All (Muslim) Politics Is Local
How Context Shapes Islam in Power
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Beyond Terror and Martyrdom: The Future of the Middle East
Harvard University Press
2008
336 pp.
9780674031388
$27.95
The Crisis of Islamic Civilization
Yale University Press
2009
304 pp.
0300139314
$27.50
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An annotated Foreign Affairs syllabus on religion and foreign policy.
The maxim Islam din wa-dawla (Islam is religion and state) is often said to describe a distinguishing mark of Islam -- the suggestion being that Islam is a religion with a political mission at its core. Both those who repeat the mantra with approving fervor and those who worry about it assert its essential truth and suggest that all Muslims must make it a part of their worldview. Some go so far as to claim that this axiom calls for a particular form of state structure or political behavior.
And yet, of course, the statement is nothing more than a political slogan -- an artifact of its time, its meaning contingent on the setting in which it is used, like any other rallying cry. This quality does not make the slogan any less meaningful for the Muslims who subscribe to it; what it does is highlight the fact that this saying reflects a preoccupation with state power in the modern world. The Muslims who adhere to it, no less than those who do not and no less than non-Muslims, are both the products and the makers of that world. This point is worth stating since much of the present debate about the role of Islam in world politics tends to downplay the political or, at least, display a one-dimensional understanding of what drives political ambition. The political behavior of Islamists, and sometimes that of all Muslims, is often treated as an exotic peculiarity that defies normal analysis and can only be explained as an extension of their faith.
Whatever one's reference point, however, the sometimes sordid business of politics has a gravitational pull that brings lofty ideals and grand sentiments down to earth with a thump. To play the game of politics is to grapple with the practicalities of power. This requires making sense of why people act as they do and when they do: why they respond to certain calls to action -- nationalist, Islamist, whatever -- and why they think their political activities are appropriate, ethically as well as practically, to the ends they imagine worthy of achievement.
Investigating these questions may be an empirical or epistemological challenge, but it does not require singling out religious motivations, Islamic or otherwise. The same searching questions should be asked of the religiously motivated that are asked of liberals, conservatives, Marxists, fascists, nationalists, and any other group that tries to put into practice its imagined notion of the good life. One should not rely only on the players' descriptions of themselves. Yet this is precisely what has happened to the effort to understand the role of religion in shaping the political lives of Muslims. Many members of the Western media, and even many Western academics, have pointed to the most extreme of Muslim political tracts and suggested that these are what Islamism, or even Islam, is really about.
It is all the more refreshing, therefore, to encounter two serious books that avoid this pitfall: Gilles Kepel puts the "politics" back in "Islamist politics," and Ali Allawi explores the often troubled relationship between worldly power and the spirituality of Islamic beliefs. Both books indicate, in their own way, that all Muslims who seek to reshape the world according to Islamic ideals and traditions, whatever they may define those to be, are confronted by the mundane need to bend an often obdurate reality to their will.
RELIGION AND POWER
The exercise of power is bound by time and place, and it depends on the competence of political actors. These conditions determine the political impact of any Islamic ideals. It is worth contrasting, for example, the very different outcomes of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's calls for revolt in Iran in 1963 and in 1978: the first foundered; the second started a revolution. In some cases, the venality of political actors can trigger disillusionment and a reappraisal of Islamic obligations, leading some to turn their backs on an Islamic political program. (Iran might become such a case, after the unrest over the presidential election earlier this year.) A program that does not work -- spectacularly, corrosively, or insidiously -- loses credibility and purchase. It can no longer move people; it has no traction. This may be the result of various factors unrelated to religion or ideology, but these factors necessarily affect the ways in which people understand and act on calls to put their ideals into practice.
Allawi captures this point well in his account of the rise, domination, and decline of secular ideologies and their adherents in the Middle East. Having lived through Iraq's turbulent years of revolution, he witnessed thousands of Iraqis being drawn to the Iraqi Communist Party and thousands of others coming to believe that Arab nationalism and Arab socialism, Baathist or otherwise, would bring modernity to Iraq. Unsurprisingly, Allawi is wary of these fallen gods.
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The United States typically gives complete allegiance and exclusive support to national leaders without considering how to promote a more traditional, and arguably fairer and more stable, system of shared power devolved to local authorities.