Islam’s founding Texts reveal the requirement to establish a divine order but no man is vested with the authority to do so: indeed, government belongs to God alone
Last update: 2022-04-22 09:19:46
Islam’s founding Texts reveal the requirement to establish a divine order but no man is vested with the authority to do so: indeed, government belongs to God alone. In this sense, the very concept of an Islamic state, that would seek to eradicate idolatry and enforce the divine law, is blasphemous because it implies the existence of men who substitute themselves for God in His judgment. Theorized by Pakistani and Egyptian thinkers, this ideology has inspired numerous extremist movements.
When Arabic terms (appearing either in the Qur’an or in the writings of Muslim authors) denote the power of men, they generally have a negative meaning. This is so for the concepts of kingship and government/judgment, which are expressed by the terms mulk and hukm[1] in Arabic. It could not be otherwise, since the Qur’an is continually recalling that power belongs to God.
The Prophet and the King
Muhammad was not a mere prophet but a rasūl, a Messenger from God with a message to pass on. To be sure, the divine discourse does not in any way confer on him a mandate comparable to that of Israel’s king-prophets but this did not prevent him from being a political leader or founding a community. This latter role is indisputably linked to his prophet function, despite the numerous verses dating to the early period that tend to present him as a simple warner who lacked any coercive power.[2]
Prophecy, like the kingship with which it is associated, is a gift of God accorded the people of Israel, as is demonstrated both by the verses about Moses and those about David and Solomon, who had this double privilege. The New Testament does not introduce any novelty on this point. “You would have no power over me if it had not been given you from above,” (Gv. 19:11) Jesus answered Pilate, when he threatened to crucify Him, and Paul was to say, “All [governing authority] comes from God” (Rm 13:1). Paul also speaks of kenosis: the exercise of authority is like a gift, an absence of domination. It is the opposite of the royal, warrior envoy.
The words most commonly used in the Qur’an to indicate kingship and the king are, respectively, mulk and malik. In sura 67, entitled al-Mulk (The Kingdom), this term denotes the universe of bodies, as opposed to malakūt, the universe of spirits. God is king because it is He Who is “protecting and Himself unprotected” (Qur’an 23:88), He whose “throne comprises the heavens and the earth” (Qur’an 2:255).
Numerous instances insist on this divine attribute. The Qur’an also uses the words kursī and ‘arsh (throne), in the concrete sense of the term, in relation to the king-prophet Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.
In all the religions of the ancient East, in Babylon as in the Old Testament, God is king and the Lord of the universe, as shown by the books of Malachi and Isaiah[3] (which speak of His majesty and sovereignty). Yahweh, too, is seated on a throne[4] and it is He who delegates His reign to the house of David, His representative sent to the people of Israel.[5] One can therefore understand that the earthly king owes his office solely to the will of God, in whom absolute kingship resides. Belief in the omnipotence of God as absolute king was all the greater during and after the exile in Babylon (c. 587-538 B.C.) when the Jews no longer had a king. After all, the kings of Judah and Israel were mere men and they were not always just. Later, Jesus was not to be king but Messiah and was to say, “The time has come and the kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent and believe the Good News” (Mk 1:15).
When applied to human matters, mulk denotes power, kingship and might. More commonly used in the sense of possession (of property), the verb malaka denotes, equally, control over oneself or over others, as when Moses speaks of himself or of his brother (Qur’an 5:25). When it refers to King Tālūt (Saul), sent by God to the people of Israel, the Qur’an recalls that kingship, according to divine virtues, is not always accompanied by wealth and material possessions. Whilst Saul is rejected by his own people, who reprove him of being without possessions, their prophet (Samuel) says to them, “God has chosen him over you, and has increased him broadly in knowledge and body” (Qur’an 2:247). In the Bible, it is Samuel once again who reminds the first king about divine wisdom when he has decided to carry out rituals reserved to the priesthood (1 Sam 15:22-23). In the same terms, Deuteronomy reminds the people through Moses that, “[the king must] not increase the number of his horses,” nor “the number of his wives,” nor “must he increase his gold and silver excessively” (Dt 17:16.17).
The Old Testament offers a lacklustre image of its kings: with the exception of the “good kings” (models of piety such as David and Solomon), they needed to be subjected to the prophets’ authority. It is probably thus that the verse of the Qur’an censuring the Jewish deniers needs to be interpreted: “Or have they a share in the Kingdom? If that is so, they do not give the people a single date-spot” (Qur’an 4:53). As in the book of Daniel (chapter 7), the Apocalypse (13:1-2) sees the power of the king as the quintessence of the terrifying and evil beast. The Evil that is expressed through the Roman Empire’s despotism is all the more perfidious in that it obtains men’s assent. Evidently, true domination can only exert its power because it persuades those being dominated that it is acting for their good. Unless there is voluntary servitude. It is here that the Christian lesson comes into play: through death and humiliation, Jesus achieves kenosis, that exercise of authority that is the antithesis of domination, because His kingdom is not of this world.
The Qur’an sometimes uses the word mulk in relation to David: “We strengthened his kingdom and gave him wisdom and speech decisive” (Qur’an 38:20). It seems, however, to reserve it to Saul and, obviously, to Pharaoh. One can therefore understand why, apart from Adam, who represents the entirety of the human race, David is the only person to receive the qualification of “caliph” in the Qur’an.[6] It is thus prophecy that brings with it ethics and wisdom, since terrestrial monarchy – too subject to human passions – has been discredited. Nevertheless, despite their status as the chosen ones, the prophets are in no way spared by the Qur’an: it presents them in a very human light because they have sinned, lied, betrayed and even killed. With the exception, obviously, of Jesus; the only one who did not fail and could not fail.
If those on whom God conferred temporal power as a gift are excluded, the Qur’anic concept of kingship appears rather discredited, referring as it does to the evil power of the wicked despot; of which Pharaoh is the archetypical figure. That is why the man who assassinated the Egyptian ex-president, Anwar el-Sadat, shouted, “I’ve killed the Pharaoh!”[7]
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Two Tests and One Single Illusion
The sura of the Ant (27), which involves the famous Queen of Sheba (or Bilqīs, for the Muslim commentators), is edifying from this point of view. If the term “queen” (malika) is not mentioned any more frequently than the actual name of the female sovereign, the semantic wealth of the verb malaka at verse 23 – uttered by the hoopoe (al-hudhud) that informs Solomon of the existence of a woman who reigns over her people (imra’tan tamlikuhum) – is enough to indicate, simultaneously, the holding of power and the might and the possessions that accompany it. The short verse is rendered even richer by two other specific details: “she has been given of everything and she possesses a mighty throne” (wa ūtiyat min kulli shay’in wa laha ‘arshun ‘azīm).
One remains struck by the profusion of meaning in this verse that describes in such laudatory terms the mighty and magnificent power of a queen who is, moreover, a polytheist and sun-worshipper; at least, before her conversion. The praise of Bilqīs’s throne is nevertheless tempered by verse 24, in which the hoopoe, relaying the word of God, states that “Satan has decked out fair their deeds to them and he has barred them from the way, and therefore they are not guided.”
The same Queen of Sheba is far from exhibiting the negative attributes of evil power, however. Alerted by Solomon’s ultimatum that orders her to submit (to God), she declares to her Council, “Kings, when they enter a city, disorder it and make the mighty ones of its inhabitants abased. Even so they too will do” (Qur’an 27:34).
It is a strange exchange, this cut and riposte between the polytheist queen and the king-prophet on whom God has conferred the power to command men, jinn and animals; in which she stands out for her wisdom and diplomacy whereas Salomon appears as an arrogant monarch, threatening to attack, drive out, degrade and humiliate, almost in the same terms as those used by Bilqīs in her critique of power. But she distinguishes herself, above all, for the way in which she exercises power within her kingdom, where she consults with her Council. She is an enlightened sovereign who rules by sharing responsibilities and asserts herself before a Solomon who orders, challenges and threatens. She negotiates, whereas he gives orders. Solomon is overcome only by the hoopoe, which informs him and reminds him – despite the king-prophet’s shouting and threats – that it knows things that he does not. Solomon obviously has every good reason to assert his own superiority, that pre-eminence that he has received from the double privilege of submitting to God and having, consequentially, a new knowledge, this ‘ilm that God states He has given him, just as He had given it to his father, David. Solomon was to exercise this thaumaturgic gift by subjecting Bilqīs to two tests: first by making a jinn bring the queen’s throne, in a transformed state. The queen is asked whether the throne she sees is hers and passes the test by prudently answering, “It seems the same.” Then, subsequently, by making her cross a crystal floor: she mistake it for an expanse of water and bares her legs. What appeared to be a failure is, in reality, a success because the queen had understood the meaning of the enigma by recognising that the only true power is God’s.
Two tests and one single illusion: that of power and the throne, which is only appearance, given that the true throne belongs solely to God, creator and re-creator of all things. It is odd that, in order to illustrate the vanity of human power that does not come from God, the Qur’an has taken the example of a queen full of wisdom; as if it wanted to communicate the incompleteness of her queenship until she had (through Solomon) submitted to God.
Idols and Objects of Veneration
“Mine is not a kingdom of this world,” Jesus said. The parallel with Christ’s message is all the more surprising if one takes account of another verse that contains a repudiation of every kind of power founded on the religious message, whether it be prophetic or clerical: “It belongs not to any mortal that God should give him the Book, the Judgment, the Prophethood, then he should say to men, ‘Be you servants to me apart from God.’ Rather, ‘Be you masters in that you know the Book, and in that you study’” (3:79).
The Qur’an has recourse to the term tāghūt (idol) to denote those who appropriate to themselves worship that is exclusively reserved to God. In the term tāghūt, boundless pride and illegitimate power are the two sides of one and the same sin: rebellion against God. In front of a God who presents Himself as the One who truly holds all power and who bestows some of it on certain chosen ones as it pleases Him, there is only room for hubris. Since the birth of Islam, the term has been attributed to the sovereigns judged not to be legitimate. Thus in 762, Muhammad Ibn ‘Abdallāh Muhammad (al-Nafs al-Zākiyya) denounced his Abbasid rival al-Mansūr, as “this tāghūt enemy of God” (hādha al-tāghiya ‘aduww Allāh).
By entitling one of the chapters in his book[8] “Was the prophet also a king?”, ‘Alī ‘Abd al-Rāziq evidently intended to demonstrate that that was not how things were. The question was, for that matter, simply metaphorical: a way of raising the issue of the relationship between prophecy and temporal power that could categorically reject the second dimension, thereby limiting Muhammad’s mission exclusively to the first. Praiseworthy and revolutionary as it is, ‘Abd al-Rāziq’s thesis is equally unrealistic and historically mistaken and this for two reasons: Muhammad really was a political leader who laid the foundations of a state and he had “successors” who assumed the role of caliph or head of state.
In order to realise the Qur’anic message in all the radicalness of its monotheism, Muhammad had to invalidate the whole pantheon of Arab divinities and restore the monopoly of the one God’s sovereignty. In so doing, and acting as God’s chosen one, he exercised a power that was political, legislative and judicial. Did he not wage war, conquer his city, collect the purification tax (zakāt) and exercise the function of judge, just as the prophets of Israel had done before him? In this case, it is difficult to sever prophecy from its political and theocratic nature. And yet why wasn’t Islam’s prophet, the seal of prophecy, invested with the title of king since he had assumed the functions in any event?[9] Is it perhaps because the power devolved upon Muhammad as the earthly representative of divine sovereignty – with all the radicalness with which this is expressed in the Qur’an – was already too vast for him to be able to assume the kingly function as well? In reality, the very principle of monarchy or central power, which up until then had been unknown to that people of Gentiles that the Arabs were, was discovered by them at the same time as the Islamic prophecy. It is not by chance that, concomitantly with the tribal “apostasies,” false prophets appeared and tried to found kingdoms through preaching.
However much the early verses depicting the Prophet as a simple messenger may be part of a divine plan, they are far from being a simple chronological detail linked to a strategy dating to the Meccan period. Indeed, they can be traced to the recurring principle that it is God, and only God, who holds true power, which He bestows on whomsoever He pleases and of which Muhammad seems to hold only a minimal share in comparison with his predecessors, the kings or thaumaturges. This is the Qur’an’s paradox. On the one hand, it offers the world’s riches for men’s enjoyment and, on the other, it debases their value in favour of the Afterlife. One can therefore see how Islamic thinking is split between two sets of contradictory leanings: between a worldly and a contemplative vision, on the one hand, and between the utopia of anarcho-theocratic justice and a secularist approach, on the other.[10] Torn by these tensions, it has produced a jurisprudence marked by the legal/illegal tandem that has, at the same time, tried to contain the excesses by promoting the principle of the middle path, thereby risking letting itself be supplanted both by one side and the other.
It is paradoxical that mulk, like mamlaka (meaning a kingdom with territorial boundaries), causes diffidence by virtue of the very thing that it denotes: possessions and wealth, luxury and magnificence. Because the malik, or king, is also a mālik, or owner and master. One can therefore understand why the Muslim historians and jurists referred to the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs as mulūk (the plural of malik).[11] The fact that they reserve this title more specifically to the kings of unbelievers, mulūk al-kuffār, is even more interesting.
Muslim consciousness has been profoundly marked by a dichotomous vision torn between the figure of the Prophet Muhammad and that of the king (as the latter emerges in the Qur’an once it is dissociated from that of the biblical prophets; its archetypal model is Pharaoh). Muhammad could not be a malik. The same splitting can be seen, moreover, between the category of caliph, the figure legally representing power and appointed by the divine law, on the one hand, and that of the king or monarch/despot, on the other.
From God’s Judgement to Men’s Government
In making the Qur’an the sole source of justice for humankind, the qurrā’ (Qur’anic readers) had recourse to the only form of sovereignty that seemed, to them, superior: the judgment of God, or hukm Allāh.
God the judge decides and acts according to His hukm, to which believers must submit. He is, however, the best of the hākimīn[12] (a term that, like that of hukkām – the plural of hākim – was subsequently to denote the rulers). In order to prescribe ethical forms of conduct, make recommendations or legislate, God sets out verses in the form of rules or āyāt al-ahkām.
The prophets are required to judge “justly” (Qur’an 5:42), or “straight” (11:112) or again, “according to what God has sent down” (5:49). Here, it is a question of judging (in the sense of a judge’s arbitration or adjudication) with justice, in accordance with what God has revealed. The Qur’an equally uses the word hākim; as, for example, in verse 188 of sura 2, which enjoins believers not to resort to judges in order to strip others of their possessions. Here the reference is to judges and arbitrators and not to political rulers. This was, moreover, the Arab societies’ tradition: they had recourse to arbitrators to settle their disputes. Muhammad had himself played this role of the wise man before embarking on his apostolate: something that earned him the nickname of amīn, he who is trustworthy. Thus, with regard to the “people of the Torah,” it is said, “Whoso judges not according to what God has sent down – they are the unbelievers” (5:44) and, of the “People of the Gospel,” “judge according to what God has sent down therein” (5:47). The duty to match divine revelation with the principle of justice emerges here in all its clarity.
The Kharijites (khawārij)[13] are consistent in their reading of the Qur’an as far as their conception of justice is concerned. There is neither reason of state nor politics but only God, His word and His representative, who must judge and arbitrate in accordance with what has been revealed, since all the world’s affairs must conform to the divine text. They assassinated ‘Uthmān because he had betrayed their caliphate (i.e. their right to judge according to the Qur’an) and refused to restore it to them. And then ‘Alī, who was also guilty of accepting the arbitration of men.
God also gave the Children of Israel “the Book, the Judgement (hukm), and the Prophethood” (Qur’an 45:16). Thus hukm was given to Moses, Lot, Joseph and John.[14] Here, judgment means the power to judge and, also, wisdom. It is not surprising that the Qur’an conferred “kingship (mulk) and Wisdom (hikma)” on David and on his heir, Solomon, as well as teaching them “such as He willed” (Qur’an 2:251). The prophets are asked to judge fairly (bi-l-qist), and with Truth (bi-l-haqq) (5,42; 21,112) because “Whoso judges not according to what God has sent down – they are the unbelievers” (5:44).
According to a hadīth, “One hour of justice (hukūma) in judgment is worth more than sixty years of worship.” The term hukūma thus seems originally to have been a synonym of hukm, in its meaning of justice and a judicial ruling in conformity with the divine law. Then, used in the beginning with the meaning of legal “ruling,” the concept little by little shifted to cover the political context. Thus, under the Seljuks, the term denoted the governmental function and, in Kurdish territory, the regions or territories enjoying political and financial autonomy. The term ended up denoting a government, from the end of the eighteenth century onwards. For example, Turkish documents dating to the beginning of the twentieth century use the concept of hukūma to speak about European governments, reserving the term dawla to the State. To be sure, the exchanges between the Ottoman Empire and Europe played their part in these usages, but the latter also denote a progression in the secularization and relative autonomy of politics. Such fact does not mean that, in this semantic shift from the field of judicial arbitration towards that of government, the source of inspiration does not remain a religious one and, more especially, Qur’anic.
A Doubly Blasphemous Idea
The Indo-Pakistani Abū al-A‘lā Mawdūdī (d. 1979), who founded Jamā’at-Islāmī[15] in 1941, constructed his doctrine on Islamic government around the concept of hākimiyya, in the sense of God’s sovereignty.[16] The context of the conflict that led to the India-Pakistan partition is, perhaps, reflected in the violence and radicalness of his thinking, as evidenced by his practice of excommunicating legal scholars and whole Muslim states and his virulent criticism of the West. Mawdūdī rejected democracy more than any other thing because, by entrusting government to the people, it usurped the sovereignty that belonged to God, the only One to order the world and the natural laws that govern it. Only an Islamic state founded on hākimiyya is able to eradicate idolatry and impose the divine law everywhere. Following in the same vein as Mawdūdī, the Egyptian Muslim Brother Sayyid Qutb (d. 1966)[17] carried the theorization of the hākimiyya principle even further. Radicalizing the binary opposition between idolatry and Islam’s government, Qutb revived the anachronistic notion of jāhililiyya, the age of “ignorance” associated with pre-Islamic Arabia, declaring whole Islamic societies to be ungodly and extending the field for jihad to inside the community. These two ideologies have inspired numerous contemporary extremist and terrorist movements, starting with Egyptian activist groups such as al-Jihād, which then merged with al-Qaeda through the auspices of the former’s ex-leader Ayman al-Zawāhirī.
Responsible for President Sadat’s assassination, this organization counted ‘Abd al-Salām Farag amongst its ranks. He has made jihad a sixth pillar and a personal duty that had been “neglected” (al-farīda al-ghā’iba),[18] in the sense of hidden by the legal scholars, who were concerned with avoiding sedition (fitna). In coining his concept of hākimiyya (divine sovereignty, Ed.) from the Qur’anic notion of hukm in order to legitimate an Islamic state, Mawdūdī certainly introduced a neologism. But, contrary to what some Muslim intellectuals, following in the footsteps of ‘Alī ‘Abd al-Rāziq, have written with the intention of demonstrating the heretical nature of this doctrine, there is no innovation. The Kharijites had already had recourse to this argument. Besides, by qualifying the contemporary extremists as “Kharijites” or “neo-Kharijites,” these authors are conforming to Sunni heresiography, which delegitimises historical Kharijism by relegating it to the category of a deviant current. Thus they end up neglecting the rationale underpinning the Islamic utopia that this doctrine, just like other, later movements, encapsulates.
That being said, there is an enormous difference between the Kharijites and the contemporary ideologues advocating hākimiyya. Whereas the former referred directly to hukm, or God’s judgment, through reference to the Qur’an, rejecting every human mediation liable to produce a concentration of power (hence their condemnation of the imam/caliph as a tyrant), the latter place the State and the Islamic party at the centre of their system. These two categories are no longer a metaphor used to indicate a utopia but, rather, institutions similar to those produced by modernity. Thus Mawdūdī proposed the model of a single party headed by a leader; a pious man who would be the divine law’s only interpreter and God’s instrument on earth. Here one can see to what extent the use of the neologism hākimiyya goes well beyond the concept of hākim that inspired it, particularly when compared with the principle of hukm, meaning God’s judgment. In this case, the Judgment of God is not exercised almost mystically and, truth to tell, anarchically, as occurred with the Kharijites but, rather, through a human representative. What is at work is the most spectacular theological aporia: the blasphemous act through which, on the pretext of God’s sovereignty, men substitute themselves for God in His Judgment, fortified by the equally blasphemous claim by which they give to understand that they have been appointed by Him; in contempt of all the verses according to which He gives power to whomsoever He pleases. One can therefore see the gulf that separates Mawdūdī or Qutb from the caliph ‘Umar, who, on hearing someone propose that he should have the title “God’s caliph,” exclaimed, in shocked tones, “But that is David.”[19] The other difference, which is anything but secondary, resides in the ascesis and spirit of social justice and equality that animated the Kharijites and are dramatically lacking in the hākimiyya ideologues.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Oasis International Foundation
[1] The same is true of the terms wilāya (sovereignty), sultān (authority) e dawla (state). See Leïla Babès, L’utopie de l’islam. La religion contre l’État (Armand Colin, Paris, 2011), chap. 4.
[2] “… Thou art only a warner and God is a Guardian over everything” (Qur’an 11:12); “…it is thine only to deliver the Message, and Ours the reckoning” (13:40) and “thou art not a tyrant over them” (50:45).
[3] Ml 1:14 and Is. 6:5.
[4] “God is king of the nations, he reigns on his holy throne” (Psalm 47:9).
[5] There are several instances of this in the Book of Kings.
[6] “David! We have appointed thee a viceroy in the earth; therefore judge between men justly, and follow not caprice, lest it lead thee astray from the way of God. Surely those who go astray from the way of God – there awaits them a terrible chastisement, for that they have forgotten the Day of Reckoning” (Qur’an 38:26).
[7] See Gilles Kepel, Le Prophète et Pharaon. Les mouvements islamiques dans Égypte contemporaine (La Découverte, Paris, 1984).
[8] Ali Abdelraziq, L’islam et les fondements du pouvoir (La Découverte, Paris, 1994) (al-Islām wa usūl al-hukm. Bahth fī-l-khilāfa wa-l-hukūma fī-l-islām, 1925). This was a book written just after the Ottoman Caliphate was abolished. The author, an al-Azhar ‘ālim, stated that Muslims could renounce the Caliphate quite happily since its existence was connected to a historical contingency and was not one of the pillars of the faith. ‘Abd al-Rāziq is considered by some to have invented Islamic secularism. His position caused a scandal and sparked a most bitter debate.
[9] See Mondher Sfar, Le Coran, la Bible et l’Orient ancien (Ed. Sfar, 19982). The author reconstructs the Mesopotamian origins of both the Qur’an and the Bible and considers Muhammad to be a king-prophet.
[10] See Babès, L’utopie de l’Islam, chap. 1.
[11] As for the other sovereigns, they began to use the word malik only in the middle of the tenth century. For many of these powers of Persian tradition, such as the Samanids and those of their successors who used it, the term took the place of the word “shah.” The latter, on the other hand, was the title that the Safavids used at the beginning of the sixteenth century. This use continued until the Iranian Revolution.
[12] “And follow thou what is revealed to thee; and be thou patient until God shall judge; and He is the best of judges” (Qur’an 10:109).
[13] The Kharijites are a group that appeared in 657 A.D. following disagreement between followers of the caliph ‘Alī (the “shi‘at ‘Alī” or Shi‘ites) about the lawfulness of deciding the caliphal succession (Ed.)
[14] See Qur’an 28:14; 21:74; 12:22 and 19:12.
[15] Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, The Vanguard of Islamic Revolution. The Jama’at -I- Islami of Pakistan (I.B. Tauris, London, 1994).
[16] Abu al-A‘la al-Mawdudi, Jihad in Islam (Islamic Publications, Lahore, 1998); Id., The Political Theory of Islam (Islamic Publications, Lahore, 1965).
[17] Olivier Carré, Mysticism and politics. A critical reading of “fī zilâl al-qur’ân” by Sayyid Qutb (Leiden, Brill, 2003).
[18] Georges C. Anawati, ‘Une résurgence kharijite au XX° siècle’, Mèlanges de l’Institut dominicain d’études orientales XVI, 1983, pp. 191-228.
[19] Bernard Lewis, The Political Language of Islam (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1988).
To cite this article
Printed version:
Leïla Babès, “The Paradox of Political Islam”, Oasis, year XII, n. 23, July 2016, pp. 84-94.
Online version:
Leïla Babès, “The Paradox of Political Islam”, Oasis [online], published on 29th July 2016, URL: https://www.oasiscenter.eu/en/paradox-political-islam.