Islam, Democracy and Civil
Society*
Chandran Kukathas**
What is the relationship between
Islam, democracy, and civil society? This is the question
which supplies the topic of this essay. Its purpose, more
particularly, is to explore the place of Islam in the modern
world-a world which contemporary writers increasingly try to
understand by invoking the notions of democracy and civil
society. But the occasion for this exploration has a more
precise origin still. The issue of the place of Islam in the
modern world is raised, more often than not, by writers and
commentators for whom Islam is, above all, a danger. In
geo-political terms, it is a danger to the West; in
world-historical terms, it is a danger to modernity; and in
philosophical terms it is a danger to democracy. For many,
then, Islam stands in a relationship of tension with-if not
complete antagonism to-democracy and modernity. It is a
religion, and a philosophy, which is a throwback to the middle
ages, and an obstacle to human progrees.1 It is, in the end,
incompatible with any kind of liberal political
order.
The concern of this essay is to
argue that Islam is not the threat it is taken to be. But to
understand why, it is necessary to acquire a surer grasp of
the nature of democracy, of the relationship between democracy
and civil society, and of the place of religion in the modern
world. Only an understanding of these matters will allow us to
appreciate the moral worth of Islam, and to see why it might
be a source of strength rather than a danger.
None of this is to suggest,
however, that there are no problems associated with the
working of Islam or, indeed, any religion in the modern world.
A related task of this paper, therefore, is to reflect on
these difficulties, and to try to understand to what extent
they stem from the nature of faith, or of religion, or certain
religious faiths; and to what extent they have their roots in
the nature of modern society, and liberal democratic society
in particular.
Civil
society
The exploration of these
questions is best begun with an investigation into the nature
of civil society. This term is now very much in vogue, though
interpretations of its meaning vary considerably. A part of
the reason for this is that the adjective, "civil", adds a
content to the term which is anything but evident from the
meaning of the word. What kind of a society is a "civil"
society, and what makes it different from society? One answer
is, quite simply, nothing. Civil society is,
straightforwardly, society; and there is much to commend in
this answer, since it is, broadly, right.
Yet this in itself will not
advance mattes very far since what remains unclear is
what,precisely, is a society. So it is with this question that
we must begin. A part of the answer is to say that a society
is a form of association made up of people who belong to
different communities or associations which are geographically
contiguous. The boundaries of a society are not always easy to
specify, since the contiguity of societies makes it hard to
say why one society has been left and another entered.
Nonethless, distinctions or boundaries can, to some extent, be
drawn. Since all societies are governed by law, the move from
one legal jurisdiction is, to some extent, a move from one
society to another. This understanding has to be qualified,
however, by the recognition that law is not always confined by
geographical boundaries. For one thing, people moving from one
region to another may still find themselves subjet to laws
whose long arms reach even into other countries. Tourists,
businessmen, and ‘visiting scholars’ remain subject to the
laws of their home countries-especially to their tax laws. In
the Middle Ages, the merchant law established codes of conduct
and mechanisms of despute resolution which bound traders who
wandered across Europe-almost whereever they might be. And for
another thing, an important dimension of law deals precisely
with the fact that people cross boundaries into different
legal jurisdictions all the time; much of law is
inter-jurisdictional.
Yet this fact itself may help to
get us a little closer to an account of what is a society. For
a society surely exists when there is some established set of
customs or conventions or legal arrangements specifying how
the laws apply to persons whether they stay put or move from
one jurisdiction to another within the greater realm. On this
understanding, there was not (as much of) a society among the
different highland peoples of New Guinea in the nineteenth
century since they lived in legal isolation from one another,
even if they were aware of one another’s existence. There was,
however, a society in Medieval Spain, in which Jews, Muslims,
and Christians co-existed under elaborate legal arrangement
specifying the rights and obligations individuals had within
their own religious communities, and as outsiders within the
others.
It may be unwise to seek any
greater precision than this in accounting for what is a
society. For the moment at least, then, I will take a society
to be a region of contiguous jurisdictions related by law.
Societies can be distinguished from one another by
jurisdictional separateness. This in itself may be a matter of
degree, since some borders or boundaries are more porous than
others. One particularly clear way in which societies may be
distinguished is by their political separation. Thus we might
talk of America and Mexico, or France and Germany as different
societies. Yet the distinction cannot be drawn equally
sharply, since France and Germany belong to the European Union
whose laws permitting the free movement of people across
borders have lessened the significance of the political
borders in distinguishing the two societies. The United States
and Mexico are, perhaps, more clearly distinguishable as
separate societies-although the North America Free Trade
Agreement may, eventually, have a profound impact on the
nature of this separateness.
This account of the notion of a
society is not an especially comprehensive one. ÝIn
particular, it says nothing about the cultural dimension of
society. This, clearly, would add some important complications
to the picture. For one thing, many political borders cut
through regions in which peoples immediately on either side of
the (new) boundaries have more in common with their neighbours
than with their countrymen. The Kashmiris may feel more in
common with each other than with their fellow Indians or with
their fellow Pakistanis. And along the much-shifted borders of
France and Germany live peoples who once saw themselves not as
members of French or German society but as peoples of
particular local regions. For the moment, however, I will
ignore this complication to the description of society since
it does not affect the argument to be presented
here.
Yet something important is being
said when the adjective "civil" is invoked to describe or
qualify "society". According to Leszek Kolakowski, "civil"
society is a whole mass of conflictig individual and group
aspirations, empirical daily life with all its conflicts and
struggles, the realm of private desires and private
endeavours.2 It is thus a complex association of individuals,
joined together in relations shaped by personal interest,
economic interdependence, and legal and customary rules.
Within such an association would be found persons who
associate with one another for friendship, or to pursue common
goals, or to exchange goods and idea. One would find,
churches, clubs, universities, businesses, and various bodies
and practices which make up the institution of law. More
importantly still, excluded from this realm are certain kinds
of political relations: those which make up that entity called
the state.
Civil society means society as
distinguished from the state. This is not to say that the two
are always separate in fact; the distinction is a conceptual
distinction more than it is an empirical one. But it is
important nonetheless. And since the state is a relative
modern phenomenon, whose emergence may be traced back no
earlier then sixteenth century Europe, the term civil society
identifies a distinctively modern form of society.
The notion of civil society also
embodies another idea which is of singular importance: the
idea of freedom. For civil society is a realm of freedom; but
a freedom of a certain kind. Though this conception of freedom
is not easily articulated, it is perhaps most readily grasped
by appreciating what it is that Karl Marx, and Marxism in
general, found so unsatisfactory about it.
Karl Marx was fundamentally a
Rousseauean in social philosophy-one who reacted against the
Philosophy of Right of Hegel to become a critic of civil
society. Civil society ("bürgerliche Gessellshaft") in Marx’s
conception was bourgeois society-market society; and the
relations which dominated it were relations of self-interest
and economic calculation. In this society, he argued, the one
thing which could never be found was human freedom. Indeed,
this form of socity was nothing if not destructive of that
freedom. In turning all human relations into mere money
relations it would never allow men to attain the autonomy in
which real freedom would consist. Civil society-capitalism-
would sustain only heteronomy in a world of class
conflict.
What one would find in such a
society, Marx argued, was simply the satisfaction of
particular, private interests-at the expense of other
particular interests. But, unlike Hegel, Marx rejected as any
sort of a solution an attempt at the reconciliation of
interests. Hegel thought that the state would turn out to
embody the general interest, reconciling the particular
interests found in the family and civil society. For Marx,
however, only the abolition of particularity was an acceptable
solution. The state, he argued, would turn out to be nothing
more than the agent of particular interests masquerading as
the embodiment of the general interest. Politics in such
circumstances is merely a conflict among particular concerns.
The political rights or freedoms sought by those who would
reform the state could not, in the end, bring freedom because
"mere" political emancipation-the making of one’s political
attributes independent of the features of one’s civil life
(wealth, birth, religion) -was an illusory emancipation: "the
state can free itself from a restriction without man being
really free from this restriction".3 Not only was political
emancipation illusory, but it brought about a fundamental
division in human life:
"Where the political state has
attained its free development, man-not only in thought, in
consciousness, but in reality, in life-leads a twofold life, a
heavenly and an earthly life: life in the political community,
in which he considers himself a communal being, and life in
civil society, in which he acts as a private individual,
regards other men as a means,, degrades himself into a means,
and becomes the plaything of alien powers."4
Civil society was thus an
expression of man’s separation from his community and from his
real self: an expression of his alienation. The only bond
which holds men together in civil society, Marx argued, "is
natural necessity, need and private interest, the preservation
of their property and their egoistic selves."5
Yet this view, at once,
overestimates the possibility of human freedom, and
underestimates (and underappreciates) the freedom found in
civil society. Indeed it misunderstands civil society
altogether. While Marx was right to see civil society as the
realm of particularity, he was quite wrong to think this could
ever be abolished, or to imagine that the conflictless utopia
of postcivil society was anything but a grotesque illusion.
Any plausible notion of freedom must offer an account of how
conflict and difference can be accommodated -for they surely
cannot be overcome.
The freedom embodied in civil
society is the freedom that allows human beings to live
together in spite of their differences and in spite of the
conflicts which arise from their varying interests,
temperament, and beliefs. And this understanding of freedom is
what makes civil society a notably modern idea, for at its
core is a recognition that in human society, nowadays, people
worship different god, and that this fact has to be
accommodated by legal and political institutions if humans are
to stand any chance of flourishing.
This last point also reveals
another important feature of civil society-one whose salience
is unappreciated (if recognized at all) by Marx’s analysis.
Civil society is peopled not by isolated or separate
individuals but by associations or communities. Civil society
is market society; but it is not just market society. The
associations within it include not only businesses but also,
more importantly, associations to which people have
attachments rooted less in their economic concerns than in
their emotional attachments and moral commitments and so, in
their identities. The most important associations or
communities, here, are religious ones.
These associations are important
because it is through them that people pursue the goals that
give meaning to their lives. Indeed, it is through them that
they seek understanding of what has value and of how they
should seek it. It is through such associations that people
seek understanding of their place in the world. For thinkers
such as Marx and his followers, such attachments, particularly
when they had a religious character, were an excrescence,
revealing the absence of real human freedom in the world of
particularities that was precommunist society. Human beings
needed liberation from such attachments. The irony is that the
philosophy which decried man’s alienation and isolation in
civil society failed completely to appreciate that it was
precisely these particular attachments in civil society that
people were made human; it was here that they were
"civilised.
Democracy
Yet human beings are not only
social creatures; they are also political ones, In Aristotle’s
world-the world of the city-states of ancient Greece-the
social and the political order were one and the same.
Community was political community; and diversity was not to be
found, or welcomed, within the polis.(6) In the modern world,
however, civil society is a realm of many associations, and
one in which different gods are worshipped in different ways.
The political problem under these circumstances is to work out
how this is possible. It is no longer a problem of how to
preserve unity; for such unity does not exist. It is a problem
of how to make possible-and preserve-freedom: the freedom to
live, and worship, differently.
What political institutions,
then; are appropriate for such a condition? While it is
tempting to reply at once, democratic institutions, this
answer is not self-evidently the right one. For one thing, not
all circumstances may be conducive to democracy, since
democracy is also a practice which has to be learned and may
be a tradition which is unfamiliar or foreign to some peoples.
But, more importantly, there are many kinds of models of
democracy: and anyone advocating democracy must specify the
type.
All this is to say that
explaining what kinds of political institutions are suitable
for a modern socity-for civil society-will involve a more
complex response. To begin this response it is necessary to
turn again to the question of civil society, and to ask what
it is about civil society that is the proper object of
political concern. If civil society is a realm of many
communities or associations, each pursuing its understanding
of the good life (or, in the case of some, in search of such
understanding), what matters most is the preservation of the
freedom each needs to get on with the business of life. Yet
the problem is that co-existence is no easy matter, since
differences here will not simply be matters of taste but will
raise questions about what is right, and how one should live.
What is to be done?
Broadly speaking, two kinds of
solutions have generally been proposed. One has been to say
that the question of how one should live should be settled (at
least to the extent of specifying what is not permissible) and
the answer then imposed (gently, if possible) on all. Another
has suggested that any solution to the problem of coexistence
would seek no more than a modus vivendi, which did not attempt
to solve the problem of how one should (or (should not) live,
but looked to provide a framework of meta-norms.7 by which
different ways could co-exist. The problem with the first
solution is that it does not take seriously the fact that
people disagree and will resist attempts to impose beliefs or
practices upon them. This solution requires the use of
power-the oppressive use of state power, to be
precise.8
The second answer, however, is
very conscious of the fact that disagreement is
inevitable-and, possibly, ineradicable and wary of the use of
state power to enforce was will not be accepted. This is the
answer which is appropriate for modern, civil society.9 What
is needed are political institutions which will tolerate the
diversity of communities, associations, and traditions which
are to be found in civil society. This anwer is a political
philosophy most commonly labelled liberalism.
Yet so far all that has been said
specifies only the moral principle which should underpin the
political institutions which govern civil society. Nothing has
been said about what kinds of instittions these should be.
Liberals generally are concerned to ensure that the major
institutions which deal with differences among people -law and
government-do not unduly favour any particular way of life.
However, even if this point is accepted in principle, the
problem is that, once institutions are in place, those who
operate them can often manipulate them to their advantage. For
this reason, it is wise to devise or put in place institutions
which make it difficult for power to be concentrated. A good
political order is therefore one in which power does not exist
unopposed.
The ways in which power might be
kept checked are many. In medieval Europe kings were bound in
complex systems of reciprocal obligations to feudal lords, who
in turn owed duties of their own to the people who lived on
their lands. In the sultanates of pre-colonial Malaya, the
activities of the Rajas were constrained by the understandings
of the duties of ruler to subject woven through Malay
political culture.10 And in England, monarchical rule became
more and more carefully circumscribed as Parliament arose, and
grew to dominance, out of the late middle ages.
In the modern world, one very
important political tradition whose point is to
institutionalise the separation of powers is the tradition of
democracy. Modern democracy has grown out of the political
traditions which were transformed over the past three
centuries by the emergence of industrial commercial society in
Europe. Theoretical expression was given to this development
most powerfully by the American thinkers of the eighteenth and
nineteeenth centuries, though particular mention has to be
made of the exceptional contribution of Tocqueville in his own
analysis of American society. What most needs remarking on,
here, is that the understanding of democracy which came to
light in this time did not see democracy as majoritarianism,
or as embodying the will of the people (though this thought
did enter into some conceptions of democratic government).
Democracy was conceived as a system of government in which
there was, above all, freedom to oppose. Democratic
governments were not free to do as they pleased but were open
to challenge. A democracy was a regime, and a regime suited,
most importantly, to an open society in which power was
checked by other powers, and also by the capacity of
nongovernmental institutions to examine and criticize the
instruments of rule, and the rulers themselves. In a phrase,
democracy, in its modern incarnation, presupposed freedom
under law, It presupposed civil socity.
Religion
The question it is now open for
us to consider is, what is the place of religion in such a
society? This is an important question in part because the
traditions of liberalism and democracy described thus far are
features o a modernity which has distinctly secular character.
Liberal democracy, the child of European civil society, looks
to be secular creed which can have no place for
religion-unless it be a place of confinement and
subordination.
Yet this is not the case. Indeed,
it cannot be the case; even though the modern world is, in
some important ways, thoroughly secularised. We need to
understand how the world has indeed become more secular; but
we need also to appreciate why, and how, religion has an
important place in modern civil society.
The secular nature of modernity
is most in evidence in the character of public discourse, not
only in international society but within the public arenas of
most societies. This reflects not only the dominance of
science in discussions of the natural world, but also its
domination in the world of human society. The languages of
economics, sociology, and mangement have no need of any appeal
to providence or divine intervention to account for the
workings of human society, or to justify public action.
Charles Larmore has suggested that this secularization is this
the consequence of the entrenchment of the monotheistic
traditions of Judeo-Christianity, which conceives of God as a
single, transcendant entity. A transcendant God, he argues,
has no place in explanations of the order of nature or the
course of history. "Once we have resolved to let God be God,
we can no longer use God for our own cognitive ends."11 God is
not dead; but we don’t seem to need him-or want him-for most
of what we do.
The secularization of the world
in this sense is not only evident but also, in many ways,
advantageous (though not strictly necessary, as I will explain
presently). In a world in which different gods are worshipped,
but in which adherents of different faiths interact in a
global arena, anything but a secular public realm could be a
disaster. Social intercourse with those who differ from us in
profound ways requires that we prescind from our deepest
commitments. Otherwise, the most likely outcome is
conflict.
Yet none of this means that
religion has no place in modern society-or that that can only
be a matter of private individual commitment. For one thing,
it ought to be noted that, even within the secularizing
tendencey of modernity, and the disenchantment of the world
which has seen the emergence of Weber’s legal-rational mode of
domination, the sacred has a powerful grip on human
sensibilities. In part this is reflected in the persistence of
faith, and the advance of religious organizations. But it is
more powerfully evident in the human capacity to turn persons
and objects into sacred entities: to hallow what was once
devoid of meaning. So millions mourned not only the death of
an Iranian cleric, ant the passing of a Catholic nun, but also
the demise of a fathless princess.
Religion will have a powerful
place for as long as this sensibility is there, for there will
be a demand for means of giving it expression. And while some
will decry this fact as evidence of the persistence of the
irrational in human activity, that will make no
difference.
This last observation, however,
brings us to a more important point. Reason alone is not going
to be the guide for human beings in all things-however much
some might think that it ought to be.12 Indeed, it cannot be;
for unaided reason cannot teach us anything substantive about
value or morality-about how to live. This, in spite of the
best efforts of some of the great philosophers of the
Enlightenment, and their modern successors, to generate a
rationalist ethics. But this leaves us with the problem of how
to pursue moral questions-how to think morally-if reason is
not enough. This is a problem which confronts modernity, and
which has to be faced. Any plausible response has to reject
two proferred solutions. The first is in the suggestion that
we look to nature to discover what it is that can properly be
the object of value, and can form the foundation of a
universally acceptable understanding of good conduct. The
problem with this solution is that it is the fact that
naturalism generates disagreement rather than consensus. The
second is the empty promise offered by postmodernism, which,
as Larmore points out, "ends up confusing the rejection of
philosophical rationalism with the abandonment of reason
itself.13
If reason alone is not enough,
and the extremes of naturalism and postmodernism offer no
solution, upon what resources can we draw to address our
fundamental concerns in matters of value? One answer worth
considering is that we turn to tradition.14 This is, in fact,
what we do depend upon. We do not try to generate moral
judgements or solutions out of nothing, but begin with
starting points given by our own contexts-by our traditions.
These traditions embody our (various and diverse)
understandings of what has aesthetic and moral worth; of what
is worth aspiring to and what is taboo; of what is sacred and
what is profane. And it is here that the place of religion is
to be found.
All of us live within, and are
guided by, particular traditions. These vary from culture to
culture, from community to community, though there is often
some overlap, our traditions tell us what is right, and what
has value; and even when we disagree with their injunctions we
start from those injunctions themselves. What has also to be
appreciated, however, is the extent to which religion has
shaped and continues to shape the traditions which dominate
modern society. Religion has, in fact, performed two important
functions.
First, it has been a source of
substantive judgements on matters of value. Religious teaching
is, for many, the source of understanding of what is worthy,
and what is right. The religious imagination has been of
critical importance in our efforts to understand and
appreciate what is good. As economists might put it, religion
generates moral capital.
Second, religion, in this way,
has played an important role in constructing the
understandings which have socialised individuals. Once again,
we can see this if we reflect on Marx’s misunderstandings in
his analysis of "The Jewish Question". For him, religion was
alienating, for it kept human beings from becoming truly
human; but the conception of the human in Marx’s thought is
only an abstraction devoid of substantive content. And content
is particular, not universal. Religions everywhere are human
creations which have responded to the circumstances and needs
of particular peoples. Even when they have attempted to
universalise human ewperience, they have responded to the
particular experiences of the communnities they
served.
If these two points are correct,
than religion has an important place in civil society. This is
not because it shapes the character of civil society directly,
but because within the communities which comprise it is the
religious imagination to which people will turn to answer the
most important questions that confront them.
This brings us immediately,
however, to a more pressing political question: what is, and
should be, the political place of religion in civil society,
and democratic civil society in particular. More precisely,
what place should be accorded, in all of this, to
Islam.
Islam
There are two views about the
place of religion in modern society which ought to be
rejected. Both come out of the European Enlightenment. The
first suggestes that religion ought to be repudiated as
irrational. Even if religious persecution is not to be
condoned, religion should be scorned and its demise hastened.
The second suggests that religion should be recognized as
something important to some people, and therefore tolerated
within tightly defined limits. This is one kind of liberal
view which asserts that religious faith and practice is
acceptable provided it is not inconsistent with more
fundamentally important commitements a good society should
have to upholding individual autonomy. Religious communities
should be required to conform to these values, and permitted
to practice within the bounds that these values
demarcate.15
The first view should be rejected
partly because it fails to recognize the centrality of
religious faith and experience to so much of human society.
But it is also of doubtful value because it says nothing about
what might be put in its place. The cognitive and the
socialising roles played by religion are not
considered.
The second view, however, is more
difficult to deal with. It does not seek to eliminate religion
but to liberalize it. What is wrong with this? To be sure,
adherents of particular religious faiths may not wish it; but
that in itself is not an argument, since those who wish to
liberalise illiberal practices think it would be a good thing,
whether or not it is welcomed. The problem, however, is that
this inclination is inconsistent with a proper understanding
of the nature of civil society.
Civil society, as it has been
described here, is a realm of diversity and difference. It is
marked less by unity than by contestation and
disagreement-albeit a form of contestation which is peaceful.
It is, in many ways, a notably modern idea; for it is a
feature of a world in which people not only worship different
Gods but also do so in remarkable propinquity. What matters
for the preservation (and flourishing) of such a realm is that
it not be brought under control. Not even under liberal
control. Civil society has to remain a realm of mutul
toleration in which no particular tradition assumes the
authority to shape the others. And this means that
religion-even religion which does not accept this
principle-has to be free.
It is at this point,, however,
that objections, arise, and in particular objections which
invoke the spectre of Islam. If religion is not kept in check
it will devour civil society. And Islam, more than any other,
the argument goes, is the likely predator. What needs to be
considered now, then, is why this concern should be
repudiated, particularly with respect to Islam.
It should be conceded at the
outset, however, that religion can be a powerful and dangerous
force in society. One of the most important reasons why this
is so is that religion, by its nature, seeks and attracts
followers. Those who are capable of mobilizing people in large
numbers have great power in their hands. For this reason,
rulers have generally sought to ally themselves with, or
control, the religious institutions of their societies.
Equally, religious leaders have often been tempted to use the
power conferred by their authority to extend their influence
into politics-sometimes even to take political
power.
But while religion can become a
political force, two things ought to be noted before any
response to this fact is considered. The first is that this is
no worse than any other group possessing an ideology coming to
power. The danger is posed by the concentration, or
usurpation, of power, and by the inclination of it possessors
to use it. The second is that it is important to consider what
might be the alternative to allowing religion to emerge as a
political force. If the alternative is to concentrate
political authority in the hands of a power great enought to
keep all, including religion, in awe, the cure might be worse
than the potential disease.
Indeed, in some respects, a
society with strong religious institutions is to be preferred
if what this means is that the power of the state is thereby
checked. While it is right to be wary of the power religious
authority might exert tyrannically if allowed, it bears noting
that the greatest tyrannies in this century were exerted by
the godless states of communism, and by Germany under the
influence Nazi doctrines of religious hatred. And it is worth
remembering that religion provided not only a source of
sanctuary in many of these societies, but also the source of
resistance (the Polish Catholic church in the 1980s, for
example).
In general, it may be a good
thing if there exists a tension within society between church
(or mosque) and state -provided that neither can clearly take
the upper hand, or manipulate the other to its own ends. The
greater the dispersal of power the better. This is,
fundamentally, what the theory of pluralist democracy
advocates: institutional arrangements in which the existence
of a diversity of powers or authorities operates to constrain
any one power from assuming a position of such pre-eminence
that tyranny becomes a possibility.
Yet does this also hold for
Islam, or is it a religon whose doctrines or character are
such that it cannot coexist with any other power, and which is
therefore suppressed if it gathers any kind of strength which
might translate into political activity? Some have argued that
the nature of Islam’s traditions make it unlikely to tolerate
such a political order. After all, the argument goes, Islam
does not recognize any separation between mosque and state, or
the notion of a secular authority. Could such a religious
tradition be anything but a threat to a democratic order? And
could it possibly embrace democratic traditions if it were in
a position of dominance?
In act, Islam is not the problem
it is often presented to be, even, though it is true that
there have been Muslim tyrants-as many, perhaps, as there have
been Christian, or Hindu, or secular ones. Islam is not at
odds with democracy or with civil society, or modernity. The
key to understanding this is appreciating that Islam
recognizes that a religion cannot embrace the whole of society
for as long as there are unbelievers. It has therefore, from
the outset, concerned itself with the question of the
treatment of those who dissent from its teachings.
The earliest Muslim community or
ummah had its origins in the seventh century as a persecuted
minority in Mecca. As is well-known,, Muhammed and his
followers eventually left Mecca for Yathrib, or what is today
Medina, in order to establish a community of the faithful.
However, when the success of Muhammed’s mission saw the
expansion of the Islamic community, it was itself forced to
address the question of how to deal with the diverse people,
and what forms of diversity to accept in its midst. Its
response was to develop a political tradition which was
remarkable for its tolerance of non- Muslim
communities.
Islam today, particularly in the
west, conjures up images of fanaticism and intolerance. Yet
much of its historiy is at odds with this impression. In the
eighth and ninth centuries the Byzantine empire crumbled under
the force of Islamic expansion, and Muslim armies eventually
overran the Persian empire before also taking the regions of
Syria, Iraq, North Africa, southern Europe and Spain. These
areas, many of which were already subjugated to foreign rulers
(particularly in Byzantine and Persian territories), were
re-subjugated to Islamic ones. Yet Islamic vision, for the
most part, proved more reasonable and tolerant, and more
willing to grant its subject populations a measure of local
autonomy-with lower rates of taxation. To Jews and Christians
it accorded greater toleration than they had been accorded
hitherto. Indeed, the local Christian churches had even aided
the invading Muslim armies to escape the persecution for
"heresy" they had endured at the hands of the "foreign"
Christian orthodoxy.16 The Muslim rulers left existing
governmental institutions intact, and left religious
communities free to govern their own internal afairs according
to their own faiths. To be sure, these rulers sought to
eliminate idolatory and paganism, and regarded Islam as the
one ture religion. But the Islamic ideal demanded that others
be invited-persuaded-to convert, not forced. If they refused,
they were to be left in peace. This was most notably so in
Jerusalem, which had been captured by Muslim armies in 638.
Under Muslim rule not only were Christian churches left
unharmed, but Jews, long banned from the city by Christian
rulers, were allowed to return-ushering in several centuries
of peaceful coexistence, brought to an end only by the
Crusades.
The point of noting all this,
however, is not to insist that Islam’s history is stainless,
or that those of its rivals are bloody. Like any tradition
with a history spanning centuries, it has had its periods of
stagnation as well as its periods of flowering. And those
traditions have varied from the harshly austere, to the poetic
mysticism of Sufism. But the point here is simply to make
clear that there is no inconsistency between Islam and
traditions of tolerantion and peaceful coexistence. Within
Islam’s traditions, as various scholars have argued, we find
not only the practice of toleration but also the concepts
which give it theoretical expression: concepts of oposition
and disagreement, consensus and consultation, and freedom of
thought and expression.
Like that of any doctrine,
Islam’s humanity and capacity for toleration depends on
questions of interpretation. In the Qu’ran the injunction to
struggle to defend Islam (jihad) is capable of many
interpretations-but not all consistent with the use of armed
force to persecute non-believers. In the same way, the
biblical injunction to "compel them (non-Christians) to come
in" to the Christian fold (Luke, XIV, 23) was capable of being
interpreted by St Augustine as sanctioning righteous
persecution even though Pierre Bayle would maintain that
"compel" could only mean "persuade".
Given its nature and traditions,
then, there is nothing in Islam that should give us cause for
concern if our interest is in the flourishing of a democratic
civil society marked by diversity. This is not to say that
Islamic political movements have not, or will never, pose any
danger. For any political movement can be dangerous. But it is
to say that Islam as a creed is not the problem, and may even
hold within it some of the resources that supply a solution.
Most important among these resources is the tradition of
toleration; but not less significant may be the fact that, in
the end, it is also distrustful of nationalism.
If all this is true, the real
question which ought to be addressed is not so much the
problem of reconciling Islam with modern democracy and civil
society as the prolem of what model of democracy is most
suited to modernity. If the considerations presented in this
paper are sound, what should give us most concern is the
emergence of models of democratic governance which seeks to
extend the power of democratic authority into supra-national
institutions, ordered in hierarchical fashion.17 If democratic
institutions are to work to preserve the diverse order of
civil society, they will have to look away from models of
centralization towards those traditions which are ready to
embrace norms of toleration. In this regard, however, the
threat comes not from Islam, even though it may at times come
from those to misuse its name.
NOTES
1. For examples of articles wary
of Islam, see the list offered by John L. Esposito, The
Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1993), p.viii. (Esposito’s book, it should be made
clear, is sympathetic to Islam.)
2. "The Myth of Human
Self-Identity: Unity of Civil and Political Society in
Socialist Thought", in C. Kukathas, D. Lovell, and W. Maey
(eds.), The Transition from Socialism: State and Civil Society
in the USSR (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1991, pp.41-58, at
pp. 42-3,
3. Karl Marx, "On the Jewish
Question", in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works
(London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1975), vol.iii, pp.146-74, at
p.152.
4. lbid., p.154.
5. lbid., p.164.
6. On this see Arlene W.
Saxonhouse, Fear of Diversity: The birth of Political Sence in
Ancient Greek Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1992)
7. For an interesting argument
couched explicitly in terms of "meta-norms" see Douglas J. Den
Uyl and Douglas B. Rasmussen, Liberalism Defended: The
Challenge of Post-Modernity (Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar,
1997)
8. The phrase is used in John
Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1993), p..
9. Much more needs to be said in
justification of this claim than can be offered here. For a
cogent, though controversial, defence of a variant of this
position see Chrales Larmore, The Morals of Modernity
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996),
pp.121-74.
10. On this see A. C. Milner,
Kerajaan: Malay Political Culture on the eve of colonial rule
(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1982)
11. Larmore, op.cit.,
p.41.
12. See, for example, George H.
Smith,
Atheism: The Case Againts God
(Los Angeles: Prometheus Books, 1973).
13. Op.cit., pp. 55-6. The
thinker Larmore has in mind here is Jean-Fraçois Lyotard. From
a healty distrust of simplifying myths, argues Larmore,
Lyotard infers that moral thinking must be combative and
rhetorical rather than reasoned. But this is a non sequitur
which "fails to escape the terms of the rationalistic idea of
reason it attacks".
14. Once again, it is a thought
which comes from Larmore, op.cit., pp. 55-9, though I am
adapting it for my own purposes.
15. For a powerful exposition of
this view see Deborah Fitzmaurice, "Autonomy as a good",
Journal of Political Philosophy 1 (1), 1993,
pp.1-15.
16. On this see Esposito, The
Islamic Threat, p. 39.
17. See for example the arguments
offered by David Held, Models of Democracy, 2nd ed.
(Cambridge: Polity, 1996)
* Paper, presented in the "Islam,
Civil Society and Market Economy" symposium on 18-19 May 1998,
in Ýstanbul, Turkey, organised by the Association for Liberal
Thinking.
