10 - 16 January 2002
Issue No.568
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 10 - 16 January 2002 Issue No.568 |
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Manifesto for a future state
Nation and State: A Manifesto for National Liberation (Al-Umma wal-Dawla: Bayan Tahrir Al-Umma), Rafiq Habib, Cairo: 2001. pp228
Following the 11 September attacks on New York and Washington, some Western writers have referred harshly to Muslim societies that have, so it is alleged, criticised the Western model of state and society without developing a model of their own. This book, though not directly about the relationship between the West and Islam, deals with this relationship by attempting to theorise a new socio-political framework for Muslim societies that would take the legacy of Islamic civilisation as its point of departure. The author, Rafiq Habib, is an Arab Christian who has long been a firm believer in the revival of a social ethos that would find its roots in Islamic civilization. Therefore his conceptual framework, based on an analysis of the role of the state and the role of civil society, does not ignore Arab cultural and religious sensitivities, and he writes from an avowedly nationalist perspective.
Habib states that his book is an attempt to formulate a vision for the revival of the umma (roughly speaking, community or people), a word he uses throughout the book. He does not, however, explain why he has chosen to employ this ambiguous term, or offer his definition of it. Does the umma, for Habib, include the whole Muslim nation, or does it include only Egypt? Habib says that his vision of change to the status quo is "revolutionary" in its implications, since it calls for the replacement of the Western model of development, which he says has been imposed on the umma and has therefore led to "civilisational emptiness and bankruptcy". His book, therefore, falls into the category of those that attempt to tailor a new social vision based on the legacy of Islam, arguing for a stronger role for the umma vis-à-vis the nation state.
In his first chapter, Habib attempts to trace the reasons why Muslim societies have lagged behind Western ones, the bulk of the argument tending towards answering the question of why the modernisation project, in much of the Arab World, has ended in perceived failure. Progress and development, Habib argues, were always thought of in terms of a Western model, which meant "that development and progress was more a process of transferring a civilisational model into our land, and less a process of learning." However, it is less the modernisation project and more the Western model of the nation state that Habib believes to be at the root of the problem, since this expanded the role of the state at the expense of the community.
This separation between state and society, or between state and umma, Habib believes has been the main reason for the failure of state-led modernisation efforts in Arab states. The nation state attempted to introduce change from above that did not fit with the legacy of the past, and this, Habib feels, explains why the bulk of the population have either not participated in, or have not felt sympathetic towards, the modernisation project, their suspicions of it adversely affecting state plans to modernize society.
Habib moves on to compare the functions of the state within conceptions developed from the Islamic legacy and within the Western model, the Islamic legacy not accepting, in Habib's view, an expansionist role for the state. However, Habib's argument is problematic here, since it assumes two civilisational blocs, one "Islamic" and the other "Western", rigidly dividing the two. Yet, in truth it may be that the lines are more blurred than Habib imagines, especially since today 15 million Muslims live in Europe, and almost seven million live in the United States.
The bulk of Habib's argument is geared towards identifying the specific character of the Islamic model and giving the reasons why a project for modernisation that ignores it and that was brought in from the West could not succeed. At present, Habib argues, both the political and cultural realms are controlled by a small elite, which has neither been genuinely selected nor elected by the umma. For this situation to change, Habib offers what he says is a radical programme, tending towards a kind of coup d'état. First, a social movement would begin within the umma that would be based on the revival of the Islamic civilisational legacy. Second, collective constructions, or groups, would be recognised as essential elements for nation building, local and informal traditions (urf) coming before legalistic notions of state and society. These informal groups seem identical to what are usually called civil-society groupings in Western political discourse.
Habib does not want to be misunderstood when he talks of an Islamic socio-political ethos to replace the present one. He is not, he says, calling for a "theological state", since such a state would offer merely another "vulgar model of power and control," and as such would be quite different from the Arab-Islamic model he is calling for. However, he does not want to be understood either as calling for a continuation of the present "mixed mode" that joins Islamic traditions with a Western political model. This, he believes, inevitably leads to the co-existence of two reference points and two civilisational frameworks in one society, and this can only lead to civil regression and continuing Western hegemony.
Habib believes that such a mixed mode can only be useful in the "transitional period" towards the genuine Arab-Islamic state and society he advocates, here taking issue with Western writings that have referred to the "moral bankruptcy" of Islamicist groups after the 11 September attacks. Far from being morally bankrupt, Habib says that these groups represent a particular kind of challenge, that of how to translate the potential religious and social revival that they represent into political reality, making their religious and social awareness into sources for the revival of the umma.
In his last chapter, Habib descends from grand theory to practical issues, offering a model for a new society that he calls ahlyyia, his own coinage but meaning something like civil society, which he thinks of in terms of a kind of "privatisation". Ahlyyia, Habib writes, "means moving away from the western model of the nation state toward reviving the umma, or the guardian state," and revivifying in so doing the community that it guards. He offers an account of how this could be implemented in practice.
Whatever the shortcomings of Habib's book, which has certain utopian elements, he has successfully articulated a dilemma in which many contemporary Muslims have been caught, as they try to negotiate stresses resulting from a Western model of state and society that has been imposed from outside and a local civilisational legacy that has been too long neglected. Habib's book aptly shows how much is at stake in understanding the relationship between the two, suggesting that the Islamic and Arab legacy should now be valorised, by so doing offering one possible answer to the question of what it means to be a Muslim in the post-11 September era.
Reviewed by Omayma Abdel-Latif
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