7
Islam has never favoured democratic tendencies.
Hurgronje359
The Democratic system that is predominant in the world is not a suitable system for the peoples of our region.... The system of free elections is not suitable to our country.
King Fahd of Saudi Arabia360
At least King Fahd has had the honesty to admit the incompatibility of Islam and democracy. Meanwhile, Western Islamic apologists and modernizing Muslims continue to look for democratic principles in Islam and Islamic history.
Human Rights and Islam
Let us look at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948361 and compare it with Islamic law and doctrine.
Article 1: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act toward one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”
Article 2: “Everyone is entitled to all rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”
Article 3: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.”
Article 4: “No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.”
Comments. 1. Women are inferior under Islamic law; their testimony in a court of law is worth half that of a man; their movement is strictly restricted; they cannot marry non-Muslims.
2. Non-Muslims living in Muslim countries have inferior status under Islamic law; they may not testify against a Muslim. In Saudi Arabia, following a tradition of Muhammad who said, “Two religions cannot exist in the country of Arabia,” non-Muslims are forbidden to practice their religion, build churches, possess Bibles, etc.
3. Nonbelievers—atheists (surely the most neglected minority in history)—do not have “the right to life” in Muslim countries. They are to be killed. Muslim doctors of law generally divide sins into great sins and little sins. Of the seventeen great sins, unbelief is the greatest, more heinous than murder, theft, adultery, etc.
4. Slavery is recognized in the Koran. Muslims are allowed to cohabit with any of their female slaves (sura 4.3); they are allowed to take possession of married women if they are slaves (sura 4.28). The helpless position of the slave in regard to his or her master illustrates the helpless position of the false gods of Arabia in the presence of their Creator (sura 16.77).
Article 5. “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
Comment. We have seen what punishments are in store for transgressors of the Holy law: amputations, crucifixion, stoning to death, and floggings. I suppose a Muslim could argue that these were not unusual for a Muslim country, but what of their inhumanity? Again, a Muslim could contend that these punishments are of divine origin and must not be judged by human criteria. By human standards, they are inhuman.
Article 6: “Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.”
The whole notion of a person who can make choices and can be held morally responsible is lacking in Islam, as is the entire notion of human rights.
Articles 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 deal with the rights of an accused person to a fair trial.
Comments. 1. As Schacht has shown, under the sharia considerations of good faith, fairness, justice, truth, and so on play only a subordinate role. The idea of criminal guilt is lacking.
2. Revenge for a killing is officially sanctioned, though a monetary recompense is also possible.
3. The legal procedure under Islam can hardly be called impartial or fair, for in the matter of witnesses all sorts of injustices emerge. A non-Muslim may not testify against a Muslim. For example, a Muslim may rob a non-Muslim in his home with impunity if there are no witnesses except the non-Muslim himself. Evidence given by Muslim women is admitted only very exceptionally and then only if it comes from twice as many women as the required number of men.
Article 16 deals with the rights of marriage of men and women.
Comment. As we shall see in our chapter on women, under Islamic law women do not have equal rights: they are not free to marry whom they wish, the rights of divorce are not equal.
Article 18: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”
Comments. 1. Quite clearly under Islamic law, one does not have the right to change one’s religion, if one is born into a Muslim family. Applying double standards, Muslims are quite happy to accept converts to their religion, but a Muslim may not convert to another religion—this would be apostasy and punishable by death. Here is how the great commentator Baydawi (ca. 1291) sees the matter: “Whosoever turns back from his belief, openly or secretly, take him and kill him wheresoever you find him, like any other infidel. Separate yourself from him altogether. Do not accept intercession in his regard.”
2. Statistics on conversions from Islam to Christianity, and therefore apostasy, are hard to establish for obvious reasons. There is, however, a myth that Muslims are impossible to convert. On the contrary, we do have enough evidence of literally thousands of Muslims abandoning Islam for Christianity from the Middle Ages to modern times, the most spectacular cases being, among others, those of Moroccan and Tunisian princes in the seventeenth century and of the monk Constantin the African. Count Rudt-Collenberg has found evidence at the Casa dei Catecumeni at Rome of 1,087 conversions between 1614 and 1798. According to A. T. Willis and others, between two or three million Muslims converted to Christianity after the massacres of the communists in Indonesia in 1965, described in chapter 5. In France alone, in the 1990s, two or three hundred people convert to Christianity from Islam each year. According to Ann E. Mayer,362 in Egypt conversions have been “occurring with enough frequency to anger Muslim clerics and to mobilize conservative Muslim opinion behind proposals to enact a law imposing the death penalty for apostasy. Ms. Mayer points out that, in the past, many women have been to tempted to convert from Islam to ameliorate their lot.
3. Those who convert to Christianity and choose to stay in a Muslim country do so at great personal danger. The convert has most of his rights denied him; identity papers are often refused him, so that he has difficulties leaving his country; his marriage is declared null and void; his children are taken away from him to be brought up by Muslims; and he forfeits his rights of inheritance. Often the family will take matters into its own hands and simply assassinate the apostate; the family members are, of course, not punished.363
Article 19: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinion without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
Comments. 1. The rights enshrined in articles 18 and 19 have been consistently violated in Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. In all three countries, the rights of their Bahai, Ahmadi, and Shia minorities, respectively, have been denied. All three countries justify their actions by reference to sharia. Christians in these countries are frequently arrested on charges of blasphemy and their rights denied.
Amnesty International describes the scene in Saudi Arabia:
Hundreds of Christians, including women and children have been arrested and detained over the past three years, most without charge or trial, solely for the peaceful expression of their religious beliefs. Scores have been tortured, some by flogging, while in detention.... The possession of non-Islamic religious objects—including Bibles, rosary beads, crosses and pictures of Jesus Christ—is prohibited and such items may be confiscated. (AINO 62 July/August 1993)
Similarly scores of Shia Muslims have been harassed, arrested, tortured, and in some cases, beheaded. For example, on September 3, 1992, Sadiq Abdul Karim Malallah was publicly beheaded in al-Qatif after being convicted of apostasy and blasphemy. Sadiq, a Shia Muslim, was arrested in 1988 and charged with throwing stones at a police station, then of smuggling a Bible into the country. He was kept in solitary confinement, where he was tortured.
The situation of Ahmadis in Pakistan is somewhat similar. The Ahmadiyya movement was founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmed (d. 1908), who is regarded as a prophet by his followers. Amnesty International [ASA/33/15/91] summed up their situation in this manner:
Ahmadis consider themselves to be Muslims but they are regarded by orthodox Muslims as heretical because they call the founder of the movement al-Masih [the Messiah]: this is taken to imply that Mohammad is not the final seal of the prophets as orthodox Islam holds, i.e., the prophet who carried the final message from God to humanity. According to Ahmadis their faith does not involve the denial of the Prophet Mohammad’s status because Mirza Ghulam Ahmed did not claim to bring a new revelation of divine law which could add to, replace or supersede the Koran. Mirza Ghulam Ahmed considered himself a mahdi, a reappearance of the Prophet Mohammad, and thought it his task to revive Islam. As a result of these divergences, Ahmadis have been subjected to discrimination and persecution in some Islamic countries. In the mid-1970s, the Saudi Arabia-based World Muslim League called on Muslim governments worldwide to take action against Ahmadis. Ahmadis are since then banned in Saudi Arabia.
Throughout Pakistan’s history, the Ahmadis have been subjected to harassment, which has, on occasion, led to serious bloodshed. Things got worse for them when President Zia-ul Haq came to power in 1977 after a military coup. He introduced a policy of Islamization and imposed severe restrictions on the Ahmadis. In 1984, further legislation was introduced aimed explicitly at these so-called heretics. Henceforth, the Ahmadis could no longer call themselves Muslims. Since then, scores of Ahmadis have been charged and sentenced severely under sections of the Pakistan Penal Code. Thus, Ahmadis can be imprisoned and even sentenced to death solely for the exercise of their right to freedom of religion, including the right to express their religion. Again, it is important to realize that such attitudes to “heretics” is a logical consequence of the orthodox Muslim position that Muhammad is the seal of the Prophets, that Islam is the most perfect and final expression of God’s purpose for all mankind, and that salvation outside Islam is not possible.
2. Blasphemy towards God and the Prophet is punishable by death under Islamic law. In modern times, blasphemy has simply become a tool for Muslim governments to silence opposition, or for individuals to settle personal scores, or, as we saw earlier, to seek out and punish “heresy.” A report in the Economist points out the manipulation of “blasphemy” in Pakistan:
A judgment by the High Court in Lahore is worrying Pakistan’s Christians. The court decided recently that Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are applicable to all the prophets of Islam. Jesus is a prophet in Islamic teaching. By worshipping Jesus as the son of God, Christians are, it could be argued, committing a blasphemy. ... There are about 1.2 [million] Christians in Pakistan, out of a population of 120 [million]. Many of them are of low caste, doing menial jobs. Some have suffered for their beliefs. Tahir Iqbal, a mechanic in the air force who converted to Christianity and was charged with blasphemy, mysteriously died in prison while awaiting trial. Manzoor Masih was accused of blasphemy, given bail and shot dead in the street.... Human-rights watchers say there is often sectarian and political rivalry, a dispute over property or competition for jobs. (7 May 1994)
Article 23: Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
Comments. 1. Women are not free to choose their work under Islamic law. Certain jobs are forbidden to them, even in so-called liberal Muslim countries. Orthodox Islam forbids women from working outside the home (see chap. 14).
2. Non-Muslims are not free to choose their work in Muslim countries or, rather, certain posts are not permitted them. A recent example from Saudi Arabia makes the point. A group of Muslims working in a company owned by a Muslim were shocked when the Muslim owner appointed a new manager, who was Christian. The Muslims demanded a religious ruling asking whether it was permissible in Islam to have a Christian in authority over them. Sheikh Mannaa K. al-Qubtan at the Islamic Law College of Riyadh declared that it was intolerable under Islamic law that a non-Muslim should wield authority over Muslims. He pointed to two verses from the Koran to back up his argument: “Allah will not give the disbelievers triumph over the believers” (sura 4.141).
“Force and power belong to God, and to His Prophet, and to believers” (sura 63.8).
Article 26 deals with the right of education.
Comment. Again, certain fields of learning are denied to women (see chap. 14) It is clear that Islamic militants are quite aware of the incompatibility of Islam and the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights, for these militants met in Paris in 1981 to draw up an Islamic Declaration of Human Rights that left out all freedoms that contradicted Islamic law. Even more worrisome is the fact that under pressure from Muslim countries in November 1981, the United Nations Declaration on the elimination of religious discrimination was revised, and references to the right “to adopt” (Article 18, preceding) and therefore, to “change” one’s religion were deleted, and only the right “to have” a religion was retained [FI, Spring 1984, p. 22].
Democracy and Islam
Western ideas of individualism, liberalism, constitutionalism, human rights, equality, liberty, the rule of law, democracy, free markets, the separation of church and state often have little resonance in Islamic, Confucian, Japanese, Hindu, Buddhist or Orthodox cultures.
Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations?364
The values and principles of democracy are defined and enshrined in the American Constitution, and both the British (1688) and American Bill of Rights (proposed: 1789; ratified: 1791).
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
One of the fundamental principles of democracy is the separation of church and state (Amendment 1 to the American Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”). We have seen that in Islam there is no such separation, instead, we have what Thomas Paine calls the adulterous connection of church and state. Why is this separation of church and state so essential? If Muslims are sincere in espousing the cause of democracy in their own countries, then they must learn the profound reasons underlying the adoption of this separation. They must then decide whether these underlying principles are at all compatible with Islam, or whether they entail too many compromises with the orthodox tenets of their creed. This is not the time for moral, intellectual, and doctrinal evasiveness.
1. The idea of a separation of church and state has been formulated by many Western philosophers: Locke, Spinoza, and the “philosophers” of the Enlightenment. In his A Letter concerning Toleration, Locke gives three reasons for adopting this principle:
First, because the care of souls is not committed to the civil magistrate [i.e., the state], any more than to other men. It is not committed unto him, I say, by God; because it appears not that God has ever given any such authority to one man over another as to compel any one to his religion. Nor can any such power be vested in the magistrate [state] by the consent of the people, because no man can so far abandon the care of his own salvation as blindly to leave to the choice of any other, whether prince or subject, to prescribe to him what faith or worship he shall embrace. For no man can, if he would, conform his faith to the dictates of another. All the life and power of true religion consists in the inward and full persuasion of the mind; and faith is not faith without believing....
In the second place, the care of souls cannot belong to the civil magistrate, because his power consists only in outward force: but true and saving religion consists in the inward persuasion of the mind, without which nothing can be acceptable to God. And such is the nature of the understanding, that it cannot be compelled to the belief of anything by outward force.... It may indeed be alleged that the magistrate may make use of arguments.... But it is one thing to persuade, another to command; one thing to press with arguments, another with penalties.... The magistrate’s power extends not to the establishing of any articles of faith, or forms of worship, by the force of his laws.
Third ... there being but one truth, one way to heaven, what hope is there that more men would be led into it, if they had no rule but the religion of the court and were put under the necessity to quit the light of their own reason, to oppose the dictates of their own consciences, and blindly to resign themselves up to the will of their governors and to the religion which either ignorance, ambition, or superstition had chanced to establish in the countries where they were bom? In the variety and contradiction of opinions in religion, wherein the princes of the world are as much divided as in their secular interests, the narrow way would be much straightened; one country alone would be in the right, and all the rest of the world put under an obligation of following their princes in the ways that lead to destruction.
In other words, it is not the business of the state to interfere with the freedom of conscience and thought of its citizens. The state cannot make people religious by force; at best, it may enforce outward observance, but at the cost of sincerity of belief. Locke’s third point—a point also made by Kant—is that by mandating belief in one religion, one is cutting oneself and an entire age or generation off from further enlightenment and progress. As Kant366 put it: “To unite in a permanent religious institution which is not to be subject to doubt before the public—that is absolutely forbidden.” That is to abdicate reason, renounce enlightenment, and trample on the rights of mankind. Locke further argues that we must get away from the notion that we are “born Muslims” or “born Christians” and that we cannot do anything about it. We should be free to enter or leave any particular creed, otherwise there would be no progress, freedom, or reform.
Once the principle of the separation of church and state is admitted, a free discussion of religion should follow without fear of torture. However, this is precisely what theocratic governments or religious autocrats fear—freethought. As Paine367 put it,
The adulterous connection of church and state, wherever it has taken place, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish [Muslim], has so effectually prohibited by pains and penalties every discussion upon established creeds, and upon first principles of religion, that until the system of government should be changed, those subjects could not be brought fairly and openly before the world; but that whenever this should be done, a revolution in the system of religion would follow. Human inventions and priestcraft would be detected; and man would return to the pure, unmixed and unadulterated belief of one God, and no more.
Following the example set by Locke, the Founding Fathers of the American Constitutional Convention, especially Madison, defended religious freedom by adopting the Bill of Rights, which, of course, includes the separation of state and church. It has played an important role in safeguarding the rights of religious minorities, dissenters, and heretics who hitherto had suffered persecution, intolerance, disenfranchisement, and discrimination.
In his “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments” of 1785, Madison368 wrote:
The Religion ... of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. The same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians in exclusion of all other Sects. Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and to observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us.
Madison’s greatness can be seen in his generous attitude toward nonbelievers—even the great Locke was intolerant of atheists. Madison’s words written at the occasion of the Virginia Ratification Convention of 1788 are even more relevant in this age of multifaith and multi-ethnic societies:
Is a bill of rights security for religion.... If there were a majority of one sect, a bill of rights would be a poor protection for liberty. Happily for the states, they enjoy the utmost freedom of religion. This freedom arises from the multiplicity of sects, which pervades America, and which is the best and only security for religious liberty in any society. For where there is such a variety of sects, there cannot be a majority of any one sect to oppress and persecute the rest. ... There is not a shadow of right in the general government to intermeddle with religion. Its least interference with it would be a most flagrant usurpation. I can appeal to my uniform conduct on this subject, that I have warmly supported religious freedom.369
What the separation of church and state means in modern terms was clearly explained by Court Justice Hugo Black in the 1947 Everson ruling:
The “establishment of religion” clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect “a wall of separation between Church and State.”370
AUTHORITARIANISM, DEMOCRACY, AND ISLAM
As soon as you have an established religious institution that is beyond doubt, then, as Kant and Paine (quoted earlier) showed, you have tyranny, thought police, and an absence of the critical sense that hinders intellectual and moral progress. In the Islamic theocracy, God is the absolute ruler whose words must be obeyed absolutely, without discussion, without doubt, without questions; we cannot plea bargain with God, nor can we override God’s veto. The Islamic God is not a democrat; we cannot get rid of Him as we can a human representative elected by the people in a representative democracy. If power corrupts, then absolute power corrupts absolutely.
While one historian of religion,371 writing in 1942, finds disturbing the fact that the career of Muhammad the Prophet presents “certain analogies to that of a nationalist leader nearer to our own day,” so many others in the West find this very absoluteness, self-confidence, and authoritarianism of Islam appealing. For example, in a remarkable passage from a book written in about 1910, J. M. Kennedy372 first deplores the quietism of the Buddhists and the theosophists, castigates the Jews for being too soft, and then accuses Christianity of “inoculating as much of the world as it can reach with the degenerate principles of humanitarianism, let us be thankful that there are many millions of Moslems to show us a religion which is not afraid to acknowledge the manly virtues of war, courage, strength, and daring—a religion which does not seek new followers by means of cunning dialectics, but which boldly makes converts with the sword.”
In recent years, Western apologists of Islam have also argued for “principled autocracy,” as exemplified by Franco in Spain. In terms similar to Kennedy’s, Martin Lings shows his essential contempt for democracy and his advocacy for a kind of Islamic theocracy in such works as The Eleventh Hour: the Spiritual Crisis of the Modern World in the Light of Tradition and Prophecy (1987). [See New Humanist, vol. 109, no. 2, pp. 10-12.]
Indeed autocracy and Islam are far more natural bedfellows than Islam and democracy. Democracy depends on freedom of thought and free discussion, whereas Islamic law explicitly forbids the discussions of decisions arrived at by the infallible consensus of the ulama. The whole notion of infallibility, whether of a “book” or a group of people, is profoundly undemocratic and unscientific. Democracy functions by critical discussion, by rational thought, by listening to another point of view, by compromise, by changing one’s mind, by tentative proposals that are submitted to criticism, and by the testing of theories by trying to refute them. Islamic law is not legislated but divinely revealed and infallible, and, as T. H. Huxley noted (see motto to chapter 5), the notion of infallibility in all shapes, lay or clerical, has done endless mischief and has been responsible for bigotry, cruelty, and superstition.
Why Islam Is Incompatible with Democracy and Human Rights
1. Islamic law tries to legislate every single aspect of an individual’s life. The individual is not at liberty to think or decide for himself; he has but to accept God’s rulings as infallibly interpreted by the doctors of law. The fact is we do not have, nor can we have, such a complete ethical code existing in a liberal democracy; we do not and cannot have an all-embracing, all-inclusive scale of values.
2. The measure of any culture’s level of democracy is the rights and position it accords to its women and its minorities. Islamic law denies the rights of women and non-Muslim religious minorities. Pagans or nonbelievers are shown no tolerance : for them it is death or conversion. Jews and Christians are treated as second-class citizens. Because Islamic doctrine holds that Muhammad is the last of the true prophets and Islam is the final and most complete word of God, Muslim “sects” such as the Ahmadis are persecuted, harassed, and physically attacked.
Muslims have yet to appreciate that democracy is not merely “majority rule”: the tyranny of the majority must be guarded against, and every democratic society must be wary of imposing “its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them.”
As I discuss elsewhere both the cases of women and non-Muslims under Islam, I shall only summarize their legal status here.
Women are considered inferior to men, and they have fewer rights and duties from the religious point of view. In regard to blood money, evidence, and inheritance, a woman is counted as half a man; in marriage and divorce her position is less advantageous than that of the man; her husband may even beat her, in certain cases.373
Here is Schacht’s summary of the legal position of non-Muslims:
The basis of the Islamic attitude toward unbelievers is the law of war; they must be either converted or subjugated or killed (excepting women, children, and slaves); the third alternative, in general, occurs only if the first two are refused. As an exception, the Arab pagans are given the choice only between conversion to Islam or death. Apart from this, prisoners of war are either made slaves or killed or left alive as free dhimmis or exchanged for Muslim prisoners of war.
Under a treaty of surrender, the non-Muslim is given protection and called a dhimmi.
This treaty necessarily provides for the surrender of the non-Muslims with all duties deriving from it, in particular the payment of tribute, i.e. the fixed polltax (jizya) and the land tax (kharaj).... The non-Muslims must wear distinctive clothing and must mark their houses, which must not be built higher than those of the Muslims, by distinctive signs; they must not ride horses or bear arms, and they must yield the way to Muslims; they must not scandalize the Muslims by openly performing their worship or their distinctive customs, such as drinking wine; they must not build new churches, synagogues, and hermitages; they must pay the poll-tax under humiliating conditions. It goes without saying that they are excluded from the specifically Muslim privileges.
The dhimmi cannot be a witness against a Muslim, he cannot be the guardian of his child who is a Muslim,374
In the U.S. Constitution, the Fourteenth Amendment says: “no State shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Originally intended to end discrimination against black Americans, it was later extended to provide protection against discrimination on criteria other than race, and many minorities felt protected for the first time.
3. Islam continually manifests hostility towards human reason, rationality, and critical discussion without which democracy and scientific and moral progress are not possible.
Like Judaism and Christianity, Islam condemns the rationalistic attitude. There are many traditions according to which Muhammad emphasized his refusal to be questioned by pointing to earlier examples of communities destroyed in consequence of their disputations. Here tradition has several things in view. Theological speculations are especially referred to in the following hadith: “People will not cease scrutinizing, till they shall say: Here is Allah, the creator of all things, but who has created Him.” [Wensinck (1) p. 53-54]
4. The notion of an individual—a moral person who is capable of making rational decisions and accepting moral responsibility for his free acts—is lacking in Islam. Ethics is reduced to obeying orders. Of course, there is the notion of an individual who has legal obligations, but not in the sense of an individual who may freely set the goals and content of his life, of the individual who may decide what meaning he wants to give to his life. Under Islam, God and the Holy law set limits on the possible agenda of your life.
It is worth emphasizing that the American Bill of Rights is essential for safeguarding the civil and political rights of an individual against the government. As Jefferson put it: “A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.” Individuals have rights that no mythical or mystical collective goal or will can justifiably deny. To quote Von Hayek:375 “Individual freedom cannot be reconciled with the supremacy of one single purpose to which the whole society must be entirely and permanently subordinated.” The First Ten Amendments and the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution limit the power of the governments: they protect individuals from unfair actions by the government; they protect individuals’ rights of freedom of religion, speech, press, petition, and peaceful assembly, and the rights of persons accused of crimes against state abuses. They prevent a state from depriving anyone of civil liberties.
Liberal democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom and attaches all possible value to each man or woman. Individualism is not a recognizable feature of Islam; instead, the collective will of the Muslim people is constantly emphasized. There is certainly no notion of individual rights, which only developed in the West, especially during the eighteenth century. The constant injunction to obey the Caliph, who is God’s Shadow on Earth, is hardly inducive to creating a rights-based individualist philosophy. The hostility to individual rights is manifest in this excerpt from a recent Muslim thinker A. K. Brohi,376 a former Minister of Law and Religious Affairs in Pakistan who has written on human rights from an Islamic perspective.
Human duties and rights have been vigorously defined and their orderly enforcement is the duty of the whole of organized communities and the task is specifically entrusted to the law enforcement organs of the state. The individual if necessary has to be sacrificed in order that the life of the organism be saved. Collectivity has a special sanctity attached to it in Islam.
[In Islam] there are no “humar. rights” or “freedoms” admissible to man in the sense in which modern man’s thought, belief and practice understand them: in essence, the believer owes obligation or duties to God if only because he is called upon to obey the Divine Law and such Human rights as he is made to acknowledge seem to stem from his primary duty to obey God.
The totalitarian nature of this philosophy is evident and further underlined by the line, “By accepting to live in Bondage to this Divine Law, man learns to be free,” which reminds one frighteningly of Orwell’s “Freedom is Slavery.”
Another Muslim thinker wrote in 1979377:
The Western liberal emphasis upon freedom from restraint is alien to Islam. ... Personal freedom [in Islam] lies in surrendering to the Divine Will.... It cannot be realized through liberation from external sources of restraint ... individual freedom ends where the freedom of the community begins. ... Human rights exist only in relation to human obligations.... Those individuals who do not accept these obligations have no rights.... Much of Muslim theology tends toward a totalitarian voluntarism.
Here, at least, the author admits the totalitarian nature of Islam.
5. The notion of the infallibility of a group and a “book” is an impediment to moral, political, and scientific progress.
6. A Muslim does not have the right to change his religion. Apostasy is punishable by death.
7. Freedom of thought in various forms and guises is discouraged; any innovation is likely to be branded “blasphemy,” which is punishable by death. Perhaps one of the greatest obstacles in Islam to progress toward a liberal democracy is its emphasis that it is the final word of God, the ultimate code of conduct: Islam never allows the possibility of alternatives. By contrast, in a liberal democracy, what is meant by the freedom of thought, speech, and press is the right to argue, the freedom to present another side of an argument, anyone may present an alternative philosophy, the majority does not have the right to prevent a minority from expressing its dissent, criticism, or difference.
Human Rights
The idea that there is good reason for ascribing rights to human beings simply because they are human beings is something that developed in Western civilization. Some would trace the idea back to Plato and Aristotle, others to, at least, the Stoics, who maintained that there was a natural law—distinct from the laws of Athens or Rome—a law binding upon all men in such a manner that “whoever is disobedient is fleeing from himself and denying his human nature” (quoted in Melden 1970, p. 1). Some philosophers have tried to ground these rights in human nature or the nature of man; while others, not happy with talk of human nature, since what we sometimes take to be human nature turns out to be a particularity of one specific culture or civilization, prefer to talk of human rights in consequentialist terms. However, modern discussions of human rights by Western philosophers nowhere appeal to God or Divine Will, but only to human reason, rational arguments, and critical thought.
Most philosophers would agree that the notion of human rights involves the accompanying ideas of self-respect, moral dignity, free agency, moral choice, personhood, and the right to equal concern and respect. Since Locke’s further development of the idea of human rights in the seventeenth century, modern advocates claim at least three things:
(1) that these rights are fundamental in the sense that without them there could not be any of the specific rights that are grounded in the specific social circumstances in which individuals live, (2) that just these rights cannot be relinquished, transferred, or forfeited (i.e., they cannot be alienated from them by anything that they or anyone else may do), since (3) they are rights that human beings have simply because they are human beings, and quite independently of their varying social circumstances and degrees of merit.378
In other words, they are universal, and not culturally bound or relative.
Under Islam, nothing like these ideas has ever developed. Human beings have duties, duties toward God; only God has rights. Under Islam, there is no such thing as “the equal right of all men to be free.” Nowhere in modern Muslim discussions is there a clear account of how “human rights” can be derived from “human duties” as described in the sharia.
LEWIS ON “ISLAM AND LIBERAL DEMOCRACY”
In an important article, “Islam and Liberal Democracy,”379 Bernard Lewis explains very well why liberal democracy never developed in Islam. Like many scholars of Islam, Lewis deplores the use of the term “Islamic Fundamentalist” as being inappropriate. I agree. I have already pointed out that, unlike Protestants, who have moved away from the literal interpretation of the Bible, Muslims—all Muslims—still take the Koran literally. Hence, in my view, there is no difference between Islam and Islamic fundamentalism. Islam is deeply embedded in every Muslim society, and “fundamentalism” is simply the excess of this culture.
Lewis himself tells us that the Islamic fundamentalists intend “to govern by Islamic rules if they gain power.” The Islamic fundamentalists will apply Islam—the Islam of Islamic law, and all that it entails. Lewis also tells us that “their creed and political program are not compatible with liberal democracy.” I also agree. But now we see immediately why Lewis and Islamic apologists, in fact, find this term, “Islamic fundamentalist,” so convenient, while at the same time deploring it. It is an extremely useful and face-saving device for those unable to confront the fact that Islam itself, and not just something we call “Islamic fundamentalism,” is incompatible with democracy. To repeat, Lewis himself says the Islamic fundamentalists will apply “Islamic rules.” Now if their creed is incompatible with democracy, then these “Islamic rules” themselves must be incompatible with democracy. Thus, the term “Islamic fundamentalist” enables apologists to set up a specious distinction, a distinction without any justification.
The curious fact is that Lewis himself shows in his article why, by its very nature, Islam is incompatible with liberal democracy. The West developed certain characteristic institutions that were essential for the emergence of democracy. One such institution was the council or representative assembly, whose effective functioning was made possible by the principle embodied in Roman law, that of the legal person—a corporate entity that for legal purposes is treated as an individual, able to buy and sell, enter into contracts, appear as a defendant, etc. There was no Islamic equivalent of the Roman senate or assembly or parliament. Islam simply lacked the legal recognition of corporate persons. As Schacht put it, “Islam does not recognize juristic persons; not even the public treasury is con strued as an institution. ”380
One of the major functions of these Western assemblies was legislative activity, but there was no legislative function in the Islamic state, and thus no need for legislative institutions. The Islamic state was a theocracy, in the literal sense of a polity ruled by God. For pious Muslims, legitimate authority comes from God alone, and the ruler derives his power from God and the holy law, and not from the people. Rulers were merely applying or interpreting God’s law as revealed to Muhammad. Lacking legislative bodies, Islam did not develop any principle of representation, any procedure for choosing representatives, any definition of the franchise, or any electoral system. Therefore it is not surprising, concludes Lewis, if the history of the Islamic states is “one of almost unrelieved autocracy. The Muslim subject owed obedience to a legitimate Muslim ruler as a religious duty. That is to say, disobedience was a sin as well as a crime.”
Having clearly shown that Islam is incompatible with liberal democracy, Lewis then tries to show that there might, after all, be elements in the Islamic tradition that are not hostile to democracy. He leans particularly heavily on the the elective and contractual element in the Islamic institution of the caliphate. Lewis himself admits that the Islamic caliphate was an “autocracy,” but he also insists that it was not “despotism.”
Lewis waxes lyrical about the caliph, insisting that the relationship between the caliph and his subjects is contractual: “The bay’a [denoting the ceremony at the inauguration of a new caliph] was thus conceived as a contract by which the subjects undertook to obey and the Caliph in return undertook to perform certain duties specified by the jurists. If a Caliph failed in those duties—and Islamic history shows that this was by no means a purely theoretical point—he could, subject to certain conditions, be removed from office.”
First, an autocracy is not a democracy. The distinction between autocracy and despotism is a dangerous and bogus one, often used in the past to legitimize undemocratic rule; indeed T. W. Arnold calls the power of the caliph “despotic” (see next paragraph). Second, as it was originally elaborated, the orthodox doctrine emphasized two essential characteristics of the caliph: that he must be of the tribe of the Kuraish, and that he must receive unhesitating obedience, for anyone who rebels against the caliph rebels against God. This duty of obedience to the established authorities is constantly emphasized in the Koran, e.g., sura 4.59: “O you who believe! Obey God, and obey the messenger and those of you who are in authority.” (See also sura 4.83.)
As T. W. Arnold381 says, “This claim on obedience to the despotic [my emphasis] power of the Khalifa as a religious duty was impressed upon the faithful by the designations that were applied to him from an early date—Khalifa of God, and Shadow of God upon earth.” Neither of these “essential characteristics is democratic.” Third, “the elective” characteristic of the institution was purely “theoretical,” for the office, in fact, became hereditary in the families of the Ummayad and the Abbasid. From the reign of Mu‘awiya (661-680) almost every caliph had nominated his successor. As Arnold says, “the fiction of election was preserved in the practice of bai’a (or bay’a).” Finally the functions of the caliph clearly emphasize the undemocratic nature of the office. Al-Mawardi (d. 1058) and Ibn Khaldun define these functions thus: the defense of the religion and the application of the divinely inspired law or sharia, the sorting out of legal disputes, appointment of officials, various administrative duties, the waging of holy war or jihad against those who refuse to accept Islam or submit to Muslim rule. According to Ibn Khaldun, the caliph must belong to the tribe of Kuraish and be of the male sex: again, not democratic principles. Much has also been made of the Islamic principle of “consultation.” But Lewis dismisses this fairly briskly: “This principle has never been institutionalized, nor even formulated in the treatises of the holy law, though naturally rulers have from time to time consulted with their senior officials, more particularly in Ottoman times.”
Lewis lays a great store in Islamic pluralism and tolerance. But as I show in the next chapter, there never was an “inter-faith utopia” (to use Lewis’s own phrase). Lewis also says: “Sectarian strife and religious persecution are not unknown in Islamic history, but they are rare and atypical.” And yet earlier in the same article, Lewis himself tells us: “But Islamic fundamentalism is just one stream among many. In the fourteen centuries that have passed since the mission of the Prophet, there have been several such movements—fanatical, intolerant, aggressive, and violent.” If Lewis is not formally contradicting himself, he is certainly seen to be wanting it both ways—“several such movements” as opposed to “rare and atypical.”
Conclusion
The truth of the matter is that Islam will never achieve democracy and human rights if it insists on the application of the sharia and as long as there is no separation of church and state. But as Muir put it: “A reformed faith that should question the divine authority on which they [the institutions of Islam] rest, or attempt by rationalistic selection or abatement to effect a change, would be Islam no longer.”
Many Islamic reformers wanting to adopt Western institutions have pretended to find Islamic antecedents for them in order to make these foreign institutions palatable to their own people. But this strategy has led to much intellectual dishonesty and has left the problem where it was—“the real Islam treats women as equals,” “the real Islam is democratic,” etc. The real problem—whether the sharia is any longer acceptable—has been left untouched.
Nor is it necessary to invent Islamic antecedents to accept the principles of democracy, human rights, the separation of church and state. India adopted democracy in 1947, and it has lasted to this day; and as far as I am aware, no one wasted time looking through the copious holy literature to justify the decision to adopt a parliamentary system upon independence. The only country in the Islamic world that can be said to be a democracy is Turkey; and, significantly, it is the only Muslim country that has formally adopted the separation of religion and state as law. Islam has been removed from the Turkish constitution, and the sharia is no longer a part of the law of the country.
I propose to examine Ann Elizabeth Mayer—Islam and Human Rights. This is a very important book on Islam, and even though I have one fundamental reservation about her book—to which I shall refer later—I find her analysis excellent and very persuasive. Ms. Mayer shows with the utmost clarity how in various Islamic human rights schemes, “distinctive Islamic [my emphasis] criteria” have been used to cut back on the freedoms guaranteed in international law, how for many Muslims the international guarantees exceed the limits of rights and freedoms permitted in Islam.
Ms. Mayer also shows how the official Islamization programs in, especially, the Sudan, Pakistan, and Iran, have led to serious violations of the human rights of women, non-Muslims, the Bahai, the Ahmadis, and other religious minorities. In these countries Islamization “did much to eliminate due process, to erode the independence of the judiciary, to place legal proceedings under the control of political leaders, and to convert courts into instruments of repression and intimidation. Thus, in all three countries Islamization became associated with a decline in the quality of the administration of justice. ”382
Ms. Mayer is refreshingly free of inhibitions when attacking the various Islamic human rights schemes from the perspective of international human rights, which she takes to be universally valid: “The way governments of countries treat those they govern should not be ruled off-limits to critical scholarly inquiry, and judging Islamic schemes of human rights by the standards of the international human rights norms that they seek to replace is entirely appropriate.”383
Rejecting cultural relativism (without giving any philosophical arguments), Ms. Mayer points out that, as a matter of empirical fact, there are many Muslims throughout the world who have and are risking their lives to “stand up for the same human rights principles that cultural relativists would maintain are not suited for application in the Muslim world because of its dissimilar culture. Cultural relativists may fail to perceive how rapid urbanization, industrialization, and factors like the growing power of the state are creating awareness of the need for human rights guarantees in non-Western cultures.” (While writing this chapter, I heard the news of the murder of Youcef Fathallah, president of the Algerian League for Human Rights, by Islamicists [Le Monde, 21 June 1994].)
Ms. Mayer compares the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) of 1948 with the 1981 Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights (UIDHR). The latter was prepared by several Muslim countries under the auspices of the Islamic Council, a private, London-based organization affiliated with the Muslim World League, an international, nongovernmental organization “that tends to represent the interests and views of conservative Muslims.”
Other Islamic human rights schemes examined are the Azhar Draft Constitution, prepared by the Islamic Research Academy of Cairo, which is affiliated with Al-Azhar University, “the most internationally prestigious institution of higher education in Sunni Islam, and a center of conservative Islamic thought,” the 1979 Iranian Constitution, and the works of Muslim thinkers such as Mawdudi and Tabandeh (Mayer 1991, p. 27). Her conclusion is that “Islam is viewed in these schemes as a device for restricting individual freedoms and keeping the individual in a subordinate place vis-a-vis the government and society.”384
Ms. Mayer shows how, using the sharia as their justification, Muslim conservatives have refused to recognize women as full, equal human beings who deserve the same rights and freedoms as men. Women under these Islamic schemes are expected to marry, obey their husbands, bring up their children, stay at home, and stay out of public life altogether. They are not permitted to develop as individuals, acquire an education, or get jobs. These Islamic schemes provide no real protection for the rights of religious minorities. “In fact, to the extent that they deal with the question of the rights of religious minorities, they seem to endorse premodern sharia rules that call for non-Muslims to be relegated to an inferior status if they qualify as members of the ahl al-kitab [the People of the Book] and for them to be treated as nonpersons if they do not qualify for such inclusion.”385.
These Islamic schemes afford no real protections for freedom of religion:
The failure of a single one of these Islamic human rights schemes to take a position against the application of the sharia death penalty for apostasy means that the authors of these schemes have neglected to confront and resolve the main issues involved in harmonizing international human rights and sharia standards.... The authors’ unwillingness to repudiate the rule that a person should be executed over a question of religious belief reveals the enormous gap that exists between their mentalities and the modem philosophy of human rights.386
ONE FUNDAMENTAL OBJECTION TO MS. MAYER‘S ANALYSIS
Like practically every single book and article published since February 1989, especially for the nonspecialists reader, Ms. Mayer’s book is at pains to point out (1) that “Islam” is not monolithic, that there is no such thing as the Islamic tradition, or just “one correct Islam,” or one correct interpretation; (2) that, in the Islamic human rights schemes examined and found wanting in terms of International norms, it is not Islam that is at fault, it is, at most, one particular interpretation of it by traditionalists or Muslim conservatives; (3) that there is no such thing as the sharia, i.e., Islamic law did not freeze at some arbitrary point in the past; and (4) that, deep down, Islam may not be hostile to rights and democracy, after all.
The above four points are not really argued for—that is not the purpose of her book. She explicitly states that the “core doctrines of Islam” are not being subjected to critical assessment.
However, a close reading of Ms. Mayer’s book reveals that after all she is only paying lip service, for ecumenical harmony, to the notion that there is no such thing as “Islam” about which we can make valid generalizations. In reality, Ms. Mayer is as prone to sweeping negative statements and huge unflattering generalizations about “Islam” as any writer who does believe that there are clearly identifiable Islamic doctrines, which are independent of any capricious or dubious interpretations of the Koran or the hadith, and, furthermore, that these recognizable doctrines are inimical to human rights and their development.
Here are some such generalizations—all of them true, in my view—about Islam, Islamic civilization, Islamic tradition, Islamic orthodoxy, and Islamic law that contradict Ms. Mayer’s pious hopes set forth in the preceding points.
Quote 1. “As we have seen, the individualism characteristic of Western civilisation was a fundamental ingredient in the development of human rights concepts. Individualism, however, is not an established feature of Muslim societies or of Islamic culture, nor can one find a historical example of an Islamic school of thought that celebrated individualism as a virtue. Islamic civilisation did not create an intellectual climate that was conducive to according priority to the protection of individual rights and freedoms.”387
We might point out that although Ms. Mayer accuses many Westerners of taking Islam as a monolithic system, she herself is quite happy to generalize in such a manner both about Islam and the West. Is there such a thing as “the West”?
Quote 2. “Orthodox theologians in Sunni Islam were generally suspicious of human reason, fearing that it would lead Muslims to stray from the truth of Revelation. The prevailing view in the Sunni world... has been that because of their divine inspiration, sharia laws supercede reason.... Given the dominance of this mainstream Islamic view, it naturally became difficult to realize an Islamic version of the Age of Reason.”388
Quote 3. “The analysis will show how Islamic rights schemes express and confirm the premodern values and priorities that have predominated in orthodox Islamic thought for more than a millennium.”389
Quote 4. “In such a scheme any challenges that might be made to Islamic law on the grounds that it denies basic rights guaranteed under constitutions or international law are ruled out ab initio; human reason is deemed inadequate to criticise what are treated as divine edicts. This affirms the traditional orthodox view, that the tenets of the sharia are perfect and just, because they represent the will of the Creator, being derived from divinely inspired sources.”390
Quote 5. “One notes that Brohi is sometimes speaking of subordination to God and Islamic law, which is clearly required in the Islamic tradition.”391
Quote 6. “Since there was no human rights tradition in Islamic civilisation...” 392
Quote 7. “Although in Islamic law one can discern elements that in some ways anticipate modern notions of equality, one does not find any counterpart of the principle of equal protection under the law.”393
Quote 8. “But Islamic clerics and Islamic institutions have by and large manifested strong opposition to allowing women to escape from their cloistered, subordinate, domestic roles.”394
Occasionally, Ms. Mayer’s desperate attempts to exonerate Islam lead her to bad arguments and contradictions. In her Preface, she writes: “Even without studying the question of how Islam relates to human rights issues, my experience in work on behalf of the cause of human rights would have sufficed to convince me that Islam is not the cause of the human rights problems endemic to the Middle East. Human rights abuses are every bit as prevalent and just as severe in countries where Islamic law is in abeyance or consciously violated as in countries where it is, at least officially, the legal norm.”
Her whole book shows that “distinctive Islamic criteria have been used to cut back on the freedoms guaranteed in international law” (p. 2); she herself shows that, at certain stages of Islamic history, one Islamic doctrine prevailed that hindered the development of human rights (quotes 2 and 4, preceding).
To argue in the above way is as illogical as arguing that because human rights were violated in pre-1989 Soviet Russia, where Communism was the state philosophy, and are equally violated in today’s—1994—Ukraine, where Communism is no longer the state philosophy, then the human rights violations in the former Soviet Union had nothing to do with the philosophy of Soviet Communism.
She rejects the view that “Islamic culture froze in its premodern formulation” (p. 12), and yet she herself tells us (see earlier quote 3) that certain premodern values have predominated for more than a millennium. I have already quoted Schacht and Hurgronje on the way Islamic law did become fixed and immutable. I shall quote Bousquet to the same effect:
On the one hand, it is certain that the system of Fiqh [i.e., Science of Islamic Law] is no longer subceptible to adaptation; it has been frozen for a long time, for centuries, the same handbooks have served to teach the principles of the Will of God, such as was established by the Doctors of the sacred books; this interpretation is defintive and immutable.”395
There are recognizable sharia laws, not dependent on perverse or illegitimate readings of the Koran and the sunna, concerning women, non-Muslims, and religious freedom, which no amount of interpretation or re-interpretation is going to make palatable to someone committed to the principles of international human rights. On women, for example, we may quote a writer referred to by Ms. Mayer in a footnote, Ghassan Ascha: “Islam is not the sole factor in the repression of the Muslim woman, but it constitutes without any doubt a fundamental cause, and remains a major obstacle to the evolution of this situation.” Here there is no equivocation, no evasive attempts to exonerate Islam.
Even, if we concede that Muslim conservatives have interpreted the sharia in their own way, what gives us the right to say that their interpretation is the inauthentic one and that of the liberal Muslims, authentic? Who is going to decide what is authentic Islam? For many scholars, the sharia remains the epitome of Islamic civilization. Finally, the sharia may be open to interpretation, but it is not infinitely elastic either.396
Happily, Ms. Mayer’s commendable efforts not to offend Muslim sensibilities, though leading her into contradictory statements, have not prevented her from showing, in thorough detail, how Islamic schemes of human rights are woefully inadequate for the protection of international human rights.
Conclusion
The major obstacle in Islam to any move toward international human rights is God, or to put it more precisely, in the words of Hurgronje,397 it is the reverence for the sources, the Koran and the Sunna. In the Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights (UIDHR), we are told that it is Divine Revelation that has given “the legal and moral framework within which to establish and regulate human institutions and relationships.” The authors of the UIDHR belittle human reason, which is deemed to be an inadequate guide in the affairs of mankind, and they insist that the “teachings of Islam represent the quintessence of Divine guidance in its final and perfect form.”
Therefore, as Ms. Mayer points out, it is not surprising that any challenges to Islamic law are ruled out a priori by the authors of the UIDHR. Hence the sharia remains impregnable.
To look for Islamic antecedents for the international human rights principles may seem necessary to make the latter acceptable to a deeply conservative civilization and tradition, but it is ultimately a waste of time, an exercise in mental gymnastics. In my view, it is a fundamental mistake to look for Islamic antecedents for the international human rights principles, not simply because there are no such antecedents, but because to argue in such a way is to play into the hands of the ulama, the obscurantist religious class. It is to fight on their own terrain. For every text adduced by the friends of democracy to show that there is compatibility between Islam and human rights, the ulama will produce half a dozen others showing the contrary. If the compatibilitists do not find any antecedents, will they then abandon these principles? The principles of human rights are autonomous, universal, and do not depend on any appeal to divine authority. These principles are rational and can be argued for without recourse to supernatural knowledge. In fact, the compatibilitists accepted the validity of the principles prior to their search for their spurious antecedents.
Progress toward liberal democracy with respect for international human rights in the Muslim world will depend on the radical and critical reappraisal of the dogmatic foundations of Islam, rigorous self-criticism that eschews comforting delusions of a glorious past, of a Golden Age of total Muslim victory in all spheres; the separation of religion and state, and the adoption of secularism. But secularism will never be adopted as long as it is seen as a Western “disease.” The Muslim world has to lay aside its unjustified, irrational, and ultimately destructive fear and loathing of the West and come to a just recognition of the West’s true values and to a deep understanding of the philosophical foundations of liberalism and democracy; and what the West has already taught it, and what it can still teach it.
Irrational Fear and Loathing of the West
It is paradoxical that Muslims often wish to point out the influence of Islam in the making of modern Europe, to the Muslim contribution toward the very civilization they profess to despise. The Americans would not have walked on the moon, we are told, if it had not been for the “Arab contributions to the exact sciences.” At the same time, the West is denounced as being shallow, materialistic, decadent, irreligious, and scientific. This scientific materialism is contrasted with the Muslim’s own putative superior spirituality and profundity. (How blind obedience to a book constitutes spirituality is not clear.) Even to talk of the influence of Islam on the West is to betray an inferiority complex, as though only those aspects of Islam that went into the making of the West were worthy of note. And, of course, it reveals the Muslims’ sense of present failure and inadequacy.
As Pryce-Jones put it, “If the Arabs had high scientific achievements to their credit, why did they leave the Europeans exclusively to benefit from them? What kind of a scientific tradition could it have been that apparently stopped dead in its tracks? Do such apologetic sentiments have purposes of self-deception in the face of distressing truth? Is it really the dreadful fate of Arabs not to be the men their fathers were,?”398
Muslims will continue to despise “scientific research and discovery” if they persist in seeing “science” as “unspiritual.” But as Popper399 and others have pointed out, science should not be confounded with technology; science, indeed, is a spiritual activity: “For science is not merely a collection of facts about electricity, etc.; it is one of the most important spiritual movements of our day.” Lewis Wolpert makes the same observation: “Science is one of humankind’s greatest and most beautiful achievements. ”400
It is unfortunate that many Muslim intellectuals have swallowed whole the shallow criticisms of “Orientalism.” Far from being the tool of imperialism, Western scholars gave back to Muslims their culture, that is to say, Western scholarship in its disinterested pursuit of truth and knowledge, revealed to the Muslims themselves aspects of their culture and history that would have been otherwise lost, gave them a deeper understanding of Islamic civilization. It was intellectual inquiry and curiosity that motivated years of study and research—indeed a whole lifetime—among a group of scholars now despised as “Orientalists.”
The story of the apparent burning of the Alexandrian library by the Muslims is a perfect example of why mistrust of Western scholarship is totally misplaced. According to the traditional account, after the conquest of Alexandria in 641, the caliph Umar ordered the great library to be destroyed: “If these writings of the Greeks agree with the book of God, they are useless and need not be preserved; if they disagree, they are pernicious and ought to be destroyed.” The books were then used to heat the furnaces of the numerous bathhouses of the city. Far from being a Western fabrication to blacken Islam’s reputation, this story was a late-twelfth-century Muslim invention, to justify the burning of heretical Ismalian books. In the words of Lewis, “the original sources of the story are Muslim.... Not the creation, but the demolition of the myth was the achievement of European scholarship, which from the eighteenth century to the present day has rejected the story as false and absurd, and thus exonerated the Caliph Umar and the early Muslims from this libel” (New York Review of Books, 2 September 1990).
Polemical denunciation of Western “materialism” also blinds Muslims to the spiritual achievements of the West and denies Muslims access to the rich heritage of Europe that should be the patrimony and cause of pride to all mankind, as much as the rich architectural heritage of Islam, for example, is the cause of human pride and wonder. The music of Mozart and Beethoven, the art of the Renaissance should be as much the object of study in Islamic seats of learning as Islamic philosophy. Secularism should open up the intellectual horizons of Muslims, who, at present, are fed a daily diet of misrepresentation of what Western culture stands for. Far from being a culture of “nihilism” or selfishness, the West is full of humanitarian impulses, from the creation of the Red Cross to Doctors without Borders.
The unwillingness to acknowledge any intellectual debts to the West, and the unwillingness that leads to vain searches for Islamic antecedents for human rights, for example, are absurd in the extreme in view of the different elements that have gone into the making of Islam. I have already cited the influence of talmudic Judaism, Syriac Christianity, and Zoroastrianism. The influence of Greek philosophy and science is also well known. The crescent, the emblem of Islam, was originally the symbol of sovereignty in the city of Byzantium. Arabic script, which was developed at a late date, may well have been invented by Christian missionaries and ultimately derived from the Phoenician alphabet, via Nabatean and Aramaic.
Islamic art and architecture owes an enormous debt to the rich and ancient traditions of the Near East with which the Arabs came into contact after the rapid conquests of the seventh century. As the recognized scholar of Islamic architecture, K. A. C. Creswell401put it rather bluntly, “Arabia, at the rise of Islam, does not appear to have possessed anything worthy of the name of architecture.” Grabar and Ettinghausen also point out that “the conquering Arabs, with few artistic traditions of their own and a limited doctrine on art, penetrated a world which was not only immensely rich in artistic themes and forms yet universal in its vocabulary, but also, at this particular juncture of its history, had charged its forms with unusual intensity.”402
The famous Dome of the Rock (A.D. 691) in Jerusalem, one of the earliest Islamic monuments, is obviously influenced by the centrally planned buildings known as “martyria,” and bears a close relationship to the Christian sanctuaries of the Ascension and the Anastasis. The interior owes a great deal equally to the Christian art of Syria and Palestine, and Byzantine. As for the minaret, Creswell has shown that it was derived architecturally from Syrian church towers.403
Ettinghausen, in a chapter pointedly entitled “Byzantine Art In Islamic Garb,” in his classic work on Arab painting, writes: “during the Umayyad period the two major elements of Arab painting were classical and Iranian; these elements existed side by side and, apart from a deliberate choice of subject matter, showed no Islamic slant. In the subsequent Abbasid period the Iranian [i.e., non-Islamic or pre-Islamic Iran] element became prevalent. (At the end of the 12th century), the classical element again predominates, this time by way of Byzantine inspiration.”404
As for Islamic law itself, here is Schacht on the influences that created it: “Elements originating from Roman and Byzantine law, from the canon law of the Eastern Churches, from talmudic and rabbinic law, and from Sasanian law, infiltrated into the nascent religious law of Islam during its period of incubation, to appear in the doctrines of the [A.D.] second [Muslim]/eighth century.”405
As the Arab philosopher al-Kindi said: “We ought not to be ashamed of applauding the truth, nor appropriating the truth from whatever source it may come, even if it be from remote races and nations alien to us. There is nothing that be-seems the seeker after truth better than truth itself.”406
The great Averroes made the same point:
So if someone else has already enquired into this matter, it is clear that we ought to look at what our predecessor has said to help us in our own undertaking, alike whether that previous investigator was of the same religion as ourselves or not. For in regard to the instrument by which our reasoning is precisely refined it is immaterial to consider, touching its property of refining, whether that instrument was invented by a co-religionist of ours or by one who did not share our faith; the only proviso is that it fulfils the condition of being sound and efficacious.
No civilization is pure; there are no more pure civilizations than there are pure races. Nabokov once said we are all a salad of racial genes; this is even more true of civilizations: civilizations are a salad of cultural genes, different interpenetrating, interinfluencing strands. Most civilizations have not developed in isolation; there has always been an exchange of material goods and ideas. Nor have civilizations remained absolutely static and unchanging in all their aspects. Traditions change and evolve—they do not emerge ready-made, fully formed, out of nowhere. Foreign influences are absorbed and assimilated and transmuted. What we take to be ancient traditions deeply rooted in a national past often turn out to be foreign imports of recent origins—this is particularly true of “national culinary dishes.” Most spices have originated in the East and have traveled westward, though occasionally the other way also; for example, contrary to what many believe, red chilis, now thought to be an essential ingredient in any Indian dish, are not native to India but were introduced there by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century. (The “traditional” British Christmas is not more than a hundred years old.) Conversely what we take to be “alien” turns out to be homegrown. What emerges is still something unique to the absorbing culture. The various strands that went into the making of Islamic civilization, nonetheless, produced an original, distinct culture that had not existed before. As Braudel said, a great civilization can be recognized not only by its refusal to borrow but also by its ability to receive and borrow. Despite the apparent stagnation of the Islamic world and its conservative nature, modem Western ideas have been penetrating Islamic culture in more ways than one cares to admit. The influence of Western literature on Arabic literature, especially since the nineteenth century, is an obvious example—the Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz is known, after all, as the “Arab Balzac.”
Unfortunately, these ideas have failed to reach the majority of the people in Muslim countries. Here intellectuals and national leaders have failed to educate the people in the principles of liberalism and democracy.
At this stage in world history, in this age of globalism, to cut oneself off from cultural influences, even if it were possible, simply because they are seen to be from the West, is childish in the extreme. The works of Beethoven are as much a legacy for the whole of mankind as the works of Ibn Khaldun or the architecture of the Alhambra.
In the past, a simple increase in knowledge has led to a change in culture. In the last century and a half there has been an enormous increase in knowledge, objective knowledge that is of universal validity. This scientific knowledge cannot but have an impact on every single culture on earth. Traditions are not necessarily “good” simply because they are ancient or well-established. As Von Hayek put it, “Follies and abuses are no better for having long been established principles of policy.”407 The British intervened in the affairs of an alien culture and abolished the ancient tradition of suttee, whereby a widow had to throw herself on the funeral pyre of her husband. This must be considered a step forward in the lot of women and the moral progress of mankind.
The preceding section is but a preparation for a plea in favor of secularism, whose Western provenance is not a rational justification for its rejection. As al-Masudi said, “Whatever is good should be recognized, whether it is found in friend or foe.”
IN DEFENSE OF SECULARISM
In the last hundred years more defenses of liberalism have been made in the Muslim world than most people realize. Muhammad Ali (1769-1849), the founder of modem Egypt, is often considered the first secularist in the Arab world. In Turkey there was Prince Sabaheddin (d. 1948), who advocated individualism, federalism, and decentralization. In Egypt, there was the disciple of Mill, Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid (1872-1963), who defended the rights of individuals and argued for the separation of powers, safeguards against the encroachment of the state in the lives of individuals, and the freedom of the press.
However, the most recent impassioned plea for secularism comes from Fouad Zakariya,408 writing in 1989, after the Rushdie affair. Zakariya, an Egyptian philosopher teaching at the University of Kuwait, laments the fact that the principles of Islamic religious dogma have never been critically examined, that there is no single periodical devoted entirely to secular thought in Arabic. Zakariya believes that the values embodied in secularism—rationalism, critical spirit, scientific rigor, intellectual independence—are of universal validity. He believes that there were Muslims in the past who fought for the same values, citing the Mu’tazilites, al-Farabi, Averroes, and Ibn al-Haytham.
Secularism is absolutely necessary, concludes Zakariya, especially for those societies threatened by any kind of authoritarian and medieval way of thinking. Since the Muslim world is still plunged in the Dark Ages, secularism is needed more than ever.