Religion, Politics & Medicine

Any entity — whether an individual, political party, or state actor — which seeks to use Islam for their politics should also, in order to remain free from hypocrisy and demagoguery, be able to demonstrate the authenticity of their claims. Claims to authenticity, however, must be based on objective scholarship, wisdom, and insight, and not a collection of half-truths and one-liners put together to mobilize the masses. In other words, the standards for authenticity must be set high lest any fool hijack Islam for their own political ambitions.

The Dangers of Political Mythology

It is the other side of the equation — the human psyche — which reveals why it’s necessary we set our bar high. Because let’s face it. We humans are made for swallowing myths. Myths concerning nation, race, history, religion, civilization, and even science [1], have long been used, not only for social cohesion and identity, but also for political ends.

By using the word myth, I’m not referring to its popular definition in the sense of legendary tales like Peter Pan or Little Red Riding Hood. Myth is also known to mean narratives or ideas accepted, in the minds of people, as real and factual. Indeed, it could be said that myths are more real than facts, because unlike facts, they don’t go away with shifting scientific and historical paradigms. For example, medicine in the 1700s is totally different from medicine today, but tawhid has remained a constant for the past millennia.

Politicized myths — myths utilized for political ends — are the most dangerous animals. Myths of the Other, for example, sustain the current War on Terror and the previous Cold War. The IMF and World Bank has its myth of democracy and free-market capitalism which has undermined the economic autonomy of numerous countries. Serbia invaded Kosovo with a number of national myths and historical prejudices about the region. Hindu nationalist ideologies in India are based on myths which inspire pride in Hinduism and hatred for India’s Islamic past.

Politicized myths, however, are often based on weak facts and half-truths. The War on Terror paints Islamism and Jihadists as a global threat (as the Cold War did with the Soviet Union). But all of them, Osama Bin Laden included, express national grievances citing Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Palestine, Chechnya, and so on, as the heart of their concerns. Their political objectives maybe expressed in religious terminology, but that still doesn’t change the fact that their interests lie in and around the Persian Gulf, not the Gulf of Mexico. Likewise, Serbia went into Kosovo on the myth that it was liberating it from the Turks, but the fact is is that Albanians live there and Albanians are not Turks; free-market capitalism may work in certain circumstances, but, without government intervention, the economy will be hijacked by large corporations (as when Bolivia’s water supply was bought by a foreign company, which jacked up the price and, consequently, started a riot); and the tripartite periodization of Indian history (first stage involving pre-Muslim rule, where there was a glorious “Hindu” civilization, followed by a decline, with the ascension of the Moguls, followed by a rise, with the British colonial rule) was a myth invented by British colonialism, probably to justify their own colonization of India.

Restoring the Caliphate… in Morocco

And then there’s the myth pushed forward by caliphate inspired movements, based on a mixture of fiqh and a selective reading of history [2] (history used for identity construction and inspiring political action rather than history as a reservoir of wisdom and experience), which basically, like the aforementioned examples, abandons high standards of authenticity for politics. In other words, a proper survey of the relationship between religion and state, throughout 1,400+ years of history (and not simply the 40 years after the hijra), is conveniently abandoned and, instead, replaced with slogans like “the Koran is our constitution!“.

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, we abandon our standards and ignore instances of compromise and accommodation (such as Shihab al-Din Marjani, when he legitimated the rule of the empire of the Russian Tsars, considering it a part of dar al-islam). [3] This still doesn’t change the fact that, according to Sunni law, the caliphate must come from the tribe of Quraysh. In fact, according the Dr. Khaled Blankinship, “when the Ottoman ruler ‘Abd al-Hamîd II started calling himself the Sultân-khalîfah”, he was “strongly opposed by ‘Abd al-Rahmân al-Kawâkibî (d. 1321/1903), who pointed out that according to Sunnî law, the khalîfah had to be from Quraysh, and the Ottomans were not Qurashîs and had never claimed to be.” [4]

Hope is not lost, however. There is a viable solution. Apparently, the Sultanate of Morocco, the ʿAlawī dynasty, is Qurayshi. And, interestingly, the Moroccans never did recognize the Ottoman’s claim to the caliphate. As Dr. Blankinship writes:

…The continuity of the use of such titles in the Muslim West also extends down to the present in Morocco, where Muhammad VI is still to this day amîr al-mu’minîn, just like ‘Umar ibn al-Khattâb, and that is taken with deadly seriousness in Morocco. Thus, the Moroccans, having their own continuous succession of the title, do not at all now and never before did recognize the Ottoman Turkish sultâns’s claim to the title of khalîfah. Indeed, since the sultâns of Morocco claimed descent from the Prophet (SAAS) and were thus Qurashîs, while the Ottomans were not, it might be held against the Ottomans rather that they did not recognize the Moroccan ruler as khalîfah and submit to him.

And thus, by simple logic:

…It would seem to me that any attempt to restore the khilâfah today would have to begin by asking why all Muslims should not swear allegiance to King Muhammad VI of Morocco, who certainly holds this claim and does so through an ancient and venerable lineage that goes back much earlier than the Ottoman claim and is much more authentic. Not that I hold the view that that is what is to be done, but it would seem that classical theory would require allegiance to the existing khalîfah rather than setting up another as rival. The Ottoman state did represent the largest surviving Muslim state in the center of the Muslim world in the thirteenth-fourteenth /nineteenth century, it is true, but it almost went under in 1247-1256/1831-1840 and was only saved by British intervention. Thus, for most of its last century it did not constitute a truly independent Muslim polity but depended on Britain for protection from Russia and from other enemies. Indeed, its destruction after the First World War occurred because it had transferred its poltical allegiance to Germany, so that Britain no longer wished to preserve it.

One-way ticket to Morocco, anyone?

Footnotes

1. See Noam Chomsky’s Psychology and Ideology from The Chomsky Reader.
2. From my last post.
3. From Sh. Abdal Hakim Murad’s Bombing Without Moonlight: The Origins of Suicidal Terrorism.
4. From Dr. Khaled Yahya Blakinship’s The History of the Caliphate.

Recommended

Imam Zaid Shakir’s Islam: Religion or Ideology

Pervez Manzoor’s Islam Without the Politics of Despair

Chandra Muzaffar’s A Secular State or an Islamic State?

For more on politics and mythology, read Myth and Literature as Political Ideology (pdf file)