Download THEOCRACY AND THE LOCATION OF SOVEREIGNTY

Islamic Studies (Islamabad) 11:3 (1972)
THEOCRACY AND THE LOCATION
OF SOVEREIGNTY
By theocracy we generally mean a form of government that is exercised under divine authority, i.e., a government which recognizes God as
the supreme ruler in civic affairs and accepts His revelation - interpreted
by His representatives - as the basis on which state and society must be
built. In a theocracy God is proclaimed as the sovereign of the state,
represented on earth by His vicegerent, the ruler. The priests in such a
government are the promulgators and expounders of the divine commands,
the representatives of the invisible sovereign. The most notable theocratic
government of all times was that established by Moses among the Israelites.
Secularist thought, tends to conceive of a multiplicity of
spheres in which man operates. He is a member of a family, a member
of a society, and a member of a political organization. Besides, there is
man addressing himself to his Lord. Thus man acts on two entirely different levels of experience and the mode of expressing his personality is bifurcated into social terms and religious terms. The traditionalist school
among modern Muslims rejects this distinction as essentially and inherently
un-Islamic. This basic conceptual difference renders it difficult for the
secularist mind to understand the Islamist's denial that his state is of necessity, or by definition, a theocracy, and for the Islamist to explain the difference. His repudiation is based on the definition of the term theocracy.
While trying to define an Islamic State, a spokesman of the Muslim
Counter-Reformation says :
"Theocracy, a word derived from the Greek word 'theos', meaning
'God', is a vague title attached to governments or states governed by God
directly or through a sacerdotal class."
He then repeats the ideological view that
"The long Western struggle between state and church is of a nature
quite alien to Islamic thought; for Islam does not authorise any material
form, human or institutional, that could claim to be representative of God."]
© Dr Muhammad Hamidullah Library, IIU, Islamabad.
http://iri.iiu.edu.pk/
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DETLEV H. KHALID
Now skipping over the point as to whether absence of priesthood
in Islam is an ideal rather than a reality, is this ideal really a sufficient
ground for rejecting the label of theocracy? It is significant that, in a
book on the legacy of the founder of Pakistan, Javid Iqbil, after reiterating
this rejection, goes on to say:
"There exists a unanimity between the Muslim jurists of the past
regarding the distinction between a secular state and an Islamic state.
According to this Consensus (Muqaddima by Ibn Qaldiin), the secular
state is founded on principles derived through human reasoning and therefore, it promotes the material advancement and welfare of its citizens only
in this world. On the other hand, the Islamic state is based on principles
derived through Revealed Law, and therefore, it promotes the material
advancement and welfare of its citizens not only in this world, but also
prepares its Muslim citizens for the Hereafter through promoting their
spiritual advancement and welfare. In other words, the Islamic state
embraces the qualities of an ideal secular state, but in addition to it, endeavours to promote the spiritual advancement and welfare of its Muslim
citizens." 2
This last-mentioned argument is certainly not a proper basis for
distinguishing an Islamic state from a secular one. It is based on the
historical perspective of the 15th century sociologist, Ibn KJhaldiin, who
had before him only the examples of secular states either preceding, or
contemporary to theocratic states. The concept of theocracy is historically
connected primarily with Israel, where it began with Moses and was fostered by the Prophet Samuel and especially King David and King Solomon,
with the Byzantine Empire and with Islam, where at least some of the
traditional interpretations refuse to recognize a separation between 'sacred'
and 'profane', between 'secular' and 'theocratic'.) For states that existed
prior to the spread of the great religions or were unaffected by them because of the absence of any considerable number of believers among their
citizens, the question of promoting the spiritual welfare did not arise at all,
and it is to such states that Ibn n a l d n n refers. In the modem context,
however, a secular state having among its citizens a majority of people
professing one or the other faith, that particular spiritual welfare forms an
integral part of the general welfare or common weal to which the state is
committed. Want of concern for this spiritual welfare would be only a
symptom of failing justice - of which there can be many other symptoms.
In a secular state with unbalanced structures it could very well happen
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that spiritual welfare is promoted more efficiently than social welfare, that
the citizens are better prepared for the Hereafter than for this present iife.
This is not so because the domains are set against each other but merely
because they are autonomous and independent of one another and it is
always possible that for certain reasons more progress may be achieved in
one autonomous domain than in another. To be more precise, the
"Department for Churches and Religious Mairs" in any capital of the
modem world may administer the funds placed at its disposal by the secular
state more competently than the "Department for Social Welfare". As
a matter of fact, during economic recessions in some of the western secular
states thousands of people became jobless and incapable of maintaining
their apartments. Their children were somtimes deprived of sound and
regular schooling facilities. But there was no dearth of places of worship,
religious literature or instructors in the faith.
Javid Iqbd's or, for that matter, Muhammad 'A11 Jinnih's emphasis
on Islam as being a code of life that rules the Muslim's conduct in politics
and economics need not be taken as an encroachment of religion upon the
secular order. The permeation of all spheres of life with the code of
ethics derived from the revelation is a subject to be discussed separately.
The statement can, however, be interpreted as implying that Islam offers
ready-made solutions to all political and economic problems. The implications of Jivid Iqbil's use of the above quoted words become apparent
in a similar rejection of both the terms, theocratic and secular, by Sa'id
Ramadan. Both writers want to stress that Islam is neither this nor that.
The French theologian Louis Gardet speaks of Islam as "une theocratic
laique et 6galitairem.4 This is rejected by Ramadin as a "pecularity of
expression revealing an inability to comprehend an ideology which
is neither theocratic nor secular, in the expressional sense, which either of
these terms conveys."s
In reality we are here confronted with the Counter-Reformationist
inability to forgo the cliche conception of secular as irreligious. "If,
as many Muslims insist," says Freeland Abbott, "the West does not understand such a religion as Islam because at one and the same time it encompasses both the secular and the religious, then it is also true that many
Muslims do not understand the concept of the secular state as it developed
in the not irreligious West, and they tend to divorce it completely from all
religious and ethical values."6 Caught in this impasse, Sa'Td Ramadan
makes the astounding admission that there exists a "paradox which renders
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Islam difficult to define."'
Himself obviously unable to arrive at a definition, he writes that Professor Gibb came very close to it with his remark
about the practical bent of the Islamic community which found its most
highly developed expression in law rather than in theology.
The emphasis on action rather than on theological speculation was
shared, inter alia, by Muhammad IqbB1, who ably traced it back to the
Glorious Qur'an; but it is noteworthy that Sa'id Ramadan, as a champion
of 'dynamic' traditionalism, fails to envisage this characteristic feature of
Islam in any other form except law. He, therefore, contrasts "luxurious
theological thought," or, as he also calls it, "mysterious outlets," solely
with the rule of Islamic law.* For him, as for so many other writers of
his brand, there seems to exist no other way of transforming the moral
precepts of the divine revelation into a code of action save by deducing laws
that are to be enacted by the government of the Islamic state. His assertion that "the rule of Islamic law can never lead to theocracy" is a blatant
contradiction for it does not matter whether this law is enforced by a priestly
hierarchy or whether there is any other form of government that is bound
to act upon the prescriptions of the 'revealed law'. It is tantamount to
a substitution of agents without altering the resultant form of government,
i.e., theocracy. Muhammad Asad admits this openly. Although a fellowtraveller of Sa'id Ramadan, he applies more appropriate categories of
thought. This enables him to arrive at much clearer distinctions. In
reply to the question whether the endeavour to establish an Islamic state
would not lead to theocracy, he writes:
"My answer to this hypothetical question is: 'Yes and no.' Yes if the concept of 'theocracy' is taken to denote a form of society in which
all legislation, even the time-bound one, would in the last resort flow from
a religious principle - in this case, from the authority of the Qur'an, which
to every believing Muslim is beyond dispute. On the other hand, the
answer is a definite 'No' if the question implies a comparison of Islamic
theocracy with the rule of the Church in medieval Europe."g
It may rightly be averred that the idea of Papacy is foreign to Islam
because even the Prophet was only God's messenger, His spokesman conveying His message. In all cases related to the running of the government
in Medina that are recorded in history, the Prophet sought public advice
and not divine regulations. The Caliph was generally not defined as
"vicegerent of God", nor was the institution of the Caliphate conceived
of as such a vicegerency. 10 The sunni delineation of the duties of a Caliph
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saddled him with administrative responsibilities in a purely secular sense;
his was, above all, the task of creating and preserving conditions conducive
to the observation of law and order, to the continued existence of the Muslilim community. The Caliph assumed the vicegerency of the Prophet as
a temporal leader of the community. However, he was a representative
of the divine in the sense that the law the observance of which he commanded was regarded to be a revealed law.11 In so far there is certainly
a parallel between the Hebrew theocracy where authority emanated from
the divinely revealed Mosaic law and the Islamic state based upon the
h r i ' a . But whereas in Judaism this revealed law is, even in theory, administered by the priests, in Islam it is, ideally, in the custodianship of the
state. It is on this ground that Counter-Reformationists generally feel
irritated when their concept is labelled a theocracy. However, Islamists
who reject the analogy of their concept with other theocracies overlook the
fact that in Jewish history administartion of the law did not always remain
in the hands of the Rabbis, but was often usurped by the state power.12
Sometimes the competences were divided and the law was partly in charge
of the state, partly in that of the Rabbinate. In Islam the development
was merely the other way round, resulting in the modern dichotomy of
shari'a courts and state courts.
-
Wilfred Cantwell Smith has very well observed that the Islamist
protest is actually directed not against theocracy but against hierocracy.
He means to imply that once they had properly understood that the correct
term for a rule by ecclesiastics is hierocracy, they would accept the label
theocracy for the Islamist concept of state.13 Here it can be argued, first,
that the term hierocracy has yet to find academic recognition and, second,
that the very definition of theocracy in most encyclopaediae and other
standard works of theology and political science is 'priest-rule'. Conversely, the same holds true of Hussayn N a p who writes that technically speaing Islam is not a theocracy but a nomocracy, that is a society ruled by a
Divine Lawl4. He believes that theocracy denotes merely what W.C.
Smith means by hierocracy, i.e., rule by ecclesiastics. According to N a ~ r ,
W.C. Smith's conception of theocracy, i.e., subjugation of the state to a
divinely revealed law, is correctly termed nomocracy. Surely, he is not
aware that theocracy has become the name for precisely such governments. 1 s.
The crux of the matter is that according to its standard definition
theocracy can mean both priest-rule, with or without a revealed law, as well
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as law-rule, no matter whether the revealed law is enacted by a priestly
hierarchy or by state administration. It is in this sense that a German
orientalist of mark, Baber Johansen, following the renowned scholars
Louis Gardetl6 and Erwin Rosenthall7, speaks of an Islamic theocratic
system. Johansen considers the use of the term justified because, as he
sees it, "strictly speaking legislation is the right of God alone."l8 Louis
Gardet sums up the whole controversy by saying that we are here faced
with what is essentially a dispute about words. He avers that the term
"th~ocratielaique et Cgalitaire", coined to define the ideal Muslim community, can be maintained, provided we add the clarification that this
"basic theocracy" or, as it has also been called, "secularized theocracy"l9,
rules out any kind of ecclesiastical government.20 This has led Malcolm
H. Kerr to the conclusion that Islam provides for a theocracy only in the
ultimate sense, because in the practical sense theocracy signifies the rule of
a priestly or other supposedly divinely inspired individual or class, which
is absent in Islam.21
One of the major problems of contemporary Muslim thinkers is the
discovery that an amorphous church of Islam has established itself in
violation of the cherished ideal of a churchless society. This pseudo-church
with its negatively theocratic ambition makes itself felt as an impediment
to the intellectual and spiritual advancement of the Believers. Theocracy
in that part of its definition which denotes hierocracy or priest-rule is very
much a reality in the Muslim world. It is, however, confronted with a
strong determination on the part of the educated'classes to work for its
abolition, though there is as yet no consensus as to how to handle religious instruction and interpretation in a reformed Muslim society.
But what about the other element in the definition of theocracy,
the part which has been termed nomocracy or law-rule. We have seen
that a spokesman for that group in the community who dreams of Islam
as a political ideology has agreed to label Islam a theocracy in a limited
sense. The Islamist Muhammad Asad has accepted the criterion of political science that the subjection of legislation to a revealed law amounts
to theocracy, although he holds that the widespread Western distrust of
theocracy is not realistic when applied to the problems of Islam:
"The many Muslims who strive today for the ideal of an Islamic
state want no more and no less than a political organisation which would
enable them to express their faith in God not merely in the mosque but also
in their practical, social affairs."22
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This last statement and the way Asad elaborates upon it takes us
back to JiivId Iqbiil and his interpretation of the Qii'id-i A'zam's words.
Here the crucial test is to examine what exactly the Islamic law of state is
and what prescriptions it contains. If we endeavour to obtain the answer
from the profuse writings of the Counter-Reformationists the result will
be disappointing. Richard Mitchell, in his exhaustive study on the Society
of the Muslim Brethren, gives the definition as it evolves from the literature
of the Brotherhood party. This does not take us much farther. When
Mitchell says that "the Islamic state thus outlined would be unique", it is
so only with regard to its want of tangibility. According to that outline
it would be: I) not a theocracy because the authority of the ruler is derived
from men, not God. This aspect has already been discussed above and
Muhammad Asad, one of the Brotherhood's more intellectual protagonists,
2) It would not
was seen admitting that in a certain sense it is the~cratic.~
be a dictatorship because the ruled may remove their ruler if he breaks his
contract with the people. This argument does not really merit consideration, for any ruler who breaks the law in order to establish himself as a
dictator in any political system of the world can, of course, be removed
by the people. The real problem is to evolve institutional safeguards to
make it either more difficult for the ruler to break the contract or easier
for the people to depose him in such an emergency. The failure to produce
such a workable system was the cause for a protracted dilemma throughout Muslim history, beginning with the case of the Caliph 'U&mln who
spumed the growing opposition of the Believers with his theocratic dictum
"I am not going to lay down the mantle that was put on me by God."24
Hence we dare say that the Islamists' claim that their state would not be
a dictatorship has yet to be made plausible. 3) It would not be a monarchy
because the ruler has no hereditary authority. This is the clearest part
of the definition of an Islamic state. With the 'rightly guided Caliphate'
as point of departure this principle is, moreover, comparatively easy to
substantiate, notwithstanding the fact that Muslim history is one of constant compromise with the dynastic principle (although few Islamic movements have compromised themselves so overtly with it as the Society of the
Muslim Brethren with their strongholds in the last few Arab monarchies).
Mitchell has thus very ably deduced the three cardinal points of the
Counter-Reformationists' definition of the Islamic law of state. All the
three points are negative; a positive definition is altogether rnissing.23
Muhammad Asad's writings on the subject have been dealt with neither by
Mitchell nor by W.C. Smith, while Erwin Rosenthal has presented
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DEIZEV H. KHALID
almost a reproduction of the principles of state and government in
Islam as expounded by Muhammad Asad.26 It seems, therefore, not out
of place to briefly consider Asad's views. In spite of his elaboration of
the principles of the Islamic state, there emerges nothing that distinguishes
it genuinely from a secular state, say, of Catholic dispensation.27 This
tallies with the finding of W.C. Smith that the descriptions of an Islamic
state are more or less indistinguishable from patterns known or idealized
in the modern West, and that "an Islamic state is not a form of state so
much as a form of Islam."2s The only characteristic that lends true individuality to the Islamic state of Asad's vision is his gratuitous stipulation that in a state subject to the authority of a Divine Law there can be no
radical separation of the legislative and the executive phases of government.
We should hold, however, that this principle goes unwarranted by the d o e
trine of the Qur'gn. He calls it a most important, specifically Islamic
contribution to political theory. Here it would not be going too far to
call this an 'Asadian' contribution rather than an Islamic one. This applies
as well to his concomitant "impartial machinery for arbitration - a
kind of supreme tribunal concerned with constitutional issues."29 Asad's
stipulation may be of some interest to political scientists - as far as the
specific Islamic nature of his invention is concerned he is not convincing,
especially since he fails to substantiate its origin in Qur'gn or Sunna.
Certainly, "to propagate the teaching of Islam to the world at large"
seems at first sight an obligation hardly to be expected from a secular state.
Here a sad is supported by a prominent Pakistani Islamist, Abii 1-A%
Mawdiidf, who states unambiguously that the only characteristic which
distinguishes the Islamic state from the non-Islamic state "lies in the fact
that it has to encourage and popularise those good practices which Islam
desires humanity to adopt and to discourage, eradicate and crush with full
force all those evils of which Islam aims to purge mankind."30
The Qur'gn does not enunciate a legal system among its revelations,
but it does broach a number of problems that arose incidentally in the
course of the Prophet's career. After the initial phase of the Caliphate,
when the centre of administration shifted to Damascus, the jurists lost
their influence over the real conduct of the political community. Pushed
into splendid isolation they went on building up a law code seemingly deduced from the Qur'gn and the Tradition, but hardly at all in tune with the
realities of political life. That ideal legal system was impracticable; and
the legists admitted as much themselves when they pessimistically declared
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that the &zrt'a could only be realized in the bygone age of the rightly guided
Caliphs and in the eschatological days of the coming redeemer or mahdty.31
Still, its observance was, theoretically at any rate, the religious duty of every
adherent of the faith. The political authorities, no doubt, paid lip-service;
but in practice they enacted whatever laws they thought convenient. This
led to the establishment of civil courts alongside those of the &ari6a.
In the end, the powers of the latter were restricted to ritual and family
matters which were closely bound up with the religious conscience of the
people. Political and administrative institutions, a great part of the penal
law and of large-scale commercial enterprise came under the authority of
the secular government. In so far as it relates to constitutional and international law and the law of war, the &rVa has never been in force.
In the light of these facts Muhammad Asad's assertion that "Islam
offers us a definite, clear-cut outline of a political law of its own"32 amounts
to little more than a slogan. As a matter of fact, elsewhere he himself
admits that there exists dissension among Muslims as to what constitutes
the socio-political teaching of Islam on which they ought to model their
Islamic state. His proposal to resolve this confusion by a codification of
&arc%ordinances seems to contradict his rejection of historical precedents
for the Islamic state of his vision. Although this extraneous element of
Messianism3 3 contributes to mental fertility it, nevertheless, leads into an
impasse of abstraction. It may be possible to elaborate a concise,
clearly comprehensible code of d a r ' i laws and to dispense with all conventional fiqh. But how such a code can be feasible or even visualized
without a revision in the light of modem conditions remains rather an
enigma. Muhammad Asad's eschatological frame of mind impels him to
think in terms of eternities and ultimates. Neither the past nor the present is reliable so that he ends up in a futuristic dream of God's final and
uninterrupted rule.
A more earth-bound attitude has been adopted by such scholars as
Yiisuf 'AlI and especially Chirfigh 'AlI who expounded about a hundred
years before Asad, that the Qur'in does not interfere in matters of political
system: "Muhammad never set up his own acts and words as an infallible
or unchangeable rule of conduct in civil and political affairs, or, in other
words, he never combined the Church and the State into one.1134
This is but the outcome of a distinction between the two functions of
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the Prophet, a distinction that was made on similar lines first by Sayyid
Ahmad =in in India and then by 'Ali 'Abd al-Riziq in Egypt. Sayyid
Ahmad Khin clearly differentiated between the two parts of man, one
which relates to God and another which relates to his fellow-beings. He
followed this differentiation up even in the case of the Prophet. According to Sayyid Ahmad khan, the Prophet of Islam, even more than Moses,
was pressed by circumstances to assume the worldly leadership of his
community, although this was not a part of his function as a prophet. All
the peoples of Arabia were in the habit of obeying their S h y & or the head
of their tribe in mundane affairs. It was, therefore, natural for the Arabs
to treat the Prophet as their worldly leader and the Prophet, too, was under
the compulsion of circumstances to assume mundane leadership. But
as in the case of Moses two functions were united in one person, so in the
case of the Prophet, too, one person had assumed two separate functions.
As far as his function as a mundane leader was concerned, the Prophet
issued commands after consulting his Companions and keeping in view the
needs and conditions of the time. But the Muslims, following the Jews,
understood the worldly doings of the Prophet as if they were divinely
inspired commands and people completely forgot the clear statement of the
Prophet that they (the people) had better knowledge of their worldly
affairs. 3 5
Muhammad Iqbil, inspite of his traditionalist bent of mind, understood that the ideas expressed by Sayyid Ahmad Khan and 'AlI 'Abd alRiziq were not mere Westernization but were warranted by the purport
of the Qur'inic message. In Iqbil's sophisticated formulation "Islam was,
from the very beginning, a civil society with laws civil in their nature, though
believed to be revelational in origin."36
To Muhammad Asad the ijtihcd of the time is to elaborate the details
only, but not the principles; though he himself fails to give tangible expression to those principles in the light of the Glorious Qur'in.37 The same
paucity of definition we find in Sa'Id Ramadin's propagation of the Islamic
State:
"The Qur'an and the Sunnah do not prescribe any specific form of
government. They set forth certain basic principles that ought to underly
it and leave the details to be evolved in accordance with the requirements
of the time, subject to the progress of human knowledge, the increase in
population, the growth of the Islamic state, and the development of
means of communication and expression of public opinion"38
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In view of this more or less absolute negation of all prescribed forms
it is hard to understand why there should at all be any talk of an 'Islamic'
state, if not for the purely psychological satisfaction of those in search of
identity. The same, we should hold, applies to Lhalifa 'Abd al-Haklm's
Islamic Ideology. His craving for the manifestation of a distinct Muslim
personality causes him to conjunct Islam with 'ideology', a concept normally designating ideas that determine the conduct of a political movement
rather than that of a religious community. However, like most liberals,
Qalifa 'Abd al-Hakim is torn between insistence on Muslim individuality
and the dream of integrating with a pluralistic world-community. The
first of these two urges induces him to adopt a terminology of distinctiveness. The second urge renders these terms meaningless in order to overcome barriers. "Thus the skeletal structure of the &ari'a came to be
defined primarily in terms of its empty spaces. The dividing line between
Islamic modernists and westernizing liberals became an essentially emotional rather than intellectual one. . .. what passed for an Islamic revival
became, in practice, an uneasy process of ideological assimilation."39
For this reason Khalifa 'Abd al-Hakfm's book on Islamic Ideology
is, paradoxically as it seems, the most eloquent rejection of the notion of a
specific 'Islamic' state and law, at least if one looks at it from the viewpoint of political science. The following passage from the above mentioned work may serve to further illustrate this point:
"A small scripture like the Qur'iin could deal only with the fundamentals of life. Besides emphasis on faith in the unity of God and exhorting man to give up the worship of all gods and idols and stick to the
worship of the one ideal source of existence who is creator and preserver
of all values and is to be worshipped in spirit and not in graven or mental
images, and besides exhorting man to practise social justice and personal
purity, there is little in the Qur'iin which is given as a set of unchangeable
eternal laws. It is mostly a book of basic principles, some of which were
applied to the circumstances as they arose."40
Ahmad Amin, the liberal Egyptian historian, who was au jait in
the early secularist reasoning of Sayyid &mad hiin in and Chiriigh 'Ali,
leaves elaboration of the political system entirely to the "absolute ijtihiiP.41
It is, therefore, but justified that a critic speaks of "the myth of the allembracing authority of the &ri6a and the absolute necessity of the Caliphate", a myth that has in recent times been exploded.42
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Thus the hypothetic assertion of the Counter-Reformationists that
Islam is primarily a law cannot be made convincingly conceivable on the
practical level. Therefore, if we are to make the ultimate sense of theocracy in Islam meaningful, we will have to search for another outlet.
It is hard to deny that "good practices" such as religious tolerance
and social justice are principles which most secular states share, at least as
an aspiration. Similarly, it is the declared aim of truly secular states to
purge mankind of evils such as racial discrimination, war-mongering, etc.
And more important yet should be the consideration that "the leavening
of the emerging world-order with Islamic ideals and aspirations"43 is not
contingent upon an ideological state. This "tabA& par excellence"44
has hardly ever been a state affair in Muslim history. In fact, one of the
recurrent topics in the abundant apologetic literature produced by the
Counter-Reformationists is the assertion that Islam was never spread by
governmental means but by gentle persuasion from individual to individual.
The state is but one of the many expressions of social life which will
ips0fact0 be imbued with Islamic spirit once its basis, i-e., the people constituting it, have imbibed the Qur'Bnic precepts in their individual and collective consciences. In a secular state where the Muslim majority upholds
their ideals nothing can prevent the Believers from permeating their state
with Islamic values so effectively as to become a manifestation of the prophetic example. The Prophet, again, did not need the state to set this
example, rather the state became apostolic because of the persuasive
force with which he demonstrated Islam to his society when he had no political backing whatsoever. Islam began in Mecca, and Medina merely
shows a promise to the righteous, an attainable reward for their perseverance in the arduous task of living up to the moral standards set by the
revelation.
Although most Counter-Reformationists frequently refer to the
"golden era" of the Prophet and the rightly guided caliphs, there is little
consistency in their illusionary return to a bygone age."
Instead of going
back to the origins in Mecca and mustering the moral strength to restart
the toilsome road to Medina, they think it possible to begin the whole
process with the victorious march back from Medina to Mecca. The
whole effort may be termed a moral shortcut which, as the developments
of the last two decades have proved, leads into nothing but intellectual
confusion and social defeat. Here the quest for Muslim identity has led
into the void of devious distinctions which serve no constructive purpose
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but, on the contrary, prevent their victims from partaking in-the effort to
make Islam meaningful in the pluralistic community of an industrializing
world.
It is very essential to keep in mind the psychological reasons for
this mania of creating distinctions for the sake of distinctions, otherwise
it is difficult to appreciate the labor a party leader like Mawdiidi invests
in obscuring the concept of sovereignty. With the rather manipulated
support of numerous Western sources he weans the term sovereignty from
political science and converts it to theology. Thus the question of sovereignty of the people does not at all arise because sovereignty is something
humanly unattainable, only the Almighty is sovereign.46 The fact that
such an untenable reducing ad absurdurn of concepts of the social sciences
impairs the intellectual purport of any dialogue is apparently part of the
Counter-Reformationist design.47
Since the Islamists envisage Muslim law as the will of God it is
necessarily true, final, and eternal. We will have to find out what is the
agency that can authoritatively decide what God's decrees are, otherwise
the attribution of ultimate sovereignty to God is in itself of no practical
significance.48 As repeatedly emphasized, ideally there is no rule of a
priestly or other supposedly divinely inspired individual or class in Islam.
But since, according to the Islamist view, the character of the constitutional
and legal systems as functional instruments are to be determined in accordance with a revealed law, there must be a second, a practical location of
sovereignty somewhere on the lower plane of this fleeting world. While
examining the statements of their leading proponents we soon discover
that they do not add any hitherto neglected element to the "classical
expositions" as exposed by the learned Islamicist, Malcolm Kerr :
"The classical constitutional theory and, to a lesser extent, legal
theory refrained from giving precise definitions of the locus of sovereignty
in this procedural sense, and confined themselves instead to setting forth
the divine nature of sovereignty. This limitation, which existed for particular reasons in classical expositions, becomes a serious deficiency in
modern times when attempts are made to apply the theory to current
practical questions of political and legal organization."49
Absolute values, the fourth Caliph 'Ali insisted, have to be translated into practical and enforceable instruments of government and law.
On this issue he fell out with an important section of his staunchest sup-
200
DETLEV H. KHALID
porters. Those then formed a movement that became notorious as Seceders (&wZrij) because they would not submit to his verdict on the indispensibility of human sovereignty in enacting the divine rule.so
However vocal the Muslim Brethren and other Counter-Reformationists may be in their rejection of analogies with Medieval Europe, their
own system would finally lead to the establishment of an ecclesiastical
rule. In order to adapt the law to new conditions, it can only be interpreted by a specific group of persons in accordance with definite rules.
Mawdiidii demands that any dispute "should be referred to that fundamental
Law which God and His Prophet have given to us."Jl This demand is
followed up by a second one which brings to light the flaw in the futile
distinction between hierocracy and nomocracy, for Mawdiidi writes ''there
should be an institution in the state which should undertake to adjudicate
in strict accordance with the Book of God and the Sunna of the Prophet."s 2
~ h u the
s "theo-democracy" which according to this scion of traditionalism
is the true expression of Islam53 is in fact nothing but pure and genuine
theocracy, doing justice to both the elements of the definition of the term.
It is rule of the revealed law administered by high priests, any other arrangement that locates sovereignty in the people can be allowed only temporarily. It has finally to give way to the ecclesiastical rule of the 'ulamd'54,
to the socialist state which is to be abolished when the time
comes to usher in the era of true Communism.
The static Divine Law and its interpretation through a class of
'ulamd' would stand in sharp contrast to the dynamic man-made law in
the modem national state, where it is enacted in order to serve some
particular interest of particular people at a particular time. Man-made
law is operational in nature and pragmatic in function. The sanction
behind this positive law is not necessarily the will of God, but certainly the
will of the people. In the national secular context of contemporary
legislation man's responsibility is extended from the field of mere interpretation to the field of law-making.
It is a common feature of the Counter-Reformationists to obscure
the question of sovereignty by referring to man as the vice-gerent of God.
This vice-gerency has anyhow become a prominent symbol of resurging
Islam.ss Notwithstanding all their verbose emphasis on this concept,
a major party of the Counter-Reformationists render it meaningless by
restricting the vicegerency to a class of divines whose sovereignty in turn
LOCATION OF SOVEREIGNTY
201
is limited by the authority of the forebears. A reformist thinker like
Ahmad Amin finds the fulfillment of @ikifat aEinsan fit-ard ,i.e., the divine
promise of man in dominion on earth, precisely in the extension of responsibility which cannot be real if it does not include the right to law-.
making shared by the totality of men through their elected representatives.
Hasan al-Bannii, the apostle of Islamism, made a promising start toward
this realisation by admitting the notion of the divinity of mankind into his
system of thought.56 Beyond this point, however, Islamist thought rarely
ventured into political economy or philosophy. Al-Bannii's basic antipathy
to theology and philosophy made the concept of law as emanating from
man anathema to his conservative followers. After their ideal of the sacred
law had been set up, nothing else mattered.
The works of Hamilton Gibb display a marked tendency to
adopt the criteria of conservative Muslim thinkers. This notwithstanding, the learned scholar of Islam had to admit that many of the
writers he studied show the uncompromising attitude of the perfectionist refuting anything less than the ideal. Therefore, they regarded
any kind of autonomous political institutions, independent of the
sacred law in which the social ideal was enshrined, as "either selfassertions of the uncontrolled animal appetite or the fanciful productions of rationalist thought."s'
Muhammad Asad is so persuasive in
his emphasis on the wide scope of Muslim legislation, which depends
only on some very broad moral outlines enunciated in the Qur'iin. But
simultaneously he dreams of separating "God's true &arf'a from all
man-made, deductive fiqhz laws." Since this eternal, unchangeable
Divine Law would be applicable to all times and all stages of man's
social and intellectual developments8 one wonders what reality man's
freedom possesses in this scheme of things. It is certainly no cogent alternative to the secular strands of the emerging fabric of democracy. The
new constellation is characterised by an increasing awareness that the truly
Islamic state is a secular one. Direct election through secret ballots, universal suffrage, a representative legislature, a responsible executive and
fundamental rights are the essentials of democratic governments. Between
them and a religion that does not recognise the claims of hereditary or
divine right of a class, clan or group to rule, there can be no antithesis.
J M d Iqbiil's distinction between an ordinary secular state and an "ideal
secular state" may originate from a different intent.59 Nonetheless, it
signals Muslim emancipation from theocracy in the political sense.
202
DETLEV H. KHALID.
Editor's Note :
In this article Dr. Khalid pleads for the establishment of a Secular
State and ridicules the whole concept of an Islamic State. Two main arguments advanced by him against the concept of Islamic State are, firstly,
that it will be a theocracy dominated by the religious scholars ('Ulama)
and that it will be based on revealed law. On both these counts he has
been misled. The Islamic structure of society is based on the ijM' or
consensus of the community and not on the ijmd' of the scholars. It is
the whole community acting through its elected representatives that will
decide matters so that the final authority in every matter will rest with the
elected representatives of the people and not with the religious scholars.
The revealed law will be interpreted by the people and their representatives
and not by a body of religious experts who will, of course, help the
legislature in an advisory capacity. Now, interpretation of law, whether
religious or secular, is a rational process and it is on rational grounds
that any particular interpretation of law will be accepted or rejected.
Dr. Khalid's attempt to bifurcate the religious and the secular does
not carry much conviction. He thinks that during the depression, when
thousands of people were thrown out of job, this was a problem for the
Secular arm. To the ordinary Muslim, this is a highly religious problem.
That a sizable portion of the community should go ill-fed, ill-clad and
remain illiterate jars upon the religious conscience of a Muslim.
The Secular State will pave the way for Communism because Seclarism is a negative doctrine. It offers nothing concrete beyond freedom
from religious exploitation. But today economic exploitation is a
more serious problem. We want freedom not so much from the authority
of religious scholars who are already a nonentity, but freedom from exploitation by the landlords, jagirdars and the barons of industry.
It is significant that while Dr. Khalid speaks of adult suffrage
and fundamental rights etc., as essentials of a democratic government,
he deliberately omits to mention freedom of press. This shows the way
the wind is blowing!
Mazheruddin Siddiqi.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
Sa'id Ramada: WhPt is an Z s h i c State?(Gznwa 1961), pp. 1-2.
Jiivid IqW: The Legmy of QuGW Azum (Lahore 1967). pp. 55-56.
Cf. Dwight M. Donaldson: ''Theocracy: God-Rule", in The Muslim World,
Vol. LX/2, (April 1970). p. 103.
LOCATION O F SOVEREIGNTY
203
L'Islam-religion et communaut~,(Paris 1%7), p. 286, especially the second chapter entitled "ThLocratie egalitaire" of his book La Cit6 Muslumane (Paris 1954).
Op. cit. Ibid.
"Pakistan and the Secular State" in South Asian Politics and Religion (edited by
Donald E. Smith, Princetion 1966). p. 356.
Op. cit. Ibid.
Ibid.
Islam and Politics (Geneva 1963). p. 10; cf. Asad's book on The Principles of State
and Government in Islam (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1961). p. 20:
"Islam makes it incumbent upon Muslims to subordinate their decisions to
the guidance of the Divine Law revealed in the Qur'a and exemplified by the Rophet: an obligation which imposes definite limits on the community's right to
legislate and denies to the 'will of the people' that attribute of sovereignty which
forms so integral a part of the Western concept of democracy. A tendency
superficially similar to that of Islam can be discerned in the concept of 'ideological'
democracy prevalent in the USSR and other Communist states. There, as in
Islam, an ideology is placed over and above the people's freedom to legislate for
themselves; only within the framework of that ideology can the majority vote
become effective."
A point very much emphasized by Seyyed Hossein Nasr in Ideals and Realilies
of Islam (London 1966), p. 107:
"The caliph is the khalifa or vice-gerent not of God but of His Prophet and
then only of that aspect of the function of the Prophet which was concerned with
administering the Divine Law."
In Islam and the Modern Age (London 1959). p. 88. Ilse Lichtenstadter writes
that the duty of the Caliph was, above all, "the obsemation of Allah's laws.
He was in no way a representative of the Divine." This, apparentjy, is a contradiction in terms. If it is the Caliph's duty to enforce the laws of God and not the
laws of men, then he is, of course, a representative of the Divine. It was Louis
Gardet who realised this interdependence and expressed it in his neat formulation:
"Nous pourrions dire: le Calife est un souverain temporel charge de fair
regner sur terre les prescriptions coraniques; mais cette charge revet une valeur
religieuse des la que ces prescriptions v i e ~ e n tde Dieu, et qu'elles concement
aussi bien 1es rzgles cultuelles que le bon ordre et l'organisation g6nSrale de la
Cite."
The persistence of theocracy is probably due to the fact that the Jewish state
almost to the contemporary era was the ghetto. The Hebrew rheocracy had been
pure and complete in the Sinai desert before the Hebrews entered Canaan, and it
became again pure and complete in the Diaspora after they had been expelled
from Palestine, after the state was destroyed and religion took over as the unifying, cohesive force. The head or the ghetto was the rabbi; its constitution the
Bible of Moses (Torah), and its laws the Talmud and later rabbinic commentaries.
Islam in Modenr History (Princeton 1957). pp. 248-9.
DETLEV H. KHALID
I&
and Realities of Islam p. 107.
"The Puritan government of Massachusetts was also called a theocracy, owing
to the claim that it was conducted on the principle of obedience to divine laws.
and the requirement that all should contribute to the Church and attend services."
(The Encyclopedia Americana. New York 1951, under Theocracy).
La Cite Mmulmone p. 23.
Politial l7wught in Medieval Islam (Cambridge 1958). p. 8.
Mu&mmad Hmain Haikal-Empa and &r Orient im Weltbild eines Agyptischen
Liberalen, (Beirut 1967). p. 90, n. 88.
Arend Th. van Ceeuwen: Christianity in World H13torpThe Meetiw of the Fcriths
of Eost and West (Edinburgh 1964). p. 332
L'Islam-religwn et communaut6 p. 286.
Malcolm H. Ken: Islamic Reform-% Political and Legal b r i e s of Muhammad
'Abduh and Rashid Ridd (Los Angela 1966). p. 4.
Islam and Politics p. 10.
The Principles of State and Government in Islam p. 39:
"Thus, the real source of all sovereignty is the will of God as manifested in the
ordinances of the *ri'a.
The power of the Muslim community is of a vicarious
kind, being held, as it were, in trust from God; and so the Islamic state-which,
as we have seen, owes its existence to the will of the people and is subject to control by them-derives its sovereignty, ultimately, from God."
Ibn Kat&r: AI-Biddyuh wa I-Nihdyuh (Cairo 1932), Vol. IX,p. 166.
Richard Mitchell: The Society of the Muslim Brothers (London 1969), p. 249.
malifa 'Abd al-gakim, a former Director of the Institute of Islamic Culture
in Lahore, views Islam against the background of preceding theocracies:
"The Jewish state was a theocratic state and, although neither Buddha
nor Christ gave the basis for the foundation of a state, Asoka based his polity
on Buddhistic principles, and Christianity, when it got hold of secular power.
founded a worldwide theocracy in which the two swords, the spiritual and the
temporal, were supposed to be wielded by the same authority; all Christian
kings had to pay homage to the Pope who became the infallible source of all
Christian legislation and claimed to regulate Christian lives down to the
details of conduct."
( m l i f a 'Abdul Hakim: Islamic Idcology (Lahore 1965), p. 231)
This lucid prelude, however, is not followed up by an equally concise d e w tion of the Islamic system. malifa 'Abd al-Hakim's attachment to Muslim
identity resembles that of his liberal ilk, notably Ahmad Amin. The complacent
tendency to envisage Islam as the synthesis of the 'good' from everywhere leads
to a dilution of definitions as is evident from w i f a 'AM al-Hakim's adumbration of Islamic Ideology:
"Such is the theocracy of Islam which is not to be identified with any
theocracy that ever existed. Call it a theocracy or call it a secular state as
LOCATION OF SOVEREIGNTY
205
you please: it synthesises the virtues of both repudiating the evils with which
they often get contaminated."
(Ibid. 243, italics are mine).
Envin Rosenthal: Islam in the Modern National State (Cambridge 1965). p. 125136.
77W Principles of State and Government in Islam p. 33:
"To make the Law of Islam the law of the land in order that equity may
prevail; to arrange social and economic relations in such a way that every individual shall live in freedom and dignity, and shall find as few obstacles as possible
and as much encouragement as possible in the development of his personality;
to enable all Muslim men and women to realize the ethical goals of Islam not only
in their beliefs but also in the practical sphere of their lives; to ensure to all nonMuslim citizens complete physical security as well as complete freedom of religion, of culture, and of social development; to defend the country against attack
from without and disruption from within; and to propagate the teachings of Islam
to the world at large: it is in these principles, and in these alone, that the concept
of an Islamic state 6nds its meaning and justification."
Islam in Modern History p. 213:
"It is to be distinguished not so much from other kinds of stateliberal, d e
mocratic, fascist, or whatever - as from other expressions of Islam as a religion.
As there is Islamic art, Islamic theology, Islamic mysticism, so there is or may be
an Islamic state."
The Principles of State and Government in I s h p. 66:
'This tribunal should have the right and the duty (a) to arbitrate in all instances of disagreement between the amir and the majlis al-shiri referred to the tribunal by either of the two sides, and (b) to veto, on its own accord, any legislative
act passed by the majfis or any administrative act on the part of the amk which,
in the tribunal's considered opinion, offends against a nass ordinance of Qur'iin
or Sunna.''
See also page 51. That many of the principles enunciated by Asad are of his
own making rather than being specificallyIslamic stipulations is indirectly adrnitted by the author in such formu!ations as "The appointments, it seems to me.
should be for lifetime.. . . And, finally, I would suggest that the member. ..."
(page 67, italics are mine).
Abii 1-A'lii Mawdid: First Principles of the Islamic State (Lahore 1960). p. 34.
Cf. H.A.R. Gibb: Modern Trends in Islam (Chicago 1954), p. 87:
"It followed that Isamic law was not regarded (like Roman or modem law)
as the gradual deposit of the historical experience of a people. Its primary function was to classify actions in terms of an absolute standard of good and evil;
the fixing of penalities for infractions of the standard was a quite secondarymatter.
Muhammad Asad: The Principles of Stare and Government in Islam p. 95.
Cf. Muhammad Asad: 77W Rwd to Mecca (London 1954). especially the chapter
on the Dajcil.
206
DETLEV H. KHALID
34.
Chidgh 'Ali: The Proposed Political. Legal and Social Reforms in the Ottoman
Empire and other Muhammadan States (Bombay 18831, p. xxxvi. For a similar
argumentation see also Muhammad 'U@Mn who refers to Sura 5/101 f. He
concludes that it is up to man to fix the most appropriate form of government
(Tuqdfat, Lahore, November 1958, p. 8 f.). Ma~hemddinSiddiqi pushes things
to extremes. He bases his argument on sira 41169-171 ( 0 people of the book, do
not exceed the limits in your religion) and declares that it is quite beside the mark
to assert that a law cannot be an Islamic law as long as it has not got a religious
base. Neither in former days nor in the modem age has the greater part of laws
been deduced from religious principles (ThaqrSfat,Lahore, May 1958, p. 47).
35.
Muhammad Ismfi'il Phipati (4.): Maqcilcit-i-Sir Sayyid, (Lahore 1961-63),
vol. v. pa* 4.
S. A. Vahid: Thoughts and Refictions of Zqbd (Lahore 1964), p. 284.
36.
37.
The relative futi!ity of insisting on the sketchy framework of an 'Islamic State'
is nowhere so evident as in t l ~ eblank spaces left by Asad in his attempt to define
what it actually is:
"If we examine objectively the political ordinances of Qur'h and Sunnah,
we find that they do not lay down any specific form of state: that is to say, the
&zriSahdoes not prescribe any definite pattern to which an Islamic state must
conform, nor does it elaborate in detail a constitutional theory. The political
law emerging from the context of Qur'an and Sunnah is, nevertheless, not an
illusion. It is very vivid and concrete inasmuch as it gives us the clear outline
of a political scheme capable of realization at all times and under all conditions of
human life. Rut precisely because it was meant to be realized at all times and
under all conditions, that scheme has been offered in outline only and not in
detail. Man's political, social, and economic needs are time-bound and, therefore, extremely variable. Rigidly fixed enactments and institutions could not
ih
possibly do justice to this natural trend toward variation; and so the &wk
does not attempt the impossible. Being a Divine Ordinance, it duly anticipates
the fact of historical evolution, and confronts the believer with no more than a
very limited number of broad political principles; beyond that, it leaves a vast
field of constitution-making activity, of government methods, and of day-to-day
legislation to the ijrhrSd of the time concerned. ( m e Principles pp. 22-23).
See also page 35 :
"Although such a code must forever remain basic in the structure and the
working of an Islamic state, it cannot, by its very nature, supply all the laws that
may be needed for the purposes of administration. Thus, as we have seen, we
will have to supplement the &r'i stipulations relating to matters of public concern
by temporal, amendable laws of our own making on the understanding, of course,
that we may not legislate in a manner that would run counter to the letter or the
spirit of any &r'i law."
-
38.
Sa'id RamadBn: What is an Z s h i c State? (Geneva 1963), p. 7:
"We have seen how the manner of electing the Head of State changed during
the early Caliphate. The conference of Saqifa which raised Abii Bakr to the
LOCATION OF SOVEREIGNTY
207
Caliphate was different from the procedure by which Omar was subsequently
made Caliph, and still different was Omar's appointment of the six Companions
to elect the future Caliph from amongst themselves."
39.
Malcolm H. Ken: Islamic Reform
- T k Political and Legal Tkories of M
h -
mad 'Abduh and Rashid Ri{i (Los Angeles 1966). page 210; see also p. 209.
"In attributing a general spirit of permissiveness and adaptability to the
Qur'fm and Sunna, modem Muslim writers have often been the victims of two
alternative but concurrent tendencies. The first is to carry the argument to the
point where Islam seems to stand for nothing in particular except permissiveness
itself. The second is to overlook the substantial renunciation of independence
in judgement that is implicit in depending on the Qur'2n and Suma for authorizations of flexibility."
40.
a a l i f a 'Abdul Hakim: Islamic Ideology p. 212:
"Islam originally had brought no extensive and comprehensive code of laws
with it; it gave only the fundamentals of civilised life which could sumre for the
individual and society total well-being."
Louis Gardet has summed up by saying that
"Aucune de ces formes de gouvernement, en tout cas, ne doit &re identifike
avec les cadres intangibles d'une cite musulmane. D'autres types d'Etat sont
possibles, et qui resterait tout aussi musulmans. Depuis quelques dkades, le
monde actuel a posh aux pays d'Islam le probEme d'un gouvemment a structures
dhocratique; r a m sont pami eux les Etats qui aujourd'hui ne se reclament
pas dc la ddmocratie, et l'on a pu envoir certains osciuer entre monarchie constitutionelle, rtpublique parlementaire, rkpublique autoritaire, dhocratie socialepopulaire. Y voir une rupture deliberke avec les bases coraniques serait a notre
sens fort ma1 situer les choses. En fait, une fois saufs les deux principes de 1'
autorite et de la consultation, il faut reconmitre que le champ est largement ouvert
au solutions concretes.
(L'Islam
41.
42.
- religion et communaut5. Paris 1963, page 278).
Ahmad Amin: Fqd al-Zjh@ir (Cairo 19551, vol. M,page 243.
Arend Th. van Leeuwen: Christianity in WorldHistory - The Meeting of the Faiths
of East and West (Edinburgh 1964), p. 418.
43.
Fazlur RahmBn: "Implementation of the Islamic Concept of State in the Pakistani
Milieu" Islamic Studies (Islamabad, September 1967), p. 220.
44.
Ibid.
Sayyid Qutb says about the program of the Muslim Brethren: "This is a call to
return to Islamic principles and not a literal return to the seventh century; those
who say this are confusing the historical beginning of Islam with the system of
Islam itself." (Ma'rakat a/-Ishim wa I-Rci'snuiliya, Cairo n.d., pp. 84 ff.)
Commenting on this, Richard Mitchell writes: "The distinction between an
'Islamic order' and a 'Muslim state' in a medieval sense is a fundamental one and
distinguishes our analysis of the Society from most others, which view it as a reactionary movement fanatically dedicated to recreating a seventh-century political
order. Apart from the question of revolutionary intent, such a view does not
45.
'
208
DETLEV H. KHALID
explain its relative indifference.. .. to such issues as the caliphate."
(The Society of the Muslim Brothers p. 224).
Though it may not be diicult to subscribe to Mitchell's finding in general.
it has, nevertheless, to be pointed out that his Brothers show little consistency,
there is frequent reference to the khil&fa rZ&i& and especially the JamPat-i
Isliimi, the Pakistani version of the Society. more often than not identifies itself
with the historical Islam of the seventh century and the incipient Caliphate.
Cf. Erwin Rosenthal's piognant discussion of Asad's assertions about the inde
pendence of the contemporary Islamic state from patterns evolved in the early
period of Islam.
(Islam in the Modern Nationa State pp. 134-5).
46.
AbE I-A'lB MawdEdi: First Principles of the Islamic State (Lahore 1960). p. 34.
47.
Writing on the "Implementation of the Islamic Concept of State", Professor
Fazlur R a h d n , a former Director of the Islamic Research Institute, Islamabad,
remarks :
"But the greatest mischief wrought by this kind of stand is to confuse the
religio-moral and political issues. This talk implies and sometimes it is even stated
explicitly that God is politically sovereign. Any student of political history knows
that the term 'sovereign' as a politid term is of a relatively recent coinage and
denotes that definite and de6ned factor (or factors) in a society to which rightfully
belongs coercive force in order to obtain obedience to its will. It is absolutely
obvious that God is not sovereign in this sense and that only people can be and
are sovereign, since only to them belongs ultimate coercive force, i.e., only their
Word is law" in the politically ultimate sense. It is, of course, patently true that
the Qur'b often makes statements to the effect that God is the most Supreme
Judge and that His alone is the power over the heavens and the earth. But it is
equally true that this has no reference to political sovereignty whatever. It does
not even refer to legal sovereignly."
(Islamic Studies, Islamabad, September 1967, pp. 208-9).
48.
49.
50.
Cf. the letter by the renowned Italian orientalist Alessandro Bausani in Javid
IqbSs Ideology of Pakistan (Lahore 1971). p. 158:
"Is that law (of cutting the hand of a thief) an essential part of Islam? Many
modem Islamic thinkers answer: No. But so I can always ask them: Who can
say so? Only God. I agree with it, because only God is the source of all authority. But through whom or through which organisation or political or religious
body does God speak now? This is a problem I always felt very deeply (as in
older times NBsir-i a u s r a w , who delineates it in his very beautiful autobiographical qa$da)."
Malcolm H. Kerr: Islamic Reform The Political &Legal Theories of Muhammad
'Abduhand m i d Ri$& (Los Angeles 1966). p. 4.
-
The Qur'hic verse iuYl +Jl
dl "The final word rests with none but God"
(VI157) was used against 'Ali's decision to accept the artibtration in his 6ght
against Mu6&wiya. 'Ali is reported to have retorted with these remarks:
209
LOCATION OF SOVEREIGNTY
;* ;/L!3
j.
YYJ;jL! y 3394 ti! &I
+!
313.
ihk
X
"What they pronouna is just, but what they mean by it is injustice; they say:
there is no imEra (i.e. institution of the amir or the executive, in the modem political
terminology), but there is no escape from this institution no matter whether the
amir is pious or not." AI-Mubarrad, ACKimil, (ed. Al-SiWi al-Bayiia
Cairo 1923). I:73.
77U Islamic Luw and Constitution (Lahore 1960)- p. 236.
Ibid.
The Political Theory of Islam (Lahore 1939). p. 148.
First Principles of the Islamic State (Lahore 1960). p. 33:
"But so long as it is not possible in our country to create a consultative body
of that calibre and to foster that spirit and that mentality (p. 32: which existed in
the days of the Caliphs), there is no other alternative but to restrict and to subordinate the executive to the majority decisions of the legislature."
Cf. Detlev Khalid: "Ahmad Amin and the Legacy of Mubarnmad 'Abduh" in
Islamic Studies (Islamabad. March 1970).
Jarirlot al-I@win al-Muslimin (Cairo, 19th September 1946), quoted by Richard
Mitchell op. cit., p. 233.
H.A.R. Gibb: Modern Trends in Islam p. 117.
Muhammad Asad: Principles p. 101.
avid Iqbal: 77U Legacy of Qunid-i A'zum (Lahore 1967). pp. 55f.