By
Nadeem F. Paracha
31 Jul 2020
The roots
of the concept of the state lie in the political ideas formulated in Ancient
Greece and the Roman Republic. Greek philosophers Plato (d. 347 BCE) and
Aristotle (d. 322 BCE) write of the ‘polis’ (the city state) as an ideal form
of association, in which the religious, cultural, political and economic needs
of the citizens can be satisfied. The ancient Roman idea of ‘res publica’ is
more similar to the modern concept of the state. According to Encyclopaedia
Britannica, the res publica was a legal system, the jurisdiction of which
extended to all Roman citizens, securing their rights and determining their
responsibilities.
Illustration by Abro
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However, it wasn’t until the 16th century that the modern concept of the state fully emerged in Europe. Between the 17th and 19th centuries, the idea was rapidly expanded and developed in the works of philosophers such as John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Jeremy Bentham, Karl Marx, etc. By the 19th century, the concept of the state as we know it today, had been practically established in various regions of Europe.
According
to the noted political anthropologist Professor Irfan Ahmad (in ISIM Review,
Autumn 2006), till the 17th century, “the state governed by not governing.”
Seldom did it interfere in most affairs of its subjects. Its main interest was
to extract levies and taxes. Its administrative scope was limited. The French
philosopher Michel Foucault claimed that the scope of the state began to expand
from the 16th century. The idea of the state in non-western regions was no
different. According to Irfan Ahmad, the nature of the state in Muslim-majority
regions and in regions being ruled by Muslims was also static and limited. It
was only interested in gathering taxes and aiding the monarch and his vassals
to retain their wealth and power. Otherwise, it hardly ever interfered in or
actively regulated the lives of the citizens.
The state
as we know it today is thus a comparatively recent construct and a product of
political and economic modernity. So what do concepts such as ‘Islamic State’
or ‘Riyasat-i-Madina’ (State of Madina) really mean? Such terms are often used
by ideologues and politicians in Muslim-majority regions. The thinking behind
them is that Islam is inherently political and its sacred texts lay out a
blueprint for a state run by laws prescribed by God. Furthermore, those who
hold this view insist that such a state came into being with the arrival of
Islam that actively regulated every political, economic and social aspect of
the community.
In his
essay for the anthology Islam, Politics and Anthropology, Irfan Ahmad writes
that till the 16th/17th century, the working of the state, even in powerful
Muslim empires, was as limited as it was in non-Muslim realms. He adds that the
idea of an Islamic State is actually not more than a hundred years old.
According to the works of Egyptian scholars Ali Abdel Raziq (d.1966) and Sa’id
al-Ashmawi (d.2013), theologically, Islam treats faith and the concept of state
separately and, in fact, puts more emphasis on faith and how it can operate as
a moral guide.
Ahmad
writes, “to impose the modern concept of the state on 7th century Arab society
is misleading.” Because of infrastructural weaknesses, the state could not have
expanded its scope beyond a handful of duties, even if it wanted to. The Syrian
academic and historian Aziz Al-Azmeh, in a widely debated 1990 essay Utopia and
Islamic Political Thought, demonstrates that there is no political theory
(about a state) in classical Islamic political thought. Fact is, those who
insist that there is, are simply projecting the modern concept of the state on
ancient and medieval Islamic polities, reimagining these polities as Islamic
states which influenced almost every aspect of the lives of their citizens.
According
to Ahmad, such projections are the result of ideas that first emerged in the
early 20th century. One of the pioneers in this respect was the prolific South
Asian ideologue and Islamic scholar Abul Ala Maududi. Ahmad writes that, as a
young man, Maududi was associated with The Muslim, a daily that took an
anti-British, pro-Congress-Party position and promoted Muslim-Hindu unity and a
secular set-up in India. However, after 1937, Maududi changed his stance,
especially when Jinnah’s Muslim League began to press for a separate
Muslim-majority state.
Ahmad
writes that all major political players in British India had become smitten by
the concepts of the state and nationalism introduced in the region by the
British colonialists. The Muslim League began to speak about a Muslim state,
the Congress about a post-colonial secular Indian state, and the leftists about
a socialist state.
Rejecting
all these concepts as ungodly, Maududi came up with the idea/theory of
hukumat-i-Ilahiya (Government of Allah or Islamic state). He then set out to
formulate a new political theology, by interpreting Islamic scriptures in the
context of the state. In a 1941 essay he writes, “In reality, the classical
Arabic word deen approximately has the same meaning which the word state has in
the contemporary age.” Noting that the modern state regulates almost every
facet of people’s lives, he contemplated the creation of an ‘Islamic state’
that would regulate every aspect of its citizens’ lives according to laws laid
down by the Islamic scriptures.
In other
words, whereas the Islamic scriptures were often understood as moral guides,
Maududi emphasises the need to understand them as political signposts to enact
a pious state. His ideas were soon adopted by the ideologues of the Egyptian
Muslim Brotherhood and other pan-Islamist movements.
Maududi
understood the Muslim League as a secular Muslim nationalist organisation. So,
to neutralise Maududi’s criticism, the state of Pakistan, very slowly but
surely, began to borrow his ideas. Yet, Maududi’s own party could not gain much
traction among voters. This was probably due to the aforementioned ploy by the
state and, more so, because from the mid-1970s, even non-religious parties
began to adopt ideas from Maududi and fused them with their secular outlook.
His ideas
in this context reached completion as an elaborate theory in his 1979 magnum
opus, Four Fundamental Concepts of the Quran. The theory suggested that an
Islamic state existed during the early days of the faith because the sacred
scriptures were treated as an all-encompassing political constitution, and that
such a state fell away because of corruption, and, therefore, needs to be
re-enacted.
Interestingly,
this is the narrative popularised by the current government in Pakistan headed
by Imran Khan. Even though Maududi’s thesis was inspired by the modern and
largely European ideas of the state, this does not seem to bother those who
take the revisionist historical claims of his theories as fact.
Ever since
the 1980s, whenever there are claims and promises made by a variety of
ideologues and leaders in the Muslim world, about working towards an Islamic
state or Riyasat-i-Madina, it is assumed that such a state is rooted in the
workings of a 7th century Islamic realm. According to Ahmad, objective history
does not support this. As Egyptian scholar Nasr Abu Zayd once observed,
“Religious scriptures are at the mercy of the ideology of its interpreter. For
a communist, they would thus reveal communism, for a fundamentalist they would
be a highly fundamentalist text, for a feminist it would be a feminist text,
and so on ...”
Original
Headline: DID THE ’ISLAMIC STATE’ EVER EXIST?
Source: The Dawn, Pakistan
URL: https://newageislam.com/islamic-society/the-european-concept-modern-state/d/122593