| Photo by Jane Scherr |
Khaled Ahmed Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
| Photo by Jane Scherr |
Page 3 of 7
Let's go back now to Islam. There is much concern and discussion about what Huntington has called the "clash of civilizations" between the West and, in the case of your part of the world, Islam. What are your thoughts on that? It sounds to me, listening to your background, that that clash is not necessarily inevitable, if one just looks at the beliefs and the pluralism of beliefs that are possible in both cultures.
What has happened inside Islam is quite remarkable. I think from a period of a freewheeling thought, we have gone back to some kind of medieval orthodoxy. Muslim societies all over the world are seen going back to what we think are the origins. At the same time, the clergy has become very vocal and very angry. There is that sense of utopia, because orthodoxy is literalist; they want to go back to a period of what they call Sharia, the way the prophet lived, the way the prophet ruled. There is also a resistance to separate religion and the state. Therefore, there is an Islamic utopia that the Muslims wish to achieve, and it is quite normal that such a utopia is not achievable. When they find resistance to that, in the twentieth century, they found that either the utopia was not achievable, as in Iran, where the clergy actually came to power, or that there was a resistance to the initiation of a utopian movement, and there was a lot of violence and war in that. I think it's an internal conflict, it's not Huntingtonian in that sense. But when the Muslims argue among themselves, they usually think that it's Western ideas and Western dominance which is standing in their way, and that society has been influenced excessively by Western ideas. Rationalism is included in that, although I think rationalism came to Islam pretty early and was rejected pretty early, and it was under the influence of Greek philosophy that it came.
When you say rationalism, do you mean that that was another strand in opposition to the one you just described?
That's right. It is a moderate middle ground, where people say, "Fine, we can be literalist, we can follow the Sharia literally, but we have also to be reasonable about how we enforce it." In a very recent interview in Saudi Arabia, a sociologist lady said, "But where is Middle Islam?", meaning, where is the moderate tradition? There is a crisis of the moderates either being marginalized or being threatened that looms over the Muslim world. The activism that one sees, the radicalism that has come to the fore, is a rejection of rationalism.
What accounts for this turn of events or the dominance of the more conservative elements? You suggested a fear of violence. But what other social conditions or international politics have affected this dynamic?
The most significant change which has come is the independence of Muslim societies and the formation of new Muslim states. Before that, they were living under imperialism. Under imperialism, the Sharia was impossible to enforce. Once the new states were created, there was this tendency to make them Islamic, which was only natural. If it's a Muslim country, it has to be Islamic. Then, the new state realized that as far as law-making is concerned, popular religion doesn't help very much. Popular religion is Low Church, where people live according to local traditions and call them Islamic. There is a lot of pluralism there, there is poetry, there are saints, there are shrines that they go to, but the state cannot recognize the shrine and mystical poetry as law-making functions. So they go back to the books, and they find that the only books are from medieval times. After the medieval times, Islam went through what is called a period of imitation, which means that we will not reinterpret the scripture anymore. In a very strange way, it was the Islamic jurists of the medieval times who sometimes superseded the edicts of the Koran. And that is what the states tried to bring back.
When this trend in the Islamic states started, then they had to abandon Low Church and adopt what I call the High Church, where all these laws were ready as case laws adjucated by the [medieval] jurists.
How does the intervention of external powers affect this dynamic? Because when one looks at the landscape, one can't avoid saying that the West is somehow implicated in the kinds of regimes that have emerged in the Islamic world.
Some of the charges seem correct, but they're also quite superfluous. In the Afghanistan war against the Soviet Union, the Islamic warriors were helped by the West, and they gathered strength. But after that, the process of Islamization was not actually dictated by the West. That happened naturally, because the Islamic state went back to the old jurisprudence, where some of the modern values are violated.
For instance, in Islamic jurisprudence, the status of the non-Muslim in an Islamic state is not determined. In fact, our jurists say that they cannot be full citizens, and they should be on sufferance, and they should pay a special tax. Now, in today's age, after you've signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it is not possible to say that the non-Muslims are not citizens. The other problem that arises from medieval jurisprudence is that women cannot be full citizens, that their testimony in the court of law is half that of men, and that they do not inherit equally with men.
So you're suggesting that the Islamic world, because of this dynamic, is held back from entering the modern world as we know it.
Tragically, because the middle Islam or the intellectual Islam has been marginalized, the process of reform, which is so necessary for the Islamic state, has practically ceased. I think it's very important for the Islamic states to rationalize the laws that they want to bring in. What is happening now is since they're not able to enforce the Sharia as it is, they are also resisting the coming to power of the clergy, because they think that if the clergy comes to power, they will enforce very harsh aspects of medieval jurisprudence. And that leads to conflict. Most of the governments who are now holding this process back are seen by the clergy to be supported by the West, which is only incidental because most of these states are traders -- they either trade in oil, or they trade in other goods that the West needs. Oil creates the nexus because only the developed world consumes that quantum of oil.
I don't think the conflict is Huntingtonian in that sense, but it does spill over. I think the September 11th incident that took place actually substantiates an aspect of what he warned against.
In what sense?
That the Muslim upheaval is not internal, that it can be externalized, and that the West can become a target. I think that the conflict is internal. The conflict in the Islamic world is internal between a radical idea of Islam and what we have known as moderate Islam.
How does this conflict affect the possibilities of the Islamic world, in terms of economic development?
If you follow the medieval jurisprudence, then, of course, it is almost impossible to progress economically because our jurisprudence doesn't allow any kind of banking system. Pakistan, for instance, now is under obligation by the Supreme Court of Pakistan to abolish interest. And that is based on four verses of the Koran, which are aimed against the money-lender. What our judges are not able to do is to rationalize the interpretation of these four verses by the medieval jurists, because in the medieval times there were no banks, but only money-lenders. Of course, the money-lenders have to be banned, but in our society, people who lend money to the bank are very poor people who keep savings accounts. The biggest crises is going to be that people will not be able to save, because if they have savings accounts, those will be outlawed.
Economics is going to be very difficult in the Islamic world if the radicals actually take over. Because their rationale is that if you abolish the banking system, there will be blessing, and if there is blessing, prosperity will follow.
I'm curious as to how the individual is perceived in Islamic culture. There is respect for the individual and one's ability to make moral choice, in ways that are consistent with Western ways of thinking. Is that correct?
Any utopian system will neglect the individual. The platonic utopia also neglected the individual; the Marxist utopia downgraded the individual. And that goes also for the Islamic utopia, unless you reform some of the aspects of puritanism as it exists. Otherwise, it is going to be very difficult for a pure Islamic state to observe human rights as understood in the West and as understood by the signatories of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Next page: Pakistan as an Islamic State
© Copyright 2002, Regents of the University of California