What Is the Place of Democracy in Islam?

In fact, I believe it is possible to summarize some points of general consensus that together form a kind of modal modern Islamic constitutional theory. The aspects of constitutionalism that are more or less subject to agreement in modern Sunni Islamic thought are that the people are, broadly speaking, the source or origin of the legitimacy of political institutions (al-sha¢b maśdar al-suluţāt), can elect and supervise political officers, and can participate in various forms of consultation and lawmaking. Similarly, it is broadly agreed that elected rulers are agents or civil servants subject to the law and limited in their authority, and that all laws and enactments are subject to some kind of shariah review. This is what is meant when some contemporary Islamic constitutional theorists claim that the state in Islam is neither theocratic nor fully secular but rather a “civil state.”

This, I submit, is the traditionalist Islamic context for understanding the rise of popular sovereignty in modern Islamic thought and the invention of a distinct ideal regime type within which democracy is not only formally tolerated but also an important moral commitment. But before exploring that ideal regime, I would like to show how a commitment to this modal kind of Islamic constitutionalism, which might be seen as a kind of “thin democracy,” might slip into a commitment to a stronger form of democracy. It is not hard to see how this follows step-by-step. 

If rulers derive their right to rule from the consent of the people’s representatives (the people who loose and bind), then why should the people who loose and bind not derive their right to represent the people from the people’s explicit authorization or appointment? After all, the people who loose and bind are not identified specifically by the shariah but only informally and functionally. If the idea of the people who loose and bind is a kind of free-floating designation that any group can claim if it wants to depose a ruler (from the Ottoman Janissaries of old to the Egyptian military of 2013), why can’t Muslims improve on this and say that, in modern conditions, the right to represent and speak for the people must be justified by the people’s own authorization or appointment? Nothing in the shariah would seem to preclude that.

But then, if the people have the right to choose their representatives who are tasked with choosing their rulers, then by what rules and procedures do the people appoint the people who loose and bind? And who chooses those rules? It seems that the rules by which the people appoint their representatives are not a fixed matter of the shariah but are rather something subject to ijtihād and consultation. Let’s posit that these basic rules governing the election of representatives might also be subject to the people’s consent or approval. In this sense, the people might be seen as the authors and source of legitimacy of the basic rules that govern the formation of political institutions.

What, though, is the scope of this right to design the rules that govern institutions? If the people have the right to authorize entire systems of rule, and not just be represented by unelected people who loose and bind, then might not the authority of the religious scholars themselves be part of this system? Some set of rules has to determine how various kinds of elites relate to each other, what the boundaries between their respective authorities are, and so on. And thus, if the applied, practical authority of the religious scholars is derived from the overall legitimacy of a political system authored (and authorized) by the people, then doesn’t this imply that the people are in some way the source of legitimate legislative authority in an Islamic polity?

What does this mean? Well, let’s assume (as noted earlier) that there is always an area of law and policy that is not sacred but rather a matter of public interest (maślaĥah) and subject to consultation. The basic laws governing the creation of new political institutions and the relations between them are one such area of law. What else might fall within this area of law? What the exact scope of this area of law and policy is, and where exactly its boundary is with areas governed by fiqh, we do not need to concern ourselves with here. The present point is twofold. First, if the authorities charged with formulating laws and policies in the people’s interest (maślaĥah) themselves derive their authority from popular consent, then in that sense, the people are the source of authority for this kind of law. But, second, if the formulation of judgments in these areas of law is a matter of shūrā, then there is no canonical reason why shūrā cannot be widespread. Nothing in the shariah specifies who has a right to be consulted, and so there is no canonical reason to deprive the people of the right to participate in consultation on public matters that affect them. So in these two senses, the people might be seen as the ultimate source of whatever we call that area of law or policy governed by maślaĥah and shūrā. 

Now this, of course, leaves open the possibility that large areas of law in a Muslim polity are still governed by the epistemic authority of religious scholars. Religious scholars may get their immediate right to propose, interpret, codify, and apply fiqh law from their appointment and authorization by legitimate public authorities (the way that judges traditionally had to be appointed by rulers in classical Islam). But that space is then autonomous. Religious scholars are collectively the ultimate arbiters of what counts as this kind of law. This is a recognizable and coherent vision of legitimate Islamic shariah governance (siyāsah shar¢iyyah). I am not questioning its plausibility or traditional status here. But I am suggesting that it is not necessarily the end of the story.

First, even in classical Islam, the right of the scholars to speak in the name of fiqh and to have their understanding of fiqh applied as the sole supreme law of Islam was not absolute or unproblematic in practice. Rulers, especially caliphs, were often involved in resolving disputes within fiqh, even commanding judges to enforce specific rulings. Moreover, where the acts of rulers were thought to be in violation of shariah, as pronounced by the scholars, someone had to decide whether the knowledge of the scholars or the judgment or prerogative of the rulers was supreme. That, then as now, was at the discretion of the rulers.

To be sure, these are all questions and ambiguities. Those who stick to a more traditional conception of Islamic governance as the collaboration of rulers, scholars, and social elites to both rule over and represent the people are not wrong in some manifest doctrinal sense. But nor is their appeal to premodern Islamic tradition the same as appeal to Islamic truth or certainty. Issues of governance are ultimately judged by how they advance the common weal (maślaĥah), and those judgments are always indeterminate (ijtihādī) and subject to dispute (ikhtilāf).

But two things must be acknowledged: (1) modern Islamic constitutional theory stresses the participatory role of the ummah—both in electing and appointing the government and also in whatever process is imagined for institutionalizing shūrā and policy-oriented lawmaking in ways not imagined by premodern tradition—and (2) the expectations of modern Muslims to hold governments accountable, articulate their own conceptions of what is in their interest, and participate in the formation of Islamic conceptions of political morality are here to stay. Whatever may or may not have been the case in the past, the reassertion of an obligation to obey rulers and scholars is experienced by countless Muslims as unjust.

However, this alone does not ground a thicker form of Islamic democracy. What is the argument for seeing the people as having some kind of authority, or even sovereignty, over both the political and legal institutions of an Islamic regime?

The Ummah as God’s Caliph

The theory of an Islamic democracy is derived not just from the technicalities of classical and modern Islamic constitutional law but also from an intellectual revolution in modern Islamic thought. This revolution consisted of the move from a view of politics as just guardianship and pious representation by rulers and scholars to a distinctive vision of democracy whereby a just and pious people govern themselves while also representing God’s instructions to humanity. This intellectual revolution involved more than political pragmatism or superficial adoption of democratic language. It consisted of a comprehensive reformulation of Islamic political philosophy, built in particular on a theological claim about humankind’s status as God’s vicegerent—or caliph—on Earth, based on a series of Qur’anic verses (particularly 2:30).²

It is crucial to appreciate that the divine and popular elements in Islamic democratic theory are not only in tension but often derived from the same commitments and materials. Divine command is not just a constraint on human freedom, and human freedom is not just the absence of divine command. Rather, the foundation of Islamic democratic politics is the same as the foundation of Islamic theocratic politics. That foundation is the relationship between divine address and the divine delegation. The political theology of popular sovereignty in Islam is that the ummah has been entrusted by God with the realization of His law on Earth. God is the principal agent and actor, and the first response of the people-as-deputy is a passive and receptive one. But the force of God dignifying humankind as His caliph is that He has deputized no one else in between God and man—no kings, no priests, no scholars. 

In the hands of some of these modern thinkers, this is mostly about cutting rulers down to size but is also about preserving the authority of scholars. The Pakistani thinker and political activist Sayyid Abū al-A¢lā Mawdūdī is perhaps the most important intellectual figure in modern Islam to make the ummah’s status as God’s caliph central to Islamic political thought: “In an Islamic state, the powers of ‘vicegerency’ are not vested in any one individual or family or group but in the whole Muslim community when it is blessed with the possession of an independent state.”³ Not only does he refer to the people as God’s caliph to stress that the people are not sovereign (“Islam uses the term ‘vicegerency’ (khilāfah) instead of sovereignty… sovereignty belongs to God alone, and anyone who holds power and rules in accordance with the laws of God would undoubtedly be the vicegerent of the Supreme Ruler and would not be authorized to exercise any powers other than those delegated to him”⁴), but in his vision of an Islamic state, traditional scholars would have expansive rights to reformulate and codify Islamic law on the basis of their own epistemic authority. For thinkers such as Mawdūdī, the covenant of vicegerency is less about asserting the people’s legislative supremacy and more about arguing that the success of Islam in the modern era will rely not on some great individual savior but rather on the ummah’s vigor, strength, and virtue in enacting the divine law.

He nonetheless released into the intellectual bloodstream of modern Islamic thought the centrality of the universal caliphate to any Islamic political vision. Within decades, this doctrine had become a commonplace, an almost ubiquitous trope in modern Islamic political and constitutional theory. The people can be spoken of as the “source of all authority” (maśdar al-suluţāt) in almost every modern work of Islamic constitutional theory not only because of the juridical implications of the Sunni doctrine of ikhtiyār and the bay¢ah but because the ummah is God’s caliph on Earth.

How is this doctrine related to a thicker form of Islamic democracy? After all, isn’t it premised on the supremacy of the divine law and the people’s lack of radical, original legislative sovereignty? This is true for certain more theocratic thinkers in this tradition. But for an important tradition of modern Islamic democratic theorists, the idea of the universal caliphate of humankind points beyond the mere fulfillment of the law to the popular creation of the law, the ultimate marker of sovereignty. Consider the views of one of the most important recent thinkers on Islam and democracy, the Tunisian intellectual (and party leader) Rāshid al-Ghannūshī. In al-Ghannūshī’s account of an Islamic state, first articulated in 1993, long before the 2011 democratic revolutions, all persons holding power to deliberate on behalf of the ummah must be authorized by the ummah to deliberate about its welfare, including religious scholars. This is obviously not an original move in al-Ghannūshī’s thought. What is crucial is the consistency with which he emphasizes that even those who claim the authority to interpret the divine law derive their effective political and legislative authority from popular authorization.

Perhaps it is true that an ideal form of Islamic self-rule whereby a virtuous people collectively deliberates on how to bring the divine law to life in specific moments is too utopian and far removed from political reality. Moreover, it is a mistake to think that political life and action require a highly developed, abstract theory. Citizens can act on knowledge gained from social experience and strive to improve whatever states or societies they happen to live in at any time and place. Nonetheless, this should not be mistaken for an intellectual or moral argument for antidemocratic forms of governance. Indeed, I believe the modern Islamic engagement with democratic theory at a very sophisticated level of abstraction contains some profound insights and aspirations that still constitute an important moral and intellectual legacy for Muslims and some valuable points of departure for even nonideal and pragmatic approaches to political life. I would like to point out four in particular:

1. Islam is ummah centered. One profound premise of modern Sunni Islamic political thought from radical theocrats to Muslim democrats is that the ummah is the embodiment of Islam in the world. This is nothing less than an ontological point. What exists in the world, what Islam creates, is a community of believers. This is not a mere truism. In Shia theology, the imams are the ontological guarantors not only of the ummah but of the universe itself. In Catholicism, the church is not just the sum of all believers but its embodied, institutional form. Nothing like this can be said for Sunnis. The ummah is the addressee of moral commands in the Qur’an and the location of certainty after the death of the Prophet. While believers may be commanded to “obey those in authority,” who those in authority are is not itself an ontological reality. They derive their existence from the ummah. Thus, it is not surprising when modern Islamic political thinkers locate everything from the obligation of jihad to reconstituting an Islamic state to safeguarding the natural world in the moral responsibility and political agency of the people. This commitment is not invalidated by the failure of a specific theory of an ideal Islamic democracy.

2. The past is a foreign country. One noteworthy, even astonishing, feature of modern Islamic constitutional theory (even in treatises authored by academics at secular universities) is the authority of classical Islamic language. Modern treatises of hundreds of pages in length can avoid mentioning any specific modern country by name, while treating Islamic constitutionalism entirely through terms such as ahl al-ĥall wa al-¢aqd, al-bay¢ah, ahl al-shūrā, and ĥuqūq wa wājibāt al-imām. But the reality is that no existing Muslim state represents the unbroken legacy of classical Islamic rules of governance. This alone does not mean Muslims should not look to classic Islamic constitutional law for inspiration, but it does mean that every such claim to represent “tradition” is a selective appropriation and reinvention of tradition. There should be humility and self-awareness when some modern claims are dismissed as “modern” or as influenced by non-Islamic traditions, when the reality is that all are. At the very least, this should help to avoid embarrassing absurdities, such as when Egyptian army officers are declared, without irony, to represent the people who loose and bind, and thus to be owed obedience. Deciding what in the Islamic tradition is authoritative and regulative, and what is subject to ijtihād, is the condition of all modern Muslims, not one subset.

3. Government is morally dangerous. Some modern thinkers have tried to see political life as the site of moral perfection, or at least as the condition of its possibility. This is a very unpopular idea today. But one important legacy of modern political thought (including for Muslims) is the unrelenting focus on how corruption and injustice are a moral hazard not only for individual Muslims who consort with rulers (consider the premodern tradition that counseled scholars and men of piety to avoid the company of rulers) but for society as a whole. A certain classical ruler-centered Islamic view, very common in premodern political theory, saw ordinary people and social conflict as the primary sources of danger for stability and religion, and a strong ruler as the solution to this danger. The ruler was the guarantor of order, stability, and the functioning of the law. This assumption has been flipped in modernity. Today, we are more likely to adopt the view that arbitrary power is not only unjust or tyrannical in itself but also a moral risk and danger to society as a whole. Injustice, inequality, and corruption trickle down and distort every realm of morality and social solidarity. It is not an impious people who deserve a rotten government, but rotten structures of government that poison social relations. It is not hard to see why anyone (Muslim or other) would hold this view, and modern or not, it is a precious and admirable moral achievement to see government as accountable for its harms rather than to blame the oppressed for their own oppression.

4. The people are the guarantor of justice and morality. In turn, then, modern Islamic political thought is much less likely to echo classical tropes about the ruler being the guarantor of justice, and still less about being the divinely blessed “shadow of God on Earth.” The source of justice in social and human relations lies not in the will of benevolent rulers, nor even in legal limits on arbitrary power alone, but in collective social consciousness and responsibility. To be sure, this is an elusive goal. Thinkers write blithely about the natural religiosity of the people (echoing perhaps Rousseau’s “natural goodness of humanity”) and the role of education in producing a virtuous people who would be competent to take on sovereign status. But even if we leave behind unattainable fantasies of popular sovereignty and salvation, the modern Islamic tendency to look to society (not benevolent elites) as both the source and the site of just social relations is an inclination that should be fostered rather than cynically disparaged.

We live in dark times for democracy, whether of an Islamic or a liberal form. There is no denying that popular energies are as likely to generate dark forces as light ones. The self-confidence of white nationalism in America is surely stoked and channeled by elites but is no less populist in origin for that. Similarly, the dark sides of popular sovereignty in an Islamic context might include justifications for vigilante violence if it is authorized on the basis of every individual “sovereign believer’s” obligation to command the right and forbid the wrong. It is understandable why elites from Washington and Brussels to Cairo and Abu Dhabi think the solution to the dark sides of popular energies is suppressing popular agency as such. 

But the fact is that there is nothing outside of the people. Authority, by definition, is not something that can be commanded or coerced. Authority is that relationship that emerges between the few and the many when obedience is uncoerced and when people retain their freedom. Those today who wish to restore something like “authority” in politics, morality, and religion should not be surprised if this fails as long as the energies, conscience, capacities, intellect, and self-respect of the many are not given their due.

Note: Listen to Andrew March and philosopher Caner Dagli discuss issues raised in this article on the Renovatio podcast at https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/media/power-to-the-people