Experiences of Islamic Rule in the Corridors of the Modern State

• Introduction:

There is no doubt that one of the most major achievements of the colonial powers was the defeat of Muslim political power, which could not withstand the European forces of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, considering the Muslims’ resources had been completely exhausted.

The most obvious results of this defeat included its rationalization and the consolidation of political ignorance among Muslims, which produced political thought that was compatible with the secular framework imposed by colonialism. This explains why political thought in the Islamic world in the colonial era and beyond did not exhibit any major differences between one country and another. The defeat was absolute and uniform across countries, as was the imposed framework. This was no less severe on the economic level; indeed, it carried even more negative impacts and influence as the capitalist system developed, along with the violence that accompanies its control over the economies and peoples of the world.

While it was only logical for this development to occur at the intellectual level, considering the rise of Western powers and the centralization of science and technology in the West, there were also other changes that occurred that could be considered less logical given the situation: some experiences in governance were becoming more and more inclined to Islamic references. These experiences were able to attract large numbers of supporters and loyalists.

It can be said that a great deal of projects and experiments began at a somewhat social level and only took on political dimensions once they successfully took root in society. In that sense, these experiments did not really have any ability to resolve or deal with problems but rather consisted of a vision that offered partial solutions without being capable of impacting the well-honed political powers that possessed economic, military, and security power. For this reason, some preferred religious confrontation with groups and movements that had secular leanings or even conflicting religious dimensions over confrontation with political forces – both internal and external – as these possessed real power and could seriously harm them. And it did come to this kind of harm; in other words, a strategy of exploiting the available margin was implemented to the detriment of imposing other conceptions.

This does not mean that there were no other factors at play, such as an inability to resolve thorny issues, feeble inclinations for review and reform, and the pressure being exerted on it by the ranks of the movement – or, on the contrary, the centers of power within it. This all contributed to the downfall of the experiment, or at least hastened its collapse.

Needless to say, these experiments did not all have the same religious leanings, nor did they share equal levels of liberation from Western influence, neither in terms of purpose nor in terms of effectiveness. Rather, some submitted to and others were subjected to Western hegemony, and some of their bureaucratic apparatuses stifled the establishment of a real Islamic political project.

• Project description and importance:

 The project aims to study the experiences of governance with Islamic references in the modern era to show the extent of their success or failure in creating a conception of an Islamic system of government in modern times, in principle but also in terms of application and effectiveness. It is also an attempt to determine the actual factors that helped set up these experiments as well as those that led to their failure, all while studying their various effects on the internal economic, social, religious, and legislative structures of society. The project also takes into account the ways in which the experiments impacted and were themselves impacted by global modernity and the systems thereof.

The project development team does not research the roots of these spiritual and rational experiments, nor does it evaluate their intellectual conceptions in terms of whether or not they fall within or deviate from the prophetic normative limits. Rather, it traces the paths of these experiments and measures their achievements and failures. Delving too deep into theory would take the team too far from reality.

The Arkan Center was pushed to conduct this research because of the lack of studies on some of these experiments. The way that they interacted with institutions has not been monitored, and all thought and writings about these experiments is majorly distorted: many researchers obtain their information from fake sources, finding in these sources the same comfort that lazy ideologues and writers would find in official police reports detailing clashes between the police and rebellious forces, adding their own conclusions to these. Our goal was to stand in the face of these fake sources. We do not support or endorse the falsehoods they publish, nor do we seek to highlight any of their strengths or weaknesses. We aim to study objective reality through research and documentation, which is why we did not rush the work and were not satisfied simply with what the researchers wrote or the results they came to. Rather, we reviewed and reconsidered the work time and time again, and then we presented it to a number of professors specialized in corresponding studies. Impartiality and objectivity were clear goals for us.

The main objective of this project is to discover the temporal and spatial contexts which led to the emergence of Islamic-oriented governance experiences in the modern era, to reliably determine the causes and factors which led to their advancement or failure, and to reveal the truth behind their political, social, and institutional practices. This would help researchers determine how close or far they really were from the correct standards, ideas, and conceptions, thus allowing them to evaluate their performance from a legitimate perspective.

It also has a secondary goal of learning the different ways that political perceptions of governance with Islamic references and Western and Arab nationalist perceptions overlapped, intermingled, or clashed. It analyzes the extent to which Arab regimes dealt with politics that had religious references in terms of vision, practice, and discourse, as well as their intellectual and organizational proximity to Western attitudes. This makes it possible to make the most of the obstacles to success and the factors that led to the failure of each of the experiments under study, employing their societal effects and institutional achievements to build a theoretical framework and cognitive model that could aid in the development of a worthy Islamic political project with social and economic dimensions. This is a far-fetched goal for the scope of this study, but we are attempting to lay a building block through which we could realistically determine the historical course of these experiments to better understand some binaries such as state and revolution, advocacy and politics, moderate regimes and rogue regimes, and others.

What does the term “Islamic governance” mean in this project?

“Islamic” here does not mean to impose a specific description to the included experiments, nor to draw a certain framework within which they should fit. There is no particular methodology that they need to have followed or adhered to. Rather it is intended to signify one thing: the description, study, analysis, or follow-up that accompanied the experiments in political theorizing. We are primarily concerned with evaluating experiments through this theoretical framework to then enable readers to judge the aforementioned descriptions based on a serious investigation of the events and facts presented in this study.

No criteria, neither preliminary nor pragmatic, were adopted to determine the description of the experiment as Islamic. In that sense, there was no standard model to speak of; instead, all of the experiments included in this study were given this description only theoretically, for analysts and scholars to refer to, and it either symbolizes the religious affiliation of the experiments’ pioneering figures who established their respective movements and systems, or reflects that the experiment adopted some sort of religious policies. It could even allude to the nature of their political discourse.

The reader is then left to conclude whether the experiment can be considered an actual Islamic cultural project that influenced development and had a human dimension and impacted economics and power, and also whether the experiment was connected in reality to society and the state, etc.

• Steps and scope of the study:

 This work attempts to cover to the greatest extent possible the experiences of governance with Islamic references in the modern era, regardless of their religious efficacy and the correctness of their positions. These include: Al Saud in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Khomeinism in Iran, Al-Turabi in Sudan, Zia-ul-Haq in Pakistan, Erbakan and the Justice and Development Party in Turkey, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Justice and Development Party in Morocco, the National Liberation Front in Algeria, the Al-Nahda movement in Tunisia, Izetbegović in Bosnia, Bolkiah in the Sultanate of Brunei, Boko Haram in Nigeria, the Taliban in Afghanistan, Ansar al-Din in Mali, the Islamic Courts in Somalia, and the Islamic Emirate of Bihar and its Indian states.

The work covers political and military practices regardless of their fate and the circumstances of their emergence. It does not comprise the religious movements – intellectual or jihad – that were associated to some of these experiments, nor does it cover the ways that the experiments were influenced by the relative religious methods, philosophies, or principles. That would require a deeper elaboration of their approaches, an immersion in their philosophical or theoretical leanings, and a study of their analyses and assessments. This is unrelated to the main objective of the historical presentation of the experiments in question. The goal is instead to focus on their institutional performance, the different ways they created impact, and the factors that led to their success and demise.

Perhaps this project could later be supplemented by another study connecting these experiments by analyzing and comparing them. It could address the duties, probabilities, and the prohibited in the Islamization of a modern state, in light of the results of these historical experiments and their common denominators. This applies especially to some important elements such as: the impact of tribes and race, the importance of the social role in the establishment of the project, the religious, legal/political, and military affiliations of the founder, and the extent of disengagement from movements and groups, etc.

For this purpose, the study focused on the following:

Demographic and environmental description of the region:

Including the geographical and geostrategic location and demographics, given the importance of the role these factors play in shaping the state’s policies and foreign relations on one hand, and its economic conditions and the cultures of its people on the other. There is also a focus on geographic proximity, culture, race, and linguistic relations through a review of demographics, especially in ethnocentric experiments. Religious composition is also taken into account.

Historical background of its origin and influence:

Or what can be discussed of the roots, political origins, and repercussions of emergence of the experiment. These cover the relevant historical political contexts and social factors that brought the experiment about and played a role in its emergence, determining first the directions in which it would develop and later its integration into political and social life, as is also touched upon in the following section addressing the transition towards a state.

Transition to a state:

This includes two main sections: the founder, and the interactions upon establishment. The former does not include any details on the personal biographies of the founders or those of any relevant main actors, but rather focuses on the interactions that these individuals had with the existing reality, and vice versa, when they came into total or partial power.

As for the latter, it includes the contexts that witnessed the rise of the experiment, the ways in which the authority could be considered unique in its governance, and its interactions with the aforementioned contexts in light of which its programs, projects, and institutional performances were determined.

Political, economic, and social effects – specifically institutional performance:

This includes the dissection of internal performance at the legislative, economic, military, social, and political levels, and finding answers to the question of how the experiment implemented its governance, which entails the presentation of its executive vision for Sharia issues.

Studying political performance, we centered this performance as the engine which brought about all the rest, considering that it affected how the experiment was understood but also the results that followed. There is a focus on international relations and international stances taken vis a vis the experiment: these are very important because they help monitor the extent to which external factors impacted the experiment, but also the extent to which the relevant actors were aware of these factors and whether they dealt with or even used it. The study also focuses on the relationship between these actors and the West in terms of employment and industry, while clarifying the differences between each problem through the actual application of the projects via political performance. Afterwards, we discuss the issue of exploitation of the available margin.

As for legislative performance, it is studied in the narrow sense of the term, which means it includes the enactment of laws and regulations and the organization of the judiciary only in broad terms. Regarding military performance, in some experiments, we use “military” to mean “security” – but we do not mean to exaggerate by describing it as military.

Overall, the goal of this part of the study was to determine whether or not a purely political experiment could work, without any ideological judgments or anticipatory expressions, all while paying attention to concepts, using simple language, and avoiding biased and exaggerated terminology. We have tried hard not to be misled by the sources we found, but because there are so few sources addressing these kinds of experiments, and considering that those that do exist are limited in scope, it was a difficult task which the researchers tried to circumvent by attributing all information and data to their respective sources and even sometimes discussing it among themselves. They were often surprised at what they found, leading them to look into the sources and major references themselves.

Factors that led to establishment and failure:

The approach in this part of the study is different from that addressing the repercussions of the emergence of a certain system. Here, we are more concerned with finding the why’s than with answering the how’s.

• Methodological tools:

 The study mainly adopts a historical approach which relies on historical events to understand the differences between historical periods and explain them and the varying effects they had on the studied experiments. It also adopts a sociological approach which takes into account the interactive and harmonious relations that existed within the societies under study, as well as the relations of conflict and adaptation. It observes the prevailing social phenomena as they relate to political research, such as relations of control and the traditions and patterns of behavior that are reflected in political practice.

The study only used analytical methods in the narrowest sense, such as with state/community relations, group approaches, or institutional approaches. The different methodologies are juxtaposed, not integrated, in the sense that different chapters and sources are studied using different methods depending on each experiment and its relative constitutive elements and what these need to be analyzed.

The project was keen to highlight the specificity and the added value of each experiment. It defines the specific periods that were focused on and presents a comprehensive map of the relevant political spectrum. It also attempted to study some experiments through different theoretical frameworks, such as: the dichotomy of moderate and rogue regimes, the triad of Imamate, piety, and tradition, and the duality of the prophecy and the epic. It does so by linking reality and history on multiple levels of analysis – the cultural, personal, and international.

The study also used digital data and statistics describing demographics and economic performance. It attempted to not only list this information but engage with it, while supporting the aforementioned analyses and considering the specificity of the two elements listed above and their inherent relation to the period under study and its historical context.

In addition, the study tried to elaborate on foreign sources and references and to make use of as many readings as possible about the included experiments. This was done in an attempt for the analysis to be as comprehensive as possible, to present apt conclusions and deductions to be discussed at length. For this purpose, the study also included a bibliography of these readings and others that could not be referenced in the analysis and presentation. The bibliography includes works in Arabic but also in foreign languages, and these works are a mix of studies, research, research papers presented in conferences, and articles. It does not include the previous studies reviewed because of how numerous they are and more importantly because they did not contribute much to the objective study of the target experiments. Only some mentions were made about these references, cited in the appropriate places in the text.

A brief introduction to each experiment is also included, to serve as an overall picture of the research and experiment. Finally, the project is prefaced with some necessary definitions of the key words used in the study, so as to define the scope of the research and lay out the connections between the different topics – as well as the results of these connections.