Political Islam Versus Secularism

[NB: this is a longer version of the article published in the September 2008 issue.]

“Those who thought that religion could be separate from politics understand neither religion nor politics.”
—Mahatma Gandhi

Two Muslim-majority countries that have registered significant gains for liberal democracy in recent years are Turkey and Indonesia. This is reflected in the rankings of Freedom House, which publishes an annual survey measuring civil liberties and political rights worldwide. While their democracies are nascent and fragile, both countries have consistently obtained some of the highest scores for liberal-democratic development that clearly set them apart from other countries in the Muslim world. What is intriguing about these gains for democracy is the seminal role played by religious-based parties and Muslim intellectuals — many of them with roots in political Islam. Left-wing parties and secularist intellectuals cannot claim credit here.

These new developments from the Muslim world suggest several things. First, they require us to rethink long-standing assumptions about democratization, particularly the role that religion can play in this process. A concomitant that flows from this is that the “Islamists-equals-bad guys versus secularists-equals-good guys” approach to Muslim politics is simplistic and distorting. Second, democratic gains in Indonesia and Turkey confirm the observations of political scientist Vali Nasr, in a famous essay on “The Rise of ‘Muslim Democracy’,” that conservative-based Muslim parties and politicians will likely lead the way toward a democratic transition in the Muslim world. ((Vali Nasr (2005), “The Rise of ‘Muslim Democracy’,” Journal of Democracy volume 16, number 2, pages 13–27. )) Third, recent trends in Turkey and Indonesia suggest why Tarek Fatah’s new book, Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State, is a fundamentally flawed study of the Muslim world.

Tarek Fatah is a Toronto-based broadcaster, polemicist and self-described secular Muslim activist. He has been a prominent and controversial voice in debates that pertain to Canadian Muslims and Islam. Recently, he has devoted himself to exposing an alleged Islamist agenda in Canada that he claims has infected not only the Muslim community but also the CBC, the Canadian banking system and the Ontario Human Rights Commission. ((See Tarek Fatah and Farzana Hassan (2007), “Little Masquerade on the Prairie,” Toronto Sun, February 12; and Tarek Fatah (2008), “Banks Are Helping Shariah Make a Back-Door Reference,” Globe and Mail, January 25. )) “There are within the staff [of the … commission], and among the commissioners, hardline Islamic supporters of Islamic extremism,” he was recently quoted as saying. ((Joseph Brean (2008), “Rights Body Dismisses Maclean’s Case,” National Post, April 9. ))

His argument in Chasing a Mirage revolves around the tension between what he calls the “state of Islam” versus “an Islamic State.” He praises the former and excoriates the latter. The “state of Islam” is the privatized form of faith that is spiritual, ethical, apolitical and based on the individual. Past contributions by Muslims to human civilization can be credited to this form of Islam. In contrast, an “Islamic State” refers to all politicized forms of Islam that have emerged throughout human history, from the 7th century to the 21st. This variant of Islam, Fatah asserts, is uniformly puritanical and supremacist and seeks political power and mastery over not only the Muslim world, but over Europe and North America as well. His book seeks to demonstrate “that throughout Islamic history, all attempts to use Islam to justify or validate political power … have invariably ended in bloodshed and war” and that “the cause of violence that has engulfed the Muslim world is centred on the premise of an Islamic state or caliphate.” In short, there is a Manichean struggle taking place within the Muslim world between these two forms of Islam. The problem is politicized Islam in all its manifestations; the solution is a rigid form of Turkish secularism. Liberals and leftists in Canada are also criticized for not taking the threat of Islamic fascism seriously, which, we are told, threatens Muslim societies, as well as the West itself, if left unchecked.

There is much to criticize here: from the alarmist rhetoric that echoes the writings of Daniel Pipes, Bernard Lewis and Mark Steyn to Fatah’s monolithic and monochromatic portrayal of all forms of political Islam throughout history, without any nuance, context, qualification or variation, to the polemical ferocity of his writing style that scars this book and detracts from the important topic he is attempting to explicate. As the focus of Fatah’s inquiry is fundamentally about religion-state relations in the Islamic world, I want to focus my remarks on this aspect of his narrative.

•••

In the widely acclaimed book The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics and the Modern West, Mark Lilla observes that historically almost every human civilization based its original understanding of legitimate political authority on the divine nexus between God, man and the world. Political theology, Lilla suggests, is the original condition of civilizations as they try to make sense of the relationship between religion and politics and the natural order of the world that surrounds them. The question that is germane for this discussion is how did this divine nexus between God, humans and society gradually eroded in the case of Latin Christendom, thus leading to political secularism and what are the comparative lessons today for Muslim societies.

The history of secularism in the West is long, complicated and generally misunderstood in intellectual debates in the West (especially when making cross-comparisons with Islam). Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age is a good place to start the discussion. In retrospect, four broad trends that had secularizing consequences for the West are discernible: the rise of modern capitalism, the rise of modern nation-states and nationalism, the scientific revolution and, most importantly, the Protestant Reformation and the Wars of Religion during the 16th and 17th centuries. It is this latter development that is central to the rise of political secularism, especially in the anglo-American tradition, and that is particularly helpful in illuminating the question of religion–state relations in Muslim societies.

Post-Reformation Europe saw the emergence of new debates about religious toleration, not only between Catholics and Protestants, but also among the various Protestant sects. In an age of gross intolerance, most denominations were interested in enforcing religious uniformity on their societies, each of them claiming exclusive knowledge of God’s will on earth and warning of the dangers of social disorder if religious toleration was allowed to flourish. In brief, religious toleration and political stability were thought to be negatively correlated. Uniformity of religious practice in the public sphere and the need for an established state religion were widely believed to be a prerequisite for peace, order and prosperity. This was the dominant view at the time, right up to the late 17th century, as discussed by Perez Zagorin in his magisterial work, the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West.

It was left to John Locke to rethinking the relationship between toleration and political order. In his famous A Letter Concerning Toleration, he rejected his earlier support for the firm union of church and state and posited a new solution to the core political problem that was plaguing Europe. Religious pluralism in the public sphere and political stability were indeed compatible, Locke newly argued, on the condition that we can “distinguish exactly the business of civil government from that of religion and … settle the just bounds that lie between the one and the other.” In other words, a soft form of secularism was required. The key interpretive point here is that political secularism emerged in England as the direct result of an existential crisis that was tearing the country apart. This conflict had been raging for many years, and without a solution, Locke affirmed, Europe would not know peace, prosperity or stability. The colossal size of this crisis cannot be overstated. Mark Lilla rightly observes that without a resolution of this issue the self-immolation of the West was a very real possibility. The future political stability of the western world hung in the balance. Political secularism thus emerged in the anglo-American tradition due to critical crisis of survival. It was intimately and indelibly connected to these transformative events in the early modern period of Europe, or, as Taylor has written, “the origin point of modern Western secularism was the Wars of Religion; or rather, the search in battle-fatigue and horror for a way out of them.” ((Charles Taylor (1998), “Modes of Secularism,” in Secularism and Its Critics, edited by Rajeev Bhargava (New Dehli: Oxford University Press), page 32. )) In short, the idea of a separation between church and state originates as a political solution out of this existential dilemma. A contrast between this picture and the case of the Muslim world, with respect to the relationship between religious toleration and political order, is most illustrative.

Historians are in broad agreement that, comparatively speaking, Muslim societies were more tolerant of religious pluralism than Christendom. The fact that until the mid 20th century, for example, the city of Baghdad had a population that was one third Jewish speaks to this point. I am not suggesting here that the Muslim world was a bastion of liberal tolerance as we understand this concept today, or that minorities were never persecuted; far from it. I am simply stating that Muslim societies and empires historically did not face the same all-consuming wars of religion and debates over religious toleration and political order that were so central to European political history in the early modern period. Comparatively speaking, Sunni–Shia relations and the treatment of religious minorities were far more tolerant in the Muslim world than comparative relations in Europe over the last millennium.

The key point that flows from this fact of relative Muslim tolerance is that no burning political questions emerged between state and society where religion was the key, all-consuming and overriding bone of political contention. As a result, no inner political dynamic emerged within the Middle East that would necessitate the development of intellectual or moral arguments in favour of religion–state separation as a way out of an existentialist dilemma in the same way these arguments developed and were so critical to the rise of secularism in Europe during the 17th century.

The primary political problems facing Muslim societies that threatened socio-political order were the corruption and nepotism of the royal court, natural famines and disasters, and, most importantly, foreign intervention and invasions such as the Crusades of the 11th to 13th centuries, the Mongol invasion of 1258 (which sacked the Abbasid caliphate), the Castilian re-conquest of the Iberian peninsula and, increasingly in the modern period, growing Russian, French, British and later American penetration, colonialism and imperialism (to varying degrees depending on the country, region and time frame in question). Due to this significantly different historical experience with respect to religious toleration—and this is key to understanding the relationship between Islam and secularism—Muslim societies never had the need to think about secularism, not in the same way the West did, as there was no existential crisis that resulted from debates on religion–state relations where secularism might be posited as solution to a pressing political dilemma.

Moreover, as Noah Feldman argues in The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State, religion–state relations in the Muslim world were far more stable and amicable than they were in the West. For more than a millennium, religion played a constructive role as an agent of stability and predictability. In contrast to the European experience, where religion in the post-Reformation period became a source of deep conflict, in the Muslim world religion and the scholars who interpreted it managed to place restrictions on the personal whims and ambitions of the caliphs and sultans by forcing them to recognize religious limits to their rule in exchange for conferring legitimacy on the state. In short, the rulers were not above the law—as they later became during the 20th century—but they were often reined in by it, thus limiting autocracy and arbitrary rule. Religion–state relations in the Muslim world has thus bequeathed different historical lessons and memories to the faithful, where religion is viewed by large segments of the population not as an ally of political tyranny and a cause of conflict, but as a possible constraint on political despotism and as a source of stability. According to Feldman, this partly explains why demands for a greater role for religion in politics have a broad following in the Muslim world today (where Islamists are not in power). This brings us to the modern period.

For the past 200 years, the Muslim world’s experience with secularism has been largely negative. It is important to appreciate that in Europe secularism was an indigenous and gradual process evolving in conjunction with socioeconomic and political developments while supported by intellectual arguments—and critically by religious groups—that eventually sunk deep roots within its political culture. By contrast, the Muslim experience has been marked by a perception of secularism as an alien ideology imposed from outside first by colonial and imperial invaders and then kept alive by local elites who came to power during the post-colonial period. In short, secularism in Europe was largely a bottom-up process that was intimately connected to debates from within civil society while in Muslim societies secularism was largely a top-down process that was driven first by the colonial state and then by the post-colonial state. As a result, secularism in the Muslim world has suffered from weak intellectual roots and, with a few exceptions, has never penetrated the mainstream of Muslim societies.

Furthermore, most states in the Muslim world by the end of the 20th century were developmental failures. A pattern of state–society relations unfolded in the post-colonial era that further impugned the reputation of secularism. An autocratic modernizing state, often with critical external support, suffocated civil society thus forcing oppositional activity into the mosque, inadvertently contributing to the rise of political Islam. A set of top-down, forced modernization, secularization and westernization policies by the state—within a short span of time—generated widespread social and psychological alienation and dislocation. Rapid urbanization, changing cultural and socioeconomic relationships coupled with increasing corruption, economic mismanagement, rising poverty and income inequality undermined the legitimacy of the state. These developments reflected negatively on secularism because the ruling ideologies of many post-colonial regimes in the Muslim world were openly secular and nationalist.

Thus, for a generation of Muslims growing up in the post-colonial era, despotism, dictatorship and human rights abuses came to be associated with secularism. Muslim political activists who experienced oppression at the hands of secular national governments logically concluded that secularism is an ideology of repression. This observation applies not only to Iran (under the shah), but also to Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Syria, Iraq (under Saddam), Yemen, Turkey and many other Muslim majority countries in the latter half of the 20th century. Summarizing this trend, Vali Nasr has noted: “Secularism in the Muslim world never overcame its colonial origins and never lost its association with the postcolonial state’s continuous struggle to dominate society. Its fortunes became tied to those of the state: the more the state’s ideology came into question, and the more its actions alienated social forces, the more secularism was rejected in favor of indigenous worldviews and social institutions, which were for the most part tied to Islam. As such, the decline of secularism was a reflection of the decline of the postcolonial state in the Muslim world.” ((Vali Nasr (2003), “Secularism: Lessons from the Muslim World,” Daedalus, volume 132, page 69. ))

None of this is recognized by Tarek Fatah. Instead, we are treated to a warped and deeply ideological reading of religion–state relations that turns Muslim history not only on its head, but inside out as well. The problems of the Muslim world, both past and present, are exclusively attributed to political Islam—a marginal political current until the late 20th century—while the colossal failures of the secular post-colonial state are not scrutinized. For example, the religious opposition to the Mubarak regime is frequently attacked (sometimes justifiably), but not the regime itself. There is no discussion of its growing authoritarianism, corruption, torture and subservience to U.S. foreign policy diktats or the US$2 billion aid package that sustains the military dictatorship in Cairo and that fuels an Islamist opposition. Fatah’s discussion of the Palestine–Israel conflict is similarly bereft of any recognition of the socio-political context that has allowed a religious-based opposition movement to rise to the forefront of Palestinian politics.

We are told that Palestinians remain stateless and under occupation because Iran and Hamas have “hijacked” the struggle for Palestine while the “hope” lies with Mahmoud Abbas and the U.S.-sponsored peace process. Hamas should be rejected because it mixes religion with politics and wants to “wipe out the Jews,” Fatah explains, while President Abbas merits support because he is secular and pro-peace.

This narrative of the conflict is indistinguishable from that of the Bush administration. Prior to negotiations, the Palestinians are required to renounce violence and recognize Israel, yet no reciprocal demands are made of Israel to do the same. For example, Israel is not required to reject violence despite an almost five-to-one kill ratio between Palestinians and Israelis (including almost 1,000 Palestinian minors), nor is Israel required to a priori recognize a Palestinian state within its international legal borders (i.e., the West Bank and Gaza)—a position no Israeli government or political party has ever adopted. ((Statistics provided by B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, and cover the period from the start of the second Palestinian intifada on September 29, 2000, until June 30, 2008. See . )) Rather than challenge this interpretive framework of the Israel-Palestine conflict, Fatah’s book reinforces it.

Fatah seems unable to fathom topics that are openly discussed and debated within Israel. According to Neve Gordon, a human rights scholar at Ben Gurion University, the popularity of Hamas “stems from its being seen as the voice of Palestinian dignity and the symbol of the defense of Palestinian rights at a time of unprecedented hardship, humiliation, and despair.” ((Neve Gordon (2006), “Why Hamas Won,” Counterpunch, February 7, 2006 ; see also Neve Gordon and Dani Filc (2005), “Hamas and the Destruction of Risk Society,” Constellations volume 12, issue 4, pages 542–560. )) Palestinians who voted for Hamas frequently cite its role in resisting Israeli occupation along with its reputation for honesty, modesty and clean government, attributes that contrast sharply with the corruption, nepotism and subservience of the U.S.-backed Palestine National Authority.

Palestinians who express support for Hamas are not by definition religious fanatics, nor have they been bought off by Iran or afflicted by Islamic fundamentalism. As in many other parts of the Muslim world, Palestinians are forced to choose between a dishonest, incompetent and unpopular establishment party and a grass-roots civil society–based religious movement. The latter has won a wide following by critiquing the status quo while simultaneously providing basic needs such as health care, food and other social services. As the prospects for a peace settlement diminish in Israel and Palestine, and while poverty increases to record levels in the Occupied Territories, accompanied by ongoing violence and Israeli settlement construction, it is not difficult to fathom why some Palestinians have turned to Hamas. In fact, given the political options available to Palestinians today, siding with Hamas is a perfectly rational and understandable choice, however regrettable it may be for Palestinian society after independence.

For Fatah, all that matters is Islamist ideology, not the social conditions that give rise to it. Although claiming to be influenced by socialist ideals, Chasing a Mirage reveals that if its author has in fact read Karl Marx, he has not understood him very well.

Marx’s famous statement that “religion is the opium of the people” is pertinent here. Taken at face value by left-wing activists who were shaped by the political convulsions of the 1960s, it continues to exist as a form of religious dogma for many. Marx, however, was far more insightful in discussing the role of religion in society. What is often forgotten are the words that precede this famous aphorism. The full paragraph reads:

”Religious suffering is at the same time an expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” ((Karl Marx (1978), “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction,” in Robert C. Tucker editor, The Marx-Engels Reader (New York: W.W. Norton), page 12. ))

Moreover, this book is marked by a noticeable absence of any serious discussion of state–society relations or of the relevant history, sociology or political economy that has generated a political Islamist opposition and that has been exhaustively analyzed by scholars such as Sami Zubaida, Carrie Wickham, Olivier Roy, Vali Nasr, Nikki Keddie and Gilles Kepel. For those seeking an alternative to Fatah’s analysis of political Islam, Mohammed Ayoob’s newly published The Many Faces of Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Muslim World comes highly recommended.

Ayoob’s work dispassionately challenges several assumptions about political Islam that have been lost in the alarmist treatment of this topic: that religion exclusively dictates political behaviour in the Muslim world; that political Islam is monolithic, transnational and independent of a social, political and national context; that Islamists are all single-minded fanatics, obsessed with sharia and incapable of making political compromises or building coalitions; that Islamic formations are by definition anti-democratic and make use of democracy instrumentally; and that political Islam is inherently violent and is incapable of evolving and learning from its political experiences.

In brief, Fatah is unable to appreciate that long before there was religious fundamentalism in the Muslim world, there was a form of modernist fundamentalism, which was state-centred, authoritarian, paternalistic, repressive, often backed by foreign powers and widely perceived as secular. Calls for the creation of an Islamic state are thus in large part due to a reaction and rejection of the failures of the secular state (both colonial and post-colonial) during the 20th century. Rather than acknowledging this basic facet of Muslim politics, Fatah sees the world in black and white, suggesting that the Muslim world would be a wonderful place if only religion were to be removed from the public square. How more than a billion people, many of whom self-identify with religion as a key marker of their identity, could suddenly relegate religion to the private sphere, is a problem that the author is not prepared to expound on.

Returning to the theme of secularism, Chasing a Mirage is a perfect illustration of a problem that Akeel Bilgrami has discussed. Referring to the crisis of secularism in the Muslim world, Bilgrami perceptively noted that “secularism has to be earned, not assumed.” Given the European roots of secularism and the differing historical experience of religion–state relations in the Muslim world as outlined above, the challenge for Muslim democrats is to develop coherent and indigenous arguments in favour of religion–state separation as part of a broader strategy for advancing democracy. Where Fatah stumbles, and stumbles badly, is that he assumes secularism rather than argues for it. His analysis is premised on the false assumption that because the West (after a long history) has democratically arrived at a consensus on the normative relationship between religion and government, the Muslim world must also have done so already. Thus anyone who challenges comfortable western political equations must be an Islamic fascist. In other words, he makes the critical error of projecting his own secularity and a western paradigm of political development onto the broader Muslim population that remains religious and has a different historical memory with respect to the relationship between religion and politics.

One reason why liberal democracy has made significant gains in Indonesia and Turkey is precisely because Muslim intellectuals have followed Bilgrami’s advice (and rejected Fatah’s). Indonesia’s Nurcholish Madjid and Turkey’s Fethullah Gülen, for example, are widely influential Muslim intellectuals who support the participation of religious groups in the public sphere. They have creatively developed an indigenous reconciliation between Islamic thought and liberal democracy (particularly secularism) that has allowed Muslim parties and civil society groups to make important contributions to democracy in their respective countries. This is a story has yet to be properly told. It serves as a potential model for other Muslim societies to study and to emulate.

•••

One of the epigraphs at the start of Chasing a Mirage is a quote from Eqbal Ahmad, a Pakistani dissident intellectual, scholar and human rights activist who died in 1999. He was asked by Harvard University Islam expert Emran Qureshi to describe the strategies Muslim and Arab intellectuals should pursue to democratize their societies. He replied:

”One must make an effort to understand the past … with compassion, sympathy and criticism. The reason I am stressing that is that many Arab and Muslim intellectuals know more about the West, more about its modern history, more about the ideas of the Enlightenment than we do about our own [history and culture]. No significant change occurs unless the new form is congruent with the old. It is only when a transplant is congenial to a soil that it works. Therefore, it is very important to know the transplant as well as the native soil. [Emphasis added.] “

I am reminded of this observation after finishing Chasing a Mirage as it perfectly demonstrates Ahmad’s point. Unfortunately, Tarek Fatah reveals in this book that he does not know the transplant (the relationship between religion, secularism and democracy as it evolved in the western tradition), nor does he understand the native soil (the unique history of religion–state relations in Muslim societies and the challenges of promoting religion–state separation). Consequently, Chasing a Mirage substantially subtracts from our understanding of the Muslim world. In the end, it tells us far more about the idiosyncrasies of its author than it does about the topic under investigation. Although it will be welcomed by those who share Fatah’s ideological predisposition, those seeking a firmer grasp of the politics and history of the Islamic world and the numerous developmental challenges facing Muslim societies today are advised to look elsewhere.

Nader Hashemi

Nader Hashemi is a professor of Middle East and Islamic politics at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. He is the author of Islam, Secularism and Liberal Democracy: Toward a Democratic Theory for Muslim Societies (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

Related Letters and Responses

I do not recall ever having read a book review with such selective commentary until I read the review of Tarek Fatah’s Chasing a Mirage written by Nader Hashemi.

Fatah did not spend as much time writing about Turkey as he did discussing the situation in Iran. Yet Hashemi, of Iranian background, seems to have declined to challenge Fatah’s narrative on fundamentalism in Iran, and concentrated on Turkey and other countries. In my judgement, that borders on intellectual dishonesty.

In my long academic life, I have observed Islamic fundamentalism creeping in the system in Pakistan, first with Abul Ala Maudoodi, and later shoved down the throats of Pakistanis by a fundamentalist and vile military dictator, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. I have also studied and written extensively about fundamentalist mullahs in Pakistan and in the Middle East, including the Wahabi regime in Saudi Arabia as well as the fundamentalists ayatollahs in Iran. Hashemi seems to have avoided all this.

Yes, Kemal Ataturk’s Turkey would have been a secular democracy if the Turkish constitution had not allowed the military takeovers in Turkey. Iran allows its citizens, both men and women, to vote, but it cannot be classified as a Muslim democracy because the top ayatollah has final authority. Even in Indonesia, Muslim fundamentalists are known to interfere with the state’s affairs. For example, they want Ahmadis to be declared as non-Muslims, as is the case in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, among other places. A similar situation is emerging in Iran in regard to the Iranians of Bahá’í faith.

A genuine system of democracy does not allow these things; only a fundamentalist regime does.

Hashemi has mentioned some of the right-wingers such as Daniel Pipes, Mark Steyn and Bernard Lewis. I think these people are Islamophobic to the extent of hating Muslims. However, like Fatah, I have defended their right to express things as they see them.

Although I do not deny Hashemi’s right to review this book, his review of Chasing a Mirage is not balanced.

Mahfooz Kanwar
Calgary, Alberta

It was disappointing to read Nader Hashemi’s review of Tarek Fatah’s Chasing a Mirage. While I may not agree with everything in the book, I found the review hostile and inaccurate. Unlike serious academic reviews that specifically critique content, the reviewer makes a few denigrating remarks about the author and the book, and provides a lengthy discussion of his own views on secularism. Impressed with Freedom House’s ranking of civil liberties, he picks Turkey and Indonesia as cases that supposedly refute Fatah’s claims about the dangers of Islamism, and conveniently avoids reference to the countries discussed in the book except for Palestine. Praising religion-based parties in these two countries, he declares: “left-wing parties and secularist intellectuals cannot claim credit here.” A minimal familiarity with politics and history suggests that without the existence of strong secular movements in these two countries, Islamists would not be much different from their peers elsewhere in demanding the rule of sharia: Indonesia had one of the largest communist movements in the world, and the strength of Turkey’s secularism is well known.

The review is full of assertions that are substantiated by assertions of other like-minded authors. We don’t see, for example, any reference to authoritative works of Abdullahi-an-Na’im, who has demonstrated that an “Islamic state” has never existed, or works by Abdelwahab Meddeb and others.

What prompted this response is Hashemi’s claims about secularism in Muslim-majority countries. We are told that since Muslim societies did not have religious wars like Christendom, “no inner political dynamic” in favour of secularism emerged, they “never had the need to think about secularism,” and their experience of secularism has been “largely negative” because it was an “alien ideology” imposed “top-down” by colonial and post-colonial states. He also implicitly assumes that in these societies everyone is religious. On the basis of these unsubstantiated claims, it seems Muslim-majority countries are essentially different from the West. Evidently, new anti-modernists share some of the views of the old Orientalists!

Attributing the push for secularism only to states ignores the rich history of the struggles of thousands of secular intellectuals, writers, poets, artists, professionals and politicians. The sketchy familiarity with modernist history in these societies inevitably obscures the reality of political suppression, always in full support of the clerical establishment, as the reason why secularists could not “earn” secularism.

The reviewer also seems to confuse public sphere with state, for no one has denied the “participation of religious groups in the public sphere.” The issue is keeping them out of the state, without which no democracy is possible. The example of a powerful Islamic state, the reviewer’s and my native country Iran, which he consciously avoids discussing, is a case in point. After 30 years in power, the mullahs are faced with strong secularist movements, women and youth, among others, which the regime has to keep at bay through sheer force and suppression, garnering a low rank in the Freedom House rankings.

Saeed Rahnema
Toronto, Ontario

It was very disappointing indeed to read Nader Hashemi’s unkind review article of Tarek Fatah’s seminal book, Chasing a Mirage. Sadly, having agreed with most analyses and reappraisals of history, religion, culture and politics by Nader Hashemi, I wonder why he has written all these in undermining Fatah’s well-argued book on the ahistorical, dangerous and degenerating concept of Islamic State and Muslim apologia and perpetual finger pointing—mainly the West—for all the problems afflicting the global Muslim community.

I am not aware of any book, not by celebrities or established authors other than Fatah, getting so much publicity and reviews—positive to extremely positive—within weeks of its publication. We know Tarek Fatah was never known as an Islamic scholar, political scientist or historian until the publication of this path-breaking work. By now we also know that he has surpassed many established authorities on political Islam and those who have worked on problems of retarded growth and development—economic, political and cultural—in the Muslim World, in general, and the state of ignorance and ambivalence of the mullahs and their followers, in particular.

This book is not all about Islamic history, politics and culture, or about a critical comparative appraisal of Islamic and western civilizations, as one would assume from Hashemi’s review. It seems the reviewer is only critiquing only two chapters out of a total 14—”Islam’s Arab Empire” and “Islam’s European Venture.” Although Hashemi has tried to point out why the West, unlike the Muslim world, has attained economic prosperity, political stability, cultural refinement, tolerance, rule of law, respect for human rights, by imputing these developments to the Reformation and grassroots-based secularism he has totally ignored some other important factors in this regard. He has totally ignored important factors behind the Crusades, geographical discoveries and the Renaissance, and how western Europeans’ quest for knowledge, access to sources of raw materials and markets in the heyday of Muslim civilizations in the East and West eventually transformed them into the most advanced and developed nations by the early 18th century.

Hashemi’s comparing Fatah with Islamophobes such as Bernard Lewis and Daniel Pipes is really unfortunate. His citing Vali Nasr’s lopsided argument that “conservative-based Muslim parties and politicians will likely lead the way toward a democratic transition in the Muslim world” is appalling—as if one day al Qaeda, Hamas and the like will espouse democracy and secularism! Hashemi’s sweeping assertion that only European Christians (Catholics, Protestants and others) fought each other on the eve of the Reformation and Renaissance, turning bulk of them into admirers of secularism, amounts to travesty of historical facts. His denial of similar bitter conflicts in the Muslim world is grossly ahistoric, as one can go on and on throughout Islamic history cataloguing hundreds of bitter sectarian conflicts—Shiah–Sunni, orthodox–Sufi, free thinkers–mullah, Wahhabi–non-Wahhabi, Assassin Ismaili–Sunni. Consequently Hashemi’s argument that European secularism was a by-product of internecine religious conflicts, and thus grassroots-based and indigenous, and that the absence of similar conflicts among the Muslims explains the absence of secular values among Muslims is not convincing at all.

An objective review of Chasing a Mirage demands a balanced appraisal of some of the core chapters of the work. Hashemi should have critiqued Fatah’s most important contribution, his demarcating the differences between the concepts of Islamic State and the state of Islam, for the sake of objectivity. One wonders as to why Hashemi did not shed any light on Fatah’s important chapters, “Politics and Theology of Islamic States,” “Pakistan—Failure of an Islamic State,” “Saudi Arabia—Sponsor of Islamic States,” “Iran—The Islamic State” and “Palestine—Future Islamic State?” The way Hashemi has only blamed the West for whatever has gone wrong with the Muslim world is very unfortunate. His ignoring the fact how Muslim clerics, intellectuals and leaders kowtowed to the West working against the best interests of Muslim countries (for example, Ayatollah Kashani’s opposition to the nationalization of the British oil companies in Iran, mentioned by Fatah) is astounding. One expected a much more nuanced and objective review from Hashemi, who is a quite well-known and promising scholar of Islamic history, politics and culture.

Taj Hashmi
Honolulu, Hawaii

Reviewing a book as controversial as Tarek Fatah’s Chasing a Mirage was bound to be a very challenging task. However, one would have expected a senior scholar such as Nader Hashemi to address the task at hand with objectivity and equanimity. Unfortunately he enters into a vain polemic with the author and never rises above that level. The result is useless meandering and rambling about a point that the reviewer thinks is central to his criticism: that Fatah “assumes secularism rather than argues for it.” Hashemi quotes Akeel Bilgrami who made this brilliant observation originally. According to Bilgrami “secularism has to be earned, not assumed.”

However, Fatah’s work is not about the historical and sociological preconditions from which secularism emerges, but rather to establish that secular democracy is infinitely a better and morally superior type of government than an Islamic state. Furthermore, he demonstrates with solid data from our times that the resuscitation of the Islamic State has invariably spelled disaster for Muslim societies. Who in his right mind would hesitate to acknowledge that Saudi Arabia, Iran and Afghanistan (under the Taliban) have been anything but neo-fascist polities where all the norms and values of civilized politics have been routinely trampled underfoot by the imposition of barbaric laws and practices that the clerics believe God has ordained forever?

The case of Pakistan is somewhat less severe thanks largely to the fact that even General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq (1977–1988), a fundamentalist by conviction, did not dare dismantle completely the liberal features of the Pakistan constitution. The so-called Islamic laws that he imposed undoubtedly brutalized society, but Pakistan continued to be a relatively open society even then. The current spate of terrorism that makes Pakistan one of the most dangerous places in the world has a different explanation from the politics of Islamic state building.

Hashemi maintains complete silence on the practice of contemporary Islamic states and therefore evades meeting head on Fatah’s objections to it.

The reviewer adopts an even more problematic position when referring to Freedom House’s ranking of Turkey and Indonesia as polities that have made significant gains as liberal democracies: “What is intriguing about these gains for democracy is the seminal role played by religious-based parties and Muslim intellectuals—many of them with roots in political Islam. Left-wing parties and secularist intellectuals cannot claim credit here.”

Now, this is most surprising and disappointing. There is a logical fallacy in Hashemi’s reasoning and more importantly a betrayal of his own position that the historical context is important to understand the growth of liberal democracy and secularism. The logical error is inherent in the assumption that Muslim intellectuals, many with roots in political Islam, are more likely to support liberal democracy than left-wing parties and intellectuals. Had this been true, the movement for liberalism and democracy would have emanated among Muslims long, long ago. The contrary is truer. Whenever Muslim intellectuals have risen against despotic rulers, it has not been because those rulers had been lax in their personal conduct but because they were allegedly not imposing strict and cruel punishments upheld by the sharia. The classic example is the movement begun by Shaikh Ahmed Sirhindi, a Sufi of the Naqshbandi order, also known as Mujaddid Alf-Thani, against the Mughal rulers of the 16th century for allowing Hindu and Shiah to gain influence at the court of a formally Sunni empire.

On the other hand, when the Safavids came to power in Iran in 1501 they let loose a reign of terror to convert the Sunni majority Persia to Shiah. The Shiah ulema (clerics) issued a fatwa that killing Sunni ensured pious Shiah a place in paradise. The Sunni Ottoman retaliated by making their ulema issue similar edicts that made the killing of Shiah a pious duty of chaste Muslims wanting to gain a berth in paradise. Earlier, the Shiah had been expelled by force from North Africa and Egypt by Sunni rulers. The Ismaili Shiah sought revenge by resorting to organized terrorism that wreaked havoc in Sunni societies for a long period because their states and caliphates in North Africa had been destroyed by Sunni. The “assassin” and the “Old Man of the Mountain” were words and expressions coined to depict that terrorist movement.

Also, closer to our own times we find that neither Saudi Arabia nor Iran nor Afghanistan under the Taliban would have become theocratic tyrannies if leadership by Muslim intellectuals with roots in political Islam were the antidote. It would also have spared the world of the scourge of Islamism that today menaces the whole globe, causing death and destruction through suicide bombers manipulated by Islamic ideologues with roots most definitely in political Islam.

Moreover, sectarian killings and terrorism that currently pervade Muslim societies are not something new, but a cruel reminder of an iron law of Islamic politics: after the early years, whenever attempts have been made to revive the so-called Islamic State it has resulted in bloodshed. As the original Arab composition of the population diversified and other ethnic groups were assimilated into the Muslim Umma sectarian differences assumed a lasting character. Therefore subsequent revival of radical Islam has always resulted in more pronounced discrimination of religious minorities and persecution of deviant sects. One can add that the freedom and equality of women was never a concern of Muslim intellectuals at any stage and still remains largely neglected.

Therefore Hashemi’s claims about Muslim societies being relatively more tolerant are only partially true. He is right to the extent that by comparison pre-modern Muslim societies managed to deal with religious pluralism more successfully that their Christian counterparts because the Dhimmi system deriving from the Quran allowed the People of the Book—Jews and Christians—to live among Muslims as long as they paid the protection tax, the Jizya. On the other hand, Christians persecuted Jews in a comprehensive manner and later Catholics and Protestants and within Protestants, Calvinists and Lutherans bled each other white when they fought each other during the religious conflicts and wars of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Leaning on the authority of Noah Feldman, Hashemi assert that whereas in the West the secularist movement was indigenous in the case of the Muslim world it has been an extraneous imposition. Therefore, he writes, “in the past 200 years, the Muslim world’s experience with secularism has been largely negative.” One would treat such rhetoric with seriousness if he or his mentor, Feldman, could show that in countries that were never colonized the practice of government has been more liberal or tolerant. The contrary once again is truer. Neither the Arabian peninsula, which is now Saudi Arabia, nor Afghanistan was ever colonized. They were ruled by tribal and clan alliances and that continues. They succumbed more easily to the worst type of Islamic extremism. Iran also never became a western colony, although its territories were occupied for some length of time in the north and the south by the Russian and British empires. It too proved easier bait for the mullahs to take over power.

On the other hand, at least in the British colonies in south and southeast Asia the legacy of liberal constitutionalism has operated as a brake on extremism. Therefore, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Malaysia have not become full-fledged Islamic states despite many attempts.

It is true that the secular elites that came to power in the Middle East and elsewhere in the Muslim world, including Indonesia, failed to promote enduring economic growth and development and were not favourably inclined toward liberal democracy. Although no excuse needs to be presented why this happened, but a reasonable explanation is that during the Cold War, while the Soviet Union backed the secular elites in the Middle East, the Americans placed their bets on conservative and fundamentalist regimes in that region. The support base of liberal democracy was weak in the Muslim world and the Americans, in typical realist calculations, came to the conclusion that bolstering Islamism among Muslims was the best way to build a bulwark against communism. In Pakistan they decided to arm and back the military while making symbolic utterances about the need to restore democracy.

Now, with regard to the historical and social circumstances that have made Turkish and Indonesian Muslim intellectuals favour some elements of liberal democracy, the following needs to be considered. Turkey was established as a secular national state by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1924. It was done in the face of stiff resistance from the clerics mobilized by the British to support a sultan who was virtually their captive and whose authority did not extend beyond his harem. First the British dismembered the Ottoman Empire, but then wanted to preserve it under a powerless sultan. Ataturk abolished the sharia as the law of the land. The Swiss code was introduced and Turkish women gained equal rights in marriage, divorce and inheritance. In fact, the right to divorce gave more power to women than men.

There is no denying that such changes were undertaken by an authoritarian state. After Ataturk’s death his successors did gradually open it up for democracy but all experiments failed because the Islamists that took part in the elections were wedded to the restoration of Islamic law and values, although they would not say it openly. Hence the Turkish army, which considered itself the custodian of the Kemalist secularist tradition, vetoed all attempts to bring Islamism into power through the democratic processes. Realizing that that there was no chance of them coming into power as long as they did not publicly abjure all allegiance to Islamism and instead declare themselves simply as conservative Muslims who favour “Islamic values and moral principles,” some members of the then Islamist party—the Refah Party led by Erbakan—broke away and founded the AKP, which is currently in power in Turkey. The AKP is considered by many observers to be a conservative Muslim party comparable to the Christian Democrats of the West. Only time will show if this is true, but the fact is that violent attacks in the streets of Turkish towns and cities against girls and women wearing western dress are reported daily by the Turkish press and television channels. So how deep is Turkish liberal democracy under the AKP remains to be seen.

The Indonesian case is different. The Indonesian elite has always adhered to a middle path in which the central role of Islam as the state religion has been acknowledged but, apart from the application of Islamic law to personal matters, the sharia has largely remained in suspension. Islamist parties were frustrated each time they took part in the elections and were rejected by the people. On the other hand, the spread of the jihad movement and networking with al Qaeda resulted in a number of terrorist outrages in Indonesia. The civilian government and military adopted stern measures against extremism. Under the circumstances, rethinking and reconsideration of strategy took place among the mainstream Islamist parties. They began to develop arguments in favour of liberal democracy, toleration of religious minorities and equal rights of women. The recent violent attacks on the Ahmadiyya minority of Indonesia, however, did not receive any condemnation from the mainstream Islamists and one wonders how genuine is the change of heart among them.

One can say that the Islamists who are currently showing interest in the democratic process and liberal ideas are comparable with former communist parties and right-wing parties with roots in fascism that decided to take part in elections and the process mellowed down their anti-democratic objectives and programs. The fact that liberal democracy is now firmly entrenched and rooted in western societies means that the extreme left and right parties have no chance of coming to power through elections. On the other hand, whether they are now fully converted to democracy and liberalism is to be questioned. European democrats continue to treat them with suspicion.

It is a pity that Hashemi did not take up some other controversial aspects of Fatah’s book. For example, Fatah’s argument that the Prophet Muhammad did not want to establish a state because he did not appoint his successor is patently unconvincing. The Sunni claim that by appointing Abu Bakr to lead the prayers during his illness he had indicated his will, while the Shia claim that he had announced Ali to be his successor in a famous speech at Ghadir Khumm. Both these incidents are mentioned by Fatah. More important is the fact that the Prophet had, under his undisputed leadership, established an authority at Medina that imposed laws and collected taxes and inflicted punishments within territories under its control. The same state, under his immediate successors and later the Umayyads went upon a successful military campaign of conquest and expansion for the more than a hundred years. All this makes no sense if there was no state to organize such activities.

Consequently the obsession among Muslims throughout the ages with establishing an Islamic state cannot be condemned as a grand conspiracy that started within hours of the Prophet’s demise in 632 and has never ceased since then. When people have nothing to talk about with pride in their own lives, they seek refuge in past glory, and the more removed they are from their utopia, the greater is their tendency for them to surround it with myths and jealously preserve that memory.

This is exactly what has been happening for many centuries now. Meanwhile the world has not remained still. It has gone through bitter ideological debates, wars, genocide, ethnic cleansing and other tragedies and traumas, and come to the conclusion that only a liberal type of democracy, respectful of religion but only as a private conviction, and in which all religious communities, ethnic groups, minorities, cultural groups and women enjoy freedom and equal rights, including group-based rights for the weak and historically disadvantaged, can serve as the basis of a fair and free society.

Consequently one can argue that the Islamic state serves no useful purpose any more, but Muslims all have the right to practise the five articles of their faith wherever they are: declaration of faith, prayers, fasting, alms giving and pilgrimage. Equally, Muslim majority states must give the same freedoms to religious and sectarian minorities living among them. I believe Fatah’s “state of Islam” is exactly about the right of all Muslims to practise their faith freely as individuals and in union with others and the right of others to do so too. In other words, let go of the Islamic state but hold fast to the cardinal principles of your faith because they are not bound by any commitment to a specific type of state.

With regard to Fatah’s painstaking research on the origin of some of the controversies at the time of the death of the Prophet, it is commendable that he presents both Sunni and Shia points of views, but is unable to draw consistent conclusions from that survey. Some of the incidents he mentions are poorly researched. Thus for example he laments that Fatima (the daughter of the Prophet) was denied by Abu Bakr inheritance and property from her father. The fact is that Fatima inherited the personal, ancestral property of the Prophet, which including some date trees and buildings. What the caliph Abu Bakr placed under the control of the state was the Bagh-e-Fidak (a fertile piece of land) had been gifted to him. Muhammad used its income entirely for welfare activities and for entering new converts and guests. By drawing a line between ancestral property and a public trust, Abu Bakr established a practice in favour of the welfare of the community against narrow private ownership.

Also, he describes Umar’s disbelief that Muhammad had died as histrionics, rather than as genuine grief or drama. Histrionics means playing a role or simply acting. After 1,400 years it is impossible to say with certainty which is the correct description. The concern with Bagh-e-Fidak and Umar’s delirious state of mind upon the death of Muhammad constitutes the typical demonization of revered personalities among Sunnis by the Shia, and one wonders if a secular scholar such as Fatah should take a partisan stand. On the other hand, the massacre at Karbala of Imam Hussain and his descendants and followers by the Umayads stands out as a great tragedy indeed. Not only Shias but also most Sunnis consider it a great tragedy indeed. The former have made it the centrepiece of their annual mourning rites, which also include heaping abuse on the three successors of Muhammad before Ali: Abu Bakr, Umar and Uthman. No doubt such behaviour results in ugly brawls in Sunni majority societies and in Pakistan and Lebanon has resulted in regular sectarian killings.

In the context of a discussion on liberal democracy and secularism it is important to note the basic difference between Sunni and Shia legal theory (both traditions lack genuine political theory). While the Sunni declared from the outset the caliphate to be a secular institution, with the caliph qualified to rule on the basis of his origin in the Quraish tribe of the Prophet, but qualified it by conditions of merit and capability of the candidate, the Shia wanted it to be the exclusive preserve of Ali and his descendants through his wife Fatima, the Prophet’s daughter. Ali’s male children from other wives were disqualified from the status of infallible imams. Both positions are manifestly untenable with modern democracy and therefore there is no point taking sides in favour of one or the other.

I took the position that any review of Tarek Fatah’s book is certain to generate controversy and I myself could not avoid starting one. This is a great merit of the book. The author takes bold and daring positions and invites spirited responses. It should be read by all those who want to learn why the Islamic state is such an anachronism.

Ishtiaq Ahmed
Singapore

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