Abstract
In this article I seek to establish what political liberalism demands of Muslim citizens living as minorities in liberal states by way of a doctrinal affirmation of citizenship. This is an inquiry of a special nature. My interests are not directly in what policies a liberal state should have, nor in what practices on the part of citizens are compatible with justice and equality, but rather in what views emerging from a comprehensive doctrine are reasonable responses to the liberal terms of social cooperation. My aim is to establish with as much precision as possible when it can be said that there is a consensus on the terms of social cooperation in a liberal society and thus that the comprehensive doctrine in question is providing its adherents with moral reasons for endorsing those terms. Thus, this is an inquiry into liberal political theory, but one inspired by the special concerns, misgivings and anxieties of a particular comprehensive doctrine.
(slightly modified from version published in Philosophy & Public Affairs 34.4 (Fall 2006))
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Notes
- 1.
Although here I am focusing specifically on the relationship between Islamic doctrine and liberal citizenship, the inquiry itself is a generic one. All comprehensive doctrines or, indeed, noncomprehensive collections of beliefs and preferences can be presumed to provide their bearers with a wide set of motivations for action, some of which may conflict with liberal terms of social cooperation. These questions would be of interest even without the more public examples of recent value conflicts in Western societies, simply because Islam is an important comprehensive doctrine that has achieved a critical presence in existing liberal democracies recently enough for there not to exist a significant philosophical literature on its relationship to liberalism and citizenship. Lest it be thought that asking these questions suggests a background suspicion or mistrust of Islamic political ethics, it should be borne in mind that these very questions are the subject of earnest, and constant, internal debate amongst Muslim religious scholars and intellectuals.
- 2.
I am not here committing myself to the view that a minimalist conception of citizenship is the correct one, nor that a minimal consensus on values or institutions is the best we can hope for. Rather, I am merely suggesting that if we take the fact of moral disagreement seriously as a political problem, then efforts to explore possible solutions to that problem should seek to maximize their plausibility, which I define as the likelihood of being persuasive to those who are compelled by the views at the root of the initial moral disagreement. That is, a consensus needs to sway those skeptical of it, not those already so inclined. In any event, it will become clear that readers should not be alarmed by my use of the term “minimalist”: I am not interested in a doctrine of citizenship as mere law-abidingness or as a modus vivendi, but rather as an affirmation of civic commitments on moral grounds.
- 3.
“A philosophic justification is not to be confused with popular acceptance, rough consensus, or even probable acceptance by all reasonable parties. [But] this is not to belittle the goal of popular consensus. In the sociological sense of the word, the legitimacy of a liberal regime depends on widespread acceptance of its justification” (Gerald F. Gaus, Justificatory Liberalism: An Essay on Epistemology and Political Theory [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996], p. 10).
- 4.
See Joshua Cohen, “Moral Pluralism and Political Consensus,” in The Idea of Democracy, ed. David Copp, Jean Hampton, and John E. Roemer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 274–75.
- 5.
Gaus argues that this is the case only when you seek to persuade and motivate a person by appealing to values or beliefs that you not only do not hold but consider to be irrational or unreasonable, i.e., views that persist not because of the burdens of reason but in spite of them. (See Gerald F. Gaus, “The Rational, the Reasonable and Justification,” Journal of Political Philosophy, Vol. 3, No. 3: 234–58, at p. 255.)
- 6.
Akeel Bilgrami has argued that the liberal aspiration of justification through purely external reasons (i.e., reasons that all rational subjects should endorse in virtue of their own rationality regardless of their substantive moral commitments) fails not only in practice but logically, and therefore that “the task of achieving secular ideals in a world in which there are strong religious and cultural identities [requires] look[ing] for reasons that will appeal even to those with these identities” (Akeel Bilgrami, “Secularism and Relativism,” boundary 2, 31 [2004], p. 175). John Kekes: “Reasonable conflict-resolution is made possible by the traditions and conceptions of a good life to which people who face the conflicts adhere” (John Kekes, The Morality of Pluralism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 76). And, of course, Richard Rorty: “The fact that we may belong to several communities and thus have conflicting moral obligations, as well as conflicts between moral obligations and private commitments generates dilemmas. Such dilemmas … are never going to be resolved by appeal to some further, higher set of obligations which a philosophical tribunal might discover and apply. All we can do is work with the final vocabulary we have, while keeping our ears open for hints about how it might be expanded or revised” (Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989], p. 197).
- 7.
This is not to say, of course, that, because Muslim minorities do not expect a non-Muslim state to impose Islamic law or advantage Islam, they have positive Islamic reasons for supporting the individual freedoms that are protected by state neutrality or that they will refrain from demands for the state to limit such freedom generally. Demonstrating the stability of an overlapping consensus requires demonstrating that those supporting liberal institutions as a minority would continue to support them as a majority. A comprehensive overlapping consensus would require positive Islamic reasons for accepting the constraints placed on communal authority.
- 8.
See Patricia Crone, God’s Rule: Government and Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), chap. 21, “Muslims and Non-Muslims.”
- 9.
This distinction is ubiquitous in Western political theory. See, in particular, Michael Walzer: “The alienated citizen receives whatever protection the state provides and lives every day with his fellows in the shadow of that protection. But he does not participate at all in political life; he chooses not to participate. He thinks of the state as an alien though not necessarily as a hostile force, and he wants only to live in peace under its jurisdiction” (Obligations: Essays on Disobedience, War, and Citizenship [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970], pp. 226–27.)
- 10.
Although there are mainstream Islamic sources that affirm all of the demands of citizenship as I characterize them in the following sections, I will not refer to them in the present work. As noted above, I present and discuss these sources in March, “Islamic Foundations for a Social Contract in Non-Muslim Liberal Democracies.”
- 11.
See Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Fi fiqh al-aqalliyyat al-muslima (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 2001), p. 25, where he lists the question of the legality of residing in a non-Muslim state as the first of the “juridical” problems facing Muslim minorities. For the best existing survey of the treatment of this problem in Islamic law, see Khaled Abou El Fadl, “Islamic Law and Muslim Minorities: The Juristic Discourse on Muslim Minorities from the Second/Eighth to the Eleventh/Seventeenth Centuries,” Islamic Law and Society 1:2 (1994): 141–87.
- 12.
One of the most famous treatments of this problem is found in Ahmad ibn Yahya al-Wansharisi, al-Mi‘yar al-Mu‘rib wa al jami‘ al-mughrib ‘an fatawa ahl Ifiiqiya wa’l-Andalus wa’l-Maghrib, ed., Muhammad Hajji (Rabat: Ministry of Religious Endowments and Islamic Affairs, 1981), v. 2, pp. 121–38.
- 13.
E.g., Salih ibn Muhammad al-Shithri, Hukm al-luju’ wa’l-iqama fi bilad al-kuffar (Riyad: Dar al-Habib, n.d.).
- 14.
See Sayyid Qutb, In the Shade of the Qur’an, Adil Salahi and Ashur Shamis, trans. and eds., (Leicester: The Islamic Foundation, 2001), v. III, p. 286.
- 15.
Q. 4:97–100: “Those whom the angels gather in death while in a state of sin against themselves they will ask: ‘What was your plight?’ They reply: ‘We were oppressed on earth.’ The [angels] will say: ‘Was not God’s earth vast enough for you to migrate within it?’ They will have their refuge in hell and how evil is such a destiny, except for those truly oppressed, those men, women and children who cannot find any means and have not been shown the way. For these there is hope that God will forgive them, for God is Forgiving and Merciful. Anyone who migrates in the path of God will find in the Earth many an abundant refuge. Whoever leaves his home in migration towards God and his Messenger, and death overtakes him, his reward with God is guaranteed, for God is Forgiving and Merciful.” And, Q. 8:72: “Those who believed and migrated and struggled in the path of God with their property and their souls and those who sheltered and supported them, and friends and supporters of one another. Those who believed and did not migrate, you have no duty of protection towards them until they migrate. But if they seek your support in religion, you owe them this support, except against a people with whom you have a treaty. God sees all that you do.”
- 16.
For example, “The hijra will not come to an end until repentance comes to an end and repentance will not come to an end until the sun shall rise from its place of setting.” “I am innocent of [I disown] any Muslim who lives with the polytheists. For you will not be able to tell them apart.” “Do not live with and associate with the polytheists. Whosoever lives with them and associates with them is like them.” These are found in the various authoritative collections of hadith, the reported sayings and doings of the Prophet Muhammad.
- 17.
Islamic law is divided between the ‘ibadat (matters pertaining to individual worship and rituals) and mu‘amalat (matters pertaining to interpersonal and social relations).
- 18.
In Abu Zakariyya’ al-Nawawi, al-Majmu‘ Sharh al-Muhadhdhab (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 2000), v. 21, p. 7.
- 19.
Qaradawi, Fi fiqh al-aqalliyat al-muslima, p. 33–4.
- 20.
The notion that residence and integration in Western societies is desirable primarily as a means of influencing these societies to the political benefit of Muslims or in order to transform them into “Islamic societies” is not rare in Islamic discourses about the Muslim minorities in the West. See also Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah, al-Hijra wa al-ightirab: ta’sis fiqhi li mushkilat al-luju’ wa al-hijra (Beirut: Mu’assasat al-‘Arif lil-Matbu‘at, 1999), p. 86, where he discusses Muslim immigration to the West in terms of the “control over Western society in its entirety achieved by the Jews through their immigration and residence there.”
- 21.
“Justice as fairness honors, as far as it can, the claims of those who wish to withdraw from the modern world in accordance with the injunctions of their religion, provided only that they acknowledge the principles of the political conception of justice and appreciate its political ideals of person and society” (Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 200).
- 22.
Alfred Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah (London: Oxford University Press, 1955), p. 232.
- 23.
See Muhammad Rashid Rida, Fatawa al-Imam Muhammad Rashid Rida, ed. Salah al-Din al-Munajjid and Yusuf Q. Khuri, (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-Jadid, 1980), v. 5, p. 1749–50; Qaradawi, Fi fiqh al-aqalliyat and Sulayman Muhammad Tubulyak, (transliteration from Bosnian of “Sulejman Topoljak”), al-Ahkam al-siyasiyya li’l-aqalliyat al-muslima fi al-fiqh al-Islami (Beirut: Dar al-Nafa’is, 1997), p. 122.
- 24.
See Majid Khadduri, War and Peace in the Law of Islam (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins Press, 1955), p. 145; Bassam Tibi, “War and Peace in Islam,” in Islamic Political Ethics, ed. Sohail Hashmi (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002), p. 176.
- 25.
Some medieval works on public law asserted that a just ruler must wage “raids” into unbelieving lands at least once a year.
- 26.
Qutb, In the Shade of the Qur’an, v. VIII, p. 28
- 27.
Ibid., v. VIII, pp. 101–02.
- 28.
Q. 4:95: “Not equal are those believers who sit [at home] and receive no hurt, and those who strive and fight in the cause of God with their goods and their persons. God has granted a grade higher to those who strive and fight with their goods and persons than to those who sit [at home]. Unto all has God promised good, but those who strive and fight has He distinguished above those who sit [at home] by a special reward.”
- 29.
Sayyid Abul ‘Ala Mawdudi, Towards Understanding the Qur’an (Leicester, United Kingdom: The Islamic Foundation, 1990), v. III, pp. 209–10.
- 30.
See Shaykh Muhammad Afifi al-Akiti, Defending the Transgressed by Censuring the Reckless against the Killing of Civilians (Aqsa Press, 2005) for a presentation – and refutation – of these positions.
- 31.
Tubulyak (Topoljak), al-Ahkam al-siyasiyya, p. 117.
- 32.
Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Shaybani, The Islamic Law of Nations: Shaybani’s Siyar, trans. Majid Khadduri, (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins Press, 1966), p. 193.
- 33.
Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Sarakhsi, Kitab al-Mabsut (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 2001), v. 10, p. 106.
- 34.
This is the position, for example, of the British group “al-Muhajiroun” (“The Migrants”), which supports terrorist attacks against the United Kingdom and the United States, but only by Muslims not legally residing in those countries. See al-Akiti, Defending the Transgressed, p. 17.
- 35.
“A person may conscientiously refuse to comply with his duty to enter the armed forces during a particular war on the ground that the aims of the conflict are unjust. It may be that the objective sought by war is economic advantage or national power. The basic liberty of citizens cannot be interfered with to achieve these ends. And, of course, it is unjust and contrary to the law of nations to attack the liberty of other societies for these reasons. Therefore a just cause for war does not exist, and this may be sufficiently evident that a citizen is justified in refusing to discharge his legal duty” (Rawls, A Theory of Justice [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971], p. 381).
- 36.
This is of course a nuance not raised by Rawls, who assumes that is it “may be sufficiently evident” whether the war is just. But this is a genuine problem and one not caused only by the plurality of comprehensive doctrines in a society. When does a country proclaim a war to be about economic advantage or national power and fail to provide a justification that is persuasive to many of its citizens? But in present circumstances this assumption is unwarranted. Consider the rise in wars of intervention that claim a humanitarian justification, a justification based on the need to fight nonstate terrorism, or a justification based on the need to prevent future threats from states. These wars are deeply disputed as to their nature, purpose and necessity in ways that both wars of self-defense after a direct invasion and open military adventures are not.
- 37.
An individual “can maintain that, all things considered, his natural duty not to be made the agent of grave injustice and evil to another outweighs his duty to obey” (Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 380).
- 38.
“There are likely to be moments when all residents, aliens and citizens alike, are morally obligated to defend the state that defends their everyday social life. … The existence of borderline cases does not call the original distinction into question” (Walzer, “Political Alienation and Military Service,” in Obligations, p. 105–6).
- 39.
See Isma‘il ibn ‘Umar Ibn Kathir, Tafsir al-Qur’an al-Azim (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1998), v. 2, p. 390.
- 40.
Khalid ‘Abd al-Qadir, Fiqh al-aqalliyat al-Muslima (Tripoli: Dar al-Iman, 1998), p. 626.
- 41.
Qutb on Q. 3:28: “We have this very stern warning in verse 3:28, making it absolutely clear that a Muslim disowns Islam if he forgoes a relationship of alliance or patronage with someone who refuses to acknowledge God’s revelation as the arbiter in life. He has cut himself off from God.” (Qutb, In the Shade of the Qur’an, Salahi and Shamis, trans., v. II, pp. 62–3).
- 42.
This theme is particularly salient given the generally accepted context for the revelation of the verses in question, which is the betrayal of the Islamic community by the “hypocrites,” those who pretended to be Muslim before the fall of Mecca but in fact maintained loyalties and allegiances with their Christian, Jewish and erstwhile pagan brethren. See Muhammad Rashid Rida, Tafsir al-Manar al-hakim al-shahir bi-tafsir al-manar (Beirut: Dar al-Ma‘rifa, 1973), v. 3, pp. 276–7, for a summary of the various theories of the context of revelation for 3:28 and 60:1.
- 43.
See Fadlallah, al-Hijra wa al-ightirab, pp. 80–81, for a presentation and refutation of this view.
- 44.
Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 16.
- 45.
Walzer, “Political Alienation and Military Service,” in Obligations, p. 105.
Bibliography
Abu Zakariyya’ al-Nawawi. (2000). al-Majmu‘ Sharh al-Muhadhdhab. Beirut: Dar al-Fikr.
Ahmad ibn Yahya al-Wansharisi. (1981). In M. Hajji (Ed.), al-Mi‘yar al-Mu‘rib wa al jami‘ al-mughrib ‘an fatawa ahl Ifiiqiya wa’l-Andalus wa’l-Maghrib (Vol. 2, pp. 121–138). Rabat: Ministry of Religious Endowments and Islamic Affairs.
Bilgrami, A. (2004). Secularism and relativism. Boundary, 2, 31.
Cohen, J. (1993). Moral Pluralism and Political Consensus. In D. Copp, J. Hampton, & J. E. Roemer (Eds.), The idea of democracy (pp. 274–275). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Crone, P. (2004). God’s rule: Government and Islam. New York: Columbia University Press.
Gaus, G. F. (1996). Justificatory liberalism: An essay on epistemology and political theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gaus, G. F. (n.d.). The rational, the reasonable and justification. Journal of Political Philosophy, 3(3), 234–258, at p. 255.
Guillaume, A. (1955). The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ishaq’s. In: Sirat Rasul Allah (Ed.), London: Oxford University Press.
Isma‘il ibn ‘Umar Ibn Kathir. (1998). Tafsir al-Qur’an al-Azim. Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya.
Kekes, J. (1993). The morality of pluralism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Khadduri, M. (1955). War and peace in the law of Islam. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.
Khaled Abou El Fadl. (1994). Islamic law and Muslim Minorities: The juristic discourse on Muslim Minorities from the second/eighth to the eleventh/seventeenth centuries. Islamic Law and Society, 1(2), 141–187.
Khalid ‘Abd al-Qadir. (1998). Fiqh al-aqalliyat al-Muslima. Tripoli: Dar al-Iman.
March, A. F. (2007). Islamic foundations for a social contract in non-Muslim liberal democracies. American Political Science Review, 101(2), 235–252.
Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah. (1999). al-Hijra wa al-ightirab: ta’sis fiqhi li mushkilat al-luju’ wa al-hijra. Beirut: Mu’assasat al-‘Arif lil-Matbu‘at.
Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Sarakhsi. (2001). Kitab al-Mabsut. Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya.
Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Shaybani. (1966). The Islamic law of nations: Shaybani’s Siyar (M. Khadduri, Trans.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.
Muhammad Rashid Rida. (1973). Tafsir al-Manar al-hakim al-shahir bi-tafsir al-manar. Beirut: Dar al-Ma‘rifa.
Muhammad Rashid Rida. (1980). Fatawa al-Imam Muhammad Rashid Rida. In: Salah al-Din al-Munajjid, & Yusuf Q. Khuri (Eds.). Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-Jadid.
Rawls, J. (1971). A theory of justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Rorty, R. (1989). Contingency, irony, and solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Salih ibn Muhammad al-Shithri. (n.d.). Hukm al-luju’ wa’l-iqama fi bilad al-kuffar. Riyad: Dar al-Habib.
Sayyid Abul ‘Ala Mawdudi. (1990). Towards understanding the Qur’an. Leicester: The Islamic Foundation.
Sayyid Qutb. (2001). In the shade of the Qur’an (Adil Salahi, & Ashur Shamis, Trans. and Eds.). Leicester: The Islamic Foundation.
Shaykh Muhammad Afifi al-Akiti. (2005). Defending the transgressed by censuring the reckless against the killing of civilians. Aqsa Press.
Sulayman Muhammad Tubulyak. (1997). al-Ahkam al-siyasiyya li’l-aqalliyat al-muslima fi al-fiqh al-Islami. Beirut: Dar al-Nafa’is.
Tibi, B. (2002). War and peace in Islam. In S. Hashmi (Ed.), Islamic political ethics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Walzer, M. (1970). Obligations: Essays on disobedience, war, and citizenship. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Yusuf al-Qaradawi. (2001). Fi fiqh al-aqalliyyat al-muslima. Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
March, A.F. (2017). Liberal Citizenship and the Search for an Overlapping Consensus: The Case of Muslim Minorities. In: Thunder, D. (eds) The Ethics of Citizenship in the 21st Century. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50415-5_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50415-5_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-50414-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-50415-5
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)