ISLAM AND CHRISTIAN–MUSLIM RELATIONS

https://doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2018.1491135

Religion, Democracy and the ‘Dawla Madaniyya’ of the

Arab Spring
Raja Bahlul
Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Doha, Qatar

ABSTRACT
The object of this article is to review and evaluate a debate that has
been taking place among Muslim and Arab writers for some time
now about the concept of ‘dawla madaniyya’ (‘civil state/
KEYWORDS
government’), and the place of religion in democratic politics. Dawla madaniyya; liberalism;
More precisely, it will be suggested that the current popularity of Islamism; state; religion; civil
the term ‘dawla madaniyya’ signifies only a partial meeting of government; democracy
minds between Islamists and their liberal and secular opponents.
By and large, the concept seems to have an instrumental value as
part of an on-going discursive struggle between various political
orientations about the place of Islam in the social–political order.
On the basis of our discussion of the terms of the debate, a new
approach to conceptualizing the disagreement will be suggested.
The goal of this is not to resolve the disagreement, but rather to
sharpen it in a way that shows what is required to achieve
significant progress. The final resolution of the disagreement must
await a more radical convergence of ideas than currently exists –
a convergence that touches not only on standards of
reasonableness but also on substantive beliefs and values.

1. Introduction
The object of this article is to review and evaluate a debate that has been taking place for
some time now among Muslim and Arab writers about the concept of dawla madaniyya
(a term that can be roughly translated as ‘civil state’ or better, ‘civil government’), and the
place of religion in democratic politics. To judge from the number and general tone of the
many discussions the concept has given rise to in the Arabic language media and internet
(both before and after the recent Arab uprisings, collectively known as ‘the Arab Spring’),
the concept of dawla madaniyya has acquired positive connotations for many writers who
belong to different schools of thought. It merits attention because it appears to be a point
of agreement between liberal and Islamist thinkers, who have traditionally held opposing
views about the place of religion in politics.
The second section of the article discusses the Arabic term ‘dawla madaniyya’ in order
to explain why it has been subject to different interpretations in the current debate. It will
be suggested that this is due in part to certain peculiarities in the historical development of
the use of the terms ‘dawla’ and ‘madanī’.

CONTACT Raja Bahlul raja.bahlool@dohainstitute.edu.qa

© 2018 University of Birmingham
2 R. BAHLUL

The third section considers efforts that have been made by liberal, secularist and Isla-
mist thinkers to explain what the term means (or should mean), and why it is desirable to
employ the concept it expresses as a regulatory principle of political life. A cursory look at
the available discussions reveals that different meanings can be associated with this term.
Yet despite this lack of consensus, one particular explanation emerges that seems to
command more general agreement than the others. According to this explanation, a
dawla madaniyya is one that involves accountable popular government, as opposed to
rule by religious, military or despotic authority. This, it will be suggested, is something
that many liberals, secularists and Islamists are willing to agree on.
Section 4 takes this agreement on the general character of dawla madaniyya a step
further by suggesting that Islamists and their adversaries can also accept the idea that pol-
itical power must be limited – there are rights, liberties and principles that need to be insu-
lated from majoritarian decision-making. This section also raises a question that will cast
the disagreement between Islamists and their opponents into sharper relief: What is the
nature of and the justification for the limitations that must be imposed on political
power? It turns out that parties to the debate have radically different answers to this ques-
tion. Whereas Islamists tend to draw limitations by reference to Sharia-based principles,
liberals and secularists tend to appeal to reason, human rational agency or philosophical
theories of morality.
Section 5 concludes with a discussion of the conflicting values and beliefs that underlie
the disagreement. There is, of course, a burden of justification that both parties to the
debate must bear. Even though the Islamist burden may appear heavier from a certain
point of view, it is not clear how differences can be resolved short of an extended historical
process that leads to changes in beliefs, values and accepted modes of reasoning – changes
that may be well beyond what purely rational argument can produce at this time.

2. The term ‘dawla madaniyya’

‘Dawla madaniyya’ is usually translated (without much hesitation) as ‘civil state’ (see, for
example, March 2013). Had the Arabic idiom followed the Lockean usage expressed in the
title of the famous Second Treatise of [Civil] Government (Locke 1980), we would be speak-
ing, not of dawla madaniyya, but rather of ḥ ukūma madaniyya, or ḥ ukm madanī.1 As
things stand, the term ‘civil state’ is bound to sound strange to Western ears, whereas
there seems to be nothing amiss with the Arabic ‘equivalent’, which is widely used in con-
temporary Arab political discourses on the subject. One is led to wonder whether the
common translation is erroneous, or if Western and Arab/Muslim writers are actually
talking about different things.
An explanation of the potentially confusing usages is possible by reference to the
history of the Arabic term ‘dawla’. For, as noted by some historians of Arab/Islamic
thought, the term ‘dawla’ has always been used, until fairly recently, to refer to what
may be better referred to as ‘(political) power’, ‘regime’ or ‘kingship’ (sulṭān) or ‘govern-
ment’. In this usage, ‘dawlat Muʿāwiya’ or ‘dawlat Banī Umāya’ would refer to the govern-
ment, regime and policies that Caliph Muʿāwiya and his Umayad dynasty used to rule over
their subjects.2
Dawla in the sense of regime (or government) is now mostly (but probably not com-
pletely) obsolete in Arabic, having been replaced by the modern sense of ‘government,
 ISLAM AND CHRISTIAN–MUSLIM RELATIONS 3

territory and people’. This is what makes it natural for us to translate ‘dawla madaniyya’ as
‘civil state’, only to find ourselves subsequently reflecting on the resulting oddness of the
English, and wondering (with the Lockean usage in mind) what difference there might be
between ‘civil state’ and ‘civil government’. But if we were to choose to understand the
current debate about the dawla madaniyya as a debate about dawla in the now (for
Arabic) mostly obsolete sense of government (or governance), we would not have to
pass judgement on the relative merits of John Locke’s ‘civil government’ vs. the Arabic
‘dawla madaniyya’, for they would amount to (nearly) the same thing.
As in the case of dawla, a partial explanation of the meaning of the term ‘madanī’ may
be sought in history. The term is closely related to ‘madīna’ (‘city’), a word that has always
had a salient territorial connotation in Arabic. Thus, in a chapter that deals with ‘human
associations’, al-Fārābī attributes madaniyya to ‘those [associations] that reside in (are
contained in) the city (hiya allatī taḥ ūzuhā al madīna)’ (al-Fārābī 1964, 69). Such associ-
ations are to be contrasted with those found in villages, quarters, households or Bedouin
encampments.
Unlike the Arabic ‘madīna’, the English ‘city’ has had a different kind of semantic
history. For even though the word ‘city’ did eventually come to have a territorial
meaning (witness talk of ‘city limits’ and ‘inner city’), there is still an ancient history
that takes ‘city’ back to the Latin ‘civitas’ and Greek ‘polis’, with their implicit reference
to ‘citizens united by law’ (Grbac 2013, 23). This can still be grasped in the concept of ‘citi-
zenship’, with its overtly legal–political implications, which are lacking in the current
Arabic equivalent. When modern Arabic had to find an equivalent for the term ‘citizen’
and similar terms, it could not derive this from madīna (which always had territorial,
rather than political connotations). A forced derivation of an Arabic equivalent of
‘citizen’ from ‘madīna’ would have at best yielded ‘city-dweller’, as opposed to ‘citizen’.
In the end, modern Arabic landed on the term ‘muwāṭin’, which is stipulated to mean
‘citizen’. But even this term still manages to carry overtly territorial connotations: it lit-
erally means someone who is native to (or of) a certain country or territory.3
Eventually, over a long period of time, the meaning of the Arabic word ‘madanī’, like
‘dawla’, shifted considerably in order to play the contrastive roles that it now plays. The
Arabic ‘madanī’ currently stands in well-defined contrast with such terms as ‘military’,
‘clerical’, ‘religious’ and ‘rural’, and also terms denoting lack of culture and refinement,
such as ‘barbaric’. This explains why, in the minds of many writers, a dawla madaniyya
cannot, by definition, be, for example, military, clerical or religious.
To summarize, it can be said that the terms ‘dawla’ and ‘madanī’ have both undergone
profound semantic changes, but that traces of their older meanings remain in current
Arabic usage. Thus it is not surprising that the use of the expression ‘dawla madaniyya’
has become subject to divergent interpretations. Nevertheless, this has not prevented
the term from acquiring a positive meaning for a great number of people in the Arab
world.

3. A contested concept
Notwithstanding the antiquity of the component parts of the expression, many writers are
well aware of the relative novelty of the complex term ‘dawla madaniyya’, and the fact that
its meaning has not yet been fixed. For this reason, some writers are careful to review the
4 R. BAHLUL

various meanings the term may convey before they go on to defend a particular interpret-
ation. In the apposite phrase used by W.B. Gallie quite some time ago in connection with
‘democracy’ and other terms (such as ‘work of art’ and ‘the Christian doctrine’) (Gallie
1956), dawla madaniyya may be described as an ‘essentially contested concept’.4
In what follows a tentative exposition of the various possible meanings of ‘dawla
madaniyya’ will be presented. None of the proposed meanings amounts to a full definition
that states all necessary and sufficient conditions. Some explanations overlap with others;
some leave some questions unanswered, while others seem to be more like definition by
negation.
According to what is by far the best known explanation, a dawla madaniyya is not a
theocracy. The Arabic term that is customarily used to denote ‘theocratic’ is the adjective
dīnī (derived from dīn, religion) so that one and the same Arabic word ends up being used
to mean both ‘theocratic’ and ‘religious’. This way of understanding dawla madaniyya is
particularly attractive to Islamic writers who want to allay anxieties over questions of reli-
gious freedom and oppressive religious rule in the hoped-for Islamic state.
Elaborations of this explanation usually refer to the history of theocratic rule in the
West. According to the Islamic understanding of this history, the Church, headed by an
infallible Pope, acted as a mediator between human beings and God and ruled in the
name of the latter. Theocracy is defined by reference to those who wielded political
power – the Pope and the clergy. It is then said that the world of Islam, unlike Christen-
dom, has never had a ‘Church’, or known church rule; hence there is no chance that a
Muslim Pope or clergy will rule over the people in the hoped-for Islamic state. In accord-
ance with this understanding, the Islamic state is declared to be a dawla madaniyya.
Examples of this way of thinking can be found in the writings of Ḥ asan Ḥ anafī (2012,
95–97), Fahmī Huwaydī (2012, 99) and Yūsuf al-Qaraḍ āwī (2012, 39).
A second way of defining dawla madaniyya is to say that it is not a military state. Here
military rule is opposed to civilian rule, that is, rule by people who have no military status.
The military are taken, in a broad sense, to include the army, the police and the intelligence
services. Of all the things that are said about dawla madaniyya in Arabic these days, this is
the least contentious explanation of what the term means. Like the first definition, it also
proceeds by way of negation, but unlike the first, it is not a subject of contention; writers
often mention it solely for the purpose of setting it aside (Shaʿbān and Qumnī 2011).
An important feature that the two preceding explanations of dawla madaniyya have in
common, over and above their negative character, is that both seek to understand the
nature of the dawla madaniyya by reference to the social identity of the people who exer-
cise political power, rather than the principles in accordance with which political power is
exercised. Of course, it is implicitly understood that clerical rulers will exercise power in
accordance with religious ideas, whereas military rulers are likely to rule as if the country
were in a state of emergency, but there is little or no recognition of the fact that civilians
may very well rule in the same ways as the military or the clergy. Leaders of military coups
who give up their military posts in order to run for election with the backing of the army
do not suddenly become civilian rulers, and it is not clear that religious fanatics with no
official religious titles qualify as civilians in the intended sense. If such possibilities are
sufficient to remove the madanī character from the dawla, the social identity of the
rulers is not, after all, so very important.5 This is what other explanations of dawla mada-
niyya presuppose.
 ISLAM AND CHRISTIAN–MUSLIM RELATIONS 5

A third way of explaining what a dawla madaniyya is proceeds by reference to its being
‘urban’ or ‘civilized’. These attributes are taken to characterize life in cities and urban
areas, as opposed to rural or nomadic types of life. Undoubtedly, civilized life, with all
the attendant accomplishments in art, science and values, cannot be reduced to mean
life in urban areas, but there is in the minds of some writers a connection between
urban-ness and the madanī character of the state (or government). Some Islamist
writers draw attention to the concept of civil society (mujtamaʿ madanī), probably think-
ing that a dawla madaniyya perforce has an active civil society (which would be hard to
imagine outside cities and urban areas). For example, Fahmī Huwaydī dwells at length on
Islamic charities, endowments and civil associations as part of Islamic culture. He claims
that the moral values exhibited in urban living are those that would prevail in the dawla
madaniyya (Huwaydī 2012, 101). This does not amount to a definition of the concept
under consideration, but if it is impossible to define dawla madaniyya without reference
to values that are implicit in political practice, then it may not be altogether out of place to
speak of this mode of living in the context of the dawla madaniyya.
A fourth way of explaining what dawla madaniyya means centres around the idea that
this kind of state concerns itself with worldly matters. It aims at meeting people’s material
needs, and it implements welfare policies, broadly understood in materialistic terms
(Darwīsh 2011). If we take this to imply a lack of concern for spiritual matters and
values, this type of approach may be of some consequence in the present context
because it can be used to deny the madanī character of any state that presumes to
concern itself with spiritual needs. Of course, this is not something that the Islamists
would accept, because, to them, the Islamic state concerns itself equally with matters of
this world and the next.
This way of understanding dawla madaniyya is bound to raise questions as to whether
an Islamic state can show equal concern for the needs, spiritual and otherwise, of believers
and non-believers alike. It is by no means obvious how an Islamic state would show equal
concern for the ‘spiritual’ needs of non-believers and unbelievers. If the state does not in
practice try to ‘save’ their souls, then it may at best leave them alone. None of this seems
compatible with showing equal concern. Hence some writers are driven to advocate reliev-
ing the dawla madaniyya of any concern with the spiritual affairs of the population, believ-
ers and non-believers alike.
This path is taken by writers who are inclined to explain dawla madaniyya in terms of
secularity. According to this understanding of what madanī comes down to, a state that
deserves to be so described derives its laws from the will of the people, not from the
will of God. Its laws are positive, and it insists on a clear separation between religion
and the state. In other words, the dawla madaniyya is the secular state by a different
name (Sharīf 2012, 122). The belief that madanī means the same as secular is shared by
conservative Islamists who are indifferent to the notion of dawla madaniyya in any
shape or form, as well as secularists and liberals who are not interested in making their
ideas palatable to Islamists. But whereas Islamists tend to see secularism as being actually
or potentially hostile to religion,6 secularists are usually careful to distinguish hostility to
religion from neutrality about religions. Religion, they think, should be privatized, not
combated (Amīn 2012, 70).
According to the last definition of madanī that can be brought to the table, ‘dawla
madaniyya’ means a ‘democratic state’. This view is different from all the others in that
6 R. BAHLUL

it seems to have a certain ecumenical significance. Various, often widely divergent, views
within the liberal and Islamist camps find ways to incorporate elements, values or aspects
of democracy in their conception of dawla madaniyya. For example, according to Yūsuf
al-Qaraḍ āwī, the famous Egyptian cleric, the Islamic state is not only madaniyya but also
democratic. Islamic democracy, however, differs from Western-type democracy in that it
does not divorce religion from politics. It is better conceived of, he says, as a ‘theo-democ-
racy’. Al-Qaraḍ āwī goes to some lengths to emphasize the importance of the accountabil-
ity of the rulers to the ruled. ‘The people who choose the ruler hold him to account. Should
he err, or persist in his error, he will be deposed by the people’ (al-Qaraḍ āwī 2012, 40).
Alāʾ Ḥ amīda (2012, 58), another Islamist, offers a definition of dawla madaniyya that
includes such elements as representation, separation of powers, popular mandate and citi-
zenship. Yet another declares that the Islamic principle of shūra (consultation) does not
differ much in meaning from ‘modern democracy’ (Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn 2011).
Contemporary Arab liberal writers are no less forthcoming with respect to the demo-
cratic character of the hoped-for dawla madaniyya. According to Galāl Amīn (2012, 72),
‘Free election is the best way for choosing government.’ Other writers say that democracy
is needed in order to establish a dawla madaniyya, or simply that dawla madaniyya just
means ‘democratic state’ in common language (Dirānī 2011). Still others claim that a
dawla madaniyya is based on the will of the people (Zāyid 2012, 143), equal citizenship
and pluralism within a constitutional democratic order (Khālid 2012, 135).
It should be noted, however, that the embrace of democracy by contemporary Arab lib-
erals is of fairly recent origin. Arab writers first became familiar with liberal ideas in the
second half of the nineteenth century. Writers such as Aḥ mad Luṭfī al-Sayyid (1872–
1963) and Salāma Mūsā (1887–1958) are well known for their advocacy of freedom of
thought and expression, the free market and freedom of religion and the press, but they
are not known for advocating democratic ideas such as political equality, popular sove-
reignty and inclusiveness. This, of course, is not surprising, for even in the case of
Western political thought, the union of democratic and liberal ideals took a long time
to establish itself under the umbrella of ‘liberal democracy’. Classical liberalism, of the
type advocated by Locke and Mill found no objection to discrimination on the basis of
property and education.7
The fairly recent embrace of democracy by Arab liberal thinkers is matched by an
equally recent embrace of democracy by Islamist thinkers. The latter embrace can be
traced back to a period of three or four decades before the Arab Spring, a period that wit-
nessed much Islamist activism, both intellectual and political. These decades saw such
thinkers as Turabi of Sudan, Ghannouchi of Tunisia and Khatami of the Islamic Republic
of Iran, produce influential works, arguing not only that Islam and democracy were com-
patible but that an Islamic system would realize a superior version of democracy. We find a
clear statement of this in the words of the Tunisian thinker, Rachid Ghannouchi, accord-
ing to whom
It is possible for the mechanisms of democracy to operate in different cultural milieus.
Democracy resolves itself into popular sovereignty, equality between citizens, governing
bodies that emerge from popular will through free elections, and recognition of the majority’s
right to rule. There is nothing in these processes that is necessarily in conflict with Islamic
values. On the contrary, the democratic apparatus is the best available method for realizing
these values. (Ghannouchi 1993, 88; my translation, emphasis added)
 ISLAM AND CHRISTIAN–MUSLIM RELATIONS 7

Ghannouchi’s claim that there is no conflict between Islam and the various elements or
values of democracy has been contested. Liberals do not believe that an Islamic state
could be democratic. A plausible explanation for this difference of opinion is that liberals
and Islamists disagree on what equality, freedom and inclusivity entail, as can be shown by
referring to some of the questions that prove to be bones of contention between them:
women’s rights, freedom of expression and equality between Muslims and non-Muslims.8
Both sides, of course, provide arguments for their positions. An outside observer who
believes that values are relative, that disagreement over values will forever remain unre-
solved, may declare a ‘draw’ in the debate. To each his own, he or she may say. This
seems to have been Joseph Schumpeter’s conclusion in another context. According to him,
Without absurdity or insincerity it is possible to say that fitness [for participation in the pol-
itical process] is measured by one’s ability to support oneself. In a commonwealth of strong
religious conviction it may be held – again without absurdity or insincerity – that dissent dis-
qualifies or, in an anti-feminist commonwealth, sex. … The salient point is that, given appro-
priate views on those and similar subjects, disqualifications on grounds of economic status,
religion and sex will enter into the same class with disqualifications which we all of us con-
sider compatible with democracy [e.g. insanity]. (Schumpeter 1976, 244)

The issue that Schumpeter raises here is not quite dead, as we still find people who argue
that advocacy of violence, racism or fascism (and, increasingly, Islamism) constitutes
grounds for political exclusion from the democratic process. According to John Rawls
(1993, xix), society may contain ‘unreasonable, irrational, and even mad’ doctrines;
‘[i]n their case the problem is to contain them so that they do not undermine the
unity and justice of society’. One may well wonder if containment does not amount
to exclusion.
Rather than bring the debate between Islamism and liberalism to an end with the con-
clusion that they do not, after all, mean the same thing by democracy, it would be more
constructive to carry the debate a little further. Democracy has never meant the same thing
to all people anyway, and at the present time, it may be better to take advantage of the
apparent agreement in order to see whether the matters over which the two parties are
divided can be conceptualized in a different way. This is what we plan to do in the next
section.

4. The place of religion in a dawla madaniyya

In the previous section, it was suggested that liberals and Islamists are prepared to accept
the idea that a dawla madaniyya is democratic. On the face of it, this is a substantive and
interesting agreement. It is substantive because democracy entails a number of important
notions such as equality, freedom, accountability and others (over whose interpretation we
may naturally disagree). It is interesting because most of the other possible definitions of
dawla madaniyya do not serve to introduce ideas that liberals and Islamists need disagree
about. (They do not disagree in their attitude towards clerical and military rule; nor do
they need to disagree about the purpose(s) of government, the importance of civil
society, or the promotion of civilized values.)
But the agreement of liberals and Islamists does not stop at the acceptance of this
definition of dawla madaniyya in terms of democracy. In fact, it can be easily taken
8 R. BAHLUL

one step further. To begin with, it is plausible to assume that both parties accept the idea
that what democracy means, in practical terms, is that people make their will known by
means of free, popular elections, and that, when voting produces a majority, the majority
is entitled to govern in the name of the people. This is what Ghannouchi and many other
Islamists acknowledge, and it is not clear how liberals can disagree with this, short of relin-
quishing their democratic credentials.
Once the right of the majority to rule is acknowledged, a question naturally arises about
limits, if any, on the power of the majority to rule. It is here that the agreement between
Islamists and liberals about democracy can be easily taken one step further: for both agree
that a state must have a constitution, or a set of laws that define, among other things, how
political power is produced and wielded, and what limits it has. Since democratic political
power is ultimately vested in the people, or their representatives, the question of how and
to what extent political power is to be regulated reduces to a question about limitations on
the rule of the majority. Neither the liberals nor the Islamists believe that people (or a
majority of them) have an unlimited right to rule.
Liberal limitations on majoritarian rule have been expressed differently by different
writers at different times. According to John Stuart Mill’s famous principle, ‘the only
purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized com-
munity, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good … is not a sufficient
warrant’ (Mill 1991, 14). According to the first of Rawls’s equally well-known two prin-
ciples of justice, ‘each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic
liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others’ (Rawls 1971, 53). These two liberal
principles may be construed as saying that citizens have equal rights to freedom and
that these rights can be restricted only when the exercise of freedom causes harm or
becomes incompatible with similar freedoms of others.
For their part, Arab liberals of the earlier generation are in substantive agreement with
what their Western counterparts said before them. According to Mūsā (2010, 37),
Government has no right to impose limits on freedom of thought except in self-defence or in
order to protect people from direct harm. There will be no justification if the harm is only
projected to happen in the distant future.

In what seems to have been an anticipation of the idea of the ‘minimal state’, Aḥ mad Luṭfī
al-Sayyid (2010, 32) says, ‘[G]overnment has only three duties: the keeping of peace, adju-
dication of disputes, and defense of the realm. Nothing else is within the government’s
power to do.’
In the same or a similar vein, contemporary Arab liberals give pride of place to freedom
in their thinking. Mindful of the rising tide of Islamism, such writers make it clear that
liberalism requires limitations on the power of government. According to Hāla Muṣtạ fā
(2011, 23), liberalism entails emphasis on the value of the individual, requiring individual
liberty in all areas of life – including the economy, politics and culture. According to Saʿīd
Karrāja (2014, 42), individual and political liberties are not subject to compromise; ‘they
belong to all, friend and foe, in a state that respects the rule of law and peaceful change of
government’. Still another writer, Yūsuf Manṣūr (2014, 133–134) explains the Arab upris-
ings of 2010–2011 by reference to economic failures caused by institutions and insti-
tutional arrangements that ‘impeded the development of freedom in all its forms’.9
 ISLAM AND CHRISTIAN–MUSLIM RELATIONS 9

This is not how the idea of limited government is expounded by Islamists who profess
to favour democracy. Typical statements of Islamic limitations can be found in Ghannou-
chi and Turabi, among others. According to the former,
In the Qur’an it is stated: ‘O believers, obey God, and obey the Messenger and those in auth-
ority over you’ (Q 4. 59). This verse clearly indicates the centre of supreme authority in the
lives of Muslims … After this comes the power that the people exercise. The legitimate scope for
this power does not violate divine law, which is found in the Qur’an and the Traditions of the
Messenger. (Ghannouchi 1993, 119; emphasis added)

According to latter,
The authority of government is limited because Sharia is the higher law, just like the consti-
tution except that it is a detailed constitution. … The difference between shura [‘consul-
tation’] and democracy … is that the higher law in Islam is so intensive that the legislature
has much less to say or do. The legislature, the Congress, or Parliament or whatever, is
not sovereign at all. The Sharia governs so much. (Turabi 1993, 25)

In saying that ‘Sharia is the higher law, just like the constitution’, Turabi seems to be fol-
lowing in the footsteps of Abū al-Aʿlā al-Mawdūdī (1903–1979), according to whom the
Islamic constitution is implicit in the Qur’an, but ‘has yet to be codified’ (al-Mawdūdī
1975, 11).
Thus for liberals and Islamists alike, the idea of placing limits on the rule of the majority
by reference to a set of principles or values seems acceptable. The question then turns on
what these principles and values are, how they are to be justified, and how they bear on
relations between members of society.
What can we say about the various principles on offer here? There are at least two
differences between liberal and Islamist principles of limitation that appear to favour
the former. For one thing, liberal limitations seem to have individuals (citizens) in
mind – the idea is to protect individuals from encroachment on their rights by government
and/or society. Islamist limitations, on the other hand, seem to have the Sharia in view – it
is the Sharia that must be protected from violations by majoritarian decisions. Because
democracy is (often) morally justified by reference to the rights and needs of members
of society, Islamists need to clarify whether excluding Sharia from majoritarian control
can also be justified along these or similar lines (or not at all).
A second difference that seems to tell in favour of liberal principles of limitation is their
abstractness. The choice of specific modes of implementation in terms of less abstract laws
and institutions is left for citizens to decide. Islamist limitations, on the other hand, tend to
be very specific. According to Turabi, whom we have just quoted, Sharia is a detailed con-
stitution. If this is taken seriously, then one may infer that, for example, the penal code and
family law should be designed in accordance with Sharia law.
In their own defence against the second point, the Islamists may claim that the abstract-
ness of liberal principles of limitation does not alter the fact that, at some point down the
road, liberal principles will have to be translated into more specific laws. Some penal code
or other will have to be laid down, some law or other will be used to regulate freedom of
expression, economic enterprise, personal status, etc. Society ends up with a set of concrete
laws and institutions that are no less specific than those which the Sharia lays down. Just
because liberals do not have a Holy Book does not mean that they will not eventually have
10 R. BAHLUL

to choose something that is equally specific, even if different. Specificity, therefore, is not a
problem in and of itself.
As to the first (more important) point, the Islamists may claim that Sharia, no less than
liberal principles of limitation, exists for the sake of protecting individuals and safeguard-
ing their rights. Islamic jurisprudence has a long tradition of discussing this matter under
the rubric of maqāṣid (intentions) of Sharia, which have been said to include the protec-
tion of life, property, religion, reason and progeny (Opwis 2005). Hence taking Sharia out
of the hands of the majority need not be objectionable, for what this does is to safeguard
something whose goal is to safeguard individual rights.
If the Islamist understanding of Sharia were to remain at (or to be taken to) the philo-
sophical level of maqāṣid, that is, the intentions and purposes of the law, then the justifica-
tion for taking Sharia out of majoritarian control need not necessarily diverge widely from
the justification of liberal principles. One may seek to justify Sharia itself by reference to
human rights, and other moral notions that have often been said to be implicit in many
world religions, including Islam (Turabi 1985, 12).10 If Sharia is ‘philosophized’ to the
point where it emerges as a set of moral principles of a general kind, then it may
indeed turn out that violations of Sharia constitute harm, or violate individual rights.
For example, if you were to starve others, lock them up, or deny them the opportunity
to obtain a decent living, then not only would your actions violate Sharia, but they
would also cause harm and violate individual rights. Not only Sharia but also Reason
will attest to this.11
It may be noted, however, that when Sharia is recast as a general philosophical moral
system of sorts, it may transpire that it harbours values and ideas that are not acceptable to
everyone. Such is probably the case with what Wael B. Hallaq presents as ‘the ideal system
of Islamic governance’. His vision is one of a system that meets the following conditions,
among others:
(1) The establishment of a divine sovereignty in which God’s cosmic moral laws are trans-
lated, as a system of moral principles, into practical ‘legal’ norms; … (3) The legislative
and the judicial powers are woven from a moral fabric whose warp and woof is a thorough
amalgam of fact and value, and of the Is and Ought; … (5) A situation where morally based
practical ‘legal norms’ are put in the service of society, nurturing the community qua com-
munity and serving its interests as a morally constituted entity; … (7) The educational
system, lower and higher, asks and answers questions about the meaning of the good life;
… (8) The concept of the citizen is successfully metamorphosed into the concept of the para-
digmatically moral community, in which each member stands with other members in a
moral relationship of mutual ties. (Hallaq 2013, 139–140)

This will undoubtedly strike many people as something that borders on moral totalitar-
ianism. Talk of an amalgamation of the Is and the Ought, and an educational system that
answers questions about the meaning of the good life will sound alarming to those who
value individualism and individual freedoms.
Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that the vision described by Hallaq is a philoso-
phical position that can be subjected to rational critique, much like many others. Rousseau’s
vision of democracy has been criticized for being potentially totalitarian. Liberalism itself has
been critiqued by socialists, feminists and the Islamists themselves. Viewed in such philoso-
phical terms, this doctrine of Islamic governance can join with others in the never-ending
debate about the laws and values that should govern political life.
 ISLAM AND CHRISTIAN–MUSLIM RELATIONS 11

The question about moralized Sharia is not a purely ‘academic’ question, that is, one
that has little to do with reality and is therefore insignificant. In any case, we need to
keep in mind that this is not the position of mainstream Islamism on how Sharia
should be taken. The Sharia that Islamists such as Turabi, Ghannouchi, Khatami and
other Islamists think should be protected from majoritarian control is not a general phi-
losophical-moral doctrine. (It is noticeable that Hallaq is silent about how ‘God’s cosmic
moral laws are [to be] translated into practical “legal” norms’). Rather, Sharia is taken as a
much more specific set of prescriptions. Recall Turabi’s statement about Sharia being a
detailed constitution, and Ghannouchi’s references to the text of the Qur’an as governing
the political process. It is at this level that we find specific laws and procedures that will
govern relations between people – men and women, Muslims and non-Muslims, believers
and non-believers.
This raises a problem of how the Islamists propose to support the claim that violations
of certain specific Sharia laws cause harm and violate rights. For example, they would have
to argue that violating Sharia by criminalizing polygamy, or repudiating limb amputation
punishments, or allowing non-Muslims and women to occupy high political office – that
all of these things stand to cause harm and violate rights. It is hardly likely that an Islamist
can succeed in making a good case for such claims before people who do not profess his
faith.
The problem, as we said earlier, does not lie with the specificity of Sharia-based laws.
But we can now adduce another consideration (one that liberals and others will
undoubtedly draw attention to) that may favour liberal limitations, even at their most
specific. Specific laws and norms based on liberal principles of limitation can be abol-
ished and replaced by others, subject to changing conditions. For such legal norms
are authorized by human thinking and experience. They are not divine prescriptions
that cannot be altered by human will, as the Islamists of mainstream Islamism hold
for Sharia-based legal norms.
It is, of course, possible that some Islamists will say that Sharia legal norms can also be
suspended, abolished or replaced through human decision-making. A position like this
will probably take us back to an understanding of Sharia as a set of moral principles. Some-
thing like this is suggested by Fazlur Rahman (1980, 47), who distinguishes between legal
enactments and moral principles, and faults the Islamic legal tradition for ‘[regarding] the
Qur’an as law book and not as the religious source of the law’.
Thus the question of moralized Sharia must remain on the table. Academic or not, this
is not a question that any serious engagement with the Islamist claim to democracy, or the
dawla madaniyya for that matter, can afford to ignore.

5. Where to now?
In the preceding section, it was suggested that there is an option for Islamists to view
Sharia as a system of values and moral principles, in the manner envisioned by Hallaq,
Rahman and others. It was also suggested that, if this path to interpreting Sharia were
to be taken, the gulf that separates liberals and Islamists would be narrowed somewhat.
But, given that we are not there yet, despite decades of (variably) rational and enlightened
interpretations of Sharia, the question is bound to arise as to what is needed in order to
reach agreement.
12 R. BAHLUL

In recent years, Rawls (1993, 1) has offered a conception of an ‘ideal of public reason’
whereby citizens conduct their public political discussions of constitutional essentials
within a framework of ideas and values that can be reasonably expected to be accepted
by other ‘reasonable’ citizens, irrespective of religion, philosophy or comprehensive
world view. According to Rawls (224–225),
[W]e are to appeal only to presently accepted general beliefs and forms of reasoning found in
common sense, and the methods of conclusions of science when these are not controversial.
… We are not to appeal to comprehensive religious and philosophical doctrines, … nor to
elaborate economic theories … , if these are in dispute. As far as possible, the knowledge
and ways of reasoning that ground our affirming the principles of justice … are to rest on
the plain truths now widely accepted, or available, to citizens generally.

According to Rawls (55–57), people must also recognize several ‘burdens of judgment’.
Reasonable people can disagree (and remain in a state of disagreement) because the rel-
evant evidence is conflicting and complex; because they accord different weights to the evi-
dence; because the important concepts are vague; or because judgments are shaped
differently by different experiences.
Most Islamists at this time will not accept this ideal of ‘public reason’ with its require-
ment to exclude appeal to comprehensive religious doctrines. Many of them will argue that
that this ideal of public reason can be more accurately described as an ideal of liberal
public reason. For it appears to be based on a conception of reasonableness that is appro-
priate (reasonable?) only in social–political contexts that contain an irreducible diversity
of values and beliefs, where respect for the freedom and equality of others can be secured
only through a minimalist conception of shared knowledge. For what harm can there be in
appealing to comprehensive religious doctrines when we reason publicly about consti-
tutional essentials if there were only one such religious doctrine to appeal to, or when
an appeal to different doctrines is not likely to lead to discord and the use of violence?
Such Islamists may then hold on for a rival conception of an Islamic public reason, with
its own set of ‘generally accepted beliefs and forms of reasoning found in common sense’.
Some Islamists tend to believe in the existence of one Islamic umma (people) united by
belief in Islam and adherence to Islamic values. From their point of view, it may, therefore,
seem unreasonable to bracket this entire (somewhat ‘communitarian’) perspective of unity
in favour of irreducible diversity (as required by the Rawlsian ideal of public reason).12
The prospect of a debate over conceptions of public reason is not enticing. It is not clear
what reasonable standards, criteria or rules of reasoning could be used to adjudicate a dis-
agreement about reasonableness itself. With no hope of being able to reduce each other’s
position to absurdity, what are the prospects for agreement between liberals and Islamists?
Two things should have become clear by now. The first is that the agreement that seems to
exist between the two parties about the desirability of a dawla madaniyya, even when this
is elaborated into agreement about the need for constitutional democracy, does not bridge
the gap between Islamist and liberal conceptions of politics. A major disagreement over
the role of religion in politics continues to exist beneath a veneer of agreement over the
dawla madaniyya and the democratic state.
The second thing that should have become clear by now is that this is not an issue that
can be settled by rational discussion when the very notion of rational discussion can itself
be brought into question. What is required is a change in worldview, one that affects
 ISLAM AND CHRISTIAN–MUSLIM RELATIONS 13

values, beliefs and even criteria of rationality. To use the phrase that Charles Taylor (1994,
67) borrows from Hans-Georg Gadamer, what is needed is a ‘fusion of horizons’:
We learn to move in a broader horizon, within which what we have formerly taken for
granted as the background to valuation can be situated as one possibility alongside the
different background of the formerly unfamiliar culture. The ‘fusion of horizons’ operates
through our developing new vocabularies of comparison, by means of which we can articu-
late these contrasts … We have reached the judgment partly through transforming our
standards.

This is something that has yet to happen. For the time being, the horizon on which the
dawla madaniyya of the Islamists appears is not the same as that of the liberals who
use the same term. The same applies to the ‘democratic state’. The metaphor of ‘different
horizons’ finds its equivalent in expressions that liberals and Islamists use to describe each
other’s outlook. Liberals claim that the Islamists intend to take Arab and Muslim societies
to a distant past of ‘dark ages’, while Islamists claim that liberals have adopted ideas and
values that are at home in a different region of space – the West. But whether it is points of
time or points of space, the meaning is the same: liberals and Islamists view each other as
belonging to different worlds.
The fusion of horizons of which Taylor speaks is not something that can happen only
(or even mainly) through public debates and exchanges of ideas. It is a historical process,
no less, one in which ideas and values change, combine and recombine, and get modified.
In some cases, ideas become impractical, or unnecessary, so that people are led to ignore
them; in other cases, sensibilities change so that what was important ceases to be impor-
tant, and vice versa; in some cases, the ideas and values are re-discovered in what others
believe, so that new, inclusive vocabularies are developed. And, of course, scientific ideas
and developments often prove to be relevant to social–political thinking. The same can be
said of economic development and processes of globalization.
It is not beyond the realm of the possible that a meeting of minds between liberals and
Islamists may take place in the not too distant future. There are paths that can lead to
neighbouring destinations if they were to be taken. For liberals, there is a well-established
tradition in modern Arab political thought, going back to the period of the Arab national
liberation movements, that has always been critical of liberalism on the ground that it
advocates excessive individualism in social and economic policies. Were liberals to
adopt this legacy, it would bring them closer to Islamist thinking, long known for its
strong social-economic ethos and communitarian values.13
For their part, the Islamists can learn to mine their intellectual history and traditions for
liberal elements. Like all major religions, Islam sustains conservative as well as liberal
interpretations. There are texts that seem intolerant of dissent, as well as texts that
reveal respect for individual autonomy. There are texts that call for equality between
men and women, Muslims and non-Muslims, and there are texts that can be taken to
require the opposite. Liberal interpretations of Islam are possible, when one takes the
total teaching of the Qur’an as ‘the criterion for Islamicity’, along the lines suggested by
Rahman (1982, 22–23) and others.
Liberal interpretations of Islam are not yet ascendant. For this reason, the debate we
have attempted to adjudicate here is not one between liberals and liberal Islamists, but
rather between liberals and the Islamists of mainstream Islamism, as we know it now.
14 R. BAHLUL

Mainstream Islamism, of course, is neither militant nor extremist, but it is not liberal
either, at least for now. As for the future, that is a different story. It may be that the
current debates between liberals and Islamists about the dawla madaniyya, as well as
the tragic aftermath of the Arab Spring, will take their place in history as moments
leading to a fusion of horizons between liberals and Islamists.□

Notes
1. In a way, ‘ḥukm’ (‘governance’) is preferable to ‘ḥ ukūma’ (government), which suggests a
‘sitting body of governors’, rather than ‘conduct of political power’. I choose ḥukūma
(government) in part in order to draw parallels with Lockean usage. But ‘government’ can
also be taken to mean ‘the totality of acts of governing’. I thank an anonymous referee for
drawing my attention to the need to reflect the government/governance distinction in Arabic.
2. For a discussion of this and related matters, see ʿAẓmī (1990, 48). See also Hallaq (2013, 62–
63), according to whom ‘The term reserved for dynastic rule was dawla, a term that has come
to refer to the totality of the modern state in the late nineteenth century and thereafter. But
before then, it meant nothing of the sort.’ Of course, dawla, in the sense of dynastic rule,
carried connotations of ephemerality and succession, inasmuch as dynasties, regimes and
governments were understood to succeed one another constantly.
3. This is probably why, in certain parts of the Arab world (notably in the Gulf region),
‘muwāṭin’ is taken to be the opposite of ‘expatriate’, with the result that ‘muwāṭin’ tends
to be understood as referring to a ‘local’ or a ‘native’ of the land. Again, the political connota-
tion is utterly lacking.
4. According to Gallie (1956, 169), these are concepts around which ‘there are disputes …
which are perfectly genuine: which, although not resolvable by argument of any kind, are
nevertheless sustained by perfectly respectable arguments and evidence’.
5. One contemporary Arab secularist, ʿĀdil Ḍ āhir, offers an extended argument for this idea in
his Al-usus al-falsafiyya li-al-ʿilmāniyya [Philosophical foundations of secularism]. Accord-
ing to Ḍ āhir (1998, 47), secularism is not to be defined (hence theocracy is not to be
negated) by reference to the social class or identity of rulers, but by reference to the ideas
and principles in the name of which political power is exercised.
6. This does not apply to liberal Islamists such as Khālid Abū al-Faḍ l, Muḥ ammad Ṭ alibī and
Sayyid ʿAshmāwī. For a discussion of liberal Islamism, see Bahlul (2012).
7. Thus Locke (1990, 179) could write that ‘the day-laborers and tradesmen, the spinsters and
dairymaids’ could no more be perfect in ethics than they could be perfect mathematicians.
According to Mill’s doctrine of plural voting, it is both just and necessary that that ‘some
mode be adopted of giving greater weight to the suffrage of the more educated voter’ (Mill
1977, 324). Such statements can hardly qualify them to be democrats, according to the
present understanding of the term.
8. For a discussion of whether and how an Islamic type of democracy can be conceived that
comports with women’s right and equal citizenship, see Bahlul (2004).
9. See Meinardus (2014) for other liberal discussions of freedom, society, politics and
economics.
10. For the Christian connection to liberalism, see Siedentop (1989, 308), for whom ‘The
assumption that society consists of individuals, each with an ontological ground of his or
her own, is a translation of the Christian premise of the equality of souls in the eye of
God.’ This is substantially what Turabi (1985, 12) says: ‘Islamic jurisprudence has known
the essence of democracy since the time believers came to know of their equality before God.’
11. Is morality to be justified by reference to Reason or Revelation? This is a vexed question that
was discussed to no end by the Mu‘tazilites and the Ashʿarites in the second/eighth and third/
ninth centuries. The (rationalist) Muʿtazilites, much esteemed by contemporary Arab liberals
and modernists, believed that morality could be grounded in Reason, and that Revelation
 ISLAM AND CHRISTIAN–MUSLIM RELATIONS 15

merely concurred with the independent judgment of Reason. For a discussion of this issue,
see Bahlul (2016).
12. I have discussed this matter in more detail in Bahlul (2003).
13. That Arab liberals have not been able (or willing) to take this path, with the many destructive
consequences for Arab/Islamic progress towards democracy and/or decent governance, is the
position that Massad (2015) argues for with great force.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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