Political aspects of Islam

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Political aspects of Islam are derived from the

The real intentions of Muhammad regarding the spread of Islam, its political undertone, and his missionary activity (da’wah) during his lifetime are a contentious matter of debate, which has been extensively discussed both among Muslim scholars and Non-Muslim scholars within the academic field of Islamic studies.^[23] Various authors, Islamic activists, and historians of Islam have proposed several understandings of Muhammad's intent and ambitions regarding his religio-political mission in the context of the pre-Islamic Arabian society and the founding of his own religion:^[23]

Was it in Muhammad's mind to produce a world religion or did his interests lie mainly within the confines of his homeland? Was he solely an Arab nationalist—a political genius intent upon uniting the proliferation of tribal clans under the banner of a new religion—or was his vision a truly international one, encompassing a desire to produce a reformed humanity in the midst of a new world order? These questions are not without significance, for a number of the proponents of contemporary da’wah activity in the West trace their inspiration to the prophet himself, claiming that he initiated a worldwide missionary program in which they are the most recent participants. [...] Despite the claims of these and other writers, it is difficult to prove that Muhammad intended to found a world-encompassing faith superseding the religions of Christianity and Judaism. His original aim appears to have been the establishment of a succinctly Arab brand of monotheism, as indicated by his many references to the Qurʾān as an Arab book and by his accommodations to other monotheistic traditions.^[23]

Quran

Most likely Muhammad was "intimately aware of Jewish belief and practices," and acquainted with the Ḥanīf.

blood money (the payment between families or tribes for the slaying of an individual in lieu of lex talionis).^{[citation needed}

]

Early Caliphate and political ideals

Main article: Caliphate

Further information: Islamic ethics and Islamic leadership

After the

Egypt, and North Africa.^[17]

Alongside the growth of the

Punjab region under the reign of the Umayyad dynasty

.

An important Islamic concept concerning the structure of ruling is the

Arabic: أهل الحل والعقد, lit. 'those who are qualified to unbind and to bind') was used in order to denote those qualified to appoint or depose a caliph or another ruler on behalf of the Ummah.^[53] Olivier Roy writes that

Classical Islamic thought is overflowing with treatises on governing, advice to sovereigns, and didactic tales. They do not reflect on the nature of politics, but on the nature of the good ruler and of good government (advice, techniques, paradigms, anecdotes).^[54]

Election or appointment

Further information: Islam and democracy

Ḥanafī school, also wrote that the leader must come from the majority.^[55]

Western scholar of Islam, Fred Donner,^[56] argues that the standard Arabian practice during the early caliphates was for the prominent men of a kinship group, or tribe, to gather after a leader's death and elect a leader from amongst themselves, although there was no specified procedure for this shura, or consultative assembly. Candidates were usually from the same lineage as the deceased leader but they were not necessarily his sons. Capable men who would lead well were preferred over an ineffectual direct heir, as there was no basis in the majority Sunnī view that the head of state or governor should be chosen based on lineage alone.

Majlis ash-Shura

Deliberations in the politics of the early caliphates, most notably the

Majlis-ash-Shura

advise the caliph. The importance of this is premised by the following verses of the Quran:

"...those who answer the call of their Lord and establish the prayer, and who conduct their affairs by Shura. [are loved by God]"^[42:38]

"...consult them (the people) in their affairs. Then when you have taken a decision (from them), put your trust in Allah"^[3:159]

The majlis were also the means to elect a new caliph. Al-Mawardi wrote that members of the majlis should satisfy three conditions: they must be just, they must have enough knowledge to distinguish a good caliph from a bad one, and must have sufficient wisdom and judgment to select the best caliph. Al-Mawardi also stated that in case of emergencies when there is no caliphate and no majlis, the people themselves should institute a council of majlis, select a list of candidates for the role of caliph, then the majlis should select from the list of candidates.^{[55][unreliable source?]}

Some modern political interpretations regarding the role of the Majlis ash-Shura include those expressed by the Egyptian Islamist author and ideologue

Islamic democrats consider the shura to be an integral part and important pillar of Islamic political system.^[58]

Separation of powers

Further information: Islam and secularism and Islamic ethics

In the early Islamic caliphates, the caliph was the

ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān (644–656), and ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (656–661). After the rāshidūn caliphs, later caliphates during the Islamic Golden Age had a much lesser degree of democratic participation, but since "no one was superior to anyone else except on the basis of piety and virtue" in Islam, and following the example of Muhammad, later Islamic rulers often held public consultations with the people in their affairs.^[60]

The legislative power of the caliph (or later, the sultan) was always restricted by the scholarly class, the ulama, a group regarded as the guardians of Islamic law. Since the sharia law was established and regulated by the schools of Islamic jurisprudence, this prevented the caliph from dictating legal results. Sharia-compliant rulings were established as authoritative based on the ijma (consensus) of legal Muslim scholars, who theoretically acted as representatives of the entire Ummah (Muslim community).^[61] After law colleges (madrasa) became widespread beginning with the 11th and 12th century CE, students of Islamic jurisprudence often had to obtain an ijaza-t al-tadris wa-l-ifta ("license to teach and issue legal opinions") in order to issue valid legal rulings.^[62] In many ways, classical Islamic law functioned like a constitutional law.^[61]

Practically, for hundreds of years after the fall of the

unwritten constitution (like the United Kingdom), and possessing separate, countervailing branches of government (like the United States), which provided a clear separation of powers in socio-political governance. While the United States and some other systems of government have three separate branches of government—executive, legislative, and judicial—Islamic monarchies had two: the sultan and the ulama.^[63]

According to the French political scientist and professor

British lawyer and journalist Sadakat Kadri argues that a large "degree of deference" was shown to the caliphate by the ulama and this was at least at times "counterproductive". "Although jurists had identified conditions from mental incapacity to blindness that could disqualify a caliph, none had ever dared delineate the powers of the caliphate as an institution." During the Abbasid caliphate:

When Caliph Al-Mutawakkil had been killed in 861, jurists had retroactively validated his murder with a fatwa. Eight years later, they had testified to the lawful abdication of a successor, after he had been dragged from a toilet, beaten unconscious, and thrown into a vault to die. By the middle of the tenth century, judges were solemnly confirming that the onset of blindness had disqualified a caliph, without mentioning that they had just been assembled to witness the gouging of his eyes.^[65]

According to Noah Feldman, law professor at Harvard University, the Muslim legal scholars and jurists lost their control over Islamic law due to the codification of sharia by the Ottoman Empire in the early 19th century:^[66]

How the scholars lost their exalted status as keepers of the law is a complex story, but it can be summed up in the adage that partial reforms are sometimes worse than none at all. In the early 19th century, the Ottoman empire responded to military setbacks with an internal reform movement. The most important reform was the attempt to codify Shariah. This Westernizing process, foreign to the Islamic legal tradition, sought to transform Shariah from a body of doctrines and principles to be discovered by the human efforts of the scholars into a set of rules that could be looked up in a book. [...] Once the law existed in codified form, however, the law itself was able to replace the scholars as the source of authority. Codification took from the scholars their all-important claim to have the final say over the content of the law and transferred that power to the state.

Obedience and opposition

According to scholar Moojan Momen, "One of the key statements in the Qur'an around which much of the exegesis" on the issue of what Islamic doctrine says about who is in charge is based on the verse

"O believers! Obey God and obey the Apostle and those who have been given authority [uulaa al-amr] among you" (Quran 4:59).

For Sunnīs, the expression "those who have been given authority" (uulaa al-amr) refers to the rulers (caliphs and kings), but for Shīʿas it refers to the Imams.^[67] According to the British historian and Orientalist scholar Bernard Lewis, this Quranic verse has been

elaborated in a number of sayings attributed to Muhammad. But there are also sayings that put strict limits on the duty of obedience. Two dicta attributed to the Prophet and universally accepted as authentic are indicative. One says, "there is no obedience in sin"; in other words, if the ruler orders something contrary to the divine law, not only is there no duty of obedience, but there is a duty of disobedience. This is more than the right of revolution that appears in Western political thought. It is a duty of revolution, or at least of disobedience and opposition to authority. The other pronouncement, "do not obey a creature against his creator," again clearly limits the authority of the ruler, whatever form of ruler that may be.^[68]

According to the

Starting from the late medieval period, Sunni fiqh elaborated the doctrine of siyasa shar'iyya, which literally means governance according to

In Shīʿa Islam, three attitudes towards rulers predominated — political cooperation with the ruler, political activism challenging the ruler, and aloofness from politics — with "writings of Shi'i ulama through the ages" showing "elements of all three of these attitudes."^[74]

Kharijite tradition

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These original Kharijites opposed both ʿAlī and Mu'awiya, and appointed their own leaders. They were decisively defeated by ʿAlī, who was in turn assassinated by a Kharijite. Kharijites engaged in guerilla warfare against the Umayyads, but only became a movement to be reckoned with during the Second Fitna (the second Islamic Civil War) when they at one point controlled more territory than any of their rivals. The Kharijites were, in fact, one of the major threats to Ibn al-Zubayr's bid for the caliphate; during this time they controlled Yamama and most of southern Arabia, and captured the oasis town of al-Ta'if.^[77]

The Azariqa, considered to be the extreme faction of the Kharijites, controlled parts of western Iran under the Umayyads until they were finally put down in 699 CE. The more moderate Ibadi Kharijites were longer-lived, continuing to wield political power in North and East Africa and in eastern Arabia during the Abbasid period. Because of their readiness to declare any opponent as apostate, the extreme Kharijites tended to fragment into small groups. One of the few points that the various Kharijite splinter groups held in common was their view of the caliphate, which differed from other Muslim theories on two points.

• First, they were principled egalitarians, holding that any pious Muslim ("even an Ethiopian slave") can become Caliph and that family or tribal affiliation is inconsequential. The only requirements for leadership are piety and acceptance by the community.
• Second, they agreed that it is the duty of the believers to depose any leader who falls into error. This second principle had profound implications for Kharijite theology. Applying these ideas to the early history of the caliphate, Kharijites only accept Abu Bakr and 'Umar as legitimate caliphs. Of 'Uthman's caliphate they recognize only the first six years as legitimate, and they reject 'Ali altogether.

By the time that Ibn al-Muqaffa' wrote his political treatise early in the 'Abbasid period, the Kharijites were no longer a significant political threat, at least in the Islamic heartlands. The memory of the menace they had posed to Muslim unity and of the moral challenge generated by their pious idealism still weighed heavily on Muslim political and religious thought, however. Even if the Kharijites could no longer threaten, their ghosts still had to be answered.^[77] The Ibadis are the only Kharijite group to survive into modern times.

Modern era

Reaction to European colonialism

In the 19th century,

King of the Hejaz

from 1916 to 1924.

Syria, Iraq, and Palestine. He later refused to sign the Anglo-Hashemite Treaty and thus deprived himself of British support when his kingdom was attacked by Ibn Saud. After the Kingdom of Hejaz was invaded by the Al Saud-Wahhabi armies of the Ikhwan, on 23 December 1925 King Hussein bin Ali surrendered to the Saudis, bringing both the Kingdom of Hejaz and the Sharifate of Mecca to an end.^[80]

The second Muslim reaction to European encroachment later in the century and early 20th century was not violent resistance but the adoption of some Western political, social, cultural and technological ways. Members of the urban elite, particularly in Egypt, Iran, and Turkey, advocated and practiced "Westernization".^[81] The failure of the attempts at political westernization, according to some, was exemplified by the Tanzimat reorganization of the Ottoman rulers. Sharia was codified into law (which was called the Mecelle) and an elected legislature was established to make law. These steps took away the ulama's role of "discovering" the law and the formerly powerful scholar class weakened and withered into religious functionaries, while the legislature was suspended less than a year after its inauguration and never recovered to replace the Ulama as a separate "branch" of government providing separation of powers.^[81] The "paradigm of the executive as a force unchecked by either the sharia of the scholars or the popular authority of an elected legislature became the dominant paradigm in most of the Sunni Muslim world in the 20th century."^[82]

Modern political ideal of the Islamic state

Main article: Islamic state

See also:

Islamization, Political Islam, and Political quietism in Islam

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In addition to the legitimacy given by medieval scholarly opinion, nostalgia for the days of successful Islamic empires simmered under later

Jamaat-e-Islami and Muslim Brotherhood

, have used the democratic process and focus on votes and coalition-building with other political parties.

ISIL/ISIS/IS/Daesh.^[10] Moreover, Qutb's books have been frequently been cited by Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki.^{[90][91][92][93][94][95]}

Sayyid Qutb could be said to have founded the actual movement of radical Islam.^[86][87][89] Radical Islamic movements such as al-Qaeda and the Taliban embrace the militant Islamist ideology, and were prominent for being part of the anti-Soviet resistance in Afghanistan during the 1980s.^[96] Both of the aforementioned militant Islamist groups had a role to play in the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, presenting both "near" and "far" enemies as regional governments and the United States respectively.^[96] They also took part in the bombings in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005. The recruits often came from the ranks of jihadists, from Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco.^[96]

War on Terror.^[98] The Austrian-American academic Manfred B. Steger, Professor of Sociology at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, proposed an extension of the term "jihadist globalism" to apply to all extremely violent strains of religiously influenced ideologies that articulate the global imaginary into concrete political agendas and terrorist strategies; these include al-Qaeda, Jemaah Islamiyah, Hamas, and Hezbollah, which he finds "today's most spectacular manifestation of religious globalism".^[99]

Compatibility with democracy

General Muslim views

Western scholars John Esposito and Natana J. DeLong-Bas distinguish four attitudes toward sharia and democracy prominent among Muslims today:^[100]

• Advocacy of democratic ideas, often accompanied by a belief that they are compatible with Islam, which can play a public role within a democratic system, as exemplified by many protestors who took part in the Arab Spring uprisings;
• Support for democratic procedures such as elections, combined with religious or moral objections toward some aspects of Western democracy seen as incompatible with sharia, as exemplified by Islamic scholars like Yusuf al-Qaradawi;
• Rejection of democracy as a Western import and advocacy of traditional Islamic institutions, such as shura (consultation) and ijma (consensus), as exemplified by supporters of absolute monarchy and radical Islamist movements;
• Belief that democracy requires restricting religion to private life, held by a minority in the Muslim world.

Polls conducted by

secular democracy, but rather a political model where democratic institutions and values can coexist with the values and principles of sharia.^{[101][102][103]}

Islamic political theories

Muslih and Browers identify three major perspectives on democracy among prominent Muslims thinkers who have sought to develop modern, distinctly Islamic theories of socio-political organization conforming to Islamic values and law:[104]

• The rejectionist Islamic view, elaborated by
  Western democracy and the Islamic doctrine of shura (consultation between ruler and ruled). This perspective, which stresses comprehensive implementation of sharia, was widespread in the 1970s and 1980s among various movements seeking to establish an Islamic state
  , but its popularity has diminished in recent years.
• The moderate Islamic view stresses the concepts of
  Rashid al-Ghannushi, and Yusuf al-Qaradawi
  have advocated different forms of this view.
• The
  Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, have justified pluralism and freedom through non-literalist approaches to textual interpretation. Abdolkarim Soroush has argued for a "religious democracy
  " based on religious thought that is democratic, tolerant, and just. Islamic liberals argue for the necessity of constant reexamination of religious understanding, which can only be done in a democratic context.

20th and 21st centuries

Main articles:

War on Terror

Further information:

Siege of Mecca in 1979, Six-Day War, Yom Kippur War, and War of Attrition

reforms, which modernized Turkey into a secular, industrializing nation.^{[78][105][106]}

Following

Republic of Turkey,^[78] many Muslims perceived that the political power of their religion was in retreat. There was also concern that Western ideas and influence were spreading throughout Muslim societies. This led to considerable resentment of the influence of the European powers. The Muslim Brotherhood was created in Egypt

as a movement to resist and harry the British.

Between the 1950s and the 1960s, the predominant ideology within the

Baathism rather than Islam.^[107] However, governments based on Arab nationalism have found themselves facing economic stagnation

and disorder. Increasingly, the borders of these states were seen as artificial colonial creations - which they were, having literally been drawn on a map by European colonial powers.

Today, many

Islamic democracy and Islamic fundamentalism

, lump together a large variety of political groups with varying aims, histories, ideologies, and backgrounds.

Contemporary movements

Some common political currents in Islam include:

• Barelvi school in Pakistan.^[111]
• Deobandi school in South Asia (mainly Pakistan and Afghanistan), Ahl-i Hadith and Tablighi Jamaat in India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia
  , and Pakistan are modern examples of fundamentalist reformism and revivalism.
• Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party and Justice and Development Party (Turkey)
  .
• Islamic theology, ethics, sharia, culture, tradition, and other ritualistic practices in Islam.^[120] Liberal Islam emphasizes the re-interpretation of the Islamic scriptures in order to preserve their relevance in the 21st century.^[110][120]

Shīʿa—Sunnī differences

Main article: Shia–Sunni relations

Further information: Iran–Saudi Arabia proxy conflict and Sectarian violence among Muslims

According to the

Islamic Revolution in Iran (1978–1979):^[6]

With the

Muslim-majority countries such as Indonesia, Turkey, and Lebanon to look at Islam with renewed interest. After all, in Iran, Islam had succeeded where leftist ideologies had failed. [...] But admiration for what had happened in Iran did not equal acceptance of Iranian leadership. Indeed, Islamic activists outside of Iran quickly found Iranian revolutionaries to be arrogant, offputting, and drunk on their own success. Moreover, Sunni fundamentalism in Pakistan and much of the Arab world was far from politically revolutionary. It was rooted in conservative religious impulses and the bazaars, mixing mercantile interests with religious values. As the French scholar of contemporary Islam Gilles Kepel puts it, it was less to tear down the existing system than to give it a fresh, thick coat of "Islamic green" paint. Khomeini's fundamentalism, by contrast, was "red"—that is, genuinely revolutionary.^[6]

The American

political analyst and author Graham E. Fuller, specialized in the study of Islamism and Islamic extremism, has also noted that he found "no mainstream Islamist organization (with the exception of [Shīʿa] Iran) with radical social views or a revolutionary approach to the social order apart from the imposition of legal justice."^[123]

Guardianship of the Jurist of Shi'i Islam

Further information: Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist

Guardianship of the Jurist (Wilāyat al-Faqīh) is a concept in

Twelver Shia Islamic law that holds that in the absence of (what Twelvers believe is) the religious and political leader of Islam—the "infallible Imam", who Shi'a believe will reappear sometime before Judgement Day) -- righteous Shi'i jurists (faqīh),^[124] should administer "some" of the "religious and social affairs" of the Shi'i community. In its "absolute" form—the form advanced by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini^[125] and the basis of government in Islamic Republic of Iran—the state and society are ruled by an Islamic jurist (Ali Khamenei

as of 2022).

A variation of Islamism, the theory holds that since sharia law has everything needed to rule a state (whether ancient or modern),^[126] and any other basis of governance will lead to injustice and sin,^[127] a state must be ruled according to sharia and the person who should rule is an expert in sharia.^[128]

The theory of

Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi), is contrasted with the theory of sovereignty in "most of the schools of political philosophy and other cultures". Non-Muslim cultures hold that "every man is free", and in democratic cultures in particular, "sovereignty ... belongs to the people". A ruler and government must have the consent of the governed to have political legitimacy. Whereas in fact, sovereignty is God's. The "entire universe and whatever in it belongs to God ... the Exalted, and all their movements and acts must have to be in accordance with the command or prohibition of the Real Owner". Consequently, human beings "have no right to rule over others or to choose someone to rule", i.e. choose someone to rule themselves.^[129] In an Islamic state, rule must be according to God's law and the ruler must be best person to enforce God's law. The people's "consent and approval" are valuable for developing and strengthening the Islamic government but irrelevant for its legitimacy.^[129]

See also

• Islam and secularism
• Islam and war
• Islam Yes, Islamic Party No
• Islamic democracy
• Islamic extremism
  • International propagation of Salafism and Wahhabism (by region
    )
  • Islamic terrorism
  • Jihadism
  • Petro-Islam
  • Qutbism
  • Salafism
  • Salafi jihadism
  • Takfirism
  • Wahhabism
• Islamic revival
• Islamism
  • Post-Islamism
• List of Islamic democratic political parties
• Modern Islamic philosophy
• Peace in Islamic philosophy
• Political philosophy of the Islamic Golden Age
• Political quietism in Islam
• Transformation of the Ottoman Empire

Notes

1. ^ "Key themes in these early recitations include the idea of the moral responsibility of man who was created by God and the idea of the judgment to take place on the day of resurrection. [...] Another major theme of Muhammad's early preaching, [... is that] there is a power greater than man's, and that the wise will acknowledge this power and cease their greed and suppression of the poor."^[27]
2. ^ "At first Muhammad met with no serious opposition [...] He was only gradually led to attack on principle the gods of Mecca. [...] Meccan merchants then discovered that a religious revolution might be dangerous to their fairs and their trade."^[27]
3. ^ W.M. Watt argues that the initial agreement was shortly after the hijra and the document was amended at a later date specifically after the battle of Badr (AH [anno hijra] 2, = AD 624).^[41]
4. ^ R. B. Serjeant argues that the constitution is in fact eight different treaties which can be dated according to events as they transpired in Medina with the first treaty being written shortly after Muhammad's arrival. ^{[42] [43]}
5. ^ Julius Wellhausen argues that the document is a single treaty agreed upon shortly after the hijra, and that it belongs to the first year of Muhammad’s residence in Medina, before the battle of Badr in 2/624. Wellhausen bases this judgement on three considerations; first Muhammad is very diffident about his own position, he accepts the Pagan tribes within the Umma, and maintains the Jewish clans as clients of the Ansars^[44][45]
6. ^ Moshe Gil, a skeptic of Islamic history, argues that it was written within five months of Muhammad's arrival in Medina.^[46]

References