| dc.description.abstract | This study focuses on the issues of politics and power in contemporary Muslim societies. It is a study of the reformist trends in contemporary Muslim societies, and Islam s relation with politics and human rights is viewed from this perspective. The starting point for the discussion in this paper is the fact that UN standards of human rights are violated by most of the governments of contemporary Muslim societies. Neither in theory, as manifested through the various Islamic schemes for human rights (Mayer 1995), nor in practice do contemporary Muslim societies adhere adequately to the standards of human rights. Given this, the question is 'why is that so?' and 'what can be done to improve the situation?'
The study compares the theory of the Sudanese professor An-Na´im with that of Ayatollah Khomeini. Neither one of these persons denies the fact that the Islamic law is in conflict with UN standards of human rights. Both persons are declared Muslims, and both justify their theories by using Islamic argumentation, and yet their views are diametrically opposed to each other. Comparing these two extremes, this study tries to throw some light on the question of the relationship between Islam and human rights. It also tries to explore the feasible sets of political regimes or traditions that may enjoy stable majority support in contemporary Muslim societies in the future.
Chapter 2 gives a compact presentation of the Islamic law (the Shari´a) and the points of its conflicts with UN standards of human rights. This chapter suggests that The Shari´a conflicts with UN standards of human rights with regards to the status of individuals before the law, as it discriminates against women, non-Muslims and Muslims who convert to other religions. Furthermore, being a pre-modern law, the Shari´a recognises slavery. The Shari´a also conflicts with the standards of human rights with regards to its penal law and legal procedures, since it legalises torture and inhuman punishments, and it violates the individual s entitlement to equal access to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal.
Chapter 3 presents a systematic analysis of the contemporary reformist trends in Muslim societies. This general analysis should help understanding An-Na´im and Khomeini in a broader context of Islamic reformism. The contemporary reformist trends are divided into six categories according to the object, the means, the agent and the orientation of reform. These trends are: the secularist, the conservative, the fundamentalist, the neo-traditionalist, the reformist and the modernist.
Chapter 4 presents a systematic analysis of An-Na´im s reform theory that is introduced through his famous book Towards Islamic Reformation (1990). For An-Na´im Islam is sacred, but capable of development and transformation through time without this incurring a violation of its spirit. An-Na´im represents a drastic reform of the Islamic law (the Shari´a) in accordance with UN standards of human rights.
Chapter 5 presents Ayatollah Khomeini as a paradigm of Islamic fundamentalism and a counterpart to the reform theory of An-Na´im. For Khomeini Islam is a sacred, unchanging and eternally determined body of rules. He disregards UN standards of human rights.
Chapter 6 discusses the principle points of agreement and/or disagreement between An-Na´im and Khomeini. There are two important points of overlapping between Khomeini and An-Na´im: neither one of them is secularist; both of them claim universal validity to their principles (none of them are cultural- relativist). But these points of similarity prove, at a deeper level of analysis, to constitute rather the deep ideological disagreement between the two persons.
Chapter 7 turns back to the classification scheme presented in chapter 3, and tries modestly to explore the feasible sets of political regimes or reformist trends that may enjoy stable majority support in present-day Muslim societies. This study suggests that the feasible sets of political regimes or models that may gain stable majority support in contemporary Muslim societies is to be found somewhere between the positions of Khomeini and An-Na´im. Stable majority support can only be achieved by political regimes or approaches that conform to the international standards of human rights and the native cultural tradition of the society concerned. Secular regimes fail to gain stable majority support because they do not have roots in the cultural and religious traditions of Muslim societies. Another reason for their failure is while they modernise their societies, they do not democratise them. Thus the population feels politically marginalized and without a voice. The modernisation schemes implemented by secular regimes also bring about socio-economic inequality together with cultural and religious alienation. This developmental crisis is presented as the main cause of the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in contemporary Muslim societies. With growing socio-economic inequality and cultural alienation, Muslim populations are inclined to see the secularist formulas as the problem.
Fundamentalist regimes fail to gain stable majority support because they ignore the civic and political rights of their populations. This causes political dissatisfaction among people that gradually increases and in time becomes a popular movement demanding freedom and the enjoyment of civic and political rights. Fundamentalist regimes also have proven to be unable to solve socio-economic problems in their countries, and this failure increases political demands for changes in the political system.
This study suggests that regimes which really share some of the political power with the traditional Ulama have greater chance for gaining stability in the long term. Jordan provides a good example for such a regime. The Jordanian regime has proved to be more stable and less oppressive than many other contemporary Muslim regimes. This example should however not lead to a simplistic generalisation that the collaboration and cooperation with the Ulama would always produce a more stable and more liberal regime. If a regime, which follows a policy of cooperation and collaboration with the Ulama, wants to comply with human rights standards, it should always check the Ulama s position in the government less they get the upper hand and impose the Shari´a. A firm ground for the application of human rights standards in Muslim societies would however require a profound modernisation of (the law of) Islam. | nor |