The Islamic state in context
It is a pretty good analysis on the history of Political
Islam over 1300 years and the modern time respectively. Although this author
indicates why the Islamic movement in general would be failed nowadays, it
seems that he misses some point regarding the non-political elements in the
Islamic movement.
Irrespective of the popular and military moves against political Islam
in Egypt this week, the
prospect of establishing an Islamic state in the Arab world has always been
extremely unlikely.
Over the past 1,352
years, since the death of Imam Ali (Prophet Mohammed’s cousin and the
fourth “Rightly Guided Caliph”), not a single state that emerged in the
Arab World has been Islamic. None had a legislative structure based exclusively
on Koranic jurisprudence; none was ruled by a leader who was selected based on
a theological basis; and all were conspicuously based on national, tribal, or
familial foundations, with Islam only an overarching frame of reference.
There is no space here to analyze every single Arab (not to mention
Persian or Turkish) state over the past thirteen centuries. But it is useful to
dissect the ruling structure of the largest and most important of these states.
The
Umayyads, the first dynasty to rule the Islamic world after the death of Ali, anchored their rule on
a familial hereditary system that was established after fighting (and inflicting
a massacre over) Prophet Mohammed's own offspring.
They subjugated North Africa, Andalucía, and Iran, and in a time when
Islam entered the Islamic republics in southern Russia. The Umayyads’
legitimacy - which
was never fully established - rested on the buy-in of the religious
establishment, initially in Al-Hejaz (Islam's birthplace) and later in various
Islamic learning centers in the Levant. The
Umayyads never claimed that their family-heads (the Islamic caliphs) were the
religious leaders of the Islamic nation; that position was almost impossible for
them to secure and was left to the venerable scholars of Mecca and Medina (and later some in
Damascus). The
Umayyad rulers were emperors of the expanding state that bore their name.
It was not a coincidence that their courts were modelled on those of the
eastern Roman Empire in Constantinople. And on the many occasions when the Umayyads' rule was challenged by those who had
a solid claim to be the real guardians of the principles and teachings of
Prophet Mohammed, the Umayyads' response came in the form of military
campaigns. In one instance their armies burnt down the Kabba, Islam's holiest
shrine in Mecca. (Secularism vs
Islamism ?)
Over
the past thirteen centuries, numerous dynasties in the greater Middle East
copied the Umayyads’ ruling scheme. First,
grab power militarily. Then, uphold the notion that the state is
“Islamic”. Next, ensure the recognition and obedience - though not
necessarily the approval - of the most venerable (and famous) of the Islamic
scholars of the age. Afterwards, rule as you please without any serious regard
to Islamic jurisprudence, principles, or identity.
An Islamic pretext was sometimes used to establish legitimacy, or gain
momentum before militarily challenging the ruling dynasty of the day. The Abbasids, descendants of an uncle of the
Prophet Mohammed, used
the notion of a “just Imam from the house of Mohammed” as their slogan in a
vast clandestine operation that lasted for over two decades, and through which
they built an army of followers (the majority of them were Persians). They developed a
sophisticated funding and money-distribution system spanning what is today
Iran, Iraq, and the eastern Mediterranean, before openly challenging - and obliterating
- the Umayyads.
Circa 250 years later, in the tenth century,
the Fatimids used their claim of descent from Prophet Mohammed’s daughter,
Fatima (Imam Ali’s wife), to entrench their rule in what is today Tunisia,
and later to march an army to challenge the Abbasid rule in Egypt, conquer the
country, and establish their new capital, Cairo (the city victorious).
Similarly, the Ottomans in the sixteenth
century only cemented their claim as the political leaders of the Muslim world
after expanding their rule to the Levant, Egypt (the home of Al-Azhar, Sunni
Islam’s most venerable seat of learning), and after taking control of Al-Hejaz,
assumed guardianship of Islam’s holy shrines.
But, in all of these examples, among others,
the ruling format remained the same. And never
did these different rulers, even those with direct descent from the Prophet,
claim that they were the theological authorities of the Muslim world. That remained the
job of the scholars in the centres of Islamic learning, towns that were increasingly
detached and geographically distant from the political capitals.
Modern times
The
format has continued in modern times. The state that Mohammed Ali Pasha established in Egypt
in the first half of the nineteenth century became the model for almost all the
states that emerged in the Arab world in the second half of the nineteenth and
the early decades of the twentieth century.
Ruling
Egypt until the 1952 coup d’état that ended the country’s monarchy, the successors of
Mohammed Ali maintained the “Islamic nature” of their state; they ensured
cordial relations with - and control over - Egypt’s powerful religious
establishment: Al-Azhar.
But all the legislative, judicial, economic, social, educational, and political
systems that they built were unremittingly imported from Europe. Even in the
Arab states whose ruling families anchored their legitimacy on a religious
pedigree the same pattern has endured, for instance the Hashemites in Jordan
and the Alawites in Morocco (both descendants of Imam Ali).
(copy from Western system, a form of
modernization)
The
social and political modernizations that accompanied the Arab liberal age from
the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century posed a significant threat to the
Arabic religious institutions. Secular education, western social norms (for example the
mixing of the genders in public spaces), and the new cultural orientation of
Arab societies in the early twentieth century (toward Paris, London, and
Vienna) not
only diluted the religious establishments’ traditional sway over their
societies; more importantly they were perceived - not just by the religious
establishments but also by different social segments - as posing a challenge
to the overarching Islamic identity of these societies. (The impact of modernization)
Some luminaries sought a meeting of minds between “modernity and the
heritage and teachings of the religion of rationality,” in the words of Egypt’s
grand scholar at the dawn of the twentieth century, Mohammed Abdou. Others saw an
impending confrontation: a need to defend Islam from the “West and its
subjects,” the subjects being the Arab and Muslim liberals who spearheaded the
advancements that were taking place at the time in Arabic education,
translation, literature, theatre, music, and later cinema.
Gradually two
narratives emerged. The
first, fuelled by the cultural developments of the Arabic liberal age, invoked the Arabic or
Mediterranean identity of the societies in this part of the world. Some of the
thinkers of this movement completely ignored the influence that Islam has
traditionally commanded in these societies. The result was highly secular Arab
philosophical currents that had their days in the sun (mainly in the 1930s and 1940s) but that
quickly vanished from the limelight.
(The Second type) The
views that lasted were those of leading thinkers who tried to merge the
traditions of the Islamic heritage with modern thinking. They emphasized that
Islam (loosely defined as a “civilization”) is the overarching frame of
reference for Arab societies. But in their endeavours in politics, economics
and even cultural productions, they worked on building the new Arabic states
that were emerging at the time on modern institutions.
The
results were the 1923 Egyptian Constitution (the model for many constitutions in
different Arab countries), the acceptance of the notion of a constitutional
monarchy (initially in Egypt and later to a lesser extent in Syria, Iraq, and
briefly in Libya), and the beginnings of credible checks and balances between
different authorities (the monarchy, the parliament, the judiciary, in addition
to formidable political-economy power centers).
Getting the support of the religious establishment, a key pillar of the
old ruling formula, was increasingly on the wane.
Arab nationalism further strengthened
this trend. The tsunami that Egypt’s
Gamal Abdel Nasser unleashed in the Arab world from the mid-1950s to the late
1960s, which continued for roughly a decade after his death in 1970, was
strictly secular, though the notion of independent state institutions was
sacrificed for hero-worship. Arab nationalism, at least in its
first two decades, imbued Arab politics with something new: the consent of the
middle and lower middle classes to a conspicuously secular governing ideology -
one not imposed by Europeanized elites, but supported by the masses.
The potency, momentum, and immense success that
Arab nationalism achieved in the 1950s and 1960s further antagonized religious
establishments across the Arab world and movements born in the early twentieth
century in the attempt to “defend the religion,” most notably the Egyptian
Muslim Brotherhood.
A gradual Islamization?
But in
the past 130 years, from the emergence of the Arab state in the 1880’s to the “Arab
Spring,” the forces of the Islamic movement never managed to stall the advance
of secularization.
Over the past two
years, the rise of political Islam across the whole of
North Africa and its commanding presence in the Eastern Mediterranean (Hamas in
Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the various Islamist groups in the Syrian
opposition forces), suggest that several
Arab countries face the prospect of a gradual Islamization.
This takes many forms, but two are paramount. The first is the
attempt of various Islamist groups to Islamize state institutions: stressing
the Islamic nature of their societies in the new constitutions of their
countries, linking the penal code of their countries to the laws of the Islamic
jurisprudence, putting religion-related restrictions on freedom of expression,
and significantly enhancing the influence of Islamist political economy power
centres.
The
second form, championed by some assertive Salafist groups aims to Islamize
“societies,” which such groups see as having strayed off the “correct Islamic
path.”
These forms of
Islamization - and of course the rapid rise of Islamist groups to power - have
been overwhelming for many Arab liberals, most of whom are fragmented,
leaderless, and with tenuous links to the masses of the lower middle classes
and the poor of their societies.
The
result has been nervousness, antagonism, detachment, increasingly violent
social confrontations, and sometimes quitting; North Africa and the Eastern
Mediterranean are witnessing alarming levels of emigration among the well
educated who are able to find jobs internationally; many of the best and the
brightest are opting out.
But
this Islamization will not succeed. First, despite the piety of the vast
majority of Muslim Arabs, themselves the commanding majorities of the region, the Islamization
efforts inherently challenge the national identities of each country. Despite clever
rhetoric, Islamization means the domination of one component of Egyptianism,
Tunisianity, Syrianism, etc, over other components that had shaped these
entrenched identities.
This is especially true in the old countries of the Arab world, the ones
whose borders, social compositions, and crucially – identities - had been
carved over long, rich centuries. And the more the Islamist movements continue
to thrust forward their worldviews and social values, the more they will
disturb these national identities, and the more agitated - and antagonized - the
middle classes of these societies will become.
Second, these efforts at Islamization take place when almost all of
these societies are undergoing difficult - and for many social classes, painful
-economic transitions. And there is no way out. The ruling Islamist executives are
compelled to confront the severe structural challenges inherent in the
economies they inherited.
Some are able to buy time and postpone crucial reforms through foreign
grants (which come at a political price). But sooner or later, they will have
to make the tough socio-economic decisions that these structural reforms
require. Islamists in office will be blamed for the pains that will ensue.
Rapidly, some of the constituencies that had voted them into power will seek
other alternatives.
Third,
demographics will work against these efforts at Islamization. Close to 200 million of the Arab world’s 340
million people are under 30-years old. As a result of the many failures it
has inherited, this generation faces a myriad of socio-economic challenges on a
daily basis. A
culture of protest and rejection has already been established amongst its
ranks, and young people will not accept indoctrination - even if it was
presented in the name of religion. Almost by default, the swelling numbers of
young Arabs, especially in the culturally vibrant centres of the Arab world
(Cairo, Tunis, Beirut, Damascus, Casablanca, Kuwait, Manama), will create
plurality - in social views, political positions, economic approaches, and in
social identities and frames of reference.
Finally,
this Islamization project, in its various parts, will suffer at the hand of its strategists and
managers. The
leaderships of the largest Islamist groups in the Arab world have immense
experience in developing and managing services and charity infrastructures,
operating underground political networks, fund-raising, and electoral
campaigning, especially in rural and interior regions. But they suffer an
acute lack of experience in tackling serious political-economy challenges or administering
grand socio-political narratives. Lack of experience will result in
incompetence.
But these factors will take time to unfold. The second decade of the
twenty-first century will be transformative not only for Arab politics, but
more importantly for Arab societies. Amid the gradual fall of the old order and
the highly likely failure of the Islamization efforts, young Arabs will be
searching for their own narratives. In some Arab countries the process will
be smooth, in others it will be bloody, and in most it will be protracted with
spikes of tension.
The result will be plurality - a plethora of different, competing social
narratives. In
many cases, we will see interesting mixes of various ideologies (Arabism,
Mediterraneanism, Islamism, and others). But in as much as Arab states have
never been exclusively Islamic for over thirteen centuries, Arab states will not
be Islamic in the foreseeable future.
Thanks go to the author and to The Cairo Review of Global Affairs,
for permission to republish this essay first published here
on July 4, 2013.
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