Ramadan Mubarak (14)

"An old lady is discussing with her best friend about the disgusting habits of her husband.

'Even after all these years, my husband will not stop biting his nails,' the lady explains.

'My husband had the same habit,' her bestie explained, 'but I fixed it. I just hid his teeth.'"

"In Indonesia, there is a film coming out called 'Kiblat', perhaps trying to imitate 'The Last Exorcism', but the result is that this film really harassing and inciting the way Muslims worship, thus leading to intolerance. Therefore, citing UN Secretary-General António Guterres, 'Let us keep working together to advance the shared values of inclusion, tolerance and mutual understanding—values that are at the heart of all major faiths and the United Nations Charter', the Indonesian government should revoke its distribution permit and prohibit its broadcast anywhere," said Jasmine while observing the real 'Qibla', Kaaba, a cubic structure in Mecca and one of Islam’s most sacred sites.

"According to United Nations, Islamophobia is a fear, prejudice and hatred of Muslims that leads to provocation, hostility and intolerance by means of threatening, harassment, abuse, incitement and intimidation of Muslims and non-Muslims, both in the online and offline world. Motivated by institutional, ideological, political and religious hostility that transcends into structural and cultural racism, it targets the symbols and markers of being a Muslim.

This definition emphasises the link between institutional levels of Islamophobia and manifestations of such attitudes, triggered by the visibility of the victim’s perceived Muslim identity. This approach also interprets Islamophobia as a form of racism, whereby Islamic religion, tradition and culture are seen as a ‘threat’ to the Western values.

Some experts prefer the label 'anti-Muslim hatred,' fearing that the term 'Islamophobia' risks condemning all critiques of Islam and, therefore, could stifle freedom of expression. But international human rights law protects individuals, not religions. And Islamophobia may also affect non-Muslims, based on perceptions of nationality, racial or ethnic background [https://www.un.org/en/observances/anti-islamophobia-day, retrieved on 30.03.2024]

In a book by the painter Etienne Dinet in 1918, appeared in its French form, Islamophobie. The word 'Islamophobia' is not new, despite the fact that one would be hard pressed to find many instances of it prior to the 1990s. Jim Wolfreys suggests that across Europe, anti-Muslim prejudice has been reinforced by the global ‘war on terror’, its stigmatization of Islam, and demands vigilance, monitoring, and increased security. In France, Islamophobia has been fostered by a divided political elite that has used republican secularism, or laïcité, as a tool for putting Muslims under scrutiny and questioning their allegiance to the values of the Republic. In an era of intense and rising inequality, the construction of moral panics, insecurity, and scapegoats has found traction among social groups anxious about losing status and looking for someone to blame. Here the radicalization of secularism, historically associated with progressive forces against reaction, has helped both divide and neutralize anti-racist groupings and institutions, hampering attempts to confront the rise of anti-Muslim sentiment.

Rodd H. Green. writes that the word has become an integral part of political and public discourse, says This is due largely to a much-cited study conducted by a British think tank, the Runnymede Trust, in 1997. The study defines Islamophobia as 'dread or hatred of Islam' and as 'unfounded hostility towards Islam.' It also defines Islamophobia in light of the concrete expressions this hostility takes, such as the deliberate exclusion of Muslims from mainstream social and political life. This definition is the one most frequently employed in debates pertaining to anti-Muslim sentiment in the West. Green added that Islamophobia is hatred, hostility, and fear of Islam and Muslims, and the discriminatory practices that result.

True, there are some people who deliberately stir up animosity toward Muslims, says Green, in order to mobilize voters, increase ratings, generate traffic to blogs and websites, sell books, or justify wars. In other words, there are folks who are in the business of manufacturing Islamophobia for personal or professional gain, and they do deserve 'special condemnation.'

What is the relationship between Islamophobia today and the anxieties toward Islam that have characterized much of Western history? How and why have hostilities toward Islam developed in Western history? Green explains that the earliest negative images of Islam among European Christians developed as the Islamic empire spread and posed a political and military threat to Christian domains. Islam arose in the early seventh century under the leadership of the Prophet (ﷺ), by the time of his (ﷺ) death in 632, much of the Arabian Peninsula had embraced the teachings of Islam. His (ﷺ) successors built on his (ﷺ) success and expanded the scope and influence of Islam. By the mid-eighth century, Islam encompassed much of Central Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Africa, and Spain. Within the span of approximately one century, a considerable portion of what had once been the Christian Roman Empire had fallen into Muslim hands.

Muslims did not have a monopoly on conquering strategic territories. As Islam enveloped Christian lands, European rulers and church leaders responded with calls for crusades and conquests. Pope Urban II ordered the First Crusade in 1095. This crusade was initially in response to the plea for aid from the Byzantine emperor as he sought to fight off invading Seljuk Turks, but the crusade eventually focused on taking Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslim hands. In 1099, Jerusalem fell to Christian armies. These armies slaughtered almost all of the Jews and Muslims in the city and subsequently established the Kingdom of Jerusalem. In the course of the First Crusade, European Christian armies founded three additional states. Holding onto the great prize, Jerusalem, proved to be quite difficult for the Christian conquerors. Much of the kingdom would be conquered less than a century later by the prominent Muslim general and sultan, Saladin.

The First Crusade was followed by many others, often prompted by Muslim conquests of territory held by European Christian powers. Most of these crusades were failures. By the end of the thirteenth century, the last significant European stronghold in the Holy Land, Acre, had fallen into Muslim hands. The struggles for territory and political power set the stage for Muslim-Christian relations in the Middle Ages, but what impact did these power struggles have on Christians living under Muslim rule and vice versa? Both Muslim and Christian rulers devised ways of dealing with religious minorities. In the case of Muslim rule, the Qur’an did not establish clear parameters for how to govern non-Muslims, though it did prohibit Muslims from coercing the “People of the Book” (ahl al-kitab)—that is, Jews and Christians—to convert to Islam. Islamic law, or would eventually elaborate on the place of protected minorities, known as dhimmis.

The restrictions placed on non-Muslim minorities may strike modern readers as intolerant, but, in fact, Jews and many dissident Christians in portions of the Byzantine and Persian Empires often enjoyed greater freedoms under Islam than under imperial Christianity. In the context of the early history of Muslim-Christian encounters, Islam, not Christianity, often proved more accepting of religious diversity.

This brief overview of the rise of Islam and the battles between Muslims and Christians can give the impression that relations between the two were characterized only by conflict and confrontation. But not always. Collaborative endeavors and beneficial exchanges also took place between Muslims and Christians. For example, in Cordoba, Muslims and Christians shared worship space for a time in the Cathedral of Cordoba. One of the greatest exchanges was of translations of scientific and philosophical texts from antiquity. Thanks to the efforts of Muslim scholars, the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Galen, and Hippocrates became widely accessible to medieval European scholars for the first time.

The impact of the Islamic world on the development of Europe extended well beyond transmitting and translating ancient texts. European science, mathematics, art, architecture, literature, philosophy, and theology all drew inspiration from Islamic and Arab sources. Abū Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariyya al-Rāzi authored Liber continens, one of the most frequently used and respected medical textbooks in Europe during the Middle Ages. Abū Ali al-Hassan ibn al-Haytham corrected ancient theories of vision that had been developed by the likes of Euclid and Ptolemy, arguing that vision is possible because of the refraction of light through the lenses of the eyes. Abū Abdullah Muhammad ibn Mūsa al-Khwārizmi contributed to the formation of a distinctive mathematical discipline now known as algebra; the word algebra is Arabic for 'restoration' or 'completion' and is found in the title of al-Khwārizmi’s widely circulated book The Compendium on Calculation by Restoration and Balancing. The Romanesque architecture of churches in southern France adopted forms and techniques from Islamic architecture, such as horseshoe arches and the incorporation of ceramic in the building materials. Fables and stories of Arab origin inspired authors from Geoffrey Chaucer to Miguel de Cervantes. The Muslim philosopher Abū al-Walīd Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Rushd, referred to simply as Averroës in European writings, developed a series of commentaries on Aristotle’s works that paved the way for Aristotelian thought to serve as an important source of philosophical and theological reflection. Indeed, the most influential Christian theologian of the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas, engaged Averroës’s philosophy deeply, even if he was critical of it.

In the earliest encounters between Christians and Muslims, the lack of awareness about Islam is easily explained. Christians simply did not show much curiosity in learning about Islam because most Christian authors initially viewed Muslims as a scourge sent from God to punish Christians for their sins. One sees the same phenomenon in the earliest encounters between Christians and Muslims in the West. As Muslims conquered vast portions of Spain, Christians viewed their conquerors as a punishment from God for their sins. The problem was with Christians, and therefore the solution, repentance, could only be found within the Christian community. It was only after a significant number of Christians converted to Islam that Christian authors began to view Muslims not simply as Divine-ordained military adversaries but as religious rivals.

With the victories of the First Crusade, Christians came into closer contact with Muslims and learned that Muslims were not pagan idolaters but monotheists. Chronicles written during later crusades devoted much less attention to portrayals of Saracens as idolaters. Nonetheless, the image of the Saracen pagan lives on in the European imagination.

The depiction of Muslims as pagans and idolaters ultimately gave way after the First Crusade to the belief that Islam was a form of Christian heresy. This perception, prominent by the twelfth century, actually found expression already in the first century of Christianity’s encounter with Islam in the writings of John of Damascus. John was much more concerned with iconoclasm, the destruction of icons, than with Islam, but he was still one of the earliest Christian thinkers to develop the view of Islam as a heretical version of Christianity.

Historians often set the Middle Ages apart from the cultural, intellectual changes taking place beginning in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries with the Renaissance and continuing in the sixteenth century with the Reformation. Both the Renaissance and Reformation marked significant changes and innovations in European thought, but in the context of the topic at hand, we find very little that is new. Many thinkers in these movements continued to recycle images and stereotypes of Muslims and Islam that circulated during the Middle Ages.

The end of the Middle Ages witnessed the emergence of three major Muslim empires: the Mughal Empire in India, the Safavid Empire in Iran, and the Ottoman Empire in Turkey. The Ottoman Empire was the most powerful and long lasting of the three. With the rapid advancement of the Ottoman Empire in this period makes it understandable why medieval references to Muslims as 'Saracens' or 'Ishmaelites' gave way to the almost ubiquitous designation of 'Turks.' Christian authors frequently invoked the problem of 'the Turkish threat' in order to rally support for crusades or wars against the Ottomans, but, the designation of 'Turk' also functioned to denigrate one’s opponents in other Christian communities. The term, like its medieval predecessors, had ethnic, political, and religious dimensions.

The Enlightenment, a cultural and intellectual movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the West that emphasized reason, was a cultural and intellectual movement that arose toward the end of the seventeenth century and reached its apex in the eighteenth century. The movement stressed the primacy of reason in the human quest to acquire knowledge and discover truth. The Enlightenment’s emphasis on reason contributed to a climate in which philosophers and intellectuals increasingly attacked traditional Christianity, in both its Protestant and Catholic varieties, as irrational and superstitious. The Enlightenment, however, did not witness the abandonment of older prejudices. In both philosophical and popular writings, unflattering images of Muslims and Islam persisted. In fact, we have plenty of examples of Enlightenment philosophers who reiterated negative stereotypes even as they articulated more positive appraisals.

Sympathetic portrayals of Islam during the Enlightenment may have problematized the medieval narrative, but they did not dislodge it. Islam lived on in the European imagination as a religion rooted in deceit, violence, and misogyny. Even if the theological arguments driving polemical constructions of Islam lost some of their potency by the end of the Enlightenment, they did linger into the modern era. The fear of the Muslim “Other” as an obstacle and threat to European power and hegemony did not fade but rather intensified in the face of Ottoman decline and Europe’s increasing interest in colonial expansion in the nineteenth century.

Colonialism was not a modern European invention, has been a recurring feature in human history. European colonization began in earnest with Christopher Columbus’s 'discovery' of the Americas in his 1492 expedition. The Spanish and Portuguese developed extensive colonial networks in North and South America in the century that followed. By the seventeenth century, they were joined by the British, the French, and the Dutch, among others. European powers also began extending their reach in the Eastern Hemisphere by the sixteenth century—the Portuguese captured Goa in India in 1510 and Malacca in Malaysia in 1511. The European conquests in both hemispheres were made possible by innovations in seafaring and greater control of shipping lanes. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Industrial Revolution provided a boost to European military technologies and capabilities that greatly facilitated colonial projects.

Colonial endeavors left many Muslim-majority territories largely untouched prior to the nineteenth century, though Muslims in regions such as the Indian subcontinent certainly felt the effects of colonialism already in the sixteenth century. With Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798, we witness the beginning of serious European attempts to conquer Muslim lands in North Africa and the Middle East. Napoleon’s efforts failed, in part as a result of British intervention, but the French would succeed in invading and occupying Algeria in 1830. Algeria became the first permanent European colony in North Africa, and its conquest marked the beginning of a long, tumultuous, and at times bloody conflict between colonizer and colonized. The French made Tunisia and Morocco into protectorates in 1881 and 1912, respectively, and in 1923 the League of Nations gave the mandate for present-day Syria and Lebanon to France.

By the early twentieth century, much of the Muslim world was subject to European rule, with only a handful of states in the Middle East—Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Yemen—escaping European colonial domination as the dust settled from World War I. By World War I, European nations exercised considerable political and economic power over much of the world, including the Muslim world.

The impact of colonialism and neocolonialism on the relationship between Islam and the West should not be underestimated. Many Muslims in the Middle East and in other Muslim-majority regions blame their political and economic struggles today on past as well as present interference from the West. The anti-Western sentiment that one encounters in these countries cannot be understood apart from the legacy of colonialism, just as any adequate analysis of contemporary Western discourse about Muslims and Islam must take into account the West’s past and present colonial enterprises and imperial designs in the Muslim world.

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and Orientalism can be said also to have a role in Islamophobia, and we will discuss it in the following episode. We will discuss the organs and functions of the state from an Islamic perspective after the topic of Islamophobia, bi 'idhnillah."

I walked in the room, eyes are red,

and I don't smoke banga

Did you check on me? *)

Citations & References:

- Todd H. Green, The Fear of Islam: An Introduction to Islamophobia in the West, 2015, Fortress Press

- Jim Wolfreys, Republic of Islamophobia: The Rise of Respectable Racism in France, 2018, Oxford University Press

*) "People" written by Libianca Fonji & Orhue Odia

[Episode 15]

[Episode 13]

Bahasa

Ramadan Mubarak (13)

"A married couple is sitting calmly in a coffee shop. The husband notices an old couple across the shop. He points at them and says to his wife with reflection words, 'That’s us in about ten years.'

His wife looks up, laughs, puts his head back down, and says, 'That’s us now because that’s our reflection.'" 

"There are roughly 50 countries in the world in which people of the Muslim faith are in the majority, although the exact number can vary depending on the source," said Jasmine while passing by Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta. 'Istiqlal', an Arabic word for 'independence', was built to commemorate Indonesian independence, and opened to the public on 22 February 1978, and to be the largest mosque in Southeast Asia and the ninth largest mosque in the world in terms of worshipper capacity.

"The so-called Arab Spring of 2011, a series of spontaneous uprisings in some of the world’s most authoritarian polities, has intensified interest in the questions of whether, how or when a new wave of democratization, this one centered in the Middle East and North Africa, might be underway. The struggles to replace the fallen dictators in Egypt, Iraq, Tunisia, and Libya have rekindled interest in those Islamic countries—Indonesia and Turkey in particular—whose steps toward democratization have been relatively successful. They have also raised the intensity of a more philosophical debate on the compatibility of Islam and democracy. Long the domain of theologians and a handful of area studies specialists, the question flew into academic and political prominence in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001 (also known as 9/11) and the subsequent Western responses in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Many scholars seek to find the correlation between the Arab Spring and democratization. According to Laurence Whitehead, by general consent, the ‘Arab Spring’ can be dated to January 2011, when mass protests produced the unexpected flight of Tunisia’s longstanding dictator, Zine Abedine Bin Ali, thus triggering a region-wide demonstration effect that soon brought down the Mubarak regime in Egypt, and destabilized authoritarian rulers in Libya, Syria, and Yemen, as well as producing wider political repercussions throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

According to Sayre and Yousef, the MENA region is at a critical juncture. Starting with the self-immolation of street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi in the provincial town of Sidi Bouzid in the Tunisian interior, the MENA region has witnessed street protests, revolutions, limited democratic progress, political collapse into civil war, and local conflicts that threaten to engulf the entire region. Before the protests, however, young people in the region had been enduring years of economic and social exclusion. The region has had the highest youth unemployment rates in the world for decades as a result of institutional rigidities, education systems that fail to provide appropriate skills, and a demographic 'youth bulge' that has increased supply pressures on the education systems and labor markets. Once these young people eventually found jobs, institutional rigidities prevented them from making the full transition to adulthood due to obstacles arising from the region’s marriage and housing markets. In fact, in the context of the region’s growing youth bulge, such negative outcomes have persisted for decades, with youth facing social, economic, and political exclusion. Beginning in December 2010, this frustration arising from this exclusion has seemed to be erupting , and young people across the region have been at the forefront of the social unrest that was quickly dubbed the Arab Spring.

John L. Esposito [et al] writes that many Western observers were shocked when Arabs began open rebellions against their governments in December 2010. The authoritarian rule had been the reality for so long that some considered it to be, if not the preferred form of government among Arabs, at least the expected and accepted reality. Some analysts suggested that the seemingly spontaneous uprisings were the unpredicted effect of the confluence of the 'youth bulge—majorities of populations under 30, unemployed, and usually better educated than their parents—and their facility with the new public cyber-sphere. Muslim-majority countries share with many other developing countries the fact that the majority of the population is under 30. Reflecting success in reducing infant mortality and improving healthcare overall, this phenomenon causes enormous social pressure in countries unable to provide employment opportunities for their restive youth. Unemployed youth in authoritarian regimes can become a potent force, especially in the context of the new social media technologies most commonly associated with younger generations. Digital social media have allowed the creation of a new, virtual public sphere that allows activists to bypass authoritarian governments’ prohibition of freedom of speech, press, and association. The virtual public sphere neutralizes class, gender, and even sectarian distinctions, allowing for the creation of a new kind of social activism, one that does not require a charismatic leader or vanguard, just numbers. In the first decade of the 21st century, participation in this virtual public sphere was approaching critical mass.

There is no inevitable transition from a popular uprising—youth bulge and new social media or not—to a sustainable social or political movement. For an uprising to become a sustained movement, there are many prerequisites, including diffuse social networks, familiar forms of collective action, cultural frames shared broadly across a population, and political opportunity. As the re-emergence of military control indicates, in Egypt and Syria, at any rate, political opportunity was lacking. In Libya, it is questionable whether any of the social movement elements existed. In any case, there are arguably as many youth involved in protests against the elected Egyptian President, Mohammad Morsi as in demonstrations supporting him, and in Syria’s and Libya’s militias. Pew surveys conducted in 2012 indicate that nearly two-thirds of Egyptians preferred the Saudi model of governance over Turkey’s secular model. And, as the queue of ISIS videos indicates, not all tech-savvy youth are pro-democracy.

A Muslim jurist writing a few centuries ago on the subject of Islam and government would have commenced his treatise by distinguishing three types of political systems. The first he would have described as a natural system—like a primitive state of nature, an uncivilized, anarchic world where the most powerful tyrannize the rest. Instead of law, there would be custom; instead of government, there would be tribal elders who would be obeyed only so long as they remained the strongest.

The jurist would then describe a second system, ruled by a prince or king whose word is the law. Because the law would be fixed by the arbitrary will of the ruler and the people would obey out of necessity or compulsion, this system, too, would be tyrannical and illegitimate.

The third and best system would be the caliphate, based on Shari'ah law—the body of Muslim religious law founded on the Qur’an and the conduct and statements of the Prophet (ﷺ). According to Muslim jurists, Shari'ah law fulfills the criteria of justice and legitimacy and binds the governed and governor alike. Because it is based on the rule of law and thus deprives human beings of arbitrary authority over each other, the caliphate system was considered superior to any other. But, what kind of government is this caliphate, especially in modern times? What does the term mean? Is it a concept that we can interpret and use today?

The concept of a caliphate has had many different interpretations and realizations through the centuries, but fundamental to them all is that it offers an idea of leadership which is about the just ordering of Muslim society according to the will of Allah. The office, or perhaps role would be more accurate, has scriptural authority and any ruler might be pleased to follow in succession to these two. But what does the word mean? The Arabic root khalafa, from which the Arabic term khalīfa (the origin of the English word caliph) comes, is well known, but like many Arabic words, it has a variety of English equivalents. Basically, it means to succeed or deputize for a person or, in this case, for Allah. It is used in ordinary administrative and secular contexts with these meanings. But, like many passages in the Qur’ān, its precise meaning here is difficult to determine. It clearly cannot mean successor, since Allah is eternal and therefore, by definition, cannot have a successor, so it must mean deputy or representative of Allah on earth.

The term appears to have been used in the time of the Prophet (ﷺ). When he (ﷺ) left Medina on a military expedition or for any other reason, he (ﷺ) would appoint a deputy (khalīfa) for the duration of his (ﷺ) absence. We know the names of at least some of these and, curiously, most of them were obscure men who played no part in the later history of the institution and their powers were very limited. Only Uthmān, radhiyallahu 'anhu, the third caliph, was among their number, and neither Abū Bakr nor Umar, radhiyallahu 'anhum, the first two caliphs, were appointed. Nevertheless, it was perhaps because of this use of the term that the Muslims naturally adopted it at the moment of the Prophet’s (ﷺ) (permanent) absence.

The first four caliphs, Abū Bakr (632–4), Umar ibn al-Khattāb (634–44), Uthmān ibn Affān (644–56) and Alī b. Abī Tālib (656–61), are described as Rāshidūn. The historical sources provide a huge variety of information about the four men, but what is certain is that they are not kings, they were respected for their ability to apply Islamic teachings. In their era, there was no caste distinction, the Sahaba were free to express their suggestions and opinions.

When the first of the Umayyad caliphs, Muāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān came to the caliphate in 661 almost by default. Hugh Kennedy writes that before Muāwiya died in 680, he had made a move that aroused bitter opposition and overshadowed his later years. He had his son Yazīd proclaimed as his heir, his successor as caliph. He seems to have known that the adoption of hereditary succession to decide the caliphate would be controversial and to have taken all the precautions he could to ensure that the baya to his son aroused as little controversy as possible.

And so, the Umayyad caliphate was the first major Islamic dynasty began to rule. The Spanish Umayyads were the first of many Muslim dynasties to rule in Spain. The Abbasid caliphate was the second major Islamic dynasty and one of the longest in power. The Samanids were the first native Persian dynasty to rule Iran after the collapse of the Sasanian empire and the Arab Muslim conquests. he Seljuqs were a Turkic people from Central Asia. The Almoravids and Almohads were Berber dynasties that ruled southern Spain after the collapse of the Spanish Umayyad regime in 1032. Seljuqs of Rum was part of the Seljuq dynasty of Iran broke off and established control over a large portion of Anatolia. Ilkhanids was established by the descendants of the Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan. The Nasrids, centered at their capital of Granada. The Mamluks were originally Turkic military forces who served the preceding Egyptian dynasty. Ottoman empire was one of the longest-lasting dynasties in world history. The Timurids were Turks who conquered much of Greater Iran and Central Asia. The Safavids were a Shi'a dynasty that traced its lineage to an important Sufi mystic. The Mughals traced their lineage to the Mongol rulers of Iran.

In espousing the rule of law and limited government, classical Muslim scholars embraced core elements of modern democratic practice. Limited government and the rule of law, however, are only two elements in the system of government with the most compelling claim to legitimacy today. Democracy’s moral power lies in the idea that the citizens of a nation are sovereign, and—in modern representative democracies—they express their sovereign will by electing representatives. In a democracy, the people are the source of the law, and the law in turn ensures the fundamental rights that protect the well-being and interests of the individual members of the sovereignty.

For Islam, democracy poses a formidable challenge. Muslim jurists have argued that the law made by a sovereign monarch is illegitimate because it substitutes human authority for Allah’s sovereignty. But law made by sovereign citizens faces the same problem of legitimacy. In Islam, Allah is the only sovereign and the ultimate source of legitimate law. How, then, can a democratic conception of the people’s authority be reconciled with an Islamic understanding of Allah’s authority? Answering this question is extraordinarily important but also extraordinarily difficult for both political and conceptual reasons. On the political side, democracy faces several practical hurdles in Islamic countries—authoritarian political traditions, a history of colonial and imperial rule, and state domination of the economy and society.

Many Muslims are actively engaged in defining Islamic democracy. They believe that the global processes of religious resurgence and democratization can be, and, in the case of the Muslim world, are, complementary. In Islamic history, there are a number of very important concepts and images that shape the contemporary visions of what a just human society should be. These are the foundations for the Islamic perceptions of democracy.

In the traditional and modern debates over the nature of the caliphate, the institution was viewed in essentially monarchical terms. However, there is a profoundly different meaning of the term that has received increasing attention in the second half of the twentieth century. In addition to the connotations of 'successor' that the Arabic term khalifah involves, there is also a sense in which a khalifah is a deputy, representative, or agent. It is possible to interpret some sections of the Quran as identifying human beings in general as Allah's agents (khalifahs) on earth, and human stewardship over Allah's creation as the broader cosmic meaning of khilafah.

The authority of the caliphate is bestowed on the entire group of people, the community as a whole, which is ready to fulfill the conditions of representation after subscribing to the principles of Tawheed. Such a society carries the responsibility of the caliphate as a whole and each one of its shares the Divine Caliphate. This is the point where democracy begins in Islam. Every person in an Islamic society enjoys the rights and powers of the caliphate of Allah and in this respect all individuals are equal.

The identification of 'caliph' with humanity as a whole, rather than with a single ruler or political institution, is affirmed in the Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights, a document drawn up by the Islamic Council of Europe. In this framework, the first phase of the 'fulfillment of social-political Khilafah' is 'the creation of the community of believers,' while the second phase 'is to reach the level of self-governance.' This perception of 'caliph' becomes a foundation for concepts of human responsibility and of opposition to systems of domination. It also provides a basis for distinguishing between democracy in Western and in Islamic terms.

In presentations of democracy within a broad Islamic conceptual framework, much attention is given to some specific aspects of social and political operation. In particular, Islamic democracy is seen as affirming longstanding Islamic concepts of consultation (shurah), consensus (ijma), and independent interpretive judgement (ijtihad).

The necessity of consultation is a political consequence of the principle of the caliphate of human beings. Popular vicegerency in an Islamic state is reflected especially in the doctrine of mutual consultation (shura). Because all sane adult Muslims, male and female, are vicegerents (agents of Allah), it is they who delegate their authority to the ruler and whose opinion must also be sought in the conduct of state. The importance of consultation as a part of Islamic systems of rule is widely recognized.

A similarly important operational concept is consensus or ijma. Consensus has long been accepted as a formal validating concept in Islamic law, especially among Sunni Muslims. A third operational concept of major importance is ijtihad or the exercise of informed independent judgment. In the minds of many Muslim thinkers, this is the key to the implementation of Allah's will at any given time or place.

Governance in Islam is one of the spheres of the Islamic system. The Islamic theory of government is based on the same bases upon which all spheres of the Islamic system are based. First is the unity of humanity in race, nature, and origin. Second, Islam has universal applicability; as declared in the Qur’an, Allah is the Sovereign over the universe, life and humanity. These ideas are applied not only to the political sphere but also to the economic, social, intellectual, and moral spheres of the Islamic system. After that, the government in Islam is based on justice on the part of the rulers, obedience on the part of the ruled, and consultation between the rulers and the ruled. From these broad basic lines branch all the principles that provide the foundation, the forms and nature of government in Islam.

Based on these broad outlines, government in Islam can take any form or shape. Islam does not impose a specific type or a specific form of government. The political ordinances of the shari‘ah do not prescribe a specific form to which an Islamic state must conform. Thus, there is not only one form of the Islamic state, but many, and it is for the Muslims of every period to discover the form most suitable to their needs, based on the shari‘ah and in agreement with its laws relating to communal life. Thus, the form of government has no impact on the Islamic identity of the state. Government in Islam can take many forms to implement justice and equality based on the shari‘ah, which is the foundation of legislation in the state.

Islam does not deal with abstract human beings, but with human beings walking and living on this planet. The Lawgiver knows that human affairs are not fixed or rigid and rigidity is not in the nature of human life. This requires a political scheme capable of realisation at all times and under all conditions of human life. The type and form of government need to be flexible and left to human reason to shape; according to the condition and public circumstances; within the framework of the general principles of the shari‘ah. This does not necessarily mean that the political law emerging from the shari‘ah is unclear. The political law is ‘very vivid and concrete in as much as it gives us the clear outline of a political scheme. But precisely because it was meant to be realised at all times and under all conditions, that scheme has been offered in outline only and not in detail. Man’s political, social and economic needs are time-bound and, therefore, extremely variable.

In the next episode, we'll continue with the organs and functions of the state from an Islamic perspective. Bi 'idhnillah."

Citations & References:

- John L. Esposito, Tamara Sonn & John O. Voll, Islam and Democracy after the Arab Spring, 2016, Oxford University Press

- Edward A. Sayre and Tarik M. Yousef, Young Generation Awakening: Economics, Society, and Policy on the Eve of the Arab Spring, 2016, Oxford University Press

- Larbi Sadiki (Ed.), Routledge Handbook of the Arab Spring: Rethinking Democratization, 2015, Routledge

- Edward Schneier, Muslim Democracy: Politics, Religion and Society in Indonesia, Turkey and the Islamic World, 2016, Routledge

- Khaled Abou El Fadl, Islam and the Challenge of Democracy, 2004, Princeton University Press

- Hugh Kennedy, Caliphate: The History of an Idea, 2016, Basic Books

- Hugh Kennedy, The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates, 2023, Routledge

[Episode 14]

[Episode 12]

Bahasa

Ramadan Mubarak (12)

"A man was stopped by the police around 2 AM. The officer asked him where he was going at that time of night.

The man replied, 'I'm on my way to a lecture about alcohol abuse and the effects it has on the human body, as well as smoking and staying out late.'

The officer then asked, 'Really? Who's giving that lecture at this time of night?'

The man replied, 'Mmmmh, that would be my wife, sir.'" 

"Even if, let's say, one of the several pairs of presidential candidates have won the election by gaining more than fifty percent of the vote, there are still more than forty percent of people who did not vote for them, or in other words, do not agree with them. It means that—although those who have won the election stated that they would be the good leader of all parties—there are still parties who—yet don't hate them as personally and according to the rules of the game should admit the winner—are ideologically, politically, and even morally, disagree with them. It is one of the reasons why democracy is always oppositional. As long as those in opposition do so within the framework of recognition of individual and group rights and as citizens and ultimate control by the people of the political system, their actions are still considered legal," said Jasmine while going through the Youth Monument at the entrance to Kebayoran Baru subdistrict in South Jakarta.

"Not all flowers are pleasing to the eye, not all oranges taste sweet, not all what we consider good for ourselves is good for everyone, and so, not all opposition is evil. From an Islamic perspective, in its history, Esposito and Voll reveal that Islamic activist movements challenge some regimes and support others. The political interests of Islamic revivalist groups may lead them into revolutionary opposition to existing governments, or such movements may participate in the existing political system as opposition movements. In some cases, Islamist movements are part of the government or are themselves the ruling force in the political system. This broad spectrum provides four different general situations within which Islamic revivalism and democratization interact. These are Islamic activism as revolutionary opposition to the existing political system; legal or cooperating opposition operating within the existing political system; active participation in government in alliance or coalition with other political forces; and the controlling force in the existing political system. The current experience in each of these situations shapes both the nature of emerging democratic ideals in the Islamic world and the developing Islamically influenced new political orders. Democratization in Muslim societies involves all of the broader issues, present in all societies, of defining and creating democratic political systems.

All Muslims did not always agree with their rulers and, according to Esposito and Voll, Muslim societies have traditions of opposition similar to all other societies. Such experiences go back to the very earliest days of Islam, in the time of the Prophet (ﷺ) in the early seventh century. The experience of the community of believers during the lifetime of the Prophet (ﷺ), set patterns that many later Muslims view as normative. Not only did these experiences set precedents for Muslim beliefs and practices regarding the nature of the law, the state, and the community, but they also created precedents for Islamic concepts of opposition that are part of the heritage available to contemporary Muslims. Because of the specific experiences and historical development of the Islamic community (or ummah), Muslims have concepts and teachings that apply to many different contexts for opposition.

The ummah began as a persecuted minority in the seventh-century Arabian city of Mecca, and their message was a firm challenge to the whole political and belief system of the existing dominant elite of Mecca. Then, when the Prophet (ﷺ) and the sahabah moved to the city of Yathrib, which came to be called Medina, they defined a 'constitution' for a pluralistic society. Finally, with the success of the Prophet's (ﷺ) mission and the subsequent expansion of the Islamic community and state, Muslims had to define what was allowable diversity and what opposition represented sedition. This diversity of experiences provides the basis for an effective repertoire of concepts defining legitimate disagreement and opposition within the community.

In the first years after the beginning of the revelations to the Prophet (ﷺ) in Mecca, the number of the sahabah grew slowly. As time went on, the Muslims were harassed and those without powerful relatives to protect them were often attacked and persecuted. The Islamic message represented a major challenge to the existing social and political order. However, the Muslim group did not engage in violent warfare or conflict and, instead, utilized the methods of dawah or preaching, persuasion, and conversion in response to the hostility of the majority. When the Muslims moved as a group to the neighboring city of Medina, they represented a significant power grouping within a pluralist context. The new context was defined by an agreement that has come to be called, in Islamic history, the 'constitution of Medina.' It outlines the rights and procedures for conflict resolution and community action among Muslims (both from Mecca and Medina) and non-Muslims. Modern Muslims argue that this document and the experience in Medina provide the precedents for a pluralistic sociopolitical system in accord with Islamic traditions and revelation.

The 'classical' Muslim society of the centuries following The Prophet's (ﷺ) death provides the context within which the formal definition of Islamic law, the Sharia, took place. It is in the context of an Islamic majority that the basic concepts and symbols of the Islamic political heritage developed. It was in this era that the ideas of consensus (ijma), consultation (shurah), and ijtihad were operationally defined. Also, during these years the concepts more specifically related to the issues of political opposition developed. These provide an important heritage for contemporary Islamic thinkers and leaders as they work with the issues of dealing with opposition in the present age of global pressures for democratization.

This broad heritage of a more formalized body of Islamic traditions and the law itself provided a foundation for the development of a concept of a privileged legal order above the rulers and governments, by which those leaders could be judged. Islamic law, in this sense, represented a "constitutional" order for Muslim societies. It was a set of fundamental precepts that most people within the political society accepted as legitimate and authoritative. In the modern era, such fundamental principles have been defined in a variety of ways, with some thinkers concentrating on the basic sources, the Quran and the Sunnah, and others utilizing the whole legal corpus of the Sharia as defined by medieval scholars. However, the idea that the basic principles of Islam represent a 'constitution' for Muslim societies is affirmed by a broad spectrum of thinkers.

Mohammed Abed al-Jabri suggests that Democracy today is not merely a history subject, it is also a basic necessity for the modern human being who is no longer a mere figure, but a citizen whose identity is defined by a great number of rights. These are democratic rights, such as the right to choose rulers, to monitor their con­ duct and to depose them; the right to freedom of speech, to hold meetings and form parties, unions, and societies; the right to education and work; the right to equal opportunities in all fields, political, economic, etc. Therefore, democracy should be viewed not as a process that may be applied in one society or another, but as an essential process to be estab­ lished and applied. It is the only atmosphere wherein the rights of citizen­ ship can be enjoyed by the people, on the one hand, while it enables the rulers to enjoy the legitimacy that justifies their rule, on the other.

Democracy is exercised in society, and society is not merely a number of individuals; it is a multitude of relations, interests, groups, contentions, and rivalries. Hence, democracy is a sound and positive method to regulate rela­tions inside the society in a rational manner, directing the struggle towards the advancement of society as a whole, within the citizen’s enjoyment of his rights.

The democratic legitimacy, today, is the only acceptable legitimacy; there is no alternative to it. The revolutionary legitimacy, which called for the deferment of political democracy, on the pretext of giving priority to other objectives, in preparation for ‘real democracy’, has failed in realiz­ ing those objectives. Whether that failure was caused by internal factors or by foreign intervention, the only conclusion today is the assertion of the need for democracy as a right that cannot be suspended or compromised by any party. Any objectives posed by the state today cannot be put above the ‘rights of the human being and citizen’. On the contrary, all objectives must stem from these rights and be in their service. The so-called histori­ cal legitimacy claimed by some rulers is a thing of the past; namely, it is no longer capable of justifying itself in the present age. It might be justi­fied only if it were to conjoin itself to democratic legitimacy and adapt to its rulings. This is its only hope of survival.

On the other hand, viewing democracy as a principle, or a system whereby man enjoys his citizenship rights, gives it precedence over chan­ nels and institutions wherein these rights are exercised.

The question of whether Islam is compatible with democracy has been a puzzle for some and a source of frustration for others. Religion has re-entered politics in many ways in most parts of the world. Historical markers for this resurgence include the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and the attempts to develop a local responsible government in Algeria. Although politically active Islam has received the lion’s share of media and policy attention, it is not alone in experiencing renewed political engagement. Catholicism was critical in the overthrow of the communist regime in Poland; Buddhism is politically engaged in Sri Lanka; conflict between religious groups in India shapes political agendas there; and Pentecostal Protestants have entered the political realm, starting in the United States in the early 1980s.

The unexpected resurgence of religion and the re-entry of religion into politics, which began in the last quarter of the twentieth century and has been accelerating since have made it urgently necessary to describe the political philosophy and system of governance that arises from the Qur’an and an examination of Al-Sīra al-Nabawiyya, the life of the Prophet (ﷺ). A systematic exposition of Islamic politics grounded in the Qur’an is made all the more necessary by the current debate in the West about Islam and human rights and the ability of Western democracies to incorporate significant Muslim minority communities. The question asked, ‘Is Islam compatible with democracy? Is Islam compatible with human rights?’ Some reactions make it clear that they consider Islamic human rights or Islamic democracy to be oxymoronic. The relationship between religion and polity in Muslim societies has been a focus of debate among scholars of Islam. Some view Islam as simply a religion without the right to govern or to order the daily affairs of human life. Others, however, view Islam as not only a religion but also a system and social order encompassing all spheres of human life, including the state and the law. They base their argument on the Qur’an and point out the political connotations of many of the Qur’anic terms such as mulk (domination), ummah (nation), and other terms with political connotations. For example, the Arabic word sultan, which is repeatedly mentioned in the Qur’an, is an abstract noun meaning authority and rule and was used from the early times of Islam to denote government. Similarly, the term hukm (to govern and to judge) and its derivations such as ‘governor(s), ruler(s) and judge(s)’ appear in the Qur’an, explicitly more than 250 times and each has its political connotation.

Islamic Law does not separate religion from daily life, religion from politics; politics from morals; or morals from the state. In Islamic Law, the activity of individuals and their relation to the state have metaphysical and religious bases. Islam is a system for practical human life in all its aspects. Islam professes an ideal and convincing concept that expounds the relationship between the Creator and the creations, the universe, all of life, and humankind. It expounds the nature of the universe and determines the position of humanity in this universe as well as the ultimate objectives for humanity. It includes the doctrines and practical organizations that emanate from and depend upon this ideal, and make it a reality reflecting upon the everyday life of human beings.

Given that the Islamic conception of life involves coordination and harmonization between the body and the soul, it is only reasonable to expect that a very close relationship should have been established between religion and politics, between the mosque and the citadel. On the one hand, Islam deals with the fullness of humanity, as it exists in reality, not treating humanity as an intellectual concept. In contrast with Idealism, Positivism, and similar notions, Islam does not deal with propositions of no practical reality. On the other hand, Islam does not view human beings as spirit alone or as matter alone. Humans are not pure minds but integrated physical, mental, and spiritual beings whose faculties are part of a unified, functional, and responsible whole.

Islamic social order is based on ‘the universal principle of human brotherhood and it endeavors to secure happiness, prosperity, and goodness for both the individual and society. There is no place for class war of any kind between individuals and society in this system.’ In its social system, Islam is communal, prefers a social life, and demands worship in a collectivity—a congregation in which every person turns towards one ultimate authority, one direction, and one center. For example, fasting for one month at the same time in all parts of the globe, and performing the pilgrimage to Mecca at the same time as one of the principal duties of all Muslims. It also places emphasis on strictly personal responsibility and does not forget the development of the individual, and yet it organizes all individuals into a single whole: the Muslim community. The same Law regulates the affairs of the universe, life, and humankind whatever the class or wherever the country. Moreover, the ruler enters the office only by free election and then takes an oath for which he is responsible before the people.

About the relationship between Islam and politics, Sayyid Qutb and Abu al-A‘la Mawdudi, both pointed out that Islam, by its very nature, is a ‘political religion’. Scholar and judge ‘Ali Abd al-Raziq states ‘I do not believe that the Islamic Law is merely spiritual’. [...] Islam is a legislative religion. The application of Islamic Law is obligatory on Muslims. This is the command of Allah to them all. [...] The Muslims must establish a government to carry on this burden. Allah does not impose upon Muslims a specific type or form of government, but they are free to choose what is better for the welfare of their society at any time.’ Earlier exegetes such as Ibn Kathir, in his commentaries upon Qur’anic verse Sura An-Nisa (4):59, points out ‘the sovereign is Allah, He alone is the legislator’. The contemporary scholar of al-Azhar, Muhammad al-Ghazali, emphasised that ‘Allah is the only Legislator and that the nation (ummah) must establish a government of consultation (shurah)’. According to al-Qurtubi, ‘there is no difference among the Muslim scholars (Imams) on that Allah is the Legislator and that there must be a State’. Similarly, al-Mawardi asserts that ‘leadership is prescribed to succeed the prophethood as a means of protecting the religion and managing the affairs of this world. There is a consensus of opinion that the person who discharges the responsibilities of this position (leadership) must take on the contract of leadership of the ummah.’

Then, what is the Islamic view of Sovereignty and the Constitution? From the perspective of international law, the sovereignty of a state is the core of its identity. In Islamic Law, sovereignty is the characteristic of the divine whose rule is immediate, and whose commands, as in the Qur’an, embody dan guide the law and constitution of the nation and the state.

One could argue that the Qur’an and sunnah are the sources of jurisprudence ( fiqh) and expressions of the shari‘ah. Sayed Khatab and Gary D. Bouma suggest that Islamic jurisprudence is only a personal opinion concerning interpretations of the shari‘ah. Muslims have agreed on the shari‘ah but not on the rulings of jurisprudence ( fiqh). The legal implication of this is that government in Islam is bound by a Constitution that is divinely inspired and that the Muslim community agrees that this is the case. Therefore, government in Islam is not a kind of absolute government, nor it is an autocracy or an authoritarian form of government; it is a government limited to a Constitution. Scholars of politics maintain that ‘limitation of governmental power, in regulating the affairs of the people, is a great principle of constitutional rule. The methods and the means which explain these limitations are called constitutional polity’.

That the sovereignty belongs to Allah alone is not necessarily that Allah descends Himself to govern, but sent down His law to govern. Here, the authority is the law, and the rule is but the rule of law. In Islam administration and government exist to facilitate the application of law. The duty of government is to facilitate the application of law. The limitation of government to the law makes the notion of theocracy inapplicable. In Islamic view of the state, the person or persons at the helm of affairs are not regarded as a specific class divinely elevated or set aside from the common people. They do not rule in the place of Allah, but merely interpret and apply the law given to them by Allah, laws which are available and known to all Muslims. They are special neither in themselves nor in the laws they interpret and apply. Nor are they clergy in the sense of Western theocracies, which are clergy-controlled absolutist governments. In short, the characteristics of theocracy, and the like of this word group, do not apply to the government in Islam.

From these points of view, it is clear to see the following characteristics: the system of government in Islam is compatible with democracy, and both systems contain substantial elements of similarity. The difference between the two systems—if interpreted on a religious basis—also supports those elements that are similar to democracy: government in Islam is Constitutional; Islamic government is not theocratic or autocratic; changes in the form of government will not change the Islamic identity of the state, as long as the government facilitates the ordinances of the law. For example, in Indonesia, the Department of Religion was formed to facilitate and handle these laws and needs. Therefore, the idea that Kantor Urusan Agama (the Office of Religious Affairs) is a place for marriage registration services for all religions is an inaccurate view.

What about the form of government, organs, and functions of the state from an Islamic perspective? We'll talk about it in the next episode, bi 'idznillah."

While taking a break, Jasmine sang,

Allah, You're the Source of life and You're the Source of truth

To obey You, I strive and my aim is pleasing You

Allah, You are the only One, Your promises always true

You don't need anyone, but we're all in need of You *)

Citations & References:

- Sayed Khatab & Gary D. Bouma, Democracy In Islam, 2007, Routledge

- Mohammed Abed al-Jabri, Democracy, Human Rights and Law in Islamic Thought, 2009, Centre for Arab Unity Studies

*) "Radhitubillahi Rabba" written by Bara Kherigi & Maher Elzein

[Episode 13]

[Episode 11]

Bahasa

Ramadan Mubarak (11)

"A doctor was diagnosing a patient, asking, 'Do you always snore?'

'Nope, only when I sleep,' replied the patient."

"Often little or oven no airing have been given through the available institutional channels offered by democratic states when citizens give voice to truths and logic on the streets or pack assembly halls or share their ideas through the minority press," Jasmine went on as looking at Raden Saleh's painting, The Arrest of Prince Diponegoro.

"Such discourses offer new rhetorical strategies for expressing citizen desires, needs, and emotions that otherwise go unrecognized and unaddressed. They also offer impetus for new forms of deliberation and informed action that can result in real political change.

As democracies become more democratic, they improve themselves and the political well-being of their members. Increased democratization further opens the public sphere to diverse opinions and thereby offers actors an increased stake in deliberative decision-making. Actors can rightly expect that their expressed interests and insights will be genuinely recognized and engaged by significant others, and so they are motivated to seize upon opportunities for meaningful input into matters of import to themselves and their progeny. All this and more creates a positive rippling effect across the political landscape that culminates in better informed and reflexive political action.

The idea of increased democratization and the value it places upon the participatory involvement of actors in political institutions underscores a need for expanded arenas of public discourse. The importance of discourse to democracy points to a tension between the ideal of increased democratization, manifested in expanded deliberative arenas, and the realities of imperfect democracies which often work in ways contrary to the ideal. On the one hand, free elections, proportional representation, and majority rule all testify to the progress of democratic states and, indeed, serve as discursive props for the legitimation of existing state institutional arrangements and practices: competing programs of action are debated; the will of the people is expressed through elections; the reins of government are often exchanged; social conflicts are resolved by peaceful means. On the other hand, such outcomes and how they are discursively represented can disguise a tendency of democratic states to suppress some actors’ input as a means of protecting or advancing the interests of privileged others: debates over competing programs of action may be only partial and exclusionary of some (perhaps most) potential participants; the will of the people may be little more than an ostensive majority opinion expressed restrictedly in calcified aggregations of electoral result or representational apportionment; claims of conflict resolution may deflect attention away from chronic disparities in how power is distributed.

The relationship between rulers and people who might disagree with them is a standard part of the political experience of every society. No government is completely supported in all that it does by all the people whom it claims to govern, and one of the major tasks of a political system is to find ways of balancing government and opposition. At the same time, the idea of organized political opposition as a normal and beneficial component of a polity is a surprising one, and seems quite out of accord with the traditional concern of political speculation: the search for a good state based on universal allegiance to correct principles and practices. Even in established parliamentary systems such as the British one, there continued to be reservations in the minds of at least some prominent nineteenth—and early twentieth—century intellectuals about the idea of a formally accepted and legitimate opposition. The effort in traditional political theory and practice was to create the best possible political system, and opposition was frequently seen as a disruptive rather than constructive force in that creative process.

Democracy protects the rights and liberties of the people and recognizes the freedom of people to express their views. However, the 'will of the people' is very frequently plural, and democratic traditions provide many different ways of defining and managing opposition. The principles of democracy involve the right of individuals and groups to disagree with the government. Yet, there is always a sense of reservation about such disagreement. Although many definitions of democracy, for example, recognize the right, and in some definitions even the necessity, of opposition parties to exist, the phrase 'partisan politics' carries negative implications even in the conversations of those most convinced of the need for multiparty political competition. Even more broadly, there is the basic tension in political societies between the desire for harmony and stability and the need to provide some vehicle for the expression of disagreement.

Opposition can take many forms, which range from revolutionary advocacy of the destruction of the existing system to varying levels of disagreement with the people in power in a political system. No government will allow open activity that is aimed at its destruction by violent means. There have, however, been governments who have organized, or at least cooperated with, as a part of some of the efforts of democratization, efforts to bring about the end of the existing political system and its replacement by a system based on different principles. Most of the authoritarian, one-party regimes of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union engaged in this cooperative self-destruction under the pressure of massive popular (and illegal) movements of opposition. Military governments in Africa repeatedly announce the initiation of efforts to restore civilian democracy, with varying degrees of commitment and success. However, the basic minimum requirement that governments impose on opposition is that they do not actively engage in violent acts to overthrow the government.

Most governments place additional restrictions on opposition groups. In the 1950s and 1960s, in many states in the United States, for example, one of the conditions of employment by a state institution was taking an oath in which prospective employees swore that they were 'not now nor ever had been' members of a group advocating the violent overthrow of the United States government, even if the individual had never personally engaged in such activities. In this context, the basic standard of judgment is acceptance of the fundamental rules of the political system by the opposition. In the early 1960s, when military regimes were common in many parts of the world, an observation by Thomas Hobbes was often quoted, which stated that politics was 'like a game of cards: the players must agree which card is to be trump. With this difference, he adds, that in politics, whenever no other card is agreed upon, clubs are trumps.' The 'rules of the game' had to be accepted by the opposition; otherwise 'clubs' would provide the basis for power.

Although the acceptance of democracy as a good political system is relatively recent and there have long been reservations (at least on the part of the rulers) about opposition to existing regimes, there have been many different structural and informal limitations on the power of rulers throughout history. No ruler has had absolute control over all things all of the time. Societies and civilizations developed important conceptualizations for limiting the power of tyrants, and these concepts reflect the distinctive heritages of different societies. Although the concept of the Mandate of Heaven, for example, may have been defined as a way of legitimizing the ancient Chou dynasty's claim to power and was an important part of Chinese concepts of imperial legitimacy, it also provided in subsequent centuries a ratio- nale for revolution against an imperial dynasty in times of instability and trouble.

Revolutionary opposition to an existing political system is not what is meant in most discussions of 'political opposition.' In his characteristic manner, G. K. Chesterton put the matter clearly, 'It is absurd to ask a Government to provide an opposition. You cannot go to the Sultan and say reproachfully: 'You have made no arrangements for your brother dethroning you and seizing the Caliphate.' You can- not go to a medieval king and say: 'Kindly lend me two thousand spears and one thousand bowmen, as I wish to raise a rebellion against you.'' In most standard Western political thought, legitimate 'opposition' in a democratic context is understood in a special way. Most suggestions stress that opposition presupposes consent on fundamentals, that is, consent at the community and regime level. What the opposition opposes is a government, not the political system as such.

This concept of opposition depends upon an underlying concept of a 'constitution,' or set of fundamental precepts that all people within the political system, including the opposition, accept as legitimate. The emergence of the idea of constitutional government is an important element in the development of the modern state, but it is a relatively recent development in the West. The concept of 'an impersonal and privileged legal or constitutional order' is frequently tied to the idea of the state in modern Western political thought, but 'it did not become a major object of concern until the late sixteenth century and the idea of a legally circumscribed power structure of power separate from the ruler and ruled with supreme jurisdiction over territory is a modern phenomenon.

In standard modern Western political thought, acceptible opposition in a democratic system is closely tied to the concept of constitutional government, in which there is an underlying, fundamental consensus on the 'rules of the game' of politics. Opposition is the legitimate disagreement with particular policies of specific leaders within the mutually accepted framework of the principles of an underlying constitution that is either written or based on long-established practice. However, in modern Western political experiences, there is also a traditional radical opposition that is expressed in many different revolutionary forms.

In modern Western European political history, there is a long-standing tension between two different understandings of democracy, and each of these understandings represents a revolutionary opposition to the other. The two competing visions were one that emphasized individual rights and limitation on government and another that stressed the popular will and collective structures of community. This is the continuing debate in the Western political tradition and is at the heart of any discussion of democracy.

By the end of the twentieth century, revolutions, in the old traditions of radical violence, are no longer practical or effective in the globalized context of the politics of democratization. In current world conditions, democratic revolutions of the classical nineteenth-century kind are possible only when the political regimes maintain anti-democratic positions in the face of significant popular demand for democratization. In most countries in the 1990s, even the radical opposition is operating within a shared conceptual framework. Where there is an underlying difference in fundamental cosmology, as in the contrast between secular humanist political theory and political theory built on religious assumptions, there is the possibility of violent, anti-systemic revolution, but in most cases there is a broad acceptance of the fundamental assumptions of the need for liberty, equality, and popular political participation in some meaningful form.

The broad consensus does not, however, eliminate the possibility of opposition or even the sense of the real need for continuing opposition if democracy is to be successful. In its most sanitized version in the context of liberal democracy, there is an insistence that the cornerstone of democratic governance is the right to conduct free and fair elections [defined by political scientist Robert Dahl as an election in which 'coercion is comparatively uncommon'. Coercion involves compelling a party to act in an involuntary manner by the use of threats, including threats to use force against that party. It involves a set of forceful actions which violate the free will of an individual in order to induce a desired response. These actions may include extortion, blackmail, or even torture and sexual assault. A free and fair election involves political freedoms and fair processes leading up to the vote, a fair count of eligible voters who cast a ballot (including such aspects as electoral fraud or voter suppression), and acceptance of election results by all parties. An election may partially meet international standards for free and fair elections, or may meet some standards but not others], that these elections should be open to multiple parties, and that the winning party should be able to form a government capable of fulfilling its mandate. It should also be willing to relinquish power if subsequent election results require it. However, in this vision of an opposition party, there is a strict limitation: when such a party comes to power, it should be forbidden to alter basic constitutional provisions in an effort to seize extra-constitutional powers or stop new elections.

More broadly based descriptions of the need for opposition in a democratic system assume that no governmental system, not even a functioning democracy, is ever perfect. Because 'governments constantly change,' the effort of 'reinventing government' is not only conceivable but, in the views of many, necessary. Constructive criticism and opposition become an essential part of democracy, both in terms of the need for mechanisms that will allow opposition continued access to positions of leadership and in a more radical sense.

Opposition as a simple statement of disagreement with the leaders in a political system is an ancient phenomenon. It usually was expressed through movements to overthrow or destroy the government and was, naturally, not recognized as a legitimate political option by the rulers. Opposition as an accepted option within a political system is in many ways a relatively recent phenomenon in world history. It is especially identified with the emergence of the modern ideas of democracy.

Modern democratic opposition involves a number of basic assumptions. In general terms, there is an assumption of a consensus among all in the system on the fundamental construction of that political system. If that consensus is absent, it is assumed that legitimate opposition will not lead to violent and military efforts to overthrow the existing system and that any opposition that comes to power will not so alter the system that it could not subsequently be restored by nonviolent means. Legitimate opposition may be radical, liberal, or conservative, working for long-term system transformation, system development, or system preservation, but it must do this within the framework of recognition of individual and group rights and ultimate control by the people of the political system.

We have discussed pragmatism about 'democracy is a way of life' as something too premature in the previous session, and in the next episode, we will discuss democracy, and also the opposition, from an Islamic perspective, bi 'idhnillah."

Citations & References:

- Michael Huspek (Ed.), Oppositional Discourses and Democracies, 2010, Routledge

- John L. Esposito and John O. Voll, Islam and Democracy, 1996, Oxford University Press

[Episode 12]

[Episode 10]

Bahasa

Ramadan Mubarak (10)

"An Indonesian tourist was visiting his old friend who worked in Vienna and took him to the Währinger Ostfriedhof. Walking in the graveyard, he heard the Third Symphony playing backward. When it was over, the Second Symphony started playing backward, and then the First. However, he couldn't listen well to Schiller's An die Freude or Ode to Joy.

'What’s going on?' he asked his friend.

'O don't worry, it's common, it’s Beethoven,' replied his friend, 'he’s recomposing his symphony.'”

"When it comes to many matters of fact, old-fashioned absolutism still usually trumps newfangled relativism," said Jasmine as she watched the red carpet followed by Charpentier's Marche en rondeau symphony.

"When it comes to values, however, says Julian Baggini, relativism has more genuine devotees. Throwing up our hands is an understandable response if we believe that moral judgements involve facts about the rightness and wrongness of actions. Facts are established by appeal to evidence and observation. No facts are inconvenient for the truth. The way to truth is not to look for an impossible neutral view that takes us outside any given network of beliefs. Power doesn’t speak the truth; truth must speak to power. Baggini added that to become smarter, we must understand the ways we are dumb. For a better morality, we need better knowledge, it needs to be understood holistically.

On 1908, A. O. Lovejoy was taking William James’s 1898 essay on ‘Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results’ as marking the inauguration of pragmatism as a completed doctrine.

The terms pragmatism, pragmatic, and pragmatist are commonly used to denote a commitment to success in practical affairs, to ‘getting things done’. According to Robert B. Talisse and Scott F. Aikin, pragmatists are driven not by principle, but by the desire to achieve their ends. Hence pragmatists have little interest in abstraction, idealization, nitpicking argument, or theory of any sort; they have no time for these because they are fixed on practical tasks. A pragmatist is hence a bargainer, a negotiator, a doer, rather than a seeker of truth, a wonderer, or a thinker. We might say, then, that pragmatism is the opposite of philosophy.

Is pragmatism a philosophical theory? Not exactly. It is difficult to point to a single philosophical claim to which all pragmatists subscribe. It is also, not bound to any particular cultural or historical milieu. Pragmatism in the sense which concerns us is the name for something distinctively philosophical, say Talisse and Aikin. Is pragmatism a school of philosophy orga- nized around a single doctrine in the way that we might say that, for example, Stoicism is a school? Not quite. Although there are doctrinal similarities and channels of influence among all pragmatist philosophers, the differences among them make it difficult to see them as constituting a school.

Philosophers who embrace the term pragmatism, disagree over central and substantive philosophical matters. They also disagree about what pragmatism is. Some say that pragma- tism is a thesis about meaning, reference, communication, or language itself. Others claim that pragmatism is an epistemological proposal, an account of knowledge, belief, justification, inquiry, or truth. Some hold it is a metaphysical perspective, a view about reality, nature, what there is, what we should say there is, or what we should say about what natural science says there is. Still others deny that prag- matism is a philosophical account of anything in particular. Among these philosophers, some say pragmatism is a method of doing philosophy. Others claim it is a stance one might take toward traditional philosophical problems. According to some, pragmatism is an attitude one takes toward philosophy itself. Some have held that pragmatism is a kind of intellectual therapy, an antidote to the human compulsion to obsess over the traditional questions of philosophy. In light of all of this, Talisse and Aikin agree with Richard Rorty, who observed that pragmatism is ‘a vague, ambiguous, and overworked word’.

Knowing is a connection between a knower and a truth. The question of truth is implicated in the question of the nature of knowledge. Pursuing a clear view of truth is not merely instrumental to our pursuit of an account of knowledge. Truth is itself intrinsically interesting and worth getting clear about. Our beliefs are things we take to be true. Truth is a success term. That is, when we have true beliefs, we have gotten things right, and when we have false ones, we have missed the mark. A further regulative thought about truths is that they not only should not contradict each other, but they also should hang together in a coherent fashion. Truth, as a good, is not intelligible unless it is integrated in our lives.

Pragmatism are species of empiricism—the view that all knowledge has its source in experience; additionally, all pragmatisms endorse some style of naturalism—the view that the world investigated by empirical science is the only world there is. Pragmatism is also concerned with action. Pragmatists are concerned with making action more successful. The word 'pragmatic' has existed in English since the 1500s, a word borrowed from French and ultimately derived from Greek via Latin. The Greek word pragma, meaning business, deed, or act, is a noun derived from the verb prassein, to do.

Charles Peirce, an American polymath, was the first one who identified pragmatism. Pragmatism began in the United States in the 1870s. Its origins are often attributed to philosophers Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. The later, views that pragmatism entails ‘democracy is a way of life’. What kind of ‘way of life’ is democracy?

Deweyan democracy through the following characterization: Deweyan democracy is substantive insofar as it rejects any attempt to separate politics and ethics. Dewey held that the democratic political order is essentially a moral order, and, further, democratic participation is an essential constituent of a ‘truly human way of living’. Dewey rejects the idea that participation consists simply in voting and petitioning in service of one’s preferences. Thus, Dewey held that democratic participation is essentially communicative, it consists in the willingness of citizens to engage in activity by which they may ‘convince and be convinced by reason’ and come to realize ‘values prized in common’. Dewey thought that such communicative processes unlike other forms of perfectionism, which hold that the project of forming citizens’ dispositions is a task only for the state, Dewey’s perfectionism is, like his conception of democracy, deep; that is, on the Deweyan view, the perfectionist project is a task for all modes of human association. Dewey held that ‘The struggle for democracy has to be maintained on as many fronts as culture has aspects: political, economic, international, educational, scientific and artistic, and religious’. He saw the task of democracy to be that of ‘making our own politics, industry, education, our culture generally, a servant and an evolving manifestation of democratic ideals’. For Dewey, then, all social associations should be aimed at the realization of his distinctive vision of human flourishing. For Dewey, then, all social associations should be aimed at the realization of his distinctive vision of human flourishing. This aspiration is found throughout Dewey’s corpus; in his writings on politics, education, psychology, religion, culture, and art, we are told that growth is the ultimate and proper end.

So, do we know what it is for humans to flourish? Given the state of our moral knowledge, no one yet knows which conception of human flourishing is correct. Talisse and Aikin suggest that a state which imposes on its citizens a false or defective conception of human flourishing inflicts serious moral harm on them. The project of instituting ‘democracy as a way of life’ by designing all institutions of human association so that they promote growth is at best premature.

Pragmatism views language and thought as tools for prediction, problem-solving, and action, rather than describing, representing, or mirroring reality. Pragmatists contend that most philosophical topics—such as the nature of knowledge, language, concepts, meaning, belief, and science—are all best viewed in terms of their practical uses and successes. Pragmatism sees no fundamental difference between practical and theoretical reason, nor any ontological difference between facts and values. Pragmatist ethics is broadly humanist because it sees no ultimate test of morality beyond what matters for us as humans.

Democracy as we know it is an inspiring but perpetually troubled endeavor, a difficult, ongoing struggle with no clear outcome in sight, says John Medearis. When Anthony Trollope was writing Phineas Finn—British politics novel of the 1860s, including voting reform, secret ballot, rotten boroughs, and Irish tenant-right, as well as Finn's romances with women of fortune, which would secure his financial future—a great deal of democratic trouble centered on radical heirs to Chartism who challenged the political domination of landed and high bourgeois classes. These efforts were threatening enough to prod both Liberals and Conservatives to compete doggedly for working-class support.

If the democratic ambition is collective, egalitarian management of the institutions and forces that shape our lives, each of these situations includes an element of the opposite, a spiraling loss of such control or an inability to exert it. It would be wrong to say that democratizing forces are absent. Movements, politicians, and ordinary people have tried to regain some democratic restraint on finance, and the public fitfully set limits on military behemoths. Still, democracy seems at best an ongoing struggle with phenomena like these, not a victory over them. Yet neither dismay, nor resignation, nor retrenchment in the face of these democratic troubles is warranted. The democratic path, according to this view, simply is continuous oppositional exertion, without any expectation of transcendent victory.

A political vision like this one, stressing the continual struggle to recapture runaway social forces, wherever we find them—one emphasizing opposition, conflict, and tension—may strike some people, like Trollope’s character Jane Bunce, as a promise that democracy will never offer more than 'dry bread and cross words.' In Phineas Finn, Bunce’s husband, a copying journeyman, trade unionist, and reformer, survives on jail food for a week after being arrested during protests outside Parliament for the secret ballot. This experience, too, is the very stuff of democratic struggle.

Democratic action, says Medearis, responds perennially to apparently untamable wars, sclerotic bureaucracies, racial caste systems, and runaway markets. It persists uneasily alongside these refractory institutions and forces, which resist and make democracy precarious. These sorts of social structures and forces as alienated. They deeply overshadow ordinary people’s capacities to act, while they provide a means for some people to oppress others. At the same time, crucially, these forces and institutions are not external ones, confronting the mass of people from outside, but the by-product of the same people’s varied collective activities. They are, in a certain social science vernacular, reproduced by these activities. Because democratic action continually struggles to maintain egalitarian control over the social world that our shared activities constantly reproduce—because alienated institutions and forces are a persistent, constantly renewed challenge—democracy is perennially oppositional.

The word ‘opposition’ is used daily to account for a variety of developments; but its many meanings have not been systematically related to the differences among the political systems of the world, says Jean Blondel. Meanwhile, many country analyses examine the nature of political opposition in each particular case. Opposition is a ‘dependent’ concept. This means that the character of the opposition is tied to the character of the government. The notion of opposition is thus, so to speak, parasitic on ideas of government, of rule, of authority: indeed, the existence of a state is a necessary condition for the existence of opposition and it could indeed be added that a distinction should be made between strong and weak states, between states that can and states that cannot fully implement their decisions. One might therefore seem entitled to draw the conclusion that the only way to discover the true character of opposition is by examining first government, rule, authority, or state.

Political opposition varies markedly in strength and character, not just between but among authoritarian and liberal regimes. In authoritarian polities, the government can be brutal or mildly repressive and, in the latter case, allow some groups and even parties to express a degree of (limited) dissent, only to clamp down if this opposition goes beyond what is regarded as ‘acceptable’ bounds. Varying degrees of repression may thus result in much of the real opposition being forced underground and the tolerated opposition being mainly represented by rather weak groups. In liberal politics, on the other hand, institutions and social cleavages have a profound effect on the character of opposition: at one extreme, opposition can reflect the existence of communal groups, parties being mere ‘epiphenomena’; at the other extreme, where there are no or almost no communal divisions, and social cleavages are cross-cutting or weak, parties are likely to be strong and some of the most important groups at least will tend to operate closely with the parties.

The strength of opposition depends on its cohesiveness. In authoritarian regimes, cohesiveness is likely to be low, at least except for short periods, since, when the opposition is cohesive, the regime is in imminent danger of collapse. As the opposition is not likely to be cohesive, the building of opposition (its ‘repositioning’) is likely to pose vast problems of institution-building if and when the political system moves away from authoritarianism. In liberal politics, political opposition is likely to be cohesive where there is one decision center only and where institutions rather than social cleavages dominate the political system. Not surprisingly, opposition is given full recognition in situations of this type and it is indeed regarded as having a status almost equal to that of the government which it is able to challenge and indeed to replace.

We will continue our discussion in the next episode, bi 'idhnillah."

Citations & References:

- Robert B. Talisse & Scott F. Aikin, Pragmatism: A Guide for the Perplexed, 2008, Continuum International

- John Medearis, Why Democracy is Oppositional, 2015, Harvard University Press

- Jean Blondel, Political Opposition in the Contemporary World, Government and Opposition Journal, 1997, Vol. 3, Iss. 4, John Wiley and Sons

[Episode 11]

[Episode 9]

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