A fourth way
What can the Arabs learn from Turkey, asks Abdel-Moneim Said* in this postscript to his series on the Arabs and 9/11
After completing the series on Arab reactions to 9/11 and preparing to move on to another subject, my attention was caught by development sin Turkey, which compelled me to add one more instalment. The victory of the Justice and Development Party (JDP) in the Turkish parliamentary elections may have brought within reach a solution to the problem of religion and the state in the Arab and Islamic world -- a problem that has plagued it since the 19th century.
The JDP has taken a number of stands that are "secular" in essence and demonstrate a desire to exist in harmony with, rather than to recoil from or oppose, the West. Indeed, one is struck by the fact that the party appears keener to expound "Western" values than even some secularist parties. With respect to the veil, for example, it has said that wearing it or not is a matter of personal choice and should not be dictated by the state or any other organisation.
Thus, ironically, a party with "Islamic" origins has felt compelled to work out a new equation for balancing Islamic, secularist and democratic values. In other words, it has found that it must approach the problems of modernism, industrialisation and progress from premises inherent in Islamic culture and civilisation, rather than from the strictures of Islamic law. It appears, therefore, that the Turkish party has for the first time ventured upon an Islamic democratic experiment that is no different in essence from the practice of Christian democratic parties in the West. Although Christian democratic parties seek inspiration from Christian principles and morals in their assessment of legislation, they do not claim to rule -- or stand in opposition -- in the name of religion. Otherwise put, they are fully aware of their options, but simultaneously aware that the choices they make are "human" choices and, therefore, subject to the laws of fallibility.
Whether the Turkish party has truly opened new horizons in the relationship between Islam and government has yet to be shown. Throughout the history of most Islamic countries, Qur'anic strictures and other sources of Islamic law formed the sole basis for legislation, until the colonial era, when other sources of law were introduced. Following independence, the question of the relationship between religion and the state resurfaced forcefully, and the Islamic world was faced with three possible answers. One was provided by Turkey, itself, under Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) who imposed such a strict and comprehensive division between religion and the state as to cast religion as the enemy of modernisation and assimilation into the contemporary capitalist world. The second was epitomised by Saudi Arabia in which religion and the state became one. Egypt posited a third way: a process of reform that enabled religion to shed extrinsic defects that had become associated with it and to embrace modern life and the contemporary world. Islam then became the state religion and a source of law, promulgated by civil authorities representing the people through a parliament rather than by religious jurists.
Perhaps contemporary Turkey will offer a fourth path -- one that will bridge the gap between Arabs and Muslims and contemporary global civilisation. Perhaps, too, Egyptian scholars Sheikh Mohamed Abduh and then Sheikh Mustafa Abdel-Razeq paved the way for this development. In fact, the latter of these two religious reformers could well have made the most important contribution to modern Arab political thought with his Islam and the principles of government. This work, published in 1925, could be to the Arab and Islamic world what John Locke's treatise on civil government was to the West.
Locke maintained that governance of mankind as a civil process conducted through the executive, legislative and judicial authorities was not inconsistent with the Bible or faith in God. In a like manner, Sheikh Ali Mustafa Abdel- Razeq, 30 years old at the time, declared his deep faith in the power of God and his Prophet and then stated, "The issue of controversy today is precisely that which confronted our fathers and their fathers before them. Indeed, the question of the deviant ruler and righteous government is one that has preoccupied all mankind since the most ancient times, which is to say since the beginnings of the ruler, the ruled and government."
At the time this Al-Azhar scholar wrote the above, King Fouad was attempting to increase his autocratic powers while also contending for the vacant seat of the Islamic caliphate. Abdel- Razeq, however, elevated the issue from this local context and posited it as a moral and intellectual challenge to Islamic, indeed, human political thought. The question of rule posed itself perennially with every rivalry over the successor to the caliphate and because power and authority rested solely on a foundation of "awesome force", which "with rare exception, has been a physical armed force".
With such explicit clarity and frankness, Abdel-Razeq reaches the most significant conclusion in Islamic political thought: "Neither the caliphate nor the judiciary, nor any of the positions in government or ranks of state emanate from religious designs. Rather, they are of a purely political nature. Our religion neither recognises them or refutes them, neither ordains them or prohibits them. It has left the matter to us and our judgment, based on the dictates of the intellect, the experience of nations and the principles of politics."
Such efforts did not resolve the question facing the Arab and Islamic world and originally posed in Plato's Laws: Is the source of law human or divine? This may be because the Al-Azhar religious establishment disapproved of Abdel- Razeq's book or because the process of social and economic development in the Arab and Islamic world was still in its rudimentary stages. In any case, in 1927, just two years after the appearance of Islam and the principles of government, the Muslim Brotherhood issued its call for Islam as "a religion and a world" and "the Qur'an and the sword", and with this call there emerged a particular type of "Islamic" group for whom Islam was not the religion of the state, but of those in that state who had their own interpretation of Islam. This attempt to monopolise the regulation of religious and secular affairs marked the beginning of the road that led the Arab and Islamic world to give rise to a host of militant Islamist organisations from Jihad to the Taliban to Al-Qa'eda.
This course was not determined so much by the Muslim Brotherhood, itself, as by the mentality in operation in response to the problem of authority and the source of law. Muslim Brotherhood founder Sheikh Hassan El- Banna was influenced by Sheikh Rashid Rida who, in turn, was, in his conservative way, a disciple of Sheikh Mohamed Abduh. The movement, therefore, was inclined towards modernisation, but it was modernisation more in its material than in its political sense.
However, the question of religion and the state became more complicated when affairs concerning the entire country became the preserve of groups that were increasingly of the "hellfire and brimstone" variety, with their brutal verdicts against all who differed with them. It is surprising that those movements parading under the banner of Islam could find nothing in the constitution, at least until recently, that would foster political and economic development.
Certainly, the Muslim Brotherhood has undergone many changes over its decades-long existence. Indeed, from its fold there emerged a strong liberal reform wing whose presence can be felt at the heart of the political movements on university campuses and in professional syndicates in many Arab and Islamic countries. However, the idea that a single group has the right to stake religion as its exclusive preserve has remained a constant in Muslim Brotherhood thought. Moreover, the Muslim Brotherhood set a distinctive model for other groups that came to believe that they were purer and more capable of representing and defending the faithful than even the Muslim Brotherhood. This belief gave rise to a long queue of Islamist groups and figures, all claiming a purity that they believed entitled them, alone, to interpret religion and, at times, to enforce it by the sword, as the Taliban did in Afghanistan and its supporters did in Pakistan and in many other Arab and Islamic countries.
The road between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Taliban may have been long and, perhaps, too, the distance between moderation and extremism is as great as that between the earth and the seventh heaven. However, the question is not one of distance but origins. Perhaps if Sheikh Ali Abdel-Razeq had prevailed over Sheikh Hassan El-Banna, the Muslim people might have taken a different course to that which led them to their current plight. To be fair, though, Islamist movements are not solely to blame for this outcome.
Against this backdrop, the developments in Turkey merit our close attention. They might just well offer the key to putting the Islamic world back on the course to progress and enlightenment.
* The writer is director of Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
