The commitment of religious forces and authorities to democracy in the Islamic world has become almost amusing in its fervor. Certainly, it marks a remarkable transformation in the conception of compatibility of Islam to democratic rule from only a few decades ago.
Hence, for example, during the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the Ayatollah Khomeini was actually reluctant to hold a referendum on whether Iran should be an Islamic state at all, ultimately relenting but describing the vote as merely a confirmation of a fact that the revolution had already laid bare. (Shaul Bakhash describes this well in his own (dated, but still classic) book on the subject of the revolution.) As for the Quietist movements that contested the principle of Islamic rule, led most prominently by Grand Ayatollah Khu’i of Najaf, their commitments were certainly not to the secular state (led at the time by Saddam Hussein, to whom no credible Shi’a jurist would ever be committed) but rather to some form of apathy and alienation from the state or indeed any governance structure at all, waiting instead for the return of the Mahdi, tolerating the state in the thinnest possible sense of toleration. Neither side within this Shi’a doctrinal division advocated anything sounding like democracy.
As for the Sunni world, Ruud Peters 1988 examination of Islamist movements reflects the hostility to the notion that there could ever be a vote over matters on which the shari’a speaks. Either God rules, or man does, but both cannot stand. Of course, significant Islamist forces, Sunni or Shi’i, never denied the possible use of democratic mechanisms at all–hence Mawdudi’s reference to the theodemocracy. But the idea was to relegate it to significant extent to rather significant strictures that would ensure broad compliance with a particularly rigorous conception of shari’a.
Over time, however, as it became obvious that Islamists could actually win elections, the instrumental advantages of a democratic commitment began to grow, and instrumental advantages grow normative roots rather quickly. What the shari’a had to control began to shrink, what the people could demand grew, and suddenly the millennium turned and you have Iraqi clerics demanding elections when the US invades (not shari’a, not the veil, UN monitored elections) and you have Hamas demanding the right to rule and expressing what appears to be genuine moral outrage when it is denied them, because they won an election. Sure you had, and still have, the genuine crazies (Shabab, Taliban, Qaeda, etc), but the mainstream movements by the early part of the century were thoroughly democratized.
And now just a decade from that, look where we are. It’s not just that democracy is compatible with Islam. No, now you have to vote if you’re a good Muslim. “Sacred Duty” is how the Sheikh of the Azhar described it. (Not that it did a damn bit of good judging by the turnout.) If you didn’t vote, you betrayed the nation, which is somehow a sin now. Najaf likewise turned into full election mode about a month ago, similarly describing it as a religious obligation to vote. Those Shi’a who demurred, I am close to one, were specifically told to keep their opinions to themselves, as they do not have the power to exercise ijtihad. The position of Quietism and alienation from the state, the very theory that dominated Najaf only two decades ago has been, at least in its purest forms, totally marginalized and discredited. That’s no small thing.
Of course, the full pendulum swing is not entirely comfortable, perhaps to a liberal like myself it feels as if it has overswung. Naturally I’m pleased with the embrace of democratic politics over army coup among religious party and secular nationalist party alike. But one wonders if it really bodes well for the future of the state to have religious authorities imbuing a fundamentally secular political act such as voting with such religious significance. It is one thing to tolerate a vote and consequent commitment to and loyalty to the state, indeed to even embrace and encourage it is one thing. It is quite another to describe those who stay home as sinners. The effort of religious authorities to boost the democratic state whatever its intentions does begin to stink once again of an intermingling between religion and state that it is best to avoid.
HAH
