Liberal democracy & Islam
By Dr Fazlur Rahman
The late Professor Fazlur Rahman wrote: "Islam is the determination to implement, in the physical texture of the world, the command of God or the moral imperative." From another standpoint Jack Miles remarked "The clash of civilizations question, from the Muslim side, is whether the Ummah can join the international community or whether it must incorporate the international community into itself."
Plainly speaking what we are witnessing today is a struggle for world domination between two ideologies - Islamic and the western. The cleavage between the two is so sharp, pronounced and deep rooted that by no stretch of the imagination could it be filled or bridged.
Any attempt at reconciling one with the other is destined to fail and going to distort both. A comparative study of some of the outstanding components of western ideology which are trying to corrode the Islamic ideology may reveal the nature and extent of the polarities.
Let us begin with the liberal democracy which is today being pushed down the peoples' unwilling throats coupled with naive human rights rhetoric. At present we do not propose to engage ourselves with the much discussed inherent shortcomings, defects and pitfalls of democracy so well known to every student of political. Our basic concern is to find out whether the two - Islam and Democracy - are compatible.
Fukuyama declared: 'the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of western liberal democracy as the final form of human government' was the end of history. Adopting the role of a fortune teller he claimed: "liberal democracy would not be superseded by a better or a 'higher' form of government".
Not with standing the tall claims the hard fact that today stares humanity in the face is that whatever the form of government if a system fails to address the perennial quest of man to find 'himself', to know the ultimate aim of his 'being', human life would be reduced to not more than an organized animal existence, directed, guided, plundered and ravaged by animal instincts, beastly desires, insatiable lust for power, and a mad rush for domination and aggrandizement. And that is exactly where the liberal democracy has failed man and made his life a hell as we are witnessing today. Invariably we would have to look elsewhere for ascertaining the ultimate concerns of human life, and find out viable means and ways to satisfy the demands of an integrated and wholesome individual and collective personality.
A society or culture which wishes to survive cannot declare the spiritual dimension of the human person to be irrelevant. Democracy is in many respects deaf and dumb to basic concerns of human life.
Democracy, the euphemism for political relativism, confers upon a people the right to legalize marriage between the same sexes, give licence to lesbianism, allow cohabitation between man and woman without entering into marriage contract, offer legal protection to gambling, allow consuming of liquor.
Under the garb of human rights it accords "freedom" to indulge in any immoral practice, in short make or break any rule of rational or moral conduct provided it is so fortunate as to enjoy the blessings of the general will, the will of the masses, or practically that of the majority of the people's representatives.
It may not be out of place here to point out that relativism is the dominant mood of the American people, the champions of democracy in our times. Emrys West cott of Alfred University asserts "I want to suggest that relativism is so embedded in our lives that we often don't recognize it as such.
The way we think of issues such as pluralism or tolerance, our understanding of personal identity, our attitudes to science - all are deeply shaped by the relativist outlook."
Islam starts with the doctrine that man's position in this world is that of a vicar or vicegerent of God. He, as such, is required to shape his entire life - individual and collective - according to the will of his Creator. The Quran terms this pilgrimage towards God as Ibadah. To become a perfect 'abd is the ultimate concern, the summum bonum of human life.
The Quran vehemently denies that man is allowed freedom to do whatever he likes, or that he is without any responsibility, that he is not accountable for his actions, or that he has been created without any purpose.
Islam, contrary to relativism, believes in absolute values, immutable moral norms, and eternally true, valid and relevant objective ethical standards applicable to all people, in all cultures, at all times and places.
Islam thus stands in stark opposition to the philosophy of relativism. Islam disposes of relativism as false and unsound. It rejects outright the notion that there is no moral law rooted in the nature of the human beings, which must govern our understanding of man and the common good.
It discards a concept of pluralism that reflects moral relativism. It holds that in the absence of an objective moral law justice and equity would be the first casualty as they would become matters of personal whims and desires. Obviously it becomes impossible to adjudicate between different conceptions of the personal and common good if there exists no objective standard.
Further, Islam absolutely denies that man, individually or collectively, has a right to legislate for other human beings. Islamic polity is rooted in the ultimate unqualified sovereignty of Allah meaning thereby that a man or a group of men, notwithstanding their representative status, even though they enjoy total confidence of not only the majority but the entire populace, while indulging in legislative activity, can, in no case, transgress the limits laid down by Allah, as explicated finally through the agency of the Last of the Prophets, (PBUH). This inviolable precept of Islam stands in stark denial of the fundamental postulate of democracy that the people are the ultimate source of law.
Democracy is embedded in the uncompromising idea of the supreme sovereignty of the people to be exercised through their representatives with unbridled freedom to legislate.
The people have the birthright to choose any course of action they may deem fit without being under any obligation to follow or take into account any superior will. The general will or the will of the masses is the godhead of democratic dispensation.
It is thus mere naivety to suggest that democracy could be Islamized by being superimposed by belief in the sovereignty of God. It would merely destroy the very axioms, the basic doctrines of democracy.
Furthermore, it is undeniable that democracy in its true spirit and form could exist and thrive only in a secular framework and with a secular mindset. Secularism is the life-blood of democracy.
If so, the pertinent question is whether there exists any possibility of a reconciliation between Islam and secularism? Could secularism be Islamized? Vice versa, could Islam afford to be secularized? Secularism, to be brief, consists in the liberation of man from religious and metaphysical control.
There are three basic postulates of secularism: (a) death of God or as some prefer to say absence of God; (b) pluralism or to use common parlance tolerance; (c) relativism. The last two are necessary corollaries to the first one.
Death or absence of God means that man can live without God. God is no longer allowed to interfere in man's world, He must have no influence on human life. Without God every criteria of good and bad, right and wrong is lost to man.
Every man is left to believe and act in his own way according to his whims and wishes. In the absence of a common standard to judge, every belief and action of others would have to be respected or at least tolerated as good and correct.
Obviously secularism demands a pluralism which would preclude a privileged position to any particular religion. As for relativism, it is the 'Siamese twin' to pluralism. As nothing is right or wrong choice becomes a matter of taste or liking not of principle or law.
No wonder if the late Professor Fazlur Rahman asserted in unequivocal words, "secularism destroys the sanctity and universality (transcendence) of all moral values... secularism is necessarily atheistic."
Niazi Burkes, the most avowed secularist and one of the most ardent preachers of Turkish secularism, once wrote: Secularism is a doctrine, spirit or consciousness advocating the temporal (as opposed to the sacred) foundation of "individual ideas, attitudes, beliefs or interests."
The first and the foremost concern of secularism is the doctrine of separation between church and the state, separation of political sphere from religion. This proposition not only undermines Islam's hegemony over human life, it rather annihilates fundamental doctrines of Islam.
Islam views human life as indivisible, as an integrated whole, incapable of being split in watertight compartments. One has to accept Islam - the whole of it or to reject it entirely.
The secularist outlook, at the very most, relegates Islam, only grudgingly so, to the ever-shrinking sphere of private devotion. The considered secularist view is that resistance to secularism is a sure sign of intellectual archaism, cultural schizophrenia and religious bigotry.
No doubt there are some superficial similarities between the Islamic and liberal democratic political dispensations like representative character of the government, the institution of Shoora, the accountability factor, due process of law, or their common abhorrence to autocratic and dictatorial rule, all or some of which have misled some writers to identify Islamic polity with democracy or at least approximate one to the other.
However, descending deeper into the philosophical foundations of the two, the irresistible conclusion is that secularism and relativism, being inextricably interwoven into the basic texture of democracy and sovereignty of people being its corner stone, democracy is not only incompatible with Islam, it is rather an anti-thesis of Islamic ideology. With every advancing step of democracy, Islam is sure to be forced to beat a hasty retreat and lose ground in equal measure.
Woodrow Wilson, about whom H. L. Mencken wrote, "He thought he was Jesus Christ", plunged America into the First World War to "make the world safe for democracy." Today the problem is how to make democracy safe for the world? How to salvage the humanity from the scourge of the acknowledged fiendish madness that the democracy is?