Reflections on the Islam and Liberal Citizenship Conference at Yale
While at a wonderful conference at the MacMillan Center at Yale University this past weekend on Islam and the Liberal State, I had the opportunity to listen to an eloquent presentation by the learned Shaykh Yasir Qadhi, a theology PhD candidate in Yale's Religious Studies Department. His presentation largely concerned whether or not Islamic salvific exclusivity (ie the doctrinal position that all non-Muslims will end up in Hell) precluded the possibility of a liberal state where Muslims and non-Muslims could live and work together. (I spoke at the conference as well, but when my remarks are published, I'll make sure to let all of you know. Until then, you might have to wait).
To begin, of course, the learned Shaykh had to explain precisely what the Islamic position on salvific exclusivity was. He gave a very thoughtful and detailed presentation, explaining the many Qur'anic verses and Prophetic statements that supported the idea that as a general matter, any non-Muslim who had heard of Islam in a fair and balanced manner was destined for hell (though exceptions might be possible and I should emphasize so I don't get him in trouble--he does not think this precludes Muslims living peacefully with their neighbors in a liberal state by any means). He explained this view was the mainstream. He then described respectfully what he thought of as fairly marginal voices from the Sufis, and from the well known progressive Fazlur Rahman, who reached a contrary conclusion by relying on a verse of the Koran that indicates that those who believe in one God and the Last Day (specifically including Jews, Christians and Sabians) and do righteous deeds will have no fear, nor will they grieve. Shaykh Ghazi suggested that Rahman never really explains how this one single verse can overcome the dozens of other verses as well as Prophetic statements indicating an alternative conclusion. The mainstream, continues Shaykh Ghazi, has interpreted this rather outlier verse as either having been abrogated, or perhaps referring to the followers of the Jewish and Christian scriptures prior to the advent of Muhammad, when Revelation was perfected. Those earlier Jews and Christians might be in heaven, but the ones who heard his message and rejected it command a different conclusion given the reams of evidence to the contrary.
The talk went on, but as he was speaking, within me bubbled up significant resistance. What do you mean dozens? I thought. I could think of one or two verses, not dozens, that specifically referred to Hell for Jews and Christians as opposed to merely describing them as being in some sort of grievous error. What "single" outlier verse? What of the verse that indicates that God can forgive anything but polytheizing him? When the noun "polytheist" is used in the Quran in the phrase "kill the polytheists wherever you might find them, and capture them and besiege them, and lie in wait for them in each and every ambush", most of us tend to take that to refer to a specific group of people living in the Prophet's time, why not the same for the verb form elsewhere? If so, all are potentially eligible for salvation, except for a few people in seventh century Saudi Arabia. What of the dozens, if not hundreds, of verses that indicate that the Prophet's job is to deliver the message, and God will handle the judging? Doesn't that mean we shouldn't be speculating on who ends up where, that this is precisely what God does not want us to think about because He is going to handle it? Doesn't yet another verse of the Qur'an, where Pharaoh asks Moses what will happen to our ancestors and Moses tells him no more or less than that their fate is written and God will oppress no person, militate in favor of the same conclusion--we don't know and shouldn't assume anything respecting salvific exclusivity, for any person of any religion?
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I thought to myself, the very grounds you use to dismiss the outlier verse, that it might refer to earlier Jews and Christians, can be used against you too. The very verses you refer to that condemn the Jews and Christians to Hell refer in the case of Christians, to "those who declare God to be one of three in a Trinity". The condemnation of the Jews relates to their indicating that God's Hands are "fettered" and, elsewhere, that he has a son named Uzair. Do you know any Jews or Christians who believe any of these things? Could God perhaps be referring to some specific people with specific beliefs that do not relate to what any Jews or Christians I happen to know think of today?
Let me be clear, it is absolutely not my intention to prove the soundness of my own views relative to those of the Shaykh. I would require further investigation to make a fuller claim, and to make a more ethical claim I would have to engage him directly, not write something on my own blog. I am sure he has fair minded, reasonable, and well considered objections to my own thoughts. This is hardly the point.
What I would like to raise, however, are two separate issues. First, it is significant the manner to which "text" is ultimately determined by "context". The Shaykh was attempting to be as fair minded and reasonable as he could by delineating the positions, but in his count of verses, clearly he included verses damning the People of the Book to Hell I would never dream even hinted at such a thing, and he didn't count verses that I was sure would lead to an opposite conclusion, not because he sought to consciously stack the deck, I am sure, but rather because he didn't think the verses had any bearing on the question. "Follow the Qur'an" is easy to say, but what the Qur'an says is defined at least to a large extent by those reading it.
Secondly, being indoctrinated as I am as a lawyer (and he as a theologian), it is striking the extent to which we both centered ourselves on what might be termed "good" arguments, as defined by our relative interpretive communities. When my resistance rose to his ideas, it didn't once occur to me to say "well that doesn't make sense, because I think it's unreasonable to consign my friends Ori and Anthony to hell, and God would never be unreasonable." It's not a very good argument, unless one develops a more precise philosophical definition of "reason" other than "what I like", and then explains why God is more subject to it than Revelation (all of that is possible but would require a great deal of philosophical rigor). I am sure the good Shaykh would also never respond to me with a similarly bad argument. The point is not that we know how to weed good arguments from bad, it's that we are so indoctrinated, so deeply is our analysis and our reasoning affected by our training that we don't even see the bad reasons any more. If they cross our mind, they leave it as quickly. Whatever our underlying motivations, we are sure they aren't the relevant ones, only the "good", "legal" reasons count.
I see it with my contracts students all the time. When they make a "bad" argument, I lead them down the path of their logic, show them where their argument will take them, and let them realize its fallacy. Slowly over the course of the semester I see the bad arguments disappear, they learn, months into law school, what will work and what won't, what is acceptable and legitimate and normatively appealing and what is not, and their minds are changed by their indoctrination into the legal world. It's what "thinking like a lawyer" is all about.
Some may see this as rather obvious and banal, but I raise it because I was struck by the number of people in the conference who rose to make the substantive objection to a form of "Western Islam" that was consciously results oriented. The claim, as made by Mustapha Benhelda in his very interesting and thoughtful remarks, was, as I learned from him later in the discussions, one to which I do not object, basically, that a liberal state should as a normative matter not be telling its Muslim citizens "this is what you need to believe to be modern, now go back to your books and get these answers." I guess that's so, or I'll defer to the political philosophers on it. I would say that aside from the normative objection, it's going to be terribly ineffective and therefore a supreme waste of time. Anyone who takes their Scripture seriously isn't going to be persuaded by an argument that it should be consciously subverted in favor of particular political outcomes.
But that seems like a rather minor point anyway. Some said Sarkozy is trying precisely such an approach--if he is, then he's rather stupid and if Europe supports him in this, it could explain why Europe is having a much harder time incorporating Muslim immigrants than the U.S. has. In that sense, I suppose it is important to point out the obvious--you can't tell other people first that they need to reinterpret their books and second what those books should say when they're done, and have the claim retain any credibility.
Beyond this, though, the idea of "Western Islam" seems extremely dangerous if misapplied. Someone said one can tell the difference between a disingenuous claim of interpretation (i.e., I'll use the good arguments even though really it's the bad ones that motivate me) and genuine ones. I find that very troubling because it could potentially delegitimize large groups of people holding more progressive opinions ("you don't really believe that, you're only saying it because you hate Islam and love Sarkozy"). I also don't think it's a terribly accurate view of how those of us who interpret for a living tend to think. Once we make it into the interpretive community, we aren't raising the good arguments just because they work, we raise them because we know believe they're the right ones, and we've started thinking that from our first week in law school when our professor lavished praise on us for making the right claims and criticized us when we made the wrong ones. I suppose some might be disingenuous because they don't really give a damn about the system, they just pretend to, but I have no idea how one might find them out.
Moreover, I found it troubling that some participants seemed to have an overly broad view of what was and was not a "good" or "bad" argument. Ultimately these are determined by the interpretive community. "We need a 21st century Islam" is not necessarily a bad argument, though some indicated it might be, if it means that we should not be bound by interpretations centuries old and in fact should pay no attention to them at all. It's not only a good argument in Shi'ism's interpretive community, it is the premise upon which the interpretive community is founded. Every Shi'i is supposed to follow a living interpreter (mujtahid), not pick a person who has died, even a year earlier precisely because Islam is supposed to be concretized in a particular time and place. That's not to suggest Sunni jurisprudence must accept this, just that what is and is not a bad argument will be determined by those doing the interpreting, and they'll inculcate all of this in their disciples early in their training. So one should be careful about imposing on the Muslim community what is and is not a bad argument.
So given this, how does a non-Muslim liberal encourage liberal views in Muslim citizens? I think give them a place and a space in your country, teach them your ways, make them one of your own, and the texts will start to say different things to them. And they'll get there using all the right reasons.
HAH
To begin, of course, the learned Shaykh had to explain precisely what the Islamic position on salvific exclusivity was. He gave a very thoughtful and detailed presentation, explaining the many Qur'anic verses and Prophetic statements that supported the idea that as a general matter, any non-Muslim who had heard of Islam in a fair and balanced manner was destined for hell (though exceptions might be possible and I should emphasize so I don't get him in trouble--he does not think this precludes Muslims living peacefully with their neighbors in a liberal state by any means). He explained this view was the mainstream. He then described respectfully what he thought of as fairly marginal voices from the Sufis, and from the well known progressive Fazlur Rahman, who reached a contrary conclusion by relying on a verse of the Koran that indicates that those who believe in one God and the Last Day (specifically including Jews, Christians and Sabians) and do righteous deeds will have no fear, nor will they grieve. Shaykh Ghazi suggested that Rahman never really explains how this one single verse can overcome the dozens of other verses as well as Prophetic statements indicating an alternative conclusion. The mainstream, continues Shaykh Ghazi, has interpreted this rather outlier verse as either having been abrogated, or perhaps referring to the followers of the Jewish and Christian scriptures prior to the advent of Muhammad, when Revelation was perfected. Those earlier Jews and Christians might be in heaven, but the ones who heard his message and rejected it command a different conclusion given the reams of evidence to the contrary.
The talk went on, but as he was speaking, within me bubbled up significant resistance. What do you mean dozens? I thought. I could think of one or two verses, not dozens, that specifically referred to Hell for Jews and Christians as opposed to merely describing them as being in some sort of grievous error. What "single" outlier verse? What of the verse that indicates that God can forgive anything but polytheizing him? When the noun "polytheist" is used in the Quran in the phrase "kill the polytheists wherever you might find them, and capture them and besiege them, and lie in wait for them in each and every ambush", most of us tend to take that to refer to a specific group of people living in the Prophet's time, why not the same for the verb form elsewhere? If so, all are potentially eligible for salvation, except for a few people in seventh century Saudi Arabia. What of the dozens, if not hundreds, of verses that indicate that the Prophet's job is to deliver the message, and God will handle the judging? Doesn't that mean we shouldn't be speculating on who ends up where, that this is precisely what God does not want us to think about because He is going to handle it? Doesn't yet another verse of the Qur'an, where Pharaoh asks Moses what will happen to our ancestors and Moses tells him no more or less than that their fate is written and God will oppress no person, militate in favor of the same conclusion--we don't know and shouldn't assume anything respecting salvific exclusivity, for any person of any religion?
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I thought to myself, the very grounds you use to dismiss the outlier verse, that it might refer to earlier Jews and Christians, can be used against you too. The very verses you refer to that condemn the Jews and Christians to Hell refer in the case of Christians, to "those who declare God to be one of three in a Trinity". The condemnation of the Jews relates to their indicating that God's Hands are "fettered" and, elsewhere, that he has a son named Uzair. Do you know any Jews or Christians who believe any of these things? Could God perhaps be referring to some specific people with specific beliefs that do not relate to what any Jews or Christians I happen to know think of today?
Let me be clear, it is absolutely not my intention to prove the soundness of my own views relative to those of the Shaykh. I would require further investigation to make a fuller claim, and to make a more ethical claim I would have to engage him directly, not write something on my own blog. I am sure he has fair minded, reasonable, and well considered objections to my own thoughts. This is hardly the point.
What I would like to raise, however, are two separate issues. First, it is significant the manner to which "text" is ultimately determined by "context". The Shaykh was attempting to be as fair minded and reasonable as he could by delineating the positions, but in his count of verses, clearly he included verses damning the People of the Book to Hell I would never dream even hinted at such a thing, and he didn't count verses that I was sure would lead to an opposite conclusion, not because he sought to consciously stack the deck, I am sure, but rather because he didn't think the verses had any bearing on the question. "Follow the Qur'an" is easy to say, but what the Qur'an says is defined at least to a large extent by those reading it.
Secondly, being indoctrinated as I am as a lawyer (and he as a theologian), it is striking the extent to which we both centered ourselves on what might be termed "good" arguments, as defined by our relative interpretive communities. When my resistance rose to his ideas, it didn't once occur to me to say "well that doesn't make sense, because I think it's unreasonable to consign my friends Ori and Anthony to hell, and God would never be unreasonable." It's not a very good argument, unless one develops a more precise philosophical definition of "reason" other than "what I like", and then explains why God is more subject to it than Revelation (all of that is possible but would require a great deal of philosophical rigor). I am sure the good Shaykh would also never respond to me with a similarly bad argument. The point is not that we know how to weed good arguments from bad, it's that we are so indoctrinated, so deeply is our analysis and our reasoning affected by our training that we don't even see the bad reasons any more. If they cross our mind, they leave it as quickly. Whatever our underlying motivations, we are sure they aren't the relevant ones, only the "good", "legal" reasons count.
I see it with my contracts students all the time. When they make a "bad" argument, I lead them down the path of their logic, show them where their argument will take them, and let them realize its fallacy. Slowly over the course of the semester I see the bad arguments disappear, they learn, months into law school, what will work and what won't, what is acceptable and legitimate and normatively appealing and what is not, and their minds are changed by their indoctrination into the legal world. It's what "thinking like a lawyer" is all about.
Some may see this as rather obvious and banal, but I raise it because I was struck by the number of people in the conference who rose to make the substantive objection to a form of "Western Islam" that was consciously results oriented. The claim, as made by Mustapha Benhelda in his very interesting and thoughtful remarks, was, as I learned from him later in the discussions, one to which I do not object, basically, that a liberal state should as a normative matter not be telling its Muslim citizens "this is what you need to believe to be modern, now go back to your books and get these answers." I guess that's so, or I'll defer to the political philosophers on it. I would say that aside from the normative objection, it's going to be terribly ineffective and therefore a supreme waste of time. Anyone who takes their Scripture seriously isn't going to be persuaded by an argument that it should be consciously subverted in favor of particular political outcomes.
But that seems like a rather minor point anyway. Some said Sarkozy is trying precisely such an approach--if he is, then he's rather stupid and if Europe supports him in this, it could explain why Europe is having a much harder time incorporating Muslim immigrants than the U.S. has. In that sense, I suppose it is important to point out the obvious--you can't tell other people first that they need to reinterpret their books and second what those books should say when they're done, and have the claim retain any credibility.
Beyond this, though, the idea of "Western Islam" seems extremely dangerous if misapplied. Someone said one can tell the difference between a disingenuous claim of interpretation (i.e., I'll use the good arguments even though really it's the bad ones that motivate me) and genuine ones. I find that very troubling because it could potentially delegitimize large groups of people holding more progressive opinions ("you don't really believe that, you're only saying it because you hate Islam and love Sarkozy"). I also don't think it's a terribly accurate view of how those of us who interpret for a living tend to think. Once we make it into the interpretive community, we aren't raising the good arguments just because they work, we raise them because we know believe they're the right ones, and we've started thinking that from our first week in law school when our professor lavished praise on us for making the right claims and criticized us when we made the wrong ones. I suppose some might be disingenuous because they don't really give a damn about the system, they just pretend to, but I have no idea how one might find them out.
Moreover, I found it troubling that some participants seemed to have an overly broad view of what was and was not a "good" or "bad" argument. Ultimately these are determined by the interpretive community. "We need a 21st century Islam" is not necessarily a bad argument, though some indicated it might be, if it means that we should not be bound by interpretations centuries old and in fact should pay no attention to them at all. It's not only a good argument in Shi'ism's interpretive community, it is the premise upon which the interpretive community is founded. Every Shi'i is supposed to follow a living interpreter (mujtahid), not pick a person who has died, even a year earlier precisely because Islam is supposed to be concretized in a particular time and place. That's not to suggest Sunni jurisprudence must accept this, just that what is and is not a bad argument will be determined by those doing the interpreting, and they'll inculcate all of this in their disciples early in their training. So one should be careful about imposing on the Muslim community what is and is not a bad argument.
So given this, how does a non-Muslim liberal encourage liberal views in Muslim citizens? I think give them a place and a space in your country, teach them your ways, make them one of your own, and the texts will start to say different things to them. And they'll get there using all the right reasons.
HAH
I would think one way to approach the aforementioned question would be to discuss the significance of tafsir [diacritics unavailable] (exegesis) in the Islamic tradition (tafsir is capable of relying on any and all of the Islamic 'sciences,' and thus might be seen as wider in scope than Islamic jurisprudence proper). I'm reading and grading papers (well, I took a break to read and respond to this) at present so I can't elaborate, but I hope it's not too presumptuous of me to ask readers to take a look at the argument(s) made in Abdullah Saeed's Interpreting the Qur'an: Towards a Contemporary Approach (New York: Routledge, 2006). This is a wonderful book deserving of a wide readership.
I should mention that I'm most grateful for the high quality of your posts. It's an eloquent testimony to the educative possibilities made available by an intellectually responsible form of blogging.
[Incidentally, in honor of "human rights day" and in the spirit of this blog, permit me to further mention another title: Ann Elizabeth Mayer's Islam and Human Rights (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 4th ed., 2007).]
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Thank you, that's very kind. The Ann Elizabeth Mayer book is great, as is so much of her work. I don't think I've read this Sa'eed work. I did read something of his related to Islamic finance and commerce that was quite interesting and develops a more modernist approach to traditional Islamic commercial prohibitions. Thanks again for the comments.
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"Haider Ala Hamoudis wrote:
So given this, how does a non-Muslim liberal encourage liberal views in Muslim citizens? I think give them a place and a space in your country, teach them your ways, make them one of your own, and the texts will start to say different things to them. And they'll get there using all the right reasons."
Again, a great article, Haider, and very well presented for those of us with little knowledge of the inner workings of the Muslim faith. I especially agreed with you conclusion, which seemed to focus on how states (specifically non-Islamic, secular ones) could foster a sense of community with their Muslim population.
My question now is, how can a state go about this and not be accused of trying to subvert Islamic culture? For example, in the US, any attempt to follow your admonition to "teach them your ways" would be met with a firestorm of criticism, probably both from the intellectual community as well as the Muslim community (though I admit the latter is a guess of mine based on more of the vocal advocates of the US Muslim community and may be simple media bias or selection in focusing on the most inciteful members of the Muslim community).
And, given that while the US is not a country with a national relgion, there was a strong Judeo-Christian element involved in the creation of the governmental system, how does a government (especially one with a very weak Department of Education, where states and sometimes towns set the standards for what is taught in schools) go about "teaching them our ways"?
I'd be interested to see the contrast between the US approach to this and the Canadian approach. As you probably know, US immigration is focused on the "melting pot" theory (though it's not enforced officially in any way) while the Canadian government actively mandates the "mosaic" pattern of immigration. Does the differing approaches to immigration placement within a nation have a different impact on the ability of the nation-state to absorb Muslim immigrants into a common culture?
And finally, how does this work outside of the US and, to some extent, Canada's naturally culturally heterogenious societies? What about European nations that still define themselves based on a certain type of ethnicity, where being French means speaking a certain language, looking a certain way, and living according to certain rules? Specifically in the context of your post, how would a modern, liberal Muslim nation, which presumably would have a strong homogenous cultural tradition, deal with the introduction of citizens who would have rights to influence that government? How can a modern liberal government espouse a theological position if it permits open elections which mean that a new administration might do away with those standards? Constitutional limits are one obvious possiblity, but, as evidenced by prohibition and slavery in the US, not even constitutional limitations are absolute.
Just a few small questions!
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Thanks Wes.
Well, I guess I've been found out on a bit of sloppiness, so let's see if I can't refine it, or really make it a little less sloppy.
During my trip to France, I actually was a bit surprised at how supremely intolerant a country I found it to be. When I didn't want wine with the meal, they were quite taken aback, and not in the sense of being rude, even though I know the French have that reputation, but in terms of them repeating to me twenty times some nonsense about health benefits and knowing what's best for me. I didn't think there was the slightest respect for my autonomy to choose what I did and didn't want to do. That extended to a bunch of different things from mealtimes to asking for something without bacon on the side and being told "it's impossible" to what to have with coffee in a manner that bore no relation to religion. So it doesn't surprise me that Europe is proving itself spectacularly bad at accommodating Muslims, and I would say the nations themselves are probably as responsible for that as the Muslims coming in. If you're going to act as if those coming in are outsiders doing weird things that don't belong and they better start civilizing, then perhaps they'll start acting like they don't belong. And trouble ensues.
So yeah, you can't just "teach someone your ways" without getting a pretty adverse reaction. Liberalism is necessarily a give and take, to accommodate Muslims one does have to take into account their specific wants and needs (we did this with the Jewish holidays, started adding them and singing Hanuklah carols and whatnot). But I guess my point is that accommodation can easily be a two way street without it forcing an inevitable conflict with the sacred, because what is sacred is as adaptable as what is liberal. So yeah, you don't tell people they have to drink at lunch to be proper Americans, you don't tell them it's uncivilized to pray at a conference and ask for a break to do it, you sort of accommodate these sorts of things. You have to. Then the reality is Muslim immigrants want to send their kids to the best schools possible, and if they can get in and arent' discriminated against, as I wasn't, then when they're six and onwards they learn about other peoples, from the Yananamamos of the Amazon to their Jewish friends Danny and Doug, and they are taught values of mutual respect, equality before the law, contempt for racism and slavery, the importance of free speech and free exercise and no establishment of religion, personal autonomy, revulsion of torture and their own ideas of their own religion start to be molded not only by what they learn in Sunday school but what they learn in school school. If one insists on a clash, it'll be there, but usually accommodation on both ends is possible if it's sought. Most Muslim parents would rather see their kid in Harvard than some random thief they don't even know have his hand chopped off. Start with that, and I think the rest starts to get molded on both ends. So that when I for example am outraged by the French headscarf ruling, and I think it's awful, it's partly as a Muslim but really largely as an American because it really represents a lack of respect for free expression. And the reason I know that is that I would deplore the reverse scenario of forced headscarves and if we started looking at the Qur'an I guarantee that I'm going to find entirely justifiable bases for my position in the text, and I won't once do it just because I like the result. (Of course my position might mold when I approach the texts, it's not like you can just confirm everything you want to believe, but it won't change in a way that threatens core beliefs).
But yes, if the ways of the nation are that civilized people don't pray and don't believe in Holy Books and you better drop the hocus pocus, then (a) I wonder how liberal that society is and (b) it's not going to work to teach that, anyone who values their own diversity is going to resist and you'll have an increased sense of particularism.
On America and Canada, I guess I'd say for religion I never conceived of America as a melting pot. We've got so many weirdo religions it's hard to count them and new ones pop up every day.
Haider
PS I've been accused when talking about Muslims in America of having an immigrant bias and not taking into account the views of African American Muslims. It's a fair point, I concede it, with regret.
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I can't understand the normative value of non-Muslim liberals encouraging liberal values in Muslims. It seems like prostelyzation to me. I suppose for believers in Christ, teaching Christianity has much value. I suppose it is the same for the followers of Islam. It seems even French secularists must encourage others to the superiority of their belief system. So then what of Liberalism?
If Liberalism is meant to be the shared values of all humanity, would not all humanity seek it out with fervor? Thomas Jefferson suggested that the free people of the world would have no need to encourage others to freedom, they would see its beauty for themselves, and then they would revolt from their oppressive systems to become free. Not everyone agreed with Jefferson, other American founding fathers believed nations needed a little push in the right direction before coming free.
I wonder, if the US constitution is based on Judaeo-Christian values, as we so often hear, then does it lack certain core values which the Hindu, Buddhist or Muslim feel need to be included? Perhaps it includes a few too many values which others would not accept? And if it does not represent the values of all humanity then perhaps it would be unethical for the American Liberal, grounded in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, to encourage his or her values on non-Jewish or non-Christian people.
There is something beautiful and core to both Liberalism and Islam, which I think is being eroded with ever increasing fundamentalism: "There is no compulsion in faith." I suppose we all hope that others will believe what we do, but how many would feel comfortable thinking that it is not the superiority of one's belief but money or fear of death which drives them to the faith?
I say to be a successful Liberal one must take the Jefferson approach. Do what's best and people will come to you.
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Thanks Ali. I think I'd reiterate Andrew's approach below, which I realize was posted after you commented, which is to distinguish between civic values, those that are meant to affirm basic principles of justice and social cooperation for all citizens, and any sort of approach that pretends to insist that Islam should adopt those civic values. Liberals do want to teach the civic values, but not to tell people their religions have to adopt them.
My only point is that if they do this, in the manner he suggests, then Muslims will start to affirm the presence of liberalism in their texts. He and I perhaps disagree on that point, though we both agree it is in Muslims' interest to do this.
My longwinded response to an earlier commenter Wes was grasping at the distinction he made. Andrew being the political philosopher picked it up and said in five lines what I said more confusingly in 25. Which makes him a pretty good philosopher and me an excellent lawyer.
HAH
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Great remarks. As I see it, there are two entirely distinct issues. One is whether a country like the US has the right to teach some form of civic education. The second is whether the state ought to encourage Muslims to see *Islam* as compatible with liberal civic values.
I think the first is clear: we have a right to teach civic values as long as they are limited to basic principles of justice and social cooperation.
The second is equally clear: the government should say absolutely nothing about Islam. It should say: "These are the principles which we think are just and fair. We invite any citizen to contest them, but they are principles designed for all citizens."
Now there is a distinct point to be made: in the long term there is a common interest in Muslims in fact thinking that Islam is compatible with liberal principles but this is a matter for Muslims, not the state.
I am slightly less optimistic than you, though, about the inevitability of this happening. Look how many Christians still do not think that Christianity requires liberal principles. Muslims need not want shari'a but why could they not develop a political theology around moral issues not dissimilar from the Christian right? There is no guarantee that people will all converge on liberal neutrality.
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Your distinction is very well received.
What I think is likely (definitely not inevitable, you are right), is Muslim acceptance of liberal tendencies in the West. I think this partly because I see ample space within the broad Sunni paradigm for it given the multiplicity of voices on the subject. In the Shi'i paradigm, I don't see the doctrinal positions of the key clerics who define the boundaries of acceptable thought as excluding the possibility of liberalism. This means to me that the most fundamental hindrance of a US Muslim embrace of liberalism, that it would bring US Muslims far beyond the scope of the positions of the rest of the Muslim polity, can be minimized. That doesn't mean Muslim acceptance of liberalism throughout the Muslim world is inevitable, if there is something the Arab world in particular has been spectacularly bad at in modernity, it's handling pluralism in any form of a liberal model, as opposed to delegitimizing and marginalizing the other, either under the guise of electoral majoritarian legitimacy (ie Iraq) or under a distorted theory of puritan fundamentalism (ie Saudi) or something else.
Why don't I think a "Muslim right" will emerge in the US but might persist in the Muslim world? Mainly because I don't really understand how an injection of religious morality into classrooms and into the affairs of the state is even mildly beneficial to Muslims and I think those kinds of material factors do have an important effect on the outcomes chosen from interpretations of religious texts. It's not going to be our Muslim morality that gets injected, after all. I guess some might be okay with the sort of politically opportunistic doctrinal jello served by the Republican right that vaguely talks about how important God is and then conveniently omits the specifics, but really, how many true believers who seek to put God into everything public and private believe in the kind of leftie Unitarianism that is satisfied with no more than a broad ecumenical references to a Supreme Being?
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Is there a set list of what these civic values are? When do individual freedoms affect or not affect public life? It seems many have concluded that anglophone nations have struck an excellent balance between these two spheres, but what about France, or Southern Germany? It seems the individual's lifestyle affects the public much more significantly than it does in the US.
It seems only the US and the UK (plus Canada and Australia) have struck the perfect balance. And if that is not the case then why can't the French teach Muslims the civic value of not wearing the Hijab in public places?
I feel like we have come to the conclusion that we know exactly what civic values are, and yet in every nation they differ greatly.
So if we are going to teach core civic values to people all over the world, we should know exactly what those civic values are. It seems the French have concluded they only know French values and that's all they really care about. But will Americans and British be capable of knowing the values of the entire world?
Perhaps then, English speaking people should merely teach non-English speaking people that civic values do exist, that there is a line between public and private life and that this line seems to differ between places and nations. If that's what's being taught then I would agree with Haider, I think it's a notion Muslims can catch onto quite quickly. But if anything more absolute than this is being taught, I think Muslims along with the French and nearly 2/3rds of the world population will do a (*french/arabic/mandarin/hindi/italian/german/etc pronounced*) pllbbbhhh in our faces.
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I think the specific context of the remarks actually was not what to tell Muslims in Muslim countries, but what a state should tell its own citizens, which will include Muslims. For example, what should American schools teach their kids about such matters? And here I think there are core values that are hard to dispute. We are a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, for example, is one I had to memorize. Okay that's potentially vague and anachronistically gender oriented, but at its heart is the idea of equality before the law, and there's nothing wrong with teaching its virtue and value to all citizens. There is something wrong, however, with telling Muslims they better get to the Qur'an and find something that agrees with this.
But I would agree that what are and are not understood to be important civic values are not going to be eternally static, and I think they do need to accommodate to a maximum extent possible people with differeng comprehensive theories of the good. Making the American model to me a normatively preferable and more effective one than the French.
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Hi Professor Hamoudi! I found your article very intriguing, especially as someone fairly new to the topic of contemporary Islamic law. A couple questions: first, you mentioned the difficulty of European countries (especially France) in incoporating Muslic citizens (with respect to legal issues, etc.). Can you elaborate, and also, in your opinion, what is the reasoning behind this issue? Also, you wrote that those in the interpretive community tend not to make disingenuous arguments, as it would undermine the basis for their claims? Is that an accurate restatement? I suppose I have trouble *completely* believing that since, especially in matters of religion, people tend to lead with their heart over logic, so I could see a situation in which someone posits an erroneous argument to reach a conclusion based on a personal belief. Isn't that why we have supposedly have freedom of religion in the U.S., yet we fight to maintain Ten Commandments memorials in public-funded and -used spaces?
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Ms. Sanchez
Thanks for the comment. You win the contest of first student of mine to comment on the blog. Prize to be determined. Starbucks, I guess.
Well, let's start with your second comment first. I completely agree that logic doesn't control religious law. As you may have been able to determine, I'm not much convinced that logic controls any form of law. But that's different from saying that there is or can be widespread use of a "bad" argument (as determined by the interpretive community, in US law, that's the legal community) to reach a particular result with much success. Using your excellent example, I think that most of the folks who want the Ten Commandments up, or at least their lawyers, say that this is a country founded by God and on Christian principles and that the Founding Fathers supported that very notion, and the Constitution is in no way antithetical to it. I think they'd say that as a result that the "establishment" of religion proscribed by the First Amendment is narrow, meant to prevent the state from adopting any one single Church (say, Episcopalian) as the official church but in no way is intended to prevent the discussion of or articulation for God in the public sphere. They'd further say that none of this implicates the "free exercise" of religion required by the Constitution, nobody told you you had to go pray at the Ten Commandments center or whatever.
Now first to my point, that's trying to put together a good legal argument. A bad argument would be to show up at the Supreme Court and say "the constitution is crap, the real law is God's, and George Washington will burn in hell for not knowing that." That argument discredits. You just can't get anywhere with it, not only in court, but with the legal world broadly.
But I would go further. Not only is it trying to put together a good legal argument, I think it is what a large number of these folks sincerely believe, there is nothing insincere or disingenuous about it. Meaning I don't think they're sitting in their strategy meetings saying "okay, we all know George Washington is in hell and the Constitution is worth less than toilet paper, but we've got a Muslim judge we're arguing to and that guy wants an argument that works in court, so let's try this one." There's no way for me to know this for sure, I'm not invited I'm sure you know to far right Christian legal strategy sessions, and part of my point is that there is no real way for anyone to gauge the sincerity with certainty. But still I really think that they have particular ideological and religious beliefs, but that in their legal and other training, their thought processes have been honed so that they dismiss the bad arguments and adopt the good ones as their own true beliefs without consciously realizing that they are doing that. We all do that is my point.
But I would go even further. What I understand you to be saying is "yes, but the argument is so bad, how can it be sincere?" And I'd take issue with that. I'd say their reading of text, determined by their own particular context and ideological desires (a state largely defined and based on Christian principles) is wholly plausible, though perhaps I am being presumptuous since I am not a constitutional scholar. The term "establishment" can be read to mean precisely the creation of a state religion, and not merely the endorsement of any religious principles. That's out of the mainstream, it's violently opposed to Supreme Court precedent, it violates what I think both you and I think to be the very basis of being an American, but it's not "bad" just because our own views (and the views of the Supreme Court) differ from it, and our own understandings of the Constitution's text, derived from our own contexts, are massively at odds with that reading.
Now is there some logical consistency to that argument of the Christian right? Meaning do they read every word of the Constitution narrowly having read "establishment" narrowly? Of course not. The Second Amendment is read quite broadly by most of them. And liberals sort of flip that order. So yes, it's not logic, but still the arguments are those that the interpretive community considers "good" and I don't think many are disingenuous, and certainly if they are, I don't know how one determines that. Seems hard. In fact, they could say the same thing to me about sincerity, they could try to say "you actually don't care about the Constitution, you sit in your Muslim-Jewish-atheist-agnostic strategy sessions and I bet you talk about burning the Constitution and the flag, but you make up arguments to support your anti-God and anti-America agenda." That's wrong, and I think it's equally mistaken to characterize their views as disingenuous. I also think it's dangerous, as it starts to delegitimize people engaged in entirely healthy debate.
The France question is a good one, too, though it would take me a long time to answer. Suffice it to say, that in the US, there is sort of a notion that freely and openly practicing one's religion is in itself not a bad thing and that there has to be some neutral, generally applicable reason before some religious activity is prohibited. It's also culturally part of our system too, nobody if I tell them I don't eat pork for religious reasons thinks to do anything but respect that decision. That's not the French view, which is that religious particularity in some ways should be suppressed in public, because it makes everyone just a little bit less French (hence no headscarves, a legal rule that stands in clear violation of First Amendment principles here), and culturally no accommodation is made in for example restaurants for religious practices. Ideas like that I think just work very badly with pious people from other cultures. But that's the Reader's Digest view of the two systems, obviously simplistic and reductive.
HAH
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