The Structural Formulation of the Asha’rite Dogma

The entry to the formulation of the Ash’arite system relies principally in understanding the Ash’arite perception of the concept of the relationship between the three circles of existence, namely God, man and the world.  The differences between all intellectual and civilizational systems are in fact, due to their perception of this relationship.  In terms of the Ash’arite formulation of this relationship, it is characterized by its abstract and formal form.  In this formulation, a concretization of one circle is deemed possible without any consideration to the other two circles, simply because it is impossible to formulate a creative relationship between the three circles –themselves formal- in the light of what is abstract and formal.  On that basis, the Ash’arites negate the idea of the relationship between the three circle due to the difference and contrast between them that goes beyond any formal and abstract intellectual construct.  To say the least, the Ash’arites came to the conclusion –by virtue of this formality and abstraction- that the only possible relationship between them is a “dictating and subjugating relationship” and not “interactive and assimilative one”.

In any case, the true relationship (true in the sense that it is necessary and not superficial) between any elements that can influence one another, has no place whatsoever in the Ash’arite system of thought.  In truth, it is not easy to explain the Ash’arites’ system of thought in the absence of a clear understanding of their negation of this relationship –as a necessary connection- between God, man and the world. 
 

Concomitant to their negation of this relationship is their intention to widely open the domain of the “dominance of the absolutes”. The aim of their system of thought and the cause of its formulation were principally to exhibit the dominance of the divine absolute at the expense of both man and the world.  That is why their system was crystallized as a complete reiteration of the concept of God, to the extent that the world seems to be void of anything but God.  This resulted in the dislodging of the objectivity and necessity of the world and the activity of man.  Hence, for the Ash’arite, the world and man are empty and fragile existence without value.  Accordingly, the true existence of God necessitates the marginality of any other existence. 
 

It might have been understood from that brief description that the sacrifice of the objectivity of the world and the activity of man for the sake of the dominance of the divine absolute, is the most passive results that the Ash’arite system of thought has ever produced.  Fortunately, this result is in a collision with one of God’s purposes of creation.  God has never created the world and man to institutionalize His dominance, but to constitute the knowledge of Himself, as He Himself states. The knowledge of Himself –and not the dominance over the other- is the real content of the relationship between God, man and the world.  And that is what the Ash’arites could not realize due to their prevailing perception of the absolute dominance of God over man and the natural world.
 

This absolutist structure, whose aim is to emphasize the dominance of the (divine or political) absolute, becomes even more apparent when the elements of the Ash’arite system of thought are structurally analyzed.  The structure of this system –it is important to note- is not discoverable only through the “realization of its external and sensitive relationships”;  a relationship that merely verifies the affinity between the elements of the system, but through the disclosure of the internal rational system that regulates all its elements.  Interestingly however, although the disclosure of this internal system -the structure that is- cannot be verified except through the elements of the system, these elements in their turn cannot be explained except through their affiliation to this structure.   Putting this in mind, the absolutist structure of the Ash’arite system is not merely a product of a simple realization of the superficial relationship that joins the elements of the system, because it is the internal rational system that regulates this relationship and acquires for it its rationality and interpretation.  In other words, a simple observation of the external affinities between various issues that the Ash’arites have dealt with, notably the issues of God, man and nature, will not lead to the disclosure of the structure of Ash’arite system.  What will lead to this is an internal rational system that these issues essentially revolve around.  It is here –and only here- that the structure of the Ash’arite system can be disclosed.

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The Ash’arite Dogma: The Root of the Arab/Muslim Absolutism

Absolutism is the real substance of the Arab (or perhaps Muslim) politics in the modern era.  It is the very root that feeds all despotic and authoritarian practices, which prevail in the political domains of the Arabs and Muslims.  The serious dilemma is that, the Arabs/Muslims are now under the tremendous pressure from the outside world –notably from the superpower- to rehabilitate their political order through the implementation of democracy and respect for human rights.  The driving reason behind this demand is the urgent need to drain the sources of what some have –mistakenly or rightly- called Islamic terrorism.  Apart from the true intention of this demand, reformation and change in the Arab/Muslim world become nonetheless the interests of the outside power.    

At this juncture, the Arab/Muslim world is trapped between two things; between the pressure for change and reform, and between the incapability to overcome its inherent predicament that hinders its aspiration for political shift.  Thus, it is awkwardly suffering from falling between the horns of the two dilemmas.

Attempts have been made to get away from the Arab/Muslim decadence, but these have come to a meaningless outcome.  This failure might be caused by the fact that these attempts followed the strategy of replacing an old practice with a modern one, without considering the discourse that stands behind this practice and dictates it.  The suggested Western recipe of reformation for the Middle East adopts this strategy.  It looks at the impasse of the Arab reality merely in its outward political representation, and ignores its deep cultural root, which found its most flashy projection in absolutism.  Absolutism of this kind however, cannot be uplifted by means of the Western recipes only.  Delving into a classical Muslim legacy is necessary; a legacy that still strongly dominates people’s consciousness –ruling and ruled- with its evasive systems and hidden roots that perpetuate absolutism.  Applying a Western democratic recipe without looking at this classical legacy is destined to another failure because this will merely replace an old practice with a new one, holding the absolutist discourse constantly alive.  This new practice will surely be absorbed –as past events witnessed- within the structure of the dominant discourse to the extent that it will become a decorative mask through which this discourse extends its life.
 

The intention of this essay is to initiate a serious step towards a critical investigation of the discourse of absolutism.  The essay suggests that this discourse finds its most profound roots in the dogmatic system of the Ash’arites.  Taking for granted that this system is not only theological, the thesis argues that it was vulnerably usable for ideological and political purposes.  The analysis particularly focuses on tracing the deep structure of the Ash’arite system that regulates some specific issues in a hope to touch some of its ideological functions.

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Shari‘a and Politics (Islamic Law?)

Islam, as religion, consists of belief and belonging, and the two in practice interact. In this interaction the social and political life of Muslims is defined differentially among Muslims themselves. The interpretation of the concept of shari‘a is crucial. It means “the path or road leading to water, i.e. a way to the very source of life.” (Rahman, 1979, 100). The very source of life in this context is God Himself. Rahman (1979, 100-01) speaks more technically about shari‘a as “religious values, expressed functionally and in concrete terms, to direct man’s life.... The Way, ordained by God, wherein man is to conduct his life in order to realize the Divine Will. ... It includes all behavior – spiritual, mental, and physical. Thus it comprehends both faith and practice.”

This definition of shari‘a fits the approach to religion as the interaction between belief and belonging. There is, however, severe disagreement among Muslim scholars about the meaning and scope of shari‘a. Muslims commonly believe that the first source of the shari‘a is the Qur’an. A question immediately arises as to the extent to which the Qur’an covers all legal issues related to Muslim behavior in a changing society. Rahman (1979, 68) argues that “the strictly legislative portion of the Qur'an is relatively quite small,” and therefore not sufficient to direct Muslim behavior. Muhammad Sa‘id al-`Ashmawi, a Chief Judge of Egypt, more specifically states about shari‘a as follows:

“The term Shari‘a appears as such only once in the Qur’an ... (Sura 45, Verse 18), but one finds there three other terms from the same root (Sura 42, Verse 13; Sura 5, Verse 48; Sura 42, Verse 41). In all these places Shari‘a signifies not judicial norms but the route or the way.” (Al-`Ashmawi, 1998, 50).

This limitation of the Qur’an is resolved through the inclusion of the Sunna as preserved in the Hadith, which is the record of the Prophet’s life in his community. The Hadith is believed to be the second source of the shari‘a. It encompasses a broader range of social and political interaction in the Muslim community. The absolute importance of Sunna as the second source of the shari‘a, according to Rahman (1979, 69), has been legitimated since the Prophet passed away by a doctrine of infallibility or sinlessness of the Prophet.

After the Prophet passed away, and the Muslim community had grown much larger, beyond Arabia, the Sunna itself was felt insufficient to direct Muslim behavior. A controversy emerged, in which one group of scholars, called the ahl al-hadith, claimed that the true Islam or shar‘a manifested in a community should imitate “the Sunna community,” i.e. the community of Muslims under the authority of the Prophet in Medina. Any influence from the non-Sunna community is claimed to deviate from the model and is supposedly intolerable.

Another group of the ‘ulama’ argued that it is true that the Sunna was never wrong in its historical context, but when this context changed, as normally happens in any community, the Sunna in fact became insufficient to direct Muslim behavior. This change strengthened the personal role of the ‘ulama' on the basis of his understanding of the Qur'an and Hadith. This personal opinion (fiqh), is opened to falsification. The ahl al-hadith cannot accept this argument, and always imagines the Sunna community as the true model for the Muslim community regardless of historical change.

The two different beliefs about the nature of shari‘a shaped the way contemporary ‘ulama’ or activists imagine the Muslim community, including their perceptions about the relationship between religion and politics. To simplify, I will sketch the debates about the relationship between Islam and politics among some leading contemporary Muslim intellectuals or ‘ulama’, and place the Muslim masses’ attitude and behavior in the context of this debate. Their antagonistic views about shari‘a, and its relations with politics, may shape the attitude and behavior of the Muslim masses.

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Ghazali in Political Prescription and Epistemological Polemic

Like most medieval Islamic political theorists, al-Ghazālī identified the leading purpose of government as the maintenance of  peace and security. In a secure environment, Muslims would be free of the worrisome exigencies of survival and able to practice salvific Islam. Without security the sharī'a would crumble, tempting people to sidestep right practice in order to protect their interests in a violent, uncontrolled situation, jeopardizing their salvation in the process.

In al-Ghazālī’s conception of political order as expressed in the Kitāb al Mustazhirī and echoed elsewhere, the caliphate was the cornerstone of law and of government. In this chapter I will show that al-Ghazālī envisioned the caliph as a crucial mediating link between (1) the Islamic community guided by the ulamā, (2) Seljuq coercive force, and (3) God’s authority.

Both ʿulamāʾ and rulers acknowledged the authority of the caliph; this mutual acknowledgement tied the Seljuq rulers to the Islamic community via the sharī'a, valued by both parties. The legitimacy of Islamic government depended on the maintenance of the caliphate, even if the caliph commanded only nominal obedience from the secular rulers and the 'ulamā'. 

The primary threat to the fragile political order in al-Ghazālī’s day was the infiltration of Isma'ili missionaries. Al-Ghazālī inveighed at length against the Ismaʿilis before outlining his thoughts on the caliphate and offering advice to his young patron, the caliph al-Mustaẓhir. I will conclude this chapter by outlining al-Ghazālī’s objections to Isma'īlism, especially regarding the faulty roots of Ismaʿīlī religious knowledge and the implications of knowledge for the constitution of an Islamic polity.111 Al-Ghazālī’s polemic brings his own views on knowledge and politics into sharp relief.

The Kitāb alMustaẓhirī was among the last works that al-Ghazālī wrote before his 488/1095 crisis and flight from Baghdad. The circumstances surrounding its composition were marked by political tumult of a kind unseen in Baghdad since the Seljuq invasion. On 14 October 1092, an Ismaʿīlī “Assassin” “in the guise of a suppliant or a petitioner” fatally stabbed Nizām al-Mulk. Sultan Malikshāh probably abetted the murder, for he had been on bad terms with his vizier in preceding weeks. A month later, Malikshāh succumbed to an illness contracted while hunting. A period of civil unrest and upheaval followed his demise. Bedouins, “emboldened by the death of the sultan and the absence of the army, waylaid and fell upon” pilgrims making the Hajj. Rival Seljuq princes Barkyārūq and Tutūsh struggled for supremacy, neglecting the maintenance of peace and order in the interest of gaining personal ascendancy. Barkyārūq triumphed by 487/1094. The caliph al-Muqtadī signed the new sultan’s diploma. 

Moments later, he began hallucinating and promptly died. In the space of a year and a half, the leading lights of al-Ghazālī’s society had been snuffed In this bleak hour, al-Ghazālī attended a small, private session of condolence held for the new caliph al-Mustaẓhir, the son of al-Muqtadi. The Baghdad notables present swore their allegiance to the new caliph, a callow youth of sixteen. Among his first acts in office was to commission from al-Ghazālī, then the preeminent religious scholar in Baghdad, a work refuting the doctrine of the Isma'īlīs, whose politically and doctrinally subversive activities
had flourished amid the recent upheaval.

The K. alMustaẓhirī was not intended for the caliph’s personal consumption but instead as an apologetic tool, a rallying point for Sunni ulamā combating the Ismaʿīlī challenge while reckoning simultaneously with the alien Seljuq Turks. The book attempted to navigate the fragile vessel of the caliphate between these twin challenges to its future. Its intended audience certainly included the caliph and the ulamā, who alone were sufficiently educated to trace the efflorescent style of al-Ghazālī’s arguments. But al-Ghazālī also claimed to address a broader audience, “to follow the via media” between abstruseness and oversimplification, “for the need of this book is general, with respect to both the elite and the common folk, and embraces all the strata of the adherents of Islam.” 

He sought to write a book that would be “pleasing to men’s ears,” even those of modest intelligence who had not “delved deeply into the sciences.” Thus al-Ghazālī intended portions of his work, read aloud, to reach a broad segment of the population as inoculation against the Ismaʿīlī appeal, though the full text and the sequential thread of his argument might be accessible only to the educated, especially the 'ulamā.

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Islam in Civic Culture Perspective (Part 2)

The claim that Islam is responsible for the lack of democracy or for unstable democracy in predominantly Muslim states must be evaluated as a problem of political culture in which political behavior, institutions, and performance are shaped by culture. The political culture approach is necessary to assess the core arguments and the logic underlying the analysis of Huntington and other critics of Islamic democracy.

At the same time, Huntington and the others are not systematic in the way in which they construct their argument, nor do they provide satsifactory evidence to support their claim. This study is designed to approach the issue more systematically by deploying the civic culture perspective laid out initially by Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba (1963). In its focus on attitudes, beliefs, and orientations, this perspective is the closest to Huntington, while being scientifically more persuasive.

Almond and Verba’s Civic Culture is the first work which addresses systematically the problem of democracy from the political culture perspective. They define political culture as psychological orientation toward social objects, or as attitudes toward the political system and toward the self as a political actor (Almond and Verba 1963). This orientation includes individual knowledge or belief, feelings or affection, and evaluation or judgment of the political system in general, political inputs and outputs, and one’s own role within the political system. Variation in these orientations and attitudes are believed to shape political participation and to effect democratic stability.

Almond and Verba believe that variation in political orientations produces three types of political culture: parochial, subject, and participant. In parochial political culture structural differentiation, for example between the religious and the political, is absent. People are unable to orient themselves towards structurally differentiated political systems. Individuals who adhere to this political culture tend to be apathetic or alienated from the political system.

Unlike parochial culture, subject political culture tends to make people active towards structurally differentiated political systems in general and towards the output side of the system, but passive towards the political input side. As with the parochial, the subject is characterized by an absence of orientation towards the self as a participant in the input side of the political process.

Finally, the participant is characterized by the presence of orientations not only toward the structurally differentiated political system in general and the output side of the system but also toward the input side and the self as an active participant. The participant, however, does not eliminate either the parochial or the subject. The participant orientation is an addition. Therefore, participants do not necessarily leave their primordial orientation. For example, a devoutly religious individual can be an active participant, supporting specific government policies and articulating his or her views as to what the government should do.

This mixed political culture is believed to have a positive impact on democratic stability. Almond and Verba’s civic culture is in fact not merely participant political culture, but participant political culture plus something else, i.e. activism plus passivism,when viewed as a whole. The result is moderate, rather than radical, political behavior. The orientation is not toward revolutionary but rather toward gradual change in the society and polity.

The civic culture syndrome has been strongly criticized (Barry 1970, Pateman 1971, Muller and Seligson 1994, Tarrow 1996) but remains resilient, at least in the scholarship of democracy in the developed nations.1 The increase in the number of democracies in the world has raised the question of the extent to which the new democracies can become stable or consolidated. In attempting to answer this question, a significant number of studies have turned back substantively to the civic culture syndrome. Inglehart even proclaimed "the renaissance of political culture" in which political culture is believed to be a crucial factor to explain democratic stability (1988). Or, as a counter to Skocpol’s idea of "bringing the state back in," he suggested the idea of "bringing the people back in" to explain political phenomena, especially democratic stability (1997). Regardless of their conclusions, Norris' Critical Citizens (1999) or her Democratic Phoenix (2002), for example, are studies about global support for democracy and political participation among people which are theoretically guided by the civic culture syndrome. Putnam's Making Democracy Work (1993) is probably the most cited recent work which revives the idea of civic culture to explain democratic performance. It has brought back not only Almond and Verba's Civic Culture but also Tocqueville'sDemocracy in America which emphasized the importance of political culture, and specifically civic association, for American democracy. All of these works argue that political culture cannot be ignored in democratic studies.

Accordingly, I will discuss the issue of the relationship between Islam and democracy in this introduction according to the logic of the civic culture research tradition. Democratic culture and behavior are understood as composed of several components: secular civic engagement, interpersonal trust, tolerance, political engagement, support for democratic system, and political participation. The claim that Islam is inimical to democracy can therefore be evaluated by exploring the extent to which Islam has a negative relationship with support for secular civic engagement, interpersonal trust, tolerance, political engagement, and political participation in addition to support for the democratic system. Before discussing these issues, I will offer a brief overview of how religion and democratic culture have generally been addressed in social science.

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Islam in Civic Culture Perspective (Part 1)

A global tendency in the post-cold war period is the increase in the number of democratic or democratizing regimes. However, this tendency does not occur in most predominantly Muslim states (Freedom House 2002, Lipset 1994, Huntington 1997, 1991). On the basis of Freedom House’s Index of Political Rights and Civil Liberty in the last three decades, Muslim states have generally failed to establish democratic politics. In that period, only one Muslim country has established a full democracy for more than five years, i.e. Mali in Africa. There are twelve semi-democratic countries, defined as partly free. The rest (35 states) are authoritarian (fully not free). Moreover, eight of the fifteen most repressive regimes in the world in the last decade are found in Muslim states.

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Contextualizing Muslims’ Political Language (Part 2)

The term daulat was introduced into Malay political tradition to give new meaning to the concept of andeka of the earlier Buddhist kings—”aword that meant the ghostly forces that lived around sovereign and smote with evil any reckless person who blasphemed their majesty” (Wilkinson 1932b: 80). Thus, daulat enunciates the religious aspect of politics which function to magnify the position of the rulers, that they have religious sanction to exercise their power. Daulat therefore cannot be sufficiently interpreted by such words as “sovereign” or “power”. It is the divine quality which is inherent in the rulers of the Malay world (Errington 1975: 118). As to a divine quality, the concept of daulat regards the rulers as having a sort of “divinely-endowed power or gift” which enabled them to exercise political power over the subjects (Khalid-Thaib 1981: 309).

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Contextualizing Muslims’ Political Language (Part 1)

Here, let me begin with the Sejarah Melayu. Although classified as belonging to a historical literature genre (Winstedt 1969: 158-62), this text is of great significance to the Islamic discourses of the precolonial archipelago. Considering both the period of its composition—at the time when Islam was already established as a social and political phenomenon (Braginsky 1993: 7-10) —and the nature of its contents which reveal a strong familiarity with Islamic terms, the Sejarah Melayu presents a clear account of the translation of Islam into the Malay society and culture. This text was deeply-seated in and significantly meaningful for the increasingly Islamized Malay circumstance (Errington 1975: 53; Day 1983: 141). Here, the Sejarah Melayu is therefore taken as the first Malay classical text to discuss.

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The Formation of Kingdoms (Part 2)

In the Eastern part of Java, Giri-Gresik emerged as a leading Islamic state as well as an important port in the international trade network. Tome Pires described Giri-Gresik as “the jewel of Java in trading ports” (1944: II, 193), indicating its crucial importance as a trade centre and at the same time a major centre of Islam. Giri had been the site of Sunan Giri, a leading ‘ālim and one of the nine walis of Java, who then became the ruler of Gresik. Thus, Giri-Gresik developed as a kingdom with the ‘ulama as the rulers (priester-vorstendom). This kingdom reached its high point under the reign of Sunan Prapen (+1548-1605) (de Graaf and Pigeaud 1974: 187-8). During this period, Giri-Gresik became the centre of Islamization in the eastern part of the archipelago. Lombok in Nusa Tenggara, Makassar in South Sulawesi, and Hitu in Maluku were some of areas under the Islamic influence of Giri-Gresik (de Graaf and Pigeaud 1974: 190-2).

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The Formation of Kingdoms (Part 1)

The historical sources available on the early history of Islam in the archipelago have led historians to conclude that Samudra Pasai was the first Islamic state to emerge in the areas in the late thirteenth century.1 This conclusion is based on evidence supplied by the gravestone of Malik al-Saleh, the first Muslim ruler of Samudra Pasai, which is dated 1297.2 This opinion corresponds to the story provided in the Hikayat Raja-Raja Pasai, in which Malik al-Saleh is described as the first ruler of the state to convert to Islam. 

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Islamizing the ‘Lands below the Winds’: The ‘Ulama and Kerajaan Politics

… the Cady, or Great Bishop, by his Authority and Remonstrance, persuaded them [the orang kayas, i.e. the economic elites] to listen to an expedient that would remove all their jealousies; namely, to put the Crown upon the Head of a certain Orangkaya, who in all these divisions had not stirred or affected anything for himself or his Family, but had lived in the Reputation of a Wise, experienced Man, being seventy years of Age, and descended of one of the noblest Families in Acheen (Beaulieu 1744: I, 747).

In pre-colonial times of the Indonesian archipelago—which was traditionally referred to as “the lands below the wind”—a close relationship between the ‘ulama and the rajas (rulers) was common, and even emerged as a salient characteristic of the period.

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