Political Liberalism for Muslim Majority Societies

LIBERA UNIVERSITÀ INTERNAZIONALE DEGLI STUDI SOCIALI LUISS GUIDO CARLI Ph.D. Program in Political Theory Department of Political Science Political Liberalism for Muslim Majority Societies Ph.D. Thesis By Meysam Badamchi Thesis Advisor Prof. Sebastiano Maffettone Cycle XXIII Commonweal, a Liberal Catholic Magazine: In A Theory of Justice, religion is not listed in the index. But in your recent work, Political Liberalism and “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited”, religion has become, if not the central theme, at least a major focus. You have had a turn in your interests. What is this coming from? What’s the motivation for this new focus? John Rawls: Well, that is a good question. I think the basic explanation is that I am concerned about the survival, historically, of constitutional democracy. I live in a country where 95 or 90 percent of the people profess to be religious….Religious faith is an important aspect of American culture and a fact of American political life. So the question is: in a constitutional democracy, how can religious and secular doctrines of all kinds get on together and cooperate in running a reasonably just and effective government? Collected Papers, 616, 1998 Some have thought that my working out the ideas of political liberalism meant giving up the egalitarian conception of Theory [A Theory of Justice]. I am not aware of any revisions that imply such a change and think the surmise has no basis. Political Liberalism, 7 n, 1993 1 Acknowledgments In writing this dissertation I owe to many people. My serious involvement with Rawls is particularly indebted to Sebastiano Maffettone, and the Rawlsian international network of scholars he provided for us as the PhD students of political theory, at the Center for Ethics and Global Politics in Luiss University of Rome. Thanks to Maffettone’s efforts, Luiss can be regarded as one of the most favorable intellectual environments in Italy for a person who is interested to work on Rawls’s philosophy. Furthermore, particularly the encouragements and supports of Daniele Santoro and Aakash Singh among the faculty were of significant importance in the progress of this work. Ingirid Salvatore kindly and carefully read all the early draft of this dissertation and gave very learning and brilliant comments on it. I also need to mention the courses we had in Luiss University with Gianfranco Pellegrino, Raffaelle Marchetti, and others. Indeed I am indebted to all the professors in the graduate program. Also the company of all the political theory PhD students in Luiss was important in development of my thoughts. Among others I specifically need to mention Saamaan Mobasheri and Domenico Melidoro. To this I also need to add my friends in Queens’ University in Kingston whose company made me feel at home. During the period I was in Canada for research, I enjoyed the supervision of Will Kymlicka and Mohammad Fadel. In Queens’ University’s Forum for Philosophy and Public Philosophy I was honored to work with Will Kymlicka. Nobody can work with him and not be 2 impressed with his great morality and intellectually innovative character. Through working with Kymlicka, I gained the confidence to elaborate my own interpretation of Rawls, which is now present in this thesis. Not only Kymlicka gave us, as his students, fish but also he taught us how to do fishing. He read the draft of this thesis and provided me with very useful and precious comments. In my research period in Canada, I also benefited from advising of Mohammad Fadel in the department of Law in the University of Toronto. As it is obvious from the dissertation, Fadel’s knowledge in Islamic law and theology, and his contribution to Rawls and Islam debate, was very illustrating for my work. I do not forget how his two articles on Public Reason and Islam, and his enlightening comments on my work, removed my doubts in the appropriateness of a dissertation on Rawls and Islam in the initial stages of my research in Canada. In addition to these scholars I need to mention Rahim Nobahar in the faculty of Law in Iran’s Shahid Beheshti University. Without Rahim Nobahars’ consult I would not be able to overcome the difficulties in understanding the political ideas of Mehdi Haeri Yazdi, as discussed in chapter V. In addition, I need to mention my deep gratefulness to my parents. Without their permanent support of my education, and without their endless enthusiasm, this dissertation would not reach this level. To this I add thanks to my other family members who impressed my work and I did not mention them here. Finally, I need to mention my wife and love Devrim Kabasakal Badamchi. From the beginning moments of this dissertation, until now which I am writing these lines, Devrim supported me and my thought with whole heart. Not only she used to edit my works, whenever I needed to any kind of help, she was available. Not to mention, I learned many things about political theory from her, particularly on Rawls. That is why I dedicate this dissertation to Devrim. 3 Abbreviation of John Rawls’s Works A Theory of Justice (1971) …………………………………………………………………….TJ Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory (1980) …………………………………………KCMT Political Liberalism [as the book] (1993) ……………………….…….……………………….PL Political Liberalism [as the idea] (1993)……………………………………….political liberalism The Idea of Public Reason Revisited (1997) ……………………………………..………… PRR The Law of Peoples (1999) ……………………………………………………………..……LoP Collected Papers (1999) ………………………………………………………………………..CP Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy (2000) …………………………………….LHMM Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (2001) ……………………………………………………JRF Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy (2007) ……………………………………..LHPP A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith (2009) ……………………………….. BIMSF 4 ABSTRACT Political liberalism is the main theory of John Rawls in the last period of his intellectual life. Since the theory was developed by Rawls in a book with the same name (referred as PL in this book), an extensive body of literature were created to analyze the different dimensions of this theory. Particularly speaking, the book and the theory have found a large audience in liberalism and religion debates. However, only a few number of works which are only produced in the last years, focus on the relationship between political liberalism and Islam, and far less address this subject within the context of Muslim majority societies. On the other hand, among the extensive literature which are produced on Islam and democracy issue in the recent years, very little number of them look towards this subject from an analytic political philosophy framework. This dissertation tries to fill this gap in the literature. This dissertation can be regarded as an application of Rawls’s theory of political liberalism to Muslim majority societies. However, many arguments of this dissertation are applicable to all nonwestern societies, regardless of whether they are Muslim or nonMuslim. Furthermore, it should be added that our reading of Rawls in this dissertation presumes the continuity between Rawls’s main works, that is A Theory of Justice (1971), Political Liberalism (1993), and the Law of Peoples (1997). This thesis contains five chapters. The first chapter can be regarded as an introduction to whole the work. Justifying the major question of this dissertation, in the first chapter we have tried to answer some of the main the possible objections which may be pointed towards this type of research. Then, the rest of the thesis is divided into two parts: part one on justification and part two on stability. Each of these parts contains two chapters. These two parts are correspondent to two stages of Rawls’s political philosophy. In the part one we have tried to develop a universal reading of Rawls by focusing on the ideas of the reflective equilibrium 5 (chapter II) and the original position (chapter III). In chapter two we have argued that all deliberating persons in the world, no matter in which society they live, can get involved with a dialogue with Rawls and his constructivist argument for justice as fairness via the reflective equilibrium as justificatory tool which is available in political liberalism. In chapter three we have claimed that political constructivism and particularly speaking the idea of the original position, models reasonable and rational individuals who hold reasonable comprehensive doctrines, no matter in which part of the global civil society they live. In addition, we implement that only specific conceptions of society and person, that is the conceptions of society as a fair system of cooperation and the persons as free and equal citizens, are modeled in political constructivism as part of the idea of the reasonable. The second part of the dissertation is concerned with the stability of justice as fairness within the context of Muslim majority societies. Explaining overlapping consensus as the most reasonable basis of social unity and the main account of stability in political liberalism, in chapter IV we discuss how a constitutional consensus, based on a modus vivendi, develops into an overlapping consensus, when a democracy is established for the first time in a Muslim majority country. Living under just institutions, in addition to justificatory ethics, has a major role in shifting the comprehensive doctrines of citizens in this process. Defining justificatory ethics as declaration plus conjecture, we also argue that political liberalism is not indifferent to the role of religious arguments in stability of justice as fairness in a religious society. Chapter V is a work of justificatory ethics in favor of an Islamic full justification for the political conception of justice as fairness in the Muslim majority context, based on Mehdi Haeri Yazdi’s Philosophy and Government. This chapter demonstrates that Islamic philosophical and legal tradition may include the fundamental ideas of persons as free and equal citizens and 6 society as affair system of cooperation, as the primary and necessary ideas in constructivist justification for justice as fairness.

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