Another Muslim con artist

Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im is a law professor at Emory University, one of the innumerable cultural fifth columnists and aliens who now have influential positions in our society. In a column, or rather a fifth column, in the March 17 New York Post, he argues that under true Islam there is a complete separation of Islam and state, and that under true Islam, individual Muslims are free to live as they like and to determine their own path of how to follow sharia (!). He says any Islamic state, such as the Islamic Republic of Iran, is a contradiction in terms. (See Andrew Bostom’s letter, below, responding to that assertion.) He then acknowledges that most Muslims in the world today desire the official establishment of sharia, and he says that they must be educated away from this view. This of course undermines his notion that true Islam has always kept sharia in the private sphere.

It seems to me that the notion of a separation of sharia and state under Islam is false on its face. Part of the essence of Islam is the joining of religion and state, from the time Muhammad became the political and religious leader of Medina, though the time of the “rightly guided” Caliphs who were always understood as combining political and religious rule, to the Abbasid Caliphate, to the Ottoman Caliph, all the way up to to Sayyid Qutb and Osama bin Laden who seek a restored Caliphate, i.e., an Islamic state, as the ONLY true Islamic arrangement for mankind.

I don’t understand everything An-Na’im is up to. But it seems to me he’s a typical Islamic con artist, though with his own original twist, namely that he is trying to persuade Americans that Islam is really just like liberalism, i.e., with a secular state, and with individuals free to do as they like! And thus to get them to accept Islam and the steady spread of sharia in this country.

Andrew Bostom has already written at his blog about An-Naim’s article.

Here is An-Na’im’s article:

IRAN’S ISLAMIC OUTRAGE

By ABDULLAHI AHMED AN-NA’IM
NY Post

March 17, 2008—LAST Friday’s election in Iran—like every vote there since the 1979 revo lution—violated fundamental Islamic principles. But, then, so does the so-called Islamic Republic of Iran itself.

No one can become a candidate in Iran without the approval of a body known as the Council of Guardians. The regime, in other words, doesn’t trust individual Iranian Muslims to uphold Islamic principles in their political choices.

Yet the fundamental principle of individual personal responsibility—which can never be abdicated or delegated—is one of the most striking recurring themes in the Koran. Various schools within Islam put different emphases on this duty, but having a council of fallible humans negate the free will of Muslim citizens is totalitarianism—not Islam.

Thus, the “Islamic Republic” is neither Islamic nor a republic.

The authoritarianism of such institutions as the Council of Guardians is supposedly justified as necessary for preserving “the Islamicity of the state”—a goal that is claimed as another teaching of the Koran.

That, too, is false. The claim that a state can be Islamic is false from a religious point of view and has no support in 15 centuries of Islamic history.

There is no mention whatsoever of the state in the Koran. Islam does not prescribe any form of government. Rather, the teachings of Mohammed emphasize the community of Muslims and each Muslim’s responsibility for conducting public affairs.

True, Muslims everywhere, whether a majority or minority of the populace, are bound to observe sharia as a matter of religious obligation. But this can be best achieved when the state is neutral regarding all religious doctrines.

Any principle of sharia that has been enacted into state law, simply because it is a principle of sharia, is no longer religious—for Muslims would then be observing the law of the state as such and not freely performing their religious duty as Muslims.

(This does not, of course, prevent a Muslim from supporting, say, laws against pornography or prostitution on the basis of his or her moral beliefs. But, then, the same holds for citizens of other faiths.)

The notion of an Islamic state is in fact a postcolonial innovation in the thinking of some Muslims—an “import” of a European model of the state and of a totalitarian view of law and public policy.

In essence, then, today’s Iranian system is no different from the former Soviet and Nazi regimes—or from the Arab nationalist Ba’ath dictatorship in Syria (and formerly in Iraq). That the repression comes in the name of religion doesn’t make it any less totalitarian.

A true and valid return to Islamic values, in Iran and elsewhere, requires allowing individuals to practice religion unfettered by political leaders who claim to speak in the name of the Divine.

This is the clear demand of Muslims everywhere. Consider “Who Speaks for Islam,” a survey, published in February by Gallup, of 50,000 Muslims in more than 35 countries. A clear majority of those polled said they don’t want religious leaders to draft their constitutions.

The survey also confirms that large majorities of Muslims want to protect free speech and reject attacks on civilians as morally wrong. It also found Muslim women demanding equality and respect for their human dignity.

Gallup did find a majority of Muslims saying they want sharia to be a source of legislation and religion to have an important role in their societies. Plainly, much great public awareness is needed of such concepts as the inherently secular nature of the state and the critical role of the principles of constitutionalism, human rights and citizenship.

Islamic beliefs, as with any other religious and philosophical principles, will unavoidably have some connection with politics. But a proper understanding of the Koran’s teachings can regulate that connection—indeed show the necessity for separation of sharia and state. The question is how to transform attitudes of Muslims on these issues.

Human-rights advocates should, of course, speak out about the Iranian election and call it what it is—a mockery of democracy. Just as important, however, Muslims must speak out.

The “religious” state that the Iran’s ruling clique hopes to perpetuate in Iran is, in fact, a form of heresy—completely antithetical to Islam’s true teachings.

As a Muslim, I demand—and the Koran promises—the right to practice my religion freely.

Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im is a law professor at Emory University and author of “Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Sharia.”

—end of initial entry—

Here is a letter that Andrew Bostom has sent to the New York Post:

Mr. An-Naim’s fantasy piece (“Iran’s Islamic Out rage,” 3/17) regarding the application of Sharia (Islamic) Law in general, or within Iran, specifically, will not do as history.

Iran’s Safavid rulers, at the outset of the 16th century, formally established Shi’a Islam as the Persian state religion, while permitting a clerical hierarchy nearly unlimited control and influence over all aspects of public life. The profound influence of the Shi’ite clerical elite, continued for almost four centuries (interrupted, between 1722-1794 by Sunni Afghan invasion and internecine struggle), until the Pahlavi seizure of power in 1925, as characterized by the noted Persianophilic scholar E.G. Browne, writing in 1930: “The Mujtahids and Mulla [religious leaders] are a great force in Persia and concern themselves with every department of human activity from the minutest detail of personal purification to the largest issues of politics.”

Reza Pahlavi’s spectacular rise to power in 1925 was accompanied by dramatic reforms: secularization efforts, and revitalization of Iran’s pre-Islamic spiritual and cultural heritage. This profound transformation broke the power of the Shia clergy, with very positive consequences for Iran’s non-Muslims, and women. The “Khomeini revolution”, which deposed Mohammad Reza Shah, was a mere return to oppressive Shi’ite theocratic rule, the predominant form of Iranian governance since 1502.

Andrew G. Bostom, MD, MS
Author of “The Legacy of Jihad” Prometheus Books (2005)
www.andrewbostom.org

- end of initial entry -

Ken Hechtman writes:

Let me say for the record I don’t like An-Na’im’s approach.

Liberalism says “The future is not constrained by the past. Tomorrow’s history is not yet written.”

Liberalism at its best says “Tomorrow’s history will be written today. Let’s make sure it’s written by us.”

But the history of the past *is* written. It is what it is. Making up self-serving stories contrary to fact and calling it history won’t work and it would be wrong even if it did.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 18, 2008 12:35 PM | Send