Here it would be wise to take account of the ways such relationships have been handled in the recent past, by referring to the three major “settlements” made in this regard, namely, the British, the French and the American. I would refer to one of the sessions of the Clinton Global Initiative in the section on “Religious and Ethnic Conflict” to make my point. It had a panel with an Englishman, a Frenchman and an American. As they spoke about religion and politics the Frenchman resisted any suggestion that religions should be taken seriously as religions within the political sphere: problems were traced mainly to economic causes, and he was confident that if poverty were dealt with effectively the unrest in French cities would disappear. The American (who was also a Muslim) insisted that the religions needed to contribute to public discourse but that the American separation of Church and state was a healthy thing. The Englishman, John Battle MP (Prime Minister Tony Blair’s special adviser on religion), told stories of his own involvement with religious communities in his Leeds constituency, and evoked a complex settlement in which religious bodies were seen as stakeholders in society with whom the government and other public bodies were in constant communication and negotiation and whose identities could be affirmed by such means as state-supported faith schools. It was as if each was representing his own nation’s settlement, developed over centuries. Making judgments on such complex achievements, each worked out in special circumstances, is dangerous, but I will risk it in summary form.
I think that in the current world situation the French secularist solution is the least satisfactory. It, like the others, is understandable in historical terms– working out the epochal, often bloody confrontation between the French Revolution and Roman Catholicism– but its practical exclusion of religions from the public sphere (including state schools and universities) is in effect the establishment of a state ideology that is not neutral in relation to religion but is suspicious, critical and often hostile. It envisages a secular public sphere. It is not well suited to a religious and secular world.
The American separation of church and state is far more benign with regard to the religions, and in fact religion plays a major role in American politics. But there has been a tendency to try to use the separation to create a neutral public space, where it is illegitimate to draw explicitly on religious sources. This ‘lowest common denominator’ public square (expressed, for example, in banning official recognition of any particular religious symbols, holidays or practices and refusing to let state schools teach religious education or state universities teach theology as well as religious studies) is increasingly being criticized, even by secular thinkers such as Jeffrey Stout of Princeton University, who see it as an impoverishment of public life. Both religious and secular traditions should be able to contribute in their distinctive ways to public debate rather than reducing all discourse to a secularized lowest common denominator.
That, at its best, is what happens in Britain also. Its particular history has kept religion involved in its public life, sometimes controversially, usually resisting pressures from those quarters that have more sympathy with secularist, often atheistic ideologies and would favour a French-style settlement. Britain also comes out rather poorly from comparative studies of the relative alienation of the Muslim minority from the rest of society. In global terms, Britain has the conditions for pioneering work in shaping a religious and secular society that draws on the resources within each of the traditions for peaceful living and working together. They have an extraordinary range of religious communities in a society that has also experienced intense secularization.
The British settlement works within what one might call a minimal secular and religious framework that enables mutual public space. This has been shaped over many centuries and is constantly open to renegotiation. The framework is minimal in that it refuses to impose either a particular religious solution or a particular secular solution and so lives by ongoing negotiation rather than by appeal to a fixed constitution or principles. It, therefore, helps to create a mutual public space with possibilities for shared discussion, dialogue, education, deliberation, and collaboration– in contrast to the French tendency towards strictly secular public space and the American tendency towards neutral public space. But for all practical purposes this constant, ongoing negotiation leaves the British settlement little better than the others, oscillating between secular pluralism and religious exclusivism.
As for Islamic legislation in Iqbal’s proposed Islamic state, he urges that Ijtihad must be adopted as a legislative process in the elected assemblies. This is the only form, which Ijma’ (Consensus of the Community) can take in a modern democratic Islamic state. It may be interesting to note that Allama Shibli believed that decisions in ‘Ijma’ on the majority basis were recognized as correct in Caliph Umar’s times.
Iqbal also held that the modern Muslim liberals’ claim to re-interpret the Shari’ah (or the foundational legal principles of Islam), in the light of their own experience and the altered conditions of modern life, is perfectly justified. He is convinced that the Islamic world is confronted by new intellectual forces, which were unleashed by the extraordinary development of human knowledge. He suggests that every generation of Muslims, guided but unhampered by the work of its predecessors, should be permitted to solve their own problems. He maintains:
The growth of a republican spirit and the gradual formation of legislative assemblies in Muslim lands constitutes a great step forward to transfer the power of Ijtihad from individual representatives of Schools to a Muslim legislative assembly. This is the only possible form which Ijma’ can take in modern times. It will secure contributions to legal discussion from laymen who happen to possess a keen insight into affairs. In this way alone we can stir into activity the dormant spirit of life in our legal system and give it an evolutionary outlook.
Although Imam Abu Ishaq Shatibi (whom Iqbal mentions in his Reconstruction Lectures) accepts the possibility of Ijtihad in Ijma’ by a non-believer, Iqbal does not touch the question whether or not the Non-Muslim members of a modern Muslim legislative assembly (Ijma’) could participate in Ijtihad on Islamic law-making. So far as the practicing of Ijtihad on individual basis is concerned, in British India in the course of the development of Anglo-Muhammadan Law, a Non-Muslim judge decided matters involving Muslim Personal Law without any objection on the part of the Ulema.
Evidently in emphasizing equality, solidarity, and freedom, Iqbal desires to incorporate in his Islamic democracy, the principles of supremacy of the rule of law, guarantee of human rights, realization of social and economic justice, as laid down in the Qur’an and Sunnah. He is reluctant to discuss some aspects of the Shari’ah, especially the problems of civil and criminal legislation, which require re interpretation. The reason for his hesitation is the conservative character of the Muslim community, which, because of sectarian differences, is not yet emotionally prepared to accept that the Shari’ah in its spirit is cohesive and not divisive, and Muslims need to restore its original spirit. Despite his caution in this matter, his scattered views indicate the trends of his progressive thought.
One important qualification of a legislator, in Iqbal’s eyes, is that he should be a lawyer who has studied conventional Islamic Fiqh in the light of modern jurisprudence. He desires that a new syllabus, integrating both disciplines should be introduced in the schools of legal instruction. He explained this approach in answer to a question as to how present Muslim legislators, with no knowledge of Islamic law, would interpret and make laws without committing grave mistakes. Iqbal recommends that in the absence of qualified legislators, a Board of Ulema be nominated as a part of the legislative assembly. They should have no right to vote, but should only help and guide free discussion on questions of interpreting Islamic law. This improvisation should be merely a temporary arrangement as a safeguard against erroneous interpretations. In the process of Islamic law making in modern times, Iqbal is aware of the sectarian and intellectual limitations of traditional Ulema who are inclined to differ from one another on trivial matters and are unlikely to provide proper guidance. Therefore, he appreciates the importance of the ‘non Ulema’ experts in specific fields, and the general contribution which laymen can make, especially if they possess keen insight into affairs.
Iqbal was the first Muslim thinker in South Asia to define the state in Islam as a spiritual democracy. He argued that:
In view of the basic idea of Islam that there can be no further revelation binding on man, we ought to be spiritually one of the most emancipated people on earth. Early Muslims emerging out of the spiritual slavery of pre Islamic Asia were not in a position to realize the true significance of this basic idea. Let the Muslim of today appreciate his position, reconstruct his social life in the light of ultimate principles and evolve out of the hitherto partially revealed purpose of Islam that spiritual democracy which is the ultimate aim of Islam.
This passage is rather unconventional. From where did Iqbal derive this idea? He does not explain. He may have picked up the idea of “spiritual democracy as the ultimate aim of Islam” from the principle on which ‘Mithaq-i-Medina’ was fashioned. In a verse from the Qur’an the principle is enunciated in the following manner. Allah addressing mankind commands:
For each of you We have given a law and a way (of life) and if Allah hath willed He would have made you one religious community. But (He hath willed it otherwise) so that He may put you to the test in what He hath given you. Therefore compete with one another in good works. To Allah will ye be brought back. And He will inform you about that wherein ye differed.
Iqbalian idealism is an appropriate example of the fusion of some new Western ideas with Islam. Clearly he was ahead of his time as the Muslim community was not ready to accept his views. Iqbal’s Western critics or Western–oriented Muslim critics may find his concept of a modern Islamic state as anchored in ‘secular humanism’ or ‘liberal unitarian humanism’. To Iqbal, the spirit of Islam is inclusive and limitless. As established by its past history, it is capable of assimilating all the new ideas of other civilizations, giving them its own synthesized direction. He was convinced that:
The inner catholicity of the spirit of Islam is bound to work itself out in spite of the rigorous conservatism of our doctors. And I have no doubt that a deeper study of the enormous legal literature of Islam is sure to rid the modern critic of the superficial opinion that the Law of Islam (Shari’ah) is stationary and incapable of development.

Main features of Iqbal’s modern Islamic state
1. It is a democratic state.
2. Parliament should adopt ‘Ijtihad’ as the guiding principle of particularly Islamic legislation to cope with the requirements of modern times.
3. The separation between the religious establishment and state organs is strictly functional. It is not identical to the separation of church and state.
4. The Criminal Law of Islam need not be enforced dogmatically.
5. Interest free banking need not be enforced in order to promote the free market economy.
6. The state must protect the economic rights of landless tenants and workers, and impose tax on agricultural produce.
7. The state is also under an obligation to protect and determine the minimum wages of industrial workers and to provide them medical care and assure compensation upon their retirement.
8. To strengthen national integration in a Muslim majority state the principle of joint electorates can be adopted.
9. While spiritual democracy remains undefined, it seems to stand for equality of all citizens regardless of their race, religion or creed.