Islam and democracy
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What follows is an excerpt from chapter 19 of the prophet and his message by Dr.Khalifa Abdul Hakim. We gratefully acknowledge and thank the institute of Islamic culture for permission to reproduce this.
The things that concern man most vitally are the most difficult to define. Who has ever succeeded to offer a definition of religion that would satisfy all creeds and all sects and all philosophers of religion? The difficulty is not less in every single religion, great or small. The hundreds of Christian sects would define Christianity differently- everyone considering someone on more traits as essential constituents of it, while the others would regard them either unchristian or of secondary importance.
Islam is proverbially reputed have seventy- two sects, though it would be difficult for any research scholar to count more than a dozen. Hinduism is a completely undefinable entity and it is now agreed only for the sake of consensus, that whoever calls himself a Hindu is a Hindu, irrespective of his beliefs or practices. Besides the division of sects individuals within the pale of the same creed have widely different views and angels of vision about what actually constitutes the essence of religion
I do not expect that the view of religion (or islam in particular) as presented in this book would be universally accepted. However, I may substantiate it by the authority of the qur’an and the prophet muhammad,p.b.u.h]. my like-minded co-religionists would hold it to be true, but whoever cares to differ many interpret the same verses differently or quote others to contradict my interpretation.
The subject of the relation of Islam to democracy would present further difficulties, because democracy seems to have become as undefinable as religion or love. From beginning of democracy, in any part of the world, up to the present times, (when it almost seens to have taken the place of religion as an ideal or a way of life) opinions about its nature and value have been divergent and contradictory.
Western political historians usually start with greek democracies, paying special attention to Athenian democracy as a typical institution. Some lovers of greek culture praise it as much today as pericles did when he celled it the high water mak of civilization. But the most famous of the greek political philosophers, Socrates, plato and Aristotle, considered it to be an irrational and d. sgraceful institution. the last one having the biggest world- conquering monarch as his glorious disciple.
Let me quote a sentence from aristotle’s politics (book V,Ch.I,Sec.2). he says: “democracy arose from men’s thinking that if they are equal in any respect, they are equal absolutely.” He did not believe in any fundamental equality of mankind. He has asserted that nature creates some human beings for slavery, and so slavery is a natural institution. The whole of Plato’s’ republic is a monumental and celebrated thesis against Athenian democracy and the concept of democracy in generation.
The teacher and the disciple desired the creation and perpetuation of rigid caste system in which the majority of superficially free citizens should have nothing to do with the making of laws or the executive government. They too, like Aristotle, considered it just that the majority should consist of virtual or actual slaves. Plutarch says about Lycurgas that to a man who demanded the establishment of democracy in Sparta, he replied:” go thou and first establishment democracy in thy household.”
The broadest definition of democracy is that given by Abraham Lincoln, that “it is a government of the people, by the people and for the people, ,”which Daniel Webster put in other words as he people’s government made for the people, made by the people and answerable to the people. As I have said already, democracy has now in many ways taken the place of religion. It is inevitable, therefore, that like religion it should become vague and assume different shapes among different nations, due to (a) difference of the temperament and history. The british are proud to have developed representative institutions: and the brithis parliament is considered to be the mother of parliaments. But the magna carta which john was forced to sign was not a character of rights for the people since a political entity did not exist. It was the lended aristocracy, the feudal barons, who wanted to share power with the king and the right to defend what they believed to be their rights or vested interests. The people received no protection against the exploitation and tyranny of the feudal lords. The british, during a long process of political evolution, curtailed and ulimately annihilated the power of the king, threatening to behead him if he was too refactory (insubordinate) and self-wided, but (the) aristocracy continued to be the actual ruling power and pelf (derog, wealth) are allowed to debate but not to decide, just as the king ia allowed to reign but not to rule. A century ago, during the time of macaulay, the franchise was still very restricted and the common man wielded no effectual power. But he proudly said:”our democracy was from an early period the most aristocratic and our aristocracy the most democratic.” Like many of macaulay’s verdicts, the assertion is more rhetorical than historical.
How many different and diametrically opposed have claimed to be democratic in recent history? I had au opportunity of discussing the suppression of democracy with Dr. Schacht when his was removed by Hitler from the control of finance. At tat time he could not dare to denounce the Nazis and, supporting the system, he said that the Jews were suppressed ( he did not aeknowledge persecution) I the name of German democracy and Hitler was elected to be (a) real democracy run by workers and peasants who have little power in a capitalist regime.
The western democracies collectively have assumed the dignified title of the “free world” implying that the communist world is an enslaved world where people are equal only in the sense of enjoying equality of rightlessness (lack of rights. The Italian fascists also believed themselves to be true democrats wielding power for the glory of the people. France, during the French revolution, raised the slogan of liberty, fraternity and equality and then napoleon, the Caesar of Caesars was the outcome of it. After that having lost her political hegemony [supremacy].
In Europe, France started or intensified her colonial ventures, defeated in many regions by the British, but still holding fast to the rest. Having been defeated debased and ousted from a part of Indo-China and retaining the rest by support of the so-called free democracies, France entered on a campaign of genocide in Algeria claiming Algeria to be French because of the exploiting French minority there. This is her practical application of the creed of liberty, fraternity and equality which sounded even better than Abraham Lincoln’s “government of the people by the people and for the people”. The union of South Africa too, is a part of the so-called free world. It look [an] active part in defeating Hitler’s Nazism and Mussolini’s fascism, but is actively and violently engaged in preach in and practicing the creed of racial segregation and disenfranchisement of the native population and the coloured people within is realm. This too is democracy. Democracy, O Democracy, what crimes are committed in thy name!
Democracy, through its long and chequered history, has assumed many forms and shall in all probability assume many more forms in the future. We have to discuss here democracy in relation to the religion of Islam. Muslim in general belief Islam to be a democratic creed but it is curios phenomenon that neither Arabic nor any other Muslim language has any word that could be called an exact equivalent of the word ‘democracy’. The word jahmnr’iyat derived from Jamhur. Meaning ‘the people,’ is a twentieth-century translation which is now adopted in many Muslim languages. The socialist party in Iran is called tudeh party; the original meaning of tudeh is a mass or a heap. The movement claiming to be the protagonist of the masses adopted the word tudeh, meaning mass. When even the word did not exist, the presumption is that democracy, as understood in the west, neither existed in ideology nor as an institution.
Dealing with Islam, the question is not difficult to answer. According to the Islamic faith, sovereignty belongs to God and not to the people either as a whole or as a majority. As God is Creator and the Law-Giver of the universe, so all authority in human affairs ultimately vests [is vested] in God. The phrase ‘sovereignty of the people’ would be considered heretical or blasphemous. Whoever ruler among the Ummah [community] rules only by delegated authority.
The real problem is to whom this sovereignty or authority is delegated. If there were an organized Church in Islam, with a hierarchy of ordained priests, this body would claim to be vicegerent of god on earth as the catholic church holds power in the name of Christ with an infallible pontiff at the apex of the ecclesiastical pyramid deriving his infallibility directly from Jesus himself. It is as if Jesus himself were the executive head of the institution. But as original Islam abolished monarchy and feudalism by abolishing primogeniture [an exclusive right of inheritance belonging to the eldest son], so it categorically abolished priesthood. The prophet handed over the preservation, propagation and implementation of the faith to the entire community of the faithful advising them to choose their leader from among themselves on the basis of all-round fitness, irrespective of tribe, race or wealth. He said; “follow your leader even if he is a negro with tangled hair.”
It should be kept in mind that book we are dealing with Islam and not with the types of states and societies in which Muslims have lived through these (last) fourteen centuries Islam should not be confused with the social or political organization of various Muslim communities (or nation) in different epochs and different climes. As Christianity, as lived through the ages, should not be identified whit the original outlook of Jesus, or (for) what he desired humanity to be.
Islam as taught in the Qur’an and preached and practiced by the prophet: and a short time afterwards by those on whom him mantel (shadow?) fell, very soon lost its idealism by what maybe celled a counterrevolution. It became diluted with Arab imperialism which spoilt a good deal of its original egalitarian ideology. when wealth undreamt of by the dwellers of the desert poured in, it accumulated in the hands of a minority and all the economic ills and moral weaknesses followed in its wake. From Mu’awiyah onwards, who converted the democratic republic of Islam into a hereditary monarchy, the self-styled saccessors of the prophet, assuming the signified title of khalifah, combined in themselves the power a Caesar and a pope. the whole wealth of an extensive realm became their private purse.
Courtiers and aristocracy sprang up so much so that they began to prefer the accumulation of taxes to the propagation of faith. Revenue collectors reported to an exceptionally pious Khalifah, Umar bian Abdul Aziz, that the revenues of the realm were declining and all was not well with the state exchequer because those who became Muslims did not pay the poll tax. He said that the state should be pleased because it was not the aim of Islam to collect taxes propagate the faith
Such a man among the later Khalifah was an expiations. The ruling junta got rid of him by poisoning (him). Theology, with (a) few honourable exceptions, became the handmaiden of monarchical power. Nobody raised a voice against these caesars who sat in the seat of a prophet who lived in a mud hut, swept his floor, mended his shoes and milked his goats, living for days together on a handful of dates with or without a cup of camel’s milk.
The propehet has said:
“hence forth there shall be no caesars and god hates most the man who is called an emperor or kings of kings.”
How could the world believe that there was anything democratic in islam when the common man had no say in the working of the state and had on power to assert his rights? Among the people only a nostalgic memory was left of the type of state and society which was brought into being by the implementation of islam for about three decades. They called this shortlived experiment khilafat rashidah, the rightly-guided caliphate, implying thereby that the rules that followed were misguided. The glory of harun al-rasyid, the magnificence of sulaiman the magnificent, and the splendor entire kingdom, was not the glory of islam or the furtherance of is ideology but quite the opposite of it.
Let us summarise the type of state and society which envisaged as an ideal pattern and which it tried to realize within the limitation of an early era, and the reliefs which it was based upon:
1. Sovereignty belongs to god alone whose chief attributes area wisdom, justice and love. He desires human beings to assimilate these attributes in their thoughts, words and deeds.
2. Hough ultimately god moulds destinies, he has endowed man with free-will so that he may freely attune his will to the will and purpose of god
3. In matters of faith, god was compelled nobody to believe: the ways of righteousness and their opposites have been clearly indicated. Anyone may believe or disbelieve and bear the consequences. There must not be any compulsion, in the , matter on faith. An imposed faith is no preference or because of his belonging to a community, provided his conduct is not subversive of fundamental morality or disruptive of the peace of the realm or does not trespass on the legitimate freedom of others
4. An Islamic state is not theocratic but ideological. The rights and duties of its citizens shall be determined by the extent to which they identify themselves with this ideology.
5. Non-muslim can live peacefully as citizens of a muslim realm. they are free to not take part in the defence of the state, and in lieu of this exemption pay a poll tax which shall entitle them to complete protection of life, property and liberty in the practice of their faith. If they are prepared of defend the realm as loyal citizens, they shall be exempt from this tax
6. There shall be no racial diserimination within a muslim realm. People become high or low only because of their character
7. All avenues of economic exploitation must be blocked so that wealth does not circulate only in the hands of the few
8. A person shall be free to earn as much as he can by legitimate means, without exploitation or fraud. But wealth, even legitimately acquired beyond a certain minimum, shall be subject to a tax on capital. This shall be an inalienable part of a muslim polity (state
9. Women shall enjoy an independent economic status. All their inherited wealth and their personal earnings shall be their own property which they can dispose of as they please.
10. A truly Islamic state cannot be a monarchical state. It must be a democratic republic in which the president is elected by a free vote of the community on the basis of his capacity and character.
11. I is incumbent on the ruler to have a council of advisers and consultants for purpose of legislation or major decisions. They shall be chosen on grounds of their wisdom, experience and integrity. The mode of their selection is left to circumstances. In matters not pertaining to faith, non-muslims are not debarred from consultations
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