Four views on Islam and the state

Can Islam support a secular, democratic government?

from the August 30, 2007 edition

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The leery Arab street

By Jorgen S. Nielsen

DAMASCUS, SYRIA – Why is it that Muslims appear to find it so difficult to see anything positive in Western secularism?

In some Muslim languages, the discussion is made almost impossible by the fact that the word used for secularism translates into English as "no religion" or "without religion."

Certainly, Muslims do not like a lot of what they see as Western: the loneliness of the individual, the breakdown of the family, the destruction of drug addiction, random violence, recreational sex. Of course, they are not alone in feeling these concerns, and many conclude that the cause is the decline of religion.

In the mid-1920s, the Egyptian scholar Ali Abd al-Raziq's book "Islam and the Roots of Government" argued that the prophet Muhammad had founded a religion, not a state, so religion should not determine state structures today. The book was immediately condemned and, we are told by most Islamic scholars, is no longer of interest. But it has remained continuously in print since then and can still be bought in Cairo bookshops. So someone must be reading it!

I talked recently with a group of Islamic scholars from one of the more conservative movements in Britain. We got on to the topic of an "Islamic order." Clearly, it was not enough that a government or economic system should call itself Islamic. It had to be Islamic. But what did that mean? That led to things such as social justice, a reliable legal system, personal liberty, equality, popular participation, accountable rulers, etc. One scholar ventured that northern European welfare states were arguably a good deal more "Islamic" than any state in the Muslim world.

If there are such important shared values, why then such mixed feelings about the idea of secularism? Clearly, the attack on secularism is encouraged by the clerics. If religion in its traditional forms is pushed to the margins of public life, what remains for them?

On the Arab street, secularism is often seen as a foreign import, brought in by the colonialists as a way of limiting the power of the Islamic religious institutions that often provided the core of anticolonial resistance. Secular politics is also associated with the military dictatorships that survived in alliance with the opposing powers of the cold-war period.

Today, the only effective challenge to this inheritance comes from the Islamist movements, and people arguing for a secular perspective run the constant danger of being accused of collaboration with the West. It is this twin dynamic that makes it more likely for many to tilt away from modern, pluralistic secularism toward a religious political system.

• Jorgen S. Nielsen is director of the Danish Institute in Damascus. His essay is from the Common Ground News Service.

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