PART ONE THE STUDY OF POLITICS IN ISLAM

In the two chapters that make up part 1, I lay out the argument of this book: politics in Islam as a struggle for a moral order in society. In the first chapter, I consider politics in Islam as a set of moral purposes—and the struggle to realize them in the name of Islam. Diverse forms of governance have ruled in the name of Islam over the centuries, from sultanates to democracies. Who determines the order of Islam, the sultan or the people? I highlight the fact that the authority to determine the order of Islam has never been singular. Such authority has long included not only the ruling powers and scholars of the law, which in Islam is known as shari‘a, but also pious communities that exist apart from governmental oversight. These communities, which have taken varied form over the centuries, are the moral educators of the umma, that is, the peoples of Islam in local societies across the globe.1 To be sure, Islam’s pious communities do not exist beyond the realities of human hierarchies. Their ranks include those with expertise in religious matters, both shari‘a norms and prophetic precedents. They also include people from all walks of life—from peasants to politicians. Still, while pious communities are always embedded in the local society, its governing structures included, they exist in principle not to capture power or enforce the law but to educate the soul (the inner life where character is formed) in the ethics of Islam. In that sense, they enable Muslims to orient to God as their primary devotion—with effect on the manner in which they interact with others in society and organize for common moral purposes. These pious communities can therefore be said to have a role in shaping the order of Islam. As such, they cannot be overlooked when it comes to the study of politics in Islam. In other words, politics in Islam—as in other traditions—is not reducible to governmental order. In this sense, sovereignty, which I define as the authority to decide on the order of society, is not singular in Islam. This is not to suggest a modernist bifurcation between the secular and the religious but rather different modalities of sovereignty that interact with one another, sometimes in cooperation and sometimes in competition. Thus sovereignty in Islam is not only a function of power by which to enact shari‘a in society. It is also a function of devotion to God. In other words, while rulers—caliphs and sultans in the past, kings and presidents today—can present themselves as devoted to God by enacting the law, other figures too can display their devotion to God by undertaking the work of educating their local societies in the ethics of Islam. In this sense, these figures and the communities that look to them as moral authorities also have a share in determining the order of society and thus in the sovereignty of Islam. The sovereignty they represent is not necessarily at odds with the sovereignty of those who enact the law. Rather, these pious communities, by positioning themselves at a distance from the ruling elite and the worldly interests they represent, display a devotion to God that is distinctly otherworldly in orientation. To be sure, these communities are not above the forces of corruption. Still, they represent a parallel sovereignty in society, one that is not primarily oriented to the authority of the ruler—even a ruler who governs society in the name of Islam. Sovereignty, then, is not reducible to a system of governance that manages diverse peoples, ordering them as a single society. Such is true in general and not only in the case of Islam, but the matter has become confused in our secular age, when, it is assumed, the state is exclusively sovereign over human life, unrivaled in the power it wields to determine the order of society. As such, it demands our devotion.2 However, as this study indicates, the idea that a system of governance, the state in modern parlance, might be the object of one’s devotion exists only ambiguously in Islam. To be sure, those who have governed in the name of Islam, past and present, have eagerly sought to associate their rule with the sovereignty of God, making it seem that it has a transcendent character of its own. Indeed, governmental authority, which is tasked with the establishment of justice in society, has long been recognized as sharing in the sovereignty of Islam. However, at the same time, the order of Islam assumes that heavenly devotions are operative in the souls of those who have been formed in the ethics of Islam through the mediation of pious communities, as mentioned above. Thus even when these communities acknowledge the governmental authority of the ruling power, their allegiance is not blind but contingent on the ways in which the governmental order aligns with their heavenly devotions.

To be sure, devotions are never entirely obvious. The opaqueness of our devotions is partly due to the fact that systems of rule do not only make and enforce laws. They also seek to orient the devotions of those they govern. That is, they need to show that they are sovereign—over one’s soul as well as over one’s society. In this sense, it is in the very nature of systems of rule— past and present—to attract the devotions of those they govern by claiming to represent them. It is, then, easy to become confused and believe that the mortal deity who rules society is the mirror of the immortal one in heaven. In principle, pious communities bring clarity to such confusion. By educating their members in heavenly devotions, they remind them that only God is God. Thus devotion to the ruling power can never be total. In addition, by educating the umma in heavenly devotions, pious communities enact a prophetic order, one marked by righteousness, alongside the governmental order. In this sense, they too are shapers of the order of Islam and therefore have a share in its sovereignty. The study of politics in Islam, then, cannot ignore the devotions of these communities, which are political even if not in the usual sense. That is, while these communities, as just noted, are shapers of the order of Islam, they are not essentially oriented to power. However, again, the question of devotions is not immediately obvious. A method is thus needed to allow us to see the way in which devotions shape the order of society.

In the second chapter of part 1, I discuss what is methodologically at stake in the study of politics in Islam as a struggle for a moral order. After all, the history of Islam includes tyrants who sought to invest their power with transcendent character by cloaking it in the language of Islam.3 What, then, does it mean to speak of politics in Islam as a struggle for a moral order when tyrants have ruled in the name of Islam? Politics is not simply a struggle for power—a contestation for control of society’s resources, including its human members, as if mere biological entities. In other words, when it comes to politics, one cannot overlook the ethical agency of humans beyond their status as biological entities to be managed by the ruling power. Politics in Islam too does not unfold apart from moral assumptions, including righteousness of a kind as the fruit of one’s cultivation of heavenly devotions. Put differently, it would be difficult to speak of politics as politics in Islam if society showed no evidence of the righteousness that stands at the heart of the prophetic message and that is generally understood to be the fruit of the umma’s worship of God. The study of politics in Islam therefore entails assessment of the diverse ways in which the umma’s political devotions are oriented to the sovereignty of God.

The sovereignty of God, as represented by the order of Islam, is twofold. The ruling power, wielder of governmental authority, exists, at a minimum, to ensure security in society,4 while divine guidance, as mediated by pious communities, educates souls in the ethics of Islam with effect, as noted above, on interactions in society, including collective efforts for common moral purposes. The idea that the sovereignty of God takes twofold expression, as just noted, implies that politics in Islam includes two sets of transcendent claims: those of the ruling power to discipline society into order by virtue of its legal authority and those of pious communities to educate souls in the ethics of Islam by virtue of their spiritual authority. Theology, the study of transcendent claims, is thus needed to disclose not only the nature of the twofold sovereignty that determines the order of Islam but also the way in which the political devotions of the umma are diversely oriented to the sovereignty of God. It is not my intention in this study to adjudicate these diverse claims to transcendence, only to follow the logic of the twofold sovereignty of Islam, which would see the transcendent claims of the ruling power as ambiguous at best, arguably false, since it is not divine, and those of pious communities as more certain, since, in principle, they are based in divine guidance as revealed by the prophetic message. In other words, the transcendence of divine guidance, in contrast to that of governmental authority, is a true transcendence. As such, divine guidance endows the umma, its recipient, with a sovereignty of its own—with its own ethical agency beyond the power of governmental authority to order human life. In sum, the umma’s political devotions are not singular because the sovereignty that determines the order of Islam is not singular, making it necessary to look to theology to disclose the varied claims to sovereignty, over souls and over society alike, within the order of Islam.

Put differently, theology is needed for a fuller comprehension of politics in Islam. Theology, as I use it in this study, does not refer to scholastic inquiry into divine matters, known in Islam as “the science of speaking” (‘ilm al-kalām), that is, discourse about the essence and attributes of God. Theology, here, is political theology, the study of human devotions in relation to politics where transcendent claims are never absent even in societies where politics is conceived in secular terms. The field of political theology, it needs to be stressed, remains a work in progress. The term is used inconsistently in the scholarly literature, not always in reference to the study of political devotions and the diverse claims to transcendence that would orient them, but, more commonly, to the idea that the governmental authority of the ruling power is quasi-divine insofar as it brooks no rivals to its sovereignty. We look to theology as a method to uncover a fuller understanding of the sovereignty of Islam and, in turn, of politics in Islam.

Indeed, given the imprecise usage of political theology, there is a need for it to be applied more rigorously as a method. This study is one attempt to do so, offering perspective on politics in Islam not only as a “secular” (worldly) phenomenon but also, as Muslims have long seen it, as a divinely ordained enterprise that embraces society as a whole. By this view, all sovereignty belongs to God—over society as well as over souls—but God does not descend from heaven to rule the order of Islam directly as its unique sovereign. While details differ from one context to the next, what is consistent is the struggle to represent the sovereignty of God in terms of a moral order. Significantly, this struggle has never been averse to nonrevealed wisdom, that is, secular or worldly wisdom, or to cooperation with non-Muslim peoples. In this sense, the sovereignty of Islam, as Muslims recognize, can be realized in societies where the ruling power governs by norms that are not explicitly those of Islam but that align with its purposes. In other words, the order of Islam is not clearly religiously uniform, and that, as we will see, by the logic of Islam.

In sum, politics in Islam cannot be studied simply as a set of power calculations, which, while always at play, are only partially determinative of the order of Islam. Alongside power calculations are moral assumptions, informed by divine guidance as prophetically revealed, so theology is needed to grasp politics in Islam as a worldly venture that is to be pleasing to God.