Have Muslims Been Actually Ordained

Logical deductions from the Qur’an and some of the most important other classical sources of Islam indicate that liberal democracy is the most appropriate form of government for Muslims. In this age, when Islam is identified with dictatorship and terrorism, this may not sound persuasive. So the sceptical reader is invited to read the paper before reaching to his/her conclusion. Keywords: Islam, liberal democracy, dictatorship, maqasid, freedom of thought, freedom of worship, secularism, hisbah, forbidding wrong and commanding right, waqfs.

2003

The author questions whether concurrent and simultaneous moral and normative commitments to Islam and to a democratic form of government are reconcilable or mutually exclusive. The author will argue in this Article that it is indeed possible to reconcile Islam with a commitment in favor of democracy. The author will then present a systematic exploration of Islamic theology and law

2016

For years, there has been debate within political science on the extent to which Islam is compatible with the principles of democracy. More recently, the field has moved past this discussion and onto a more productive question: when do religious actors decide to support a democratic transition process? And when do they decide to oppose it or remain neutral? Like other religions, Islam does not have a unified position on issues of democratic transition. Instead, religious actors come to their own positions depending on their interests and the extent to which democratic transition affects those interests.

Since the time of ancient Greek philosophy, the question of upholding perceived ‘higher’ values – whether they be epistemological in the case of Plato, or cultural in the case of Nietzsche – has been seen in conflict with the values of the ‘masses’. In political terms, this is translated into a battle between meritocracy (the ‘talent’ in this case being able to determine higher values) and democracy. This duality has also been a more recent phenomenon in Islamic thought, with a concern that the values of the majority threaten the spiritual values of the religion. One thinker in particular, Mawlana Mawdudi, has highlighted this concern and attempts to defend spiritual values in his call for a theo-democracy. However, as this paper will demonstrate, Mawdudi’s theo-democracy translates into a theocracy in practice, and the possibility is presented here of a compromise whereby spiritual values can be maintained whilst not having to sacrifice the inclusiveness that democracy can allow.

Before the 9/11 tragedy, the West (maybe understood the way used by Samuel P. Huntington in his masterpiece The Clash of Civilizations) claimed to have settled what Alexis de Tocqueville said in 1831 was "the great problem of our times"; the relationship between religion and politics. A simplified and manifest version of a socially constructed reality and an instrumentally achieved political order was an organic, bottom-up, and mutually shared idea of secularism. However, with the advent of the 21st century, there have been some agonizing questions about the rise of an assertive secularism and rejection of religion. There has been a demand for the marginalization of religion from public policy matters which, according to the former American President, Barak Obama, is "a practical absurdity". The Muslim world, on the other hand, is still dealing with the basic question about religion vs. politics to determine the basis of political power, its legitimacy, and its expression. The available mainstream literature on the role of religion in the public sphere in the Muslim world is, unfortunately, predominantly an expression ethnocentric scholarship. There is a dire need to have native perspectives on the subject to understand local political challenges and ideological confrontations to develop a theory of liberal democracy for the Muslim world. To fill the gap, Nader Hashemi, Director Center for Middle East Studies and an Assistant Professor of Middle East and Islamic Politics at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, wrote a very insightful book titled Islam, Secularism, and Liberal Democracy: Toward a Democratic Theory for Muslim Societies with an informed sense of history, as proposed by C. Wright Mills, to; a) challenge some unexamined assumptions of the western scholarship on the Muslim world; b) develop a theory a new theory of liberal democracy for the Muslim world where religion is a key identity marker.

Journal of Democracy, 2003

Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 2017

Experiences of democratization, especially those outside core western democracies, have seen the explosion of different forms of religious expression in public and political life. After all, democratization is about opening up the socio-political sphere, and creating an equal playing field for the participation of various contenders and alternatives of a 'good life'. At the same time, religious movements are usually among the best-organized contenders to articulate and pursue powerful visions of a good life. That inherited legacies of nation-state formation, and the resulting 'traditions' of each specific country, are often at odds with the egalitarian-universal principles underlying democratic inclusion of different contenders, however, complicates the application of values of religious freedom and equality. That religious alternatives themselves consist of 'comprehensive' and often exclusionary narratives, moreover, makes them a difficult, even if unavoidable, companion of democratic openings. Hence, democratizing polities have to walk a very fine line between accommodation and restriction of religion in order for citizens from different walks of life to perceive the state as a shared home for everyone. Such dilemmas of inclusion and exclusion hinge on broader institutional choices, which concern fundamental questions about who is to be included and excluded, under what arrangements, and with what results. This collection of articles explores the emerging institutional solutions to govern Islam and religious plurality in democratizing polities in the Balkans. The cases under analysis-Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria and Turkey-all feature diverse religious groups, which include Muslims, Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics, as well as atheists and agnostics. All our cases also encompass substantial Muslim populations, which constitute either the majority or sizeable minorities in each country. In all cases under scrutiny, and different from many religiously diverse European societies, Muslims are also 'endogenous' populations that share fundamental historical experiences and legacies with other religious groups and fellow countrymen. Hence, they are not only part of the complex ethno-religious configuration, but also a long-term feature in how this configuration merged in terms of a common sense of 'we-ness' , aspirations for conformity, historical traditions and legacies of state-church relations. In this context, the evolving institutional choices to manage Islam and religious diversity involve both democratic aspirations of freedom and equality and historical concerns and solutions to what was often considered a troublesome plural reality. This issue highlights the role of these old and new dilemmas in shaping institutional arrangements for governing Islam and religious diversity in different cases. The empirical analysis revolves around a set of common questions: What are the institutional compromises that characterize new models for governing Islam in different cases? How do the historical 'traditions' factor in? What is the supervisory role of the

Kashmir Reader, http://kashmirreader.com/, 2014

It argues that (i) the “problem of religion’s relationship with democracy is not an exclusively Muslim phenomenon” but one of those problems that other religions and religious traditions, Christianity in particular, “have had to struggle with” in the past; (ii), taking into consideration the ‘spirit’ rather than merely the ‘process’ of democracy, it is feasible and reasonable to propose that the relationship between Islam and democracy is not inherently problematic even by western standards.

Islam, Secularism, and Liberal Democracy, 2009

Two research trips to Indonesia and Turkey helped solidify my understanding of these countries. I would like to thank the United States-Indonesia Society and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for their financial support of my work. My parents, Esmat Hashemi and Mehdi Hashemi, deserve special recognition and praise. I am grateful to them for many things (the list is too long to give here), but in this context I want to especially thank them for instilling in me a love of education. This book is dedicated to them, for all their sacrifices, for putting up with their rebellious son and for their ongoing and unconditional love. I would also like to single out my siblings, their spouses, and my nephews and nieces for their encouragement and love. They all deserve to be recognized by name: Fereshteh, Shahid, Noor, Ameer, Naseem, Firoozeh, Mehdi, Negean, Ameen, Namjoo, Armita, and Iman. xviii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many of the ideas that appear in this book were tested and first debated in front of a close group of friends affiliated with the Ottawa-based Second Generation Muslim Discussion Group (affectionately known as the "2nd gen"). The intellectual stimulation, laughter, and companionship they have provided me with over the years have been invaluable, and our email listserver has acted as an important sounding board for many of my thoughts and frustrations with the state of the world-the Muslim world in particular. I want to thank this group of people for their friendship, religiosity, solidarity, and camaraderie. Several people deserve special recognition. Emran Qureshi has been my best friend for most of the past decade. He has been an important resource person for me over the years, keeping me on my toes intellectually and abreast of unfolding debates that are/were germane to this book. A subtext to our friendship has been the tension between secularism and religion. We have argued about this topic on many different occasions and in countless diverse political contexts, both in person and via email, to the extent that this book bears his imprint. I would also like to thank Andaleeb Qayyum and Soraya Moghadam for their friendship, laughter, and the many camping trips, debates, and arguments over the years that indirectly contributed to my intellectual development. Over the years their solidarity, camaraderie, and religiosity has meant a lot to me. Afra Jalabi deserves to have a Ph.D. already. I have learned much from her and especially benefited from her moral reading of the Qur'an and early Muslim history and her ruminations on the philosophy and merits of nonviolence. I hope this book will inspire her to begin work on the twenty books I've been encouraging her to write since we first met. Alim Elliot Khan has been a loyal friend for the past fifteen years. I deeply appreciate his support and solidarity over the years. Other members of the larger 2nd gen family I would like to acknowledge are