Al-Ahram Weekly returns to the fray with a new round of Ramadan Debates. This year, contestants will examine the Islamist project: has it failed, or does it continue to form a government-in-waiting? Omayma Abdel-Latif challenges Sheikh Rashed Al-Ghenoushi In his home in the Sudbury Hills suburb of northeast London, 57-year-old Sheikh Rashed Al-Ghenoushi talks, preaches and lectures about Islam. His most important task, however, is to theorise an "Islamic order of things". As the leader of the Tunisian Islamist opposition movement known as Hizb Al-Nahda (the Party of Rebirth), which engaged in intensive political action in the '80s and early '90s, Sheikh Ghenoushi barely had time then to create a theoretical framework for the 'Islamic agenda' his party was propagating. A brief honeymoon between the then newly-appointed president, Zein Al-Abidin Bin Ali, and the Islamist movement came to an abrupt end when the movement embarked on an ambitious plan to challenge the government in the 1989 elections. In so doing, Al-Nahda was clearly breaching a previous agreement with the government in which it had pledged to keep a low profile. The movement was outlawed, and Al-Ghenoushi was forced to leave the country. He has lived in Britain ever since. One of the most prominent contemporary Islamic thinkers writing on political Islam, Al-Ghenoushi is convinced that Islam has an in-built sociopolitical mechanism which enables it to renew and reassert itself against internal decay and external threat. He has published several books, including We and the West; The Islamic Movement and Modernisation; Women, between the Qur'an and Society; The Rights of Non-Muslim Citizens in the Islamic State; and Destiny and Man in Ibn Taymiya's Thought. The sheikh, as his followers and visitors call him, does not see his stay in Britain as exile. Rather, it provides him with an opportunity to reflect and put into writing what he has been preaching in politics. Would you agree with the proposition, put forth by some Western scholars and some secular intellectuals in the Arab world, that the concept of combining religion with politics -- specifically, political Islam -- has come to a dead end, or, in their words, has proved a total failure? First of all, the notion that politics and religion are separate in any given society doesn't exist. In its most fundamental sense, politics involves a set of active links, both positive and negative, between civil society and institutions of power. In this sense, there has been little separation between religion and politics anywhere. I would like to point out that the Islamic project, as I see it, while based on divine references, is fundamentally dependent on the human element. Therefore, the possibility of success or failure cannot be completely ruled out. Yet I see no signs to validate this claim that the Islamic project -- which embodies the politics of Islam -- has in any way failed. I would place such a claim within the framework of ideological hostility because the understanding of Muslim politics seems to have slipped beyond the grasp of some 'experts'. How can one judge the success or failure of any political ideology? Only by how popular this political concept is. In any given democratic system, the party's success or failure is measured by the number of votes it manages to garner in the electoral process. I challenge this claim of failure by saying that no Islamic party in any given Arab country has ever participated in a free election and failed to achieve a remarkable victory through the ballot boxes. In fact, in the absence of a truly democratic process, it becomes absurd to speak of the failure of the Islamist programme. The Algerian example is a case in point: the secular project did not pass the test of power in the ballot boxes. So it opted for the use of force to defend the modernism they claimed the Islamists were going to destroy. A similar process took place in Turkey, where the Islamists defended democracy and civil society, while the secularists sought the protection of the military and foreign assistance, closed schools and private businesses, and even interfered with the way people dressed. This is what is happening in Tunisia as well. Now the argument should be set as follows: where does the secular project derive its legitimacy from, if not from the tanks and use of violence which in any civilised country go against the very basics of the modernist project? The role played by the Western powers, which stood against the rise to power of an Islamist party, worsened the situation. Had they ceased supporting and assisting the regime, violence would have ended a long time ago. But the democratic West and a chunk of the secular Arab elite, which allied itself with it, chose to support the attack on democracy when it served their interests. But achieving electoral success does not negate the fact that the absence of a detailed political programme remains one of the characteristics of any Islamist project, reflecting its inability to go beyond the founding texts. We have to understand that there are two poles of Islamicisation. One is from top to bottom and involves power sharing. The other is from the bottom up, i.e., the Islamicisation of the society in which you lay the foundation of the social order. Islam places high emphasis on civil society and its organisations, while the secularist project in Islamic countries has focused on control of the state apparatus and the use of this apparatus to impose what it calls 'modernisation' -- and which is, in reality, Westernisation and the fragmentation of the traditional social structure, in order to paralyse its defences. So the traditional structures have collapsed, but no modern structure has taken their place. This has destroyed equilibrium and has made of the state the sole player. This is dictatorship, and the Islamist movement's fundamental project is to restore equilibrium to the benefit of society. It is not true that the Islamist project does not have a political programme. There is a whole body of literature written on that. The Islamic order is not just about the implementation of the Shari'a. But how can you contest the validity of such an order when it was not put into action in the first place? The Islamists ran for elections in professional syndicates, student unions, municipalities. This was based on a certain agenda. People didn't elect them because they pray more than the others, or have beards, but rather because they manage to get things done. To counter your claim, one could very well say that the policy programmes of other Arab political actors are not in better shape. The question here is not why the Islamists did not succeed, but rather how the Islamists -- despite all the physical violence committed against them -- have managed to survive under such repressive circumstances, and in a situation stacked against them. All the evidence points to the fact that, in its broad outlines, the Islamist trend is a moderate trend, facing the extremism of Western secularism and the organisations that depend upon it. Islamism counters violence with moderation, and is integrating an increasing number of democratic concepts. It has come to represent the hopes of the people for the liberation of Palestine and Lebanon, their hopes for democracy and justice, for the unity of the Arab and Muslim community [Umma] in opposition to capitalist American clientelism. Does that justify the brutal acts committed by some radical groups in the name of establishing an Islamic order? We have witnessed two forms of violence: official violence committed by the state, and popular violence committed in the name of Islam, as a reaction to this official violence. We always stand against any form of violence unless it is exercised against a foreign force. As we have stated before, violence should not be used as a way of expressing intellectual and political protest against the existing order within the nation [Umma], and both sides are to be blamed for the use of violence. But the reason, in my opinion, is that the government has drastically curtailed the possibilities for political participation granted to moderate Islamists while strengthening the action of the security forces against Islamist radicals. Consequently, the intensification of the state-Islamist conflict seems to correspond more to changes in government strategy with regard to the Islamist movements than to the evolution of an Islamist discourse on the legitimacy of political violence. So do you think that the best approach to eliminate violence is to have these radical groups co-opted by the state? It is important to remember that democracy is not only a mode of government based on the recognition of difference and its passive management. It is also an educational sylabus capable of gathering even its enemies and bringing them to accept and comply with its mechanisms. Those who refuse these mechanisms and insist on the use of violence to impose their opinion can easily be marginalised by democracy. This is what happened with the most extreme right- and left-wing movements in Europe and Latin America, where most of them turned from violence and threatening democracy to the formation of political parties that actually support democracy. Those who insisted on employing strategies of direct action were pushed aside. In Israel, for example, people get engaged in fiery debates about a variety of different issues, but violence is not used as a way of expressing political protest. The state has managed to co-opt all the political trends, no matter how extreme they might be. It goes without saying that the so-called Muslim extremists are not going to be any more extreme than their Jewish counterparts, but because there is democracy in Israel -- only for its Jewish citizens, of course -- there is no need to use physical violence. In the Arab world, the problem was that the process of economic liberalisation which swept most of these societies off their feet had no parallel in the political domain. True, the scope of violence has been reduced compared to the [early to mid-] '90s, but the reasons why this violence broke out in the first place are still very much there, and this is due not so much to the success of the security apparatus as to the willingness of the main Islamist trend to grow more rational and moderate. At any rate, there seems to be no political development to guarantee that such violence is not going to break out in the future. Unfortunately, this state-Islamist conflict affects the social, political and economic fabric of the country, leaving it vulnerable to external pressure. No state will be able to ward off outside pressure unless it acts from a unified base. A just democratic state -- even if not Muslim -- could achieve more victory and progress than an unjust Muslim state. You have stated in your writings that, in a truly Islamic society, the state will wither away. If the central concern is the conduct of man and not the state, why do some of the Islamist movements strive to attain such a secular goal? The Islamist project is concerned primarily with the individual and society, not the political regime. The problem is that the latter inserts itself between us and the people. From an Islamic perspective, the state has very limited functions and, as the community gets stronger, the need for the state diminishes. We seek power sharing basically as a way to combat foreign aggression, because violence continues to be the norm in the world. The state's main function is to deter aggression against the Muslims, but instead states now keep people away from religion in the name of combating fundamentalism. The state in the Arab world has been acting like the church in medieval Europe -- the guardian of its own version of the faith. It runs the mosques, imposes a certain kind of official religiosity... This concept does not exist in Islam. It is similar in a way to the Jacobean secularism adopted by the French Revolution, which did not protect the right of religious conviction. It doesn't even protect the right to choose a dress code, and this is how the veil issue came about in France, Turkey and Tunisia. But some argue that this right is not even protected within an Islamic system, since the veil is meant to be imposed on women anyway. Within the Islamic perception, there is no uniform. The veil cannot be imposed by force, in accordance with the Islamic principle that 'there is no compulsion in religion'. The extremist secularist project in France, Turkey or Tunisia, which interferes in private life, is the other face of extremist Islamism. But it is, in Islamic systems like Saudi Arabia and Iran. We do not regard Saudi Arabia as the ideal type of an Islamic state. There are plenty of applications of the Islamic system. Because there is no church in Islam, the right to ijtihad [independent interpretation] remains open. Nobody monopolises interpretation of the text. It is up to the community of believers to choose a certain interpretation, and a leader from among the candidates. You have stated that Muslims should share power in a secular state. Does that not go against one of the main features of the Islamists' project of denouncing the existing order? The answer is no. Muslims should not hesitate to participate in the establishment of a secular democratic system. It is their right as individuals and communities to contribute to efforts to establish such a system. In this way, the Muslims would seek the establishment of a 'rational government', due to their inability to establish the 'government of legitimacy', as Ibn Khaldun puts it. So it is their duty to participate politically in establishing and administering government in order to serve the interests of the Umma and prevent evil. Failing to do so will undermine these interests and allow evil to dominate society. It should be made clear that the choice in this case doesn't involve an Islamic government versus a non-Islamic one, but rather a dictatorship versus a democracy. Here power sharing becomes a means to achieve mutual goals such as national solidarity, respect for human rights, civil liberties, cultural and social development and the deterrence of external threat. The problem lies in convincing the 'other' of the right of the Islamists, just like other political groups, to engage in political activities and compete for power through democratic means. The problem in our part of the world is the hegemony of despotism. One of the basic charges leveled against the Islamists is that they have applied double standards in politics: they allow themselves to use the democratic process to reach power and, once they seize it, they turn into the very authoritarian regimes they stood up against. How valid is this argument? Islamic rule is by nature democratic. Basically, because it derives its legitimacy from the people and, if the people withdraw their support, it loses its right to remain in power. The Islamists don't speak in the name of God, therefore anyone has the right to oppose them, and by so doing he will not be opposing God in them. But we represent a way of interpreting Islam, and other non-Islamic ideologies could very well compete with [this interpretation]. I don't think the Islamic moral system would allow for double standards. I do not think it would be appropriate to ask a secular government to grant us legitimacy as political actors then, having seized power, take away their right to be there. This might be the stand of some radical groups that reject the principle of democracy altogether, but definitely not that of the moderates. Islamic ethics are based on the idea that you must do as you would be done by. But according to some of these groups, the 14-century-old civilisation of Islam has been reduced to just one element: implementation of the Shari'a. The central concern of the Qur'an is the conduct of man and the establishment of justice. So, just as in Kantian terms no ideal knowledge is possible without the regulative ideas of reason (such as first cause), so in Qur'anic terms no real morality is possible without the regulative idea of God and the last judgement. This is the Shari'a. What many Orientalists and even indigenous writers do is to confuse Shari'a, which is fixed facts, revealed in Qur'an and unchanged by time, with fiqh [jurisprudence], the body of literature produced by the ulama, which is subject to change. The Shari'a gives continuity and character to Islam. It is the common thread that links the first generations of Muslims with generations to come. If everything is subject to change, there would never be an Islamic identity as such, and Islam would have been a surrealistic text. The Islamic order is based on two main principles: justice and shura [consultation]; and the implementation of the Shari'a. If such an implementation is not viable under certain circumstances, the emphasis would be on achieving justice and democracy. Therefore, I consider that the secular democratic system is semi-Islamic because justice is one of its basic components. Ibn Khaldun classified regimes in three main categories: dictatorship (rule by the use of force), rational government and Shari'a government. So if circumstances are not suitable for implementing the Shari'a, we must accept rational rule, a rule that is based on respect for human rights and justice, because Islam's basic tenet is the achievement of the Umma's best interest. If that is achieved, even though not under Islam's banner, then well and good.
