Muslim theoreticians were derived from the actual practice of the saintly Righteous Caliphs, who were acting in the absence of any rules. Moreover, saintly men such as Omar ibn Abd al-Aziz acted virtuously and courageously in spite of the rules and conventions which in their time supported and encouraged corruption. Rules only become necessary when we are dealing with people who need guidance and restraint, which is the reason classical political theory was misguided and largely irrelevant to societies where saints were hard to find. (pp.127-128)

Wisdom dictates that we should be pessimistic about the qualities of our rulers, something which should not be too difficult, given our experiences. The institutions of a Muslim polity, and the rules devised to govern it, should therefore be based on expecting the worst. Human experience shows that democracy, broadly defined, offers the best possible method of avoiding such disappointment
in rulers, and affords a way of remedying the causes for such disappointments once they occur. (p.139)

Beyond Autocracy

The homogeneity of the early Medina community - the mutual trust between the leading figures in the community, the ease of communication between the different leaders (all resided in Medina or were otherwise in direct contact with the Caliph) and the charisma of the early caliphs - made it unnecessary to have a formal decision-making structure which allowed all leading figures to take part in the political process. In different circumstances where the leader lacked charisma or where communication was too cumbersome, more formal arrangements were needed. In fact, the very idea of having to have a single caliph or ruler may have to be scrapped in favour of a council or another body which would compensate for the shortcomings of individuals by pooling expertise and resources. (pp.128-129)

Rethinking Islamic Political Participation

A collective duty should be redefined to mean not that marginally important obligation from which everyone is absolved if anyone takes care of it. On the contrary, it should be the obligation of every individual in the community to see that this duty is carried out by the right person, no one being absolved until this was positively assured. The term fard kifaya should be changed to fard jamai (collective duty), for that is what it is. (p.130)

The Muslim community, and not an impersonal state, has a duty to afford each individual the maximum help in achieving his or her moral potential, which can be done by example, exhortation and by shielding the individual from undue pressures and temptations. However, the community cannot shoulder the individual's ultimate responsibility for his or her own actions, nor replace the individual's duty to prove his or her own moral worth and act as an example to others. (p.135)

Rethinking The Islamic State (or rather, socio-political order?]

The basis for the re-establishment of the Muslim community (as a precondition for the setting-up of an Islamic state) must be the reaffirmation of the freedom and dignity of the individual Muslim.

A state formed by a Muslim community will by necessity be an Islamic state, one based on the sharia. It is inconceivable that in a Muslim community an argument should arise about following this or that command of God. The provisos set forth by extra-cautious theoreticians who insist that an Islamic state cannot be a democracy because that would imply that the will of the people is above all law, including sharia, is misplaced. If a community rejected sharia, it is by definition not Islamic, and the arguments of these writers are therefore irrelevant to it. Nevertheless, disputes within a Muslim community are bound to arise, as in the past, about many other things. However, democracy means that these differences should be resolved peacefully according to an agreed procedure, which is equitable and fair. (p.136)

In a pre-sharia community the conditions for guiding society back to Islam can be supplied only by democracy, where the operation of the community and the demands of Islam are freely debated and refashioned. If society decides to make the transition to sharia, then democracy is needed to keep it together and resolve its differences. An Islamic state should also be independent and self-reliant.

It does not have to be aggressive and disruptive, but it should be firm in its moral convictions, and noble in its aversion to enslavement to the consumerism which has reduced most communities on our planets to grazing herds of mindless seekers after unhealthy comforts.

This state should be outward-looking, reasserting itself in the international arena and acting as a focus for the global community of Muslims. The unity it seeks should not be enforced, but it should seek to promote a shared outlook which asserts the collective view of Muslims on how the international order should function.

An ideal Muslim state should also be plural. It is not necessary for Muslims to allow the modern concept of territorial state sovereignty to imprison groups within a unitary scheme that stifles all diversity. A true pluralism is important for accommodating non-Muslims within an Islamic polity without either diluting it or relegating them to second-class citizenship, as well as for Muslims since we are fast approaching the emergence of a world community in which Muslims as a bloc are a minority. The rights of communities and individuals within this system must be defined to assure coexistence with the maximum freedom for all.

It is a strong possibility that, as happened in the past, the exemplary behaviour of Muslims would in time convince their neighbours that theirs is the right path. In the meantime, an Islamic territory must be governed by a pluralistic polity of coexisting but independent communities, governed by treaties rather than by a constitution. The treaty should detail the rights and duties of each community for the safeguarding of common existence, in a similar way to that of the sahifat al-Madina. This could present an imaginative solution to a vexing problem.

Finally, an Islamic state must be a light for all humankind. It cannot be, like today's nation-states, engrossed in the endless search for unhealthy comforts and material goods for its citizens. Rather than being such an acquisitive black hole, the Islamic state should shine outwards and embody a philosophy of giving. There should not be 'interest-groups' vying with one another for what they can squeeze out of the system, but competition should be over how much can be given. What such a community can offer to the world is without limit. (pp.137-138)

The state for Muslims must be a principle of liberation based on pluralism, with no coercion involved other than the minimum inherent in the principle of community itself. (p.140)

To Enable Not Force

The central misunderstanding of current Muslim political thought is the confused belief that a state based on Islamic principles is one which forces people to live according to Islam. In truth, the purpose of an Islamic political community is to enable individual Muslims to live according to Islam, and to protect them from coercion which tends to subvert their commitment to Islam.

All the current references to the `imposition of sharia' or the Islamic state, whether by Islamic thinkers or opponents of Islam, actually misunderstand the issue completely. Sharia can rule truly only when the community observing it perceives this as a liberating act, as the true fulfilment of the
self and moral worth of the community and each individual within it, for sharia can never be imposed. When it is imposed, it is not sharia. When only coercion underpins sharia, it becomes hypocrisy.

A Muslim polity must also defend the right of Muslims to live freely according to the dictates of their consciences, by force if necessary, for a Muslim state must use all its resources to fight injustice and tyranny inside and around it. We cannot expect the commitment to peace to be a licence for the toleration of all evils in the name of avoiding conflict. (pp.140-141)

The state must be based on a voluntary adherence to Shari'a. Because if the majority of people were compelled to follow Shari'a against their will, and for any purpose other than their sincere desire to please God Almighty, this would not be an Islamic political community, but a political community divided into oppressors on one side, and hypocrites on the other. (p.147)

On The Priority of Justice

It is essential to strive for justice as the only firm basis for permanent peace and harmony.

To attain these goals, the Muslim state must rely primarily on the responsibility and active role of the individual within the community. It reasserts the value of the individual without preaching individualism.

The individual does not need the state to be a Muslim. He creates the state as a Muslim, and he creates it voluntarily to further enhance his Islamic life.

For Muslims, to have no state at all is better than to have an illegal one. (p.141)

Community Not State, Treaty Not Constitution

The political ideals of the Muslims must be guided by the concept of the Muslim polity as a decentralized pluralistic association based primarily on choice rather than on coercion. The ideas I have outlined here suggest that the central ethical demands of Islam are less compatible with the modern concept of a coercive centralized state than with a free association of mutually co-operating communities. For such an organization the basis should be more like a treaty than a constitution. (pp.142-143)

The Document of Medina (Sahifat al-Madina), hailed by modern Islamic scholars as the Medina Constitution, was in fact a treaty. (p.143)

The solution suggested by this model to the current dead-end path of the nation-state points to a new kind of polity, in which communities are joined together not as subjects to a sovereign all-powerful state, but as members of communities united voluntarily, each pursuing its own way of life in complete freedom. Of course, coercion is not ruled out entirely to safeguard and maintain the polity once it is established, but - and this is important - it is not the basis of the polity. A person should be able to join the community and polity of her or his choice, and also to leave freely and join another. This element of choice is absent from the current international order, where most states insist that citizens conform to norms dictated from above, while freedom of movement to join another polity of one's choice is severely limited.

This lack of freedom is closely related to the territorial nature of the modern state. The model we are proposing here could suggest a way in which a polity is not strictly territorial. Political associations should make it possible for members to move in space without losing their rights of membership. This entails a concept of an international order based more on coexisting communities than on territorially-based mutually-exclusive nation-states. (pp.143-144)

Various Muslim and non-Muslim communities would coexist over an extensive area, and base this coexistence on mutually agreed treaties governing rights and duties towards the maintenance of the common polity. These rights and duties would not be affected by one's physical location, but by one's freely chosen commitment to the polity.

Such a polity will not be an intrusive, coercive organization seeking to impose specific norms and lifestyles. It will, rather, be a co-operative association designed to help people live freely according to the dictates of their consciences. The key word here is 'treaty' as opposed to 'constitution', which is the regulating principle.

The polity would, of course, conform to sharia which is not 'imposed' but is the true expression of the free will of the community. With membership completely free, the Muslim community at the heart of this state is one that has chosen to live according to Islam and to obey sharia. This observance is essentially a matter of conscience, for sharia is truly observed only when people do so voluntarily and sincerely. (pp.143-144)

In Defence of Syed Qutb, Pacifist

[According to some Islamists], the state was supposed to grow organically out of the community once it reached a critical mass. Where these theorists faced a problem was in their entertaining of recurrent delusions that such a community had already come into existence, and all that was needed to be done was to take charge of it, persuade it to surrender its will completely to their guardianship which could henceforth assume the task of keeping it virtuous.

In this regard, it was the much maligned Maududi-Qutb hardline position which appears at once more consistent and inherently pacifist. For if one believed, as they did, that no genuine Muslim society existed, then what was needed was to create one, and that can only be done peacefully, by preaching the message until one can gather a large enough following to make a viable community. (p.158)

Why Self-Governing Communities Must be Small and Decentralised

The fast expansion of the Medina city-state into an empire created many new difficulties, as the administration of the expanded state became too complicated for the city-state model of management as it evolved up to that time. (p.163)

The Medina model experienced powerful destabilising forces due mainly to inner tensions between the vision and reality. The Medina model emerged from the struggles which followed the death of the Prophet, and was shaped by the hard-line centralising stance adopted by Abu-Bakr, who was of the opinion that the unity of the community depended on its submission to one central authority. But his success in suppressing the rebellions against this authority launched the dynamics that led to break-neck expansion in Muslim-controlled territories and the dispersal of the citizenship body made up mainly of Arab Muslims throughout the new territories. (p.166)

The resulting tensions put unbearable pressure on the original model, which depended on the active consent of a cohesive citizenship body, with opportunities to communicate effectively, usually face to face and on a daily basis. (p.166)

Piety and Chaos

Of equal significance has been the tendency of the 'ethical party' (or the 'religious party' as it is often called) to undermine itself by endemic indiscipline. Those claiming to stand up for the 'pure' model deferred only to their own conscience and accepted no earthly authority. This made for poor discipline and endless fragmentation. (p.171)

On The Necessity of Power

Reformers and other aspiring politicians have to be mindful of these laws of social action, and need to seek sources of power where they naturally lie. It is no use championing a noble cause if one cannot deliver the striking capability needed to carry it to victory. A reformer has thus to enlist the support of a powerful solidarity group for this purpose. Even God is mindful of this, for he selects prophets only from the leading clans within strong tribes. (p.183)

Concluding Thoughts

The instability of the ethical model of the Medina state was caused in part by the unrealistic demands it puts on leaders and followers. But it also needs to be seen in the wider context of the challenges facing pre-modern republican models of government, in particular in city-states undergoing a radical transformation during a period of fast expansion. (p.184)

The city-state model was doubly vulnerable in the anarchic pre-modern world system, where city-states were vulnerable either to being swallowed up by empires or neighbouring states, or they could themselves expand into empires. (p.184)

It is only with the development of techniques of representation, the emergence of an international system which guaranteed the survival of weak states, and improved communications, that it became possible to stabilize republican/democratic systems. (p.184)

While Muslim thinkers, like their Roman counterparts, had effectively acquiesced into imperial rule, they continued to deny its legitimacy. The resulting divergence between ideals and reality spelt a dangerous moral vacuum which continued to infect Muslim politics down the years, and accounts for much of its pathology. (p.185)

The caliphate model was embedded in its environment and dependent on many variables which were not often clearly identifiable. (p.186)

The ideal of the caliphate is no mirage; it is an ideal that is real enough. But its reality cannot be detached from the conditions which made it possible. It belongs to the category of the republican city-state and its ethos of the involved citizen, making it unworkable in multi-ethnic empires. (p.186)

Peace