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Why and How Political Liberals Need to Persuade Muslims: Ferrara and March’s Interpretations of Conjecture

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Post-Islamist Political Theory

Part of the book series: Philosophy and Politics - Critical Explorations ((PPCE,volume 5))

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Abstract

In this chapter I explore the potentials of the Rawlsian idea of conjecture for presenting a native theory of political liberalism for post-Islamist Muslim-majority societies. Although this Rawlsian idea can play a key role in uniting political liberalism and post-Islamism into one coherent project, it has been almost completely neglected in the existing post-Islamism literature. While Rawls’s own treatment of conjecture was very brief, Ferrara and March have independently extended this idea to demonstrate politically liberal discourse’s ability to accommodate the concerns of highly conservative religious groups in affirming democratic hyperpluralism (Ferrara) or liberal citizenship (March). Both authors view conjecture as a particular justificatory tool to overcome moral conflict between liberal values and any comprehensive religious or secular doctrine, especially Islam. The chapter ends with a discussion on Soroush, Shabestari and Kadivar’s possible critical reactions to March’s Treatment of Islamic Jurisprudence.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Rawls “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited”, p. 781.

  2. 2.

    See Ferrara, The Democratic Horizon, p. 72.

  3. 3.

    Ibid.

  4. 4.

    Ferrara, The Democratic Horizon, p. 72.

  5. 5.

    Rawls Political Liberalism, p. 147.

  6. 6.

    Ferrara, The Democratic Horizon, p. 73.

  7. 7.

    Rawls Political Liberalism, p. 154.

  8. 8.

    Ferrara The Democratic Horizon, p. 73, emphasis in original.

  9. 9.

    Ferrara The Democratic Horizon, p. 75.

  10. 10.

    Ferrara The Democratic Horizon, p. 75–76, 86.

  11. 11.

    Ferrara The Democratic Horizon, p. 87.

  12. 12.

    Ferrara The Democratic Horizon, p. 87.

  13. 13.

    Ferrara, The Democratic Horizon, p. 87.

  14. 14.

    March Islam and Liberal Citizenship, p. 24.

  15. 15.

    Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 169.

  16. 16.

    March Islam and Liberal Citizenship, p. 65; cf. Dallmayr, “Beyond Monologue: For a Comparative Political Theory”; Von Vacano, “The Scope of Comparative Political Theory”, for other approaches to comparative political theory.

  17. 17.

    Rawls “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited”, p. 783.

  18. 18.

    March, Islam and Liberal Citizenship, p. 68.

  19. 19.

    Ibid.

  20. 20.

    March, Islam and Liberal Citizenship, p. 75; see also the following chapters of March’s book.

  21. 21.

    March Islam and Liberal Citizenship, pp. 76–77.

  22. 22.

    March Islam and Liberal Citizenship, pp. 76–77.

  23. 23.

    March Islam and Liberal Citizenship, p. 78.

  24. 24.

    See Rawls Political Liberalism, xxxvii.

  25. 25.

    Rawls Political Liberalism, 148.

  26. 26.

    March Islam and Liberal Citizenship, p. 78, emphasis mine.

  27. 27.

    March Islam and Liberal Citizenship, p. 79.

  28. 28.

    To see how March proceeds through these five steps in order to develop his specific conjectural argument for Islamic affirmation of liberal citizenship, see Parts II & III of March, Islam and Liberal Citizenship, pp. 97–258, respectively entitled: “Islam and Liberal Citizenship: Patterns of Moral Disagreement and Principled Reconciliation”, and “Islamic Affirmation of Liberal Citizenship”;cf. March, “Reading Tariq Ramadan: Political Liberalism, Islam and “Overlapping Consensus””; March, “Liberal Citizenship and the Search for an Overlapping Consensus: The Case of Muslim Minorities”.

  29. 29.

    March, Islam and Liberal Citizenship, p. 80.

  30. 30.

    March, Islam and Liberal Citizenship, p. 81.

  31. 31.

    Jackson, “Jihad and the Modern World”, pp. 4–5; quoted in March, Islam and Liberal Citizenship, 80.

  32. 32.

    March Islam and Liberal Citizenship, p. 81.

  33. 33.

    March, Islam and Liberal Citizenship, p. 74.

  34. 34.

    March, Islam and Liberal Citizenship, pp. 84–85.

  35. 35.

    March, Islam and Liberal Citizenship, p. 81.

  36. 36.

    Rawls, Political Liberalism, 44.

  37. 37.

    Rawls Political Liberalism, 44.

  38. 38.

    Rawls Political Liberalism, 45.

  39. 39.

    Rawls Political Liberalism, 46.

  40. 40.

    Rawls Political Liberalism, 46.

  41. 41.

    March Islam and Liberal Citizenship, p. 82.

  42. 42.

    March’s First Argument is inspired by a Mohammad Fadel article on the Islamic roots of public reason in which Fadel discusses various pre-nineteenth century Sunni theological (kalami) and ethical doctrines in order to demonstrate that their implicit political commitments are consistent, at least subject to reasonable reinterpretation, with the constitutional essentials of a liberal regime, including Rawls’s conception of the burdens of judgment. According to Fadel, “the historical doctrines of substantive Islamic law” do not represent the “highest order commitments of Islamic orthodoxy”. As Fadel understands it, “the political commitments enshrined in the historical formulations of Islamic law are subordinate to, and carry relatively less moral weight within the normative Islamic tradition viewed as a whole, than do the commitments set forth in theology and ethics”. He concludes that, “the commitments adumbrated in theological and ethical discourses lead to a more optimistic view regarding the likelihood of discovering overlapping commitments between Islamic orthodoxy and liberalism”. See Fadel. “The True, the Good and the Reasonable”, pp. 6–7. As we will see, March finds Fadel’s argument “very demanding”.

  43. 43.

    March, Islam and Liberal Citizenship, p. 82.

  44. 44.

    See Rawls Political Liberalism, p. 59; Scanlon, “Rawls on Justification”, p. 164.

  45. 45.

    This seems to be exactly the case with post-Islamist Muslims’ approach to religion. See Chap. 1.

  46. 46.

    March, Islam and Liberal Citizenship, p. 84.

  47. 47.

    March Islam and Liberal Citizenship, p. 84.

  48. 48.

    See Rawls Political Liberalism, p. 170.

  49. 49.

    March Islam and Liberal Citizenship, p. 85, emphasis original.

  50. 50.

    March Islam and Liberal Citizenship, p. 77.

  51. 51.

    March Islam and Liberal Citizenship, pp. 291, footnote.

  52. 52.

    March Islam and Liberal Citizenship, pp. 291–92, footnote.

  53. 53.

    March Islam and Liberal Citizenship p. 85; cf. An-Naim’s critical reaction to March’s approach to conjecture in An-Naim, “Review of Islam and Liberal Citizenship: The Search for an Overlapping Consensus by Andrew F. March”.

  54. 54.

    The exchange is available in Montazeri, “Dar Bab-e Tazahom: Pasokh be Mahnameye Kian”; Soroush, “Feqh dar Tarazu”; Montazeri, “Bab-e Maftuh-e Ejtehad”. Montazeri was the most prominent quasi -post-Islamist jurists of post-revolutionary Iran. He first criticized the absolute guardianship of the jurist (velayat-e motlaqe-ye faqih) when Khomeini was alive because he objected to the mass execution of political prisoners of various dissident groups. In the post-Khomeini era, he explicitly challenged the absolute velayat-e faqih and advocated the notion of an elective, constitutional and accountable guardianship (velayat-e entekhabi-ye moqayyade). Although in his four-volume work in Arabic entitled Dirasat fi vilayat al-faqih va fiqh al-dovlat al-Islamiyah [On the Guardianship of the Jurist and the Jurisprudence of the Islamic State], published in the 1980s, Montazeri had offered a sophisticated theological justification for the guardianship of the jurist, in Resale-ye Huquq [Treatise on Rights] (2004) and other later works, he explicitly challenged the absolute velayat-e faqih to argue that the Muslim ruler’s authority has to be limited to the will of people. Montazeri was a valiant voice in support of the Green Movement until he passed away. “This movement,” he argued answering the questions of some of the Green Movement activists, “is the accurate reflection and representation of the justified demands of the majority that have surfaced over many years.” In his last public speech, Montazeri asserted that, because the Islamic Republic of Iran exists to realize Islamic values, if it violates such values, it has lost its legitimacy. Although not a radical move from Shia orthodoxy, his fatwas on hijab, apostasy, and the Islamic penal code mostly challenged mainstream Islamist rulings. He was the first Shia ayatollah to accept that the Bahai religious community must enjoy the rights of equal citizenship. See Mahdavi, “Post-Islamist Trends in Postrevolutionary Iran”, pp. 98–99; cf. Montazeri, Resale-ye Huquq; Kadivar, Sugnameye Faqih-e Pakbaz; Kadivar, Dar Mahzare Faqih-e Azade.

  55. 55.

    Soroush, “Feqh dar Tarazu” p. 22, emphasis is mine.

  56. 56.

    Soroush, “Feqh dar Tarazu” p. 22.

  57. 57.

    See Soroush, “Feqh dar Tarazu”, pp. 33–34.

  58. 58.

    Mojtahed Shabestari, Hermenotic, Ketab, va Sonnat, pp. 7–33; the quotation is taken from Soroush, “The Idea of Democratic Religious Government”, p. 129.

  59. 59.

    See Kadivar, “Freedom of Religion and Belief in Islam”, pp. 123–124. This article is a chapter of Kadivar’s book on Islam and human rights in Persian. See Kadivar, Haqqonnas: Eslam va Huquq-e Basahr.

  60. 60.

    Ibid, pp. 125–126.

  61. 61.

    Kadivar, “Freedom of Religion and Belief in Islam”, p. 140.

  62. 62.

    See Kadivar, “Ijtihad in Usul al-Fiqh”, p. xxiii.

  63. 63.

    See Kadivar, “Ijtihad in Usul al-Fiqh”, pp. xxi–xxvii. I am indebted to Mahmoud Sadri, who informed me about this article. A comprehensive account of Kadivar’s political thought can be found in the books and essays he has written during the last two decades, all of which are available on his website, which has both Persian and English sections: http://kadivar.com/. Some of Kadivar’s earlier books on Shia jurists’ political thought include Kadivar, Nazariyehaye Dovlat dar Feqh-e Shia; Kadivar, Hokumat-e Velaei; Kadivar, Siyasatnameye Khorasani. For his later views on the relationship between Islamic jurisprudence and democratic politics, see also Kadivar, Shariat va Siyasat: Din dar Hozeye Umumi. For an interesting distinction between religious reformism (behsaziye dini/eslah-e dini) and religious reconstructivism (bazsaziye dini/ehyaye dini) as two approaches to reconcile Islam with modernity by post-Islamist intellectuals, which is also relevant to our discussion about conjecture in this chapter, see Mahmoud Sadri, “Gofteman-e Bazsazi va Behsaziye Dini” [The Discourse of Religious Reform and Reconstruction]; Mahmoud Sadri, “Balandegi va Barvariye Andisheye Eslah-e Dini” [Evolution and Ripening of the Idea of Religious Reform]; cf. the summary of these two essays in English: Mahmoud Sadri, “Modernizing Islam: Iran’s Reformists and Reconstructionists Square off”.

  64. 64.

    See March, “Speech and the Sacred: Does the Defense of Free Speech Rest on a Mistake about Religion?” p. 321; cf. Talal Asad, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, and Saba Mahmood, Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech.

  65. 65.

    See Ibid, pp. 326–327.

  66. 66.

    For other Rawlsian reactions to post-colonial, post-modernist critiques of liberalism, see Maffettone, “How to Avoid the Liaison Dangereuse between Post-Colonialism and Postmodernism”; Badamchi, “A Fair Critique of European Philosophy? Review of Hamid Dabashi’s Can Non-Europeans Think?”.

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    Meysam Badamchi

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Badamchi, M. (2017). Why and How Political Liberals Need to Persuade Muslims: Ferrara and March’s Interpretations of Conjecture. In: Post-Islamist Political Theory. Philosophy and Politics - Critical Explorations, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59492-7_3

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