The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

libertarianism

Libertarianism is a tradition in Western political philosophy that emphasizes choice and political freedom from state coercion over other values such as equality. In one variant, libertarian thought approaches anarcho-syndicalism, promoting social organization that eliminates the state altogether. Another variant, minarchism, emphasizes a necessary minimal role for the state, such as the protection of basic rights and collective defense. Minarchist libertarianism, defined as the idea that the political authority of the central state apparatus should be constrained to certain necessary functions for preserving social choice, has notable parallels in Islamic tradition.

Minarchism and libertarianism are not labels that are widely associated with Islamic political thought. The word “libertarianism” evokes acceptance of social behaviors unfettered by common standards of decency or morality. Yet minarchist libertarianism’s resonance with Islamic tradition comes from its emphasis on preserving the moral autonomy of the individual and collective grouping and protecting society from tyrannies and coercion by the state as well as nonstate actors.

A key Qur’anic injunction regarding religious choice reads, “Let there be no compulsion in religion” (Q. 2:256), which suggests that individuals cannot be coerced into religious observance. Choosing Islam, or submitting to the will of God, requires the opportunity to choose otherwise. State coercion can remove that choice and thus reduce the possibility of genuine submission by those in society. Numerous injunctions against spying, and a high bar for proving guilt in serious infractions of religious law, provide significant scope for individual choice without state interference.

Islamic law arguably developed in conscious opposition to the state as prominent scholarly authorities cultivated distance from political power. This is encapsulated in the failed Abbasid attempt to impose a Mu‘tazili hegemony on Islamic interpretation. Furthermore, fiqh, the attempt to understand shari‘a (Islamic law), has produced often-divergent rulings. The plurality of Islamic fiqh positions suggests that no single approach can be codified into public law without detracting from other approaches. This is represented by the traditional closing line in the fatwa (religious opinion) literature, “And God knows best,” suggesting that the author does not presume to speak for God but rather offers a fallible opinion on an interpretative matter.

Particular claims to what constitutes an “Islamic” approach to state-society relations, despite the hegemonic aspirations of advocates, have been unsuccessful in gaining unanimous or high-majority support. There is no equivalent of the Roman Catholic pope (and the institutional structure provided by bishops), who can claim to definitively pronounce judgment on religious matters in most Islamic communities. The universal clerisy assumed in the Islamic context, as well as the normative practice that represents juristic legal opinions as fallible, suggests that respect for plural interpretation is built into Islamic tradition. Minarchist libertarianism offers a vision of a state that tries to safeguard such plurality through nonendorsement of specific doctrines. Ironically, the effort to assert a pluralism-respecting central state can itself be a totalizing claim about what state-society relations are most “Islamic.”

Much of contemporary Islamic political activism seems inclined toward the statist direction, in which the Islamic state is presumed to endorse a comprehensive doctrinal position codifying Islamic guidance into public law. This is notable in the platforms of Hizb ut Tahrir al-Islami (Islamic Liberation Party), the Jama‘at-i Islami of Pakistan, and some branches of the Muslim Brotherhood. The opposite position—that the role of the central state should be restricted as much as possible—appears to have few takers, and there are relatively few self-proclaimed Islamic libertarians.

In practice, some approaches carrying the libertarian label are difficult to distinguish from liberal perspectives. One element that separates the two is that libertarian polities can potentially incorporate large numbers of illiberal constituents. This is partly because the libertarian approach is better placed to recognize the rights of plural social groupings as well as the rights of individuals. While a neat solution to the problem of reconciling individual and collective rights has not emerged, traditional norms of respect for interpretative choice suggest that plural groupings may coexist in an Islamic context.