On Democracy, Violence, and the Promise of Islam

Irene Oh John Kelsays Arguing the Just War in Islam enriches the field of comparative religious ethics through its nuanced historical treatment of war in Islamic jurisprudence. Kelsays work has long been an important resource for scholarly insights into the field of Islamic ethics and this addition to the corpus should be lauded especially for its lucid eloquence, a rare quality that is all too important when writing about a topic that is relevant to a broad audience. Substantively, Arguing the Just War provides a detailed intellectual history of Sharia reasoning and demonstrates how this strand of Islamic history has evolvedor perhaps more accurately, devolvedto legitimate the crisis of Islamic extremism. One leaves the book not only well informed about the history of Islam, Sharia, and warfare, but with a model for how oneas a scholar, teacher, and citizenought responsibly, thoughtfully, and respectfully to engage with a religious tradition that is not ones own.1 With this volume, Kelsay offers a valuable contribution to the fields of Islam, just war theory, and comparative ethics. His account of Muslim jurisprudence on war serves as an accessible reference for scholars and students, and his final thoughts on Islamic religious governance and violence will be sure to fuel many debates on this timely topic. Arguing the Just War provides resources for American, nonMuslim readers (as well as Muslims who may not be familiar with

IRENE OH (BA, Swarthmore College; MA, University of Chicago; PhD, University of Virginia) is an assistant professor of religion and the director of peace studies at the George Washington University. She is the author of The Rights of God: Islam, Human Rights, and Comparative Ethics. Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Religious Ethics, the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, and the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. Her special interests include comparative religious ethics, and feminist ethics. 1. For a discussion of why and how one might engage with others religious traditions, see, Lee Yearley, Mencius and Aquinas: Theories of Virtue and Conceptions of Courage (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990), 1 23.
Journal of Church and State vol. 53 no. 1, pages 50 58; doi:10.1093/jcs/csq143 # The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the J. M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com

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On Democracy, Violence, and the Promise of Islam sharia reasoning about jihad) for comprehending the motivations and rationale behind Islamic militants. Kelsay appears to have two audiences in mind: one that describes groups like al-Qaeda as not really Muslim and another that dismisses Islamic militants as irrational agents. The first audience is typically composed of well-meaning moderate Muslims and apologists who understandably wish to dissociate violent radicals from the vast majority of peaceable Muslims. The second audience, which is the one I believe Kelsay most convincingly persuades, finds dismissing violent radicals as irrational easier than admitting that violent radicals might have actual reasons for their actions. To the first audience, Kelsay bluntly states, Those who wish to argue that Islam has nothing to do with the attacks of 9/11 or with the tactics of Iraqi insurgents will find no comfort here.2 Indeed, the facts are plain that the militants in question identify themselves as Muslim and use religious reasoning to justify their actions.3 Unless one is willing to ignore the statements of the militants themselves, one cannot deny the central role of religious reasoning in the acts of violent extremists. Concerning the second audience, Kelsays book forces the reader to resist the temptation to dismiss Muslim militant actors as irrational, insane, or monsters. Instead, Kelsay takes on the more difficult, intellectually rigorous task of tracing the history of jihad as argued by Islamic jurists. Kelsay clearly portrays in his study an interpretive, textually rooted legalistic tradition that militant Muslims draw upon (though they do so ineptly and not without controversy) in waging war in the name of Islam. As philosophers Charles Taylor and Hans-Georg Gadamer have asserted, in order for understanding to occur across cultures, we must first accept each other as moral agents with reasons for believing and acting as we (and they) do.4 Arguing the Just War illustrates how this process of cross-cultural understanding might take place. Kelsay rightfully dismisses glib characterizations of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and he offers detailed reasons for why Islamic militants are able to justify to themselves the acts that they commit. Without these insights into the very foundations of their beliefs, we risk losing both the battle and the war against violent Islamic extremism.
2. Kelsay, Arguing the Just War in Islam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 3. 3. Ibid., 3. 4. Charles Taylor, Philosophy and the Human Sciences (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 116 17; Hans Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Jowel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Crossroad, 1991), 385.

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Journal of Church and State

On Islamic Intellectual History

Readers will find a wealth of knowledge about Islamic intellectual traditions in the first three chapters of Kelsays book. For those who are unfamiliar with the basic outline of Islamic history, his descriptions of the beginnings of Islam are helpful not merely for the information provided, but also for the explanations concerning the contemporary relevance of events that transpired 1,400 years ago. He sets the tone of the book and anticipates concerns about the factuality of early Islamic history when he instructs the reader that there is
no reason to doubt the broad outline of the stories associated with Muhammad and the early Muslims, even as there is no reason to doubt the historical bias of the broad outlines of the gospel narrative concerning Jesus of Nazareth, or of reports concerning the sayings of the rabbis of the Talmud. . . . In all these cases we ought not to push the details. . . . The point of holy history is to answer religious questions: not simply or even primarily How did these events transpire? but Why did they occur?5

For Islamic militants, this early history serves as the template upon which their activities are based. Using a form of Sharia reasoning, they draw parallels between the struggles of the early Muslim community and the struggles of Islam in a postcolonial age. As Kelsay goes on to explain, Sharia reasoning did not arise in a vacuum, but developed out of the historical need to unite a growing Islamic community administratively, legislatively, and religiously. Sharia rests upon the belief that the early Muslim community, centered around the prophetic figure of Muhammad, exemplifies virtues and practices that Muslims ought to emulate. By the twelfth century, sharia had evolved into an established process by which a scholarly class trained in religious and legal history could artfully negotiate between history and present circumstance, or between approved texts and new contexts.6

Democratizing Islam
As Kelsay deftly illustrates, the first centuries of Islamic jurisprudential history are relevant to the study of the jihad today. However, the major turning point in the history of sharia with regard to the rise of Islamic militants appears to have occurred with the creation of the twentieth-century Egyptian movement
5. Kelsay, Arguing the Just War in Islam, 11. 6. Ibid., 125.

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On Democracy, Violence, and the Promise of Islam known as the Muslim Brotherhood, ikhwan al-Muslimin. Kelsay explains that with
the Brothers, we actually see something new in the history of Sharia reasoning. The deference to the learned class as experts in religion is shown as historical accident; for it rested largely on certain social facts: most Muslims could not read, or if they could, they could not obtain access to the texts necessary for the practice of reasoning about the Sharia. By the 1920s, however, the growth of a professional class, able to read and discuss the matters of religion, combined with the increased availability of books made possibly by developments in print technology, meant that deference would no longer be the rule. With Hassan al-Banna [the founder of the Brothers], the movement toward a serious Islamist movement had begun.7

Members of the Muslim Brotherhood and its south Asian counterpart, the Jamaat-i Islami led by Abul ala Mawdudi, continued to respect the ulema, the learned class of Islamic legal scholars, but they effectively reserved judgment on matters of practice for themselves.8 Here, I think, is one of the most valuableand controversialarguments Kelsay offers in his book. It is not without irony that the process of democratizing Sharia reasoning made possible the rise of decidedly undemocratic organizations such as al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Kelsay associates the broadening of Sharia reasoning with the assassination of Anwar Sadat and with the formation of Afghani Arabs, the most infamous of whom, of course, is Osama bin Ladin. After providing a concise analysis of declarations from such militants, Kelsay reminds us, humbly, that pointing out where such statements on militants converge and diverge from the opinions of established ulema constitutes the lesser task. The more arduous and important task solves the crisis of legitimacy. He explains, For Osama bin Ladin and those who stand with him, the ulema are nearly as irrelevant as the leadership of historically Muslim states. At best, they [the ulema] are focused on splitting hairs; at worst, they publish opinions that identify Sharia reasoning with the policies of acquiescence to Europe and the United States.9 In other words, the scholars of Islamic jurisprudence who have traditionally been respected as members of the learned class are no longer regarded as authoritative by a significant minority of Muslims. Not only do the likes of bin Ladin consider themselves qualified to issue a formal Sharia opinion on the duty of Muslims, including the learned, but they are also capable of mobilizing
7. Ibid., 91. 8. Ibid., 95. 9. Ibid., 153.

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Journal of Church and State resistance against Western influence.10 The appeal of these militants appears to lie in their ability to speak to a widespread sense that current political arrangements are unsatisfactory.11 Current governments of Muslim-majority states are perceived as weak and corrupt, especially in the face of institutions such as the U.S. military, the World Bank, and the IMF. These observations by militant Muslims are not in themselves particularly troublesome or even inaccurate. For Kelsay, what is disturbing is that the established ulema appear to agree with the Islamic militants vision of Islamic governance. At this point, Kelsey shifts from a discussion primarily concerning the means employed by Islamic militants to a discussion concerning their ends. Even as the ulema critique militants unsophisticated methods of argumentation and their violent means for achieving such ends, they concur on the necessary end of Islamic governance and, in particular, Islamic political leadership. To be clear, Kelsay does not argue against the contributions of Muslim voices in the making of policy within a democratic, multicultural state, but rather against the establishment of Islam as the religion of a state.12 Islamic governance, he suggests, may err toward the use of force when force may not be necessary.13 Kelsay also briefly notes the historical tendency of Christian states to resort to violence but also acknowledges that the legacy of Christian intolerance constitutes one part of the story by which modern democracy was born.14

Democracy and Religion

There are alternatives to the Islamic state envisioned by such militants and ulema. Kelsay describes the work of well-regarded scholars such as Abdulaziz Sachedina, Abdullahi An-Naim, and Khaled Abou el-Fadl to make his case for the separation of Islam and the state. In choosing these scholars, Kelsay provides his readers three different jurisprudential methods that draw a range of conclusions against the establishment of an Islamic state. However convincing and sophisticated their argumentation might be, it is nonetheless hard to overlook the significance of the fact that each scholar has chosen to make the United States his home. While one would like to believe that the ideas of Sachedina, An-Naim, and Abou el-Fadl are sound enough to stand on their own, their choice of home in the United States weakens their legitimacy abroad.
10. 11. 12. 13. 14. Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid. 137 38. 162. 166. 197.

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On Democracy, Violence, and the Promise of Islam One of the qualifications for attaining the rank of ulema in Islamic jurisprudence has been the character of the scholar in question. A very learned scholar who writes dazzlingly brilliant opinions but who fails to display the kind of virtue desired in a scholar would not be qualified to join the ranks of the learned class. In the political environment of the Muslim states in question, the choice by a Muslim scholar to make the United States their homeeven if they frequently visit Muslim-majority stateswould likely be construed as an undesirable character flaw, an indication that they have gone to the other side. Kelsays selection of Sachedina, An-Naim, and Abou el-Fadl would not help to convince an Islamic militant of the error of his ways. To such a militant, these scholars have sold out to the West. Even the fact that these scholars have received death threats for their work would not convince Islamic militants that moving to the United States was matter of necessity rather than choice. If these American scholars are unlikely to convince militants of a religiously neutral political structure, could they persuade institutional ulema, like those at Al-Azhar? It seems improbable in this situation as well, especially if the ulema are equally convinced of the insidiousness of Western imperialism, even as they remain critical of militants use of violence.15 To be fair, Kelsay is writing primarily for an American audience, and he is right to argue that we ought to familiarize ourselves with the kind of reasoning that Sachedina, An-Naim, and Abou el-Fadl employ. Nonetheless, the argument that the democratizing of Sharia has given rise to the likes of bin Ladin, while convincing, suggests the possibility that it might have also given rise to voices that challenge Islamic militancy at its core. If the claim that Muslims have the duty to explore their own consciences has led to the rise of Islamic militancy, then why would the same claim not also lead to the rise of democratic voices? One prominent Islamic scholar, Abdolkarim Soroush, provides a counterbalance to the Islamic militants discussed by Kelsay. Soroush, unlike Sachedina, An-Naim, and el-Fadl, lives in Muslimmajority Iran (although he has resided in the United States as a visiting scholar) and espouses a vision of Islam that supports democratic Islamic governance.16 Soroushs understanding of Islamic democracy aligns with the ideals of governance and religious
15. Ibid., 139 44. 16. Abdolkarim Soroush, The Idea of Democratic Religious Government, and Tolerance and Governance: A Discourse on Religion and Democracy, in Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam: Essential Writings of Abdolkarim Soroush, trans. and ed. Mahmoud Sadri and Ahmad Sadri (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 122 30, 131 55.

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Journal of Church and State toleration amenable to Kelsays understanding of a just state. For Soroush, the concepts of freedom, democracy, and toleration flow out of his understanding of Islam. Unlike his militant counterparts, Soroush claims that the true teachings of Islam are entirely compatible with other faith traditions. Moreover, Soroush finds reasonable the skepticism of secular thinkers.17 His understanding of a religious democracy therefore makes space for not just Abrahamic believers, but presumably also atheists. Perhaps the difficulty of acknowledging voices like that of Soroush from Kelsays perspective is that these voices often call for Islamic democracies under Islamic leadership. Kelsay is doubtful that such governance can be truly equitable, especially for nonMuslims. Certainly, Muslims who do not support the idea of a state religion and atheists might feel particularly burdened living under a religious regime. Kelsays main concern, however, is that there may be something to the very idea of Islamic government that constitutes a temptation to resort to force where it ought not to be used.18 I am not convinced, however, that state-sponsored religion, including state-sponsored Islam, is inherently more prone to the use of force, especially if Sharia reasoning became subject to the demands of a transparent democracy. There are numerous states in Europe, Scandinavia, South America, and Asia that have either a state religion (as in the Churches of England, Denmark, and Norway) or sponsor a religion (Catholicism in Argentina, Costa Rica, and, of course, the Vatican; Theravada Buddhism in Thailand) within the bounds of democratic governance. Indeed, the relationship between established religion and violence seems overwhelmingly contingent upon factors beyond faith, especially economic and financial ones. Whether a state has an established religion or not seems a poor indicator even of the amount of influence that religion might have upon the actual governance of the state. The Church of England today, for example, seems to possess largely symbolic rather than real political power. One might also consider the fact that nonestablishment has failed to inoculate states from perpetrating horrifically violent acts against persons considered other. Jews in Nazi Germany, political dissenters in Stalin Soviet Union, and African Americans in pre civil rights United States were victims of institutional violence supported by nations that claimed no official state religion. These examples suggest that the degree to which state power is
17. Soroush, The Idea of Democratic Religious Government, 125. 18. Kelsay, Arguing the Just War in Islam, 197.

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On Democracy, Violence, and the Promise of Islam centralized might better indicate a governments willingness to apply unwarranted force to achieve desired ends, rather than the religion or ideology of a state.19 While few and arguably no true democracies exist in the Arab world, about half of all Muslims live in democratic and semidemocratic states.20 The dispersion of Muslims across the globe complicates any correlation between Islam, especially when defined as a lived tradition, governance, and violence. Presumably the majority of Muslims who choose to live in democratic, even secular states either do not perceive or are able to resolve any tension between their faith and support of their respective governments.21 Countries that currently declare Islam as their state religion apply Islam to civil society in a variety of ways and in varying degrees. Sharia functions differently in Jordan and Qatar than in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Admittedly, state-sponsored Islam in relatively young, postcolonial nation-states can be unstable, but the majority of young, postcolonial states are unstable for a variety of reasons, religion being but one. Given the political and economic repercussions of Western colonialism and imperialism in Muslim-majority states, the most diplomatically effective stance might be to encourage the development of indigenous models of democracy, Islamic or otherwise. If the people of a Muslim-majority state were to elect to have, democratically and justly, an Islamic state, then I think that we would have to respect both the process and the result. This, of course, is a complicated scenario, and numerous hypotheticals could be raised, but my main point is that we ought not to rule out the possibility of a democratic, Islamic state that applies Sharia to reject violent Islamic extremism on the one hand and state-sponsored secularism on the other. Indeed, from this perspective, the critical comments of ulema against the use of violence, rather than their agreement over Islamic governance, become the focus of the argument against Islamic extremism. The cross-cultural conversation thus remains centered upon the means, that is, the use of violence, of Islamic extremists to achieve their goals, rather than upon the end of Islamic rule. Although the upshot of Islamic governance may
19. Rudolf Rummel, Is Collective Violence Correlated with Social Pluralism? Journal of Peace Research 34, no. 2 (May 1997): 163 75. 20. Jonathan Fox and Shmuel Sandler, Separation of Religion and State in the Twenty-First Century: Comparing the Middle East and Western Democracies, Comparative Politics 37, no. 3 (April 2005): 319; Alfred Stepan, Religion, Democracy, and the Twin Tolerations, Journal of Democracy 11, no. 4 (2000): 48 49. 21. Tariq Ramadan, Western Muslims and the Future of Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).

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Journal of Church and State be problematic, the violent means employed to achieve this end is arguably more so.

Conclusion
In reading Arguing the Just War, I was struck by the depth to which a Western, non-Muslim (Christian) scholar can engage with a tradition that is not his own. Really, the only obvious traits in common between Kelsay and the Islamic militants he investigates in his book are their sexmaleand, perhaps, their ageunknown, but one might guess. Kelsays contribution serves as a paradigm for those who work in comparative ethics and, indeed, for those of us who make the study of other peoples religious beliefs their livelihood. I was reminded in a conversation with John Kelsay (over an unrelated matter) of a graduate advisor of mine who said that one can best understand ones own religious tradition only after careful contemplation of other peoples religions. Arguing the Just War in Islam is useful not only for understanding Islam, but essential for reflecting upon the ways in which just war is argued in our own country. After the careful study of war in Islamic thought, the last pages of Kelsays book urge us, his American audience, to consider how we ought to think about Islam in our own political lives. If only we were as reflective as Kelsay, there would be fewer injustices in the world.

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