The Challenge of Political Islam

Non-Muslims and the Egyptian State

Rachel Scott

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780804769068, 9780804769051
• eBook ISBN: 9780804774710
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion, Politics & State

The rise of political Islam has provoked considerable debate about the compatibility of democracy, tolerance, and pluralism with the Islamist position. As The Challenge of Political Islam reveals, Egyptian Islamists today are more integrated into the political arena than ever, and are voicing a broad spectrum of positions, including a vision of Islamic citizenship more inclusive of non-Muslims.

Based on Islamist writings, political tracts, and interviews with Islamists—including members of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and other important contemporary thinkers—this book looks closely at how modern, politically-oriented Egyptian Islamists perceive non-Muslims in an Islamic state and how non-Muslims respond. Clarifying the movement's aims, this work uncovers how Islamists have responded to the pressures of modernity, the degree to which the movement has been influenced by both a historical Islamic framework and Western modes of political thinking, and the necessity to reconsider the notion that secularism is a precondition for toleration.

1

NON-MUSLIMS IN CLASSICAL ISLAM

ONE OF THE PRINCIPAL FEATURES of the Islamist movement is the insistence upon the application of sharī‘a as the foundation of a proposed Islamic state. Islamist slogans have included “Islam is the solution,” “the Qur’an is our constitution,” and “Islam is a system.” Such statements imply that there is some kind of certainty about what constitutes Islam and what constitutes an “Islamic state.” It is often assumed that Islamists are seeking to reinstall a type of religious state—in which religion and state are unified—that existed at some idealized point in Islamic history. Implicit in this view is the assumption that Islam has a specific theory on politics and the state, which the Islamic revivalists are attempting to implement anew.¹ The reality is, in fact, far more complex. Sharī‘a is not a codified body of law that can simply be applied. Islamic political theory—which was more diffuse and varied than the term itself allows for—often responded to the status quo and legitimized that status quo.² In addition, both the interpretation and the practical application of sharī‘a were subject to change over time. They also varied from one geographical entity to another. An analysis of Islamic history illustrates the divergent interpretations of the law and the flexible and selective ways in which it was applied. The way in which it was interpreted—or selectively ignored—was contingent upon local political, cultural, and social conditions and the pragmatic needs and choices of rulers and elites.

The challenge for contemporary Islamic thinkers therefore lies in differentiating sharī‘a, or Islamic principles, from the various historical contexts in which sharī‘a was applied. Regarding the role of non-Muslims, contemporary Islamists face the challenge of identifying what the role and status of non-Muslims in different historical contexts was, and the extent to which that role was—from their perspective—a true reflection of their perception of an essential and immutable Islam. These questions have been addressed by only some Islamists, the majority of whom tend to refer to an immutable transhistorical sharī‘a. However, an analysis of the Islamist position on the proposed role of non-Muslims within an idealized future Islamic state cannot proceed without a consideration of these issues.

RELIGION AND STATE

Hasan al-Bannā (1906–1949), the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, argued that “Islam is a complete system which deals with all areas of life. It is a state, a nation, a government, and a community.”³ Al-Bannā assumed that the concept of Islam as a system was embodied in the past, though he was not clear as to the specific historical period that this ideal Islamic state related to.

The discourse of an “Islamic state” or Islam as “religion and state” is a modern ideological construction and is not supported by either a historical analysis or an analysis of Islamic political theory. Indeed, the whole concept of “religion” and “state” reflects deeply secular assumptions about the concept of religion. The concept of “state” is also ahistorical. While the idea of a fixed corpus of Islamic political thought is problematic, “Islamic political thought mostly concentrates on non-state unit analysis such as the community (umma or jama‘a), justice (‘adl or shari‘a), and leadership (khilafa, imama, and sultan).”⁴ It also tends retroactively to justify the status quo.

Contrary to the Islamist notion that Islam is a system, the legislative details of which are clearly laid out in the Qur’an and the Sunna (sayings and actions of the Prophet recorded in the Hadith), the Qur’an provided only general guidelines for legislation. Qur’anic legislation is predominantly ethical. Legal verses tend to be very detailed on some subjects, such as inheritance, and sparse on others, such as decision-making processes. The Sunna are more legalistic but tend to respond to specific incidents and do not lay down general guidelines. In the case of guidelines for the rights and role of non-Muslims, verses in the Qur’an about non-Muslims are often unclear and inconsistent. The Sunna are relatively sparse concerning concrete stipulations for the treatment of Christians.⁵

Historical analysis shows there was no single relationship pattern between religion and state. Indeed, that relationship is contested terrain, and modernists, secularists, and Islamist revivalists read and interpret history to support their own narrative. Many contemporary Islamists argue that religion and state were unified only under the small polity established by the Prophet that continued in the early decades of the Islamic caliphate. Muhammad reportedly had religious and political authority by virtue of his role as the Prophet of God and leader of the early Muslim community. However, Asma Afsaruddin argues that the idea that an Islamic state was fully conceived of during the prophetic period is ahistorical and that “there is no evidence at all in the early sources that the Companions invoked a supposedly divinely mandated blueprint for an ‘Islamic Government’ or an ‘Islamic State.’” Rather, she says—in line with a modernist position—that “the shari’a is largely apolitical” and that in “the formative period . . . there was no universal consensus regarding a religious mandate . . . to elect or appoint a ruler for the polity.” ⁶

Regardless of the competing claims that have been made about the relationship between religion and state—and these terms are used tentatively and heuristically—in the early formative period, by the middle of the ninth century religious groups had emerged independently and in opposition to the caliph. It is this relationship of distance between the religious groups and the caliph that came to characterize normative classical Sunni Islam. These religious groups were represented by the ‘ulamā’ (religious scholars), who evolved into the recognized carriers of religious knowledge on account of their expertise in the Qur’an and the Hadith. Their religious authority was, in theory, limited to interpreting God’s divine law. Ahmad Ibn Hanbal (780–855) argued that religious obligations stemmed not from caliphal declarations but from the Qur’an and the Sunna as interpreted by the ‘ulamā.’ ⁷ The ‘ulamā’, fearing proximity to power, were keen to remain at a distance from the caliph. In fact, the ‘ulamā’ were reluctant to attach sharī‘a to the authority of a specific ruler and to codify the sharī‘a, as this would invalidate the sharī‘a as God-given law. This separation between the sharī ‘a and the ruler was compounded by the fact that by the time the law had developed in its classical form—the early tenth century—“there was no unified state left in the Islamic world.”⁸ In Egypt, the center of power of the ‘ulamā’ was the mosque and university of al-Azhar, founded in 969 CE, from which the ‘ulamā’, possessing much independence from the state, operated as leaders of the community.⁹

According to the normative classical Sunni position, the caliph possessed neither God’s power to make law nor the Prophet’s function of proclaiming it. The caliph inherited only judicial and executive power.¹⁰ The role of the ‘ulamā’ was a theoretical limitation on the caliph’s power, since the caliph was subject to the law and the state was created to enforce the law.¹¹ According to Ibn Khaldūn, the North African historian and scholar of the fourteenth century (1332–1406), the caliph was head of the Islamic state, and he was representative of the umma (Muslim community), which was based on the shared acceptance of Islam. The caliph was obliged to protect Islam and create the circumstances under which sharī‘a could be implemented and followed. Other religious duties included waging holy war, administering public interest, and venerating learning and religious scholars, which included the appointment of the muftī, the religious scholar who issued legal judgments .¹²

At the same time, however, the caliph was subject to the limitations of the law only in a general ethical sense.¹³ The scope of religious law, which was developed by incorporating elements of the law prevailing in the areas conquered by the Muslims, was limited. From early on, governments had appropriated the administration of criminal justice from the sharī‘a courts, and practice and custom increasingly influenced the law of contracts and obligations. Some have argued that a gulf evolved between the ideal doctrine of sharī‘a, which defined the state, and historical reality.¹⁴ This view holds that “practice almost always involved breaches with the doctrine; and that such breaches were due to the idealistic, impractical, and exacting nature of a doctrine that had not changed since the tenth century.”¹⁵

However, such a rigid disjuncture between law and practice is problematic, since in reality the law itself was not isolated; rather, both the interpretation and the application of the law changed over time. During the Umayyad period (661–750), Islamic law developed on an ad hoc basis and included much customary practice. As the ascendant Abbasid Empire (750–1258) encountered new situations, the elaboration of Islamic law accelerated. Claiming the Qur’an and Sunna as sources, Muslim jurists began to develop a body of law known as Islamic jurisprudence ( fiqh). The jurist would undertake ijtihād, the process of employing intellectual reasoning to read the sources of sharī‘a in order to arrive at a legal judgment. In theory, there is a distinction between sharī‘a, the transcendental idea of law, and Islamic jurisprudence, the interpretation of that law by religious scholars. In practice, however, this distinction has often not been maintained and Islamic jurisprudence was conflated with sharī‘a so that Islamic jurisprudence itself acquired an unquestionable status. Some have claimed that the door to ijtihād closed in the eleventh century. Certainly the books of the early jurists of Islam were granted “a special and indisputable status.”¹⁶ Both Islamists and Muslim modernists have claimed that Islamic jurisprudence became ossified in some way, although historically the idea that the door to ijtihād closed is questionable.

Most of what emerged in Islamic political thought, at least within the Sunni tradition, reflected historical reality.¹⁷ Thus Islamic jurisprudence sanctioned the status quo, and as a result there was no need for Islamic political thought to theorize on the dynamics of the state in ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• NOTES ON TRANSLITERATION
• INTRODUCTION
• 1 - NON-MUSLIMS IN CLASSICAL ISLAM
• 2 - CONTINUITY, DISCONTINUITY, AND THE RISE OF ISLAMISM
• 3 - NON-MUSLIMS AND THE EGYPTIAN STATE
• 4 - THE DHIMMA
• 5 - TOWARD CITIZENSHIP
• 6 - CITIZENSHIP IN AN ISLAMIC STATE
• 7 - COPTIC RESPONSES
• CONCLUSION
• NOTES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX