On The Importance of Developing a 21st Century Islamic Political Theory

What does modern "Islamic governance" look like?

The past 100 years or so hasn’t exactly been great for the Muslim world. That’s putting it mildly. European imperialism, eclipsed by authoritarian dictatorships, followed up by a new round of Western warfare inflicted upon it to start this century isn’t a recipe for success.

It’s become in vogue to claim Islam as a solution to this malaise: If only we had Islamic governance, none of this would happen. If only the shari’a was properly implemented, Muslim society would return to the paragon of morality it was in the past. If only there was a unified, pan-Islamic caliphate, there would be no foreign wars inflicted on Muslims.

While these slogans all sound utopian and wonderful, they are merely slogans. What all Muslim revivalist movements of the past century have failed to do is develop a political theory that is at once properly “Islamic” in its framework while also forward-thinking and willing to engage the realities of the present and future.

So what does an Islamic political theory look like? If we take history as a guide, we see that it is simultaneously adaptable to various civilizational contexts while also being grounded in an Islamic framework that does not change.

Take for instance the shift that occurred when the Abbasids took power from the Umayyads in 750. The entire structure of governance was fundamentally altered. Whereas the Umayyad administration was grounded in aspects of Byzantine rulership combined with old tribal Arab patronage, the Abbasids adopted Persianate norms and bureaucracy, with much of the government managed by the same families that did the job under the Sassanids.

After the Mongol destruction of the Abbasids in 1258 there occurred another seismic shift. The entire old notion of caliphate was gone, replaced in Egypt with a slave sultanate predicated on military power and in Anatolia, Iran, and Northern India by Turko-Mongol authority based on just rulership and aspects of Sufi sovereignty. Further diversity is found in the various revivalist kingdoms that ruled in the Maghrib and Andalusia and the mercantile city-states of the Indian Ocean rim.

Within all this diversity of administration however, we find a relatively stable framework that we can properly label as “Islamic”. The ruler, whether he is called caliph, sultan, malik, amir, or whatever, occupies an intermediate role between Allah’s sovereignty and the population he rules over. Just as Allah rules over the entire of creation through justice, the temporal earthly ruler was conceived of as ruling over his polity with justice, maintaining the same stability and order of the cosmos itself. For this reason, we find relatively few treatises written in Muslim history that are focused on the actual form of Islamic governance. Al-Mawardi’s (d. 1058) al-Ahkam al-Sultaniyya is the most notable example of this genre. Ibn Taymiyya’s (d. 1328) al-Siyasa al-Shar’iyya, with its singular focus on the imposition of the shari’a in the face of the slowly-Islamizing Mongol khanates, is another. What we find instead are dozens, if not hundreds, of siyasetname texts, which are less interested in what government looks like and more interested in encouraging the ruler towards justice in his personal and official interactions.

The Siyasetname of the Seljuk grand vizier Nizam al-Mulk (d. 1092)

Enacting the shari’a was an integral aspect of political justice, but it was far from the only thing rulership was concerned with. Political thought was predicated on adapting that Islamic framework to the current socio-political context. The language of rulership varied from Umayyad Damascus to Ottoman Istanbul to Mughal Delhi. The relative power of the ruler, his titles, the role of the military and educational-jurisprudential establishments, and the level of centralization of power all varied and adapted to the prevailing notions of sovereignty at the time. But the framework, predicated on justice and ultimate divine sovereignty remained.

This is where modern Muslim political theory has failed. It takes as axiomatic the political theory generated by the West over the past few centuries and attempts to shoehorn Islam into it. Liberal democracy, with its origins in the centrality of the individual and its relegation of God to a secondary role, is an ill-fitting framework for Muslim civilization. Groups such as the Brotherhood in Egypt, the AKP in Turkey, and PTI in Pakistan have attempted to use liberalism as the vehicle through which the shari’a can be implemented, but fail to recognize that the framework itself is fundamentally at odds with an Islamic notion of sovereignty.

Similarly, the authoritarian dictatorships that have ruled over much of the Muslim world fail not just because authoritarianism is a flawed system to begin with, but because the theoretical basis of it lies in European imperialism and aspects of socialist state power that are antithetical to Islamic notions of justice.

So practically speaking, what does a 21st century Islamic political theory look like? I would argue that it can have any number of manifestations. It can look like a modern western democracy, led by a president and legislative body. It can be a sultanate, with power passed down hereditarily. It can be a confederation of states, loosely united like the EU with a titular caliph or chairman. It can be a tribal system with a decentralized government. But for it to be “Islamic” it must be built upon a framework that views sovereignty as divine in origin, with the ruler’s job being implementing justice within a larger understanding of cosmic order.

One of the notable features of Muslim civilization has always been its ability to adapt to modern circumstances. Prevailing ideas of sovereignty, authority, and bureaucracy were always capable of being incorporated into a truly Islamic framework that reflected the imperative of revelation while also practically addressing the socio-political realities of the day. The 21st century challenge for Muslims determining their own political futures in places like Afghanistan and Syria is to build systems that can effectively deal with modernity while remaining within a larger Islamic framework of justice and sovereignty. The era of simply copy-pasting Western frameworks onto Muslim civilization must end for Muslim civilization to be revived.