Modern Islamic Political Thought

Rashīd Riḍā’s important treatise on the Caliphate (Al-khilāfah aw’al-imāmat ’al-uẓmā, the Caliphate or the Supreme Imāmate, 1922–3) was published on the eve of the abolition of the Caliphate. Nevertheless, it gives vivid expression both to this caution, and the tension between the demands of Arab nationalism, and religious loyalty to the Caliphate. It is a work which should obviously be appreciated against the background of Riḍā’s intellectual development – his change from an advocate of the Ottoman Caliphate in the name of Islamic universalism, to a relatively objective commentator on its decline – as well as in conjunction with his modernist ideas on the necessity of ijtihād (independent judgement), legislation, and fighting ignorance and superstition among Muslims.² He belonged to that generation of Syrian émigrés who made Egypt their home and centre of intellectual activity at the end of the nineteenth century, and were therefore able to take a broader view of things.³ He condemned ethnic and racial prejudice, and criticised Ibn Khaldūn for glorifying ‘aṣabiyyah, or group solidarity and clan partisanship, as the motivating force of polities, dynasties and even prophetic missions. Notwithstanding all this, he was an active spokesman of Syrian Arab nationalism. In 1920 he became President of the Syrian National Congress that elected Fayṣal as King of Syria. It is perhaps this oscillation between Islamic universalism and Arab nationalism which is behind his undogmatic, at times ambivalent, views on the Caliphate and the Islamic state – a feature which is all the more striking because of the unshakeable tone of conviction imparted by his other, innumerable articles in his periodical Al-Manār.

Riḍā brings up the subject of the Islamic state after dealing with the problems of the Caliphate. He does this in three stages: (1) first he traces the foundations of the Caliphate in the Islamic political theory; (2) then he demonstrates the cleavage between that theory and the political practice of Sunnī Muslims; (3) finally he advances his own idea of what an Islamic state should be. Each of these stages will have to be described in some detail.⁴

(1) In the first stage, his introductory résumé of the classical theory of the Caliphate is ostensibly aimed at establishing its ‘obligatoriness’ (wujūb), which he holds to be based on the religious law (shar‘), and not, as the Mu‘tazilah contended, on reason (‘aql). To prove his point, he relies heavily on the Prophetic sayings (ḥadīths) and consensus (ijmā‘) but not on the Qur’ān. This, and his extensive quotations from Māwardī, Ghazālī, al-Ījī and Sa’d ad-Dīn at-Taftāzānī, at first create the impression that he has subscribed to a legalistic approach to the question. But it soon becomes obvious that his main objective is to show that the classical theory sets such high standards for the right conduct of the Caliphate that the institution which has come to be known under this name to Muslims in history should unhesitatingly be rejected as a monstrous deviation. In the light of this conclusion, his quotations from authoritative sources of the past transpire to be no more than precautionary lines of defence against possible orthodox attacks.

He differentiates between what he calls the ideal Caliphate, which as is agreed by most Muslims existed only under the Rāshidūn (Rightly-Guided) and a few exceptional pious rulers like the Umayyad ‘Umar Ibn ‘Abd al-‘Azīz, and the actual Caliphate, under which the Muslims lived for the best part of their history. Subdividing the actual Caliphate into the Imāmate of Necessity (al-imāmat’ aḍ-ḍarūrah) and Tyranny, or conquest by force (at-taghallub bi’l-quwwah), he again summons the past jurists to his aid to demonstrate that these varieties of the Caliphate were permitted and tolerated only as temporary expedients, in special circumstances. The Imāmate of Necessity was allowed in cases when all the essential prerequisites of the Caliph, especially justice, efficiency, and descent from the Quraysh could not be found in one person, and the electors had therefore to settle for a candidate who possessed most of these qualities. The Imāmate of Tyranny was simply installed by force, and rested on the family or tribal solidarity of its founders, with no room left for the approval of the electors. But the jurists’ permission to the Muslims to tolerate or obey these regimes, Riḍā asserts, was not supposed to be more than a dispensation; by no means did it absolve the believers from the duty of striving towards establishing a proper Caliphate. The Imāmate of Necessity had to be obeyed because its alternative was chaos. Less dignified was the obedience to the Imāmate of Tyranny, beFcause it belonged to the same category of actions as the eating of pork or the flesh of animals not killed according to ritual requirements, and in cases of unavoidable necessity. Riḍā gives equal weight to the jurists’ detailed descriptions of the conditions under which the Caliph forfeits his rights, and can be deposed. After quoting all the cases which, according to Māwardī, give cause for the deposition of the Caliph (loss of moral probity, physical disability, insanity, captivity, apostasy and unbelief), he dwells on the right to revolt against unjust rulers. He considers this problem in the case of a properly constituted Caliphate, because the Imāmate of Tyranny obviously falls outside any such discussion, and is governed by the maxim ‘the necessities make the forbidden things permissible’ (aḍ-ḍarūrāt tubīḥ al-maḥḍūrāt).⁵

In his desire to prove the soundness of the theoretical Caliphate, Riḍā simply avers that the past authorities have imposed the obligation to resist injustice and oppression on ahl al-ḥall wa’l-‘aqd, ‘the people who loose and bind’. This term, which we have come across several times before, covers all varieties of the representatives of the community, particularly the ‘Ulamā’. The vital condition which should be observed by this group in exercising its right to resist injustice ‘even if by war’ is that the ‘advantages of such an act should outweigh its disadvantages’.⁶ Riḍā again quotes classical jurists in support of this, but what he fails to do is to examine questions left unanswered in the principal sources of classical theory. In the first place, the qualifications laid down for the exercise of the right to revolt can, in practice, evidently be more constrictive than vague phrases like ‘advantages outweighing disadvantages’ would imply. The urge to revolt must always be weighed against the fear that it might result in anarchy. This fear acts as an ever-present deterrent to rebellion by making the status quo, compared with probable ensuing civil strife, appear as ‘the lesser of the two evils’. Then there is the problem of defining exactly what constitutes injustice and oppression, and what is equally important, determining whether they have been committed with a frequency and on a scale which would warrant revolt. Presumably occasional contraventions of the canons of justice cannot give cause for rebellion, since they fall into the category of ma‘ṣīyah, or individual sin, which, contrary to kufr (unbelief), is a controversial ground for disobeying the Caliph; some authorities maintain that in such cases he should merely be advised to correct his behaviour.⁷ And finally, there is the procedural problem of locating the authority for settling the foregoing questions. This, in fact, is part of the larger problem of the accountability of the Caliph or ruler in general which we shall discuss in the following chapter. In Riḍā’s analysis, the only people qualified to pass judgement on the conduct of the rulers are again those who ‘loose and bind’.⁸ In the absence of any tradition of political thinking outside the framework of the Sharī‘ah, however, these leaders can do no other than follow the advice of the ‘Ulamā’, or the mujtahids. So ultimately everything turns on the ability and integrity of the ‘Ulamā’ to voice their honest opinion on vital political issues. When one remembers that in classical theory the Caliph was also supposed to be a mujtahid,⁹ the challenge posed to the ‘Ulamā’ by an offending Caliph seems all the more daunting.

But, like ‘Abdūh,¹⁰ Riḍā diagnoses the corruption of the ‘Ulamā’, and their subservience to rulers, as one of the main causes of the distortion of the Caliphate, from its ideal form under the Rāshidūn into an apparatus serving the basest interests of the despots and dynasts, thus making tyranny the normal form of government in Islamic history.¹¹ Hence the very people who are charged with the task of preserving the justness of the system prove to be the mainstay of its abuses. The vicious circle is complete – freedom from injustice is not possible without the ‘Ulamā’ taking the lead, but the ‘Ulamā’ themselves perpetuate injustice by giving it an air of divine providence. The conundrum is not exclusive to the theory of the Caliphate, but is inherent in any political system shielded by an ideology, since this is bound to produce after a while self-appointed guardians of its ‘truth’, ready to hurl accusations of heresy at all potential or actual rivals.

Interestingly enough, when it comes to mentioning specific cases from history of how the Muslims have used their legitimate right to revolt against unjust rulers, Riḍā mentions only the example of the Turks overthrowing the Ottoman Sulṭānate.¹² This is strange, not only because the subsequent secularisation of Turkey greatly diminished the value of any argument that the Turkish decision to overthrow the Sulṭānate had been a simple exercise of the right to resist, or revolt, against injustice, but also because – as was noted before¹³ – the Turks had justified their decision by denying both the canonical obligatoriness and primacy of the Caliphate – a view diametrically opposed to that taken by Riḍā in the earlier sections of his treatise.¹⁴ But perhaps such laconic remarks in favour of the Turkish decision constitute a more reliable indicator of Riḍā’s real feelings on the subject than the quotations from the orthodox jurists. Perhaps these quotations were really meant to ward off the accusations of heresy, in order to make his suggestion for the future of the Caliphate palatable to orthodox tastes. One thing certainly casts doubt on the seriousness of Riḍā’s debate about the right to revolt. He quotes all the principal jurists on the matter, except one who otherwise enjoys his unstinting admiration: Ibn Taymiyyah. It was, as was mentioned in the Introduction, Ibn Taymiyyah who, with more authority than any other orthodox jurist, sharpened the Muslims’ consciousness of the excruciating choice they have to make between anarchy and injustice, every time they feel oppressed by a tyrant. It was with him that endurance of the status quo acquired the dignity of a pious act. His warning against the evils of anarchy has to be treated seriously because it comes not from a pseudo-intellectual cynically preaching doctrines favourable to the interests of the ruling classes but from a devoted religious thinker who had the interests of the Muslims at heart, and paid for his convictions with his freedom.

But this omission might also be to Riḍā’s credit, because it denotes his awareness of a major pitfall in Sunnī political theory. He undoubtedly knew that so long as the authority of a government, whether called Caliphate or otherwise, is supposedly sanctioned by religious tenets, no rebellion against it can be easily justified. Quoting Ibn Taymiyyah would have faced him with the necessity of engaging in a great deal of sophistry to explain it away, or make it consonant with his other arguments. He therefore saw the way out of the vicious circle created by the ‘Ulamā’s double role as both the defenders and monitors of the status quo, by concentrating on the familiar safeguards against the abuse of power: unfailing enforcement of the principle of consultation (shūrā) between the ruler and the ‘people who loose and bind’,¹⁵ full assumption by the latter group of its responsibility for the sound conduct of public affairs, and what for him seemed to be the most important of all, restoring the pristine standards of simplicity, humility and frugality in the lifestyle of the rulers, so that those attaining high positions are not motivated by the desires of self-aggrandisement and hegemony. Of these suggestions, only that on the necessity of reactivating the ‘people who loose and bind’ is both crucial and practical, and we shall later consider its implications. Consultation is also feasible, provided it is clearly defined and, as Riḍā himself realised, guaranteed by solid constitutional arrangements. The last proposal, on the rulers’ modest living, is obviously purely moral, and relies heavily on the good faith of the rulers, although one shrewd way of ensuring it, which he advises on the Prophet’s authority, is to debar from office those who display willingness to occupy it (ṭālib al-wilāyah la yuwallā).¹⁶

(2) The second stage of Riḍā’s advance towards the idea of the Islamic state is to examine a number of practical difficulties hindering the rehabilitation of the Caliphate – especially finding the right person to become the Caliph of all Muslims, as well as the right city for his capital. Surveying the political scene, he rules out the most ambitious candidate for the Caliphate at the time, Sharīf Ḥusayn of Mecca, for his despotism, lack of canonical knowledge, pro-British sympathies, and opposition to reformism. Turks are also naturally excluded, since they were at the time opposed to the concentration of all spiritual and political powers in the hands of one man anyway. He is silent on the Egyptian candidates. Only Imām Yaḥyā of the Yemen enjoys his approval because of his mastery of the religious law, moral probity, efficiency, political semi-independence, and Qurayshī descent. But he admits that the Imām could become the Caliph of all Muslims only if, first, the people of Ḥijāz, Tihāmah and Najd agreed to take the oath of allegiance to him, and, second, if the Imām himself undertook to observe the rules of ijtihād by allowing all groups of Muslims to follow their particular rites. In point of fact, laying such conditions was another way of stating the impracticality of the whole scheme, for the simple reason that the Imām belonged to the Zaydī sect of Shī‘īsm. Although, as Riḍā rightly points out, compared with other Shī‘īs, the Zaydīs are the closest to Sunnī, especially Ḥanafī, Muslims in canonical matters, it is hard to imagine how the majority of Sunnī Muslims could have brought themselves to obeying a Shī‘ī caliph, of whatever denomination.¹⁷

So he arrives at the sad conclusion that there really is no candidate to meet the ideal requirements of the Caliphate. For more or less the same kind of reasons he finds both Ḥijāz and Istanbul unsuitable as the seat of a restored Caliphate. Ideally, he says, the Caliphate should be revived through the co-operation between the Turks and the Arabs of the Peninsula, who between themselves possess the essential qualities required for the regeneration of Islam. The Turks occupy a place between the rigidity of the Arabs of the Peninsula and the undiscriminating, Westernised outlook of those who seek to dispense with the religious and historical constituents of the Islamic community; the determination, tenacity and courage of Turkey’s new leaders, and their skill in military techniques, ensure their success in reforming Islam by establishing a Caliphate equipped with both the material strength and moral virtues necessary to protect the Muslims from Bolshevism and anarchy. The Arabs of the Peninsula, on the other hand, are the ‘substance’ and ‘root’ of Islam; there is no trace of heresy and Westernisation in their midst, their only defect being ‘ignorance of the ways of administering and developing the land’.¹⁸ He also praises the Arabs because of the pivotal place of their language in Islam; this has nothing to do with national or racial prejudices, but is cleverly incorporated into his reformistic doctrines: Islamic revivalism depends on ijtihād in religious law, and ijtihād is impossible without proper understanding of the sources of the law, for which knowledge of Arabic is an indispensable tool Again the realist in him takes over; he confesses to his lack of confidence in both the Arabs and the Turks, because neither of them has reached the requisite degree of progress, and neither is showing any readiness to co-operate in such an enterprise.¹⁹

He then makes a suggestion which, although sounding as utopian as the previous one, gives him the opportunity to set forth his principal ideas on the nature and future of the Caliphate: it should be installed, so he proposes, in an ‘intermediary zone’ between the Arabian Peninsula and Anatolia, where Arabs, Turks and Kurds live side by side; for instance in Mosul, which at that time was the bone of contention between Iraq, Turkey and Syria, and moreover he wants the adjoining territories, which were also being claimed by Syria, to be annexed to it. He hopes that once the area is declared neutral, as the seat of the Caliphate, the parties would stop quarrelling over it, and Mosul would be truly ‘worthy of its name (in Arabic, mauṣil, literally, the place of re-union) . . . serving as the spiritual link (rābiṭah waṣl ma‘nawī)’ at a geographic borderline.²⁰

The metaphor ‘spiritual link’ is in fact the key to Riḍā’s vision of a regenerate Caliphate – and of an Islamic state. He elaborates this vision in his proposal on the organisation of the Caliphate. For him, this presented a simpler problem than the previous issues, not least because he could approach it free from the fear of offending any national susceptibilities. What he suggests is not in essence different from what the Turks had already done, namely, the transformation of the Caliphate into a spiritual office, serving mainly as a symbol of the unity of all Muslims, settling canonical disputes, but also overseeing the general adherence to Islamic rules among his followers. This is proved not only by the kind of remark just quoted on the character of the Caliphal realm, but also by his heavy emphasis on the moral and scholarly qualities of the candidates. True, one can point to some of his remarks, requiring the acknowledgement of a properly elected Caliph as ‘the just Imām, representing the Prophet . . . in upholding religion and temporal politics( sīyāsat ’ad-dunyā)’,²¹ to argue that what he had in mind was more than a purely spiritual pontificate. But the opposite testimony of other features of his scheme is overwhelming: his lengthy discursus on the virtues of ‘independent knowledge’ (al-‘ilm al-istiqlatī) or ijtihād and other related juridical talents, which takes up almost the whole of the section on the ‘institutions’ of the future Caliphate²² leaves the reader in little doubt that these are for him the most essential qualifications of the Caliph. His reticence on efficiency, courage and other civic and political virtues which he himself enumerates in the first phase of his argument in the manner of classical theorists may not mean their exclusion, but does mean their relegation to a lower rank. His proposed procedure of electing the Caliph is also isulated against political considerations by confining the candidates to the graduates of a special university to be set up to train not only the future Caliphs but also religious judges and muftīs. The courses which he recommends for the curriculum of such a university are all certainly useful to widen the trainees’ general knowledge, but hardly to produce practical politicians: international law, heresiography, universal history, sociology and study of papal, episcopal and patriarchal institutions. Lastly, the proposed administrative offices of the Caliphate were all of a consultative, supervisory and apostolic nature – which, even though carrying immense political weight, were not exactly the same as the attributes of a fully-fledged Caliphate.²³

When these suggestions are read in the context of Riḍā’s reformism – his attack on ‘fossilised jurisconsults’, his praise of modern sciences and technology, and his repeated pleas for the revival of ijtihād – their innovative import, and proximity to ‘Abd ar-Rāziq’s conclusions, becomes more visible. But again unlike ‘Abd ar-Rāziq, he could not be accused of having denied the canonical origins of the Caliphate, or having pleaded the separation of religion and politics in Islam. He had, after all, demonstrated his earnestness by paying attention to some of the practical obstacles to the restoration of the Caliphate in its traditional form – a feature missing from the works of most Muslim writers of the period, who concerned themselves with speculative generalisations. After identifying these obstacles, he had arrived at a conclusion which was not very far from that reached by the Turks and ‘Abd ar-Rāziq – although, compared with the latter, from different premises. The conclusion was that, however much the Sunnī Muslims, himself included, piously wished otherwise, it was impossible to revive the traditional Caliphate, and hence it would be better to devise the nearest alternative to it.

(3) It is here that Rashīd Riḍā turns from the question of the Caliphate to that of the Islamic state – a subtle, and almost imperceptible, transition. However paradoxical it may sound, the term he uses for the Islamic state (ad-dawlah, or al-ḥukūmat al-Islāmiyyah)²⁴ is, at least in its modern sense, a new addition to Islamic nomenclature thanks mainly to the Ottomans. In classical Islam, state or government (the distinction between the two is a recent refinement) was known, if not as Caliphate or Imāmate, then under such terms as imārah (amirate), or wilāyah (guardianship or governorship). Riḍā does not give a definition of the Islamic state, all the time implying that it is synonymous with the Caliphate. Sometimes he uses compounds such as the ‘Islamic Caliphate’ (al-khilāfat al-Islāmiyyah), or the ‘government of the Caliphate’ (ḥukūmat al-khilāfah),²⁵ which are rather tautological. Hence the many ambiguities in his plan, which is nominally offered in the name of the reorganisation of the Caliphate, but actually proposes a new entity, since some of its functions and institutions (for instance, legislation and propaganda) are unprecedented. It is another evidence of his pragmatic disposition that his plan for this reorganisation makes a direct assault on two vital issues: the principle of popular sovereignty, and the possibility of man-made laws. Schemes for the Islamic state which take no account of these two questions are empty expressions of utopian goals – and there have been many such schemes offered to Muslims even after Rashīd Riḍā proposed his. He and his master ‘Abduh deserve great credit for having at least initiated the debate over them.

Of the two issues, the first is treated lightly. All that Riḍā says on the subject is what most contemporary Muslim writers – whether traditionalist or modernist – charitably recommend: that once the government implements the principle of shūrū, or consultation between the rulers and the ruled, and the provisions laid down by the jurisconsults on the right to resist injustice, democracy is ensured for Muslims.²⁶ But consultation depends on the good faith of the rulers, and the vicious circle created by the provisions against injustice has just been hinted at. A further guarantee of democracy for Riḍā is the predominance of the ‘Ulamā’ who, in his view, are ideally placed to act as the natural and genuine representatives of Muslims. In saying this, he is manifestly inspired by the performance of the Shī‘ī ‘Ulamā’ of Iran, whom he admires as being the only men of their class living up to this expectation by their leadership of the famous Tobacco Rebellion of 1892 and the Constitutional Revolution of 1906.²⁷ The second issue – on legislation – is treated more fully, and by leading up again to the function of the ‘Ulamā’ links with his discussion on the first issue, and in a way makes up for its shortcomings.

If political philosophers have normally understood law in terms of a rational requirement of orderly social life, the Salafī proponents of the Islamic state have more often tended to conceive of it as a testing ground for measuring the Muslim community’s cultural and moral integration. It was ‘Abduh who argued cogently against the Muslims’ adoption of foreign, mainly Western, laws and institutions. He put the blame for this firmly at the door of orthodoxy for its impervious juridical outlook: by ignoring the Sharī‘ah’s boundless resources for legal renovation, orthodoxy fostered the misconception that Islam by its very nature is incapable of coping with the growing complexity of modern life, and Muslims had therefore to have recourse to foreign laws. Pursuing the same point, Rashīd Riḍā likens the legal system of every society to its language: just as no language should allow the grammatical rules of another language to govern its syntax and modes of expression, if it wants to keep its identity, no nation should adopt the laws of another nation without exercising its independent judgement and power of adaptation for adjusting them to its beliefs, mores and interests, otherwise it will fall prey to mental anarchy, and forfeit its solidarity and independence. The Muslims have not only borrowed foreign laws, worse still, they have done so without any sense of discrimination. They can now achieve cultural and moral redemption only by liberating all the latent agents of dynamism in their religion. For’ Abduh, the main methodological tools for bringing this about were first, the principle of istiṣlāḥ or maṣlaḥah, the supremacy of public interest as the guiding norm to deduce laws from the Qur’ān and Tradition, and second, the method of ikhtīyār (selection) or talfīq, namely comparison and synthesis of the good points of all the four Sunnī legal schools, and even the opinions of independent jurists not adhering to any of them.²⁸

As muftī of Egypt, ‘Abduh applied these principles to a number of his rulings and decisions on issues which were seemingly trivial, or peripheral to the tension between tradition and modern political ideas, such as whether Muslims could wear European hats or eat the flesh of the animals slaughtered by Christians and Jews, whether the painting of human figures was permitted by religious law, whether polygamy was good or bad. Riḍā’s departures were also of the same nature, and have been criticised because, with the exception of his concession on credit, and his interpretation of ribā (usury) as a compensation for service, following Muḥammad ‘Abduh and Ibn Qayyim Jawziyyah, and his decision that art (music and painting) is canonically permissible hardly ‘touch any of the more vital aspects of a modern state and society, such as the position of women’.²⁹ But such criticisms overlook the ability of orthodox forces to mount a successful resistance against any innovations of a more substantial scope, with devastating consequences for the further advance of religious modernism – witness their vociferous reaction against Ṭāhā Ḥusayn’s critique of pre-Islamic poetry, with its implied threat to all traditional thinking,³⁰ and ‘Abd ar-Rāziq’s liberationist tract against the Caliphate. As it happened, the peripheral reforms of ‘Abduh and Riḍā played, in the long run, a more effective part in transforming the attitudes of ordinary Egyptians towards modernity.

From the premise that the independence of the legal system is an essential bulwark for the Muslims against cultural alienation and moral anarchy, Riḍā not only draws the obvious conclusion that the Sharī‘ah must be preserved or revived in its proper form, but also infers that the civic rule (ḥukūmah madaniyyah) can neither survive nor function without legislation. The term he uses for legislation is ishtirā‘, which again is a neologism in the sense he has in mind, because although it is derived from the root shar‘ (literally meaning law, but specifically, Divine Law), in his usage, it means both the actual law-making and the ability to deduce law (istinbāt) from the Sharī‘ah. He stresses that the essence of these rules is their adaptability to meet the exigencies of every time and place, and fit the religious and political characteristics of every nation.³¹ The final criterion, however, against which such laws should be judged remains the Sharī‘ah.

This is by no means an original idea, since one could find its precedents and counterparts in the history of the Ottoman legal reforms,³² or in the controversies during the Iranian Constitutional Revolution.³³ But in expressing it, Riḍā comes amazingly close to the secularists when he states the canonical reasons for the Muslims’ freedom of legislation in non-religious matters. The most important of these, according to him, is as always the necessity of ijtihād. But there are also two other reasons. He adduces one of these from the well-known division in the Sharī‘ah between the rules governing devotional or ritual acts (‘ibādāt), and those governing social relations or mundane transactions (mu‘āmalāt). He redefines the nature of the latter category, which is primarily relevant to the task of legislator. He says that relations governed by such rules are only subject to certain general religious principles, such as the individuals’ respect for one another’s rights, honour, lives and properties. But outside this proviso, all administrative, juridical, political and military acts, in which the main intention is not ‘nearness to God’, belong to the ‘branches’ (furuū‘) of the Sharī‘ah, provided they are performed in good faith. This means that they are fit to be the subject of novel, man-made laws.³⁴ The other reason results from the distinction between religion (dīn) and the law (shar‘). It is true, Riḍā says, that Islam consists of both, and in traditional sources the terms for both are used interchangeably. But they can give rise to two separate sets of rules. Borrowing a term from logic, he describes their relationship as one of the Universal (religion) to the Particular (law).³⁵ He does not pursue his analogy, and his imprecision again lends considerable potential to his argument as a defence of secular legislation. In logic, the relationship of the Universal to the Particular can be one of two kinds: absolute (Animal to Man), and particular (Man to White man). Riḍā does not say to which of these two kinds the relationship of religion to law in Islam belongs. If it is of the first kind, all provisions of the law, however irrelevant they might be to Man’s spiritual needs, have to be under the aegis of religion. But if it belongs to the second category, then large areas of the law can be independent of religion.

In addition to these general considerations, there are also specific legal formulae which Riḍā cites as further licence for a modern legislator to make public interest his paramount aim. They all emanate from the notion of necessity. He mentions only two of these (we will know of more in our discussion on socialism in the next chapter). First is the principle of protection against distress and constriction (‘usr wa ḥaraj), which applies essentially to social relations or transactions, but only rarely to acts of devotion and worship, because in these a certain degree of discomfort and even painful effort is necessary to cultivate discipline and purity of the soul, whereas social relations contain the religious element only to the extent described before. Second is the principle of refraining from causing loss or harm to oneself or to others (lā ḍara wa lā ḍirār).³⁶ Hence one might say that even in the absence of any textual injunction in the Qur’ān and Tradition on ijtihād, the principle of necessity would have been enough to furnish a canonical basis for independent legal deductions.

Legal dynamism thus turns out in Riḍā’s description to be the cornerstone of the Islamic state in the modern world. In his mind, so long as such a state is able, thanks to the intellectual vitality of the ‘Ulamā’, to seek solutions to problems hitherto unforeseen in the Sharī‘ah, not by going beyond its provisions but by making full use of its inherent mechanism for renovation, there is no danger of the Muslims losing faith in the excellence of their religion. For this reason, although Riḍā identifies the Ummah or community as the locus of national sovereignty,³⁷ he uses this democratic fiction to bolster the position of its representatives – ahl al-ḥall wa’l-‘aqd, ‘the people who loose and bind’. It will be recalled that this term includes the ‘Ulamā’, which in the present context means the jurisconsults or the jurists who, according to Riḍā, should possess, in addition to a thorough grounding in the traditional sources of the Sharī‘ah, a lively critical mind for independent judgement. But for him, what should distinguish them most markedly from other experts in the application of the Sharī‘ah is their moderation: they must strike a balance between the Westernised élite and the hidebound, dogmatic, orthodoxy.³⁸ As we saw, Riḍā himself tried – although not always successfully – to practise this moderation in his observations on the state of the Muslims of his time: his critique of both Arabs and Turks for their faults, while recognising their merits; his admiration of the Iranian Shī‘ī ‘Ulamā’ as the true spokesmen of their people in both religious and political matters, while criticising some of their doctrines for apotheosing their Imāms; his sympathies for the fundamentalism of the Ḥanbalī school,³⁹ while advocating flexibility in its application,⁴⁰ and finally, some of his utilitarian legal teachings as exemplified by the counsels mentioned before. The negative side of moderation is his occasional unwillingness to make a clear-cut stand on controversial issues, or to think out the full implications of his reformism. This may be the result not so much of a ‘tendency to dash off in all directions’,⁴¹ as of the honest doubts afflicting a reformer who leaves the safe corner of abstract speculation for the hectic arena of practical politics.

We can now summarise our discussion on Rashīd Riḍā by drawing together the main strands of his idea of the Islamic state. The broad ideological orientation of such a state, contrary to what is suggested by the label of Riḍā’s own brand of reformed Islam – fundamentalism – is not a total return to the origins of Islam. It is a return to only those elements of early Islamic idealism which are untarnished by mundane, ethnic and sectarian prejudices. The political, social and economic affairs of the state are regulated by a constitution which is inspired in its general principles by the Qur’ān, the Tradition and the historical experience of the Rāshidūn caliphs. Since ijtihād is an imperative attribute of all legal thinking, these primordial sources are not likely to present many insuperable obstacles to any measure designed to promote public welfare. This is further ensured by the provision that the Head of State – Caliph or Imām – should himself be a mujtahid, and aided in his juridical capacity by ‘the people who loose and bind’. These people form the most powerful group in the state and are the guardians of its Islamic character. They share many of the theoretical functions of their traditional forerunners: they elect the Caliph and represent the community. It is in consultation with them that the decisions of the state acquire a religiously binding force. But what is new in their case is their power to legislate. It is thanks to this feature that law-making, as an ongoing effort to find rational and systematic solutions to unprecedented problems, is no longer an innovation. The Sharī‘ah continues to have overriding authority, but there is also a body of ‘positive law’ (qānūn) subordinate to it, in the sense that if there is conflict, it is the Sharī‘ah which is valid, but otherwise positive law is accepted and with a binding force which derives ultimately from the principles of Islam.’⁴² The Caliph is elected by the representatives of all Muslims from a group of highly trained jurisconsults who should also have impeccable reputations; but he is not required to have any specifically political and military qualities. There is ambiguity about the nature of his authority and leadership, but whatever it is, he is not a temporal ruler. This does not mean that his office is apolitical, but since positive law occupies such a pivotal place in the state, there is an overwhelming emphasis on his status as the moving spirit of the legislative process.

The Head of State or Caliph is the elected leader of all Muslims – (Twelver) Shī‘īs, Zaydīs, Ibāḍī (Khārijīs) and the four schools of Sunnīsm, but seeks neither the abolition of their differences nor a forced integration of their creeds, but simply a recognition of doctrinal pluralism as a legitimate manifestation of free individual judgement. The Caliph should be. obeyed only to the extent that his decisions conform to the principles of Islam, and have a bearing on public interests. The community, through its representatives, has the right to challenge his decisions whenever these are seen to contravene those principles. Every individual is entitled to learn for himself all the requisite techniques of understanding the Qur’ān and Tradition without any intermediaries, either past or present. There is no religious domination (as-sulṭat ad-dīniyyah) in Islam;⁴³ faith is an individual matter which can be the subject of only guidance and education, but not edict and regimentation. Nobody, whether powerful or weak, is authorised to spy on anyone’s beliefs. Women are equal to men at all levels of social activity, except in the headship of household, the supreme Imāmate, and leadership in prayer, which are exclusive to men. The minorities – Christians and Jews – enjoy security of worship and business; they can even engage in activities which are allowed in their own religions but forbidden in Islam, provided that such acts do not harm others. On this score they are in a sense more privileged than Muslims, in whose case apostasy is punishable (but not by death, which has been required by the consensus only, and has no basis in the Qur’ān). The spirituality of the office of the Caliph does not obviate the need for a temporal authority which should ‘complete the wisdom of law-making’ by creating a centralised system of sanctions and punishments against law-breakers. The exact relationship between this temporal authority and the Caliphate is not known. Obviously Rashīd Riḍā could not work out the details of this relationship, and remove the numerous ambiguities and inconsistencies in his scheme, while the debate on the Caliphate was still going on at the time of the publication of his treatise. Even so, his outline of the Islamic state embodies many features which make it acceptable to a large cross-section of the Muslim community all over the world; especially, in spite of his vehement polemics against the Shī‘īs, the historical arguments which he adduces in support of his plan appear to make many concessions to their political theory: his criticism of the method of candidature of Abū Bakr on the ground that it had not been preceded by consultation with all the parties concerned, of ‘Umar’s appointment by Abū Bakr, because it was later misused to institute hereditary rule, and of ‘Uthmān’s weakness which allowed the Umayyads’ encroachment upon the interests of the community, together with his admission that the Caliphate in its proper form thus existed only partially under the Rāshidūn, and disappeared altogether after them, all amount to a virtual endorsement of the Shī‘ī case against the Sunnī Caliphate. It is noteworthy that in recent years, about half a century after the publication of Rashīd Riḍā’s treatise, when some Iranian Shī‘ī leaders – the architects of the Islamic Revolution – produced their initial ideas on an Islamic state as an alternative to submission to tyrannies in anticipation of the return of the hidden Imām, there were strong similarities between their pronouncements and those of their Sunnī adversary: in both, the ‘Ulamā’ have prime responsibility for leading the popular struggle for establishing the new state; ijtihād is the main intellectual means of upholding and reviving the Sharī‘ah; the head of state is distinguished more by his jurisprudential and exegetical competence than his political skills; sectarianism is discarded in favour of an irenic, ‘unitarian’ Islam just as nationalism is deprecated in the name of universalism; and perhaps most important of all, resisting the cultural offensive of the West is the implied objective of all political, educational and legal reforms. The only significant difference between the two is that while the Sunnī scheme has an air of finality about it, the Shī‘ī model is, even if tacitly, temporary, since it is not consciously aimed to supersede the doctrine of the Return of the Imam.

Having said all this, the fact remains that the Islamic state as perceived by Rashīd Riḍā is far from being an all-powerful system regulating every detail of the social, political and cultural life of Muslims. Whether because of some obscurities and contradictions in his scheme, or an underlying conviction that a religious prescription of the totality of human life is impossible in the modern age, the main conclusion from his outline is, as Rosenthal remarks, ‘the parallel existence of a religious and political state, despite the emphasis on the former and condemnation of the latter’.⁴⁴ This dichotomy did not last very long in the subsequent evolution of the message of the Salafiyyah, when it was exposed to the strong undercurrents of mass politicisation, from the twenties and thirties onwards in Egypt, Syria and Pakistan. The tensions which were slowly gathering momentum in that period soon resulted in a sharp ideological polarisation. Movements seeking to use religion as an instrument of struggle in these circumstances have always been in danger of sliding into authoritarian militancy. An orderly dialogue might possibly have slowed down, if not stopped, such a drift. But a complex of factors made such a dialogue impossible: an atmosphere poisoned by the bitter political feuds of the ‘twenties and ‘thirties, the cultural gap between the disputants, and the resultant absence of a rapport, not only between the modernist critics of the Caliphate and the entrenched orthodoxy, but also among the modernists themselves. Such were the conditions surrounding the rise and development of the movement of the Muslim Brothers – the continuators of the teachings of Asad-ābādī (Afghānī),’ Abduh and Rashīd Riḍā in the field of active politics – whose ideology marks the break of fundamentalism with the notion of the parallel existence of religion and politics and insists on the subordination of the former to the latter.

The first was the transformation of the Society from its modest beginnings as a youth club into a potent political force. This coincided with the first phase of the open conflict between the Arabs and the Zionists, culminating in the Arab general strike of 1936–9, which provided the Society with an unprecedented opportunity to relinquish its pious campaign of ‘propaganda, communication, and information’ in favour of political activism. The Brothers’ contribution to the Arab cause in Palestine must have played a decisive role in encouraging Bannā’ to decide in 1939 on turning the Society into a political organisation. What is of more interest to us is that the Brothers redefined their ideology for the next phase in a way which stressed the ability of Islam to become a total ideology, since they now declared their programme to be based on three principles: ‘(a) Islam is a comprehensive, self-evolving (mutakāmil bi-dhātihi) system; it is the ultimate path of life, in all its spheres; (b) Islam emanates from, and is based on, two fundamental sources, the Qur’ān, and the Prophetic Tradition; (c) Islam is applicable to all times and places.’⁴⁶ Bannā’ then declared his movement to be the inheritor, and catalyst, of the most activist elements in the Sunnī traditionalist and reformist thinking by describing it as ‘a Salafiyyah message, a Sunnī way, a Ṣūfī truth, a political organisation, an athletic group, a scientific and cultural link, an economic enterprise and a social idea.’⁴⁷ The programme of the Society consisted of two items. One was the ‘internationalisation’ of the movement: it stressed the necessity of a struggle not only to liberate Egypt, but the whole of ‘the Islamic homeland’ from foreign control. The other was the duty ‘to institute in this homeland a free Islamic government, practising the principles of Islam, applying its social system, propounding its solid fundamentals, and transmitting its wise call to the people’. It then went on to add that ‘so long as this government is not established, the Muslims are all of them guilty before God Almighty of having failed to install it’. This betrayal, in ‘the bewildering circumstances’ of the time, was a betrayal, not only of Muslims, but of all humanity.⁴⁸ The Brothers could hardly be more explicit in their demand for an Islamic state.

The second instance of the impact of the Palestinian crisis had an even more radicalising influence on the Brothers’ political ideology and activity. It was precipitated by the United Nations’ resolution on the partition of Palestine in November 1947, and the first Arab–Israeli war. Even before that, with the increasing bitterness of the political mood of the country, and the sharpening of the struggle against the British, violence had become a normal feature of political life, with various groups using it both against one another and the Government. The stresses and frustrations caused by the war, and the Arab defeat of 1948, incited the activists to fresh violence inside Egypt, but most of the blame for this was put on the Brothers, whose society was consequently dissolved in December 1948.⁴⁹ After the assassination of Bannā’ in 1949, the moderate wing of the Society tried to retrieve its legal status by electing as its leader Ḥasan Ismā‘īl Ḥūḍaybī, a judge of more than twenty years standing, and an outspoken opponent of violence and terrorism. But this was a temporary diversion, and the militants soon took over again. The first war with Israel affected the fate of the Brothers – and through them, Egyptian politics – in another way too: it put them in touch with the Free Officers, the nationalist group in the Egyptian army which overthrew the monarchy in 1952. Although marred at times by an ambiguity that characterised the Society’s position towards all political groups, these links were of a special nature, forged as they were by the common hardships of the two groups at the Battle of Fālūjah. Apparently, while the Brothers helped to indoctrinate the Free Officers, the latter helped the Brothers with military education (Nāṣir was once accused of having trained the Brothers in the use of arms).⁵⁰ One reason for such intimacy may have been the fact that while the Society’s tactical co-operation with political circles was often planned and effected ‘from above’, its alliance with the Free Officers was made possible by the shared idealism, and joint action ‘at the bottom’. This rift between the leadership and the rank and file – which is perhaps an inherent disability of all political parties committed to ideologies – later on badly damaged the Society as Egypt’s political crisis deepened. However, the common feelings and experiences of the past must have aroused among the Brothers an expectation that, with the Free Officers establishing themselves as rulers of Egypt, the realisation of Islamic ideals was within easy reach. When the Officers proved to be much less doctrinaire than they had appeared on the battlefield, and too pragmatic for the Brothers’ taste, conflict developed fast, and with all the intensity and violence that mark the feuds between erstwhile comrades. Such reversals turn out to be less puzzling when one notes that the rift between the leadership and the rank and file in the Society widened after 1952, as circumstances became temporarily more favourable to its activities. While at least some of the leaders seemed inclined to co-operate with the regime, and consented to a gradualist approach, the rank and file were becoming increasingly impatient with the slow pace of reforms, and suspicious of the Officers. It was thus that an unsuccessful attempt was made by the more militant Brothers on Nāsīr’s life in October 1954, following which the Society was once again dissolved, and a number of its leaders and activists were executed, or condemned to long terms of imprisonment.⁵¹ It is difficult to conceive how the relationship between the Brothers and the Free Officers could have followed such a tortuous course without the Palestinian crisis having acted as a major catalyst in the growing radicalisation of the Brothers’ political thinking.

One can go on pointing to still more examples of the continuing link between the Brothers’ radicalism and the Arab–Israeli conflict after 1954: the traumatic effects of the Arab defeat in the Six-Day War of 1967, however disastrous for Nāṣirism, were highly beneficial for the Brothers and their ideology. They dealt a mortal blow to the semi-secular Arab socialism, and created the right collective psyche for new attempts at vindicating the truth of suppressed or neglected traditional beliefs. This is what happens, thundered the review of al-Azhar, when Muslims discard their glorious heritage, and allow themselves to be enticed by fleeting, exotic ideas-a rebuke which would have had greater moral force if al-Azhar itself had not been obediently toeing the official line during the previous decade.⁵² Although in the past al-Azhar had shared the Brothers’ absolute faith in the unsurpassed ability of Islam to solve the social and political problems of Muslims, this was the first time after a long period that, in addressing the rulers, it was restating the same faith in the annoyed tone of a guide who had long suffered the aberrations of his wayward disciples. Like the Brothers, some of the Azharites interpreted the Arab–Israeli war in terms of a conflict between Islam and Judaism, and appealed for intensified religious education of the people as the most effective way of fighting Israel.⁵³ Both the Brothers and al-Azhar were helped in their bid for self-assertion by the religious fervour which was aroused in response to some of the consequences of the Arab defeat: the decision of the Israeli Government to declare the irrevocable annexation of Jerusalem, which is equally sacred for Muslims, the fire at al-Aqṣā Mosque, and the emergence of messianic vision and religious feelings in Israel itself. As if to concede the justice of the orthodox admonitions, the Egyptian Government released several hundred Brothers from prisons in April 1968, an act which marked a general relaxation of controls on the fundamentalist groups, at least for the time being.

The Brothers’ concept of the Islamic state is an accentuated form of Rashīd Riḍā’s. But its real distinguishing mark is that, as Nadav Safran rightly says, it is advanced by a militant and armed movement which does not simply ‘express pious boasting or devotional cant’, but reflects a ‘messianic vision’ which the Brothers seek to bring into being ‘sword in hand’.⁵⁴ But this interpretation reveals only half the truth in so far as it does not take full account of the fact that the Brothers’ political outlook was at least partly a reaction against what the Arab masses regarded as Israeli expansionism since 1948. Safran bases part of his stimulating criticism of the Brothers’ doctrines on a well-known book, Min hunā na ‘lam (From Here We Learn), published in 1948 by one of their prominent leaders, Muḥammad Ghazzālī, who later defected from their ranks, but the ideas he expressed in that particular book and some of his other publications can still be treated as representative of the fundamentalist perception of the Islamic state. It is noteworthy that one of the arguments which Ghazzālī puts forward in this book to prove the case for the Islamic state-to which Safran makes no reference-is the example set by Israel. The Israelis, Ghazzālī muses with admiration, ‘could have called their country the Jewish Republic, or the Jewish Socialist Union, just as their Arab neighbours have named their countries after the ruling families – [such as] the Mutawakkilite State of the Yemen, or Hashimite Jordan, or Saudi Arabia’. But they called it Israel ‘which is the symbol of their attachment to their religion and reminiscences, and of their respect for their sacred values. The Jews who have done this are masters of wealth and knowledge, and leaders of politics and economy, and there have been people from among them who have taken part in effecting the nuclear fission, and in many inventions. Nevertheless, they have felt no shame in ascribing themselves to their religion, and have not thought of shirking their obligations.’⁵⁵ This tendency to taunt the Muslims for not emulating the Israelis in blending religion with politics must have received further moral stimulus from the later growth of the Judaic influences in Israel’s political, military and educational institutions, as the new state consolidated itself.

At the other end of the spectrum, there are authors like Richard Mitchell, who have tried to make the Brothers’ political doctrines less distasteful to Western audiences by denying that they ever aimed at installing an Islamic state, in the sense of the Caliphate or a theocracy. Mitchell’s argument is that one should distinguish in the Brothers’ political writings between the concept of the Islamic state, and that of the Islamic order (an-niẓām al-islāmī); according to him the Brothers merely sought the former and not the latter.⁵⁶ This view cannot be reconciled with the kinds of statement that we quoted earlier from the Brothers’ programme of 1939. But it is true that under Bannā’’s leadership, so long as there was any hope of achieving power through constitutional means, the Society, either out of wavering or for purposes of camouflage or politicking, often avoided a stance which would indicate a revolutionary rejection of the status quo. It is with respect to such vacillations that one is inclined to agree with the Egyptian critic of the Brothers, Raf ‘at as-Sa‘īd, in describing their ideology as ‘politics without programme’.⁵⁷ But as prospects for their imminent accession to power receded, both as a result of official suppression and the tremendous popularity of Nāṣirism from the Suez crisis of 1956 onwards, their ideas became more and more rigid – and lucid. This process was strengthened by external factors as well: the more the West and Israel appeared to be aggressive the more strongly the Brothers felt confident to fall back on the neglected Islamic heritage, and to delineate the state that should be grounded on it. So in the eyes of the new theorists of the movement, the silver lining to all its setbacks was the greater receptivity of the ‘real’ public to their protests and aspirations. The extent to which they perceived the psychological climate to have changed in their favour can be gauged by their attitude to the Caliphate. If in 1924, as we saw before, Rashīd Riḍā lauded the Turkish measures against the Caliphate as a timely exercise of the religiously sanctioned right to revolt against unjust rulers, in 1950 Ghazzālī deprecated the abolition of the Caliphate as a cowardly submission to the desires of the imperialist West which was aware of the symbolic value of that institution for millions of Muslims scattered all over the world.⁵⁸ For him, the Western hostility to Islam is a continuation of the Crusades. Some people, he says, are misled by appearances, and believe that the Europeans have discarded religion altogether; they therefore doubt that Europe’s stand against Islam is motivated by Crusader feelings. But the truth is otherwise, ‘the official title of the British sovereign is the Defender of the Faith, and the first item on the programme of the Conservative Party is the establishment of a Christian civilisation, and the ruling party at the moment in Italy . . . is the Christian Democratic Party’.⁵⁹ All this amounts to a negative justification of the necessity of the Islamic state. Muslims should set up such a state, so Ghazzālī seems to be arguing, because Israel and the West are clinging to their religions, hellbent on the destruction of Islam. True, Ghazzālī also offers positive justifications, although these are largely the repetitions of the arguments already quoted from Rashīd Riḍā, and the critics of ‘Abd ar-Rāziq. But even these assertions are studded with frequent references to European history – to the example of the French and Russian revolutionaries: just as they did not rest content with mere preaching of their egalitarian ideals but proceeded to attain political power as a necessary goal of their activities, so too Muslims cannot divorce their spiritual and moral values from politics without depriving themselves of the possibility of promoting those values.⁶⁰

As regards the actual principles and characteristics of the Islamic state, although these are not spelled out by Ghazzālī beyond the broadest generalities, they differ from those in Rashīd Riḍā’s outline in a number of important respects. First and foremost is the absence of any serious debate on the necessity or permissibility of human legislation – a subject which had engaged Rashīd Riḍā’s particular attention. Conversely, the all-pervasiveness of the Sharī‘ah in terms of judicial provisions for every conceivable area of social, economic and political life is emphasised. Second, whereas Rashīd Riḍā readily admitted the variety and complexity of human experience as an argument for the diversification of the sources of laws, the impression produced here is one of a monochrome, monolithic world, governed by a uniform, indivisible law which is revealed by the Qur’ān and the Tradition. The sole lawgiver is God; all human beings are equal in their subjection to his ordinances. There are numerous laws, but all of them enjoy a certain organic unity among themselves, with none having any precedence over the others. By the same token, while in Rashīd Riḍā’s scheme the religious and the political coexisted happily but independently, here there is a total integration of both under the aegis of the Sharī‘ah. This is rendered inevitable because of the necessity of enforcing the injunctions on the holy war (jihād), retribution (qiṣāṣ), and alms-tax (zakāt), which as the highest civic functions in Islam can neither be left to private initiative nor carried out by individual means alone. Ghazzālī underlines the cardinal place of these functions by calling them ‘social worships’ (‘ibādāt ijtimā‘iyyah), thereby suggesting that in terms of rewards they enjoy the same status as the ritual acts of prayer, fasting and pilgrimage.⁶¹

The indivisibility of the legal system, however strict it may appear, has at least one comforting implication for liberal opinion. Such severe punishments as the amputation of the thief’s hands or the flogging of the adulterers have to wait until all the conditions of a proper Islamic state have been fully realised – a pre-condition which would have met Rashīd Riḍā’s approval too. But while Riḍā, at least for a period, admired the Saudis for their pure understanding of the Sharī‘ah, Ghazzālī lashes out at their formalistic application of the penal law, and their disregard of the total spirit of Islam: ‘When the Muslims,’ he says, ‘recently awakened and resolved to return to Islam in their laws and beliefs, they started their search for the truth at the wrong end, seeking to restore the “branches” before the principles. They called for the re-establishment of retribution and punishment before making sure that the political circumstances that had allowed the ruler to throw away the Sharī‘ah would not prevail again.’⁶² He pursues the same theme under the title ‘Are there religious governments today?’: ‘It might be thought,’ he says, ‘that the religious rule offers us clear evidence of its aims and methods by its manifestations in the Arabian Peninsula. . . . This is because only in these countries is the thief’s hand cut off and the adulterer flogged. That is to say, they are the only Muslim governments which insist on the application of these laws in an age which has renounced, and intensely abhorred them. We do not dispute that these prohibitions are part of Islam, but we find it strange that they are considered to be the whole of it. We wish to see the punishments enforced so that the rights and the security and the virtues may be preserved, but not that the hand of a petty thief be cut off while those punishments are waived . . . in the case of those who embezzle fantastic sums from the state treasury.’ Ghazzālī’s conclusion is that so long as the evils of despotism and economic disparities between the ruling rich and the masses persist in the Arabian Peninsula, and so long as its states are still struggling to assure their sheer existence, there can be no talk of the application of Islam as a religion and a state in these lands.⁶³ We shall see presently how some Muslim fundamentalists have found it extremely difficult to reconcile these ideas with the hard facts of practical politics once they have achieved power.

But nowhere in Ghazzālī’s account does the character of the Islamic state assert itself more forcefully than in the domain of female rights and obligations. Against the background of the brief history of the feminist movement in Egypt, Ghazzālī’s ideas on the subject seem to be a definite retrogression. Almost half a century before him, Qāsim Amīn (d. 1908), a disciple of ‘Abduh, had launched a modest campaign in favour of female emancipation in Egypt. At first Amīn was careful to formulate his appeal for securing women’s education, and an end to their seclusion, by reference to the Qur’ān and the Sharī‘ah. But later, when he came under attack from the orthodoxy, he abandoned the Islamic framework, and adopted modern civilisation as the warrant for transforming the life of Muslim women.⁶⁴ About two decades later, Rashīd Riḍā carried on the same debate, but restored it to its Islamic setting. Although harping on the natural inequalities between men and women to justify male preponderance, and warning against the corrupting influences of modern life on family morality, Riḍā argued on the whole in support of greater female participation in the communal life of Islam.⁶⁵ But neither Amīn nor Rashīd Riḍā lived amidst the kind of social and moral strains that bedevilled urban, and particularly metropolitan, life in Egypt, as in other ‘developing’ Muslim countries, after the Second World War. Never before had the congeries of attitudes, beliefs and values which give that distinct tang to the collective life of a Muslim people been felt to be so threatened by popular infatuation with the trappings of Western civilisation. If the chief issue for Amīn was how to overcome the inertia and ignorance of the female half of the population, for Ghazzālī and men of his formation it was how to prevent the fibre of family life from disintegrating under the weight of spreading promiscuity. To dismiss this alarm at the immoral consequences of female emancipation as a mark of sheer bigotry is to run the risk of ignoring its deeper social causes. A glimpse of these causes can be obtained from a cursory glance at the function of entertainment in any of the modern Muslim states caught between the opposing poles of traditionalism and superficial modernity. If, in Ghazzālī’s definition of the Islamic state, concern about the way the Muslims occupy themselves in their leisure time looms as large as issues of high politics, this is not necessarily owing to misplaced priorities. In societies which lack sufficient educational organisations as well as recreational facilities for the vast majority of people, but the appetite for both is whetted by the direct or indirect contact with the countries that enjoy them, the scarce, available outlets of entertainment – mainly the cinema, newspaper-reading, and informal gatherings – become doubly influential as moulders of collective outlook and tastes: they serve the functions of both a refuge from daily cares and ‘ersatz’ educational agents. While this may hold true of some Western countries too, the crucial point about such Muslim countries as Egypt and Iran, is that in their case these popular modes of entertainment often foster needs and values which are not even remotely connected with objective social and political conditions. This defect is aggravated by the absence of such corrective institutions as voluntary, cultural associations and a free press. Irrelevance to the real or concrete internal problems and needs at the individual or social levels has not, of course, detracted from the popularity of some of the most hackneyed products of Western culture, especially films, among the urban masses in the Muslim world, a popularity which has often tenaciously outlived vigorous spells of political hatred of the West. Whether in Nāṣir’s Egypt, or Sukarno’s Indonesia, or Qadhāfī’s Libya, or Khumayriī’s Iran, carefully cultivated anti-Americanism has hardly made a dent in the popular addiction to Hollywood films, or worse still, to their homespun imitations.

More than any other social group, Muslim women have suffered – materially, morally and politically – from this combination of circumstances. No doubt a major part of their suffering can be said to have resulted from some of the provisions of the Sharī‘ah, particularly the laws of inheritance which heavily favour men. But at least in the period of nascent Islam this did not prevent a number of women from achieving prominence as political leaders (‘Ā ‘ishah, the Prophet’s favourite wife), or compelling examples of implacable idealism (Fāṭimah, his daughter), or heroines of revolutionary resistance (Zaynab, ‘Alī’s daughter). It was the increasingly one-sided interpretation of the Sharī‘ah, concomitantly with the rigidity of certain trends of Muslim thought, which was used by the ruling monopolists throughout history to confine women to a secluded, passive life of subordination to men. As victims of a twofold deprivation – sexual and social – women are therefore doubly vulnerable to the alienating effects of cultural imports. In Western democracies, anxiety about public morality, whether with regard to female behaviour or any other issue, is often associated with campaigns by right-wing fringe groups. This is not always the case in the Muslim East, where debates on moral issues often lead on to a problem non-existent, at least to the same extent, in the West: the side-effects of the borrowing of a foreign culture. Accordingly the views of Ghazzālī, and other intellectual spokesmen of the Brothers’ movement, have two clear components: a cultural censuring of the blind imitation of Western patterns of behaviour, whether by men or women, and a set of moral prescriptions for tackling the problems arising from this imitation, or from the process of modernisation in general. While the moral statements give rise to disagreements with the secularists, there is a surprising degree of unanimity between writers of both groups on the cultural score. Thus some of the apologetics of the Egyptian liberal thinker ‘Abbās Maḥmūd al-‘Aqqād against Western detractors of Islam are, in spirit, indistinguishable from the writings of Sayyid Quṭb; similarly, the tirades of the Iranian controversialist Jalāl Āl Aḥmad against the Westernisation of Iran have been recast in many of the slogans of the Islamic ‘cultural revolution’ in that country.

After urging the removal of what he considers to be temptations to a dissolute life (seductive appearance, unchaperoned outings and journeys, etc.), all heightened by the Westernised way of life, Ghazzālī’s main concern is to advise an educational system for women geared essentially to family responsibilities. This is stated with some subtlety. He is at pains to prove Islam’s insistence on an active social and political life for women.⁶⁶ But he then modifies this insistence by trying to justify the prohibition on women occupying ministerial and judicial positions, not only because, in his view, female sentimentality militates against impartial judgement, but also on practical grounds: female judges or solicitors have to investigate all sorts of crime, including those violating every standard of decency, and effect cross-examinations which sometimes require them to put aside their sense of shame, and ask embarrassing questions; they may also have to be transferred away from home, with all the disruption this would entail for family life.⁶⁷ He warns against concluding from all this that Islam holds men to be intrinsically superior to women, and admits that there are some women who are superior in intellectual and moral qualities just as Mary and ‘Ā’ishah were in their times.⁶⁸ The tradition that keeps women in a state of permanent inferiority by virtue of their physical pecularities is not of Islamic but of oriental ancestry, he says.⁶⁹ Islam attempts to strike a balance between this stultifying legacy, which forces women to be used exclusively as an agent of animal reproduction, or an instrument of sensual pleasure, and the unrestrained freedom which is afforded them in the West. So the Islamic state releases women both from bondage to sensuous men and exposure to the enticements of Western civilisation, while providing every opportunity for them to fulfill their talents, and thus gradually overcome the frailties wrought in their nature by centuries of unnatural segregation and enslavement. There is, however, a limit to this process of liberation, which is revealed by Ghazzālī’s plan of female education. For reasons already stated, he is opposed to any curriculum designed to train women to become secretaries, or heads of departments, or cabinet ministers, and instead recommends education principally as a means of cultivating virtues: women should be educated, not to achieve a career, but because education is good for its own sake. As a subsidiary benefit, education will also enable women to carry out their duties towards their families, and to assist men to perform their mission.⁷⁰ The philosophy behind this plan obviously kills any hope of an Islamic state being able to produce female political leaders: a woman’s role, he says, is far greater than that of a man if she stays at home. So while Rashīd Riḍā, as was mentioned before, had forbidden only three offices for women in his state (those of prayer-leader, head of family, and head of state), Ghazzālī blocks all careers to them.

The Muslim Brothers have not been able so far to become the ruling party in Egypt, and one cannot predict the final shape of their ideas, if and when they accede to power. But at least a glimpse of this was furnished when the Iranian variant of their movement, called Fidā ’īyān-ī-Islām (the Devotees of Islam), gained a share in Iran’s ruling hierarchy after the victory of the Islamic Revolution of 1978–9. The Devotees became an active force on the political scene after the Second World War.⁷¹ Their first important public campaign was to mobilise popular support in Iran in favour of the Palestinians at the time of the first Arab–Israeli war. But the history of their movement has differed from that of the Brothers in Egypt mainly on two counts: first, they never became a mass movement, always remaining a coterie of zealots dedicated to violent pursuance of their aims, although some of their anti-imperialist slogans did at times become popular; second, they have so far produced no protagonist either of the political perspicacity of Ḥasan al-Bannā’, or the intuitive gifts of Sayyid Quṭb, or the erudition of the Pakistani Abu’l A’lā al-Maudūdī. The founder of the movement, Sayyid Mujtabā Navvāb Ṣafavī (d. 1956), of Ṣafavīd descent on the maternal side,⁷² was a man of enormous personal charisma, capable of inspiring immense loyalty in his immediate entourage and reportedly enjoying even the respect of some of the high-ranking ‘Ulamā’ in Iran, particularly Shaykh ‘Alī Akbar Ilāhīyān, himself a mystical man renowned for his esoteric pursuits.⁷³ Nonetheless, Navvāb Ṣafavī always remained a figure on the sidelines of the community of religious scholars. Until the Islamic Revolution, the Devotees claim to fame rested on their self-confessed part in a series of political assassinations between 1945 and 1963, rather than on any contribution to religious and political debate. The Egyptian and Syrian Brothers too have resorted to violence – or been accused of having done so: but for the student of religio-political thought, this has to be set against their intellectual record: the fairly systematic teachings of Bannā’, or the ideological writings of Ghazzālī, or the socialistic theorising of Muṣṭafā as-Sibā‘ī..

All this highlights a characteristic which distinguishes the religious community in Iran from that in other Muslim countries, that is, the plurality of the ‘poles’ of Shī‘ī leadership, and by indirection, the availability of alternative patterns of religious experience, and if need be of alternative outlets of activism. This naturally decreases the chances of a single religio-political trend, even in extraordinary circumstances, to supersede the multiple shades of opinion on an issue or a set of issues which give cause for national concord – unless such a trend is epitomised by a figure of such commanding prestige, political or otherwise, as to eclipse all other religious leaders. But even in these exceptional circumstances the fundamental multiplicity remains intact, albeit in a latent state, ready to re-emerge at the first opportune moment. The distinctness of the Iranian case is thus evident. In Egypt, with al-Azhar’s standing as an independent political force irredeemably compromised by its commitment to the state, and with occasional challengers to the orthodoxy like ‘Abd ar-Rāziq and Khālid Muḥammad Khālid seemingly disrupting the consensus on the unity of religion and politics in Islam, the Brothers offered, over a long period, the only reliable forum for religious militancy and idealism. The Devotees never achieved such advantage in Iran, and whenever they became the focus of national attention they had to hang on to the coat-tails of any national religious leader available at the time to thwart the suppression of officialdom, or the hostility of other political groups: in the forties and fifties it was the Āyatullāh Sayyid Abu’l-Qāsim Kāshānī who acted as their patron for a time; in the seventies it was Khumaynī.

The Devotees have always been non-intellectual, in every sense of the term. This has relatively immunised them against any internal dissension. But it has also deprived them of the opportunity to proselytise outside the centres of religious education, or traditional foci of support for religio-political movements, such as the bazaar and a few industrial complexes, to subject their ideas to the rejuvenating test of dialogue with their opponents. It has also intensified their fundamentalism whenever they have had to go underground – namely, for the greater part of the period from 1951 to 1979 – or carry on their activities in the absence of a charismatic leader, as from 1956 (after the execution of Navvāb Ṣafavī) until 1979 (when Shaykh Ṣādiq Khalkhālī became their best-known spokesman). But avoidance of intellectualism has allotted an almost unique place to the Devotees in the history of secret or semi-secret oppositional religious groups in Iran. Whether in the form of the encyclopedist circle of Al-Ikhwān aṣ-Ṣafa’ (the Brethren of Purity) in the fourth (tenth) century, or the armed conclaves of the Sarbidārī Ṣūfīs in the eighth/fourteenth century, or some of the secret societies during the Constitutional period, the political agitations of these groups were always tempered by one kind of intellectual, esoteric activity or another. The Devotees would have none of it, not out of any deliberate hostility to speculative thought, but simply because of their total dedication to political action. This uncommon feature goes some way towards explaining why, of all the contemporary Shī‘ī religio-political groups in Iran, the Devotees have been the only one to establish doctrinal, and, reportedly, organisational, connections with their Sunnī counterparts in the Arab world. During the last decade or so many of the works of Sayyid Quṭb, Ghazzālī and as-Sibā‘ī have been translated into Persian, and published by the Devotees or their supporters. In view of the Devotees’ unswerving adherence to Shī‘īsm, and the fact that these authors have expressed strong Sunnī views, such manifestation of a supra-sectarian spirit on the part of one of the most militant groups of contemporary Shī‘īs is rather remarkable.

The judicial philosophy of the revolutionary regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran can be put down in no small measure to the Devotees’ concept of Islamic justice. This concept has materialised itself in the punishments meted out by the revolutionary courts, not only to the agents and supporters of the overthrown monarchy, but also to persons accused of various moral offences. While explanation of some of these punishments in political terms as requirements of the survival of a young regime in the face of counter-revolution cannot be easily refuted in a world dominated by power politics, their justification on religious grounds has provoked a debate which, if sustained in a free atmosphere, can have great bearing on the identification of the attributes of an Islamic state in one crucial respect. The generic terms invariably used by the courts in describing the offences of the accused have been ‘fighting God and his Apostle’ (muḥārābāh bā khudā vā rāsūl) and ‘corrupting (or causing disorders) on the earth’ (mufsid fi’l-arḍ). These terms have not so far been judicially defined, but have been taken from the Qur’ān: ‘The recompense of those who war against God and his Apostle, and go about to commit disorders on the earth shall be that they shall be slain or crucified, or have their alternate hands and feet cut off, or be banished the land’ (5:33). ‘This [is] their disgrace in the world, and in the next a great torment shall be theirs. Except those who, ere you have them in your power, shall repent; for know that God is Forgiving, Merciful’ (5:34).

Beyond the objections levelled against the working of the courts by liberal and some left-wing intellectuals, doubts have also been expressed on religious grounds as to the applicability of the verse to the charges in question. Even before the issue was raised by the establishment of the Islamic Republic in Iran, the verse appears to have long been the subject of controversy, indeed ever since the beginning of Islam. Since the offences mentioned in the verse are vague, Muslims must have realised early in their history that any misinterpretation can turn it into a lethal instrument in the hands of tyrants against their opponents. Hence the attempts either to remove the ambiguities in the verse, or to restrict its application to specific crimes. This is borne out by the Qur’ānic exegetics which indicate that difference of opinion arose over basically four issues: first, whether the verse in its entirety, irrespective of any other controversy resulting from it, applies to the crimes committed only by Muslims, or the People of the Book (Christians, Jews, etc.), or the infidels; second, what exactly is meant by the phrases ‘fighting God’ and ‘corrupting (or causing disorders) on the earth’; third, does the fact that several punishments are enumerated in the verse (slaying, crucifying, etc.) denote that the judge has the power to choose whichever punishment he deems fit at his own discretion, or does it mean that the crimes themselves have different grades, and each punishment depends on the nature and severity of the crime? The conflicting answers to these questions reflect primarily the Muslims’ extreme caution in taking the verse at its face value. Thus, while some commentators and jurists think that the verse lays down a general rule about all offenders against the public order, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, others believe that it is meant to provide only against Muslim offenders; still a third group, relating the verse to its historical ‘cause of revelation’, believe that it refers only to those infidels and People of the Book who defaulted on their covenant with the Prophet Muḥammad.

The most widely accepted definition of ‘fighting God and his Apostle’, and ‘corrupting (or causing disorders on) the earth’ in the classical commentaries is highway robbery, and, more specifically, killing and plundering people on the highways and thoroughfares, and pillaging and destroying the harvest. Both Sunnī and Shī‘ī authorities agree that the two phrases signify two constituents of a single crime, the second supplementing the first. They also agree that the principal condition for the realisation of the crime is the use of arms. But the Shī‘ī commentators, in particular, have tended to take a restrictive view by identifying the crime with certain concrete acts. The sixth-/twelfth-century commentator Faḍl Ibn Ḥasan Ṭabarsī, who is respected by some Sunnīs as well, says that the ‘fighter (against God) [muḥārib] is whoever ‘draws the sword and terrifies the highways’. This, according to the eighth Shī‘ī Imām, ar-Riḍā, can take one of four forms, which, in descending order of gravity, are as follows: (a) murder and plunder, (b) murder alone, (c) plunder alone, and (d) terrorising.⁷⁴ The contemporary Iranian Shī‘ī thinker Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ṭabāṭabā’ī summarises these varieties as ‘disrupting public order’ which, he adds, ‘both customarily and naturally, can only take place by the use of arms in a threat to kill’. But he admits that in its normal usage, the term ‘fighting God’ can also have a general meaning, which is to contravene ‘any rule of the Sharī‘ah, and also any act of injustice and transgression.’⁷⁵ It is the latter meaning which is stressed in Rashīd Riḍā’s commentary, since he says that the verse enjoins punishment of ‘all those who commit acts injurious to public order, against individual lives, properties and honour in Islamic countries, and in so doing, rely on their force’.⁷⁶ Such acts are not obviously confined to those mentioned in verse 33, but, as he says, can take innumerable shapes according to different times and places. That is why the punishments have not been set out in detail, leaving the matter to the judgement of authorities in every age. He defends the general harshness of the punishments by describing them as deterrent, or, again in the favourite terminology of all the apologists of Islamic penal law, as a ‘blocking of the means’ (sadd dharī‘ah) of transgression and corruption, comparable to the maximum preventive penalties prescribed by the legal systems of all states. To expose the unfairness of the Western criticisms of Muslims on this point, he cites the Dinshāwī affair which in 1906 had caused acute national humiliation for the Egyptians. A group of British soldiers who were shooting pigeons in the delta fought with the villagers of Dinshāwī. Several officers were injured, and one died of shock and sunstroke. In retaliation, the British soldiers killed a peasant; later on, fifty-two Egyptians were also arrested, and in the ensuing trials, held under the presidency of the Christian Minister of Justice, Buṭrus Bāshā Ghālī, four were sentenced to death, and the rest to terms of imprisonment with hard labour or flogging. The sentences were executed on the following day with a certain display of ruthlessness.⁷⁷ Rashīd Riḍā says that although the incident did not constitute either a rebellion against the authorities or a case of causing corruption on the earth, the British showed particular ruthlessness in dealing with it so that nobody would dare in future to defy their military presence. Rashīd Riḍā compares the British Government’s connivance in the affair with the second Caliph ‘Umar’s equitable treatment of the Muslims and Copts in Egypt,⁷⁸ to provide further evidence of Islam’s unflagging sense of justice, and, by implication, of the correctness of his interpretation: all states inflict harsh punishments on those who challenge their authority, but an Islamic state would do so more judiciously and fairly.

The Devotees’ understanding of the verses in question seem to be nearer to Rashīd Riḍā’s than to that of Shī‘ī commentators of the past or present. In indicting alleged offenders, they make frequent use of the term ‘causing corruption on the earth’ because presumably it admits more easily of facile application to any offence against public interest. This enables them to include a vast variety of misdeeds, ranging from sodomy to embezzlement of public funds to high treason, among crimes punishable by death. It also involves a casuistry which avoids the necessity of proving the incidence of the first element of the crime of ‘causing corruption on the earth’, namely, ‘war against God and his Apostle’, which, as we saw, requires evidence of the use of arms, because, for them, any accusation of causing corruption on the earth automatically presumes the guilt of having waged war against God and his Apostle, even if the accused has not committed any armed offence. This also solves the last problem raised by commentators, that is, determining the punishments. Once any moral and political offence can be defined as causing corruption on the earth, imposition of capital punishment becomes unavoidable. This is again a departure from the Shī‘ī tradition, because in the same ḥadīth that was quoted before the eighth Imām ar-Riḍā, quotes verse 33 to establish a clear link between the severity of the crime and severity of punishment, the implication being that there is no single, blanket ‘recompense’ for all varieties of crimes. Verse 34 brings up the possibility of pardoning the culprits provided they repent before being caught; they may be pardoned both in the sense of being exempted from stipulated penalties, and forgiven by God in the hereafter. Ṭabāṭabā’ī seems inclined to stress the former meaning when he says that the verse represents ‘one of the cases in which (divine) forgiveness pertains to worldly matters’. But perhaps the most important and the most decisive point about the punishments mentioned in verse 33 is that, as Rashīd Riḍā and Ṭabāṭabā’ī both emphasise,⁷⁹ the Prophet Muḥammad did not inflict these punishments on the infidels after defeating them. According to Rashīd Riḍā, the reason why ‘Alī also acted likewise in the case of the Khawārij was that, despite their open defiance of his authority, he did not think that they were set upon destroying civilised life or public security, but knew that they were simply acting on their judgement and understanding of religion,⁸⁰ they were thus, in today’s parlance, political offenders. Among the modernists too, at least one group, the Indian Qādiyānīs, although strongly defending the harshness of punishments as evidence of Islam’s opposition to ‘false sentiments’ dealing with ‘dacoits, robbers and thieves’, hold that political offenders should be forgiven, ‘if they repent and desist from further rebellion and other offences against the state’.⁸¹

As was noted before, merciless retributive measures by states in times of crisis may be justified by the convenient logic of extraordinary circumstances, or the demands of preserving a newly established regime against overwhelming odds. But what is of greater interest to us is that they point to a glaring paradox which can come to the surface when a fundamentalist group finds, for the first time in modern history, an opportunity for attempting to translate its vision of Islam into legal and political realities. On the face of it, the Devotees’ approach has been draconian and retrogressive, especially with their insistence on adherence to rituals and norms of formal behaviour. But whenever they are criticised either on this score or for their deviation from the accepted interpretation of specific Qur’ānic verses, they accuse their critics of rigid, formalistic thinking, and by so doing admit the virtue of adapting religious precepts to changing circumstances; for while they do their best to extend the provisions of the verses beyond the ‘highway robbers, dacoits and thieves’ to include any and every offender against public interests, their opponents seem to be miserably shackled by the literal meaning of the verses. So they claim that it is they, not their critics, who are the real modernists. If one essential condition of modernism is a rejection of the literal interpretation of the Qur’ān, then this claim cannot be dismissed out of hand. But the Devotees and their doctrinal allies do not seem to be concerned about the fact that their espousal of the modernist cause at least on this score, by opening the way to non-literal interpretation of all sources of religious thinking, is bound to be harmful to the central tenet of fundamentalism – safeguarding the purity of Islamic teachings from the ‘poison’ of speculative exercises.

The foregoing brief survey of the Iranian version of the Muslim Brothers confirms and elaborates the point we already made about the place of law in the Islamic state. It is true that a state can be Islamic only by dint of its enforcement of the Sharī‘ah. But the provisions of the Sharī‘ah do not form a rigid code of laws accepted by all Muslims. Apart from the laws of personal status and what Iqbāl calls ‘socially harmless rules relating to eating, drinking, purity and impurity’, the nature of a substantial number of them depends on the mentality, and therefore on the intellectual, social and political climate, of those who try to extract them from the sources. A liberal-minded Muslim would try to deduce from the Qur’ān and the Tradition all the necessary guarantees of individual rights and liberties, and a socialist would be more keen on demonstrating the collectivist ethos of Islam. This truism proves that, so far as modern political trends in the Muslim world are concerned, a plea for establishing the Islamic state can neither be the unique feature of the fundamentalist ideology nor a conclusive proof of the conviction that Islam is heedless of any doctrine or principle outside the purview of the Sharī‘ah.

How Islamic fundamentalism can face different doctrinal problems in its effort to turn itself into a state ideology is illustrated by the case of the Jamā‘at-i-Islāmī in Pakistan.⁸² We saw that both the Egyptian (or Syrian) Muslim Brothers and the Iranian Devotees conducted their activities in circumstances where Islam as a political ideology relevant to the modern world had become marginal in national politics. This was the ascendancy of secular, liberal and left-wing political parties and ideologies, following a long period of forced and superficial modernisation of laws and institutions. The situation was different in Pakistan where Islam was the raison d’être of the state. The sole justification for establishing the state of Pakistan was that its people belonged to Islam, to a religion different from that of the majority of the inhabitants of the Indian sub-continent. Islam has therefore always been at the very heart and centre of intellectual and ideological debate both among the Muslims and between them and the Hindus, both before and after the emergence of Pakistan. Whether in deference to Hindu revivalism, or to stand up to British imperialism, or in the drive for Muslim–Hindu unity, or to mobilise popular support for the Ottoman Caliphate, or, finally, to protect the Muslim minority against a Hindu-dominated state, Islam always kept its pivotal place in the political conscience of the Indian Muslim élite.

It is this overriding historical fact that can largely account for a distinct feature of the Jamā‘at as compared with its Egyptian and Iranian counterparts: a greater political maturity, inspiring its contributions to the national debate over a wide range of issues faced by Pakistan in her long and arduous course of constitutional development. Whereas the Brothers and the Devotees had either to operate as ineffectual opposition groups, or conduct clandestine campaigns, or enter into dubious alliances with other political factions, the Jamā‘at was allowed – and challenged – to state its ideas openly and officially in the discussions on the structure of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. It did not always live up to this challenge, but its performance was undoubtedly more impressive than similar groups in other Muslim countries. The ideas that it set forth were in many cases more practical and to the point.

Side by side with these differences, however, there have been similarities too, otherwise the Jamā‘at would have been completely cut off from the mainstream of fundamentalism.

Just as the perceived menace of Zionism has been partly responsible for the growing rigidity of the Brothers’ ideology in the Arab countries, so too has the threat of Indian nationalism or bellicosity been instrumental in nourishing fundamentalist trends in Pakistan. This can be clearly seen in the history of her search for political order and constitutional development.⁸³ Since her formation in 1948, three constitutions have been adopted in that country – in 1956, 1962 and 1973. In addition to the problems concerning the distribution of powers between the centre and provinces, and the nature of the executive suitable for Pakistan, the relationship between religion and state has been a principal cause of this constitutional instability. It may be that as G. W. Choudhury has remarked, the Islamic provisions of these constitutions are merely ‘high-sounding phrases’⁸⁴ which have no corresponding reality in the country’s legal system or socio-political spheres. But however symbolic the value of such provisions may be, one cannot ignore their importance as an index to the relevance or urgency of Islam, both at the official and popular levels, as the ideological framework of the state. Thus, while in 1956, with the history of Hindu–Muslim conflicts still fresh in memories, the first Constitution understandably asserted the dominant place of Islam by determining the title of the country as the ‘Islamic Republic of Pakistan’ and through the famous Repugnancy Clause (‘no law shall be repugnant to Islam’), and the prohibition of usury, drinking, gambling and prostitution, the Constitution of 1962 considerably watered down the Islamic character of the state. This was made possible partly by the high-handed method of government of Ayyūb Khān’s military regime, but also partly by the changed atmosphere of the times due to dwindling religious fervour and a dawning realisation of the necessity of the country’s development along modern economic and educational lines. The war with India in 1964, and the much more devastating Bangladesh war of 1971, resulting in the dismemberment of Pakistan, revived popular religious feelings, and this was reflected in the Constitution of 1973 which for the first time declared Islam to be the state religion.⁸⁵

The theoretical predominance of Islam in the national politics is, no doubt, a crucial factor in giving some substance and urgency to the Jamā‘at’s religio-political platform. But no less important has been the dedication of its founder and theoretician, Abu’l A‘lā Maudūdī (d. 1979). It is an indication of his unique status in the fundamentalist movement that while men like Bannā’ or Sayyid Quṭb in Egypt or Navvāb Ṣafavī in Iran were treated as outsiders or extremists by the religious establishment, Maudūdī has had close association with the ‘Ulamā’. Given the fact that he himself was not strictly an ‘ālim by formation, but was self-taught in the Islamic sciences, and even in his twenties was semi-Westernised, this was no mean achievement. His views often reflected the ‘Ulamā’s’ positions, particularly on constitutional issues. His relations with them were by no means free of personal rivalries and frictions. Binder has enumerated the differences between his fundamentalism and the ‘Ulamā’s’ traditionalism: these basically boil down to the fact that while he believed in the necessity of ijtihād, they adhered to the age-old practice of taqlīd (imitation of authorities).⁸⁶ But Maudūdī has frequently tried to minimise this divergency by warning that ijtihād cannot be exercised outside the norms of the Sharī‘ah, and this makes stringent demands on those who should qualify as mujtahids.⁸⁷ Much more significant has been his disagreement with them over women’s rights to occupy high political offices, as will be explained below. Perhaps one reason why he was at times recognised as the ‘Ulamā’s’ spokesman has been the latter’s inability to produce any figure who would match his intelligence, talents and international standing: he is the only contemporary non-Arab Muslim fundamentalist whose works have been translated into Arabic.

Outwardly, there is nothing in Maudūdī’s career which would suggest a revolutionary temper. In 1937 Muḥammad Iqbāl, as the President of the Muslim League, invited him to co-operate in the codification of Muslim jurisprudence; in 1938, he became Head of the Islamic Research Institute at Lahore. Meanwhile, he acted as the Dean of the College of Islamic Theology at Lahore for two years.⁸⁸ His monthly review Tarjumān al-Qur’ān (‘Exegesis of the Qur’ā n’, begun in 1932) bears further witness to a speculative disposition. In unison with the ‘Ulamā’, he was at first opposed to the movement for creating Pakistan, because he considered it inappropriate to use Islam⁸⁹ – a universalist religion – as the ideological underpinning of a nation-state (a problem which, as we shall see in the next chapter, was faced by the Arab nationalists as well). But he later changed his mind, seeing in the whole Pakistan movement a promise for the rebirth of Islam. It is true that after the Partition he came into conflict with government authorities, frequently being accused of fomenting trouble. He was arrested and imprisoned once in 1948 for his campaign against liberal politicians, and again in 1952 in connection with the disturbances against the Qādīyānī community. He was also blamed for student unrest in West Pakistan.⁹⁰ He and his followers always denied these charges, an attitude which contrasts sharply with that of radical Muslims elsewhere, who often welcome such imputations as evidence of their own revolutionary identity. Maudūdī did not allow official animosity to deter him from constitutional activities. He submitted proposals and comments on the Draft Constitution of 1956, and his followers acknowledged the legitimacy of the parliamentary processes by taking part, and gaining limited support, in the electoral campaigns.

And yet, in spite of this background, and of certain rightist traits in his teachings, it would be wrong to describe him as a conservative thinker. In fact, of all the fundamentalist authors who have achieved international fame, his is the only ideology which includes a fairly coherent theory of the ‘Islamic revolution’. This is because he takes an uncompromisingly holistic view of the issue of the Islamic state. Ghazzālī and Sayyid Quṭb come close to this holism, the former in his doctrine of the indivisibility of the Islamic legal system, the latter on Islamic socialism; but since Islam has always been taken for granted in Pakistan as at least as one of the essential determinants of the country’s political regime Maudūdī has been less hamstrung than them by the obligation to prove Islam’s ability to supersede modern, secular ideologies. Instead, he has concentrated on demonstrating the rational interdependence of Islamic morality, law and political theory. His religious and political teachings thus offer the most comprehensive exposition so far of the nature of the Islamic state.

An Islamic state, without an Islamic revolution preceding it, is bound to founder on the moral infirmities of its citizens: this is the gist of Maudūdī’s theory of ‘the process of the Islamic revolution’. Some of his arguments in support of this proposition could have been adduced by any secular ideologue, since they are partly based on the analogies of the French, Russian and Nazi German revolutionary movements. None of these movements, says Maudūdī, would have succeeded without the backing of its appropriate type of social consciousness and moral atmosphere, and these can only be brought about through a revolution.⁹¹ In this argument, the revolution is prescribed mainly as a spiritual prerequisite of the Islamic state, but he also pursues another line of reasoning which is sociological, emphasising the character of the state as something which is formed, not by artificial means, but as the product of the ‘interplay of certain moral, psychological, cultural and historical factors pre-existing it’⁹² – a notion which, although couched in modern or Marxian terms, can be traced back to Ibn Khaldūn: ‘Until there is a change in the social fabric, no permanent change can be produced by artificial means in any state’, he says.⁹³ Mindful of the controversy among the philosophers of history over the overestimation of social structure as a decisive factor of political change, he immediately adds that he does not thereby suggest the ‘doctrine of determinism’, denying the freedom of human will.⁹⁴ The success of his entire scheme of revolution hinges on the firm resolve, integrity and steadfastness of individuals in an untoward environment. To prove that such a suggestion is not utopian, he mentions the example of the Prophet Muḥammad and the small numbers of his followers: just as that tiny group gradually won the non-believers over to their side by their sacrifices and sufferings, so too there should now come forward a group of people who would sincerely believe in the call to the unity and sovereignty of God, ready to abandon the life of self-indulgence and accept the restraints of morality. It is this belief in the unity and sovereignty of God which is the ultimate protector of the revolutionaries against all deviations and distractions. Combined with a ‘true understanding of Islam, single-mindedness, strong power of judgement, and complete sacrifice of personal feelings and selfish desires’, it will give the revolutionaries the ability to withstand all hardships, and finally overcome public apathy or enmity.⁹⁵ What is interesting in the whole of this argument is that although in expounding its premises Maudūdī may sound like a social determinist, he ends up a voluntarist by stressing the element of individual will and initiative.

Is violence indispensable to an Islamic revolution? Maudūdī thinks not, and this is consistent with his conviction in the tremendous force of moral example, although like all fundamentalists he does not rule out force as an unavoidable means of dealing with evil in the world. Again he falls back on the analogy of incipient Islam: ‘Historians’, he says, ‘have given such prominence to the religious wars of the Prophet that people have been misled into believing that his revolution in Arabia was brought about by violence and bloodshed, whereas not more n a thousand or twelve hundred men were killed on both sides in the course of all the wars. . . . If you recall the history of revolutions in the world, you shall have to admit that this revolution is fit to be called a “bloodless revolution” ’.⁹⁶ One could contest this claim by pointing out that the place of violence in a social movement should not be judged solely by the number of people killed in its process, that even one person killed is always one too many, and that a more plausible criterion is whether violence is accepted in the corporate thinking as a legitimate means of realising social ideals. On this score, an Islamic revolution can certainly not be free of violence for the simple reason that Islam itself does not negate the use of force in the abstract. But perhaps a more pertinent observation is that unlike all the familiar protagonists of revolution, Maudūdī is obviously reluctant to preach recourse to force, and instead stresses the necessity of gradual, spiritual transformation of the society in order to inculcate ‘the true Islamic mentality and moral attitudes’⁹⁷ in the people.

The state born of such a revolution is not, at least in form, dissimilar from the totalitarian regimes of modern times. It cannot be otherwise, since the revolutionary movement preceding its birth aims ultimately to effect the utmost uniformity and harmony of souls. ‘It is essential,’ he says, ‘that a particular type of movement should grow up, permeated by the same spirit; the same sort of mass character should be moulded; the same kind of communal morality should be developed; the same kind of workers should be trained; (and) the same type of leadership should emerge.’⁹⁸ The responsibility for running the state will be vested in men who would seek to enforce, not their own will, but the divine law. They should then create the ‘same mental attitude and moral spirit’ among the people. Their system ‘would produce Muslim scientists, Muslim philosophers, Muslim historians, Muslim economists and financial experts, Muslim jurists and politicans.⁹⁹ Sustaining this monolithic culture is the ideological character of the state, based as it is ‘on a definite set of moral and spiritual principles, and ruled by a group of persons . . . of widely differing nationalities.’¹⁰⁰ These principles are subsumed under the formula ‘submission to the sovereignty and unity of God’. Far from being disturbed by the totalitarian implication of making ideology the exclusive guiding principle of state actions, Maudūdī finds it the most reliable defence against the corrupting influence of power. He sounds absolutely sure of this, mainly because power for him means only a specific institutionalised form of it – the nationalistic state. The failure of the revolutionary regimes in the past, he says, has been due to their preoccupation with narrow, nationalistic pursuits.¹⁰¹ But an Islamic ideology, by protecting the minds from all family, ethnic and racial prejudices, is the antithesis to nationalism, and therefore forestalls decline. What is overlooked in this reasoning is that power, in order to be corrupting, does not need to pursue nationalistic or ethnic aims alone. In fact it does not need to pursue any aim at all to be so. In many cases rulers have been infatuated with power for its own sake. The hope, or conviction, that rulers can be kept out of mischief by adhering to a certain set of doctrines, or leading an ascetic way of life, is as old as the notion of Utopia in human history. It is a noble idea, but one which has so far rarely worked in practice. Maudūdī does not provide any evidence that his ideological state would be an exception to this depressing observation of history. Since the case for the intrinsic power of ideology as a shield against corruption is thus unsubstantiated, his suggestion for immunising the Islamic state against the pest of nationalism – entrusting its government to a group of people of ‘widely differing nationalities’ – exacts too much credulity: he is over-confident of the ability of individuals to subordinate their immediate, emotional desires to long-term, rational ends.

Within the framework laid down by the Islamic revolution, no department of individual and social life is exonerated from the ‘Islamic order’. No other fundamentalist advocate of the Islamic state presents as lucid a blueprint of it as does Maudūdī. His numerous writings and speeches deal with many of the details of the constitutional and legal features of the Islamic state – another reflection of the urgency of his theme in the context of Pakistan politics: the sources and methodology of law-making, the distinction between the permanent and unalterable part of the Sharī‘ah (such as the prohibition of interest and wine-drinking) and the flexible (made possible through the device of ta’wīl or ‘probing into the meaning of the injunctions found in the Qur’ān and Tradition’, ijtihād, qīyās, or analogy, and istiḥsān, or ‘juristic preference’), the functions of the legislative, judicial and executive organs of the state, and the position of the electorate.¹⁰² His remarks on these issues are partly meant to repel doubts about the feasibility of the Islamic state in general, and partly incidental to the particular problems of Pakistan (for instance, his opposition to ‘joint electorates’ consisting of both Muslims and non-Muslims¹⁰³ becomes more comprehensible when one recalls the distinct significance of the Hindu community in Pakistan as India’s neighbour, or the controversial status of the Qādīyānīs, who regard themselves as Muslims but are described by Maudūdī as non-Muslims).¹⁰⁴ However, as he himself notes, the whole question of the constitutional and legal characteristics of the Islamic state is subsidiary to a larger issue – that of the Sharī‘ah, not as a body of laws, but as a ‘complete scheme of life and all-embracing social order’, without which Islamic laws can ‘neither be understood nor enforced’. It is this scheme which he calls the ‘Islamic order’, and is a corollary to his theory of revolution. He finds it, not hidden in convoluted theological or juridical disquistions, but neatly encapsulated in fourteen Qur’ānic verses, all from the Sūrah Banī Isrā’īl.¹⁰⁵ These have to be quoted in full:

Thy lord hath ordained that ye worship none but him; and kindness to your parents whether one or both of them attain to old age with thee; and say not to them ‘Fie’ neither reproach them; but speak to them both with respectful speech; [17 : 23]

And to him who is of kin render his due, and also to the poor and to the wayfarer; yet waste not wastefully,

For the wasteful are brethren of the Satans, and Satan was ungrateful to his Lord:

But if thou turn away from them, while thou thyself seekest boons from thy Lord for which thou hopest, at least speak to them with kindly speech:

And let not thy hand be tied up to thy neck; nor yet open it with all openness, lest thou sit thee down in rebuke, in beggary.

Verily, thy Lord will provide with open hand for whom he pleaseth, and will be sparing. His servants doth he scan, inspect.

Kill not your children for fear of want: for them and for you will we provide. Verily, the killing them is a great wickedness.

Have nought to do with adultery; for it is a foul thing and an evil way. Neither slay any one whom God hath forbidden you to slay, unless for a just cause: and whosoever shall be slain wrongfully, to his heir have we given powers; but let him not outstep bounds in putting the manslayer to death, for he too, in his turn, will be assisted and avenged.

And touch not the substance of the orphan, unless in an upright way, till he attain his age of strength: And perform your convenant; verily the covenant shall be enquired of:

And give full measure when you measure, and weigh with just balance. This will be better, and fairest for settlement:

And follow not that of which thou hast no knowledge; because the hearing and the sight and the heart, – each of these shall be enquired of:

And walk not proudly on the earth, for thou canst not cleave the earth, neither shalt thou reach to the mountain in height:

All this is evil; odious to thy Lord.

This is a part of the wisdom which thy Lord hath revealed to thee. . . . [17 : 26–39]

It is noteworthy that in elaborating his idea of the ‘Islamic order’, Maudūdī mentions only these verses, with no reference to any ḥadīth or other secondary sources. This is perhaps meant not so much to minimise the importance of ḥadīths as to lend more authority to his scheme of ‘order’. Besides, the verses he quotes have all clear and straightforward meaning, leaving little or no room for equivocation. These had to be quoted in full, because they not only show the exact canonical basis of the ‘order’, but also illustrate Maudūdī’s preference for deducing the principles of his political thought straight from the Qur’ān. As he reminds us, the verses belong to the Medinan period of Muḥammad’s messenger-ship, namely, the period in which he received divine revelation of the moral, social, economic, political and cultural institutions of the new Islamic state and society. The underlying principles of these institutions, as derived from the foregoing verses, are as follows: (1) The ideology of the Islamic state is nothing but the thought that real sovereignty and lordship belongs only to God, and that it is His law which lays down the rules of human conduct, and the principles of government throughout the world. (2) Parental rights occupy the highest place in the scale of all human relationships. Respecting, obeying and serving one’s parents is a religious duty. Hence the obligation of the Islamic state to establish its juridical, educational and administrative policies on the basis of protecting and strengthening family life. (3) People should not be content only with satisfying their minimum material needs, but ought to seek a prosperous life, without indulging in extravagance, and allocate a portion of their income towards the maintenance of their needy relatives and other fellow-citizens. Such is the way to promote the spirit of co-operation, self-sacrifice, and economic mutual help. These are not merely moral prescription, but ideas which can be turned into living realities through the institutions of obligatory alms (aṣ-ṣadaqāt al-wājibah), supererogotary alms (aṣ-ṣadaqāt an-nāfilah), testaments, inheritance and endowments. (4) Extremes of wealth and poverty should both be avoided. Poverty (or to use Maudūdī’s euphemism, ‘insufficiency of wealth’) is not necessarily an unnatural phenomenon, because ‘the inequalities which arise from natural causes, with no interference by artificial limitations’ are not evil in themselves. (5) Birth control through ‘killing the offspring, and miscarriage’ is a crime. The remedy lies in constructive efforts for elevating the family’s living standards. (6) Adultery should be prohibited, not only by outlawing the act itself, but also through eliminating all its ‘means, causes, stimulants and accessories’. This is the aim of the Islamic bans on drinking, dancing, men’s imitation of women (takhannuth), and women’s imitation of men (istirjāl), as well as the various laws aimed at facilitating marriage, and preventing individual overspending and corruption. (7) No human being should be killed, except for a just cause, which consists of punishment for five kinds of crime: (a) murder, (b) hostility and war against Muslims, (c) attempt at overthrowing the Islamic order, (d) adultery, whether by men or women, (e) apostasy or high treason. In punishing those guilty of such acts, no transgression, no ‘overkill’, and, especially, no torture should be allowed.¹⁰⁶ The state alone can be in charge of punishment. Individuals or families should not exercise the right of revenge on their own. (8) The rights of orphans should be protected. (9) Promises should be kept, and contracts implemented. (10) Business transactions must be conducted with complete honesty. (11) Individual and public policies should be based, not on doubts or presumptions, but only on solid evidence. Nobody should be arrested or harmed or imprisoned on mere suspicion. The same holds true of international relations. (12) Muslim behaviour should be free of all traces of arrogance and vanity.¹⁰⁷

As can be seen, the elements of the scheme are not of the same nature or importance from a political standpoint: some deal with general principles of social life, some with interpersonal relationships; some are political, some moral. But this combination of the general and particular, of political and moral is the distinctive feature of all the manifestos of those modern fundamentalists who regard the creation of an Islamic state within the immediate capability of Muslims. But more particularly it serves to confirm the point we already made to refute the validity of any distinction between an ‘Islamic order’ and an Islamic state, as has been suggested by some authors, because it is unthinkable that a society be run along these lines in the political, social, penal and moral fields, without its government being fully committed to Islam.

When this scheme is considered in the light of Maudūdī’s other writings, then the following broad strands of his political teachings become manifest: first, despite the revolutionary methods recommended by him to fulfil the prerequisites of the Islamic state, his perception of the structure of the state itself is ‘conservative’, in the sense of running counter to any weakening of the institutions of family and private ownership. Maudūdī is more specific on this point in his later writings, making it amply clear that the kind of revolution he is seeking is far from a total overhauling of social structure. ‘Islam’, he says, ‘does not aim at an extreme revolution (inqilāb mutiṭarrif), transforming everything from the foundations, as does Communism, which militates against human nature, abolishing private ownership and instituting state control over individual properties. Islam eschews such a destructive reversal of (the order of) things, consonant as it is with human nature.’¹⁰⁸ Such qualifications of the appeal for the revolution can only be explained by the genuine fundamentalist misgiving, felt in Pakistan as elsewhere and particularly in the post-Bandung period, that Islamic radicalism may be exploited by left-wing movements. Allied to this loathing of abrupt and violent change, is the second basic element of his ideology – an opposition to all egalitarian doctrines which deny the natural inequalities of human beings. Any attempt, he asserts, to impose equality on entities which are naturally unequal is as unjust as fostering inequality among the equals.¹⁰⁹ This, of course, is a commonplace proposition with which one can hardly disagree, and certainly one admitted to be true by most fundamentalists, in Pakistan or elsewhere. Controversy arises over the context in which it is stated, and the aim it pursues; whether it is intended to condemn disparities of wealth and social status, or, conversely, to counter quasi-communistic notions of absolute equality. While sharing with Sibā‘ī and Sayyid Quṭb their denunciation of unjustifiable social inequalities and immorally gained wealth, Maudūdī occasionally veers towards rightist espousal of the ‘wisdom of inequality’, notably when the point at issue is the sanctity of private ownership, and the right of the state to confiscate and manage lands in the name of the community. From this non-egalitarian stand flows the second conservative strand in his ideology – the rejection of the inevitability of class struggle. Class differences, he says, when being the result of ‘natural’ causes, do not constitute an evil in themselves. Rather than trying to eradicate the ‘differential inherent in human society’, an Islamic state should therefore merely attempt to prevent them from becoming ‘an instrument of exploitation and injustice’. These mellow thoughts make Maudūdī more circumspect than his Arab or Iranian counterparts in the use of socialist rhetoric, while outlining his theory of revolution.

Third, although Maudūdī’s more explicit than any other fundamentalist of his time in his stand for the principles of the electiveness of rulers, their accountability to the ruled, their obligation to consult ‘the people who loose and bind’, and the right of ordinary citizens to criticise all those in power, he is opposed to democracy in the sense of a particular system of government imported from the West.¹¹⁰ One might explain this opposition by reference to the cultural puritanism of all fundamentalists who repudiate in principle any Western institution, or, alternatively, to the stereotyped notions about incompatibility of Western democratic values with Muslim attitudes. But in the case of thinkers like Maudūdī, it has more to do with an élitist streak in their mentality, despite the fact that their appeals for Islamic revivalism are often addressed to the masses. It is, of course, in the nature of any idealism, set upon swimming against the tide of public fascination with values opposed to its principles, to be authoritarian. Taking pride in the fact that their version of Islam is a ‘stranger’ in a world enthralled by ungodly attitudes is a common feature of all fundamentalists – from Muḥammad Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhāb to his direct opposite, the Āyatullāh Khumaynī.’ ‘Islam does not regard numbers as a criterion of truth and rectitude’, says Maudūdī, ignoring that his fellow-Sunnī polemists have often used the reverse of this argument in denouncing the Shī‘ī minority status. He also decries many of the institutions associated with democracy: the multi-party system, because it ‘pollutes the government with a false sense of loyalties’ besides being divisive; and electoral campaigns by candidates, for the same reason that Rashīd Riḍā had drawn from the Prophetic Tradition, prohibiting the rulership to all its aspirants. Moreover, there cannot be much scope for democracy in a state such as the one he champions where the most powerful organ is a judiciary charged with upholding not simply the law, but God’s laws: ‘In Islam, the judiciary is independent of the executive. The task of the judge is to implement God’s laws. . . . He does not sit on the seat of judgement in the capacity of the representative of the Caliph or the Ameer, but as the representative of God.’¹¹¹

We may add two other points which do not figure in the foregoing catalogue, but can be gathered from Maudūdī’s other declarations: one is the severity of the punishments and penalties provided in the Sharī‘ah for wrongdoers, and the second is the position of women. He defends the former with great vigour and cogency against its Western critics: it is not, he contends, the religious punishments which are barbaric, but rather the crimes which call them into operation. What is again reassuring to modernists is that for him the whole system of these punishments is primarily a deterrent, and in any case intended for a society which has already been revolutionised and reformed according to Islamic principles, where presumably the incidence of crime is reduced to the minimum, the implication being that their application before such a state of affairs prevails would be unjust. Islam, he says, ‘does its best to save people from punishment, just as it lays down the strictest conditions for the admissibility of testimony as evidence of crime, and fixes a certain period of time to conduct investigations before applying punishments, so as to check any error that might have been made by the witnesses, and directs the judges to exert all in their power to ward off the punishments from the people.’¹¹² On the question of the proper behaviour and appearance of women and their social and political rights, there was no apparent theoretical disagreement between Maudūdī and other fundamentalists. He was, if anything, more demanding than many of them on the practice of ḥijāb (veiling), and on their being barred from high political offices. But in practice he turned out to be more liberal than any other well-known theoretician of his kind by supporting a woman candidate (Fāṭimah Jinnāḥ) in Pakistan’s presidential election of 1965. This seems to have been largely a political move inspired by the Jamā‘at’s vehement opposition to the incumbent president, Ayyūb Khān, on the grounds of his pro-Western policies. Whatever the motive, the fact is while a gathering of the ‘Ulamā’ produced a fatwā declaring that in Islam a woman could not be head of state, Maudūdī announced that a woman could attain this office, although it was not desirable.¹¹³

Islamic thinking in Pakistan is not, of course, exhausted by the theories of Maudūdī. Nor has the Jamā‘at been the sole representative of Islamic activism, as evidenced by the fact that the decline in the Jamā‘at’s power after its defeat in the general elections of 1969 did not mean the dwindling of the force and appeal of the concept of the Islamic state. Another distinguished Pakistani thinker, Muḥammad Asad, had his own plan of the Islamic state which deserves equal attention. But Maudūdī’s ideas have been more germane to our study because of their influence beyond Pakistan, as well as their place in the nexus of fundamentalist utopianism.¹¹⁴

3 The concept of the Islamic state