The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

consultation

The idea of mutual consultation, or shūrā (also mushāwara, mashwara, tashāwur, or istishāra in Arabic, i.e., conferring with other individuals or a group), which is referred to in the Qur’an (42:38; cf. 2:233, 3:159) and the sunna as an aid to decision making in both private and public affairs, has become the core value of a newly propagated Islamic system with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. In Islamic history, the term shūrā is especially connected with the small council of prominent early Muslims, which selected ‘Uthman b. ‘Affan as the third caliph. In the following centuries, the notion of consultation remained attractive for dissidents (e.g., Kharijis), who used it to question the legitimacy of the reigning dynasty of the day. Likewise, the motif of advice appears in several obviously nonauthentic reports on the Rightly Guided Caliphs, who supposedly held councils frequently concerning important matters of the state. In Arabic-Islamic literature, particularly in books on etiquette, the merits of consultation were praised and arbitrary personal rule condemned. Nevertheless, shūrā neither played a central role in premodern Muslim reasoning on the Islamic state nor was ever institutionalized prior to the 19th century. Occasionally, judges or rulers applied shūrā in order to distribute responsibility in sensitive cases. As in pre-Islamic tribal society, however, the consultation circles in the premodern era remained ad hoc assemblies and exclusive bodies.

In the 19th century, reformers began to seize upon the ideal of consultative government as a way of arguing for the basic compatibility between Islam and constitutionalism. Intensive research on shūrā since the 1970s did not result in an innovative approach to deliberative democracy. Generally, the debate remained confined to a retrospective discourse of Islamic jurisprudence, focusing on the same questions as centuries before: What is the meaning of shūrā and its derivatives? What is the scope and necessity of its application? Is consultation obligatory or only recommended? Are the results of the consultative process binding or nonbinding? Who are the councilors, and who should select or elect them? On which issues is consultation allowed? When a concrete political system had to be identified with shūrā, both religious and secular authors either adopted a conventional Western model or defined Islamic systems only in the negative (in other words, in contrast to autocracy or theocracy). As a result, theories of an Islamic democracy have offered reformulations of Western perceptions in an Islamic idiom rather than a real alternative.

Notwithstanding the great spectrum of theories, four tendencies can be distinguished in the contemporary debate on shūrā and democracy. Representatives of the first tendency, radical Islamists such as Sayyid Qutb and his adherents, see the superiority of an Islamic system based on shari‘a and shūrā; democracy as well as political parties and the sovereign electorate are condemned as alien ideas, rooted in evil and unbelief. The opposite view, held by ‘Allal al-Fasi and Khalid Muhammad Khalid, among others, equates shūrā with a kind of original or authentic Arabic-Islamic democracy. A third view is held by the majority of pragmatic or moderate Islamists. They have embraced the rhetoric and politics of democratization and have adopted several aspects of the reformist discourse. Apart from consultation, consensus and ijtihād (individual reasoning with particular reference to the so-called public benefit) are crucial concepts in their articulation of an Islamic democracy. Shūrā is often considered a comprehensive principle not limited to the political sphere but equally desirable in other realms, including familial matters. The specific political order should accord with the requirements of the times, provided it remains within a framework of Islamic principles. Critical issues in conceptions, such as those of the major ideologists of the Muslim Brotherhood, are the implications of this particular view for the legal status of both women and religious minorities and the degree to which tolerance and pluralism are accepted. Insisting on the centrality of a fixed shari‘a without defining its exact meaning, maintaining a traditionalist gender discourse, restricting religious freedom to monotheist religions, and expressing disdain toward “alien” values such as individualism, secularism, materialism, and atheism call into question their adherence to the concept of liberal democracy. All in all, proponents of this tendency seem to envisage the Islamization and moralization of democracy.

The fourth tendency is represented by various secular scholars and intellectuals, among them Mohamed Talbi (b. 1921) or Mohammed ‘Abed al-Jabri (1935–2010). Having realized the necessity of a culturally embedded democracy, they perceive shūrā as an essential principle derived from the Qur’an and sunna and consider it one of the universal principles that all humans know through their innate sense. The secular modernists discern in shūrā not an early democracy awaiting contemporary resurrection but rather some general human truth or, as Talbi puts it, an antityrannical ethos. Since human institutions and organizational forms are always time-bound and limited, the actual task is to work out a concept of government in the Islamic territory that would realize the higher ideal, whether one calls it democracy or shūrā.

Because of the Imami Shi‘i doctrine of the imamate, shūrā has never played a key role in Shi‘i political thought, not even in modern times.

In practice, the idea of consultation has proven to be compatible with various political systems, whether monarchical or republican, with nominated or selected members, and with assemblies of different kinds.