Islamic Values, Secular Values and the Muslim State: The Muslim Mosaic
First, I want to qualify my last post, because it seems I may have been misunderstood. I made an amendment to it to be clearer, but still, it will introduce me into the theme for today.
I do not say, I have never said, I hope I will never say, that the only reason anyone thinks about implementing shari'a in the Muslim world is because they want effective government, and so give them effective government, and then shari'a goes away in the public sphere. My whole theme has been that the shari'a is NOT about effective governance and rule of law, it is about resisting the West, some sort of anticolonial sentiment drives it, and therefore Islamist movements have not been much concerned with good governance and actually have a pretty appalling record on that front. But they are good at stridency with Israel, implementation of criminal punishments for adultery and the like, and relegating women to second class status. Some have been attuned to social justice issues as well, which I greatly applaud, Baqir al-Sadr in particular is a wonderful example of trying to do right in an inequitable world through Islamic text. But leaving his movement aside, and thinking of places like Egypt, Sudan, Pakistan and the Islamists, well all respect to Feldman, but I think there is some level of apology going on when these movements are supposed to be about the rule of law. I say that in my review, my blog post wasn't meant to pull back from that at all.
That said, what the post was meant to address is that clearly there are people, many many people, concerned first and foremost with making their government work, many of them vote Islamist and yet are uncommitted Islamists and the point of my last post was to explore that phenomenon, and show that really, if this is the concern, then they'll drop Islamism if you give them something else that works as a model of governance. Shari'a will still be a powerful force among those who think it vindicates other things, a normative worldview, and that may carry the day. My mailman growing up was a deeply conservative prolife Catholic, convinced Reagan was destroying the country and ruining his pension, but committed to voting for Reagan because he was going to save hundreds of thousands of innocent babies from dying (his words). Well, that guy isn't swayed by effective governance, that's not what law is about to him first and foremost, not here, and not his Muslim counterpart in Cairo.
The point of the last piece was to view with suspicion anything called an "Islamic rule of law system." In many cases, it's awfully similar to rule of law, or effective governance, or democracy in any context. The values coincide in very large part, and we shouldn't force distinctions which might not be as massive as such a simplistic rendition would create. This isn't just a Muslim issue, Aharon Barak, the former President of the Israeli Supreme Court, used to talk of the importance of Jewish liberalism. I heard him once, it sounded a lot like "liberalism" to me, if there was a Jewish part I missed it.
Now one might claim that it's BETTER to draw the similar values from Islam (or Judaism), it adds to its effectiveness. moreover, states that draw upon some level of awe or mysticism as concerns their central texts (look at us with the US constitution) even as they debate precise interpretations are more stable, and the believer, among which I of course count myself, prefers to be doing God's work to man's.
And certainly I do think that realizing some values is God's work, Lincoln dd God's work, as did Sadr (Baqir not Moqtada), as did King, I believe that. I don't have a problem with this. But that's different from saying that somehow I am doing something in a way that is so different from everyone else, that is so unique to my own people, that really it isn't compatible with secular values, it's comprehensive and inconsistent. Of course not, in many cases the goals are largely the same. The devout Egyptian whose house is destroyed wants a new house from his government, or insurance, or something. It's not like the fact that the government isn't Islamic in the way he might or might not like changes that central need, not like if the house is given he might not be inclined to take that into account next election cycle.
Of course there might be some differences in different places and among different people with different worldviews drawing on different texts and different sources of inspiration, but in any Muslim societies, those are going to be mediated, there isn't one system that will rule. It seems to me in any Muslim state we are going to have a variety of different currents and impulses. Some are going to be driven by a desire for the rule of law, some by a need for social justice, some by a call for democratic rule, some for more comprehensive and entire systems (Islamism, communism), some for free market reforms. Some of these are going to be religiously inspired, and some more secular in their origin.
My concern with this "Islam is a comprehensive view with its own system of values and balances, it's so different from the secular state, here it is, drawn from classical text, the true source of authority to the Muslim" is that it excludes too many viewpoints. It makes us into some exotic monolith when we are not. People who study Islam this way are too focused on the Brotherhood, or even worse than that on medieval Muslims, and not enough on other contemporary legal realities. What about Indonesia? What about the Pakistani Bar? Why is everything back down to some set of values in some medieval texts when we see people on the streets saying "you can't fire the Chief Justice you dictator" what in heaven's name would lead us to deny the obvious, that these people are not drawing on Abu Hanifa or Ibn Taymiyya for inspiration in this context?
The national legal cultures, and national legal communities are being ignored in our academy, nearly totally, for medieval thought and I think that's awful. It is certainly not reflecting contemporary reality.
At the same time, it's not pure secularism or Rawlsian liberalism in Muslim society either. Islam is at work in much of this. The fact is, Sadr is looking at the gross material iniquities of his society and he finds this deplorable for religious reasons. He is shocked at the offense before God, and trembles in fear for his people come Judgment Day. He sees them moving to Marxism and is concerned about this too (for reasons having less to do with social justice, more with other values vindicated in shari'a). He isn't interested in a secular reason, that's not his thing. And he is part of the conversation.
Now those viewpoints I think can fit in the public sphere, and they do in the Muslim world. They are the legitimate and sincere positions of believers. If they are taken to the point of "this is a comprehensive view, either adopt all of it or I will not work with you", then yeah, that kind of Islamist totalitarianism is precisely the problem we face. But the notion that Islamic oriented ideas aren't part of the conversation, that SOME of their ideas cannot be adopted into the secualr dominated nation state with its secular legislation, well it's just wrong. They HAVE been. There HAS been land reform in Iraq, and Sadr had something to do with that. It's not all or nothing. It's not like the legal culture is dismissed because incompatible with Islam, and it's not like Islam is dismissed because we have national legal culture, both are at work, the latter more in actual state law but both matter, each of different power in different contexts.
The problem is we insist on projecting onto the East an all encompassing and monolithic Islam, and what we have is a mosaic Islam, different movements contributing different ideas. Looking at law, some is Western transplant that has grown root, some is juristic influence, some is social movement inspired by Islam, and some is the influence of democratic left socialism. These ideas, all of them, play against each other, there is no comprehensive world view, no one set of Divine values in play, when Sadat brings shari'a into the constitutional state it's neither to be dismissed as an "accommodation" or hallowed as some sort of realization of caliphal glory. It is what it is, a mediation between different social forces, different people with different values coming together on points of confluence, the essence of modern, Muslim hybridity.
It might not be pretty, it might not be clean, it might take more than 150 pages to describe, but it's the only way law has ever operated. Our debates shouldn't be on if this is happening, only on the extent to which each influence counts in any given context.
HAH
I do not say, I have never said, I hope I will never say, that the only reason anyone thinks about implementing shari'a in the Muslim world is because they want effective government, and so give them effective government, and then shari'a goes away in the public sphere. My whole theme has been that the shari'a is NOT about effective governance and rule of law, it is about resisting the West, some sort of anticolonial sentiment drives it, and therefore Islamist movements have not been much concerned with good governance and actually have a pretty appalling record on that front. But they are good at stridency with Israel, implementation of criminal punishments for adultery and the like, and relegating women to second class status. Some have been attuned to social justice issues as well, which I greatly applaud, Baqir al-Sadr in particular is a wonderful example of trying to do right in an inequitable world through Islamic text. But leaving his movement aside, and thinking of places like Egypt, Sudan, Pakistan and the Islamists, well all respect to Feldman, but I think there is some level of apology going on when these movements are supposed to be about the rule of law. I say that in my review, my blog post wasn't meant to pull back from that at all.
That said, what the post was meant to address is that clearly there are people, many many people, concerned first and foremost with making their government work, many of them vote Islamist and yet are uncommitted Islamists and the point of my last post was to explore that phenomenon, and show that really, if this is the concern, then they'll drop Islamism if you give them something else that works as a model of governance. Shari'a will still be a powerful force among those who think it vindicates other things, a normative worldview, and that may carry the day. My mailman growing up was a deeply conservative prolife Catholic, convinced Reagan was destroying the country and ruining his pension, but committed to voting for Reagan because he was going to save hundreds of thousands of innocent babies from dying (his words). Well, that guy isn't swayed by effective governance, that's not what law is about to him first and foremost, not here, and not his Muslim counterpart in Cairo.
The point of the last piece was to view with suspicion anything called an "Islamic rule of law system." In many cases, it's awfully similar to rule of law, or effective governance, or democracy in any context. The values coincide in very large part, and we shouldn't force distinctions which might not be as massive as such a simplistic rendition would create. This isn't just a Muslim issue, Aharon Barak, the former President of the Israeli Supreme Court, used to talk of the importance of Jewish liberalism. I heard him once, it sounded a lot like "liberalism" to me, if there was a Jewish part I missed it.
Now one might claim that it's BETTER to draw the similar values from Islam (or Judaism), it adds to its effectiveness. moreover, states that draw upon some level of awe or mysticism as concerns their central texts (look at us with the US constitution) even as they debate precise interpretations are more stable, and the believer, among which I of course count myself, prefers to be doing God's work to man's.
And certainly I do think that realizing some values is God's work, Lincoln dd God's work, as did Sadr (Baqir not Moqtada), as did King, I believe that. I don't have a problem with this. But that's different from saying that somehow I am doing something in a way that is so different from everyone else, that is so unique to my own people, that really it isn't compatible with secular values, it's comprehensive and inconsistent. Of course not, in many cases the goals are largely the same. The devout Egyptian whose house is destroyed wants a new house from his government, or insurance, or something. It's not like the fact that the government isn't Islamic in the way he might or might not like changes that central need, not like if the house is given he might not be inclined to take that into account next election cycle.
Of course there might be some differences in different places and among different people with different worldviews drawing on different texts and different sources of inspiration, but in any Muslim societies, those are going to be mediated, there isn't one system that will rule. It seems to me in any Muslim state we are going to have a variety of different currents and impulses. Some are going to be driven by a desire for the rule of law, some by a need for social justice, some by a call for democratic rule, some for more comprehensive and entire systems (Islamism, communism), some for free market reforms. Some of these are going to be religiously inspired, and some more secular in their origin.
My concern with this "Islam is a comprehensive view with its own system of values and balances, it's so different from the secular state, here it is, drawn from classical text, the true source of authority to the Muslim" is that it excludes too many viewpoints. It makes us into some exotic monolith when we are not. People who study Islam this way are too focused on the Brotherhood, or even worse than that on medieval Muslims, and not enough on other contemporary legal realities. What about Indonesia? What about the Pakistani Bar? Why is everything back down to some set of values in some medieval texts when we see people on the streets saying "you can't fire the Chief Justice you dictator" what in heaven's name would lead us to deny the obvious, that these people are not drawing on Abu Hanifa or Ibn Taymiyya for inspiration in this context?
The national legal cultures, and national legal communities are being ignored in our academy, nearly totally, for medieval thought and I think that's awful. It is certainly not reflecting contemporary reality.
At the same time, it's not pure secularism or Rawlsian liberalism in Muslim society either. Islam is at work in much of this. The fact is, Sadr is looking at the gross material iniquities of his society and he finds this deplorable for religious reasons. He is shocked at the offense before God, and trembles in fear for his people come Judgment Day. He sees them moving to Marxism and is concerned about this too (for reasons having less to do with social justice, more with other values vindicated in shari'a). He isn't interested in a secular reason, that's not his thing. And he is part of the conversation.
Now those viewpoints I think can fit in the public sphere, and they do in the Muslim world. They are the legitimate and sincere positions of believers. If they are taken to the point of "this is a comprehensive view, either adopt all of it or I will not work with you", then yeah, that kind of Islamist totalitarianism is precisely the problem we face. But the notion that Islamic oriented ideas aren't part of the conversation, that SOME of their ideas cannot be adopted into the secualr dominated nation state with its secular legislation, well it's just wrong. They HAVE been. There HAS been land reform in Iraq, and Sadr had something to do with that. It's not all or nothing. It's not like the legal culture is dismissed because incompatible with Islam, and it's not like Islam is dismissed because we have national legal culture, both are at work, the latter more in actual state law but both matter, each of different power in different contexts.
The problem is we insist on projecting onto the East an all encompassing and monolithic Islam, and what we have is a mosaic Islam, different movements contributing different ideas. Looking at law, some is Western transplant that has grown root, some is juristic influence, some is social movement inspired by Islam, and some is the influence of democratic left socialism. These ideas, all of them, play against each other, there is no comprehensive world view, no one set of Divine values in play, when Sadat brings shari'a into the constitutional state it's neither to be dismissed as an "accommodation" or hallowed as some sort of realization of caliphal glory. It is what it is, a mediation between different social forces, different people with different values coming together on points of confluence, the essence of modern, Muslim hybridity.
It might not be pretty, it might not be clean, it might take more than 150 pages to describe, but it's the only way law has ever operated. Our debates shouldn't be on if this is happening, only on the extent to which each influence counts in any given context.
HAH
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