Authority in Islam: From Mohammed to Khomeini

From Mohammed to Khomeini

Mehdi Mozaffari

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315494470
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This text looks at the future orientation of the People's Liberation Army. It covers military leadership, readiness and expenditure, defense doctrine, high-tech warfare acquisitions, the scientific and technological base for defense procurement and China's security concerns in Northeast Asia.

1 Approaches and Models

Approaches

The theoretical elaboration of the concept of “Islamic state” is of relatively recent date. To be sure, competition for power existed from the very outset, even during Muḥammad’s lifetime. The numerous and bitter armed conflicts that set Muslim against Muslim testify to the passions political disputes can generate—from the division of Muslims within the Medina community (i.e., under the Prophet himself, among the different subgroups, most notably the “Emigrants” [Muhājirūn] and the “Helpers” [Anṣār]) to the war of Ṣiffīfn between ‘Alī and Mu’āwiya, and later the revolt of Ḥusayn son of ‘Alī against Yazrd son of Mu’āwiya, and the fall of the Umayyads and their replacement by the ‘Abbāsids.

In fact, it was these political schisms and struggles that subsequently gave rise to theoretical schisms into different sects, schools, and doctrines. The positions of the most important sects (Sunnī, Shī‘ī, and Khārijī) will be discussed in a later chapter; for the moment let us examine briefly the different theoretical approaches to power and the state in Islam. Among the “classic” approaches we have necessarily had to be selective, yet our choices may be fairly said to be among the most representative.

Disregarding the approaches of moralist leanings, we may distinguish, broadly speaking, four fundamental political approaches² to the study of power and the state in Islam’s classical period: philosophical, administrative, dogmatic, and sociological.

The philosophical approach

The most celebrated representative of the philosophical approach is unquestionably Al-Fārābī (259-339/872-950), who lived during the apogee of Hellenism in Islam. He himself was a Muslim Hellenist par excellence and in fact also bore the appelation Magistrat Secundus. His political thought is basically organic and Utopian: organic in the sense that the state (the “city,” or medina, to use his own term) is conceived of as a living body composed of organs, the importance of which varies depending on their function. It is a hierarchically organized body with interdependent members. “The dominant organ is by nature the most perfect and the most complete unto itself in all that is proper to it, in that it possesses to the utmost degree all that of which every other organ partakes, and in that below it exist organs that dominate other subordinate organs.”

For Fārābī, it is the Leader who is the cause³ of the city and not vice versa.

Just as the heart is the first instance, and is the cause of the existence of all the other organs of the body, of their powers and of their hierarchy, such that if one of these organs is in distress it is the heart that provides the means to stem that distress, so (too) the Leader of the city must exist first, in order to be the cause of the existence of the city and of its parts, and the cause of. . . their hierarchy, such that if one of them is in distress it is he (the Leader) who can stem that distress.⁴

Fārābī’s utopianism is manifest at two levels: in the qualities of the Leader of the virtuous city (al-madinat al-faḍila) and in the divisions of the different cities that he enumerates. Fārābī’s concept of the Leader was deeply influenced by Plato, while his division of the city was influenced by Aristotle.

Inspired by Plato’s Republic and influenced by the Shī‘ī idea of the imām, Fārābī desired a leader who would be philosopher, prophet, imām, and king all at the same time. His view was, in essence, that a Leader is a man who has fulfilled his humanity to perfection, whose intelligence, having acquired all that was intelligible, had by that fact become intelligence in actu and intelligible in actu. It is to such a man that God makes his revelations, and he does so through the active intellect which lavishes these revelations on the acquired intellect of this man, whence they pass to passive intellect, and then to the imagination. Thus this man is, by reason of what he receives in his imagination, both sage and philosopher, proclaiming that which is and that which shall be in the most beautiful of languages.⁵

In saying this Fārābī is aware that the qualities he enumerates in detail (a total of thirteen) in his work have a Utopian flavor, and hence he also admits a certain realism, indicating that

if one sole individual combining all of these conditions in himself be not found, yet be it that two are found, the one a sage and the other offering the rest of these conditions, both will be leaders of the City. If these conditions are shared among a group of individuals, one possessing wisdom and (each of the others possessing one of the other conditions) and if (these individuals) agree among themselves, they will (all) be virtuous leaders.⁶

The distinctions drawn among the different cities show clearly that the author of the Conciliation of Plato and Aristotle was broadly influenced by the Politics of Aristotle. To the virtuous City Fārābī opposes the ignorant City, the immoral and fickle Cities, and the City that has lost its way, each divided in turn into other cities.

The administrative approach

For the definitive institutionalization of the caliphate a centralized hierarchized administration based on defined norms and precise rules was necessary. Al-Māwardī (364-450/974-1058) is a typical example of a Muslim theoretician who attempted to define the nature and function of administration in all its various aspects. Numerous others have of course dealt with the same problem,⁷ but the scope and rigor of Māwardī’s works place them in a category by themselves. His treatise on public law, Constitutionis politicae (al-Aḥkām al-sulṭāniyya), explores the caliphate (or imāmate) and the emirate, jurisprudence, the army, taxes, sanctions, legal punishment, etc. The vast domain over which his inquiry ranges is rendered with a mastery that, in Laoust’s words, “only age can give.” As for its rigor, he wisely avoids mixing good counsel (naṣiḥa) to the Prince, so much in fashion in the Muslim world, with the impersonal, technical side of administration.

The treatise gives the impression that for Māwardī, the institution of the caliphate was a thing of worth in itself, separate from and above the person of the caliph himself. He attaches, in fact, a particular importance to the impersonal quality of administration. It is the continuity of the caliphate as an institution that counts above all else. His thoroughly administrative approach was doubtless tributary to his nuanced attitude in politics, and in one sense Māwardī may be said to represent the views of the establishment of his day. He is thus the spokesman of the caliphate bureaucracy, and in that capacity disposed to any compromise to ensure the perpetuity of the administration.

Māwardī’s administrative approach was clearly a response to the needs of the times. The ‘Abbāsid caliphate was beset by serious problems caused essentially by the innumerable emirs, sultans, and princes who had established themselves on the territories belonging to the Baghdad caliphate. Power so diffuse and fragmented contained the inherent risk of bringing about the end of the caliphate as an institution. It was therefore imperative for the establishment to react to save the institution on which its own survival depended. Moreover, in the absence of a powerful caliphate, the administrative apparatus offered the only means to integrate, or at least tie together, so many disparate elements into a single body.

A rigid administration would hardly have been able to meet this need, and indeed would even have risked constricting that administration’s sphere of influence and control even further. A more flexible administrative system was necessary, and it was to this project that Māwardī turned.

He succeeded brilliantly. Using every juridical expedient and formal device at his disposal, he deftly fashioned just the flexible, cohesive, and integrative administrative system that was needed. He drew first on “the Koran and Tradition (sunna)” and then on consensus omnium (ijmā’) and analogical arguments (qiyās). But he also made a broad appeal, in the name of public interest (maṣlaḥa), to other sources: custom (‘urf), administrative jurisprudence (‘amal), and the imperatives of the moment (ḥukm al-waqt). Thus a religious policy (siyāsa) was evolved, solicitous of protecting the legitimacy of the caliphate yet at the same time prudently making alternations and amendments (istidrāk) to existing institutions.⁸

The concern to protect the administration is so great in Māwardī that he even entertains the thought of a pluralist state instead of a unitary state. The caliphate is a unitary state when it has sufficient power to appoint emirs to govern the provinces who in their persons combine the requisite conditions and over whom the caliph can have relatively tight control. It is a pluralist state, more confederate than federal, when the caliph is obliged to work together with local dynasties, whose existence he accepts in return for their recognition of his preeminence.⁹

The dogmatic approach

The dogmatic approach may be regarded, broadly speaking, as a reaction to the two preceding ones. Fārābī’s utopianism and Hellenism in general had no further theoretical ammunition to come to the aid of a caliphate in difficulty. The same, if to a lesser degree, applies to Māwardī’s administrative approach; although it worked within the framework of the ‘Abbāsid caliphate, it was unable to provide a theoretical basis the caliphate of Baghdad could use in its defense against the vehement attacks of Iranian and Egyptian Isma’ilism. In this situation, a return to dogma seemed to be the surest means for mounting a defense of the ‘Abbāsid caliphate. Thus, the rationalist movement (mu’tazilism) was forced into retreat to make way for a dogmatism whose origins went back to the Ash’arī school, a bitter adversary of mu’tazilism. The most eminent representative of the new dogmatic wave was Al-Ghazālī (450-505/1058-1111) who was born the same year Māwardī died.

With Ghazālī, holder of the title Ḥujjat ul-Islam, we are already in the midst of the era of the “revival of religious sciences” (Iḥyā’ ‘ulūm al-dīn, title of one of Ghazālī’s principal works). The choice of such a title is significant: if it was necessary to “revive” the religious sciences, by implication they had been dormant, if not dead.¹⁰ Ghazālī

noted with sadness and indignation that people in his time know much too little of religious law (shar’), not only in the cities but even more so in the villages and in the countryside. Therefore, a doctor of law (faqīh) officially charged with teaching religion must be placed in each village, tribe, or quarter.¹¹

If the observation is true, ignorance of the sharī’a was widespread in Ghazālī’s time at least among the common people, hence the necessity of a general remedy that consisted in a spectacular return to dogma, which entailed abandonment of philosophy and the condemnation of all nonconformist thought or attitude, specifically the bāṭiniyya.

Philosophy and heresy were two sides of the same coin, in Ghazālī’s opinion. Whereas in his book The Inconsistency of the Philosophers (Tahāfut al-Falāsafa) he concentrates his attack on the philosophy of Fārābī and Avicenna (Ibn Sinā, 980-1037 A.D.), in the Mustaẓirī he takes up the battle in earnest, saying that’ ‘the doctrine of the bātiniyya, seen from within, is that of the philosophers, and seen from without, that of the Shī’ī.”¹²

But it should be borne in mind that Ghazālī, who ardently preached the dogmatization of the state, was also perfectly aware of the administrative problems besetting the caliphate, indeed, at least as aware of them as his illustrious predecessor Māwardī: while Māwardī had been exclusively in the service of the caliphate, Ghazālī was in practice simultaneously in the service of three different institutions. First, there was the wizāra, under the leadership of the powerful wazir (vizir) Niẓām al-Mulk, who raised his compatriot (both were from Tus) from anonymity, charging him with the defense of the shāfi’ī credo against the batinl criticisms. Through the wizāra Ghazālī would serve the Seljūq sultanate: first Malikshāh and then Sanjar. It was in honor of Sanjar that Ghazālī wrote his Naṣihat al-mulūk (Mirror of Princes). The caliphate was the third institution to benefit from Ghazālī’s services. His book Mustaẓhirī, dedicated to the caliph Al-Mustaẓhir, was a treatise in defense of the institution of the caliphate.

Ghazālī’s profound knowledge of the machinations and machinery of power at these three levels led him to the conclusion that Laoust summed up as follows:

The strength that had enabled the prophet and the first caliphs to embark upon vast and bountiful conquests was lacking in the caliphate. The Tbrks had the strength, but lacked the convictions and religious training without which a military enterprise could only be a war of conquest and plunder. If strength is lacking, then “science,” a missionary undertaking, a winning over of the leaders and the common people, is necessary—not of course the rational sciences, but the religious sciences such as tradition, Koranic exigesis, the fiqh, dogmatic theology, and the science of the heart.¹³

The sociological approach

The sociological approach is uncontestably the most “modern” of the four. Utopian constructions, administrative expedients, and dogmatic speculations vanish at a stroke in it. The state becomes a human phenomenon shorn of mystery and mystifications. The sociological approach, innovative and “revolutionary,” which gave mankind (primarily non-Muslims) new instruments for scientific study and inquiry, was invented and developed by the unequalled Muslim theoretician, Ibn Khaldūn (734-808/1332-1406), who was also a preeminent political practitioner in every sense of the word. Statesman, man of intrigue, skillful mediator (Timūr, whom Ibn Khaldūn asked to spare the lives of the besieged inhabitants of Damas, was dazzled by his intelligence and ability), not to speak of his qualities as diplomat, judge, and teacher. Over and above his high posts and delicate missions, he was the man who “revolutionized” the social sciences. For Muslims, Ibn Khaldūn will always be the person who demystified the “Mu...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Approaches and Models
• 2 Authority, Legitimate Power, and Virtual Power
• 3 Contemporary Models
• 4 Islam and Secularization
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Glossary
• Selected Bibliography
• About the Author