April 29, 2005
Quantum Note
Islam, State and Society (II)
All Muslims believe that the Qur’an is a Revealed book containing guidance for a complete way of life. This is a fundamental belief and there is no difference in opinion among Muslims on either the Divine nature of the Book or its completeness as far as guidance is concerned. Both of these articles of belief can also be verified objectively. The Divine origin of the Qur’an is affirmed by the absence of any other book like it; no one has been able to produce even a surah like its surahs during the last fourteen hundred years. The claim that the Qur’an offers a unique and complete system of guidance, has been elucidated through a vast body of scholarly texts that have come into existence during the last fourteen hundred years. In the context of our topic, literature on the relationship between Islam, state, and society is not only extensive, it also builds a very sophisticated theory of governance that deals with all aspects of the relationships that come into existence between an individual and the state as well as between states.
But this body of literature is both time-bound and derived; that is, it came into existence in historical time and dealt with the changing situations of the Muslim communities. At a certain time in their history, this scholarship began to lag behind the rapid changes that arose in the world as a result of the emergence of a new force in Europe. This new phenomenon was empowered by a new scientific, economic and political outlook that forced every other civilization to adjust its economic, political, and even geographical existence to the dictates of Europe. To be sure, the rise of European powers was not merely due to the Scientific and the Industrial Revolutions; it was a product of a comprehensive change in the worldview that governed these societies and it was accompanied by fundamental changes in the nature of relationship between the individual, state, and society.
It is this fundamental change in the nature of relationship between the individual and the state on the one hand, and among states on the other, that has altered the world situation. During the last centuries, and especially since World War II, the state has increasingly gained invasive powers; it is no more possible for an individual to remain an anonymous entity living in a state. Apart from some isolated tribal communities, each birth and death is now recorded in one or the other form, and the state now regulates individual and collective lives of its citizens in countless ways: from enrolment in educational institutions to registration of marriages and from records of business activities to the purchase of property, in all affairs of life, the state has now become an inevitable presence.
This change in the relationship between the state and the individual has not received enough attention by Muslim scholars. The older framework of governance, that existed in the pre-Seventeenth century Muslim world, is no longer adequate, for, then it was possible for a very large majority of citizens to live out their lives with a minimum contact with the state. Then, a Harun al-Rashid or Ma’mun could become the Caliph without disrupting the traditional course of the life of the community. This was the norm; of course there were exceptions such as the mihnah instituted by Ma’mun or the whimsical ideas of Akbar who invented a new Deen. But these were short-lived and passing aberrations that came and withered, without altering the nature of relationship between the individual and the state.
This situation does not exist anymore. Now the state is a very powerful institution that controls many aspects of an individual’s lives and a state ruled by a dictator can destroy fundamental values of a society in a very short time. Thus, in this changed situation, the tri-angular relationship between Islam, state and the individual needs to be investigated afresh. And this fresh reflection should provide guidelines for the role of Islam in a Muslim polity. But this fresh reflection has to be situated within the Islamic worldview. In other words, Muslims must disregard the Western notion of the separation of religion and state—which is merely a theoretical notion as Church bells keep ringing and almost all Western societies remain deeply entrenched in a worldview derived from a modified form of the original teachings of Jesus, upon whom be peace.
A fresh effort to investigate the relationship between Islam, state and society, many important questions would have to be answered. These include the following: (i) Since Islam governs an individual Muslim’s beliefs and actions, and since the state now has a dominant role in the life of an individual, does this automatically necessitate that in a Muslim polity, the state must adopt the Qur’an as its guiding Book from where it should derive all principles of governance? (ii) Since the state now owns, controls, manages, and utilizes resources of the land, does this necessitate that this use be put under laws derived from the Qur’anic guidance? (iii) Since Muslims believe the Qur’an to be a complete code, providing guidance for all aspects of their individual and collective lives, does this mean that the state in a Muslim polity must adopt the Qur’an as its comprehensive source for its relationship with the individual? (iv) Would the social contract that would emerge from such an exercise require the state to adopt Islam as the source from where it should derive the content of its own rights and duties toward the individual citizen? (v) Since all Muslims believe the Qur’an to be a comprehensive source of guidance, does this mean that the states where Muslims are in a majority, must establish their relations with other states on the basis of the guidance culled from the Qur’an? (vi) Does this also mean that all such states, where Muslims are in a majority, automatically become a political unit distinct from other polities? In other words, can the “Two Nation Theory” be expanded for inter-state relations? The original “Two Nation Theory” postulated that there exist two distinct nations in the Indian subcontinent: Muslim and Non-Muslims. (See the first part of this article, published in The News, April 15, 2005).
Systematic and thorough reflection on these and other related aspects of the changed situation help the Muslim world to evolve its own governing institutions which can cope with the realities of the twenty-first century.
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