civil society
are referred to as “the merciful [and the] righteous” (al-­abrār al-­
ruḥamā’). The chiefs, in turn, must possess a generous soul and
take care of the brethren with compassion and mercy, employing
the philosophical faculty, which develops by the age of 30. The
possessors of this rank are called “the virtuous [and] pious” (al-­
akhyār al-­fuḍalā’). The rulers must possess authority of command
and prohibition and be able to eliminate obstinacy and resistance in
a subtle and friendly way. This ability is provided by the legislative
faculty (al-­quwwa al-­nāmūsiyya), which develops by age 40. The
possessors of this rank are called “the noble [and the] virtuous” (al-­
fuḍalā’ al-­karrām). Finally, the divines must embody a complete
submission to God, receiving in return His support and the ability to
witness Him. This ability is given by the angelic faculty, which de-
velops by age 50. This division is based on the seventh book (537c–­
540c) of Plato’s Republic.
Ibn Rushd deals with the issue of the philosophical city in his
commentary on Plato’s Republic (which survives only in Hebrew
translation). He identifies the philosophical city with the perfect
Islamic state based on the shari‘a. The city is ruled by the philoso-
pher, because happiness can be achieved only through theoretical
knowledge (however, no mention of his conjunction with the Active
Intellect is made). The ruler-­philosopher, who is also king, legisla-
tor, and imam, presents the elite with demonstrative arguments but
addresses the common people with persuasive and poetical ones.
His duty is to create and maintain an administrative hierarchy that
would perfectly reproduce the natural hierarchy among the moral
virtues and practical arts, all of which exist for the sake of perfect-
ing theoretical virtues.
See also Brethren of Purity; al-Farabi, Abu Nasr (ca. 878–950);
Ibn Rushd (1126–­98), Isma‘ilis; philosopher-­king; philosophy; utopia
Further Reading
Averroes, Averroes on Plato’s Republic, edited and translated by Ralph
Lerner, 1974; Charles E. Butterworth, The Political Aspects of Is-
lamic Philosophy, 1992; Patricia Crone, Medieval Islamic Political
Thought (God’s Rule), 2004; Abu Nasr al-­Farabi, Mabadi’ Ara’ Ahl
al-­Madina al-­Fadila, 1989; Ralph Lerner and Muhsin S. Mahdi,
eds., Medieval Political Philosophy: A Source Book, 1963; Richard
Walzer, ed. and trans., Al-­Farabi on the Perfect State, 1985.
Ya n is E sh o ts
civil society
During the 1990s, civil society became a popular conceptual tool
for studying democratic transformations within the Muslim world.
Civil society was portrayed as the icon of democracy, where not
only associations, unions, and parties but also clubs and less for-
mal groups were formed and mediated the relations between citi-
zens and state authorities. In the post–­cold war era, civil society
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provided social scientists with an ecumenical paradigm of politi-
cal development that could satisfy both the residual supporters of
modernization theory and its opponents. A more sobering view of
the concept requires exploring the extent to which the idea of civil
society is the outcome not only of the specific modern history of the
West but also of its relations with “the rest,” first and foremost the
Muslim world.
The perhaps too-­optimistic use of the notion of civil society in
the 1990s was shared by the social movements that brought about
the collapse of the authoritarian regimes in Eastern Europe. This
mood spilled over to the Muslim world and furthered hopes for
democratization in face of the perpetuation of various types of au-
tocratic and sometimes pseudodemocratic regimes variably associ-
ated with ongoing neoliberal globalization. In the process, Muslim
responses to oppressive state systems took a more nuanced view
of the relationship between the ideas and practices of civil society
and democratic transformations. The original European model of
civil society, as elaborated by the Scottish Enlightenment, laid a
primary stress on the individual agent who knows his own inter-
est and possesses a capacity to act autonomously while sharing a
sense of affection and sympathy toward other individuals. Against
this streamlined model, a more inclusive notion highlights the
value-­setting power of human beings’ capacity to transcend the
satisfaction of material necessities through dynamics of passionate
interaction and interested cooperation.
In light of these developments, which occurred within continen-
tal social theory, civil society appears overstretched as a concept
if it is mainly intended to cover the civil power of autonomous
social ties. It also risks oversimplifying the dimensions of collec-
tive action, which are not rooted in trust and cooperation among
self-­interested individuals but are based on specifically collective
mechanisms of protest and empowerment. This problem was high-
lighted by the early 19th-­century French thinker Alexis de Toc-
queville, who looked at the emerging non-­European societies of the
United States and Russia and stressed the importance of a “political
society” as a necessary match to civil society. The idea of a political
society extends the original notion of civil society to include the
realm where individuals fight over notions of common good and
implement collective welfare programs within smaller or bigger
communities and municipalities, notably with the help of voluntary
associations, including political parties.
Such collective endeavors can be considered the manifestation
of a profound metamorphosis—­but not the erasure—­of traditions
in the wake of modern transformations. Colonialism itself did not
completely disrupt the way social groups and movements within
non-­European societies proved able to build distinctive versions of
civil (or of civil-­cum-­political) society. As shown by leading social
theorist Hannah Arendt, the impersonal and potentially totalitarian
quality of the “social” as a marker of impersonal modernization
cannot be entirely balanced out by the civil ties of trust and reci-
procity. A collective dynamics not captured by the liberal notion of
civil society reenacts key factors of the koinonia politike of Aris-
totle (in Latin, societas civilis—­since the Greek polis corresponds

to the Latin civitas—­that is, semantically, the antecedent to “civil
society”). Politics within human society requires the articulation
of practices supported by a deeper symbolic bond. Boundaries are
continuously created and challenged, and the ongoing mediations
and contestations can be accommodated only within a larger con-
cept of civil society that incorporates key elements of more classic
notions. To pinpoint this deeper dimension of the social bond, the
consideration of the common good (e.g., as incorporated in reli-
gious traditions) contributes to rendering the idea of civil society
more inclusive by creating a strong nexus between common sense–­
oriented praxis in human relationships and a disciplined “passion”
for justice, which can be mediated and expressed through modern
forms of collective mobilization.
The tension between a liberal, European, and largely colonial
notion of civil society and a more inclusive idea of the social bond
has provided the main framework for debates in various parts of
the Muslim world since the 1990s. In Egypt and in other parts of
the Arab world, the discussion focused on the distinction and com-
petition between al-mujtama‘ al-madanī, an Arabic translation of
“civil society,” and al-mujtama‘ al-ahlī, which literally means “in-
digenous” or “communal society” and so captures the communal
nature of the social bond. Comparable contentions between polar
models occurred in other parts of the Muslim world, such as South-
east Asia, where the idea of a masyarakat madani, though meaning
“civil society,” reenacted the Medina paradigm of Muhammad’s
virtuous community while also attempting to reconcile the two
rival understandings of civil versus “communal” society. While
stressing the religious foundations of social solidarity, masyarakat
madani evidences the more secular idea of a “moral sense,” central
to the original formulations of civil society, as the human engine
facilitating the autonomy of action and the self-­sufficiency of the
civil bond.
Both the conceptual bifurcation and the attempts to restore a
unitary meaning of civil society are a product not only of West-
ern experiences and approaches but also of the German sociologist
Ferdinand Tönnies’s self-­critical reflections on Western modernity.
One major example is the distinction between Gemeinschaft and
Gesellschaft (literally “community” and “[civil] society”), desig-
nating not a traditional versus a modern form of the social bond
but two different types of will, agency, and voluntary action. Tön-
nies’s arguments might be read as antecedents of the reasoning
of many contemporary Islamic thinkers. He saw Gemeinschaft as
expressing the agency that is oriented to a collective telos. Such
social bonds, characteristic of smaller communities that are not
necessarily archaic but live on trade and depend on some special-
ized division of labor, are quite different from the division of labor
within Gesellschaft, which is premised on exploitation. Tönnies
also stressed the richness of Roman law, which encompassed both
a dimension of communio and one of societas—­in other words,
of collective and individual property versus the one-­sided use of
the principles of Roman law within modern codes, subjected as
they are to the logic of capitalism and requiring the erasure of cus-
tomary law. Such theorization helps us better situate the Islamic
civil war
postcolonial critique of simplified and exclusive notions of civil
society as not unique.
The diffuse concept of social agency incorporated in the liberal
notion of civil society happened to be too dependent on legal un-
derpinnings (civil law and more specifically the laws demarcating
and often restricting associational rights) and so remained a partly
unfulfilled “Western dream.” This is most visible in the entrenched
top-­down bureaucratic steering necessary to the maintenance of
modern polities that are based on ordered labor relationships. The
leading anthropologist and social theorist Ernest Gellner provoca-
tively described the “Western dream” of civil society as a “failed
umma” in order to highlight that excessive expectations of mutual
trust as the glue of civil society, supposedly replacing a communal
bond of faith, fall back inevitably on some nonliberal and premodern
idea of social harmony. A civil society eschewing any form of waṣta
(authoritative mediation, or even intercession) is unthinkable even in
Western historic models. This aspect was also recognized by Hegel,
who argued that the condition for a bürgerliche Gesellschaft was a
cluster of traditionally rooted intermediary institutions.
In conclusion, the hegemony of liberal notions of civil society
has been seriously contested within the West itself for more than
two centuries. In this sense, the Islamic critiques and reconstructions
are not instances of an Islamic exceptionalism but rather reflections
of the postcolonial predicament of contemporary Muslim-­majority
societies.
See also globalization; individualism; modernity; rights
Further Reading
Jonathan Benthall, “Civil Society’s Need for De-­deconstruction,”
Anthropology Today 16, no. 2 (2002); Simone Chambers and Will
Kymlicka, eds., Alternative Conceptions of Civil Society, 2001;
Ernst Gellner, “The Importance of Being Modular,” in Civil Society:
Theory, History, Comparison, edited by John A. Hall, 1995; Chris
Hann and Elizabeth Dunn, eds., Civil Society: Challenging Western
Models, 1996; Serif Mardin, “Power, Civil Society and Culture in the
Ottoman Empire,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 11, no.
3 (1969); Augustus R. Norton, ed., Civil Society in the Middle East, 2
vols., 1995, 1996; Adam B. Seligman, The Idea of Civil Society, 1992.
A rma n d o S alvat o re
civil war
The term “civil war” describes severe intrastate violence, as dis-
tinguished from lower-­intensity violence, be it chronic or sporadic,
in premodern societies, and interstate violence, such as invasion or
conquest. What is at stake is the possession of ultimate political
power, and the parties involved in the conflict are rival claimants
(in dynastic polities, frequently brothers or cousins) supported by
political, religious, and military factions.
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