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Democratization
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Democracy, Islam and the Culture
of Modernism
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GEORGE JOFF
The Islamic world seems to lack the ability to confront the challenge of modernism
and has chosen instead to turn inwards towards Islam as a political paradigm. As a
result, there appears to be a reluctance to adopt democratic principles of government.
This is due at the level of ideas to a failure to embrace secularism in the collective
sphere, as occurred in Europe. The cause for this failure lies in the marginalization of
the Hellenistic philosophical tradition in the twelfth century, despite the role of the
falsafah movement. Yet contemporary moderate Islamic and Islamist thinkers are
turning back to such paradigms in order to be able to incorporate the political
implications of modernism into the new Islamic project.
George Joff is the deputy director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham
House), London.
Democratization, Vol.4, No.3, Autumn 1997, pp.133151
PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON
134 DEMOCRATIZATION
set to join the same class. Nor is it intended to disparage the efforts made by
the Arab states of the Gulf - and, indeed, Brunei - to accommodate to the
uncomfortable problems of oil wealth. Whatever their political problems,
these states have successfully created modern economies which have the
potential of surviving the oil era as viable entities in an ever more globalised
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For most Muslims, the linkage between religious doctrine and social
order, epitomized in the adage, 'din wa dunya' - 'faith and society'(the
secular word) - carries an echo of 'dawla' - state as well. It stems from
the implicit contract at the base of Islamic constitutional theory2 which has
been absorbed into the general political culture of the Islamic world. It
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mean, however, that constraints do not exist, for clearly they do. Some are
inherent in the process of thought and logic, others result from linguistic
constraint and, whilst these are implicit constraints on speculation, there are
explicit constraints too. Personal conviction and morality, as well as
imagination, are perhaps the most obvious. But the crucial point is that none
of these are restraints which are the result of external edict; none of them
reflect the imposition of socially, doctrinally or legalistically defined limits
on speculation.
Now, of course this situation did not spring phoenix-like from the ashes
of medieval obscurantism - if, indeed, the European Middle Ages were as
irrational and obscurantist as they are usually portrayed. In fact, during the
Renaissance, one of the great dramas was the attempt by the Church to
hinder precisely the development of such speculative reasoning if it
threatened religious doctrine. Not only was Giordano Bruno martyred for
his scientific pantheism in 1600,6 but Galileo's proof of the accuracy of
Copernicus's description of the rotation of the earth about the sun suffered
Papal condemnation in 1633. Admittedly, change had occurred within the
Church. For, although Bruno was burnt at the stake, Galileo was eventually
merely confined to his home and, so legend has it, murmured, 'But still it
moves', after his condemnation.7 This evinced an irreducible commitment
to scientific, as opposed to religious, truth - except, of course, he believed
that there was no distinction between them. And, only four years later, in
1637, Descartes published his Discourse on Method, the book which, more
than any other, was eventually to define the Age of Enlightenment.
These events, however, occurred in a rapidly changing political and
intellectual context; so that, by the seventeenth century, the Roman Catholic
Church was already on the defensive against the onslaughts of the
Reformation. Indeed, the Reformation is the second key intellectual
influence which informed the era of modernism, alongside the Renaissance
which re-introduced the rationalism of the Greeks, mediated through the
innovative exegeses of Islamic science and philosophy, into the medieval
world of Europe. It was not the philosophical or doctrinal discoveries and
innovations of the Reformation which were so important, however. Indeed,
Luther rejected speculation as a means of understanding God and argued
that salvation came through faith alone. Calvin enunciated the terrifying
doctrine of predestination and was quite prepared to burn heretics at the
stake, as happened to Michel Servetus (who was accused, as Bruno had
DEMOCRACY, ISLAM AND THE CULTURE OF MODERNISM 137
divinely and thus uniquely sanctioned. It meant the growth of the sense that,
for practical purposes, power, authority and interpretation could be confined
and legitimised within the temporal, rather than the spiritual world. There
was, in effect, a secularization of the intellect. For now there could be
several truths, even over religious doctrine, rather than just one; and they
could be developed through personal interpretation, rather than through
divine sanction as mediated by the Church. They could not, of course, be
mutually acceptable, but, after the Thirty Years War, they could and did
coexist, for it was the Peace of Westphalia which brought the war to an end
which finally resolved this issue.
It is this which is the real meaning of the Augsburg Compromise of
1555. That established the principle of cuius regio, eius religio, in effect
meaning that a prince could establish the form of religion practiced in his
territory.9 This principle, sanctified by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648,
ushered in the European world of nation-states when, as Professor Tawney
pointed out, '... the secularization of political theory [was] the most
momentous of the intellectual changes which ushered in the modern world.'
He goes on to say, in a striking passage in his famous study, Religion and
the Rise of Capitalism, that
The theological mould which shaped political theory from the Middle
Ages to the seventeenth century is broken; politics becomes a science,
ultimately a group of sciences, and theology at best one science
amongst others. Reason takes the place of revelation, and the criterion
of political institutions is expediency, not religious authority.
Religion, ceasing to be the master-interest of mankind, dwindles into
a department of life with boundaries which it is extravagant to
overstep.10
The term 'intellectual analysis' could easily be substituted for 'political
theory' in this passage without outraging its meaning, so that the
secularization of the intellect has now been partnered by the secularization
of politics. In fact, by the Age of the Enlightenment, the scene had also been
set for the third of the great secularizations that defines the modernist world;
that of economic life. After all, in the Middle Ages, economic activity also
fell under divine sanction and the Church frowned on such activity
undertaken for its own sake. 'Christians should not be merchants', ran the
accepted dictum and the condemnation of usury was even stronger. Indeed,
138 DEMOCRATIZATION
economic life was essentially based on agriculture and the moral hierarchies
of feudalism. It was not until the Enlightenment that the essential precursor
of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution - the market system, with its
tradable components of land, labour and capital - had fully developed,
although its origins lie in the thirteenth century and the subsequent collapse
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of the feudal system after the Black Death. In essence - and at the risk of
dangerous over-simplification - this transformation of economic life was
the transition from a moral economy to one based on the impersonal
operation of the market for the sake of profit; a secularization, in other
words, of yet another sphere of collective life and the precursor of modern
capitalism."
In so far as this tripartite process of secularization destroyed the
operation of an overriding divinely sanctioned moral authority, secularism
became the essential partner to intellectual speculation about the natural and
the temporal worlds. The only absolutes now were the rules and methods
which established how speculation should proceed, how its conclusions
could be reproducibly tested, but not the nature of the conclusions it could
reach. This comprises the essence of modernism and, in intellectual terms,
at least, the causative factor that has led to the scientific and technological
civilization embodied in the concept of 'The West'. It is crucial to realize
that this system has developed not because of some innate quality of
European culture to which other societies and civilizations have no access,
but because of a specific and particular historical nexus of factors that led
ineluctably to such a result. The historian, Paul Kennedy, for example, roots
this unique European experience primarily in geography which then led on
to socio-political differentiation.12 Because of Europe's differentiated
geography and natural resources, trade was stimulated and the political
system was decentralized - no state could gain sufficient advantage to
dominate the others for long, and all became engaged in technological
competition for military supremacy. With the development of both trade and
naval power, European aggressiveness was externalized and the
development of empire fed the growth of a market-based mercantilism and,
eventually capitalism. Had the right conditions existed elsewhere, then the
same 'miracle' could have theoretically developed elsewhere as well. The
question is, however, whether such developments would have been possible
without the concomitant intellectual evolution; indeed, whether that, too,
could have occurred elsewhere and - if not - why not?
societies, too - most obviously in Middle America today. The issue is more
one of the legitimizing principles underlying the organization of society and
the sanctioning of the power and the legal system of the state - things which
in Western societies and states are purely secular in nature, but which in the
Islamic world refer back to Islamic archetypes. Nor does it matter that many
political systems in the Islamic world use such referents cynically; the
important fact is that no other system of legitimization seems to be valid. In
the Arab world, where, for decades the principles of Arab nationalism
served such a purpose, there are few states today that would depend only on
that as a system of legitimization. And even those which do, still seek to
demonstrate that they also operate in accordance with the principles of
Islam and the sharcia.
In part such a process is a statement about what appears to be culturally
appropriate within societies that have felt betrayed by the alternative
paradigms that they have been offered, particularly since independence. As
such, it is a reflection about the need to create confidence in a social and
political order that derives from innate cultural assumptions which inform
daily life as well as political and social institutions. However, it is also often
an explicit political manifestation of rhetoric and ideology that seeks its
legitimacy from an absolute, revealed truth. As such - and particularly since
such truth is not only absolute but also universal - this political, or, perhaps
more accurately, politicized, Islamic vision carries its own moral and
intellectual tinge. Sayyid Qutb, admittedly a personage excoriated by many
for his role within the Egyptian Ikhwan Muslimin but none the less a
recognised Islamic and Islamist intellectual, once remarked
[Islam] offers to mankind a perfectly comprehensive theory of the
universe, life and mankind ... a theory which satisfies man's
intellectual needs. It offers to men a clear, broad and deep faith which
satisfies the conscience. It offers to society legal and economic bases
which have been proved both practicable and systematic.13
The counterpart to such certainty can easily be a rejection of the freedom for
individual speculative reasoning which, as has been suggested above, has
played a major role in the evolution of Western culture. Indeed, in so far as
such convictions depend on belief in revealed absolute truth, this must be
the consequence, since, by definition, other truths are excluded. The
problem is neatly defined in a book entitled The Concept of Knowledge in
140 DEMOCRATIZATION
Islam by the Malaysian writer, Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud, where he writes:
"The unity of God who is Truth, the Light, logically implies the unity of
knowledge, that is, the unity of prophethood (nubawwa) [sic. nubuwwa].
The unity of knowledge ... means ... that there is no bifurcation between
what is called secular and religious sciences.'14 But, of course, it is precisely
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modernism did. And in its origins there may lie clues as to how alternative
Islamic responses to the enforced co-habitation of the Islamic world with
the West may be formulated.
Furthermore, Islam, like Christianity and Judaism, also had to deal with the
Greek philosophical tradition which has always sat uneasily on the religious
stomach. There were two attempts to do this and, until they had been
resolved, it would have been very difficult, if not impossible, to speak of a
coherent, internally integrated Islamic tradition. The first was that of the
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speculation - had been closed and was to remain shut until the present day.
Matters were far less restricted within Shi'a Islam, but there, too, the proper
objects of study increasingly came to be concerns related to doctrinal issues,
to the exclusion of the natural world. There seems to be little doubt that this
pre-eminence of doctrine over logic was also related to the close inter-
relation of revelation to collective, in addition to and as opposed to
individual, life within the Islamic world. The concept of truth in terms of
personal religious insight became the mirror of the social and political order.
Unlike the European experience, revelation could and usually did dictate the
mode of analysis of the natural world and the conclusions it produced. No
wonder, then, that Salafiyyism sought its philosophical insights, through
which it would deal with European technological superiority, in the
philosophical and doctrinal truths of early Islam.27
Modernist Holism
Nothing said so far, however, is intended to suggest that the Islamic world
today is excluded from operating within the intellectual environment which
has been created in the modern world as a result of the technological
civilization that developed from the European philosophical paradigm of
the Enlightenment. This is self-evidently not the case, as a simple survey of
the global scientific and intellectual community would demonstrate. Nor is
the intention to suggest that religious belief is an irrelevance in the modern
world. That could hardly be the case, given the evidence of the rapidly
growing interest in and commitment to the religious ideal in the lives of
millions of people in Europe and America. However, there has been a
growing separation of spheres of interest - which is, in the modernist vision,
absolute - between the concepts of truth in religion and in the temporal
sphere. This corresponds, not only to a distinction between personal
revelation and scientific analysis, but also to a rigid separation between the
personal and collective worlds. There is, in short, a potential conflict
between revealed, absolute truth and our understanding of the temporal
world in which we live and between absolute, revealed truth and the
way in which we organise that collective, temporal world. Although
Ibn Sina would have never accepted the distinction, the sceptical
rationalism of scientific modernism is implicitly based upon it - an
assumption which has crucial implications for the Islamic world today,
146 DEMOCRATIZATION
not the political order have some responsibility for imposing it on the
society over which it rules? There is here a real contradiction; between
voluntarism and restraint, individual morality and social responsibility,
freedom of expression and ethical constraint. Indeed, it is a contradiction
apparently entailed in the very principle on which modernism has been
based, that of unfettered speculation and its corollary, unlimited experience.
Yet there is nothing in the modernist credo that denies the key role of
morality; simply a requirement that this is a personal obligation that cannot
be effectively imposed by external edict. There is, however, the 'threat' of
post-modernism - the argument that absolutist principles of analysis do not
exist, that analysis itself is relativist and personal and that moral principle,
even at an individual level, is an unreasonable constraint on experience, for
those principles themselves are relativized and contingent. Only the text can
speak, not its creator, and all readings of it have their own intrinsic validity.
There, perhaps, lies the real danger, of which modernism is not yet fully
aware but which the Islamic paradigm instinctively fears!32
NOTES
9. G.R. Elton, Reformation Europe 1517-1559 (London: Fontana, 1963), p.266. In fact, this
Latin tag does not occur in the recess of the Diet of Augsburg which established religious
peace in Germany during its deliberations between February and September 1555.
10. R. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1922), pp.20-21.
11. I. Wallerstein, Historical Capitalism (London and New York: Verso, 1983), pp.18-19.
12. P. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict
from 1500 to 2000 (London: Fontana, 1989), pp.20-38.
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13. Qutb (Kotb), Sayyid, Social Justice in Islam (Washington, DC: American Council of
Learned Societies, 1953), p.279.
14. Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud, The Concept of Knowledge in Islam (London and New York:
Mansell, 1989), p.12.
15. F. Braudel (trans. Mayne R. 1993), A History of Civilizations (Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1993), p.292.
16. Gellner, p.17.
17. Sabet A., Iranian Journal of International Affairs, Vol.7, No.1 (1995), p.59.
18. J.L. Esposito (ed.), Voices of Resurgent Islam (Oxford and New York: Oxford University
Press, 1983), pp.3-4.
19. P. Crone P. and M. Cook, Hagarism: the Making of the Islamic World (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1977).
20. N. Ayubi, Political Islam: Region and Politics in the Arab World (London: Routledge, 1991),
pp.203-4.
21. See M. Fakhry, A History of Islamic Philosophy (London: Longman, 1983) for a detailed
description of the Mutazili movement.
22. W. Montgomery-Watt, Islamic Philosophy and Theology (Edinburgh: University of
Edinburgh Press, 1962), p.97.
23. As Fakhry points out (p. 276): 'For Ibn Rushd this postulate [the unity of philosophical and
religious truth] not only involved the methodological necessity of recourse to interpretation
(taw'il); in addition it implied the tacit recognition of the parity of philosophy and Scripture,
of reason and revelation, as the two primary and infallible sources of truth.' The important
point, however, is that there is a parity between the two and that, through philosophy,
religious truth is accessible. For the Quran (3:5) allows 'those confirmed in knowledge' to
interpret scripture where ambiguity (mutashabih) exists. Ibn Rushd's concept of the soul,
furthermore, emphasised his essential materialism which was similar to that of his mentor,
Aristotle, and led to his attempt, which had been anticipated by Ibn Sina, to give religion a
'scientific status'. (J. Schacht and C.E. Bosworth (eds.), The Legacy of Islam (Oxford and
New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), p.358.)
Ibn Sina, following Aristotle, argued that God was engaged in self-contemplation and
thus had no direct interest in the exterior worlds except in their creation. Reason was the
means by which access to understanding was possible, because it reflected universal images
which were themselves inherent in the universal science that was the only means of
apprehending God. Truth, in this context, was a quality of the 'intelligible form' of
knowledge: 'By truth is understood the state of the word and the intellect which refers to the
state of the external thing, when it coincides with it ... Truth is the identification of the speech
with things' - or, in the medieval reconstruction of Ibn Sina by St. Thomas Aquinas, 'Veritas
est adequaetio orationis at rerum' or 'Veritas est adequaetio rei et intellectus'. In other words,
it dealt with the real world, although it was linked to revealed truth (A.M. Giochon (trans.
M.S. Khan, 1969), The Philosophy of Avicenna and its Influence on Medieval Europe (Delhi:
Motilal Banarsidass, 1942), pp.92-3.)
The result was that:
In fact it was religion which was to pay the price of this 'agreement'. It was philosophy
which was to discount the apodeictic truth; religion did no more than 'clothe' the images
to bring them to the level of the mass of people. This accounts for the attempt of some
Christian thinkers to interpret this attitude as the acceptance of a 'double truth' which
the Commentator [Averroes - Ibn Rushd] would have professed and which they would
have willingly accepted as their position. But in fact it meant destroying religion and
150 DEMOCRATIZATION
theology, since it was estimated that on the essential points they would be in
contradiction with reason (Schacht and Bosworth, p.384).
24. Al-Ghazzali identified twenty errors in Ibn Sina, seventeen of which were bidac (innovation
- heresy) and the remaining three were kufr (unbelief). He went on to argue for the
predominance of religious revealed truth over philosophical truth:
... there is a whole area outside the scope of reason into which philosophy cannot
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venture. Al-Ghazzali was therefore right to argue that 'with respect to whatever lies
outside the scope of human cognitions, it is necessary to resort to Scripture [al-sharc]'
In certain cases, human reason is incapable of acquiring a form of knowledge
indispensable for man's felicity. In other cases, it is incapable because of accidental
impediments or simply the difficulties inherent in the subject matter itself. In all such
cases, revelation necessarily supplements rational knowledge (Fakhry, p.284).
Ibn Rushd rejected al-Ghazzali's arguments on the grounds that they negated causality, yet
the concept of 'efficient causation' (in Aristotle's formulation) was essential for there to be
action and, without action, God could not act upon the world. Furthermore, he argued that
'genuine knowledge is essentially the act of eliciting the causes underlying a given process
... whoever repudiates causality repudiates reason' (Fakhry p.286). This, in turn, denies the
concept of a wise Creator - who demonstrates wisdom by action - and is thus contrary to the
Qur'an.
25. It should also be borne in mind that, as Montgomery-Watt points out, both Ibn Sina and Ibn
Rushd were to be marginal influences on the Islamic world. This was partly because of the
Muslim preference for consensus as well as because of the intellectual dominance of al-
Ghazzali, even though they were major influences on medieval Europe. A devout Muslim
saw essential truth as revealed and not discoverable. Philosophy only had relevance if it
defended and explained this position, 'Consequently he looked on the Falasifa with
suspicion, for they were first and foremost believers in philosophy and science who then
but only in the second place tried to reconcile revealed truth with philosophy' (W.
Montgomery-Watt, The Formative Period of Islamic Thought (Edinburgh: University of
Edinburgh Press, 1973), p.205).
26. Braudel, p.84.
27. This is not to say, however, that the Salafyyists rejected European modernism. On the
contrary, they embraced it, simply looking for its justification within the Islamic corpus to
modify, rather than reject the culture that it embodied. Indeed, MuhammadcAbduh, a leading
figure of the movement alongside its founder, Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani, turned back to the
neo-Platonist Mutazili school of philosophers for his justification of the rationalism of
Western political models. As he himself said:
I took it upon myself to plead the cause of two great issues. The first was the liberation
of thought from the shackles of blind imitation, and the comprehension of religion
according to the rules laid down, before the emergence of conflict, by the ancestors of
the community, and the return, in acquiring religious knowledge, to the original sources,
considering them in the light of human reason. The second issue was the reform of the
Arabic language ... The other issue that I espoused ... and is the pillar of social life was
the differentiation between the entitlement of government to obedience from the people,
and the people's right to justice from their government. (Abduh M. (1980), al-Acmal al-
Kamila (ed. cAmara M.) Al-Mucassasa al-cArabiyya Ii'1-Dirasat (Beirut), II, pp.318-19;
cited in Y. Choueiri., Islamic Fundamentalism (London: Pinter Press, 1991), p.38.
28. As opposed to Cartesian logic, 'fuzzy logic' attempts to allow for non-linearity of systems in
practice and reflects the concerns of chaos theory. It still, however, operates on the same
basic logical rules adapted to allow for non-linearity.
29. F. Hayek, New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), p.152.
30. In his lecture to the Royal Institute of International Affairs (London) on 9 May 1995, Dr
Ghannouchi stated:
DEMOCRACY, ISLAM AND THE CULTURE OF MODERNISM 151
Islam is unique in that it alone recognises pluralism within and outside its own frontiers.
Within, no religious wars are known to have ever taken place. While on the one hand
Islam guarantees the right of its adherents to ijtihad in interpreting Quranic text, it does
not recognise a church or an institution or a person as a sole authority speaking in its
name or claiming to represent it. Decision-making, through the process of Sharia,
belongs to the community as a whole. Thus, the democratic values of political pluralism
and tolerance are perfectly compatible with Islam (p.58).
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He went on to say: 'Tunisian Islamists have never rejected modernization in the sense of
rationalising politics, administration and the economy. They recognise human dignity and
civil liberties, accept that the popular will is the source of political legitimacy and believe in
pluralism and in the alternation of power through free elections' (p.62). The speech is
reproduced in Maghreb Quarterly Report, 18 (1995), pp.56-66.
31. According to Soroush, the political application of Islam (what he calls 'Islamic ideology')
deforms religion and prevents true popular participation in the process of government. The
only form of religious government which does not do this is one that is democratic, for
democracy is a form of government which is compatible with a multitude of political cultures
including Islam. According to one commentator, he argues that, 'Any religious government
that rules without societal consent, or restricts this right, abrogates the public's conception of
justice and sacrifices its legitimacy.' In short:
Democracy is both a value system and a method of governance. As a value system, it
respects human rights, the public's right to elect its leaders and hold them accountable,
and the defense of the public's notion of justice. As a method of governance, democracy
includes the traditional notions of the separation of powers, free elections, free and
independent press, freedom of expression, freedom of political assembly, multiple
political parties and restrictions on executive power. Soroush argues that no government
official should stand above criticism, and that all must be accountable to the public.
Accountability reduces the potential for corruption and allows the public to remove, or
restrict the power of incompetent officials, Democracy is, in effect, a method for
'rationalizing' politics. V. Vakili, Debating Religion and Politics in Iran: the Political
Thought of Abdolkarim Soroush (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1996),
pp.21-3).
32. I do not intend here to decry the very real power of post-modernist analysis, nor, indeed, to
reject the Rorty-esque vision of democracy within a post-modernist setting. It is merely that,
as much as post-modernism undermines the principles on which modernism is based, it must
also do the same to the Islamic paradigm. This indeed prompts a debate which has not yet
properly begun except, perhaps, in anthropology, in the context of dialogics. See
Abu-cLughod L. (1990), 'Anthropology's Orient: The Boundaries of Theory on the Arab
world', in H. Sharabi (ed.), Theory, Politics and the Arab World (London: Routledge, 1990),
pp.91-2.