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The Sharia State: Arab Spring and Democratization
Set against the backdrop of the Arab Spring, The Sharia State examines the Islamist concept of political order. This order is based on a new interpretation of sharia and has been dubbed "the Islamic state" by Islamists. The concept of "the Islamic state," has been elevated to a political agenda and it is this agenda that is examined here. In contrast to the prevailing view which sees the Arab Spring as a revolution, this book argues that the phenomenon has been neither a Spring, nor a revolution. The term 'Arab Spring,' connotes a just rebellion that led to toppling dictators and authoritarian rulers, yet in The Sharia State, Bassam Tibi challenges the unchecked assumption that the seizure of leadership by Islamists is a part of the democratization of the Middle East. Providing a new perspective on the relationship between the Arab Spring and democratization, this book is an essential read for students and scholars of Middle Eastern Studies, Islamic Studies and Politics.
- GenresIslam
256 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
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July 6, 2017
To start with the good: Bassam Tibi, the Syrian-German political scientist who authored the book, is right about plenty of things. He makes a good case that Islamism is not coterminous with Islam. He makes a good case that democracy is valuable, that various Arab dictatorships were rightful targets for popular uprisings. And he's right to lament the ways in which the "Arab Spring" has been co-opted by Islamist movements. He's even right to criticize discourse about "Islamophobia" as obstructing our ability to see and talk clearly.
But then for the downside: Tibi has an ax to grind with pretty much every "Islamic" or "Western" scholar aside from his personal heroes. Tibi leaps from a criticism of Islamism to saying that, 'obviously,' there can be no role for religion in politics whatsoever. In Arab countries, he says that democracies should "engage with" but not "empower" Islamist movements, but offers little sense of what it would look like to democratically do the former without serious risk of the latter. Some of his views constructing a "Euro-Islam" with no space for da'wa should rightly be rejected by Muslims in Western countries. He compromises his own "Islamism"/"Islam" distinction by spending a while attacking classical Islam without any modifiers (e.g., "Freedom of belief conceded to others in Islam applies only to Jews and Christians, but it is a limited freedom").
Tibi's style is intensely repetitive, and yet it's difficult get to actually sort out his discussion of shari'a: he speaks positively of "the original Qur'anic meaning of shari'a as ethics," labels the political shari'a as understood by Islamism as "an invented shari'a," inveighs heavily against Islamist advocacy of "the shari'a state," speaks ambivalently about "traditional shari'a [as] an interpretive law, mostly restricted to civil law and to a penal code," grants that it was "used in the past to legitimate a political rule," criticizes the "constructed historical shari'a as inherently opposed to "democratic constitutionalism," and eventually advocates for "the de-essentialization of any system of shari'a." What does that finally amount to? To figure that out, the reader has to put in more work than the writer did, I think.
And for as much as one entire chapter revolves around advocating "the Westphalian synthesis" as superior to both a Pax Americana and a Pax Islamica, Tibi doesn't seem to care to clearly define any of those terms for his readers.
Tibi comes across (and I say this with as much due respect as I can muster) as a quite arrogant (and wildly self-referential) propagandist of a fringe view, which he variously calls "Islam of the enlightened turn," "civil Islam," and eventually even "Averroist Islam," with limited precedent (hence his incessant references to Ali Abdel-Raziq and Mohammed Abed Al-Jabri). I'm still glad I read the book, but Tibi's vision seems dead on arrival, as far as a viable approach toward remaking what he calls "the Islamicate." Again, it had some good points, but they were outweighed by its difficulties.
But then for the downside: Tibi has an ax to grind with pretty much every "Islamic" or "Western" scholar aside from his personal heroes. Tibi leaps from a criticism of Islamism to saying that, 'obviously,' there can be no role for religion in politics whatsoever. In Arab countries, he says that democracies should "engage with" but not "empower" Islamist movements, but offers little sense of what it would look like to democratically do the former without serious risk of the latter. Some of his views constructing a "Euro-Islam" with no space for da'wa should rightly be rejected by Muslims in Western countries. He compromises his own "Islamism"/"Islam" distinction by spending a while attacking classical Islam without any modifiers (e.g., "Freedom of belief conceded to others in Islam applies only to Jews and Christians, but it is a limited freedom").
Tibi's style is intensely repetitive, and yet it's difficult get to actually sort out his discussion of shari'a: he speaks positively of "the original Qur'anic meaning of shari'a as ethics," labels the political shari'a as understood by Islamism as "an invented shari'a," inveighs heavily against Islamist advocacy of "the shari'a state," speaks ambivalently about "traditional shari'a [as] an interpretive law, mostly restricted to civil law and to a penal code," grants that it was "used in the past to legitimate a political rule," criticizes the "constructed historical shari'a as inherently opposed to "democratic constitutionalism," and eventually advocates for "the de-essentialization of any system of shari'a." What does that finally amount to? To figure that out, the reader has to put in more work than the writer did, I think.
And for as much as one entire chapter revolves around advocating "the Westphalian synthesis" as superior to both a Pax Americana and a Pax Islamica, Tibi doesn't seem to care to clearly define any of those terms for his readers.
Tibi comes across (and I say this with as much due respect as I can muster) as a quite arrogant (and wildly self-referential) propagandist of a fringe view, which he variously calls "Islam of the enlightened turn," "civil Islam," and eventually even "Averroist Islam," with limited precedent (hence his incessant references to Ali Abdel-Raziq and Mohammed Abed Al-Jabri). I'm still glad I read the book, but Tibi's vision seems dead on arrival, as far as a viable approach toward remaking what he calls "the Islamicate." Again, it had some good points, but they were outweighed by its difficulties.
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