On the Limitations of Liberalism in Muslim Polities
With all my talk of liberalism on the blog, it started to get me to wonder whether or not conventional, Rawlsian liberal theory would really be suitable as a system of governance in the average Muslim polity. I wonder if there might be some limitations. (The question I address is not the one that others do, whether Muslims can live up to their obligations as observant Muslims and as citizens in non-Muslim liberal societies. For that, see the admirable work of Andrew March and Mohammad Fadel. I am asking something else--is Rawlsian liberalism the best model to envisage governance in a modern Muslim state?)
I have some sympathy for the notion that we should just try to separate governance from religion, to simply use public reason to develop rules as concerns the former, and allow the comprehensive worldviews of the latter maximum freedom within the law, that is develop the law to give space to religious practice. But I wonder whether this makes sense in the Muslim world.
There are plenty of religious movements in the Muslim world, and it doesn't seem to me that asking them to drop the God talk is going to be fruitful or wise. Some people want land reform because they see the maldistributions of wealth as a sin that stinks to high heaven. That's the cause of their concern, the purpose of their movement, to do God's work in stamping this out. I don't know how to include them while asking them to develop arguments that they aren't concerned with rather than just say "it's what God wants, and the law should do what God wants."
Now it doesn't seem to be that their bringing this view into the public sphere, their attempting to say is necessarily that harmful to the social fabric. The secularist or Christian might not share the reasoning, but if they share the goal, will they care? Can't a socialist democratic movement join hands with a religious one to achieve similar goals on land reform? Obviously if the religious movement is categorically intent on seizing power and squelching dissent and is not interested in cooperation, then that sort of totalitarianism is deeply problematic to the Christian in the Muslim polity, as problematic as something like communism would be to the Muslim believer. Nobody would say that everything is permitted in the open society, clearly they are limits, and Islamists in the Muslim Brotherhood in places like Egypt transgress them every day.
Still, I don't know if that means it's necessarily harmful to bring God in at all. It is still as a believer logically possible to accept that if my side loses in an election, God wants me to follow the law and keep the fight up for another day. It's not all or nothing, it shouldn't be once God comes in then the solution will be a fight to the death over what God actually said and we can't have that so please leave God out of it. There can be middle ground I think.
It seems to me that middle ground is where much occurs these days. The Shi'i Islamist wants to see the family law changed so as to hand rulemaking in the area over to Najaf. The secularist is opposed. The Islamist says it comes from God, the secularist, or the Christian, says "not my God." Well they both still believe in the state, and in the legal codes. The Islamist isn't calling for willful disobedience of current legal obligations. The secularist is willing to compromise and allow those who want to run off to Najaf, so long as teh current code is an alternative to those who elect it. There's continual mediation among different influences, but that is always the case. I think there are ways to preserve state legitimacy and state stability and still allow religious movements, who want the law to implement religiously derived teachings, to work side by side with those who talk of public reason.
As to the exact system or appropriate limitations, I don't know, it requires much much more thought than I've given it, but I think it's worth considering.
HAH
I have some sympathy for the notion that we should just try to separate governance from religion, to simply use public reason to develop rules as concerns the former, and allow the comprehensive worldviews of the latter maximum freedom within the law, that is develop the law to give space to religious practice. But I wonder whether this makes sense in the Muslim world.
There are plenty of religious movements in the Muslim world, and it doesn't seem to me that asking them to drop the God talk is going to be fruitful or wise. Some people want land reform because they see the maldistributions of wealth as a sin that stinks to high heaven. That's the cause of their concern, the purpose of their movement, to do God's work in stamping this out. I don't know how to include them while asking them to develop arguments that they aren't concerned with rather than just say "it's what God wants, and the law should do what God wants."
Now it doesn't seem to be that their bringing this view into the public sphere, their attempting to say is necessarily that harmful to the social fabric. The secularist or Christian might not share the reasoning, but if they share the goal, will they care? Can't a socialist democratic movement join hands with a religious one to achieve similar goals on land reform? Obviously if the religious movement is categorically intent on seizing power and squelching dissent and is not interested in cooperation, then that sort of totalitarianism is deeply problematic to the Christian in the Muslim polity, as problematic as something like communism would be to the Muslim believer. Nobody would say that everything is permitted in the open society, clearly they are limits, and Islamists in the Muslim Brotherhood in places like Egypt transgress them every day.
Still, I don't know if that means it's necessarily harmful to bring God in at all. It is still as a believer logically possible to accept that if my side loses in an election, God wants me to follow the law and keep the fight up for another day. It's not all or nothing, it shouldn't be once God comes in then the solution will be a fight to the death over what God actually said and we can't have that so please leave God out of it. There can be middle ground I think.
It seems to me that middle ground is where much occurs these days. The Shi'i Islamist wants to see the family law changed so as to hand rulemaking in the area over to Najaf. The secularist is opposed. The Islamist says it comes from God, the secularist, or the Christian, says "not my God." Well they both still believe in the state, and in the legal codes. The Islamist isn't calling for willful disobedience of current legal obligations. The secularist is willing to compromise and allow those who want to run off to Najaf, so long as teh current code is an alternative to those who elect it. There's continual mediation among different influences, but that is always the case. I think there are ways to preserve state legitimacy and state stability and still allow religious movements, who want the law to implement religiously derived teachings, to work side by side with those who talk of public reason.
As to the exact system or appropriate limitations, I don't know, it requires much much more thought than I've given it, but I think it's worth considering.
HAH
I think there is an inherent limitation to any system that defines itself using a religious framework, although I doubt they would view it as such.
Bringing God in would not necessarily be a conversation-stopper. Habermas' rejoinder to Rawlsian liberalism put forth the idea of postsecularism, i.e. a secularism that recognizes religion as part of the numerous arguments in the theoretical public sphere. He recognized that religious arguments as such have an intrinsic merit and that even secularists can derive some general truth from it. So yes, I definitely agree that there is some middle ground possible. It doesn't matter the reason sometimes, if the end goal is the same.
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I heard that Habermas had said this, I haven't had a chance to read his latest work. Sounds interesting.
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