Building Muslim Civil Society from the Bottom Up
by
Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad
Minaret
of Freedom Institute
Presented
October 14, 2000
at
the Meeting of the American Muslim Social
Scientists
at
Georgetown University in Washington, DC (Oct. 13-15,
2000)
Abstract:We consider the obstacles faced by
the construction of Muslim Civil Society in the
twentieth century and propose that the problems have
mainly been due to the top-down view of its advocates.We explain the
advantages of a bottom-up approach and suggest
specific strategies for implementing such an approach
in the twenty-first century.
Introduction
Alexis
de Tocqueville (2000), in his quintessential study of
democracy in America, manifested great concern for the
problem of how to assure that democracy could be
developed in a way compatible with liberty.It is an issue that is all too often
lacking in Muslim discussions of the compatibility
between democracy and Islam.The French Revolution had demonstrated
to Tocqueville how easily democratic structures could
produce a tyranny of brutal proportions.The number of
Muslim societies possessing the outward forms of
democracy and yet operating as functional
dictatorships, should be sufficient proof to Muslims
that Tocqueville's concerns were well-placed.
Tocqueville's
conclusion was that American democracy had the
advantage of the presence of a vital (and to large
degree religiously based) civil society.There should also
be no doubt that the existence of a robust civil
society is an important element of Islamic society.Yet the virtual
absence of the same is an indisputable hallmark of
Muslim societies today.Such
civil society as does exist, is either besieged, as
under the Palestinians, or marginalized as in most
Muslim countries.The
history of democracies in the world suggests that a
meaningful democracy cannot exist without a separate
healthy functioning civil society that lies outside
from the political sphere, although it may interact
with it.The
Muslim and Arab worlds have certainly demonstrated
this, but the fact applies generally.One need only
observe the colossal problems confronting the attempt
to democratize Russia.This
country has deliberately set upon a course of both
democratization and liberalization, but has failed to
date because the absence of civil society has left the
Russian people without the attitudes necessary to
exploit the opportunities that democracy and
liberalism have afforded them.Familiarity with
democratic process and civic action are best
inculcated at the neighborhood level.Once they become
second nature to the participants, they can
conceivably carry them into a national forum.
Civil
Society Defined
Before
Hegel civil society was incorrectly identified with
the state.Hegel
had the insight that civil society is "the set of
institutions that meet the needs of economic life and
regulate people's pursuit of their private affairs."(Hegel as paraphrased in Adler 1980)I would go further.I contend that
civil society is a third branch of society separate
from both the government and the commercial sector.It includes the
NGOs, the mosques and churches, the civic
associations, charitable organizations, and the
individual families that comprise the society.Their function is
distinct both from the monopoly on force claimed by
the government and from the profit-making function of
the business sector.They
have particular diverse missions that severally and
collectively contribute to the quality of life in a
given society.
Civil
society is a mix of unity and diversity.Cranston (1980)
notes that while it "requires a fair measure of shared
adhesion to the same social and moral values," it yet
contains a "plurality of groups and individuals who
have severally their own interests and aims."He argues ideology
is antithetical to such a society, threatening, in
particular, the civility that is often associated with
civil society, especially to the degree that ideology
attempts to generate zealous devotion to the aims it
wishes to impose upon the society.In this light, it
should be unsurprising that classical Islamic society,
wherein the religion was an organic and vital way of
life, had a thriving civil society, while the modern
attempts to redefine Islam as an ideology overlook or
attempt to suppress this necessary aspect of society.In contrast, the
United States in the nineteenth century could have a
government utterly secular, in the sense that no
religion was established nor was any religion
suppressed, and yet the society itself was imbued with
a firm religious foundation through the largely
religious nature of the civil society.
Islamic
Civil Society in History
Before
I proceed with the claim that civil society is lacking
in the modern Muslim world, it is worthwhile to take a
glance back at Muslim history and to note that this
was not the case in the "Golden Era" of the classical
Islamic society.The
greatness of that society, this audience surely
appreciates, went far beyond military victories and shari`ah
scholarship.The
great achievements in the sciences, medicine,
agriculture, urban growth, and international relations
of all sorts were underpinned by a successful
infrastructure that included that third sector
independent from the state and financial institutions
such as today would be called "big business."
That
infrastructure was developed in a highly decentralized
manner.This
fact and its significance are sorely under-appreciated
today.For
example, many people will point to the support of the
sciences given by the Muslim rulers and wealthy
patrons as an explanation for the scientific progress
of the golden era.Such
support was valuable, but it could not have been as
successful as it was if the state had directly
controlled the institutions of learning and research.Rather, those institutions were made
independent through the establishment awqâf.The independent
charters of the establishments, together with their
generous endowments, enabled these institutions to be
effective in ways that the state-controlled
universities and research centers of the Muslim world
cannot.
The
same was true of the hospitals and clinics, in some
cases even roads and canals upon which the great
Islamic civilization was constructed.I have been struck
by the similarities between these institutions and the
private foundations that play such an important role
in the vitality of Western civil society.The most important
difference between those institutions and their modern
Western counterparts for our purposes is that the
modern West includes civic associations that are
democratically organized and operated.The organizations
are independent of the government, voluntarily
organized to to address the quality of the life of the
citizenry both directly through social action and
indirectly through consultation with the government.The members of
these organizations form a popular electorate which
directly elects the leadership and whose approval is
required on the most important issues.Even the religious
associations in the West employ this democratic
structure.
In
America, there is no doubt that it was from the New
England "town meetings" and the
congregationally-controlled churches (not to mention
inspiration from the democratic tribal traditions of
many of the native American tribes) that the early
American colonists became acclimated to democratic
methods and subsequently demanded that similar
principles govern their independent states and
ultimately the federal government.
The
Failure of Civil Society in the Muslim World
Having
defined civil society, we can quickly see the lack of
same in the modern Muslim world.The question has
properly been asked, how can we expect Muslims to take
an interest in the election of political leaders when
they take no part in the election of their mosque
boards?One of
the most dramatic moves that Warith Deen Mohammad took
in transforming the Nation of Islam from the
paramilitary structure he inherited from his father
into the decentralized democratic bodies that are
scattered around America today was to demand that the
jamats directly elect their own imams.Now there is a man
who is more interested in the welfare of his people
than in his own power.Not
only is such a practice not common in the Muslim
world, it is not even common in the mosques founded by
Muslim immigrants in America, where the imam is
selected by the board instead of by the jamat.
The
awqâf that exist in the Muslim world today are
barely worthy of the name.Where they exist at all they are not
truly independent endowments but are under the–often
direct–control of the governments.One exception had
been the case of the Palestinian social service
agencies which, before Oslo, were actually were
independent of the Israeli occupiers.Although their effectiveness was limited
by the constraints of occupation, the degree to which
the Israelis allowed them to operate in the hopes that
they would become an alternative to the P.L.O. may
have helped them.Certainly,
the civil society in Palestine today under the
patriarchal "support" of the PNA is in terrible shape.Of course, this is
in part due to the additional constraints of closure
on the welfare of the Palestinians, but Palestinian
activists will testify to the stultifying effect of
having to operate under the centralized structure of
the PNA.
Another
major issue in many Muslim countries, for example
Pakistan, is the problem of corruption.(See, e.g., Menon
1995, 1996).Corruption
and waste are the unavoidable corollaries to
politically controlled benefits.Prof. James
Buchanan of George Mason University received the Nobel
Prize for his demonstration of how the problem of
"public choice" affects these issues.Actors in politico-economic systems
pursue their own interests at the same time that they
are entrusted with care of the public or corporate
interests.System
designs that provide for a confluence of these
interests tend to avoid corruption and waste while
system designs that provoke a divergence of these
interests lead to corruption and waste.
This
is true even in the United States.For example, the
25% limit on overhead costs that the Combined Federal
Campaign imposes on charitable organizations could not
be met by government social welfare agencies, where
the average overhead rate is over 60%.While it is true
that some crooked charitable organizations have
overhead rates over 90%, no one has to donate to these
organizations, while payment of tax money to support
wasteful government programs is compulsory.
Techniques
for Developing a Bottom-Up Civil Society
In
my introduction, I asserted that "familiarity with
democratic process and civic action are best
inculcated at the neighborhood level.Once they become
second nature to the participants, they can
conceivably carry them into a national forum."As is so often the
case we must not separate the ends from the means.Instead of
organizing and supporting top-down structured
organizations pushing for "democracy" in the Muslim
world, we must establish bottom-up organizations that
will initially deal with the immediate concerns of
their members and then spawn veterans who can form
organizations with broader aims for the reform of
society.The
most obvious place to start is with the mosques
themselves.This
is what happened in the Muslim republics of the Soviet
Union in days of its decline and immanent demise.Former government
bureaucrats who had hidden their secret commitment to
Islam would, upon retirement from government service,
set themselves up as independent imams and conduct
prayer services and religious educational activities
independent of the "official" mosques with their
state-appointed imams.
After
the mosques, there come the schools and then later
social service agencies and civic groups aimed at
social betterment.The
schools are the key element in the chain.It is through education that massive
social change is wrought.But unless the schools themselves are
structured as marketplaces of learning rather than as
means of simple indoctrination, we engage in a
self-defeating process.The
students must be approached as independent agents
being taught the essentials of independent original
thought, rather than vessels to receive the pureed
contents of our conclusions.
Note
how the ever-recurring theme of ijtihâd arises
again.We should
treat every student as if we had hopes that he or she
would some day become a mujtahid.Only if we are
successful in this enterprise can we then expect them
to go forth and create the kind of civil society of
which I am speaking.Once
they create it at the local level and the people
become acclimated to their role as Allah's khalifah
can they move on to transforming society on a larger
scale.
But
who is to do this work?And
how?Surely, it
should be obvious that the vanguard of the Islamist
movement have been Western educated Muslims who, out
of their experience in the West have developed a
greater commitment to Islam than they could have had
in their native lands.This has been true across the political
spectrum, whether of those like Sayyid Iqbal, whose
experience in the West inculcated a hatred for it, and
a desire to reject what he perceived as corruption at
its core, or to Ismail al-Faruqi whose experience gave
him a critical appreciation of its strengths and the
desire to "take back" that which we had given to the
West.I
previously mentioned the retirees in the former Soviet
Union who played a role in establishing the Islamic
revival in the Muslim commonwealths that have spun off
from that fallen empire with no traditional formal
religious training.Similarly, we note how so many of the
leaders of the Islamic revival throughout the Muslim
world are not traditionally trained imams, but
engineers and doctors.It
is from this same pool that we can develop the
vanguard of the Islamic civil society movement.
And
how shall we do that?Again,
the means should reflect the ends.We must develop
civil institutions to promote these ends.I will leave the details to other places
and times, and even other thinkers.But I will give
just one obvious example:We need multiple foundations offering
scholarships to Muslim students in all disciplines who
manifest an interest and a capability in developing
Muslim civil society from the bottom up.Each such
institution could have its own standards for deciding
which students are most promising.In addition to
scholarship grants that would enable them to attend
the schools of their choice, they would participate in
seminars in which they would be exposed to the
principles I have addressed here as well as to
whatever other aspects of "Islamization" and
"civilization" are deemed important by the sponsoring
organizations.Among
them, these foundations would fund and facilitate the
development of a diverse corps of young Muslim men and
women prepared to return to their home countries and
establish the grassroots civil society of which I have
spoken.And some
them could be American Muslims who would infuse an
injection of Muslim activists into America's existing
and vibrant civil society.
Allahu
a`lam.
References
Adler,
Mortimer J.1980."civil society." Encyclopaedia
Britannica, Micropaedia II:959, Chicago:
Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Cranston,
Maurice 1980.Encyclopaedia
Britannica, Macropaedia 9:196, Chicago:
Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Memon,
Ali Nawaz1995.The Islamic
Nation: Status and Future of Muslims in the New
World Order, Beltsville, MD: Writers, Inc. Intl.
Memon,
Ali Nawaz1996.Pakistan:
Islamic Nation in Crisis, Beltsville, MD: amana.
de
Tocqueville, Alexis2000.Democracy in
America. Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press.
