Islamic Law: "Abnormal Abuse of Rules Can Neither Legalise The Abusive Practice Nor Render the Authentic Rules Null & Void"

This is an excerpt from The Muslim Conduct of State by Dr. Muhammad Hamidullah

(1)As has aptly been said: "When stable communities whether Tribes, or City-States, or States of a modern type are permanently contiguous, customs hardening in time into law never fail to regulate their intercourse. Ubi societas, ibi jus; wherever developed communities are brought in contact with each other, judicial relations must sooner or later be formed not mainly by agreement, tacit or express, but by the very necessity of the case, and partly from the same cruses as those which working internally create states." 

(8) Law (Fiqh) is variously defined by classical Muslim jurisconsults. "The knowledge of what is for and upon one" is a definition attributed to Abu Hanifah) which in other words may be rendered as "the science of the rights and obligations of man". A late authority, Muhibbullah al-Bihariy, introduces this all-embracing subject in the following words  of his book (compiled 1109 H.) : " The science of ascertaining religious commands (regarding practical affairs of life) by means of their detailed guides." [By guides he means authority or source of information.]


(9) A glance at the contents of works on Fiqh would reveal that they embrace practically all the affairs of human' life, material as well as spiritual. In view of the standard definitions given above and is the face of the contents of works do Fiqh, there remains not the slightest doubt that international law, i.e. the rules of State-conduct in times of war, peace and neutrality, form part of the ordinary law of the land, the Fiqh. These rules of conduct are generally dealt with in books on Fiqh under the heading Siyar i.e. conduct,

(10) Here a brief expose of the origin of law according to Muslim jurists may profitably be added. They say that man must always do what is good, and abstain from what is evil, and take scrupulous care of the intermediary grades of plausible, permissible and disliked. It is, however, not easy to distinguish between good and evil, especially when the matter concerns the subtleties of a complex civilised life beyond the pale of ordinary commonplace things. 


Practical needs would have required the possession of the power to legislate (or lay down definitely grades of good and evil [in] each and every matter) in the hands of Man, either individual, as jurisconsult, or collectively organised, i.e. a State. Yet mere reason, regarded as the touchstone of good and evil, is not without grave difficulties. For it is possible, and also a matter of fact -- so argue Muslim jurists -- that different persons opine differently regarding the same things. 

The belief in Messengers of God is useful even from the point of view of jurisprudence, in so far as the awe and respect due to their persons lead to the acceptance of certain fundamentals without further dispute, wherefrom other and further details may be elaborated. For this reason, the Muslim savants are very thankful to the generosity of God that He gave men along with reason certain chosen human Guldes to help them in the conduct of life. These selected and chosen ones pointed out what God commanded, God the real Sovereign and Lawgiver, regarding good and evil. 


Muhammad has been acknowledged by the Muslims as the Messenger of God; and whatever he gave them in his lifetime, commands as well as injunctions, in the name of his Sender, God, was accepted by the Muslims as indisputably final and most reasonable. 


These Divine Commands, known as the Qur'an and the Hadith - as we shall see later in detail - served practically all the needs of the Muslim community of that time. But human needs multiplied later in such a manner that express provision seemed to be available for some of  the new matters in either the word or deed of the Messenger, who himself had passed away, disconnecting the link whereby Man could receive Commands from his Lord. The consequent result would have been fatal and the fabric of Fiqh would soon have collapsed under the strain, had not there been express provision in the law itself for further elaboration. Credit must also not fail to be given to the Muslim jurists, after the death of the Prophet, who not only discerned this elasticity of the Divine Law, but also utilized it to its fullest extent. In time there emerged a complete system of law which served all the purposes of the Imperial Muslims, even at the height of their widest expansion from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans.


(11) Thus law originated from the direct Commands of God; but the power retained by man to interpret and expand Divine Commands, by means of analogical deductions, and other processes, provided all that was required by the Muslims. In this way a dual need was served: that of sanctity to inspire awe in the minds of (hose who were intended to observe it, and that of elasticity or capability of development to meet the needs of times and circumstances.


(12) We have defined international law, first, as a part of the law of the land. The province of the law of the land is therefore, obviously, wider than that of international law; and we have no concern here with the portion of the law of the land which regulates internal affairs of the State or its subjects.


(13) We have also acknowledged customs as contributing to international law. No system of law can positively provide guidance regarding every detail of every matter. Completion of a list of obligatory and prohibited things, along with details of a certain number of permitted matters -- that is all any system of law can achieve Naturally the prevalent customs  general practice, and even innovations hardening in time into prevalent usage eye) regulate the relations in such cases. 


(17) It may be added that, for purposes of illustration, precedents from Orthodox Practice have freely been referred to. These alone are binding. Abnormal and temporary abuse or overlooking of certain rules by a Muslim State can neither legalise the abusive practice nor render the authentic rules null and void. 


http://muslim-canada.org/conduct_1.html This is an excerpt from The Muslim Conduct of State by Dr. Muhammad Hamidullah

Political Islam: A Modern Phenomena

Mohammed Ayoob

Political Islam: 
A Modern Phenomena of Presenting National Goals as Islamic
Mobilizing Resistance to Domestic Autocracy and Global Western Hegemony

Political Islam, namely, any political activity that draws upon Islamic precepts, history, vocabulary, and presumed models of governance currently embodies the idea of resistance to hegemony far more than any other ideology in the Muslim world and even beyond. The only ideology currently capable of mobilizing substantial segments of the South’s population to resist this material and ideological hegemony [of the Industrilaized West] is political Islam.

This does not mean that political Islam is a monolith. Diverse manifestations of political activities in the name of Islam are primarily determined by context-specific variables, despite the similarities they may possess in terms of the vocabulary used and the common pool of ideas from which they draw. However, there is an anti-hegemonic aspect of political Islam that runs through many of its diverse manifestations. This dimension also explains the role of several mainstream Islamist movements and groups as the primary opponents in those countries ruled by authoritarian regimes, several of which are clients or allies of the global concert and/or hegemon.

Several factors help explain why political Islam is especially prone to taking anti-hegemonic positions and resisting Western domination: the historical antecedents of Islamist movements that have shaped their worldviews, the nature of regimes in several Muslim countries and their dependent relationship with global centers of power, and trajectories of American policy toward the Muslim world in general and the Middle East in particular. The complex interplay among these variables tends to strengthen the anti-hegemonic strand in Islamist political activity as well as add to its standing and popularity among diverse Muslim populations.

The antecedents of what we call “political Islam” can be traced to the nineteenth century, when the Muslim world began to feel the full weight of the European onslaught. Islamist political activity in the form we know it today is, therefore, a modern phenomenon, as much a creation of modernity as a reaction to it. In the thousand years of Muslim history before the advent of European colonialism, when Muslims ruled over Muslims, Islam was only rarely used as a political tool to challenge temporal authority. This held true among both the majority Sunnis and the Shia minority with the latter adopting religio-political quietism as a survival strategy.

In general, the ulama, the religious scholars, were politically quiescent as long as the temporal rulers met the minimum standards of defending the lands of Islam and non-interference in their subjects’ practice of religion. The state was minimalist in character and largely left civil society alone as long as subjects paid their taxes and did not threaten rebellion. In other words, there was basically a live-and-let-live policy between the temporal and religious authorities; when wars occurred, they were primarily among princes and warlords seeking to expand their territory at the expense of their neighbors. Political mobilization at the popular level, which was inherent in the Prophet’s preaching even during his lifetime, became the exception under Muslim dynastic rule.

European colonialism drastically changed the nature of political authority in the Muslim world by putting non-Muslims in control of Muslim lands either directly or indirectly. Simultaneously, mass literacy and the introduction of the printing press enabled lay Muslim scholars and activists to challenge the ulama’s religious authority, thus leading to a proto-Reformation that ushered scriptural literalism and the priesthood of the individual – essential components of Europe’s Reformation – into the Islamic world.

Calls for proto-nationalist resistance were often couched in Islamic terminology, and the faithful were called upon to resist colonial encroachment and overthrow European domination as part of their individual and collective Islamic duty to prevent Islamic lands and Muslims from falling under non-Muslim rule. Consequently, anti-colonial resistance became the modern era’s quintessential jihad. This notion of jihad has been carried over into the twenty-first century as resistance to the hegemony of, and domination by, non-Muslim great powers – the taghut (arrogant ones rebelling against God) – to use the terminology of the Iranian revolution.

Political Islam, as an ideology of popular mobilization, is the heir of these proto-nationalist resistance movements and its ideologues, the most prominent of whom is Jamal al-Din al-Afghani. This pioneer in terms of using Islamic vocabulary to mobilize Muslims against colonial domination found no contradiction between the twin forces of nationalism and pan-Islam in colonized Muslim countries. In fact, he saw them as two sides of the same coin that could be employed simultaneously to resist European domination, thereby demonstrating the paradoxical compatibility of nationalism and pan-Islam in the Muslim world. 

Contemporary manifestations of political Islam are heirs of this tradition of combining nationalist agendas with Islamic ones, or rather of presenting national goals as Islamic, in their attempt to mobilize Muslims to resist both domestic autocracy and global hegemony. The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928, successfully combined nationalist and Islamic appeals to become a major domestic political force. Hamas, an offshoot of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood, has achieved similar success in Occupied Palestine.  But it was the Iranian revolution – a classic case of people going into the streets and overthrowing an unpopular regime – that provided the prime example of successfully combining Islam and nationalism for popular mobilization.

A second variable that has strengthened and continues to strengthen political Islam’s anti-hegemonic strand is the nature of several Muslim regimes and their past and present links with the global centers of power, especially the United States. While Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Bangladesh have adopted (and, in the case of Turkey, consolidated) democratic systems to various degrees, several others, notably those in the Arab world and Central Asia, continue to suffer from huge democratic deficits.

The authoritarian nature of many Muslim regimes, especially in the broader Middle East, which includes Central Asia, the Caucasus as well as the Middle East as traditionally defined, provides crucial political space in which Islamist political activity can expand. Closed political systems and authoritarian regimes are standing invitations to the increased popularity of such political formations, because they stifle political debate and effectively suppress all secular opposition.

This dialectic between American hegemony (as represented by American policies toward the Muslim world and especially the Middle East) and political Islam (as represented by movements and political formations opposing both American hegemony and its local clients) is likely to have a major impact upon the Muslim world’s future political trajectory, particularly in the Middle East.

Read full article: http://www.theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/the_united_states_and_political_islam_the_dialectic_of_hegemony_and_resista/

Mohammed Ayoob is Distinguished Professor of International Relations and Coordinator of the Muslim Studies Program, at Michigan State University. He is also an Adjunct Scholar at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding.(ISPU). His most recent book is The Many Faces of Political Islam (University of Michigan Press: 2008).  The full policy brief may be downloaded [here] courtesy of the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding. http://www.jmc.msu.edu/faculty/show.asp?id=2

More on Political Islam:

http://swp-berlin.org/common/get_document.php?asset_id=6022 Dynamics in Political Islam and challenges for European policies

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:4e89mS4LsSkJ:www.nixoncenter.org/Monographs/HizbutahrirIslamsPoliticalInsurgency.pdf+islam+political+tool+%2B+arab+countries&hl=en&g Hizb-ut-Tahrir: Islam's Political Insurgency (The Nixon Centre, 2004)

http://www.cceia.org/resources/transcripts/135.html Jihad : The Trail of Political Islam (Carnegie Council, New York)

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:2UveL0CrU0QJ:wwwarc.murdoch.edu.au/wp/wp154.pdf+islam+%2B+political+tool+%2B+arab+countries&hl=en&gl=pk&pid=bl&srcid The New Challenges of Political Islam in Malaysia (Murdoch University, Australia, 2009)

Islam as a Political Tool: The Zia Era of Islamization of Pakistan

Mubarka Ahmed

The military regime under Zia-ul-Haq entered the political arena in 1977 as a “caretaker ninety-day government whose “sole aim was “to organize free and fair elections. The “directionless drama eventually spanned over the course of eleven years, having been granted a legal license to persist by the Supreme Court of Pakistan.

It soon experienced a remarkable shift in policies, with religious reform becoming a top priority before long. A. K. Brohi, General Zia’s Law and Religious Affairs Advisor, claimed in less than a year after Zia’s take over that the “main concern of the military coup had been “to put the country on the Islamic system.

The process of Islamisation started almost immediately, and soon emerged strongly in the shape of legal amendments.

Just five days after coming to power, new Martial Law regulations with strict Quranic penalties for a series of crimes were announced. Zia persistently advocated his support for complete Nizam-e-Mustafa (Order of the Prophet) in Pakistan. Over the years, innumerable promises over a starkly broad range of issues to Islamize the legal and social dynamics of the country were made, but much of it remained un-implemented . This led to an increasing sense of superficiality associated with the selective process of Islamisation, appearing to be a matter more concerned with state convenience, impression-building, and political tactics as opposed to genuine motives to find the right place for Islam within Pakistan’s political structures. As Ali rightly states, “Whatever Islamisation Zia had been enforcing was more to consolidate his own personal power than to establish a genuine Islamic order. 

In the wake of election-postponement, Zia unveiled a four-tiered priority agenda with Islamisation at the top of the hierarchy . This eleven-year rule dedicated to Islamisation, saw in its very first year the making of a parallel legal system that looked to the Quran and Sunnah for precedents, the performance of which was limited to ‘law-finding’ and not ‘law-making’. 

Various other legal amendments followed in the name of Islam. The controversial Hudood Ordinances were duly approved the next year. The Law of Evidence (Qanoon-e-Shahadat) was then amended to severely affect the rights of women, followed by the compulsory deduction of Zakat, and other such changes. It was the first time in the history of Pakistan that strict Islamic penalties, as in operation in Saudi Arab, were being legalised. Modifications in Pakistan’s economic system through the establishment of Islamic Banking, abolition of bank interest (riba), mandatory collection of zakat (social welfare tax), introduction of Islamic bank tax (ushr) and establishment of various institutions to study Islamic economics were all contemplated as well. Educational reforms were mandated by setting up the International Islamic University, Shariah Training Institute, and various ulema training institutions. Social reforms were also introduced under the new Nizam-e-Mustafa; re-enforcement of the pre-existing bans on gambling and alcohol, stricter measures to encourage the observance of purdah (veil) and so forth. 

Religion also served as the prime justification for the military regime. It allowed the gap between the ‘Islamic’ way of governance and that specified by Western standards to be widened substantially; the un-Islamic nature of democratic forms of governance thus came under question. “The rhetoric of Islam and the inculcation of an Islamic identity have been deployed by the rulers of the state to justify arbitrary and undemocratic practices. Zia made sporadic comments on the need for a strong presidential form of government, it being more in line with the “thinking and psyche of Muslims, since they “believed in one God, one Prophet, and one Book, and their mentality is that they should be ruled by one man. He contended that true Islamic values envisioned a strong presidential system as opposed to the formerly established parliamentary one – another example of the use of Islam to entrench personal power. 

Amidst innumerable cases of non-implementation, those implemented resulted in acute social, political upheavals. Resentment followed from various quarters of society, particularly women and the Shia community. State-led Islamisation was in effect being reduced to ‘Sunni’ Islamisation which undermined the universalist claims of the entire process.

Academic scholarship of the time clearly saw the weaknesses and superficiality associated with these reforms. ‘Political noise’ regarding Islamisation was at its peak, but the unimplemented reforms showed a lack of genuine interest - Zia’s reform agenda had more force in words and vision than in practical reality.

On most occasions, it merely re-enforced Bhutto’s pre-existing reforms (bans on gambling, alcohol etc.) or made cosmetic changes to existing policies, e.g. zakat collection schemes. Most crucially though, many of the policies were simply left unimplemented; e.g. textbook reform, the ban on riba and so forth. Where there was implementation, it constituted a very minor change in existing policies, e.g. general educational reform and introduction of ‘Islamic Banks’. Kennedy cites these examples to illustrate the superficiality associated with Zia’s process of Islamisation, and the severe fickleness behind the entire procedure . Joshi reiterates, “Islamic regulations came to have but one source - the volition of Zia. 

The expediency of the propagation of this Islamisation process with reference to the international arena was a highly important factor for Zia too. Saudi concern in Pakistani politics, their support of adherents and advocates of Saudi Islam (Jamaat-i-Islami) and their vested interests in facilitating socio-religious dominance in Pakistan were key factors acting as catalysts for the Islamisation process. The Saudi interest in promoting their breed of Islam all over the Muslim world has been a constant feature of Pakistani politics, and was at its peak under Zia. Zia forcefully supported Saudi causes in Pakistan. The Afghan war proved another catalyst for this support, “The Afghan war in the 1980s once again raised the prospects of communism reaching the shores of Pakistan, and the Persian Gulf was quick to respond. Generous funding infiltrated the borders of Pakistan, to support and propel Islamic activities, thereby strengthening Pakistan’s Islamic identity. 

“The fount of Zia’s Islamic ideology came from Maulana Maudoodi and his Jamaat-i-Islami party. Zia was heavily reliant upon the Jamaat until his power became entrenched; the Jamaat on the other hand was interested in having an ideological stronghold in Pakistani politics that would outlive Zia’s temporary government. This resulted in a proximity that would heavily influence Zia’s policies and politics; an appeased JI meant a stronger power-foothold. This is, for many academics, one of the key explanations for Zia’s interest and keenness towards religion and religious reform. Joshi opines that, “It is obvious that in the priorities of the Jamaat, Islam was the most decisive consideration. Since Zia’s veneer of Islam fitted in with the Jamaat fanaticism, the two-some forged an alliance of collusive concurrence with a view to holding Pakistan to ransom.

The question put to the citizenry of Pakistan for the 1984 referendum is indicative of the manipulative use of religion for political gain. The people were asked a single question, the crux of which was whether they supported the Islamisation process and “the Islamic ideology of Pakistan. A yes vote would automatically serve as a vote of confidence for electing Zia as the president of Pakistan for the next five years. The manipulation was evident in the referendum; for emphasis, the yes column of the ballot was printed in green (symbolic of Islam) and the rest in white. 

Thus Zia’s era saw the use of religion has a highly charged entity, loaded with possibilities to justify an unconstitutional regime, entrench power, build external alliances and win domestic support. Islam, originally a matter of individual choice and preference, ultimately evolved into a prime governance tool subject to the heaviest forms of manipulation.

CONCLUSION: 

One way of understanding the reasons behind such use and abuse of religion under both regimes is to remember that Pakistan has always operated on an ‘Islamic mandate’, even under its most secular regimes. 

Bhutto for instance, was “arguably Pakistan’s most secular leader, but even before he reverted to the politicisation of religion for personal gain, the central PPP credo was, “Islam is our ideology, socialism our economy, and democracy our politics. 

Pakistan’s leaders have thus always reckoned the expediency of using Islamic rhetoric to support changes in policies, but what differentiates the two aforementioned regimes in this regard has been the ugly abuse of Islam and religious sentiments to further personal and politically charged agendas. Kennedy has argued that these legal and social changes brought under the name of Islam did not do much damage in practical terms; but many authors have debated that these “islamisation measures have created an environment of fanaticism and extremism in Pakistan . A hostile atmosphere, foul with fanaticism, has emerged and strengthened over time, finding its roots in the events that unfolded under the Bhutto and Zia regimes and the atmosphere of intolerance created therein.

Additionally, legal structures have suffered drastically, most primarily because of the ambiguity that has been created by the absence one standard source of law – the sources now being the Quran, Sunnah and the Constitution, all operating under a wider ambit of ‘Islam’ as the primary source. This ambiguity has facilitated the abuse of religion that has taken place in Pakistan, and has wreaked havoc in the legal system. Religion, by its very essence, allows for numerous interpretations, and thus as a non-standardized source of law, has given rise to drastic vagueness. 

The fact that there has been no ‘popular movement’ questioning the wisdom behind these laws is evidence that people are queasy questioning religion. Surely this is not something that places Pakistanis society alone but the way Islam has come to be viewed by many as unarguable. Even attempts to rationalize religion in light of modern day society have often been stomped down by fanatics as heretical advance to foil orthodox religion. Reform is slow, as society is uneasy about challenging anything validated under the guise of Islam. 

Read full article: http://www.chowk.com/articles/islam-as-a-political-weapon-in-pakistan-Mubarka-Ahmad.htm

Islam as a Political Tool: The Bhutto Era of Islamization of Pakistan

Mubarka Ahmad

The process of Islamising the state of Pakistan started as early as 1949. It was then that Pakistan’s career as a theocracy began in theory; with Liaquat Ali Khan’s (Prime Minister, 1947-51) move to secure the adoption of the Objectives Resolution by the Constituent Assembly, thereby substituting divine sovereignty for the sovereignty of the people. However, despite the fact that successive constitutions declared Pakistan an Islamic Republic, the use of Islam in politics remained chiefly rhetorical, to the great displeasure of religious organizations who championed the desirability, if not the necessity, of making Pakistan a truly Islamic state. 

President Ayub Khan (1958-69) showed clear modernistic tendencies; yet retained a modest complacency towards a degree of pre-existing Islamic ideology legitimized by the Pakistan movement, but took it no further . The trend of predominantly religion-free politics continued with Yahya Khan (1969-71), who similarly showed little sympathy for the religious parties. Till the rise of Pakistan People’s Party in the 1970s, the political stance regarding religious parties had been unsympathetic, as evidenced by the imprisonment and original announcement of death sentence of Maulana Maududi, head of the Jamaat-i-Islami in response to the Punjab disturbances in 1953.

It was only after the fall of Dhaka that the role of religion in politics was drastically altered. Power was handed over to Bhutto, who had won a clear victory in West Pakistan in the 1971 elections. Much to the consternation of the people and despite his liberal-progressive leanings, it was Bhutto who signed the risky merger between religion and politics soon after. It was with his coming to power that Islam became a catalyst for furthering political motives.

BHUTTO’S ERA:

The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) had won the 1971 elections on a heavily leftist map for governance; entrenched as it was in socialist ideals and thereby enjoying massive support. However, it was not long before the tide shifted. “It was not until Zulfikar Ali Bhutto came to power at the end of 1971 following the secession of East Pakistan that any elements of Islamic ideology began to appear in Pakistan’s substantive foreign policy. Islam came to the forefront of all policy and law-making decisions, and, ultimately, a vast host of issues, economic , policy-related etc. were increasingly dressed in Islamic colours. Religion soon after became the official legitimising strategy for all political manoeuvres. 

The PPP’s view of the role that religion would play in Pakistani politics was an issue controversial from its very inception. Bhutto introduced the term ‘Islamic Socialism’, but was never truly able to define its tenets . The ambiguity was ultimately used to an advantage when the political expediency of religion became evident. “Devotionalism", however, had never originally been part of the PPP’s strategy to rally the masses for support, and Bhutto had never been seen to portray himself as an observant Muslim; the rightly guided leader of a Muslim nation . For the most part, religion remained distinct from the politics of substantive policy-making. The PPP’s governance policy never encompassed a theocratic Pakistan, merely a socialist state based on principles of Islamic justice – whilst retaining Islam as a personal matter for the individuals of the state. This further supported PPP’s leftist stance as originally envisioned. This strongly leftist and somewhat secularist stance, however, was soon drastically altered. 

What were the reasons, then, for the shift in policy; why did the PPP feel the need to resort to religious rhetoric and appeal to religious justifications as key guiding factors for policy and law-making? “If most of Pakistan’s leaders were not particularly enthusiastic about Islamisation, why did so many take the initiative to bring it about, or at least acquiesce in it, when the populace has never once opted to vote for religious parties committed to the creation of an Islamic Pakistan? The attempt is to understand why and how religion began to carry this value as a political tool for governance.

Amongst other factors, the events of 1971 are of crucial importance in this regard. Bhutto was handed a country that had only recently been split into two. International politics and external alliances were in complete disarray. Having lost its only significant ethnic and religious minority, the Hindus, Pakistan drew closer to its neighbours in the East . The Governments of Saudi Arab and the United Arab Emirates supported “all kinds of Islamist activities in Pakistan to save it from falling in the clutches of socialism, and negating its thus-far latent Islamic identity. Bhutto acknowledged this interest, and realised the advantages of building alliances with these oil-rich states. The most powerful alliance Bhutto would seek with the Gulf would be an ideological one; Islamic brotherhood. 

At the level of public diplomacy, the Islamic Summit in Lahore was seen as the right political move to further this growing bond. Socialism, the initial guide to policy- and law-making was put aside and international politics began rapidly leading to a change in priorities. The crucial aspects of this dependency were, “economic assistance… temporary migration and employment of hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis in the Gulf States. Bhutto’s commitment to the Gulf-alliances, and the value he attached to them became manifest when the emergence of Pakistan’s nuclear program was accompanied by deeply Islamic rhetoric, alarming many. It was one of the first in a series of moves to create an ‘Islamic identity’ for Pakistan. 

These events relating to external affairs and foreign policy amalgamated to create an environment that led Bhutto to realize the latent power in religious rhetoric, and the crucial role that Islam would play for economic advantages and initiating alliances with these hugely wealthy Gulf monarchies. As Delvoie elucidates, the need for “strengthening ties with these countries… to diversify Pakistan’s sources of financial and political support at a time when he thought the country had become overly dependant on the United States and precisely when the Gulf states were beginning to deploy the wealth accumulated as a result of spectacular increases in the price of oil had hit the PPP hard. 

However, a far more dangerous shift was soon to follow: the use of Islamic rhetoric for internal politics – rallying the masses, seeking legitimacy for controversial policies, and Islam as a means to ensure popular support. The political use of Islam was now evident to the PPP, not just for international alliances and fiscal benefits, but more so for the growing internal threats to power. By the late 1970s, the PPP was facing a substantial threat from the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA); an umbrella organization of nine opposition parties that was to contest the upcoming March elections. The primary uniting feature of the resistance was a general dislike for Bhutto’s politics, but given varying and sometimes even contradictory party-agendas (Asghar Khan’s secularism, Khan Abdul Wali Khan’s socialism, and Maududi’s assertive Islamism), an agreement on the necessity of a positive role of Islam in policy-making became the ‘official’ party-agenda for the PNA . This signified the emergence of the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) as one of the key players in Pakistani politics. 

As a result, the legal structures began to be heavily influenced by this process of Islamisation, if simply as a means to prove the Government’s loyalty to Islam by infiltrating it into the Constitution. Subsequent amendments to the Constitution followed; making Islam the state religion and setting pre-requisites for the head of state to be Muslim. In a frenzy to break the momentum of the PNA-led movement, numerous Islamisation measures erupted. Shariat laws were introduced; gambling, horse racing, and alcohol were banned. The PPP manifesto was duly amended, making Friday the weekly holiday, introducing Quranic studies as mandatory for all students, establishing Ulema (clerical) academies and so forth . A new newspaper “Musawat" was founded to propagate Islamic justification for the PPP rule. These steps were of course accompanied with the appropriate rhetoric seeking to allow Bhutto to gain electoral support from the more religiously inclined quarters of society. ‘Socialism’ was accordingly replaced in party literature for “Musawat-i-Mohammadi"(‘Equality of Mohammad’), i.e. Islamic egalitarianism. These moves established the PPP’s dedication to the cause of Islam, which became Bhutto’s most powerful defence to fight the PNA in their own battlefield. One of Bhutto’s last desperate bids to buy off religious parties agitating for his overthrow with U.S. backing was to declare the Ahmadiyya Community non-Muslim in 1974. In 1976, he controversially appointed General Zia-ul-Haq the Chief of Army Staff in another move to appease the JI, of whom Zia was a close compatriot. Ironically, upon the advice and persuasion of Mian Tufail, the militant leader of JI, Zia overthrew Bhutto in 1977 . Later expressing regret for his political tactics, a resigned Bhutto claimed before the Supreme Court of Pakistan, “I appointed a Chief of Army Staff belonging to Jaamat-i-Islami, and the result is before us all. 

Islam had thus evolved into the most predominant political factor to facilitate in both external and internal scenarios, by the end of Bhutto’s regime and as a result thereof. Although his insistence upon the role of Islam in Pakistani politics during his final days in power could not save his fading popularity, it did serve to reinforce the centrality of Islam for the military regime that followed. The dangerous alliance between military might and religious pressure thus found its seeds in Bhutto’s policy shifts, only to find renewed force under the approaching military rule. 

Read full article: http://www.chowk.com/articles/islam-as-a-political-weapon-in-pakistan-Mubarka-Ahmad.htm

Is religion a public or a private matter? America as a Jihad State

Abdul Hakim Murad [T.J. Winters]

'Elites which conform to the emerging global monoculture are resistant to the idea that religion might be a factor in the politics of the world’s most modern state'

'Increasingly the elites in the Islamic world read only in English and French, and a survey of local newspapers and vernacular TV channels is unlikely to provide sure clues to their perceptions of the world.'

The present time of slackening is a helpful moment to examine Muslim perceptions of Western religious intention. A kind of seven-year itch following 9/11 seems to have thrown up some possible resolutions of the polarity which look beyond the clearly fruitless ‘security agenda’.

The publication, two years ago, of the Common Word  marked perhaps the clearest and most remarkable sign of this, a genuine shift in the Muslim-Christian equation: David Burrell, one of the most seasoned Catholic specialists of Islam, has spoken of a dramatic turn-about unparalleled in recent history. Even more recently, the fall of the Bush administration has allowed a more measured and less histrionic assessment of America’s engagement with political Islam and political Christianity over the past eight years. The Obama victory was followed within days by the death of Samuel Huntington, most notorious of advocates of the thesis of the mutual allergy of Islam and Christendom. It is a good time to take stock.

In today’s seminar I propose to begin with a survey of changing Middle Eastern perceptions of America following upon the rise of the so-called ‘theocon’ agenda in Bush’s America. I will then move on to some more general considerations of the issue of religious extremism as a strand in the mutual regard – or disregard – of what remains of Christian and Muslim civilisation.

Elites which conform to the emerging global monoculture are resistant to the idea that religion might be a factor in the politics of the world’s most modern state; Islamic activists, by contrast, may brandish evidence of US religiosity as part of their polemic against the secular discourse of the rulers. Furthermore, elites loyal to the monoculture may not have access to the material written in local languages, both monographs and media reports, which should be the basis of our survey. Increasingly the elites in the Islamic world read only in English and French, and a survey of local newspapers and vernacular TV channels is unlikely to provide sure clues to their perceptions of the world. Religionists, by contrast, are typically consumers of a mass media over which they have only very limited influence, subject to the systematic censorship which is still normal in most Muslim states. Hence the media coverage of American fundamentalism has been extremely erratic.

An article by Jaafar Hadi Hassan in al-Hayat in 2003 urged readers to broaden their understanding of US objectives in the region to include the chiliastic. For Hassan, what this means is that Bush’s core electorate are expecting the parousia in their lifetime, as he writes: ‘they believe that occupying Iraq confirms the predictions of the Holy Bible; it is one incident in a series of events before the return of the awaited Christ’. Hassan offers an outline of the history of Christian dispensationalism, summarising the seven ages of the world, and explains how Bush’s voters believe themselves to stand at the threshold of the seventh age: Christ’s millennial reign. Hassan then goes on to identify dispensationalist decision-makers in the Bush team, including Commerce Secretary Donald Evans, a disciple of Billy Graham, and discusses Graham’s son Franklin, in his role as President Bush’s personal religious mentor.

Hassan then summarises the core passages of the Book of Revelation which are central to the world-view of the so-called theocons. Much of Revelation, he writes, is ambiguous, but the role of Iraq in the end-time scenario is clear: Iraq, or ‘Babylon’, will fill the nations with impurity; and an angel of God’s wrath will bring it to destruction, and it will be divided into three parts – exactly what America has achieved.

When that takes place, Jerusalem, the city of true belief, the polar opposite of Babylon, will hear the four angels liberated by the fall of the false city. They will proclaim the imminence of a great battle, and then the reappearance of Jesus. Thus, for Hassan, the next stage in the theocon plan will be the destruction of the Dome of the Rock and the rebuilding of Solomon’s Temple, where Christ will preside over the sacrificial rituals to symbolise the restoration of God’s order on earth.

Hassan then concludes with some reflections on right-wing American policies, attempting to fit them all into his interpretation. Pat Robertson, he reports, preaches to the Christian world the inexorable disappearance of virtue, the spread of abortion and sodomy, and the forgetting of God. The environmental crisis is a positive sign that the present world is coming to an end; and this explains, for Hassan, American indifference towards the Kyoto Protocols. Peacemaking is an illusion, even a demonic subversion, since conflict can only come to an end with the millennial reign of Christ.

Hassan’s article is fairly typical of the growing Muslim concern over the influence of America’s radical right. Baffled by the apparent foolhardiness of the Iraq adventure, and the administration’s maximalist support for Israel, Arab commentators have sought a master explanation in the Bible-time beliefs of key Bush decisionmakers.

One key channel has undoubtedly been Christian Arab journalists, whose cultural familiarity with the Bible and with Christian eschatology has allowed them to unravel the famous ‘double-coding’ in presidential speeches, where apparently innocuous phrases turn out to trigger specific Biblical references important to the religious electorate. Particularly impressive was Al-Hayat’s coverage from Washington during the 2008 elections. Its correspondent, Joyce Karam, was alert to the evangelical hesitations over McCain, successor to Bush, as a credible new ra’is injili, or Gospel President. 

Conservative evangelicals will almost invariably vote Republican, she observes, despite McCain’s uneven record on abortion, but some moderate evangelicals, less convinced that religion requires a state of endless Middle Eastern war, have been seduced by the Obama camp, which has adroitly revived the memory of the Carter years. 

Karam has done much to emphasise the centrality of theopolitics in America. Like most Middle Eastern Christians, she is herself at a considerable ideological distance from evangelical Christianity; indeed, the targeting by evangelical missionaries who accompanied the first American military units into Baghdad of Eastern Christian communities as the first object of their attention generated a good deal of resentment; and some Orthodox and Catholic leaders in Middle Eastern countries have, in response, called for a ban on some hardline evangelical churches in their countries.

If there is an interpretation, or an explaining-away, of the embarrassing – to Christian Arab nationalists – fact of American religious violence, then it seems to have been articulated most typically by the Israeli Arab writer and former Knesset member, Azmi Bishara. In a characteristic article in al-Ahram, this left-wing secular Christian interprets the theocon phenomenon by outlining its historic roots in America’s Puritan heritage. 

Bishara’s view is one that I have also heard from Orthodox church leaders in the Middle East. The theocons are a reversion to an older, ‘Jewish’ type of political religion, and have failed to notice that St Paul proclaims the radical inferiority of Judaism and its law. As for the theocon preoccupation with the seer of Patmos, this is also, he believes, a sort of Judaizing. Although he does not explain this, it is possible that he is aware of the literature on the Book of Revelation, which sees it as part of Jewish apocalypticism. Long ago, Bossuet called radical Protestants who stressed this text ‘judaizers’. The true meaning of Revelation is the eschatological revelation of transformed life which is the Church. This was Augustine’s conviction; but not every Protestant has been so happy to explain away the evident violence and retributive quality of the text. 59 percent of Americans, according to a recent poll, affirm its literal truth.

A further case of this has been the coverage of the role of Blackwater, the security firm deployed by the Pentagon in trouble spots such as Iraq. Exempted by Paul Bremer’s Immunity Order No.7 from prosecution by Iraqi authorities, Blackwater operatives were accused of a range of atrocities against Muslim civilians, including the Nisour Square incident late in 2007.

Islamist understandings of Blackwater’s role do not appear to originate in media coverage internal to the Islamic world. Instead, they illustrate a growing familiarity with Western media, including specialised sources.

The sources of Islamist knowledge about the alleged religious agenda of Blackwater appear to be twofold. Firstly, there is a European Parliament report written by Giovanni Claudio Fava, which detailed the connections between Blackwater and the Knights of Malta, a sovereign fraternity of Catholic military elites answerable directly to the Pope. The occasion for the European Parliament’s inquiry was the revelation that two Blackwater subsidiaries were involved in US special rendition flights. Fava confirmed the connection with the Knights of Malta, and indicated that Malta is one of Blackwater’s primary operational bases. Its vice-president, Cofer Black, had been the CIA officer responsible for special renditions of detainees to pro-Western regimes which employed torture as an interrogation method.

The second source is the bestselling book on Blackwater by Jeremy Scahill. Blackwater’s rendition flights have frequently been routed through Malta, to the concern of the island’s press. And the practice of rendition (terminated now, we are told, by the Obama administration), has also triggered Arab media concern with the interrogation style and cultural policies applied to Muslim suspects in American custody.

The final conduit through which information on US theopolitics has reached the Middle East has been the translation of Kimberly Blaker’s collection of essays by academics, first published as The Fundamentals of Extremism in 2003. In 2006, an Arabic translation, Usul al-Tatarruf, appeared with the Cairo-based publishing house Dar al-Shuruq, eclectic promoters of everything from the novels of Naguib Mahfuz to the fundamentalist manifestos of Sayyid Qutb. This is a careful and responsible translation of an important text, perhaps, along with Chris Hedges’ book American Fascists, the best study of the subject yet to appear.

What is illuminating about this interesting clash of fundamentalisms? There are asymmetries which demand to be listed prominently. Most evidently, one needs no Marxian baggage to observe that Islamic civilisation, with minor Gulf exceptions, is a Lazarus at the gate of Dives. Christianity, which emerged – pace the prosperity-gospellers – as a discourse of the poor, has become the favoured sacred space of the wealthiest and most competitive economic culture that has ever evolved. For the theocons this is not a paradox but a grace from God.

Islamism, however, exists in order to refute this discourse. Despite its abhorrence of Sufi asceticism, and its generally conservative social ethos, it often takes itself to be a site of resistance to wealth and privilege. It is not figured as Babylon – that was the self-serving secularity of Saddam and the Ba’th elite – but as Ishmael. Like the dispensationalists, the Islamists are unnerved by the absence of God – the deus absconditus who because of the sins of the faithful allowed the rise of liberal secularity and the decline of faith. 

Yet the Islamist response is precisely the old trope of God’s preference for the underdog. For Boykin, God is with America, and this is shown by America’s economic and martial prowess; for the Islamists, God is with Ishmael, as is shown, again, by America’s economic and martial prowess. 

The global panopticon of surveillance is not reciprocated by Al-Qaida; neither are the ever more stringent visa laws which, like the ha-ha around an English stately home, exclude trespassing animals while remaining hardly visible from the house itself. Attorney-General John Ashcroft has himself anointed with holy oil, denounces church-state separation as ‘a wall of religious oppression’, and seeks to implement God’s law. Islamists do just the same. Yet theirs is a site of resistance, on behalf of Ishmael’s ‘black house in Mecca’, against the evangelical White House, in the city of Masonic symbolism, seen as the nerve-centre of Pharaonic evil. This is not the pacifism and political indifferentism of the Gospels, nor a Baptist joy in God’s empowerment of His covenant people; it is more akin to Amos’ prophecy of the uprising of the poor.

No doubt this tendency can be seen in simple terms as a decadence. Or, as Cardinal Newman put it, ‘the nation drags down its Church to its own level.’ But it is a protest against decadence as well. If the modern world is experienced as a kind of Mardi Gras, all differences levelled in the pursuit of pleasure and the right to pleasure, and if mainline denominations have substantively acceded to monocultural values and the ideology of progress, then the fight for difference, including a difference that can only exist by discriminating, can to some extent claim to be a site of real resistance. Milan Kundera writes that ‘the struggle of men against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.’The end of history finds it hard not to be an end of memory, and therefore of the self: Foucault’s end of man. 

Where mainline belief still manages to be full of passionate conviction, it will probably prefer enlightenment in the form of better education. In an era of connectivity, few seem to know anything: Muslims may be able to name Pat Robertson and John Hagee, but are likely to ignore the existence of the archbishop of Chicago. Similarly, few in Christendom can yet name a single Muslim leader. This was brought home in an absolute way last year, when two magazines, Foreign Affairs and Prospect, sponsored a global survey to find the world’s hundred most influential public intellectuals. The overall winner was Fethullah Gülen, a fact that surprised few in the Muslim world, but baffled Westerners familiar only with the names of radicals.

I also mentioned, as a sign of this, the Common Word, whose extraordinary trajectory is still unfolding, and which in many ways is calming tensions which the ongoing securitization of the world may only sharpen. Last July, the Common Word process reached Yale Divinity School, which had already coordinated a response by over three hundred evangelical thinkers. 

The final communiqué of the conference saw the evangelicals present endorsing language about a common ‘Judeo-Christian-Islamic monotheistic heritage’, rooted in the two commandments of love of God and love of neighbour. The initiative was denounced by some more radical Christians and Muslims, but it was clear that an important conversation had fruitfully begun. The mood of the participants seemed to be one of determination not only to confound misperceptions, but to demonstrate to the world’s media, and perhaps even to Slavoj Zizek, that scriptural fidelity, seen by many Muslims as the dynamo of America’s current wars, can yield conviviality as well as conflict. Religion, they concluded, is worth belonging to, but only when it supplies more than just belonging.

Read full paper: 

America as a Jihad State:
Middle Eastern perceptions of modern American theopolitics

Faith and Public Policy Seminar
Kings College, London, 21.04.09

© Abdal-Hakim Murad [April 2009] 

http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/ahm/America-as-a-jihad-state.htm

Read on Abdul Hakim Murad:
http://baytunur.blogspot.com/2010/02/perceived-failure-of-traditional.html

The Difference in Europe & USA on the separation of 'Church and State'

Blandine Chelini-Pont

In the United States, two interconnected theories of the public sphere are particularly relevant. In the liberal tradition of democratic theorists the public sphere has been viewed as the space common for all, where citizens can freely discuss and deliberate ideas, commit themselves to voluntary associative forms, and improve and control the various levels of their common life. The second theory locates the public sphere not so much in the legal and material organization of this space but in civil society itself, moved by a continuing deliberative and critical process.

The concept of the public sphere in Europe relies on the old notion of the common good, originally understood to include the responsibility of accounting to God for one's actions, but which now also includes accounting to the citizens of the state for the actions of the State. In this conception, the State is responsible for the public order (safely and health)-a concept with ramifications that justify all kinds of circumstantial and legal limitations in the public sphere.

The different perceptions of the concept of public sphere in the United States and in Europe accordingly translate into different perceptions of the State's place and role within that public sphere. There is a difference in the power given to the State by its citizens, and there is especially a difference in the State's legitimate actions in service of its citizens.

In the European public sphere…Religion was, more than anything else, an issue of law and order. Kings required the conformity of their subjects to the king's religious precepts, whether Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, or Calvinist. This requirement is illustrated by the famous adage, Cujus regio ejus religio, Latin for "whose rule, his religion

The legacy of these former times remains influential, as evidenced in two ways: first, by the frequent and legal occurrence of a specific relationship between the state and religion-with the state granting religious status and limiting the scope of a religion's activities; and second, by the normative tendency to consider religion as a public, charitable, medical, educational, and even spiritual service. Consequently, it seems natural for the State to collaborate with religious leaders as much as possible in order to help citizens in need of such services.

Paradoxically, because of the historical relationship between the state and religion, and the subsequent reaction against it, separation between church and state was reached. In Europe, separation between church and state connotes the State's regulation of the public sphere and religious freedom in the private sphere. Consequently, this separation has resulted in the fading of religion from the European public sphere. This concept of separation, however, has surely led to a more visible secularization of the public sphere, where the State now has a monopoly. To some extent, the secularization of the State-that was gradually or abruptly reached, depending on the nation's history-allowed the citizens to exert their freedom of conscience and to avoid membership in a single or state-authorized religion. However, this secularization led to the visible disappearance of religion from the public sphere. The departure from the fused relationship between religion and the State in Europe led not only to a secularization of the public space but also to a privatization of religion. The fear that religion might once again take on a public role, however painfully reduced this role may be, drives officials and politicians to consider new movements like Islam as a threat to the now-secularized public sphere. 

In comparison, U.S. citizens do not consider the State to be a supervisor that must oversee religion or drive it out of the public sphere to avoid possible manipulation. To the contrary, the State is seen as guaranteeing most scrupulously all forms of religious manifestation. U.S. citizens consider religion in the United States to be foremost a personal freedom. The public sphere is seen as a place where individuals exercise multiple personal freedoms in their capacity as religious citizens, politicians, legislators, or as members of religious groups or institutions. For Europeans, it is surprising that a President, elected by a majority of citizens, could call publicly for the blessing of God, or justify his actions with his faith. In the United States, religion is often present in political debates and in legislative ceremony. Religions enjoy a long associative tradition, a liberal tax policy, ample freedom of worship, and open expression in the public sphere.

Blandine Chelini-Pont, Equipe Droit et Religion du Laboratoire Droit et Mutations Sociales (Jeune Equipe 2425), Responsable du Master Lacit et Droit des cultes, Universite Paul Czanne, Aix-en-Provence, France.

Read full paper: http://www.allbusiness.com/legal/laws/1060059-1.html