Muslim political culture

The arrival of the 21st century has seen Muslims the world over grappling to determine their identities amid unique challenges brought by the waves of modernisation and globalisation. The Muslim-majority nation states account for a quarter of the world’s total of 192 nation states, encompassing the Middle East, South Caucasus, Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Muslims also constitute a significant minority in countries such as India, China, US, UK, Germany and France. Totalling a fifth of the world’s population, the Muslim world has absorbed the Islamic faith into its richly diverse customs and traditions. The aim of this article is to examine whether the mixing of religion and politics inherently produces the antithesis of a progressive political order. The method of the assessment is made through analysis of the nature of governance, political culture, and the prospect of democracy in Muslim societies, focusing on three Muslim-majority states: Saudi Arabia, Iran and Indonesia.

Speculation on the prevailing dearth of democratic systems in Muslim societies has made some scholars perceive the Islamic ideology to be inherently undemocratic and anti-modern. Therefore, the issues relating to the governance types, political cultures, and the prospects of democracy in Muslim societies deserve attention. It is necessary, however, to distinguish the term “democracy” from “liberalism”. It can be argued that “democracy” is accommodative of varying connotations. Examples include direct and indirect democracy; majority rule and majority vote.

The selection of the three nation-states has been carefully made so as to canvass the diverse characteristics of Muslim political cultures across the globe. The kingdom of Saudi Arabia presents as an iconic image of the orthodox Islamic heartland, as it is the guardian of the two Muslim holy shrines as well as boasting to be the birthplace of the Prophet of Islam. On the other hand, Indonesia has the world’s largest Muslim population of 183 million, which makes it a significant candidate in determining the future shape of Islam. The Islamic Republic of Iran not only depicts a Shiite perspective concerning the issues under discussion, but also holds symbolic significance for all Muslims.

Factors shaping local Muslim political culture

The factors of geopolitics and strategic interests have generated Muslim political movements, since the final quarter of the 20th century, that have sought to return to indigenous values rather than mimicking a classic Western model - a common impetus prevalent amid other non-Western societies such as China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and India.

The resurgence of religio-nationalist movements in Muslim societies is a common phenomenon shared globally by other non-Muslim societies. Examples include the Hindu nationalism in India, Zionism in Israel, political Buddhism in Sri Lanka, and Evangelical nationalism in the US. “Muslim political culture” implies any mode of political culture that is claimed by Muslims to be in line with the Islamic guidelines. “Islamist movement” refers to an “umbrella designation” for a very broad array of movements: pro-scientific, anti-scientific, pacifist, violent, devotional, political, democratic and authoritarian with diverse philosophies, shaped by a unique interlocking of multifarious factors. Some of the examples are mentioned below.

Authoritarian non-Muslim regimes risk confronting radical Muslim opposition groups when “economic and social fault lines intersect with ethnic and religious ones”, as in the cases of Bosnia, Chechnya, Kashmir, Palestine, Philippines, Thailand, Xinjiang, and elsewhere.

An overwhelming majority of the opposition Muslim political parties seek peaceful and legitimate means to come to power whenever the ruling state makes an effort to liberalise and ensure a civil society. For instance, the Parti Islam se-Malaysia (PAS) operates peacefully in accordance with the state regulations of Malaysia, which boasts industrial growth, political stability and “one of South-East Asia’s most vibrant economies”.

Anti-Western sentiment in the minds of Muslims mounts up relative to the degree that the West in general and the US in particular is perceived to be the principal international supporter of corrupt governments in the Muslim world, such as Shah’s Iran, Saddam’s Iraq in 1980, and now Islam’s Uzbekistan, where democratisation would raise the likelihood of the “client states’ being transformed into … less predictable nations which might make Western access to oil less secure”. The US and its allies are seen as having a double standard with regard to international policymaking. Examples include the US’s discriminatory stance on the following:

1. the violation of U.N. resolutions (Israel, Iraq);
2. the prevention of support for so-called terrorist organisations (IRA, HAMAS); and
3. tolerance of the mixing of religion and politics in nation-states (Eastern Europe, Algeria).

Saudi Arabia

The kingdom of Saudi Arabia exemplifies an ultra-conservative or traditional model of governance, built upon the historical template of patrimonial and nomadic Nejdi tribes. The Saudi regime institutionalised Abd al-Wahhab’s doctrinal philosophy, which favoured an austere interpretation of the sacred texts, with politically quietist and socially conservative implications.

The presence of a sizeable Shia minority within the population and the neighbouring Shiite Iran has also had catalytic effects on promoting the exclusivist philosophy of kingdom-sponsored doctrine.

The ultra-conservative, anti-modern, and anti-pluralist ethos of the Wahhabi doctrine essentially serves the ruling regime in blocking most attempts at modernisation and expansion in the political arena, providing legitimacy and virtually unlimited powers to the Saudi ruling family who holds absolute control of state education and expression of public opinion.

The oil boom had been among the principal factors that helped keep up the royal family’s monopoly of political power. It had brought the prospect of strategic relationship with the US and other allies. The oil wealth had made it possible for the ruling regime to strengthen internal and external security through obtaining sophisticated weapons.

A militant variant of political Islam, similar to al-Qaida, took shape in Saudi Arabia during the 1960s, adhering to a “Qutbist-Wahhabi” philosophy. The radical trend in Muslim political movements is generally attributed to the political theory of a Muslim Egyptian thinker, Sayyid Qutb (d. 1966) who, being disillusioned with the shortcomings of the post-Enlightenment rationalism shortly after the World War II, sought to conceptualise an ideology that envisaged “a global Muslim polity under a single caliph (khalifah) charged with the duty of ensuring the practice and enforcement of the Islamic Law (shari’ah)".

The overthrow of the contemporaneous Muslim ruling regimes was deemed justified by any means including an armed struggle (jihad), as the states deterred from the “true” Islamic imperatives and succumbed to Western models.

Interestingly, analysts including Graham Fuller note some striking parallels between the radical Islamists and the radical Christian Protestant sects at the time of the Reformation.

Qutb’s theory bore some resemblance to Abd al-Wahhab’s thought. A “Qutbist-Wahhabi” integration among Saudi opposition movements emerged when a large number of members from the radical wing of the Muslim Brotherhood movement in Nasser’s Egypt were allowed to enter Saudi Arabia as refugees, owing to diplomatic rivalry between the two nation-states. It was the newly emergent “Qutbist-Wahhabi” alliance between the Saudi opposition force and radical refugees from Egypt that generated a shift from politically quietist to radical ideology along with a conservative socio-cultural approach.

For the Saudi royal family, who co-opts the official religious establishment in order to render legitimacy upon the ruling regime, liberalising the political system would mean to have the kingdom’s Islamic credentials challenged by the opposition Islamist parties. The Saudi Arabian socio-politically conservative model of governance has been a corollary of multifaceted factors, including the historical tribal nature of the state, its vast oil resources and strategic alliance with the US, and patronage of Muslim holy shrines and use of religion so as to bolster legitimacy to the kingdom.

Iran

Unlike Turkey or Saudi Arabia, Iran’s historical power dynamics between the state and religious establishment reveal a weak state and strong Shiite clergy establishment. In contrast to the Sunni religious establishment (‘ulama), clergy in Shia Islam traditionally resisted control by the state. The autonomous clergy, in steady conflict with the Qajar dynasty (1781-1925), remained a powerful presence and were held in high regard by the masses for their revolt against Russian and British expansion, and their protest against the tobacco monopoly granted to British financiers.

Reza Shah’s (d. 1980) regime lacked legitimacy from the very beginning when he sought US and British support to overthrow popular Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh (d. 1967), who came legitimately to power through parliamentary election.

Shah’s White Revolution campaign brought him into fierce conflict with the clergy, who were vehemently opposed to it. The campaign, in effect, worsened the overall socio-economic condition of Iran and widened the rich-poor gap. Shah’s close alliance with, and dependence on, the US for the supervision of the modernisation process made him appear a treacherous leader in the eyes of Iranians that came from almost all segments of society.

All these factors led to the Khomeini-led Iranian revolution. The recent victories of the conservative non-cleric candidate, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in the Iranian presidential election held in June 2005, and the militant political party, Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement), in the Palestinian parliamentary elections underscore two concerns.

First, they pinpoint the socio-economically disenfranchised masses’ desperate demand for economic reform, the quest for which has made them vote for the opposition party in both cases.  Second, these events underscore the popular anti-American sentiment in the minds of Muslims that has intensified not due to their resentment towards the values the West claims to espouse (for example, democratic values), but the West’s duplicitous foreign policy and interference in domestic affairs of Muslim societies.

Most notably, the occupation of Iraq by US and its allies has been interpreted as a ploy to both perpetuate Israeli hegemony as well as gain control of oil resources in the Middle East. The US-favoured Fatah (Palestinian National Liberation Movement) party unsurprisingly failed to win majority seats in the Palestinian parliament. The opposition Islamist political movements have gravitated towards militancy in nation-states that are known to be close allies of the US (for example, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan).

Although in their early experimental and evolutionary stages, the Islamic ideologist movements of the last couple of decades have been gaining exponential popularity, as they are highly critical of repressive ruling regimes and state-sponsored religious establishments (‘ulama). The authentic populist movements throughout the Muslim world today promote Islam as an ideology, which has proved to be a powerful vehicle of expression that co-opts traditional vocabularies to protest against social injustice and state oppression. These movements often face intense marginalisation from both the ruling regimes, which fear loss of power at the prospect of liberalisation, and the Western powers, owing to clashes of socio-economic, and strategic interests.

It is noteworthy that a fringe of ‘ulama themselves speak out against the state monopoly over policy, and co-option of the establishment ‘ulama, and they have abandoned the umbrella of the state to increasingly become involved in Islamo-nationalist struggles (for example, Nahdatul Ulama in Indonesia).

Indonesia

The nation-state of Indonesia clearly exhibits a prognosis of a democratic model of governance since the fall of Soeharto regime. Indonesia bears an historical template of pluralist communal structures that remained autonomous from a weak and decentralised state. The historical states in South-East Asia were firmly legitimised in cosmopolitan cultural terms.

A parallel could be drawn here with the Mogul empire, which ruled over a large non-Muslim segment in the Indian subcontinent, and sought legitimacy by promoting a syncretistic cultural Islam. Indonesia’s historic cosmopolitan cultural identity yielded a secular society in the 20th century. Muslims from diverse socio-economic backgrounds in post-independence Indonesia, including conservative rural ‘ulama, independent landowners, and liberal merchants, held varying interpretations of the sacred texts so as to promote diverse ideologies concerning the nation’s ideal polity.

Influenced by a number of Islamist thinkers, Indonesian Muslim youth during the 1980s favoured a secular democratic model of governance over an Islamic democratic model, which were promoted by the preceding generation. Owing to its historical power dynamics between the state, religious, and parochial communities, the presence of significant non-Muslim minority and their cosmopolitan worldview, and philosophies of influential Muslim thinkers including Mohammad Sjafaat Mintaredja (b. 1921), Nurcholish Madjid (d. 2005), Amien Rais (b. 1944), and Tunisian Muslim thinker Rachid al-Ghannouchi (b. 1941), Indonesia has yielded a prognosis of secular democratic model of governance.

Conclusion

The mixing of religion and politics does not inherently produce the antithesis of a progressive political order. Islam is but one of complex and multifaceted elements that build a national polity. Religious traditions are capable of having multiple and major ideological interpretations, which is evident by the wide diversity of philosophies of Islamist movements worldwide. The governments in Muslim societies use the strategies of co-optation, competition, or suppression to deal with the Islamist elements.