Tensions and Transitions in the Muslim World

Abstract

Safi’s text interrogates the potential of Islamic reform movements to articulate a democratic and pluralistic politics throughout the Middle East and the broader Islamic world. He begins by arguing that these reform movements exert the greatest influence in determining the direction of sociopolitical reforms in the Middle East, and, as a result, constitute a core movement from which to understand and interpret the dynamics of the region’s cultural and sociopolitical reality. Furthermore, the author argues that in the contemporary Middle Eastern intellectual climate, Islamic reformists represent a synthesis between the opposing programs of moralist-Islamists on the one hand, and nationalist-secularists on the other. This synthesis constitutes the most viable and realistic program for genuine reform and for developing a pluralistic society and participatory politics. In support of this thesis, Safi divides the text into nine chapters constituting four interrelated parts: “Democratization and the Islamic State,” “Visions of Reform,” “Islamic Law and Human Rights,” and “Islam in a Global Cultural Order.” The first part poses the question of whether democracy and pluralism can flourish in a society in which Islamic law commands the majority’s allegiance. His answer is cautiously affirmative, as it depends on the rejuvenation of cultural and legal reforms grounded in a historical Muslim experience that offers the tools to transcend current political and cultural institutions. As such, both the secular state and Islamist movements preclude such a renewal: the former because its structures negate the possibility of pluralistic politics, and the latter because its merging of state structures with the communal structure of the historical Shari`ah contradicts the nature of the Islamic polity as established by the Prophet. These restrictions can be overcome through grounding the state in two pillars. First, this means severing the link between the state and the ummah, a separation necessary to ensure that the state and its institutions are not hijacked by particularistic interests or erected as obstructions to the Islamic community’s spiritual and conceptual development. Such an Islamic state, which privileges the marshalling of state resources toward the Islamic community’s spiritual goals, also has, as its second pillar, the concept of consensus (ijma` ). Classical jurists viewed this concept as the fundamental principle that confers legitimacy upon the state. Therefore, the state gains its legitimacy insofar as it reflects the ummah’s will ...