The Middle East

The Politics of the Sacred and Secular

By Shahrough Akhavi

Zed Books Ltd

Copyright © 2009 Shahrough Akhavi
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84277-897-5

Contents

Acknowledgments, vii,
ONE Introduction, 1,
TWO The sacred and the secular, 51,
THREE History and social change, 74,
FOUR The individual, 119,
FIVE Society, 149,
SIX The state, 195,
SEVEN Conclusions, 234,
Notes, 250,
Bibliography, 274,
Index, 283,

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

This book, as part of the World Political Theories series, examines the intellectual debates in contemporary Middle Eastern political theories on such issues as the nature of society, the role of the individual, and the conceptualization of the state. At the same time, it is also my purpose to critique aspects of these theories, in the hope of contributing to the dialogue that their authors deserve in writing them in the first place. This book is not meant to be a sustained engagement with the secondary literature on Middle Eastern political theories.

There is a rich store of such literature, beginning in a sustained manner since the early 1960s. Perhaps among the first publications were Albert Hourani's magisterial Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age (1962), Serif Mardin's seminal The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought (1962), and Malcolm Kerr's innovative Islamic Reform (1966). Some works have been in the nature of edited volumes, such as Kamal Karpat's Political and Social Thought in the Contemporary Middle East (1968, 1982) or Sylvia Haim's more narrowly based collection, Arab Nationalism: A Compendium (1962, 1976). Other works have focused on single societies, such as Anouar Abdel-Malek's Egypt: Military Society (1968). Yet other efforts have been in the tradition of single-authored works influenced by the literature on modernization and development, either in the form of various essays written at different times, such as Leonard Binder's The Ideological Revolution in the Middle East (1964), or a sustained argument presented in the form of a monograph, such as the same author's Islamic Liberalism: A Critique of Development Ideologies (1988). Somewhat different from the latter was Hamid Enayat's Modern Islamic Political Thought (1982), and Issa J. Boullata's Trends and Issues in Contemporary Arab Thought (1990), both written more from the perspective of the history of ideas. Many works have more recently been published with a focus on Arab nationalism, political Islam (Islamism), and democratization and civil society, such as, respectively, Adeed Dawisha's Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century (2005), Basam Tibi's The Challenge of Fundamentalism: Political Islam and the New Disorder (2002), and Michaelle Browers, Democracy and Civil Society in Arab Political Thought: Transcultural Possibilities (2006) As a result of all these efforts, the overlap of Middle Eastern studies and social and political theory has become a fascinating and exciting area of research. I hope that the present work will make a small contribution to this steadily growing library of research.

The region is, of course, much too large and the period of time too extensive to do more than provide representative coverage. Entire monographs may be devoted to many of these topics or many of the thinkers that I have chosen to focus upon. I have also had to be selective. Thus, I do not discuss the role of women in contemporary political theory; nor do I assess writings on international relations. It is not that these matters are not important. Clearly, they are. But giving them proper consideration would have made an already lengthy manuscript even longer, and one has finally to make choices of inclusion and exclusion. This does not mean that these choices may not themselves be criticized, but that is another matter.

Reverting to my initial comment that this volume is part of a series entitled World Political Theories, two factors need to be discussed. First, one must conceptualize political theory itself. Second, one needs to identify and define a newly emerging field that scholars call comparative political theory, since this is the field that best can make sense of the subject matter suggested by the general rubric of the series.

What is political theory?

Theory is "a form of systematic knowledge systematically pursued." Political theory, then, is systematic knowledge about politics systematically pursued. Western political theory started with the ancient Greeks. But it has also had a long tradition in non-Western societies. The kinds of questions systematically posed and systematically addressed in the various cultures that have possessed a tradition of political theory have varied with their mutually diverse material and cultural experiences. But just as Socrates (470–399 BC), Plato (428–348 BC), and Aristotle (384–322 BC) are often invoked as pioneers of Western political theory, other civilizations also have had their founding fathers in this realm. Thus political theory in Egypt reverts to the Maxims of Ptahhotep (lived c. 2400 BC), in Mesopotamia to the Code of Hammurabi (d. c. 1750 BC), in China to the Analects of Confucius (d. 479 BC) and the Mencius of Mencius (d. 289 BC), in India to the Arthashastra of Kautilya (lived c. 300 BC), and in Islam to al-Ahkam al-Sultaniyya of al-Mawardi (d. 1058 AD) and the Siyasatnama of Nizam al-Mulk (d. 1092 AD).

Politics pertain to the dynamics of cooperation and contention among people seeking to promote their interests in public arenas. Thus, political theory is the study of what human beings think are the key issues of politics and of how people have tried to solve the questions germane to those issues. Political theory is not to be equated with ideology, nationalism, or policy. Instead, it consists of conceptualizations of such values as justice, authority, responsibility, obedience, and freedom and how these values are related to such purposes as well-being, the common good, happiness, and a virtuous life. Ideology, nationalism, and policy all bear on these values and purposes. They provide the context for a society's orientation to public life. Political theory, by contrast, is the study of how these three factors impact the expectations and the conduct of the people who advance such ideologies, nationalist sentiments, and policy preferences.

In his 1969 article, "Political Theory as a Vocation," Sheldon Wolin writes that political theory deals with "'wholes' made up of interrelated and interpenetrating provinces of human activity," and the task of the political theorist is "to locate 'divisions' in the human world and embody them in theoretical form. For example, what aspects of that division which [sic] we call 'religion' have a significant bearing on the activity called 'economic?'" In dealing with these "wholes," political theorists seek to provide explanations, evaluations, and, at times, prescriptions.

Comparative political theory

Middle Eastern political theories have long been influenced by theories about politics that they have encountered from outside the region. In the "era of recording" ('asr al-tadwin), as the period of scholarly activity in early Islam has been called, bodies of knowledge from Greek, Persian, and Hindu civilizations were transmitted to, translated and debated by Muslim scholars, who integrated important concepts from those discourses...