Coping with Troubling Texts

Haroon Moghul

Kenes Webinar

February 3, 2016

1. What is Shari’ah? Sunan Tirmidhi, Kitab Ahkam ‘an Rasul Allah (Book 15:7) 1327

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2. The Purpose of Prophecy Sahih Bukhari, Khatim an-Nabiyin (Book 61:43) 3534

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3. On the Abolition of the Caliphate Islam and the Bases of Power, translated from the Arabic by L. Bercher, in

Revue Des Etudes Islamiques VIII (1934), pp. 171-222.

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4. Islamic Authoritarianism Abu-l-‘Ala Mawdudi, “Political Theory of Islam,” in Islam in Transition:

Muslim Perspectives, New York: Oxford University Press (2007), pp. 262-270.

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5. “A League of Nations” Muhammad Iqbal, and M. Saeed Sheikh, The reconstruction of religious

thought in Islam, “The Principle of Movement in the Structure of Islam,” (Oxford Univ. Press, 1934).

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6. Political Islam as Secular Nationalism Leonard Binder, 1961. Religion and politics in Pakistan. Berkeley:

University of California Press, p. 100; Jinnah, M. Ali. (1989). Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah: speeches and statements as Governor General of Pakistan, 1947-1948.

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Haroon Moghul is a writer, analyst and broadcaster. He's appeared on all major media networks, and has been published at CNN, Washington Post, Boston Review, Foreign Policy, Guardian and Haaretz. He is the author of a novel, The Order of Light, and an upcoming memoir, How to be a Muslim (Beacon 2016). Currently a Senior Correspondent at Religion Dispatches, Haroon has been a Fellow at the Center on National Security at Fordham Law, and with New America Foundation's National Security Studies Program. Haroon is President and co-founder of Avenue Meem, a new media project.

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1 | What Is Shari’ah?

Sometime around the year 631 C.E., messengers from Yemen arrived in Medina announcing their conversion to Islam, and interest in learning more of their new religion. So the Prophet Muhammad commissioned a small group of teachers, and appointed Mu‘adh ibn Jabal to be their ‘Amir,’ or leader. The following exchange was recorded between Muhammad and Mu‘adh before the latter’s departure to Yemen:

Before their dispatch, Muhammad had this public exchange with Mu‘adh:

Muhammad asked, ‘How will you judge?’ ‘According to the Book of God (the Qur’an),’ Mu‘adh said. Muhammad asked, ‘And if you find nothing there?’ ‘According to the path of God’s Messenger,’ Mu‘adh replied. Muhammad asked, ‘And if you find nothing there?’ Mu‘adh said, ‘Then I will strive to my utmost [ijtihād] to form my own judgment.’

Muhammad then said, ‘Praise God who has guided the messenger of the Messenger to that which pleases the Messenger.’1

2 | The Purpose of Prophecy

On the authority of Jabir ibn ‘Abd Allah: The Prophet, peace be upon him, said,

The example of myself and the Prophets is of a man who has built a house, and completed it, and beautified it. When people enter the house they admire its beauty and say, ‘But for this brick!’2

1 Sunan Tirmidhi, Kitab Ahkam ‘an Rasul Allah (Book 15:7) 1327 2 Sahih Bukhari, Khatim an-Nabiyin (Book 61:43) 3534

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3 | On the Abolition of the Caliphate

In the year 1924, under Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk), the Republic of Turkey abolished the Caliphate. The abolition left the Sunni Muslim world without a Caliph for the first time in centuries. Created after Muhammad’s death, the office had won over the majority of the community as the ideal response to his absence, and anchored the self-conception of the Sunni scholarly establishment for many centuries. Following its abolition, various Muslim thinkers proposed new responses. Egyptian scholar ‘Ali ‘Abd ar-Raziq (1888-1966) welcomed its abolition, to great controversy (as would Muhammad Iqbal, 5):

‘The authority of Muhammad over the believers was the authority of apostleship; it had nothing in common with temporal power. No, there was neither government, nor state, nor any type of political aspiration, nor any of these ambitions proper to kings and princes… ‘During all his life the Prophet made no allusion to anything which could be called an “Islamic State” or an “Arab State”. It would be blasphemy to think otherwise. The Prophet did not leave this earth until he had entirely accomplished the mission given him by God… How, then, if his work comprised the creation of a state, could he have left the Muslims without any precise directions concerning that state… How could he have failed to concern himself with the question of succession to power when this has always been the primary concern of those who have founded governments?... How could he have left the Muslims with nothing to guide them in this domain, abandoning them to incertitude? … The Prophet went to his celestial repose only after the religion had been completed, when grace had reached its fullness and the preaching of Islam had become a reality. On that day only did he die. His mission was accomplished, and that sublime union which in his august person joined heaven and earth came to an end.’3

3 Islam and the Bases of Power, translated from the Arabic by L. Bercher, in Revue Des Etudes Islamiques VIII (1934), pp. 171-222.

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4 | Islamic Authoritarianism

Abu al-‘Ala al-Mawdudi (1903-1979), an Indian Muslim thinker, constructed his own vision for an Islamic polity, which produced the first modern Islamist organization in South Asia, Jama‘at-i Islami, and had a major impact and influence on Sayyid Qutb. Here, he describes his vision of Islam as a political force:

The belief in the Oneness (tawhīd) and the sovereignty of Allah is the foundation of the social and moral system propounded by the Prophets. It is the very starting-point of the Islamic political philosophy. The basic principle of Islam is that human beings must, individually and collectively, surrender all rights of overlordship, legislation and exercising of authority over others. No one should be allowed to pass orders or make commands in his own right … This right rests in Allah alone:

The Authority rests with none but Allah. He commands you not to surrender to anyone save Him. This is the right way. [Qur’an 12:40] We sent no messenger save that he should be obeyed by Allah’s command. [6:50]

An Islamic state must, in all respects, be founded upon the law laid down by God through His Prophet. The government which runs such a state will be entitled to obedience in its capacity as a political agency set up to enforce the laws of God and only in so far as it acts in that capacity. If it disregards the law revealed by God, its commands will not be binding on the believers.

…the Islamic state … is an ideological state … Islam is based on an ideology and its objective is to establish that ideology … Whoever accepts this programme, no matter to what race, nation or country he may belong, can join the community that runs the Islamic state. But those who do not accept it are not entitled to have any hand in shaping the fundamental policy of the states. They can live within the confines of the State as non-Muslim citizens (dhimmis). Specific rights and privileges have been accorded to them in the Islamic law: A dhimmi’s life, property and honour will be fully protected…. He will, however, not be allowed to influence the basic policy of this ideological state.

…The power to rule over the earth has been promised to the whole community of believers; it has not been stated that any particular person or class among them will be raised to that position. From this it follows that all believers are repositories of the Caliphate. The Caliphate granted by God to the faithful is the popular vicegerency [khilāfat] and not a limited one. There is no reservation in favour of any family, class or race. Every believer is a Caliph of God in his individual capacity … Thus one Caliph is in no way inferior to another. This is the real foundation of democracy in Islam.

The position of a man who is selected to conduct the affairs of the state is no more than this; that all Muslims … delegate their Caliphate to him for administrative purposes … if he raises himself to the position of an irresponsible absolute ruler, that is to say a dictator, he assumes

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the character of a usurper rather than a Caliph … the Islamic state is an all-embracing state and comprises within its sphere all departments of life, but this all-inclusiveness and universality are based upon the universality of Divine Law which an Islamic ruler has to observe and enforce … an Islamic ruler cannot depart from these instructions … the powers which the dictators of Russia, Germany and Italy have appropriated or which Ataturk has exercised in Turkey have not been granted by Islam.’4

4 Mawdudi, Abu-l-‘Ala, “Political Theory of Islam,” in Donohue, John J. and John E. Esposito (eds.) Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives, New York: Oxford University Press (2007), pp. 262-270.

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5 | “A League of Nations”

Sir Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1946) remains the most influential thinker of Muslim South Asia; with Muhammad Ali Jinnah (#6), he provided an outline for a Muslim homeland in South Asia and modern Muslim politics generally. He provided Jinnah the religious and social force to enable the creation of Pakistan and (indirectly) Bangladesh, against conservative clergy. Nevertheless, Iqbal and Jinnah disagreed substantially on the meaning of Muslim nationalism. Below are selections from Iqbal’s major English-language work:

It is only natural that Islam should have flashed across the consciousness of a simple people untouched by any of the ancient cultures, and occupying a geographical position where three continents meet together. The new culture finds the foundation of world-unity in the principle of Tawhid. Islam, as a polity, is only a practical means of making this principle a living factor in the intellectual and emotional life of mankind. It demands loyalty to God, not to thrones. And since God is the ultimate spiritual basis of all life, loyalty to God virtually amounts to man’s loyalty to his own ideal nature.

The ultimate spiritual basis of all life, as conceived by Islam, is eternal and reveals itself in variety and change. A society based on such a conception of Reality must reconcile, in its life, the categories of permanence and change. It must possess eternal principles to regulate its collective life, for the eternal gives us a foothold in the world of perpetual change. But eternal principles when they are understood to exclude all possibilities of change which, according to the Qur’an, is one of the greatest “signs” of God, tend to immobilize what is essentially mobile in its nature. The failure of Europe in political and social sciences illustrates the former principle, the immobility of Islam during the last five hundred years illustrates the latter. What then is the principle of movement in the structure of Islam? This is known as Ijtihād.

The word literally means to exert. In the terminology of Islamic law it means to exert with a view to form an independent judgment on a legal question. The idea, I believe, has its origin in a well-known verse of the Qur’an– “And to those who exert We show Our path.” We find it more definitely adumbrated in a tradition of the Holy Prophet. When Mu‘ādh was appointed ruler of Yemen, the Prophet is reported to have asked him as to how he would decide matters coming up before him. “I will judge matters according to the Book of God,” said Mu‘ādh. “But if the Book of God contains nothing to guide you? “Then I will act on the precedents of the Prophet of God.” “But if the precedents fail?” “Then I will exert to form my own judgment.”

The student of the history of Islam, however, is well aware that with the political expansion of Islam systematic legal thought became an absolute necessity, and our early doctors of law, both of Arabian and non-Arabian descent, worked ceaselessly until all the accumulated wealth of legal thought found a final expression in our recognized schools of Law. These schools of Law recognize three degrees of Ijtihād: (1) complete authority in legislation which is practically confined to the founders of the schools, (2) relative authority which is to be exercised within the limits of a particular school, and (3) special authority which relates to the determining of the law applicable to a particular case left undetermined by the founders. In this paper I am concerned with the first degree of Ijtihād only, i.e. complete authority in legislation.

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According to Sunni Law, the appointment of an Imām or Khalīfah is absolutely indispensable. The first question that arises in this connexion is this– Should the Caliphate be vested in a single person? Turkey’s Ijtihād is that according to the spirit of Islam the Caliphate or Imāmate can be vested in a body of persons, or an elected Assembly. The religious doctors of Islam in Egypt and India, as far as I know, have not yet expressed themselves on this point. Personally, I believe the Turkish view is perfectly sound. It is hardly necessary to argue this point. The republican form of government is not only thoroughly consistent with the spirit of Islam, but has also become a necessity in view of the new forces that are set free in the world of Islam.

The Turks argue that in our political thinking we must be guided by our past political experience which points unmistakably to the fact that the idea of Universal Imamate has failed in practice. It was a workable idea when the Empire of Islam was intact. Since the break-up of this Empire independent political units have arisen. The idea has ceased to be operative and cannot work as a living factor in the organization of modern Islam. Far from serving any useful purpose it has really stood in the way of a reunion of independent Muslim States. Persia has stood aloof from the Turks in view of her doctrinal differences regarding the Khilafat; Morocco has always looked askance at them, and Arabia has cherished private ambition.

And all these rupture in Islam for the sake of a mere symbol of a power which departed long ago. Why should we not, he can further argue, learn from experience in our political thinking? Did not Qādī Abū Bakr Bāqillānī drop the condition of Qarshiyyat in the Khalīfah in view of the facts of experience, i.e. the political fall of the Quraysh and their consequent inability to rule the world of Islam?

These lines clearly indicate the trend of modern Islam. For the present every Muslim nation must sink into her own deeper self, temporarily focus her vision on herself alone, until all are strong and powerful to form a living family of republics. A true and living unity, according to the nationalist thinkers, is not so easy as to be achieved by a merely symbolical overlordship. It is truly manifested in a multiplicity of free independent units whose racial rivalries are adjusted and harmonized by the unifying bond of a common spiritual aspiration. It seems to me that God is slowly bringing home to us the truth that Islam is neither Nationalism nor Imperialism but a League of Nations which recognizes artificial boundaries and racial distinctions for facility of reference only, and not for restricting the social horizon of its members.5

5 Iqbal, Muhammad, and M. Saeed Sheikh. 2013. The reconstruction of religious thought in Islam (Ch. 5, “The Principle of Movement in the Structure of Islam,” accessed online at http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=1184521 (Oxford Univ. Press, 1934).

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6 | Political Islam as Secular Nationalism

A culturally secular actor, lawyer and eventual political leader increasingly disillusioned by Mohandas Gandhi’s increasing reliance on religious rhetoric, Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876-1948) became the main force behind the Pakistan movement. He died very shortly after the founding of Pakistan, and as such his vision for the state remains more theoretical than actual. One might also note he was born to an Isma‘ili (“Sevener”) Shi‘a family:

No power can hold another nation, and specially a nation of 400 million souls,6 in subjection; nobody could have conquered you, and even if it had happened, nobody could have continued its hold on you for any length of time, but for this. Therefore, we must learn a lesson from this. You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed -- that has nothing to do with the business of the State. As you know, history shows that in England conditions, some time ago, were much worse than those prevailing in India today. The Roman Catholics and the Protestants persecuted each other. Even now there are some States in existence where there are discriminations made and bars imposed against a particular class. Thank God, we are not starting in those days. We are starting in the days where there is no discrimination, no distinction between one community and another, no discrimination between one caste or creed and another. We are starting with this fundamental principle: that we are all citizens, and equal citizens, of one State. Now I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal, and you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus, and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State. My guiding principle will be justice and complete impartiality, and I am sure that with your support and co-operation, I can look forward to Pakistan becoming one of the greatest Nations of the world.7

- First Presidential Address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, 11 August 1947

6 He means India’s Muslims in total. Jinnah understood partition as not denying the greater unity of India, but honoring it—he does not refer to the Muslim population of what becomes Pakistan (including Bangladesh), but those two and what we know now as India. Jinnah makes other references to India throughout this speech, delivered in English before Pakistan’s date of independence (14 August). There is no mention of God, Muhammad, or reference to Islamic text, in this speech. 7 Binder, Leonard. 1961. Religion and politics in Pakistan. Berkeley: University of California Press, p. 100; Jinnah, M. Ali. (1989). Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah: speeches and statements as Governor General of Pakistan, 1947-1948. New ed. Islamabad: Govt. of Pakistan, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Directorate of Films & Publications (5-42).