In conversations about Islamism which I define as a state system which also enforces moral laws derived from Islamic texts, its supporters bring up a common point about public drunkeness or what some consider public lewdness. Indeed, at least in the US there are laws against them, but not at the level that they say the Quran demands. However, I would say that the Quran seeks for people to want not to sin and it does not directly call for a state to enforce such laws. I would further argue that enforcing such laws on outward behavoir are 1) useless and 2) require a anti-Quranic dictatorship to enforce.
1). We see in the example of regimes which highly regulate public behavior: the Soviet state, the Saudi regime, the Iranian regime. In all three examples, rigid and extensive regulations produced surprising effects: the sins were moved underground and manifested themselves in many new ways. In Saudi, boys and girls throw slips of paper with phone numbers to set up a hookup place. In the Soviet Union, US Rock n Roll became wildly popular as a reactionary behavoir. In Iran, even religious women increasingly flout these rules not because they disbeleive, but because they resent a regime forcing them to do it and after the taliban fell and along with it the mandatory beard law, men shaved them off, even religious ones!
2) Because of the above reality, regimes require extensive police forces to enforce these rules, and it basically demands invading the home and private businesses to enforce. This is exactly what happens in Iran and in the former Soviet state and lead inevitable to thought crimes; the Soviet gulag, Soviet collectivization and chinese reeducation camps claimed millions of lives, many for simply thinking or beleiving opposite of the regime. Thankfully, the Saudi and Iranian regimes have nowhere near the power of the Soviet or Chinese regimes and are unable, but not unwilling to accomplish the same (aside from a number of Ayatollahs...who are under house arrest!). The Taliban tried it and it led to thier rapid downfall as soon as an outside military force simply nudged it. Do remember that the Prophet rebuked Umar for climbing over a wall to see if the household was drinking. Also remember, "There is no comulsion in din". A state relies on comulsion, and thus enforcing the Quran is compulsion in din; belief in God and following the moral rules for oneself must be voluntary. Murder, theft harm others and must therefore be covered under laws, as must be drunk driving. However, the state cannot force the wearing of hijab, cannot force prayers, or force restaurants to close in Ramadan, or force people to say "salam."
In the end, there is great wisdom in the Quran not calling for a state to enforce totalitarian rules: it produces the opposite harm it was supposed to solve, and God knows that! People hate repression and so does the Quran and the Prophet. What you call for has been shown time and again to produce the exact oppression that God hates. Therefore, what you call for is not necessarily Quranic or Sunna.
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Historically, of course, the so-called Constituition of Medina is no constitution whatsoever. It is a compact that reinforces the traditional tribal relations of membership, clienthood and slavery in the light of the intrusion of the Mekkan followers of Muhammad into the context of Yathrib/Madina. The so-called "Islamic state" emerged decades after the death of the Prophet, particularly with the ascension of the Abbasid dynasty.
Shari'a is hardly the fixed commodity that Islamists would want either. As a number of modern Muslim scholars have pointed out, it is an evolving interpretation of the Qur'an. After all, its meaning in Arabic is drawn from a term meaning the path towards a watering hole - in other words a journey towards something and not so much its arriving.
Shari'a is hardly the fixed commodity that Islamists would want either. As a number of modern Muslim scholars have pointed out, it is an evolving interpretation of the Qur'an.>>>
The closer one comes to historical accuracy the more powerful weapon they possess. And yet, those who would manipulate history and our collective ignorance of it, always seem to push the idea that the study of history and all education is somehow a blasphemous waste of time. As a result, they get empty vessels and empty minds with which to fill with whatever maleable clay suits their agendas. It goes on all over, becomes more prominent and then recedes through time and is clearly on the rise again in many places including large swaths of the US. It could be a natural cyclical tide of our expressions of human culture, and I suspect this is so, just like rot and decay must come before the new flowering. Doesn't mean we have to take it lying down or resign ourselves to it. Too often I have seen people, smart people, yielding to this kind of argument through intimidation and fear of louder and angrier voices. And at times through nothing more than some kind of sappy "it's all good" kind of laziness that dares not challenge anything for fear of not being Politically correct, or some version of that sentiment. You bring up critical points Abu Faris, and those who wield misinformation should find themselves being questioned with greater frequency and resistance.
I would agree with you entirely, Karen.
My point on the Constitution of Madina can be followed at greater length in an article by John S Romanides ("ISLAMIC UNIVERSALISM and THE CONSTITUTION OF MEDINA", Athens, 1968), which has been reproduced here: http://www.romanity.org/htm/rom.14.en.islamic_universalism_and_the_const....
Romanides critically argues:
"The fact that Muhammed's message can be understood, at least in part, as reaction against the cultural and social conditions fostered by the Meccan mercantile developments, which brought about a serious decay in the old tribal customs, values, and attributes, would indicate Muhammed's interest in counteracting this situation. He evidently did this, however, not by calling for a simple return to the old tribal ideals, but rather be way of internal tribal purification and inter-tribal unification along the pattern of the twelve tribe league of the Jews under the direct rule of God in the person of a Moses and in terms of the pure monotheism of Abraham. This is certainly strongly suggested by the predominance of the figures of Abraham and Moses in the Quran.
It is, therefore, not correct to point to the breakdown of the old tribal structure as preparing the way for a supposed politico-socio-religious non-tribal universalism similar to that of Greco-Roman Christendom. Rather it seems obvious enough that both Muhammed and his immediate successors could think of the spread of the new faith only in terms of the submission of the tribes and the assimilation of peoples who were not members of tribes by the traditional process of confederation, clientship, and slavery. In other words the very possibility of the spread of Islam beyond the confines of the Arab tribal system must have presented itself to Muhammed (if ever it did) and his immediate successors in terms similar to those of the twelve tribe Hebrew conquest of Canaan whose population was either converted by assimilation into the twelve tribe league, or simply (at least theoretically) annihilated. An essential difference was that Islam encountered people with scriptures who were accorded the position of protected neighbors and were permitted to exist as subordinate tribes alongside of the believing tribes. It is this that became the basis of the Milet system of governing the Christians and Jews by means of their own tribal customs and chieftens, and according to their own divine books of laws, which were considered valid, even though not as pure as the Quranic."
On the point about Shari'a, this is enlightened by a wonderful article by Professor Ziauddin Sardar, "Rethinking Islam", in which he writes:
"There is nothing divine about the Shari`ah. The only thing that can legitimately be described as divine in Islam is the Qur’an. The Shari`ah is a human construction; an attempt to understand the divine will in a particular context...The Shari`ah is nothing more than a set of principles, a framework of values, that provide Muslim societies with guidance. But these sets of principles and values are not a static given but are dynamically derived within changing contexts. As such, the Shari`ah is a problem-solving methodology rather than law. It requires the believers to exert themselves and constantly reinterpret the Qur’an and look at the life of the Prophet Muhammad with ever changing fresh eyes. Indeed, the Qur’an has to be reinterpreted from epoch to epoch – which means the Shari`ah, and by extension Islam itself, has to be reformulated with changing contexts. The only thing that remains constant in Islam is the text of the Qur’an itself – its concepts providing the anchor for ever changing interpretations."
http://www.islamfortoday.com/sardar01.htm
Apologies for the (over long) quotes.
"The movement that is the universe is the movement of love" - Ibn 'Arabi
Overlong quotes are just fine when they provide quick access to the ideas under discussion without going and reading the whole book. Many people never seem to take into consideration the concept of synergy in the idea of forward movement of religion through time. One of my favorite contemporary Muslim theorists, and one I mention frequently, is Abdolkarim Soroush. He writes at length on the topic of reinterpretation of religion in a purely Muslim context and not as a response to any western challenge, but one which doesn't hesitate to employ theoretical models from the west when they work and don't subvert the purity of what is truly Islam. To this end he defines the separation between Religion as it is, which is eternal and of God, and Religion as we Understand it, meaning that which evolves with time as our understanding of creation and human society changes through multicultural dialogues in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences. This allows one to separate the baby from the bathwater as it were. But too often people see any questioning of tradition as an attempt to throw away all that is truly sacred in favor of some apologism and underhanded means of grasping a piece of the secular pie. And all too often reformsts can see nothing but a return to models of the past, models we have absolutely no way of recreating perfectly today and which fail to take into account the divine gifts that come to us through increased knowledge. There is a third piece to this equation, it's not either a return to an pure and idyllic (nonexistent) past or a final collapse into debauched western barbarism. Ideologues like Soroush begin to explore some very exciting new models that just might take us into a new and unforseeable age. Unlike the Amish model, I do not recall at any point within the text of the Qur'an the suggestion that 7th century Arabic culture was the high water mark of human endeavor on this planet and that, even prior to the Prophet's (pbuh) arrival, that culture was socially perfect and in accordance with the divine model. There is much from that culture that has been abandoned, and much that is clung to and the basis for those decisions seem all too often highly arbitrary and without clear origin. There is much in pure Islamic religious culture, as alluded to in the Qur'an, that has never been attained by any historical Muslim state. And merely chopping off heads at the prescribed times and the veiling and seclusion of women does not qualify a nation state as "Islamic" and it is in fact much much more which does. Why do we settle for so little?