Wael B. Hallaq - The Impossible State: Islam, Politics, and Modernity’s Moral Predicament

THE IMPOSSIBLE STATE

THE IMPOSSIBLE STATE

Islam, Politics, and Modernitys Moral Predicament

Wael B. Hallaq

Columbia University Press

New York

Columbia University Press

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New York Chichester, West Sussex

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E-ISBN 978-0-231-53086-6

COVER DESIGN: Martin Hinze

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hallaq, Wael B., 1955

The impossible state : islam, politics, and modernitys moral predicament / Wael B. Hallaq.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-231-16256-2 (alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-231-53086-6 (e-book)

1. Islam and state. 2. Islam and politics. I. Title.

BP173.6.H29 2013

297.272dc23

2012014567

A Columbia University Press E-book.

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References to Internet Web sites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

Contents

Although the greater part of this book was written during 2011, it has been in the making for at least a decade. It formed part of the preparation necessary to write my Shara: Theory, Practice, Transformations, published by Cambridge University Press in 2009. The plan and structure of Shara did not allow for a full, or at least fuller, statement about the modern state and the reasons for and meanings of its incompatibility with the Shara. The present book may therefore be regarded as a continuation of and expansion upon Sharas interest in the state, in both empirical substance and theoretical direction. In terms of substance, it is clear that much more needed to be said about the modern state in the 2009 book that could not be included in an already very long work. In terms of directionby which I mean teasing out the wider theoretical implications of the empirical narrative of so-called Islamic law and its governanceShara was largely silent. The present work attempts to fill this gap and in the process engage the Western disciplines of political science, moral philosophy, and law.

In thinking about the themes of this book, I have benefited from the intellectual companionship of a number of individuals. My graduate students and former colleagues at McGill University have for years afforded me the luxury of engagement in first-rate conversations about the modern state and much else. At Columbia, my departments fortnightly colloquium and other extensive conversations with colleagues have continued this engagement, providing me with much insight that resulted in sharpening the text. I am grateful to Talal Asads and Sudipta Kavirajs always fruitful intellectual companionship; to Akeel Bilgrami and Kaoukab Chebaro for insightful remarks they made on the second part of , which benefited greatly from his comments; and last but certainly not least to Muhammad Qasim Zaman, for reading and perspicaciously and constructively commenting on the entire text.

I am also grateful to my gifted and efficient research assistants: Maura Donovan, Shawn Higgins, Aelfie Starr Tuff, and Elizabeth Rghebi. Stephen Millier of McGill continues to make what I write appear more elegant. To all these individuals and to others I may have neglected to mention, I record here my profound gratitude.

The argument of this book is fairly simple: The Islamic state, judged by any standard definition of what the modern state represents, is both an impossibility and a contradiction in terms.

Until the early nineteenth century, and for twelve centuries before then, the moral law of Islam, the Shara, had successfully negotiated customary law and local customary practices and had emerged as the supreme moral and legal force regulating both society and government. This law was paradigmatic, having been accepted as a central system of high and general norms by societies and the dynastic powers that ruled over them. It was a moral law that created and maintained a well-ordered society, to borrow John Rawlss effective expression. Even in this relatively limited sphere, the Shara lost its autonomy and social agency in favor of the modern state; Shara was henceforth needed only to the limited extent that deriving certain provisions from itprovisions that were reworked and re-created according to modern expediencylegitimized the states legislative ventures.

For the great majority of Muslims today, the Shara undoubtedly remains a source of religious and moral authority. Whereas some Islamic regimes have adopted the policy of distilling from the Sharawhile flagrantly disregarding both its procedural laws and communal contextsuch punishments as dismemberment and stoning, To say that the overwhelming majority of modern Muslims wish for the Shara to return in one form or another is to state what anyone with even a cursory knowledge of world affairs would readily acknowledge. The question of why they entertain this wish will be answered in good part in the following chapters, although this is not an intended objective of this book.

Yet, as located in the modern condition, this wish entails an aporia. Muslims today, including their leading intellectuals, have come to take the modern state for granted, accepting it as a natural reality. They often assume it not only to have existed throughout the long course of their history but also to have been sanctioned by no less an authority than the Qurn itself. this being partly a reflection of a present reality in which they must confront what seems to them to be an indestructible and powerful machine on a daily basis.

Modern Muslims are therefore faced with the challenge of reconciling two facts: first, the ontological fact of the state and its undeniably powerful presence, and, second, the deontological fact of the necessity to bring about a form of Shara governance. This challenge is further complicated by the recognition that the state in Muslim countries has not done much to rehabilitate any acceptable form of genuine Shara governance. The constitutional battles of the Islamists in Egypt and Pakistan, the failures of the Iranian Revolution as an Islamic political and legal project, and other similar disappointments amply testify to this proposition. In a recent and highly representative statement, the powerful Muslim Brothers argue that the modern nation-state

does not stand in contradiction with the implementation of Islamic Shara, because Islam is the highest authority in Muslim lands, or so it should be. With its mechanisms, regulations, laws, and systems, the modern stateif it contains no contradiction to the founding and indubitable principles of Islamdoes not preclude the possibility of being developed... [so that] we can benefit from it in achieving for ourselves progress and advancement.

Note that developed here should be taken to mean adapted to our needs and purposes, as the text makes clear later. Any attempt by the nation-state to quarantine religion or undermine commitment to the supreme authority of Islam will no doubt be rejected by any Muslim. Thus, the state is expected to promote Islamic values, including general public interest, the rule of law, freedom and equal opportunity for all citizens, and to deepen the conception of citizenship.... In our understanding of what Islam means, these are [the tasks] that the modern state should accomplish. A subtitle in the document sums it up: There is no Contradiction between the Nation-State and Islamic Shara.

But surely there is. The argument of this book, as we have already intimated, is that