1: The Liberal Age is not entirely over . . .
It may seem at times as if Islamic political thought has been captured by Qutb, Maududi, and their intellectual descendents. It is hard to remember that from about 1840 to 1940 (the period that Hourani terms the "Liberal Age"), the dominant strain in Muslim political thinking was comprised of the work of Tahtawi, Kayr al-Din, Afghani, Abduh, and Rida, who struggled above all to combine the moral weight of Islam with the science and rationalism of the West. Their goal was to create societies that were progressive and humanist while remaining identifiably Islamic.
The failure of the Islamic modernists was not going far enough -- not finding a new understanding of Islam's relationship to both the socio-historical world and the physical universe. An-Naim is clearly working in this Islamic liberal tradition, but his work has greater promise since he offers what his precursors feared to -- a new synthesis of Islam and politics that goes beyond the traditionalist understanding of the Shariah.
His initial premise is that if Muslims are to be Muslims, the state must remain secular. The Quran tells us clearly that there is no coercion in religion. A state created along the lines set out by Maududi and Qutb, one that would coerce belief, would foreclose the only path to true religious practice -- the path of the religious seeker, finding her own way to draw near to God.
A secular state does not mean one that is outside the influence of religiously motivated Muslims. Individuals can not hope to divorce their religious beliefs from their participation in politics. But policies that incorporate religiously inspired input must be adopted as a result of open, democratic dialogue. In An-Naim's terms, policy congenial to the Muslim community must be adopted through the process of civic reason, not imposed by the state. In order to protect this process, he calls for a constitutional order, a theory of individual equal citizenship, and the guarantee of individual human rights.
One of the most valuable components of the book is An-Naim's impressive scholarship that establishes the fact that the Shariah in concept is an unchanging, comprehensive body of divine law; but that in historical terms it has always been applied by human beings who engaged in "ijtihad", or independent reasoning, to discern what the divine law actually requires of timebound human beings in historical situations. This is a useful counterpose to the position of the Islamic militants who argue, in Maududi's terms, that the Shariah "makes God's regulations very clear and specific and thus provides guidance for the regulations of how man should live". All experience with fundamental law, whether it be the Shariah, the Ten Commandments, or the American Constitution, argues that an-Naim's position is correct and Maududi's is wrong.
An-Naim goes farther than the original Islamic liberals by calling for a basic shift in the interpretation of the Shariah based on the work of Ustadh Mahmoud Mohamed Taha. The new paradigm would emphasize the verses in the Quran that were revealed to Muhammad during the Maccan period rather than the Medinan period. The revelation of the Medinan period was intended for a community surrounded by enemies and at war. That of the Maccan period emphasized more the universal doctrines of Islam. A focus on the latter is more in keeping with the requirements of an Islamic community that is a strong component of an open, democratic, and secular state.
There is more of value in this book. Suffice it to say that it is a required read for those who are interested specifically in the development of Islamic law, and more generally in identifying voices in the Islamic world who call for Muslims to find ways to embrace the future rather than reacting to the past.
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