The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

socialism

The modern concept of socialism (ishtirākiyya), which involves state regulation, if not ownership, of the means of production and distribution, was introduced to the Muslim world in the 19th century, probably in the Ottoman Empire during the reform period known as the Tanzimat (1839–77). The word ishtirākiyya comes from the root sh-r-k, which denotes sharing. The Young Ottomans, as the reform-minded intellectuals were known, diffused the concept and doctrines of socialism among themselves, and through the media their ideas spread into Egypt and the Fertile Crescent. Socialist political groups emerged in Turkey after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, but the regime of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Turkey’s president, exerted constant pressure on these entities in the early to mid-1920s. Socialism and communism were understood to be bedfellows, so the repression of the Turkish Communist Party tended to reverberate and extend to the socialists as well. It was only after the Turkish military coup in 1960 that Turkish socialists acquired a new lease on life.

Meanwhile, in the Arab lands of the Middle East, Egyptian, Syrian, and Lebanese writers such as Salama Musa (d. 1958) and Shibli Shumayyil (d. 1917) published their interpretations of European socialist thought and practice in newspaper essays and articles. By the late 1940s and the 1950s, socialism came to be examined in the context of Arab society and politics, and some of its principal exponents were the Syrian Michel ‘Aflaq (d. 1989) and the Jordanian Munif al-Razzaz (d. 1984), Arab nationalist writers of the Ba‘th Party. Meanwhile, professional men of religion or pious laypersons such as the Syrian Mustafa al-Siba‘i (d. 1964), the leader of the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Egyptian Sayyid Qutb (d. 1966), the main ideologue of the Egyptian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, began writing about socialism in the context of the principles of Islam. In Iran, the cleric Mahmud Taliqani argued that the best attributes of socialism were already to be found in Islam, a line of argument similar to that of Siba‘i and legions of others writing on this topic, both Sunni and Shi‘i. In contrast, Qutb and the Pakistani thinker Abul al-A‘la Mawdudi (d. 1979) argued that all secular ideas were inherently inimical to Islamic thought and practice. Even so, in their view, “Islam” introduced these same principles centuries ago, and the rest of the world was merely belatedly catching up.

Many Muslims have attested that the Islamic scriptures are redolent with themes of egalitarianism, a bedrock concept in socialism. They also alleged that “social justice” (al-‘adāla al-ijtimā‘iyya) is endemic to Islamic belief and used the expression “joint mutual responsibility” (al-takāful al-ijtimā‘ī) to capture the spirit of this principle. But the phrase al-‘adāla al-ijtimā‘iyya is a neologism generated by pious Muslims in the face of writings in non-Islamic social theory, and it was absent from Islamic discourse—whether juristic or theological—until the late modern period. As David Miller, author of Principles of Social Justice, has shown, the concept of social justice emerged in Western political discourse itself only in the late 19th century, even though its genesis might be found in 18th-century writings.

Those responsible for crafting a theory of social justice assumed first of all that every individual is entitled to a claim of fairness. Second, they held that a clearly articulated society with identifiable members must exist in order to assess whether individual members were obtaining their fair share of goods, services, and opportunities. Third, they agreed that sophisticated measures were necessary to make that determination accurately. Fourth, they maintained that an institution (typically, the state) must be able to operate in a manner that would ensure as close an approximation to social justice as possible. Finally, they believed that rational, nonreligious justifications should be provided for each individual’s claim to entitlements, presumably on the argument that religiously based justifications risked omitting entitlements for those who did not profess the mainstream religion of the group.

In the juristic theories of the classical Muslim legists, these conditions and considerations were absent. Indeed, the main concern of these jurists was to identify the caliphate as divinely ordained and its task to ensure the ability of the believer to worship God according to the strictures of the holy law, as opposed to an organizational framework for enforcing the right of individuals to pursue their interests.

Nonetheless, socialism was the preferred model for Muslim writers in the contemporary period. During the Soviet era, Muslim political theorists maintained that “Islam,” which they tended to reify, avoided the excesses of communism and capitalism. They cited scripture, such as Qur’an 11:143: “We have made you a middle-most nation so that you may act as witness over man.” These Muslim writers saw a community of the middle way, as it were, as God’s deliberate creation, which alone could ensure justice, equity, balance, and moderation. In other words, in their view “Islam” avoided extremism. The extremism of communism was its putative brutality against individuals, and the extremism of capitalism was its alleged valorization of greed.

Such interpretations have routinely been made by political leaders and professional men of religion. Among the former are Libyan ruler Mu‘ammar Qaddafi (d. 2011), whose famous Green Book referred to Islam as “the third international theory,” and Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini (d. 1989), who demonized communism and capitalism as the work of Satan. Popular Muslim preachers, such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi (b. 1926), Muhammad al-Ghazali (d. 1996), and Shaykh Muhammad Mutawalli Sha‘rawi (d. 1998)—all Egyptians—have echoed such ideas.

Although socialism in the writings of authors in the Muslim world was undercut to some degree by the collapse of the communist systems in Europe and the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s, its appeal did not vanish. Indeed, to the degree that capitalism was perceived as a threat, a number of Muslim writers upheld the advantages they saw in socialism. But socialism held little appeal for many other Muslims, given its association with secular thought and the suppression of organized Islamic activities by some political leaders in the Muslim world who professed Arab socialism, such as President Gamal Abdel Nasser (d. 1970) in Egypt or the Ba‘thist leaders in Syria and Iraq from the 1960s into the 21st century.