Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty (34 page)

Dr. An-Na‘im agrees, noting that “separation of Islam and state,” which is necessary, is not the same thing as “separation of Islam and politics.”
²³
The difference here is similar to the one between a Communist state, which takes Marxism as its official ideology, and a democratic state under which a Communist party exists as a part of the democratic game. The same game would also allow different versions of political Islam. In such a democratic system, for example, there could well be a “Liberal Islamic Party” that finds classical liberalism and its free economy more compatible with the Islamic values it aspires to uphold. Another political party could be named the “Socialist Islamic Party,” which could defend a more state-governed economy. Both could claim that their programs would serve Islamic values (and society) better, and voters could then decide which one sounded more promising.

The Shariah, too, can be separated from the state and exist in the civil sphere as a guide for conservative Muslims who wish to organize their lives according to it—just as has been done by the Orthodox Jews who have long been living according to the Halakha, their religious code, in Western countries.

One good case study is the United Kingdom—which is practically, if not technically, a secular state, and also a very liberal one. In late 2008, the government officially allowed the establishment of Shariah courts to deal with matters of family law and make legally binding decisions if parties agreed. In just a year, more than eighty Shariah courts were opened throughout the country, and thousands of British Muslims, mostly immigrants, appealed to them on matters of marriage, divorce, and inheritance.

Of course, some elements of the classical Shariah, such as corporal punishments for crimes, are not applicable in this British system. So be it. Other aspects of the Shariah, such as matters relating to slavery, are also inapplicable, a reality that Muslims have almost unanimously accepted, acknowledging that times simply have changed. In fact, some of the laws were deemed inapplicable as early as the time of Caliph Umar, just several years after the Prophet’s death, simply because conditions that had led to enactment of those rulings in the first place had changed.
²⁴
It is inevitable that the modern context will enforce even greater changes in the Shariah.

The critical point here is the assurance that adhering to the Shariah is a voluntary choice. Those British Muslims who appeal to the Shariah courts are following the dictate of their conscience—not the dictates imposed by the government or “religious police.” Other British Muslims who don’t appeal to the same courts are also following the dictates of their conscience. If I were living in the United Kingdom, I, too, would skip the guidance of the Shariah courts, for the Traditionist schools to which they subscribe don’t conform to my less literalist understanding of Islamic law.

All these different approaches are valid, because there is no one who can authoritatively invalidate them. The Murjiites (Postponers) of first-century Islam were right; we cannot know for sure whose interpretation of Islam is right or wrong, so we have to “postpone” the ultimate decision to the afterlife, to be given by God. We can only modestly follow the interpretation that we find most convincing. “You can say my school is most righteous,” as Turkish Islamic thinker Said Nursi famously put it, “but you cannot say it is the only righteous one.”

E
NTER THE
“I
SLAMIZED
U
NITED
K
INGDOM
”

However, contemporary Islamists want to impose their own interpretations of the Shariah on all other Muslims and, alas, even on non-Muslims. In Britain, a fringe group called “Islam for the UK” swears that it will “Islamize” the whole United Kingdom. It advocates such boldly outlandish steps as adding minarets to the Houses of Parliament. A rant on the group’s website, titled “Trafalgar Square under the Shari‘ah,” vows to destroy all the great statues in that historic London plaza. “Under the Shari‘ah,” the site also explains nicely, “all harmful intoxicants will be banned unequivocally,” apparently referring to alcoholic drinks and drugs.
²⁵

The totalitarian dream expressed here goes beyond even tradition. Most classical scholars have acknowledged that the Shariah is mainly a law for Muslims, and therefore most of its limitations do not hold for others. The eighth-century Hanafi scholar al-Shaybani, author of an authoritative work on the rights of non-Muslims under Islamic rule, insisted that non-Muslims were free to trade in wine and pork in their own towns, although these were deemed illegal for Muslims.
²⁶
Hence, Muslim states such as the Ottoman Empire had taverns operated by non-Muslims serving alcohol exclusively (at least in theory) to non-Muslims.

The triumphalism of the radical Islamists, then, seems to be a modern invention. It also seems to stem not from a religious motive to serve but from a political motive to dominate. “Authoritarianism,” as British Muslim Ziauddin Sardar puts it, “is intrinsic in much of what masquerades as ‘Islamic ideology’ in contemporary times.”
²⁷
This authoritarianism is very much linked to the contempt that those on the fringes of modernity feel toward its elites. It is no accident that groups like Islam for the UK are formed by Muslim immigrants in European countries who feel alienated from and looked down upon by their host societies. These immigrants are “culturally uprooted,” for they feel a part of neither the countries they came to nor the ones they came from.
²⁸
Such “disaffected city dwellers” have always been prone to radical ideologies—often various forms of the radical Left—and have shown “hostility to the city, with its image of rootless, arrogant, greedy, decadent, frivolous cosmopolitanism.”
²⁹
The result is often a burning desire to defeat, dominate, and then radically transform the society that seems so corrupt.

In other words, although radical Islamists often claim, and probably believe, that all their triumphalism is rooted in their zeal to serve God, it might well be rooted in their sociopsychological issues—and, probably, their mere egos. For the implicit subtext of their ideology is that they are the most righteous people on earth, and thus they deserve to rule over all others. If the whole world gets “Islamized,” the result will be, as one militant quite candidly put it, that “Muslims will win . . . and rule the whole world.”
³⁰

The more Muslim thing to do, perhaps, is to be more modest, and to acknowledge the right of others to be different. The Qur’an promotes such tolerance by ordering Muslims to say to others: “Unto you your religion, and unto me my religion.”
³¹
The best political system that will allow all this pluralism to coexist is a political system that will not be defined by any creed but will set all of them free. It is, in other words, a secular state—not too unlike the original Medina city-state that the Prophet Muhammad founded on the basis of equality with Jews.
³²

Accepting the secular state will allow Muslims not only to follow Islam in the way they genuinely believe but also to eliminate endless discussions over the ideal “Islamic state” and its systems, like the “Islamic economy”—a very recent invention.
³³
For example, there remains disagreement among Muslims about whether accepting interest, a fundamental feature of modern banking, is the same thing as the usury (
riba
) that the Qur’an denounces. In a free economy, such a disagreement is fine, because those Muslims who disapprove of interest can opt for “interest-free banking,” whereas others who don’t see a problem with it can work with conventional banks. (This is the situation in Turkey today.) But if you try to replace a free economy with an “Islamic” one that you construct according to your own subjective interpretation, then you will first create conflict, and later, if you triumph, tyranny.

Accepting the secular state could also help Muslims focus on what is really important. Islamic movements have lost too much time, and caused too much tension, in the twentieth century with their endless quest for
systems
based on Islam. What they should have focused on instead was advancement of Islam’s faith and culture—through arts and sciences, evangelism and advocacy, education, charity, and the media. All these can be carried out by individuals and communities without backup from a state. In fact, they are almost always done better
without
state involvement—as the American experience proves.

What Muslims really need from the state, in other words, is not religion but freedom of religion.

CHAPTER TEN

Freedom to Sin

But then what is virtue, if not the free choice of what is good?

—Alexis de Tocqueville
1

I
MAGINE THAT
I am sitting on a bench in a quiet park, on a beautiful day, in an overwhelmingly Muslim country. Let’s say there are other people around who are also relaxing in the same park. When the time comes for afternoon prayer, the nearby mosque raises the call for prayer. Everyone in the park, including me, heads to the mosque. Only one man remains sitting on his park bench.

Now, what would happen if I threw disapproving looks at that man? Or if I went even further and mumbled to other mosque-goers: “Huh, look at that impious guy, he’s ignoring the call for prayer.”

Chances are that the man would feel pressured to go to the mosque. Perhaps the next time the call for prayer sounded he would join everyone else in the mosque to avoid public censure.

If this hypothetical country were Saudi Arabia, the pressure this man would feel could be heavier and more direct. If members of the religious police were around, they could scold the man for skipping the prayer and push him to the mosque to catch up with the service.

In both scenarios, the man in question is forced to pray by the dictate of either the society or the government, not his own conscience. And if he succumbs to these pressures, then he will be praying out of a concern for image, rather than a sincere wish to worship God.

But is this what God really wants from Muslims? Quite simply, no. A passage in the Qur’an specifically addresses this issue. “Woe to those who do prayer,” it reads, “those who show off.”
²
In other words, God deplores worshipping for the sake of appearance. Worship should be solely for the sake of worship.

Coercion not only fails to lead to such sincere religiosity; it even blocks the way. If the man in our story were not coerced by anyone to go to the mosque, he would have a better chance eventually to find his own way to godliness. Perhaps he would be impressed by the piety of the people around him, and think about it. In fact, he certainly would be much more impressed if those mosque-goers smiled at him rather than giving him nasty looks. Respect is always more attractive than contempt.

This is just common sense. But it also is Qur’anic wisdom, reflected by verses such as, “There is no compulsion in religion,”
³
or this one: “If your Lord had willed, surely all those who are in the earth would have believed, all of them; will you then force men till they become believers?”
⁴

Why, then, do some Muslim societies have a strong tendency toward “compulsion in religion”? Why do the Saudis employ the
Mutawwa’in
and the Iranians the
Basij—
official security forces whose job is to stroll the streets and punish any “impious” behavior they see?

C
OMMANDING
R
IGHT,
F
ORBIDDING
W
RONG

To be fair, neither the Saudi nor the Iranian religious police are entirely devoid of an Islamic justification. There is indeed a specific concept in the Qur’an to which they, and other authoritarian-minded Muslims, routinely refer: “commanding right and forbidding wrong.” The Qur’an presents this as an obligation for Muslims: “From among you there should be a party who invite to good and enjoin what is right and forbid the wrong.”
⁵
Several other verses call for the same duty. Scholars of the Shariah have expanded the idea over time and created detailed rules about how piety must be imposed on fellow Muslims who fail to be pious enough.

The world learned more about all this, with shock but not much awe, when Afghanistan fell under the rule of the Taliban, who, immediately after capturing Kabul in 1996, established a Department for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prohibition of Vice. Its militias soon started to ban and destroy everything they deemed sacrilegious—including wines and spirits, VCRs and cassette players, and even kites and chessboards. All-enveloping
burqas
were imposed on women, and long beards became obligatory for men.