UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Pluralism, Consensus, Human Rights, and Civil Disobedience in Islam: An Early Model of Democratic Culture A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science by Robert Bruce Brown June 2014 Dissertation Committee: Dr. John Christian Laursen, Chairperson Dr. Bronwyn Leebaw Dr. John Medearis Copyright by Robert Bruce Brown 2014 The Dissertation of Robert Bruce Brown is approved: Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside Acknowledgements I would like to thank several people whose help was indispensable to the completion of this project. First and foremost, I would like to thank my mother, whose constant support girded me when all hope seemed lost. I would also like to thank my wife, Anna, who endured much during the writing of this paper and whose love was a guiding light to me. Finally, I must thank my Chair, Chris Laursen, whose advice was unflinchingly accurate and much needed. iv ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Pluralism, Consensus, Human Rights, and Civil Disobedience in Islam: An Early Model of Democratic Culture by Robert Bruce Brown Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in Political Science University of California, Riverside, June 2014 Dr. John Christian Laursen, Chairperson This thesis will attempt to demonstrate that Islamic political thought developed democratic features and embraced concepts of universal human rights long before these features were evident in the west. By surveying Islamic religious, philosophical, and juridical records, it will attempt to determine whether the single over-arching theme of religious exclusivism has remained constant in Islamic literature (fundamentally alienating east from west), or whether concepts have been debated, modified, and incorporated in a dynamic way that reveals Islam as an evolutionary concept, rather than a rigid set of religious precepts, that is capable of producing a political process predicated on pluralism, consensus, respect for human rights, and toleration of civil disobedience. Samuel Huntington may be entirely correct that liberal democracy as it is understood in the west will never be derived from an Islamic ideology. However, we shall ask if Islam could provide a conceptual framework from which a non-western liberal democratic theory (one that retains the unique features of Islamic ideology) may be constructed, given time? v Huntington seems to ignore the ways in which western liberal democracy emerged throughout centuries of social conflict and challenges to time-honored culturally nurtured institutions. Similarly, Islam’s culture stretches back for more than a millennium, and has undergone its own transformations. Were there periods of time in which the philosophic debate in Islam incorporated ideas that have nurtured democratic process? Is there evidence that Islamic ideology, like any other ideology, has been subject to alternative interpretations? In short, are Islamic religious beliefs flexible and can they express a genuinely Islamic brand of democratic culture? In this regard, there need not be extensive comparison with western democratic theory, either in the establishment of a “democratic culture”, the debate regarding the normative understanding of rights (and their sources), or the implementation of a democratic process. It will suffice merely to examine the textual evidence and glean from it what Islamic scholars themselves debated. vi Table of Contents Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………...p.iv Abstract……………………………………………………………………………….p.v List of Tables and Figures…………………………………………………………….p.viii Introduction…………………………………………………………………………...p.1 Chapter One: Methodology..........................................................................................p.12 Chapter Two: A Survey of the Literature………………………………………….....p.23 Chapter Three: Liberal Democracy in the Early Islamic Period?.................................p.46 Chapter Four: Early Expansion and Debate Concerning the Caliphate………………p.69 Chapter Five: The “Golden Age” of Islamic Philosophy…………………………………………………………………………….p.98 Chapter Six: Islamism and Modernism……………………………………………………………………………p.142 Chapter Seven: Competing Institutional Models……………………………………..p.175 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………....p.205 Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………..p.212 Glossary........................................................................................................................p.225 vii List of Tables Tables and Figures Table 4.1……………………………………………………………………………...p.82 Table 7.1……………………………………………………………………………...p.179 Table 7.2……………………………………………………………………………...p.183 Table 7.3……………………………………………………………………………...p.186 Table 7.4……………………………………………………………………………...p.187 Table 7.5……………………………………………………………………………...p.188 Table 7.6……………………………………………………………………………...p.192 viii Introduction Islamic culture explains in large part the failure of democracy to emerge in much of the Islamic world…So long as Islam remains Islam (which it will) and the West remains the West (which is more dubious), this fundamental conflict between two great civilizations and ways of life will continue to define their relations…. Samuel Huntington1 No more definitive assertion of the West’s skepticism regarding Islam has been articulated in the social sciences than the foregoing. Given the ascendance of the “Bush Doctrine” since the momentuous events of September 11, 2001, and the attempt to establish democratic partners in the Middle East, however, the debate over democracy within the Islamic world has been revived, a debate that has been largely ignored by western scholars. Islamic scholars (some of which have been identified by this research as “apologists”) including Moulaui Chiragh Ali, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, and Fareed Zakaria have challenged Huntington’s position, but other Western scholars have historically applied an interpretation of Arabic philosophical concepts that remains persistently uni- dimensional and vague, adding confusion and misunderstanding to the list of obstacles that these apologists seek to overcome. Islam, it should be noted, is diverse; that is, it has neatly adapted to regional cultures from Northern Africa and Spain to those of Southeast Asia. Nonetheless, Arabic (still regarded as a holy language) and Arabic interpretations of key concepts in early Islam are crucial to understanding the political ideas that were being discussed in Islamic communities through time.2 It has often been through the prism of western chauvinism that the distinctions between Arab culture and Islamic 1 Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), pp.29 & 212, respectively. 2 For this reason, I have included a glossary in an attempt to define key terms (see Appendix A). 1 ideology have been obscured; concepts such as jihad (struggle),itjihad (interpretation), and ijma (consensus) remain mired in contexts prescribed by modern politics. Conventional Western political theory regards many of these elements from a rigid conceptual framework, given a name (Orientalism3) by Islamic scholars; but one essential question remains: Is Islam a monolithic, static ideology? If so, then Islam was (from the time of its very origins) and is (in every one of its modern expressions) either inherently undemocratic and exclusivistic (Huntington’s position), inherently pluralistic and inclusive enough to foster a democratic culture of its own (the apologist position), or perhaps something in between. Huntington, of course, approaches the problem from a cultural paradigm, and although he would acknowledge that culture is by no means static, he makes a crucial distinction between culture and civilization. Within the boundaries of culture is to be found intense activity (wars, ethnic conflicts, assimilation and dominance, etc.), but culture is expressed as the way in which societies absorb larger civilizational features. Civilization, on the other hand, is the much more static expression of commonalities between cultures (usually, religion and language).4 There are several points of commonality that all civilizations enjoy (sanctions against murder, the efficacy of the family, the rule of law, etc.). Huntington has observed that the impact of modernization has been to allow the major civilizations of the world to retain what is unique about each by adapting the larger features of language and religion to the economic forces unleashed by the West. In this regard there is no threat to the “universal culture” of modernization, 3 See Glossary, p.201. 4 Huntington, pp.59-66. 2 at least not in the sense of what benefits each civilization (urbanization, literacy, etc.); rather, it is the assumption that there are certain “shared values” between civilizations that must be dispelled.5 Modernization, then, allows for other civilizations to challenge the dominance of western “assumptions, values, and doctrines”, all static concepts from the Huntingtonian perspective. If Islamic apologists are to make headway against this characterization of Islamic civilization, they must demonstrate that, in at least one of its aspects (particularly religion), change was always possible; even as they acknowledge that these transformations of culture took place over extremely long periods of time. This debate has profound consequences for the modern Middle East, a region that many political scientists have noted was “passed over” by the “third wave” of democratization during the 1970’s and