Islam and Democracy
After WW II – the bankrupted western colonial powers were not in
position to hang-on to their Muslim colonies. So they awarded those
colonies to their trusted Muslim puppet elites (Kings, Sheikhs, military
and civilian dictators) to manage those colonies on behalf of their
western masters. The western colonialists always protected these ruling
stooges, with voicing their intention of exporting western brand of
‘democracy’ – for public consuption. However, the irony is that every
country they tried to experiment the so-called ‘democracy’ – the
Islamist parites scared the hell out of them – by defeating pro-western
secularist parties. Whether it was in Algeria, or Turkey, or Occupied
Palestine, or Lebanon, or Morocco, or Tunisia. The successive winning of
Islamist parties has convinced the western powers that Muslim countries
are not ready for democracy as yet!
Personally, I believe – the democracy defined as “a government by the people; for the people” – doesn’t exist in the West. To understand what I mean by that – one has just have to look at the current political situation with respect to America’s Presidential Election 2008. The real players to choose the man who would reside in the White House for the next four years – are not the American voters – but the Jewish Lobby (AIPAC) working for the interests of Israel than the US. Furthermore, under Islamic Shari’ah – the altimate head of an Islamic State is Allah (swt) and not someone elected by the voter, even if the man elected be morally worse than most of the voters. However, there are several aspects of western governance are okey in view of Islamic Shari’ah, if applied in fairness, such as, human-rights, freedom of speech (with some moral limitations), etc.
Professor Dr. Mohamed Elmasry, whom I respect and love to read his writings – has his own opinion of democracy in Islam, which I reproduce below.
Is there a relationship between Islam and democracy?
If you ask me, this is a very strange question, yet one that has been debated long and vigorously by Muslim and non-Muslim intellectuals, activists and politicians.
Why is it so strange? – because it has not been posed today in the context of any other mainstream religion. And it gets even stranger; for if democracy is proven to be politically and socially better for the common good than other systems of governance, then like any other religion Islam not only accepts, but encourages, its practice and sustenance.
But I suspect that life is not that simple; or at least, there are people who do not wish to make it so.
Two high-profile groups these days maintain that Islam and democracy are incompatible.
One is represented by western-hemisphere writers like Bernard Lewis and Daniel Pipes. In their view, since Islam is considered anti-democratic and since western-based experience correlates democracy with world peace, the only conclusion to be drawn is that most of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims are therefore a liability, an impediment to peace.
If the Lewis and Pipes group were to ask me – an unlikely scenario – I would have to respond that theirs is a racist and dangerous ideology, based on twisted dogma and chopped logic.
Another group whose ideology is equally off the mark emerges from within Islam itself.
Certain Muslim politicians and self-styled spiritual leaders try to appeal to the masses with slogans such as “al-islam-howa-al-hal,” which roughly translated means, “Islam is the solution for everything.”
This group believes, on similarly thin evidence, that Islam is far superior to democracy. Its leaders trash all that is western and blame democracy for every ill that has befallen humanity for the past century and more.
If the supporters of this group were to ask me – another unlikely scenario – I would say that theirs is another dangerous dogma that exploits and distorts the love of Muslims for their faith.
Both groups are guilty of politicizing the question around Islam’s supposed non-relationship with democracy in order to advance their particular warped agendas. Ironically, the first group (Lewis, Pipes, et al) likes to use the arguments offered by the second, saying in effect, “Look! We told you so. Islam is not compatible with democracy. Even Muslim leaders are saying so.”
Interesting, eh? So where does the real truth lie?
The Qur’an does not offer a specific prescription or recipe for an ideal political system. But it does recommend and praise the value of collective decision-making for the common good (42:38). And elsewhere, it elevates collective decision-making from the category of recommended processes to that of obligatory ones (3:159).
Thus if modern democracy offers a practical methodology for achieving collective decision-making for the common good, it is not only compatible with Islam, but is virtually an Islamic political system with a Greek name.
Good Muslim politicians who apply sound Qur’anic teaching to their theories should therefore call themselves Muslim democrats.
In fact, this was the primary thesis of Muslim reformers during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the most important of whom were Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Muhammad Abdu, and Rashid Rida (an Afghani, an Egyptian, and a Syrian, respectively).
Each asserted that the values of freedom and democracy in the west are exactly what traditional Islamic teaching defines as justice (adl), right (haqq), collective decision-making (shura) and equality (musawat).
These Islamic values relate to the rule of freedom and democracy, which consists of imparting justice and rights to the people, and affirming the nation’s participation in determining its own destiny.
Basically, they reframed and reformulated western democratic principles using Islamic terms, harmonizing Islamic teachings with western political, social and economic concepts.
Other Muslim intellectuals, however, rejected the three western concepts of democracy, secularization, and the nation-state, saying they represented three direct contradictions of Islamic religious and political thought, and relying “for their authority on human rather than divine legislation … formulated through secular rather than God-given laws.”
This group believed that no one can reconcile the conflicting ideologies of global Islam and western democracy without accepting the latter system’s perceived drawbacks of intellectual dishonesty, spiritual blasphemy, and moral cowardice.
This separationist point of view can be seen in the writings of Sayyid Qutb, a major figure of the Muslim Brotherhood who was executed by Egyptian authorities in 1966.
Other Muslims thinkers agree with Sayyid Qutb. Among them is Abu’ala al-Mawdudi, a prominent Pakistani scholar. Both Qutb and al-Mawdudi reject the idealization of the three western values of democracy, secularization, and the nation-state, finding them corrupting to the human soul and to society.
But if you ask me — and I hope you will — I am proud to be a Muslim democrat. And that is that.
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Personally, I believe – the democracy defined as “a government by the people; for the people” – doesn’t exist in the West. To understand what I mean by that – one has just have to look at the current political situation with respect to America’s Presidential Election 2008. The real players to choose the man who would reside in the White House for the next four years – are not the American voters – but the Jewish Lobby (AIPAC) working for the interests of Israel than the US. Furthermore, under Islamic Shari’ah – the altimate head of an Islamic State is Allah (swt) and not someone elected by the voter, even if the man elected be morally worse than most of the voters. However, there are several aspects of western governance are okey in view of Islamic Shari’ah, if applied in fairness, such as, human-rights, freedom of speech (with some moral limitations), etc.
Professor Dr. Mohamed Elmasry, whom I respect and love to read his writings – has his own opinion of democracy in Islam, which I reproduce below.
Is there a relationship between Islam and democracy?
If you ask me, this is a very strange question, yet one that has been debated long and vigorously by Muslim and non-Muslim intellectuals, activists and politicians.
Why is it so strange? – because it has not been posed today in the context of any other mainstream religion. And it gets even stranger; for if democracy is proven to be politically and socially better for the common good than other systems of governance, then like any other religion Islam not only accepts, but encourages, its practice and sustenance.
But I suspect that life is not that simple; or at least, there are people who do not wish to make it so.
Two high-profile groups these days maintain that Islam and democracy are incompatible.
One is represented by western-hemisphere writers like Bernard Lewis and Daniel Pipes. In their view, since Islam is considered anti-democratic and since western-based experience correlates democracy with world peace, the only conclusion to be drawn is that most of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims are therefore a liability, an impediment to peace.
If the Lewis and Pipes group were to ask me – an unlikely scenario – I would have to respond that theirs is a racist and dangerous ideology, based on twisted dogma and chopped logic.
Another group whose ideology is equally off the mark emerges from within Islam itself.
Certain Muslim politicians and self-styled spiritual leaders try to appeal to the masses with slogans such as “al-islam-howa-al-hal,” which roughly translated means, “Islam is the solution for everything.”
This group believes, on similarly thin evidence, that Islam is far superior to democracy. Its leaders trash all that is western and blame democracy for every ill that has befallen humanity for the past century and more.
If the supporters of this group were to ask me – another unlikely scenario – I would say that theirs is another dangerous dogma that exploits and distorts the love of Muslims for their faith.
Both groups are guilty of politicizing the question around Islam’s supposed non-relationship with democracy in order to advance their particular warped agendas. Ironically, the first group (Lewis, Pipes, et al) likes to use the arguments offered by the second, saying in effect, “Look! We told you so. Islam is not compatible with democracy. Even Muslim leaders are saying so.”
Interesting, eh? So where does the real truth lie?
The Qur’an does not offer a specific prescription or recipe for an ideal political system. But it does recommend and praise the value of collective decision-making for the common good (42:38). And elsewhere, it elevates collective decision-making from the category of recommended processes to that of obligatory ones (3:159).
Thus if modern democracy offers a practical methodology for achieving collective decision-making for the common good, it is not only compatible with Islam, but is virtually an Islamic political system with a Greek name.
Good Muslim politicians who apply sound Qur’anic teaching to their theories should therefore call themselves Muslim democrats.
In fact, this was the primary thesis of Muslim reformers during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the most important of whom were Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Muhammad Abdu, and Rashid Rida (an Afghani, an Egyptian, and a Syrian, respectively).
Each asserted that the values of freedom and democracy in the west are exactly what traditional Islamic teaching defines as justice (adl), right (haqq), collective decision-making (shura) and equality (musawat).
These Islamic values relate to the rule of freedom and democracy, which consists of imparting justice and rights to the people, and affirming the nation’s participation in determining its own destiny.
Basically, they reframed and reformulated western democratic principles using Islamic terms, harmonizing Islamic teachings with western political, social and economic concepts.
Other Muslim intellectuals, however, rejected the three western concepts of democracy, secularization, and the nation-state, saying they represented three direct contradictions of Islamic religious and political thought, and relying “for their authority on human rather than divine legislation … formulated through secular rather than God-given laws.”
This group believed that no one can reconcile the conflicting ideologies of global Islam and western democracy without accepting the latter system’s perceived drawbacks of intellectual dishonesty, spiritual blasphemy, and moral cowardice.
This separationist point of view can be seen in the writings of Sayyid Qutb, a major figure of the Muslim Brotherhood who was executed by Egyptian authorities in 1966.
Other Muslims thinkers agree with Sayyid Qutb. Among them is Abu’ala al-Mawdudi, a prominent Pakistani scholar. Both Qutb and al-Mawdudi reject the idealization of the three western values of democracy, secularization, and the nation-state, finding them corrupting to the human soul and to society.
But if you ask me — and I hope you will — I am proud to be a Muslim democrat. And that is that.
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