symposium on Islam and Good Governance

Goals and Objectives

1. Articulate a systematic vision of good governance and approach the development of this concept from both Islamic ethics and values and empirical research. We want to benchmark the point of convergence of our normative vision and empirical reality. We will pursue a research and policy program that will develop knowledge and policies for governing ethically in contemporary times. 2. To develop an epistemic community that has expertise in the areas of values and good governance, Islamic ethics and values, and good and smart governance understood broadly. This network of scholars, practitioners and students will eventually constitute a core of good governors expanding to include governance in corporations and nonprofit sector too. If you wish to be part of this community please contact us @ [email protected] He does, however, ask a very pertinent question -is it not possible to achieve most of what I advocate through an application of the maqasid al-shariah approach (higher purposes of Shariah) as advocated by Jasser

Auda and others? 6 Hefner is right, that the already established idea and approach of maqasid could be a vehicle to implement many of the virtues I advocate. 7 However, I have two reservations with regards to this idea. One of my goals is to reduce the domination of legalism in Islamic thought as I see it as the main cause for the loss of Ihsan in the fiqhi discourse (pp. 9-42). The maqasid approach is another form of legalism and it will, in my view, perpetuate the loss of Ihsan.

Secondly, as I discuss in Islam and Good 7 Hefner, Robert, "Ihsan Ethics and Political Revitalization: Appreciating Muqtedar Khan's Islam and Good," in Muqtedar Khan (Ed.), Symposium on Islam and Good Governance, International Institute of Islamic Thought, October, 2020. 8 Afsaruddin, Asma, "Negotiating Virtue and Realpolitik in Islamic Good Governance," in Muqtedar Khan (Ed.), Symposium on Islam and Good Governance, International Institute of Islamic Thought, October, 2020.

Afsaruddin reminds us that the first four caliphs where selected primarily for their virtue and moral excellence (fadila). 8 Indonesia. 36 The Islamic Development bank (IDB) also refers to these frameworks in some of its projects while helping Muslim countries reach those goals. 37 The connection between love and spirituality in Islam goes back to the foundational passage in the Qur'an (16:90): [Qur'an 49:14] The great Muslim poet and sage Rumi confirms this. In his Fihi Ma Fihi, he states that better than prayer is the soul of prayer, and better than prayer (key dimension of "Islam" above) is faith ("Iman") since prayer takes place a few times a day, but faith is continuous; prayer can be stopped or even postponed, but faith is ongoing. 46 Ihsan is an even higher rank. Ihsan is about seeing God, and none other than God. Ihsan is also about transcending the ego to the point that one even if he does not see God, is conscious of being seen by God.

Worlding the Inward Dimensions of Islam:

It's for that reason the entire realm of Islamic spirituality is associated with Ihsan.

As such, one can say that the whole realm of love, beauty, spirituality, and aesthetics have to do with Ihsan. In that sense, the entire domain of Islamic spirituality -also called the Sufi tradition but also goes beyond that to include many genres of Islamic poetry, music, philosophy, Hikmat (wisdom traditions), Batini (esoteric, often 46 Mawlana Jalal al-Din Rumi, Fihi Ma Fihi, Chapter 8. Concretely, the path between legalism and secularism lies through the human heart. In Khan's rendering, Ihsan seeks "love over law, process over structure" and "virtue" over "selfassertion." 59 As such, a culture of Ihsan will "nurture compassion, mercy and love in societies." 60 Khan's task is to highlight that such a tradition exists within Islam, to revivify its adherence, and to encourage its adoption not simply as an individual spiritual goal but as a guide for political philosophy in Muslim-majority nations.

To do so, Khan's work traces, in turn, "the loss of Ihsan" occasioned by the expansion of rigorist extremism; the adoption of an equally distorted conception of Islam reducing faith to an "identity" bereft of spiritual depth, a hollow self-definition serviceable mostly as a vehicle for political mobilization, and, in its concluding section, an exegesis of Ihsan that celebrates it not simply as a path to personal spiritual 59 Khan, Islam and Good Governance, 1-2. purity -as many across Muslim history have -but as a blueprint for good governance in our contemporary, broken world. Ihsan as a political program can help to heal the wounded world in part by giving to states that "forcibly implement divine law" no sanction. 61 Khan's bold vision, I believe, can benefit from a comparative religious studies perspective. In this regard, I think it is helpful to note the similarities between Sufism in Islam and Quakerism in Christianity. Quakers also arose against both proponents of a legalistic view of the faith and those who were espousing a kind of de-Christianization, and thus a kind of secularization.

Additionally, the Quaker endeavor aligns well with that of the great Sufi mystics: a religion of what they call "the inner light," which ensures possession of religious truth while inspiring an ethic of loving service. Further, as with Khan's proposal so too with Quakerism: the internal guide is not simply the soul's sourcebook for spiritual strength but is a blueprint for social and political reform -a template for "good governance." 61 Khan, Islam and Good Governance, 2. The Pre-history of Quakerism: The

Traditional Christian View

The main thrust of Christianity understood as a body of theological truths stakes its claim on individuals "called to freedom." 62 Indeed, properly grasped, freedom suffuses Christianity through the concepts of creation, covenant, and conscience. As to creation, only God is sacred--not the moons, planets, or states that populate the created order. Due to the centrality of creation, neither the world nor any entity within it is permanent or necessary, as the whole universe is the free act of the creator's will. God, in 62 Galatians 5:13. turn, values the free will of created men and women -individuals made in the image of his own creative nature. 63 Free choice also radiates from the biblical notion of covenant: God directly asks men to act freely as He Himself freely created. Indeed, does God through leaders like Joshua -"if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve" 64 -not ask us to choose?

And this choice cannot be coerced. As Jesus relates, "The kings of the gentiles lord it over them, but it shall not be so among you." 65 The highly influential Gregory of Nyssa relates Christ's point as follows: "Some are saying that God if he wanted could by force bring even the disinclined to accept the message. But then where would free choice be? Where their virtue? Where their praise for having succeeded? To be brought around [by force] to the purpose of another's will 63 Genesis 1:27. 64 Joshua 24:15. always be free to follow, has usually taken a particular hue. As Robert Lewis Wilken remarks, "appeal to conscience is not a simple allowance for private judgment," but is rather an inner feeling of "obedience to the voice of God revealed in scripture and handed down" through established structures. 75 Hence, Aquinas, who as we saw says one's good conscience must ultimately be followed, also declares that one's conscience is most in a position to be good -and so Conscience, therefore, is free and must be heeded, but "stay awake!" 81 and "if anyone has ears to hear, let them hear" the guidance God has gifted his followers through the blessing of religious authority. 82 In addition, more often than not, in Christian thought the 77 Matthew 7:15. 78 Acts of the Apostles 20:29-31. 87 One can think of the statement of Emperor Justinian (reigned 527-65) that "since we strive by all means to enforce the civil laws, whose power God in His goodness has entrusted to us for the security of our subjects, how much more keenly should we endeavor to enforce the holy canons and the divine laws which have been framed for the salvation of our souls," which could imply a harsh legalism toward those inside the Empire but outside orthodox faith (Justinian, Corpus Iuris Civilis III, Novellae, ed. R. Sholl and G. Kroll, 8 th ed. Berlin: Weidmann, 1963, 695); think also of the Baltic Crusades of the 12 th century which, though endorsed by the papacy on defensive grounds, embodied 92 To be sure, in elements of early Lutheranism and in the so-called Radical Reformation attempts were made to announce a religiosity of the Bible without further authority, or even a religiosity of the personal conscience, wholly alone before God. But these movements tended over time either to ramify into exiguous factions that faded from history, or to reassert a claim to divinely sanctioned guidance. Wilken writes of how Reformation groups that refused external authority "fragmented" and became "scattered throughout," having no "staying power." Wilkens, Liberty in the Things of God, 102. Indeed, traditionalism will always be at a disadvantage in such a contest.

For it has to do twice the work of religions of social praxis: it both has to practice as well as defend the traditional faith and to do the social work that comes from a living faith. In 103 Quakers, for example, had a pacifism that left frontier communities prey to Indian attacks, had an unwillingness to take oaths that meant that if they had needed testimony in court cases to convict violent disrupters of the public peace, they would often refuse to give it; and Transcendentalists at times could subvert social reform through their fascination with their own spiritual selfgrowth, so much so that one of its leading lights could say derisively of Christian poverty relief, "Are they my poor?" Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance." Emphasis added. 104 To be sure, global secularisms are diverse, and attempts have been made to cover a nature "red in tooth and claw" comparison, this dual task was (and is) less pressing for those who put core beliefs behind the doing of good worksthey can focus only on the doing of social good.

As a result of this entire unfolding, as mentioned, an ominous social misperception has come to lighta terrible disjunction: the doing of good or faithfulness. The "either/or" mentality in fact defines the apologetical challenge orthodox Christians face today. The faith's primary and most effective opponents are not dour materialists with a reductive worldview, for their metaphysics is (to this author at least) unsuitable for human flourishing. 104 No, among the real with a patina of grandeur and ennobling awe. See Ronald Dworkin, Religion without God (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013) and Alain de Botton, Religion for Atheists: A Nonbelievers Guide to the Uses of Religion (New York: Vintage, 2013). Whether these writers can overcome "the firm foundation of unyielding despair" to which so famous an unbeliever as Bertrand Rusell was led by contemplation of man as "the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of challenges are those who are content with vague spiritualisms but say Christianity is insufficiently committed to doing social good. 105 In fact, as the decline in Christianity recently has proven, atheism hasn't gained from Christianity's losses, but rather spiritualistic social welfarism.

The root of all this lies, to a very real degree, in Quakerism's bold and beautiful dream. A tragic beauty, indeed.

An Outsider's Friendly Advice

accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the débris of a universe in ruins"-seems, to this author at least, doubtful. Bertrand Russell, A Free Man's Worship, 1903 (Portland, ME: Thomas, Bird. Moher, 1923). 105 The content of this social good also has become a challenge, no doubt. But this too is to be expected: unmoored to a traditional creed, why should a religion of social praxis remain committed to a traditional moral code?

The same fate that I described could also occur in Islam -absent, of course, a special protective grace. Sufi theology of the inner heart will, if centered in Islamic politics, achieve great deeds in the world. Yet, can it remain true to central Islamic teachings -especially as it enters the arena of contentious political and cultural debate? Will it once again be "lost" by experiencing its own Hicksian schisms? 106 If it were, then in response to more traditional Islamic criticism, 106 To be sure, Quakerism and Sufism are not identical. (How could they be?) Sufism does not eschew all authoritative guidance, for segments within Sufism have long prized fraternal orders with strong spiritual leaders. Indeed, its focus on the tutelage of the spiritual master is so strong that it has been written of Sufism that "the disciple should be in the hands of the master 'like a corpse in the hand of the washer'" (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sufi sm/Sufi-thought-and-practice). To be sure, Sufism is internally diverse and has groupings which operate outside of hierarchical arrangements, and Professor Khan is drawing mostly on newer Sufi movements that eschew the strict murshid/murid hierarchy. In any case, the point is that there is little authority beyond the fraternal order, the pupil-master relationship, or the personal devotee. And here trouble might lurk. This work is an attempt to deploy the maqasid (higher objectives of Shariah) approach to public policy. It argues that public policy in Islam is a qualitatively distinct enterprise and should not be looked at only from the fiqh perspective. It is the author's contention that the maqasid approach can resolve many of the governance dilemmas which have been dogging the Muslim world throughout its history. This book is an empirical study of bureaucratic Islam in Malaysia. The author argues that the real agent of Islamization in the country is the bureaucracy which is advantageously situated and has divinity as well as sacrality attached to it. Najem, Tom, and Martin Hetherington (eds.). Good Governance in the Middle East Oil Monarchies. London: Routledge Curzon, 2003. This book studies the concept of good governance and how it is applied in the states of Gulf Cooperation Council. It argues that Western notions of good governance need to be modified in order to be effectively implemented in this region. Riaz, Ali and C. Christine Fair (eds.). Political Islam and Governance in Bangladesh. London: Routledge, 2015. This edited volume brings academics and journalists to examine the impact of Islamist politics on governance in Bangladesh. The authors argue that Islamist politics will

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the Prophet he asked, "What is Ihsan?" Both Gabriel's question and the Prophet's response make clear that Ihsan is an ideal at the center of the Qur'an and Sunna of the Prophet, and that it enjoins "perfection, goodness, to better, to do beautiful things and to do righteous deeds" (3). It is this cosmological ethic that Khan argues must be restored and implemented "to develop a political philosophy ... that emphasizes love over law" (2).

Negotiating Virtue and Realpolitik in Islamic Good Governance Asma Afsaruddin Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies Indiana University, Bloomington

Lewis's sense of betrayal is a potent reminder that words and resolutions in themselves -however lofty and high-minded they may sounddo not in themselves create a just and inclusive society. Since the adoption of the US constitution, minority groups -African-Americans and Native Americans in particular -have been unable to fully benefit from the rule of law in this country, as both groups have 23 M. A. Muqtedar Khan, Islam and Good Governance: A Political Muqtedar Khan's thoughtprovoking and remarkable book, Islam and Good Governance: A Political Philosophy of Ihsan, expresses a not dissimilar disenchantment with the course of Islamic political history that he understands to have largely turned its back on the high ideals expressed in the Qur'an and hadith literature about how Muslims should govern their affairs in this world 23 . He focuses on the concept of Ihsan, which in the Qur'an is specifically coupled with justice (16:90). Philosophy of Ihsan (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). about Ihsan, he replied that it means to worship God as if you see him; if you cannot see him, then surely he sees you." The Qur'an (29:69) promises that God is with those who practice Ihsan, that is to say, with those who carry out beautiful deeds. Ihsan is a much-invoked and powerful concept particularly within Islamic moral theology and the mystical strain of Islam known as Sufism. Khan provides a useful odyssey through the trajectory of spiritual and mystical Islam in which Ihsan enjoys a particularly high valence, often in self-conscious contrast to the hard-nosed realm of politics, which was guided more by realpolitik and what today we term as "identity politics." It is this development that the author rues, leading him to lament how the adoption of realist precepts by ruling elites have been determined by establishment of what Khan calls "the State of Ihsan" that would strive to realize a system of virtuous and benevolent governance in which justice and participatory politics would predominate. In contrast to the state as it evolved in Islamic history, "the State of Ihsan will be concerned with national virtue rather than national identity." More provocatively, Khan states that this State of Ihsan is a secular state. Such a secular state, in our author's conception, is not devoid of religion and religious principles. It is rather a state that "creates an intimidation-free environment that allows various ethical and virtuous communities and even movements to advocate the pursuit of individual and societal perfection." In the State of Ihsan, the government no longer exercises its authority in a top-down coercive The hunt for the elusive "Islamic state" of modern-day Islamists is futile and must be abandoned. The conclusion is inescapable: in the absence of adherence to Qur'anic principles, no amount of sloganeering turns a state "Islamic." Islam, after all, is not an empty shibboleth merely to be invoked and publicly professed. Khan appeals to the example set by the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century that, he says, must be emulated by contemporary Muslims in establishing their State of Ihsan. The Qur'an (33:21) describes the Prophet as "a beautiful example," signaling the importance of beauty (husn), 24 Asma Afsaruddin, Excellence and Precedence: Islamic Discourse on Legitimate Leadership (Leiden: Brill, 2002); idem, The First Muslims:

Ihsan in Search of a Political Praxis Peter Mandaville

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Khan, M. A. Muqtedar, "Live Life as if you have made and Eye-Contact with God," Islamic Horizons, March-April issue, 2020., pp. 61-62.

Mandaville, Peter, "Worlding the Inward Dimensions of Islam: Ihsan in Search of a Political Praxis in Muqtedar Khan (Ed.), Symposium on Islam and Good Governance, International Institute of Islamic Thought, October, 2020.

Khan, Mohammed Ayub. "Islam and Good Governance: An Annotated Bibliography," in MuqtedarKhan (Ed.), Symposium on Islam and Good Governance, International Institute of Islamic Thought, October, 2020.

Ibn Taymiyya, n.d.),[23][24][25][26]

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Khan, Islam and Good Governance, 2.