THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VII, Issue # 149, July 13, 2005
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
MUSLIMS, CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY,
& THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE
By Salim Mansur
PROSPECTS FOR ACHIEVING POLITICAL REFORM & ESTABLISHING STABLE CONSTITUTIONAL REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY IN
THE MUSLIM WORLD: TRANSFORMATION OF ISLAMIC CULTURE MUST PRECEDE POLITICAL REFORM &
DEMOCRATIZATION -- ATTITUDES, VALUES, & BELIEFS IN THE MUSLIM WORLD MUST BE MODIFIED IN SUCH MANNER THAT
ISLAM & MUSLIMS CAN & WILL BE RECONCILED WITH THE MODERN AGE, A PRODUCT OF WESTERN CULTURE & CIVILIZATION --
MUSLIMS MUST CHOOSE BETWEEN HUMAN PROGRESS & CIVILIZATION ON THE ONE HAND & BARBARISM, BACKWARDNESS, &
STAGNATION ON THE OTHER
FULL STORY:
The subject of Islamic reform is old, even as it has emerged in recent years as one of urgency. Since the September 11, 2001, Islamist
attacks on the U.S.A., the subject has become even more pressing. It would be more proper, however, to speak about the reform of
Muslims. For whatever is Islam and however Islam is received, understood, practiced, and made the template of cultures and
civilization, it is, at the human level, a reflection of the conduct of Muslims.
The reform of Muslims, as was that of Christians, is neither an event nor an instant in time, but a process deeply frustrating, ugly,
and, at its end, not entirely predictable. This is true of any reform process, but even more so of reform driven by the ideals of a
religion.
It is the human condition to persist, to push on the boulder of reform like Sisyphus, and to strive, despite disappointments and
defeats, to improve upon the existing situation. The Qur'an sets an imperative tone on the need for reform by insisting that it
must come from within people themselves. A well-known Qur'anic verse reads, "Verily God does not change the state of a people
till they change themselves" [1]
The subject of reform (islah) and renewal (tajdid) within Islam is as old as the history of Muslims. There exists a vast number of
Muslim writings and reflections on this matter, and much of the effort behind this cumulative labor of the mind has been driven on
the assumption that reform may be brought about by a better textual understanding of Islam. No matter that such an assumption is
contrary to Qur'anic instruction and that reform of the mind and the heart must precede a better reading of the sacred text.
The concern for reform from the late nineteenth century to the present has been driven, in part, by the objective of reconciling Islam
and Muslims with the requirements of modernity and constitutional democracy, both products of European history and most
compellingly manifest in the United States of America.
THE GROWING CRY FOR REFORM
The six lectures which Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938), the poet-philosopher of India-Pakistan, gave in Madras in the late 1920s,
subsequently published as The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, [2] remains one of the most thoughtful and
provocative attempts by a Muslim to reconcile Islam and the modern world. In the opinion of the late historian Hamilton Gibb
(1895-1971), this attempt reflected an approach almost bordering on heresy. [3] But Iqbal's efforts were not the work of a recluse; he
was deeply involved as a spokesman for Muslims in the politics of undivided India and an active supporter of Muslims across Asia
and Africa in their effort to gain independence from European rule. His efforts were also part of a nineteenth century Muslim
intellectual movement questioning the traditional formulation and representation of Islam as Muslims became increasingly aware of
the gap between the culture of their world and the civilization of Europe.
Iqbal is important because the effort he expended in rethinking Islam exemplifies the modernist approach of Muslims — to name just
a few Muslim modernists, such as Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani (Iranian, 1838-1897), Sayyid Ahmed Khan (Indian, 1817-1898), Muhammad
Abduh (Egyptian, 1845-1905), and Ali Abd ar-Raziq (Egyptian, 1888-1966) — before Iqbal, and those after him, such as Adonis [4]
(Syrian, b. 1930), Ghulam Ahmad Pervez [5] (Indian/Pakistani, b. 1903), Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (Egyptian, b. 1943), Abdolkarim
Soroush (Iranian, b. 1945) and Mohammed Arkoun (Algerian, b. 1928). They contended that closing the gap between Europe and the
Muslim world requires, preeminently, an interpretation of Islam taking into account the philosophical and scientific foundation of the
modern world. The foundational assumption of the modernist approach is that, by demonstrating reason and revelation to be in
harmony, such a reading, understanding, and application of the Qur'an by Muslims to their lives will also be harmonious with
the requirements of the modern world. Hence, to speak about Islam and Modernity [6] as Fazlur Rahman (1919-1988) did, or about
Islam and Democracy [7] as Fatima Mernissi (b. 1940) does, is to suggest that, if the Qur'an is properly read and rightly
understood in keeping with the spirit of the age in which Muslims reside, then Islam may be reconciled with modernity and
constitutional democracy respectively. This is the faith and optimism of the modernist approach; the reality, however, is sobering
about a culture that may well be irreparably broken.
Iqbal anticipated the argument for partitioning India and the making of a Muslim majority state within the subcontinent. He died in
1938, some nine years prior to the formation of Pakistan. At the end of the twentieth century, Pakistan, in the light of Iqbal's dream of
a Muslim majority state coming to terms with the modern world economically, politically and socially, has turned out to be a
nightmare of failed expectations. But Pakistan is not alone, nor is its political and economic failure unique — the country broke apart
in 1971, when East Pakistan, after a bloody civil war, became independent as Bangladesh. Neither is its continuing internal sectarian
violence exceptional within the larger Muslim world. From Algeria to Indonesia, from the Central Asian republics to Sudan, the entire
Muslim world has retreated from meeting the challenge of modernity and has turned its back on modernity. Writing in the 1930s,
Hamilton Gibb observed that the "most remarkable feature of the Moslem world in these early decades of the twentieth century is,
not that it is becoming Westernized, but that it desires to be Westernized." [8] Without injury to Gibb's choice of words, readers can
assume that "to be Westernized" means "to be modern." In contrast to Gibb's observation, Yale historian Paul Kennedy, writing at
the end of the twentieth century, wrote, "Far from preparing for the twenty-first century, much of the Arab and Muslim world appears
to have difficulty in coming to terms with the nineteenth century, with its composite legacy of secularization, democracy, laissez-faire
economics, transnational industrial and commercial linkages, social change, and intellectual questioning." [9]
The difference between the observations of Gibb and Kennedy is the distance between the restlessness of Muslim elites exposed to
the Western world under colonialism and a backward Muslim world constrained by its cultural system in the post-colonial age.
Kennedy astutely stated, "If one needed an example of the importance of cultural attitudes in explaining a society's response to
change, contemporary Islam provides it." [10] The weakness in the modernist approach is the assumption and expectation that a new
textual interpretation or modern hermeneutics applied to the reading of the Qur'an will enable the Muslim world to be
reconciled culturally and politically with the relentlessly revolutionary process of change that Marshall Hodgson, in The Venture
of Islam termed the "great Western transmutation." [11]
The problem and challenge for Muslims in coming to terms with the modern world, shaped by the social power of the West, resides
in the cultural resistance of their societies, taken individually and together, as the Muslim world. Textual interpretations are part of a
cultural enterprise, and for any interpretation, whether modern, traditional or something other, to become absorbed into majority
thinking requires that society is receptive to new ideas. The failure of modernist thinkers in Islam, such as Iqbal, to find majority
support among Muslims suggests that, culturally, Muslims remain averse, if not entirely hostile, to the values of the contemporary
world associated with the West. British sociologist Anthony Giddens described modernity as "modes of social life or organization
which emerged in Europe from about the seventeenth century onwards and which subsequently became more or less worldwide in
their influence." [12] The problem of the Muslim world, in terms of being open to modernity, is not with Islam awaiting
"reconstruction," in the sense Iqbal used the term, but that Muslims in their majority culture are resistant both to the change
demanded by the modern democratic age and to the need for self-reformation.
HOW DID ORTHODOXY BECOME ORTHODOX?
To focus on Muslims and their culture, and not on Islam, requires acknowledgment that Islam, as a living reality is a human
construction in historical time. From the earliest accounts of Islamic historians -- Ibn Ishaq (d. 761), Al-Waqidi (d. 823), and
At-Tabari (d. 923) among others -- it is clear that the founding of Islam was neither a peaceful affair nor did the new religion
eliminate tribal and familial conflicts. Blood readily flowed. Muslims in the first age of Islam were not simply moved to accept the
new faith taught by Muhammad, their being driven by the wonder of the sublime majesty of divine revelation that descended upon
Muhammad. They had to be subdued forcibly. The Qur'an itself provides testimony to the obduracy and violent resistance
of those among whom Muhammad was born, lived, and preached. Islam prevailed, but the cultural predisposition of the desert
Arabs remained sufficiently strong to shape the message of Islam for posterity.
From its beginning in the eighth century, what became consecrated as orthodox Islam of the Muslim majority was initially arbitrary.
It was the opinions of those who succeeded in holding the centers of power against dissidents that became the dominant cultural
value of the Arab-Muslim society. It was the political views of Mu'awiya and his chosen successors who defeated ‘Ali ibn Abi
Talib and his sons. It was the Umayyads over the Hashemites. Contests between claims and counterclaims over time and place
slowly shaped orthodoxy. In that moment of great plasticity in Islam's infant history, when the Prophet died and all could have
been lost in the succession dispute that followed, those who seized power and legitimated it in the Prophet's name set the tone
of what came to be defined as orthodoxy. Within a few short decades, that orthodoxy provided legitimacy for those in authority,
even though they did not possess the virtues exhibited by the Prophet and by his family and close companions. Ever since then,
it is that orthodoxy — more a product of the cultural markings of the desert Arabs and tribal manners — that has had an
immeasurable influence on what later Muslims made of their religious inheritance.
Should anyone depart from orthodoxy, for example, by adhering to Sufi ethics and mysticism, they would need to reconcile their
private or minority views with the public face of orthodoxy or suffer the consequences. In time, this orthodoxy became idealized as
the norm of Muslim culture. The merits this cultural system once possessed in premodern history became incongruent with the
values — secular, rational, democratic — of the modern age.
To use Western terms, this culture became authoritarian, due both to deference to rulers and the unaccountability of authorities to
their subjects. The sulta (those in authority) were always right, for the sulta held both the Qur'an and the sword. The
orthodox ulema (religious scholars) provided the key judgment for all time within this cultural system: since order is preferable to
anarchy, the tyranny of the sulta is preferable to the consequences of resistance and rebellion. In South Asia, the word for sulta is
sarkar, meaning that all rights emanate from those in power and all obligations are due to them. This is the culture of deference
which, in Pakistan, resulted in Supreme Court judgments on the basis of the "doctrine of necessity" legitimizing the right of men in
uniform to seize power. [13]
The success of the orthodoxy in this cultural system of deference is not entirely a function of coercion; rather, it reflects the values
of the people, which, in turn, reinforce those values as norms and ideals. Indicative of this phenomenon is the manner in which the
orthodoxy uses the Hadith (accounts of the Prophet's words and deeds) to constrain the reading of the Qur'an
according to the interests of the orthodox. The use of the Hadith — a human product of a certain time and, therefore, of
questionable authenticity, in contrast to the Qur'an, the Word of God — to fix the meaning of the Qur'an has
reinforced the authoritarianism of the sulta and the culture of deference.
The symptoms of this cultural system can be seen in the prevalent attitude of Muslims toward women, minorities, and dissidents.
The microcosm of this cultural universe is the family and the mosque. Within the family, patriarchal values dominate; women are the
property of men, beholden to their opinions and their needs. The violence done to women reflects the reaction of men when women
are unwilling to submit to those values. A culture of deference is also one in which the collective consensus takes precedence over
individual thinking, where an individual is suspected of being misguided and subversive unless he remains beholden to the
collective. Minorities are tolerated so long as they acknowledge the rights and privileges of the majority and recognize their
appropriate place in society. Dissidents are punished for not submitting to the sulta.
In the mosque, the cultural rhythm of Muslim societies finds routine expression. The place of the imam (prayer leader) in the
congregation, the authority he wields when he ascends the minbar (pulpit) and delivers the Friday khutba (sermon), is unmistakable
and amplified by the chain of authority leading ultimately to the person of the sulta. The imam cannot be questioned on what he
preaches on the pulpit, and what he preaches is sanctioned by the wisdom residing in the consensus of the orthodoxy. He protects
the values by which Muslims live, sanctifying and validating them by referring to the Hadith and reading the Qur'an
through the perspective of that literature, irrespective of the vast changes in time and place from the context of the age in which the
Hadith was compiled.
It is through the family and the mosque that the Muslim cultural system is reproduced daily and maintained in all its complexity.
While this cultural system has been challenged by the modern world, the Muslim world has resisted the modern world by
maintaining the autonomy of Islamic culture from the economic linkages Muslim countries have with the West. Moreover, the
dominance of fundamentalism in the discourse and practice of Muslims since the 1970s represents the stern resistance of a
traditional and backward cultural system against the forces of modernity.
The face of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan is a particular variant of this cultural system, as is the Saudi Wahhabi variant,
the Iranian Shi'ite variant and the Malay-Indonesian variant, within the larger complex of the Muslim world. The autonomy of the
Muslim cultural system has assisted each of these variants to maintain its authenticity in the midst of global changes. This
autonomy also provides Muslim immigrants in the West, protected by the Western constitutional democratic values of tolerance
and pluralism, with the ability to maintain, in their personal lives and within their private domains, the norms of the Muslim cultural
system. So long as, by choice and conviction, the Muslim majority adheres to, approves of, and reinforces this cultural system, the
Muslim world will recede further from the modern world. The consequences of a fifth of humanity being resistant to the West and
the occasional eruption of this resistance into reactionary violence will remain one of the more difficult and troubling challenges
for global politics in the twenty-first century.
IS ISLAMIC CULTURE COMPATIBLE WITH CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY?
Constitutional democracy is a political-cultural system describing the norms of a society, rather than just the workings of a
government. Such a reference to constitutional democracy indicates how great the cultural distance is between the Muslim world
and constitutional democracy, and how profound reform will have to be, if constitutional democracy is to become reality among
Muslims above and beyond periodic elections to give a façade of legitimacy to those in power. Anthony Arblaster, a political
philosopher, defined democracy as "the idea of popular power, of a situation in which power, and perhaps authority too, rests
with the people." [14] This idea of popular sovereignty resting with the people is an anathema to Islamists.
Constitutional democracy is, in a cultural sense, an expression of the liberal modern world that situates the individual as the moral
center of politics and society. The mechanics of constitutional democracy rest on an electoral system that provides for contested
elections among individuals and parties. It is in the regular functioning of the electoral system, its provisions established in
constitutional documents, that a culture of constitutional democracy will emerge. When sovereign individuals embrace inalienable
rights that no authority may abridge or revoke, non-constitutional and non-democracies systems evaporate. The idea of
constitutional democracy as a culture is found in the work of Tocqueville and, in recent times, has been given the most subtle
renderings in the writings of the American political philosopher George Kateb. [15]
It is the idea of the inalienable rights located in the individual, rights that need to be protected, nurtured, and allowed the fullest
unhindered expression that makes constitutional democracy so morally distinctive from other cultural systems. From this liberal
perspective, the common error about constitutional democracy is to view it as a majority system of governance. In a constitutional
democracy based on individual rights, on the contrary, it is the protection of the rights of minorities and dissidents that reflect the
different nature of politics within the larger context of constitutional democratic culture. Constitutional democracy produces a
citizenry distinctively different than those in the culture of deference. The cluster of values distinguishing constitutional
democratic culture from non-constitutional and non-democratic culture is qualitative. According to Kateb, "In its distinctive way
of forming political authority, representative democracy cultivates distinctive ways of acting in nonpolitical life — of seeking and
giving, of making claims for oneself and one's group and acknowledging the claims of others." [16]
There is an urgent need, when discussing reform of Islam or Muslims, to keep in perspective the culture of constitutional
democracy, as found in the United States of America, and the notion of democracy simply as the mechanics of government.
Political essayist Fareed Zakaria suggested the need to distinguish between "liberal" democracy (constitutional democracy) and
the "illiberal" democracy (absolutist, or authoritarian, democracy) found in many developing countries. [17] Such a distinction
suggests an eventual evolution from illiberal to liberal democracy. For such an evolution to be successful, however, a sufficient
number of people in an illiberal democracy who believe in the culture of constitutional democracy and all of its freedoms must
coalesce. The reality in the Muslim world remains different. Zakaria's illiberal democracy is similar to what Samuel E. Finer, a
professor of politics and government, wrote about in Comparative Government as "façade democracy," [18] a bowing of
the head to the idea of democracy by the tiny elite in power as a means to enhance their legitimacy and perpetuate their authority.
The October, 1999, military coup in Pakistan and the apathetic manner in which the public greeted the ouster of an elected
government, or the commonality of authoritarian governments in Arab states, are not anomalies; they are reflections of a cultural
system operating on assumptions different from the constitutional democratic cultural system of the West.
WHAT CAN THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE PROVIDE?
The U.S. involvement with the Muslim world since 1945, and the resulting Muslim perception of the United States, have been
difficult for a number of reasons. The Cold War in the Muslim world, U.S. support for Israel, and historic U.S. preference for
stability in the Persian Gulf has led Washington to support governments that lack popular approval by Muslims. All of this has
less to do with American constitutional democratic culture than with U.S. foreign policy during a period of global politics when
the United States assumed responsibility for maintaining freedom, constitutional democracy, and the market economy in its
confrontation with international Communism. That America made mistakes during this period, that it overreached, and that there
were negative consequences to some actions that could have been mitigated, if not avoided, are all part of the internal American
debate.
The majority public opinion in the Muslim world has been shaped by the power of the United States abroad rather than by the
nature of American constitutional democracy at home. The result is a grossly distorted image of the United States among Muslims,
even among those who reside in America. Edward Said, for instance, observed that, despite the fact of the United States looming
large in the lives of Arabs and Muslims, there was no serious institutional effort to be found in the Arab-Muslim world to study
the United States, and that not "even the celebrated American universities of Beirut and Cairo teach American culture, society,
and history in any systematic way." [19] When Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, denounced
America as the "Great Satan," he gave voice to a popular opinion among a great many Muslims worldwide — an opinion
frequently expressed in flag burnings, attacks on American assets and citizens abroad, and a readiness to believe both the worst
about decadence and corruption in American society and that the United States, as Israel's patron, is an enemy of Islam and
Muslims.
For Muslims, the requirement of seriously studying America carries the risk of undermining the cultural assumptions by which
they live. Their study of American constitutional democracy and of the lives and contributions of American men and women of
diverse ethnic origins who made American consti democracic republic immensely rich, would force Muslims to discover how the
core values of American society are profoundly moral, indeed religious, and how, at critical moments of American history, as
Seymour Martin Lipset, dean of American sociologists, wrote, "the hand of providence has been on a nation which finds a
Washington, a Lincoln, or a Roosevelt when it needs him." [20] Poets possess an inward eye with which to gaze upon the world.
Intuitively they give voice to the spirit of their age. Kateb noted, "Walt Whitman is a great philosopher of democracy. Indeed, he
may be the greatest." [21] The Muslim world has not produced any poet like Whitman, and this absence, when poets and poetry
have traditionally been an exalted facet of Islamic culture, reflects the absence of the constitutional democratic ethos among
Muslims and by which the West is distinguished from the East.
It is urgent that Muslims set aside their blinkers, their self-perpetuating resentments, their anger and complaints against the
United States, which reflect their own weaknesses and failures and ahich, ultimately, erupted in the events of 9-11. They need to
carefully, earnestly, and with humility begin to explore and understand what America represents as a constitutional democracy.
There is some difficulty in this enterprise of exploration and comprehension, due to the range of contradictory images that
Americans float about their country through mass media, which is the only way most Muslims learn anything about the United
States. The difficulties in sifting through the contradictory images only make it more urgent to engage in an effort of discovery as
a corrective to those selective images and stories which fuel the existing resentment and anger of the vast majority of Muslims.
The irony is that it is not Islam as transcendent truth about the unity of God, but rather the historical-cultural system associated
with Islam, that now encloses Muslims and prevents them from hearing ever fresh the Word of God when they read the
Qur'an. It is this cultural system, once proven to be remarkable for the achievements of Islamic societies, that now weighs
upon Muslims, and its inertia prevents them from once again being progressive and in harmony with the world around them.
Textual interpretations may help individuals to reorient themselves to their world, but there is insufficient evidence from Muslim
history to suggest that textual interpretation may bring about a reform of Muslims collectively as a people.
In concluding, the Qur'an informs that, without reform of belief, civilizations in the past vanished, and warns:
"O people, it is you that have need of God, and God is the Self-Sufficient,
the Praised One. If He please, He will remove you and bring a new creation
[in your place]."[22]
In the democratic age, God's message resonates through the voice of sovereign people. Muslims are standing at a fork of history in
the early years of the twenty-first century. Their choice for reform will lead them on the path of Islam as constitutional democracy.
Their refusal to embrace reform, however, will leave them stagnant within a cultural system incongruent with the spirit of the modern
age of constitutional democracy, while they indulge in identity politics, nostalgia, grievances, and resentment against a West they
do not understand.
NOTES:
[1] Qur'an: 13:11.
[2] London: Oxford University Press, 1934.
[3] Hamilton A.R. Gibb, Modern Trends in Islam (New York: Octagon Books, 1978), p. 81.
[4] Adonis is the penname of Ali Ahmad Said.
[5] See Aziz Ahmad, Islamic Modernism in India and Pakistan 1857-1964 (London: Oxford University Press, 1967) pp. 224-36.
[6] Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982.
[7] New York: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1992.
[8] Hamilton A.R. Gibb, Whither Islam: A Survey of Modern Movements in the Moslem World (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd.,
1932), p. 319.
[9] Paul Kennedy, Preparing for the Twenty-First Century (Toronto: HarperPerennial, 1994), p. 208.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Marshall Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, vol. 3 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), p. 176.
[12] Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), p. 1.
[13] "Introduction," in William I. Jennings, ed, Constitutional Problems in Pakistan (London: Cambridge University Press,
1957), also see reference to Pakistan's Supreme Court judgment, pp. 298-9, 307.
[14] Anthony Arblaster, Democracy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), p. 8.
[15] See the collection of his essays in George Kateb, The Inner Ocean: Individualism and Democratic Culture (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1992).
[16] George Kateb, "Moral Distinctiveness of Representative Democracy," in Inner Ocean, p. 43.
[17] Fareed Zakaria, "The Rise of Illiberal Democracy," Foreign Affairs, Nov./Dec. 1997, pp. 22-43.
[18] Samuel Edward Finer, Comparative Government (London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1970), chap. 9.
[19] Edward Said, Peace and Its Discontents: Essays on Palestine in the Middle East Process (New York: Vintage Books,
1996), p. 89.
[20] Seymour Martin Lipset, American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1996), p. 14.
[21] George Kateb, "Whitman and the Culture of Democracy," in Inner Ocean, p. 240.
[22] Qur'an: 35:15-16.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
The Middle East & the Arabs
War & Peace in the Real World
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Salim Mansur is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Western Ontario.
The foregoing article by Salim Mansur was originally published in the Middle East Quarterly, Summer, 2005, and can be
found on the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum.
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
July 7, 2005
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