Religion and Global Affairs: Islamic Religion and Political Order

Religion plays an important political role in many predominantly Muslim states, unlike in the secular state models of the West. Premature conclusions have been drawn suggesting that Islam and democracy are incompatible. Both Western and Muslim scholars must reexamine the historical role of Islam in order to dispose of the alarmist views currently being presented. Moreover, there is a de facto separation between Church and state in Islam which should be recognized.

The debate over the challenge of an Islamic form of government as a comparable and functional alternative to the modern secular model continues as we approach the 21st century. Western scholars remain divided in their assessment of the “threat” that a government founded upon an exclusivist religious system like Islam poses for liberal, secular democratic values. Their underlying assumptions about the political role of religion are central to this debate. The differences between secular and religious cultures come into focus as their respective representatives begin defining the role that religion should or should not play in politics. Differences in cultural orientation have led secular culture to criticize religion as soon as it enters the public sphere. In contrast, religious establishments appear to assert that religion cannot remain passive and are compelled to use religious resources for mobilizing their followers to promote social and political justice in society.

Many events over the last three decades have demonstrated an important public dimension of the moral demands that religions make on their adherents in order to maintain social cohesion. In some countries, the religious impulse has functioned as the only viable means of mobilizing social outrage against autocratic state rule. More importantly, in the absence of democratic institutions, religious institutions have served as a surrogate means of public participation in the political process. A number of countries have demonstrated the potential of religious establishments to bring about national reconciliation and subsequent nation-building. In recent years, both South Africa and Bosnia stand out as countries in which religious leaders and their congregations have contributed positively to such developments.

The ramifications of a religious ideology functioning as the vertical point of reference in a political order become more significant when political principles are derived from an exclusionary religious ideology. By failing to transcend sectarian boundaries, religion becomes an obstacle to the development of a national identity. Moreover, when a particular religious regime is favored by the political order, the public domain is unable to seek a consensus among various other groups which have conflicting political convictions rooted in their private religious commitments.

In the Muslim world, where religion permeates the national culture, Islamic tradition neither remains, nor can afford to remain, indifferent when addressing issues of national politics and social justice. Nonetheless, the limitations placed by religious values on the determination of national policies in a modern Muslim nation-state have never been fully explained or accepted by Muslim communities.

In response to the ascendancy of Islam as a faith that encourages political action both to combat human imperfections and to construct a political order with a sacred point of reference, a number of Western scholars of Islam have engaged in uncovering and recovering the political history of Islam. These scholars seek to remind their readers about the “lost” meanings of those defunct concepts of classical Islamic juridical traditions that divide the world between believers and non-believers. Among such legal constructs of the past that continue to dominate the scholarly enterprise of “neo-orientalism” are dar al-islam (literally “sphere of submission;” technically “territories administered by the Muslim state”) and dar al-harb (literally “sphere of war;” technically “territories to be subdued”). These two phrases are used frequently in works dealing with the rise of political Islam to explain the normative foundation of Muslim convictions about their global role in forming a transcultural community of believers who must ultimately subdue and dominate disbelievers. Such scholarly endeavors serve to warn the international political community about the threat posed by Muslim extremists who, as these scholars argue, are engaged in reviving the historical jihad to destabilize the secular world order.

Many of the major works...