The case for secularity in Islam

Abstract

The dominant view holds that Islam is a comprehensive way of life that does not differentiate between religion (din) and state (dawlah). This article argues, however, that it is possible to carve out a space for secularity based upon the Islamic tradition, one that does not compromise either its integrity or its coherence. The oft-repeated claim that Islamic culture does not distinguish between religion and politics, which inherently lends itself to an undemocratic and authoritarian system of governance, can be challenged from three fronts. First, in practice and even during Prophet's Muhammad's lifetime, there was an explicit separation between ritual acts of worship (‘ibadat) and creed (‘aqidah), on the one hand, and interpersonal relations and social affairs (mu‘amalat), on the other. The former are static and immutable, whereas the latter consists of rules of conduct and behavior that are open to public negotiation. Second, a distinction is made between religion's moral authority, which demands human agency, and right intention (niyyah), which motivates a believer to submit to its dictates, and the state's coercive power. Third, Islamic legal theory has incorporated the concept of the aims and objectives of Islamic law (maqasid al-Shari‘ah), thereby suggesting that non-ritual acts are subject to continual elaboration and evolution.

Keywords:

• secular
• secularism
• secularization
• secularity
• Islam
• Shari‘ah
• maqasid al-Shari‘ah
• Islamic state
• dawlah
• Muslims in America
• mu‘amalat
• Muhammad Mahdi Shamsuddin

Notes

¹Ernest Gellner, Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and its Rivals (Penguin, New York, NY, 1994) 15.

²This worldview, conceived at a time when Muslims were the dominant power, eventually had to be modified to accommodate other scenarios, such as religious diversity or Muslims being in the minority. Thus, other intermediate categories were devised: the abode of covenant (dar al-‘ahd), the abode of peace treaty (dar al-sulh), and so on. Also, the notion of safe conduct (aman) was introduced to enable the abode of war's residents to travel into Muslim territory as traders, ambassadors, and visitors. Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), some of whose writings have been removed from their original context to legitimize religious extremism, coined the phrase “the abode of composites” (murakkab) to factor in the different religions in his famous fatwa of Mardin; Yahya Michot, ‘Ibn Taymiyya's “New Mardin Fatwa”: Is Genetically Modified Islam (GMI) Carcinogenic?’ (2010) 101(2) Muslim World 130; Muslims under Non-Muslim Rule: Ibn Taymiyya on Fleeing from Sin, Kinds of Emigration, the Status of Mardin (Domain of Peace/War, Domain Composite), the Conditions for Challenging Power (translated, annotated, and presented in relation to six modern readings of the Mardin fatwa, Interface, Oxford, 2006).

³Tariq Ramadan, Radical Reform: Islamic Ethics and Liberation (Oxford University Press, Oxford 2009) 20.

⁴Q. 2:256.

⁵“Actions are judged by the intentions” (innama al-a‘mal bi al-niyyat); Muhammad b. Isma‘il al-Bukhari, Sahih Bukhari (Dar al-fikr, Beirut 1980) 1, 2.

⁶Sadik J Al-Azm, “Is Islam Secularizable?” in Elisabeth Özdalga and Sune Persson (eds) Civil Society, Democracy and the Muslim World (Swedish Research Institute, Istanbul 1997) 18.

⁷Ingolf Dalferth, ‘Post-Secular Society: Christianity and the Dialectics of the Secular’ (2010) 78(2) J Am Acad Relig 317, 335.

⁸S Hussain M Jafri, Origins and Early Development of Shi‘a Islam (Longman Group and Librairie du Liban, London, 1979) 19.

⁹Muhammad b. Ya‘qub b. Ishaq al-Kulayni, al-Usul min al-kafi (3 vols, Arabic with Persian commentary and translation, ed/trans S Jawad Mustafawi, Daftar-e nashr-e farhang-e ahl-e bayt, n.d.), {Kitab al hujja, Bab anna al-a‘imma muhaddathun mufahhamun} 2:13–15.

¹⁰‘Ali b. Abi Talib, Nahj al-balaghah (compiled Sayyid Radi, trans Sayed Ali Reza, European Islamic Cultural Centre, Rome 1984) sermon 124, 278.

¹¹Abdulaziz Sachedina, Islamic Biomedical Ethics: Principles and Application (Oxford University Press, Oxford 2009) 5.

¹²Barry A Kosmin, ‘Introduction’, in Barry A Kosmin and Ariela Keysar (eds) Secularism and Secularity (Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture Hartford, CT 2007) 8.

¹³Abdullahi An-Na‘im, Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Shari‘a (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA 2008) 38.

¹⁴Amyn B Sajoo, Muslim Ethics: Emerging Vistas (I.B. Taurus, London 2004) 31.

¹⁵Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA 2003) 182.

¹⁶Ibid., 183.

¹⁷Ibid., 209.

¹⁸Muhammad b. Ya‘qub b. Ishaq al-Kulayni, Usul al-kafi (ed ‘Ali Akbar Ghaffari, 3rd print, 8 vols, Dar al-kutub al-Islamiyyah, Qum 1974) 1:58, hadith 19: “Halal Muhammad halal abadan ila yawm al-qiyamah wa haramahu haram abadan ila yawm al-qiyamah.” Another argument adduced in favor of the permanence of Islamic injunctions is the Qur'anic portrayal of human nature or conscience (fitrah) as constant and unchanging: “So [O Prophet] as a man of pure faith, stand firm in your devotion to the religion. This is the natural disposition (fitrah) God instilled in mankind – there is no altering God's creation – and this is the right religion, though most people do not realize it” (Q. 30:30); Ayatullah Jawadi Amuli, Shari‘at dar a'ineh-ye ma‘refat (Raja, Qum 1993) 115 and 116.

¹⁹Kevin Reinhart, ‘Islamic Law as Islamic Ethics’ (1983) 11(2) J Relig Ethic 186, 192.

²⁰Abdokarim Soroush, Qabz wa bast-e ti'urik-e shari‘at: Nazariyyah-ye takamul-e ma‘rifat-e dini (Mu'assasah-ye farhangi-ye sirat, Tehran 1996).

²¹Ibid.

²²An-Na‘im (n 13) 1.

²³Moch Nur Ichwan, ‘Official Ulama and the Politics of Re-Islamization: The Majelis Permusyawaratan Ulama, Shari‘atization and Contested Authority in Post-New Order Aceh’, (2011) 22(2) J Islamic Stud 184.

²⁴Mehran Tamadonfar, ‘Islam, Law, and Political Control in Contemporary Iran’, (2001) 40(2) J Sci Study Relig 205, 213–15.

²⁵Asef Bayat, Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn (Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA 2007) 101.

²⁶Chibli Mallat, The Renewal of Islamic Law (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1993) 92.

²⁷Bryan S Turner, Religion and Modern Society: Citizenship, Secularisation and the State (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2011) 173.

²⁸Wael Hallaq, Islamic Legal Theories: An Introduction to Sunni usul al-fiqh (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2004) 162; Abu Ishaq Ibrahim al-Shatibi, al-Muwafaqat fi usul al-ahkam (ed M Muhyi al-Din ‘Abd al-Hamid, Matba‘at Muhammad ‘Ali Subayh, Cairo 1970).

²⁹Muhammad Mehrizi, ‘Maqasid al-shari‘ah fi madrasah ahl al-bayt’ in ‘Abd al-Jabbar al-Rifa'i (ed) Falsafah al-fiqh wa al-maqasid al-shari‘ah (Dar al-hadi, Beirut 2001) 509.

³⁰Muhammad Mustafa Shalabi, Usul al-fiqh al-Islami (Maktabat al-nasr, Cairo 1991).

³¹In response to a question on whether God is free to inflict pain on infants in the hereafter, al-Ash‘ari replies: “God is free to do that, and in doing it He would be just. Likewise, whenever He inflicts an infinite punishment for a finite sin, and subordinates some living beings to others, and is gracious to some and not to others, and creates men knowing well that they will disbelieve – all that is justice on His part. And it would not be evil on the part of God to create them in the painful punishment and to make it perpetual. Nor would it be evil on His part to punish the believers and to introduce the unbelievers into the Gardens. Our only reason for saying that He will not do that is that He has informed us that He will punish the unbelievers – and He cannot lie when He gives information”; Abu al-Hasan al-Ash‘ari, The Theology of al-Ash‘ari (tr. Richard J McCarthy, Catholique, Beirut 1953) 99, question no. 169.

³²A Kevin Reinhart, Before Revelation: The Boundaries of Muslim Moral Thought (State University of New York, Albany, NY 1995) 7.

³³A term coined by Shamsuddin in 1985 in his Nizam al-dimuqratiyyah al-‘adadiyyah al-qa'imah ‘ala mabda’ al-shura (Al-mu'assasat al-dawliyyah li al-dirasat wa al-nashr, Beirut 1985); see also his interview in Al-tatbi' bayn darurat al-anzimah wa khiyarat al-ummah (Al-mu'assasat al-dawliyyah li al-dirasat wa al-nashr, Beirut 1995) 92–6.

³⁴Muhammad Mahdi Shamsuddin, Fi al-ijtima al-siyasi al-Islami (Al-mu'assasat al-dawliyyah li al-dirasat wa al-nashr, Beirut 1992) 92–7.

³⁵Muhammad Mahdi Shamsuddin, Nizam al-hukm wa al-idarah (Al-mu'assasat al-dawliyyah, Beirut 1995) 234.

³⁶Ibid., 234–5.

³⁷Noah Feldman, ‘Shari'a and Islamic Democracy in the Age of Al-Jazeera’, in Abbas Amanat and Frank Griffel (eds) Shari‘a: Islamic Law in the Contemporary Context (Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA 2007) 110.

³⁸On the relationship between religious democratic parties and liberal democracy, see Sultan Tepe's excellent Beyond Sacred and Secular: Politics of Religion in Israel and Turkey (Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA 2008).

³⁹Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Belknap/Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA 2007).

⁴⁰Mehdi Haeri Yazdi, Hikmat wa hukumat (Intisharat-i Shadi, London 1995).

⁴¹Ingolf Dalferth, ‘Post-Secular Society: Christianity’, (2010) 78(2) JAAR 317, 318; José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL 1994).

⁴²Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA 2007) 530.

⁴³Peter L Berger, ‘The Desecularization of the World: A Global Overview’, in Peter L Berger (ed) The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics (William B Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI 1999) 2.

⁴⁴Casanova (n 41) 211.

⁴⁵Ibid., 11.

⁴⁶Bassam Tibi, “Post-Bipolar Order in Crisis: The Challenge of Politicized Islam', (2000) 29 (3) J Int Stud 156.

⁴⁷Scott W Hibbard, Religious Politics and Secular States: Egypt, India, and the United States (John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD 2010) 17.