Political Thought in Islam

A Study in Intellectual Boundaries

Nelly Lahoud

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415341264
• eBook ISBN: 9781134296064
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

This book is a study of political thought in Islam from the viewpoint of the history of ideas and the relevance of these ideas to contemporary Arabic political discourse. The author examines the use of the classical Islamic tradition (turath) and its religious and philosophical components by the three dominant Arabic political discourses: the Islamists, apologists and intellectuals. The book analyzes the different assumptions advanced by these discourses and the way they propose to apply or restore the turath in the present. Exploring connections between the medieval Islamic tradition and current debates, this book is essential reading for advanced students and researchers of Islam and political thought.

1 The Islamists and the Apologists

An idea isn’t responsible for the people who believe in it

Don Marquis

Of the several currents of thought in contemporary Islam, the Islamist current undoubtedly enjoys greater ‘authenticity’ among the general public. It is essentially a political current that uses its particular interpretation of the Islamic tradition as its ideological platform. Islamists emphasise their faithful adherence to the Islamic foundation texts, Qurʼan and Hadith, which they, in turn, use selectively as a tool to justify their political programmes. The radical among them draw on these texts even to legitimate their call to violence. This current has assumed the right to adjudicate what is authentic, ethical and moral in the spheres of politics and social behaviour in the Islamic community. This seemingly faithful adherence to the teachings of the foundation texts has enabled it virtually to monopolise Islamic ‘authenticity’ in the minds of many Muslims and non-Muslims. As a consequence, there exists now a broad perception of Islam that identifies it with Islamism. This perception is not false in so far as Islamism represents an intellectually active political stream of Islam. But it is incomplete in so far as Islamism does not represent all of the intellectual currents within Islam.

The Apologist current advances an alternative interpretation of Islam. It is made up of Muslim thinkers, often academics, who, conscious of Islam being a powerful political tool in the hands of Islamists, are seeking to deploy Islam for different purposes. Essentially, they are using Islam as a tool to promote political trends that can be adapted to the now globally dominant political values in the West such as democracy and liberalism. They represent a current that is on the rise in popularity among academics and policymakers in the Western world.¹ It is commonly referred to as ‘Liberal Islam’, and the thinkers whose views form this current are referred to as ‘Liberal Muslims’.

This neologism is recent or has at least become increasingly used over the past decade.² It is, however, a category that does not adequately describe these individuals. To my knowledge, they do not use the Arabic equivalent of liberals, aḥrār, to describe themselves. Moreover, the political circumstances of the Arab-Islamic world are so dire as far as good governance, human rights, democracy and so on are concerned that the very notion of ‘liberal’ in a transparent sense of the term requires an exercise of the imagination. One can certainly speak of liberal-minded Muslims or of liberal traits in the Islamic tradition, but it would be misleading to speak of contemporary ‘liberal Islam’ in the absence of the foundation of a minimum political theory of liberty (outside the patriotic poetry and songs) that is also translated into liberal institutions and political practices.

In this study, I use the term Apologists not without unease, for I recognise the problems with typologies as well as the fact that Apologist is a term that is loaded in meanings. As I note in the Introduction, I use this term because I consider these thinkers to have an agenda, which is to adapt Islam to what they deem as necessary modern challenges and, further, because they frame their interpretations through what is essentially a defence of their religion.

The Islamist approach and its intellectual roots

Writing in his Fī Ẓilāl al-Qur’an (In the Shadows of the Qurʼan), Sayyid Qutb, still the most influential Islamist ideologue, expresses an approach to the Islamic tradition that is common among Islamists. It takes the form of a reification of Islam, and promotes this reification as an exact emulation of the teachings and practices of the early Muslim community, as if it is a ‘return’ to an idealised past:

And we are taken in at times by deceptive appearances pertaining to the division of cosmic norms (sunan kawniyya). When we observe [for example] that [it is accepted that] the adherence to the laws of nature would lead to success, even if the religious values were contravened. The results of this division are not immediately apparent, but they will certainly be evident in the end. … and that is what has befallen the Muslim community itself. The line of its ascent began in a period during which the laws of nature coincided with the religious values. The line of its descent began when the two came to be [perceived as] separate. It continued to decline gradually as the separation between the two grew wider until it reached its nadir when the Muslim community completely disregarded the natural norms and the religious values altogether.³

Here, Qutb is alluding to the periods during which he believes true Islam was fully realised. By far the truest Islam for Qutb was that experienced during the rule of Muhammad at Madīna in CE 622–32.⁴This was a foundational period that saw a virtually miraculous development of the Muslim community; it represents a fusion between the religious and the political spheres, which coincided with power and prosperity. Qutb laments that ‘“the existence” of the Islamic community (umma) is considered to have been interrupted for many centuries’.⁵

Qutb’s views are symptomatic of the Islamists’ discourse in general. It takes the form of a search for a cure for the ailment of political instability and perceived moral decadence. It sees the cause of this ailment as a divergence between the observance of Islam and the conduct of social and political affairs. The main thrust of this discourse is that the apogee of humanity in its ethical, political and social spheres was reached during the time of the founder of Islam, the Prophet Muhammad. The ideal, then, has already been reached beyond which no further progress is possible. Given that the death of the Prophet was followed by a sharp decline in human ideals, so runs the argument, moral and political progress may be achieved only through emulating a past when the Muslim community is believed to have scrupulously observed the teachings of the Qurʼan.

The twentieth century saw a rapid rise of groups of Muslims who use Islam as an ideological weapon for their political ends. This is the current commonly referred to in scholarly and media writings as Islamism and its proponents are designated as ‘Islamists’, not Muslims, in order to stress that they are attributing an ideological dimension to Islam.⁶ In Western languages one also finds related terms, such as ‘post-Islamism’, ‘fundamentalism’, ‘neo-fundamentalism’, the French language adding ‘intégrisme’ to the list.⁷ In Arabic, one finds in the relevant literature other descriptions to this current, such as ‘political Islam’ (al-islām al-siyāsī), ‘Islamic expansion’ (al-madd al-islāmī) or, as the Islamists themselves describe it, the ‘Islamic awakening’ (al-ṣaḥwa al-islāmiyya).

There are many Islamist groups, but as might be expected the use of scriptural language is a common characteristic of their rhetoric. For example, they all use scriptural references as an immutable source of authority in the social, ethical and political spheres. While they do not always share the same strategies and goals, they nevertheless resort to the same sources of authority and deploy similar terms of references.⁸ For example, they highlight the central role that Islam occupies in their political activities, stressing that they are not simply Islamic political parties engaged in politics but they are political parties founded on Islam as an ideological platform.⁹ Further, they seem to agree upon three main precepts: māḍawiyya (a return to the Islamic principles of the past), shumūliyya (a comprehensive application of Islam in all spheres of life) and al-daʽwa al-niḍāliyya (a call for struggle to bring about the Islamisation of the state and society).¹⁰

From the perspective of the late twentieth and beginning of twenty-first centuries, the intellectual roots and developments of Islamism can be traced back, in part, to earlier thinkers and movements, in particular to the salafiyya movement. It is a movement that emerged in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and whose leading figures advocated a return to the teachings of the pious forefathers (al-salaf al-ṣāliḥ – hence the name salafiyya).¹¹ Of the many meanings of salaf that the Arabic lexicon Lisān al-ʽArab lists, the most fitting is ‘we have made them the predecessors so that others are guided by them’. It is an ambiguous term, one that can be deployed rhetorically to imply positive connotations without necessarily giving a precise meaning. Other definitions of salaf exist which seem to suggest that the salaf are pious Sunni predecessors, excluding those revered by the Shīʽites, like ʽAlī Ibn Abī Ṭālib.¹² The general meaning of salaf though is the one most emphasised.

The context in which the salafiyya emerged was related in part to the political conditions of the Ottoman Empire. Its decline, eventual fall and the subsequent colonisation by Western powers of territories previously parts of a strong Islamic conglomerate led to a new intellectual movement in the Arab world. It was characterised by a renewal (tajdīd) of Islam, as a response to the emerging socio-political and technological changes. This tajdīd served as an intellectual platform for the salafiyya, and it developed primarily under the influence, in chronological order, of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (d. 1897), Muhammad ʽAbduh (d. 1905) and Rashid Rida (d. 1935).

This line of the salafiyya emerged in the late nineteenth century, and its members advocated reform (iṣlāḥ) from within the tradition of Islam.¹³ Their aim was to adapt Islam to modernity and, through it, to thwart the influence of the West, which was rapidly impinging on the Muslim world.¹⁴ They based their call for iṣlāḥ in Scripture, citing, for example, the many verses in the Qurʼan that praise those who practise iṣlāḥ,¹⁵ and a hadith in which Muhammad had said that a reformer (mujaddid) would appear at the beginning of every century.¹⁶ Their reforms called for the modernisation but not secularisation of the Islamic world. Rashid Rida, for instance, advocated the modernisation of sharlʽa in such a way that separation of religion, state and civil society could be achieved.¹⁷

The salafiyya generated various responses in the Arab world and beyond. Werner Ende notes that the emergence in the years 1927–8 of the Muslim Brotherhood (Al-Ikhwān Al-Muslimūn), the movement that continues to form the ideological basis of most Islamist movements in the Islamic world today, marked a change in the development of the salafiyya. The founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hasan al-Banna, was inspired by the writings of Rashid Rida, Banna developing the intellectual stimulus that started with the salafiyya towards religious conservatism. He also sought to spread religious teachings widely, and thus focused on education for the masses.¹⁸ In this sense, therefore, the salafiyya movement is considered by some as the precursor of Islamism. The emergence of an outwardly secular Arab nationalism, and the banning of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1954, saw a decline of the salafiyya as a reform movement, but its ideas and ideals were to re-surface in Islamist, Apologist and other forms.

While the influence of the salafiyya may be identified in the programmes of some Islamists, it is also the case that many of the proposals made by the early reformists have been criticised and dismissed by influential Islamists as the movement took shape. For instance, the Moroccan Islamist ideologue, Abd Assalam Yassin, does not believe that Islam stands in any need of modernisation. Quite the contrary, he believes the goal should be ‘to islamicize modernity not to modernize Islam’.¹⁹

Some scholars have also made some links between the Wahhābī movement and Islamism, the former being a puritanical movement that arose in central Arabia in the eighteenth century.²⁰ The Wahhābī link is a complex one. The thinkers of the salafiyya movement made little impact in Saudi Arabia. Moreover, as far as the intellectual development of Islamism, Egypt stands as the intellectual heartland of the current, producing Hasan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood and Sayyid Qutb.²¹ It is only since the late 1970s, and particularly since the success of the Iranian revolution, that Wahhabist teachings began to spread in an intensive way, perhaps even in a calculated way, as Michel Feher suggests. This has been mainly through the funding of religious schools (madrasa) beyond the borders of Saudi Arabia and of the Arab world.²²

It is increasingly difficult to pinpoint with confidence the intellectual parameters of different Islamist groups or individuals. It is no doubt convenient for observers to work with taxonomies and thus use labels and categories, but this does not necessarily reflect the intellectual character of Islamists. One needs only to refer to the many websites that cater for Islamist teachings to find the extent to which there is a ‘mix and match’ in Islamist textbooks, combining at times sufi, salafi, Wahhabi and Qutbian texts. Among the reasons for this sort of laissez-faire cafeteria style is, as Michael Cook observes about modern Islamic developments in general, the fact that sects and schools no longer define the divisions in Islamic thought as they used to. Except for the Shīʽites and the rest of the Muslims, there is little that remains by way of intellec...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on translation and transliteration
• Introduction
• 1 The Islamists and the Apologists
• 2 The Intellectuals and the tradition
• 3 Are Islamic politics Islamic or Islamist?
• 4 Allegory and orthodoxies
• 5 Fārābī: on religion and philosophy
• 6 On Ibn Rushd’s liberalism
• Conclusion
• Glossary
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index