The Principles of STATE and GOVERNMENT in ISLAM
By Muhammad Asad
Chapters: The Issue before Us | Terminology and Historical Precedent | Government by Consent and Council | Relationship between Executive and Legislature | The Citizens and the Government | Conclusion |
Chapter I
THE ISSUE BEFORE US
Why an Islamic State?
In the life of every nation there comes, sooner or later, a moment when it seems to be given a free choice of its destiny: a moment when the decisions as to which way to go and what future to aim at, seem to be freed from the pressure of adverse circumstances, and when no power on earth is able to prevent the nation from choosing one way in preference to another. Such historic moments are extremely rare and fleeting, and it may well be that if a nation fails to avail itself of the opportunity thus offered, it will not be offered another for centuries to come.
This moment of free choice has now arrived for the nations of the Muslim world. After a century of struggles, hopes, errors, and disappointments, full independence from colonial rule has been won by most of the countries inhabited by Muslims. The achievement of independence has brought to the foreground the question of the fundamental principles by which they should govern themselves in order to ensure happiness and well-being for their peoples. The problem is one not merely of administrative efficiency but also of ideology. It is for the Muslims to decide whether their newly independent states shall be subordinated to modern Western concepts which deny to religion the right to shape the nation's practical life, or shall, at last, become Islamic polities in the true sense of the word. A state inhabited predominantly or even entirely by Muslims is not necessarily synonymous with an "Islamic state": it can become truly Islamic only by virtue of a conscious application of the sociopolitical tenets of Islam to the life of the nation, and by an incorporation of those tenets in the basic constitution of the country.
But, then, one might ask: Does Islam really expect the Muslims to strive, at all times and under all circumstances, for the establishment of an Islamic state—or is the desire for it based only on their historical memories? Is Islam really so constituted that it demands of its followers a definite course of political, communal action—or does it perhaps leave, as other religions do, all political action to be decided by the people themselves in the light of the exigencies of the times? In short, is the "mixing of religion with politics" a genuine postulate of Islam, or not?
The intimate connection between religion and politics which is so characteristic of Muslim history is, more often than not, somewhat unpalatable to modern, Western-educated Muslims who have grown accustomed to considering questions of belief and of practical life as belonging to entirely separate realms. On the other hand, it is impossible to gain a correct appreciation of Islam without paying full attention to this problem. Anyone who is acquainted, however superficially, with the teachings of Islam knows that they not only circumscribe man's relation to God, but also lay down a definite scheme of social behavior to be adopted in result of that relation. Starting from the fundamental assumption that all aspects of natural life have been God-willed and possess, therefore, a positive value of their own, the Quran makes it abundantly clear that the ultimate purpose of all creation is the compliance of the created with the will of the Creator. In the case of man, this compliance—called islam—is postulated as a conscious, active coordination of man's desires and behavior with the rules of life decreed by the Creator.
This demand presupposes that—at least with reference to human life—the concepts of "right" and "wrong" have meanings that do not change from case to case or from time to time but retain their validity for all times and all conditions. Obviously, no definitions of "right" and "wrong" arrived at through our speculation can ever possess such eternal validity, for all human thought is essentially subjective and, therefore, strongly influenced by the thinker's time and environment. Hence, if it is really the purpose of religion to guide man toward a coordination of his desires and his behavior with the will of God, he must be taught in unmistakable terms how to differentiate between good and evil and, consequently, what to do and what not to do. A mere general instruction in ethics—such as "love your fellow men," "be truthful," "put your trust in God"—does not suffice, because it is subject to many conflicting interpretations. What is needed is a precise body of laws which would outline, however broadly, the whole sphere of human life in all its aspects—spiritual, physical, individual, social, economic, and political.
Islam fulfills this need by means of a Divine Law—called shariah—which has been provided in the ordinances of the Quran and supplemented (or, rather, detailed and exemplified) by the Prophet Muhammad in the body of teachings which we describe as his sunnah, or way of life. From the viewpoint of the believer, the Quran and the Sunnah reveal to us a conceptually understandable segment of God's all-embracing plan of creation. With reference to man, they contain the only available positive indication of what God wants us to be and to do.
But He only indicates His will to us: He does not compel us to behave in the way indicated. He gives us freedom of choice. We may, if we so desire, willingly submit to His revealed Law and thus, as it were, cooperate with Him; and we may, if we choose, go against Him, disregard His Law, and risk the consequences. However we decide, the responsibility is ours. It goes without saying that our ability to lead an Islamic life depends on our making the former choice. Nevertheless, even if we choose to obey God, we may not always be able to do it fully: for although it is obvious that the innermost purpose of Islamic Law is man's righteousness in the individual sense, it is equally obvious that a good deal of that Law can become effective only through a consciously coordinated effort of many individuals—that is, through a communal effort. From this it follows that an individual, however well-intentioned he may be, cannot possibly mold his private existence in accordance with the demands of Islam unless and until the society around him agrees to subject its practical affairs to the pattern visualized by Islam.
So conscious a cooperation cannot arise out of a mere feeling of brotherhood: the concept of brotherhood must be translated into positive social action—the "enjoining of what is right and forbidding of what is wrong" (al-amr bi'l-ma-'ruf wa 'n-nahy 'an al-munkar)—or, to phrase it differently, the creation and maintenance of such social conditions as would enable the greatest possible number of human beings to live in harmony, freedom, and dignity. Now, it is obvious that anti-social behavior on the part of one person may make it difficult for other persons to realize this ideal; and the larger the number of such "rebels," the greater the difficulty for the rest. In other words, the community's willingness to cooperate in terms of Islam must remain largely theoretical so long as there is no worldly power responsible for enforcing Islamic Law and preventing rebellious behavior—at least in matters of social concern—on the part of any of the community's members. This responsibility can be discharged only by a coordinating agency invested with the powers of command (amr) and prohibition (nahy): that is, the state. It follows, therefore, that the organization of an Islamic state or states is an indispensable condition of Islamic life in the true sense of the word.
Why Not a "Secular" State?
There is no doubt that countless Muslims passionately desire a sociopolitical development on Islamic lines; but there is also no doubt that in the mental climate of the modern world it has become almost axiomatic among many educated people that religion ought not to interfere with political life. And, while the principle of "secularism" is automatically identified with "progress," every suggestion to consider practical politics and socioeconomic planning under the aspect of religion is dismissed out of hand as reactionary or, at best, as "impractical idealism." Apparently, many educated Muslims share this view today; and in this, as in so many other phases of our contemporary life, the influence of Western thought is unmistakable.
For reasons of their own, the people of the West have become disappointed with religion (their religion), and this disappointment is reflected in the ethical, social, and political chaos now pervading a large part of the world. Instead of submitting their decisions and actions to the criterion of a moral law—which is the ultimate aim of every higher religion—these people have come to regard expediency (in the short-term, practical connotation of the word) as the only obligation to which public affairs should be subjected; and because the ideas as to what is expedient naturally differ in every group, nation, and community, the most bewildering conflicts of interest have come to the fore in the political field, both national and international. For, obviously, what appears to be expedient from a purely practical point of view to one group or nation need not be expedient to another group or nation. Thus, unless men submit their endeavors to the guidance of an objective, moral consideration, their respective interests must clash at some point or other; and the more they struggle against one another, the wider their interests diverge and the more antagonistic become their ideas as to what is right and what is wrong in the dealings of men.
Briefly, in a modern "secular" state there is no stable norm by which to judge between good and evil, and between right and wrong. The only possible criterion is the "nation's interest." But in the absence of an objective scale of moral values, different groups of people—even within one nation—may have, and usually do have, widely divergent views as to what constitutes the nation's best interests. While a capitalist may quite sincerely believe that civilization will perish if economic liberalism is superseded by socialism, a socialist is as sincerely of the opinion that the very maintenance of civilization depends on the abolition of capitalism and its supersession by socialism. Both make their ethical views— that is to say, the views as to what should and what should not be done to and with human beings—dependent solely on their economic views, with the resultant chaos in their mutual relations.
It has become evident that none of the contemporary Western political systems—economic liberalism, communism, national socialism, social democracy, and so forth—is able to transform that chaos into something resembling order: simply because none of them has ever made a serious attempt to consider political and social problems in the light of absolute moral principles. Instead, each of these systems bases its conception of right and wrong on nothing but the supposed interests of this or that class or group or nation—in other words, on people's changeable (and, indeed, continuously changing) material preferences. If we were to admit that this is a natural—and therefore desirable—state of man's affairs, we would admit, by implication, that the terms "right" and "wrong" have no real validity of their own but are merely convenient fictions, fashioned exclusively by time and socioeconomic circumstances. In logical pursuance of this thought, one would have no choice but to deny the existence of any moral obligation in human life: for the very concept of moral obligation becomes meaningless if it is not conceived as something absolute. As soon as we become convinced that our views about right and wrong or good and evil are only man-made, changeable products of social convention and environment, we cannot possibly use them as reliable guides in our affairs; and so, in planning those affairs, we gradually learn to dispense with all moral guidance and to rely on expediency alone—which, in turn, leads to ever-growing dissensions within and between human groups and to a progressive decrease in the amount of happiness vouchsafed to man. This is, perhaps, the ultimate explanation of the deep disquiet which is apparent throughout the modern world.
No nation or community can know happiness unless and until it is truly united from within; and no nation or community can be truly united from within unless it achieves a large degree of unanimity as to what is right and what is wrong in the affairs of men; and no such unanimity is possible unless the nation or community agrees on a moral obligation arising from a permanent, absolute moral law. Obviously, it is religion alone that can provide such a law and, with it, the basis for an agreement, within any one group, on a moral obligation binding on all members of that group.
Religion and Morality
Whatever the particular tenets of this or that religion, however sublime or primitive its teachings, whether monotheistic, polytheistic, or pantheistic, the innermost core of every religious experience—at all periods of history and in all civilizations—is, first, man's inner conviction that all being and happening in this world is the outcome of a conscious, creative, all-embracing Power—or, to put it more simply, a Divine Will; and, second, the feeling that one is, or at least ought to be, in spiritual accord with that Will. On this feeling and this conviction alone was and is based man's faculty to judge between good and evil. For, unless we presume that an absolute, planning Will is at the root of all creation, there is no sense in our presuming that any of our aims and actions could be intrinsically right or wrong, moral or immoral. In the absence of a belief in such a planning Will, all our concepts of morality must of necessity become vague and more and more subject to expediency: that is, subject to the question of whether or not an aim or an action is useful (in the practical sense of the word) to the person concerned or to the community to which he belongs. Consequently, "right" and "wrong" become purely relative terms, to be interpreted arbitrarily according to one's personal or communal needs, which, in their turn, are subject to the continuous changes in one's socioeconomic environment.
These reflections on the role of religious thought and feeling in the realm of morality assume a paramount importance if we realize that the trend of our time is definitely antagonistic to religion as such. Everywhere and every day we are being told by a certain class of intellectuals that religion is nothing but a relic of man's barbaric past, which is now allegedly being superseded by the "Age of Science." Science, they say, is about to take the place of the worn out, outmoded religious systems; science, so gloriously and irresistibly growing, will at last teach man to live in accordance with "pure reason," and will in time enable him to evolve new standards of morality without any metaphysical sanction.
This naive optimism with regard to science is in reality not at all "modern": it is, on the contrary, extremely old-fashioned — an uncritical copy of the Occident's naive optimism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. During that period (and particularly in the second half of the nineteenth century), many Western scientists believed that a solution of the mysteries of the universe was "just around the corner," and that henceforward nothing would stop man from arranging his life in God-like independence and reasonableness. The thinkers of our time, however, are much more reserved—not to say skeptical—on this subject. Under the tremendous impact of modern, twentieth century physics, contemporary thinkers have come to the conclusion that deterministic science is unable to fulfill the spiritual hopes attached to it as recently as a hundred or even fifty years ago: for they have found that the mysteries of the universe become more mysterious and more complicated the more our research advances. Every day it becomes more obvious that it may never be possible to answer by purely scientific means the questions of how the universe came into being, how life originated in it, and what constitutes the phenomenon of life itself: and, therefore, also the question of the true nature and purpose of human existence. But until we are in a position to answer this last named question, we cannot even attempt to define moral values such as "good" and "evil": simply because such terms have no meaning at all unless they are related to a knowledge (real or imaginary) of the nature and the purpose of human existence.