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 |
With reference to the problem before us, one may safely say that there is not only one form of the Islamic state, but many; and it is for the Muslims of every period to discover the form most suitable to their needs—on the condition, of course, that the form and the institutions they choose are in full agreement with the explicit, unequivocal shar'i laws relating to communal life.
These political shar'i laws (which will presently be discussed in detail) found their full expression in the administrative institutions and methods that prevailed at the time of the Right-Guided Caliphs —and therefore their state was Islamic in every sense of the word. However, we must not forget that in the unwritten constitution to which the Islamic Commonwealth conformed in those days, there were, side by side with the explicit skar'i laws relating to statecraft, certain other laws enacted by the rulers of the time in accordance with their own interpretation of the spirit of Quran and Sunnah—that is to say, derived through ijtihad. Apart from these, we encounter in the period of the Right-Guided Caliphate many other administrative and legislative enactments which were neither directly nor indirectly derived from Quran or Sunnah but from purely commonsense considerations of governmental efficiency and public interest (as, for example, 'Umar's establishment of the diwan, or treasury office, after a Persian model, or his prohibiting warriors from Arabia to acquire landed property in the newly conquered territories). Inasmuch as such enactments were promulgated by the legitimate government of the day and were, moreover, not contrary to the spirit or the letter of any shar'i law, they had full legal validity for that time. But this does not mean that they must remain valid for all times.
The Example of the Prophet's Companions
An objection to this claim of legal flexibility might thus be made: "Were not those great Companions of the Prophet better acquainted with the innermost aims of Islam than we could ever be? Is it not, therefore, absolutely necessary to follow their example as closely as possible in matters of statecraft as well? Did not the Apostle of God himself urge us to model our behavior on that of his Companions?"
This objection has an emotional background of great force, and so I shall try to answer it at this stage of our discussion.
It is true that the Prophet has impressed on us the necessity of taking his Companions as an example: not only because they had spent many years in the Master's company and were thus fully aware of his ways, but also because the character and behavior of some of them attained to incomparably high levels. However, our moral obligation to try to emulate the great Companions relates precisely to their character and behavior—to their spiritual and social integrity, their selflessness, their idealism, and their unquestioning surrender to the will of God. It cannot and does not relate to an imitation, by people of later times, of the Companions' procedure in matters of state administration—for the simple reason, pointed out above, that this procedure was in many respects an outcome of time-conditioned requirements and individual ijtihad, and did not in each and every instance depend on shar'i ordinances alone. The Prophet's sanction of a ruler's right to resort to such free, ijtihadi decisions is illustrated in many Traditions, but perhaps nowhere as lucidly as in the classical report of his conversation with his Companion Mu'adh ibn Jabal:
When he [Mu'adh ibn Jabal] was being sent [as governor] to the Yemen, the Prophet asked him: "How will you decide the cases that will be brought before you?" Mu'adh replied: "I shall decide them according to the Book of God." — "And if you find nothing concerning [a particular matter] in the Book of God?" — "Then I shall decide it according to the Sunnah of God's Apostle." — "And if you find nothing about it in the Sunnah of God's Apostle?"— "Then," replied Mu'adh, "I shall exercise my own judgment [ajtahidu bi-ra'yi] without the least hesitation." Thereupon the Prophet slapped him upon the chest and said: "Praised be God, who has caused the messenger of God's Messenger to please the latter!"(1)
By no stretch of imagination could Mu'adh be supposed to have meant that his — as yet nonexistent — legal or administrative decisions would become a permanent addition to the code of laws enunciated in the nusus of Quran and Sunnah. Nor could the Prophet have intended to sanction the future ijtihadli judgments of Mu'adh as binding on anybody outside the latter's temporal or territorial jurisdiction, not to speak of later generations : for it might well have happened (as indeed it frequently did happen) that a Companion's decision on a particular matter was at variance with the opinions of other Companions. The Prophet's saying implied no more and no less than an approval of his Companion's common sense in claiming for himself the right of an independent decision in all matters not formulated in terms of law in the nusus of Quran and Sunnah. In point of fact, none of the Companions ever regarded his own ijtihad — either on questions of belief or of action — as binding, in a religious sense, on any other person.
(1) At-Tirmidhi and Abu Da'ud, on the authority of Mu'adh ibn Jabal.
Their hearts were blessed with the deepest humility; and none of them ever arrogated to himself the status of a law-giver for all times. Yet precisely such a status has come to be ascribed to them by people of later generations: by people who in their pious—and certainly justifiable—admiration of those splendid Friends of the Prophet have become blind to the element of imperfection inherent in all human nature. In this blindness they commit the mistake of regarding every detail of the Companions' ijtihadin political matters as a "legal precedent" binding on the community for ever and ever: a view justified neither by the sharFah nor by common sense.
Without in the least impairing our reverence for the Companions, we may safely admit that all findings obtained through ijtihdd, by however great a person, are invariably conditioned by that person's environment and state of knowledge: and knowledge, especially in matters of social concern, depends not so much on the loftiness of a man's character as on the sum total of the historical experience available to him. There can be no doubt that the historical experience available to us is, without any merit on our part, very much wider than that which was available to the Companions thirteen centuries ago. Indeed, we have only to think of the immense development in the intervening centuries of so many scientific concepts in order to realize that in some respects we are even better equipped to grasp the inner purport of this or that socioeconomic proposition of Islam than the Companions could possibly have been: simply because we can draw not only upon their experiences, but also upon the accumulated historical and intellectual experience of those thirteen centuries which, to them, still lay shrouded in the impenetrable mists of the future.
We should never forget that the message of Islam is eternal and must therefore always remain open to the searching intellect of man. The very greatness of the Quran and of the Prophet's life-example lies in the fact that the more our knowledge of the world progresses, the better we can understand the wisdom of the Law of Islam. Thus, our right to independent ijtihad on the basis of Quran and Sunnah is not merely permissive, but mandatory; and particularly so in matters on which the shariah is either entirely silent or has given us no more than general principles.
It is obvious that our conclusions as to the best means of achieving administrative efficiency and safeguarding social equity are conditioned by the time and the socioeconomic environment in which we live—and so, logically, quite a big proportion of the legislative enactments in an Islamic state must vary from tune to tune. This cannot, of course, affect those elements of legislation which are clearly ordained in the nusus of Quran and Sunnah and are therefore unchangeable from the viewpoint of the believer; nor can it affect the essential proviso that all such variable, non-shar'i enactments must not run counter to existing, unequivocal shar'i injunctions. With all this, however, there can be not the least doubt that an Islamic constitution to be evolved thirteen centuries after the Right-Guided Caliphs may legitimately differ from that which was valid in and for their time.
It is, however, not even necessary to visualize an interval of thirteen centuries in order to understand that the political requirements of one time often differ from the requirements in this respect of an earlier period. Even within the short span of a few decades, the Right-Guided Caliphs themselves varied their system of administration—or, as we would say today, the constitution of the state—in many a point. As an illustration, let us take the problem of choosing the head of the state.
There was, naturally, no difference among the Companions concerning the principle of elective government as such, for, as we shall see, the shariah is perfectly clear on this subject. However, although it is beyond doubt that the chief executive of an Islamic state must be elected, the Law does not specify any particular method of election; and so, rightly, the Companions regarded the method of election as something that lay outside the scope of the sharfah and could, therefore, legitimately be varied in accordance with the best interests of the community. Thus, the first Caliph, Abu Bakr, was elected by the chiefs of the muhajirs and ansar (2) present at Medina at the time of the Prophet's demise. On his deathbed, Abu Bakr designated 'Umar as his successor, and this choice was subsequently ratified by the community (ratification being, in this instance, equivalent to election). When 'Umar, in his turn, was dying, he nominated an electoral body composed of six of the most prominent Companions of the Prophet and entrusted them with choosing his successor from among themselves. Their choice fell on 'Uthman, who was thereupon recognized by the community as 'Umar's rightful successor. After 'Uthman's death, 'All was proclaimed Caliph by a congregation in the Prophet's Mosque, and the majority of the community thereupon pledged their loyalty to him. Hence, under each of these four reigns which we describe as "right-guided," the constitution of the state differed on a most important point; for it cannot be denied that the method by which the head of the state is elected is a constitutional question of great importance. The different treatment accorded by the Companions to this question—with regard to both the composition of the electorate and the electoral procedure—shows that, in their opinion, the constitution of the state could be altered from time to time without making it any the less "Islamic" on this account.
Apart from this, it is a mistake to believe that the endeavors of the Right-Guided Caliphs represented the fulfillment of all Islamic aims, including those relating to statecraft. Had it been so, Islam would be no more than a call to eternal repetition, for nothing would have been left to us but to imitate the doings of our predecessors. In reality, however, Islam is a call to eternal progress, socially as well as spiritually, and, therefore, also politically.
The Right-Guided Caliphate was a most glorious beginning of Islamic statecraft, never excelled, or even continued, in all the centuries that followed it: but it was, for all that, a beginning only. From the moment of Abu Bakr's accession to the moment of Ali's death, the Islamic Commonwealth was, from the structural point of view, in a permanent state of change, organically growing and developing with each successive conquest and with each new administrative experience. Within a generation it expanded from the confines of Arabia to an enormous dominion stretching from North Africa deep into Central Asia. A state which in the lifetime of the Prophet embraced only agricultural and pastoral communities with simple needs and comparatively static problems suddenly became the heir to the most complicated Byzantine and Sassanian civilizations. At a time when almost all the energies of the government had to be directed toward military consolidation and ensuring the minimum of administrative efficiency, new, staggering problems were arising every day in the sphere of politics and economics.
Governmental decisions had often to be made on the spur of the moment and thus, of necessity, many of them were purely experimental. To stop at that first, splendid experiment and to contemplate, thirteen centuries after the Right-Guided Caliphs, the organization of an Islamic state in exactly the same forms, with exactly the same institutions in which their state was manifested, would not be an act of true piety: it would be, rather, a betrayal of the Companions' creative endeavor. They were pioneers and pathfinders, and if we truly wish to emulate them, we must take up their unfinished work and continue it in the same creative spirit. For did not the Prophet say,
"My Companions are a trust committed to my community"? (3)
(2) The muhajirs were the Meccan Muslims who accompanied the Prophet on his hijrah, or migration, from Mecca to Medina; the ansar (literally "helpers") were those Medinese who rallied to the Prophet on his arrival in their town.
(3) Muslim, on the authority of Abu Burdah.