Arguably the idea of civil society is a Western concept, even a ‘Western dream’ as Serif Mardin, a celebrated Turkish historian of ideas would have us believe. If we take Mardin as a prototypical modern Muslim intellectual then we can safely assert that, there is a concern among Muslims, about the philosophical origins of the idea of civil society, along with similar liberal notions of human rights, democracy, the state and dispensation of justice. It can be further argued that, for any idea to be authentic and vibrant, for example in a particular community or in a particular civilisation, it must be grounded in its history and collective memory, for otherwise it may ‘remain abstract, cut off from their existential, cultural, historical and intellectual contexts of [their] emergence’.
Well, let us now discuss the idea of civil society. The idea of civil society rose to prominence followed by the political experience of modernity in the eighteenth century Europe. It developed out of philosophical reflection of such enlightenment and post-enlightenment thinkers as Hobbes, Adam Ferguson and Hegel among others, whose main concern was contrasting the state of nature with that of a peaceful society. These thinkers envisaged a society where people lived their lives according to certain rule of conduct, defined and agreed by all the members of any society in question. These rules were to be embodied in a social contract that constituted the basis of civilisation. So the idea of ‘civility’ or understood in terms of moral behaviour was certainly part of a ‘civil society’, to be contrasted with an anarchic state of affairs or a barbarian mode of living. In its origins, the idea of civil society was not really distinguishable form the idea of the ‘state’. However it was with Hegel who clearly contrasted civil society as separate arena both form the ‘state’ and other primordial social units as the family. In a Hegelian sense all the political space between the state and the family was the realm of the civil society. Hegel conceived the state as the ultimate expression of human reason, thus blessing it a universal character. While state embodied and symbolised the universal conscience of people, yet there was a need for particular forms of consciences to be expressed. Civil society provided precisely that arena for the expression of particularism at the cost of universalism. Hence in this socio-political space, autonomous people negotiated and re-negotiated the social contract that has already bound them with the state and hence it provides an opportunity for individuals to exercise the power of their liberty. So the modern conception of civil society is essentially about liberty, and by extension about the rule of law, about democracy, and about rights and all the trappings of a liberal bourgeoisie society.
Islam is the youngest of the Abrahamic faiths which originated in Mecca in the 610 AD when Prophet Muhammad’s claims to divine revelation were widely accepted across the Arabian Peninsula. This new religion was not less than a moral revolution in the tribal society of seventh century of Arabia embodying many of the Judeo-Christian concepts of ethical behaviour, purpose and meaning of life. As a religion Islam contrasted itself from the earlier periods of Arabian life which was termed as the period of ‘jahilliya’, an age of ignorance, moral decadence and social fragmentation. Islam presented itself as a new ethical order, whose central concerns were, like its Abrahamic predecessors not only spiritual redemption and other-worldly goals of its adherents but also, unlike Christianity, Islam concerned itself with this-worldly and even practical concerns of the believers. With subsequent expansion of Islam throughout the Middle-east by conquest, conversion and moral appeal, Islam truly emerged as a world civilisation with its own distinct system of values whose bedrock was the Quran and the Prophet guidance or the Sunna. One of the defining features of Islamic civilisation, during its formative stages, was a clear division of the whole world into two mutually exclusive categories: Dar al-Harb wa Darb al-Islam [Abode of War and Abode of Peace]. The abode of peace was the area where such values as the rule of law and Islamic brotherhood were practised, in addition to peace and social order being the normal political conditions. It was in opposition to the Abode of War where Islam was not practised and hence a barbarian state of affairs existed. It follows that within the realm of Islamic civilisation there was no place for violence as an option or as a policy instrument: it was sinful to fell a tree un-necessarily. This idea comes closer to the enlightenment notion of a just and rule-governed society. Over the course of the last 1400 years of its existence Muslims have ceaselessly, on many historical occasions, sought to revert to the ideals and goals that were first set by the Prophet himself and actualised during the ‘‘Golden Age of Islam.’’ In this light, it becomes inevitably necessary to highlight the historic experience and the guidance contained in Quran, on any topic that concerns Islam and Muslims. It follows that, the discussion of the existence of an Islamic civil society we should turn to the origins of Islamic thought that can explain things in the light of the Quran. As a matter of fact the Quran has demonstrated a sustained concern about justice and there are many quotations, some categorically stated and others suggested in a characteristically metaphorical language. For example, Quran says something like this on private property, ‘and eat up not one another’s property unjustly (in any illegal way e.g. stealing, robbing, deceiving, etc), nor give bribery to the rulers (judges before presenting your cases) that you may knowingly eat up a part of the property of others sinfully. Sura al-Baqra.:188(2). Such statements were subsequently embodied in Islamic legal thought that takes into account the importance of private property, but with a concern for justice. The interpreters were normally the ulemma or the learned people who were a fairly independent community, whose primary obligation was to interpret and deduce meaning form the divine text. The ulema were supplemented by yet another group of species; the qadis [jurists and judges] who were also, like the ulema were independent from the clutches of the state authority and executive government. The decisions and judgements of qadis were binding both on the caliph and the common man, and in turn their judgments were subject to the opinions (or fatwas) of the ulemma. Both the ulemma and qaids acted as bulwarks against the extremes of the caliphate and thus kept important checks on caliphal power. They also acted as ‘watchdogs’ against each other as well. This creative tension sustained a vibrant civil society, quite independent from the state and we can confidently assert, as Hasan Hanafi a leading Cario based contemporary Muslim philosopher observes that
Islamic theory and practice sustain a number of legitimate human groupings existing between the state and the individual. These groupings are endowed with their own sphere of autonomy free from government intrusion, which made Islamic societies historically far less monolithic and undifferentiated than some Western stereotypes of a theocratic society allow.(Hanafi: 2002)
These institutional mechanisms were accompanied by active participation and public debate on issues not only of theological interest but also issues concerning contemporary politics, social and economic problems, war and issues of justice. However the defining framework was Islamic and settings were often centres of power or metropolitan cities. These debates were called munizara, where people came and debated any topic with active interest and keen engagement. This whole affair is not less than Habermasina public sphere which is a ‘realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed. Access is guaranteed to all citizens. A portion of the public sphere comes into being in every conversation in which private individuals assemble to form a public body.’
In the Mid-east there are many coffee houses, tea houses and places where people hangout and discuss issues of the day, quite independently and with enough liberty. This has been a feature of many Mid-eastern societies for a long period of its history, as there were some six hundred coffee house in Istanbul in the reign of Selim II (1566-1574)’’. These places have always served as opportunities for exchange of information, poetry, and political commentary and of course socialisation. While these discussions don’t quite often translate into real political struggles or a sustained socio-political engagement, is an entirely different question. However, it follows that, there may be trappings of civil society existing in many Muslim societies today, if we understand civil society in its very simple definition as a place for discourse independent of family and the sate. Given this situation it may be pertinent to ask as to the possibility of a distinct civil society with an Islamic flavour. Since civil society has a lot to do with modernity it can be argued that the presence of an ‘Islamic civil society’ is a step towards what Eisetndeat has called ‘multiple modernities’ where modernity should be seen ‘as a story of continual constitution and reconstitution of a multiplicity of cultural programs’. This is a certainly helpful way of investigating about the success of the idea of civil society in Islam, but in order gain a fuller understanding of this phenomenon we will have to distinguish between two basic but useful categories: Islamic society and Muslim society. An Islamic society is a society where the law is Sharia and its strict sense of the word and all members of the society are subjected to this law. This society can be contrasted with that of a Muslim society where the majority of the people are Muslims and their lived realities may be according to Islam but Sharia is not the law. Our concern should be with the later category given the plurality of Muslim societies and diverse interpretations of the fundamental sources of Islam. So in this context one of the abiding concerns of Muslim societies has been acceptance of the government of a ‘just’ ruler [often a just prince], at the cost of individual agency and liberty. This values its legitimation in a Prophetic guidance when Muhammad advised his followers to obey ‘even a slave if he leads you according to the precepts of Islam’. The abiding concern of Muslim societies was to avoid disorder or fitna, an idea which is quite similar to the Hobbesian state of nature. So for much of its history Muslim societies have preferred a dynastic system of caliphate, a system that remained in tact until the early part of the 20th century when the Ottoman [caliphate] empire was finally dismantled. Although the Ottoman Sultan or the caliph was Turkish and his actual political sovereignty extended to a rather limited geo-graphical area but his legitimacy as a caliph extended far beyond the boundaries of the empire as far as to, for example, India.
But much of political discourse and concepts about civil society in Islam revolve around the impact of the West and its consequent results in the modern period. The first direct experience of the Muslim world with Western hegemony started off from Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798, who brought scientists, physicians and also intellectuals and scholars. This encounter was followed by colonisation of many Muslim countries and subsequent emergence of independent nation-states. These new states resisted colonial and imperial oppression by uniting different elements of the society on nationalist grounds along the secular lines. While these new governments pursued modernization polices along secular lines the ulema and the religious establishment pursued to resist these change and pushed for their own programme of Islamisation as opposed to copying Western modernity, as Ira Lapidus observes that, ‘Muslim religious life, in general, became separated from state institutions and flourishes as a differentiated element of ‘civil society.’ Given continued weakness of secular states, and in some cases state-failure in the Muslim world the religious establishment has come to the foreground. The claims of these religious groups is often a reversion to a nostalgic past or re-enacting, or re-grafting a old institutions. These groups are usually found around mosques, madrassas, awqaf groups (endowments for social welfare). Ironically these groups are also fundamentalist ones whose interpretation of Islam is rather exclusivist and literalist, and view the West values as culturall hegemony, nevertheless they form par of the civil society in the post-colonial Muslim World. For example these civil society groups along with the collaboration of Bazaris (usually petty bourgeoisie) during the reign of Reza Shah Pehlavi (1952-1979) in Iran effectively challenged the state and were even ultimately successful in overthrowing the regime in 1979 through a popular revolution. However, disillusionment with the ideal of the revolution has resulted in a process of questioning the legitimacy of an Islamic government, excesses of the revolutionary state and concerns about human liberty and freedom of expression. This whole reformist political movement, originating in 1997 following the election of President Muhammed Khatami, is led by active citizen groups including the media, such independent intellectuals as Abdolkarim Soroush and liberal theologians like Ayatollah Murtaza Mutahiri. The idea idea of civil society or ‘jame’h mandani stood in opposition to Islamic Society or jame’eh eslami as promoted by the segment of the state that adhered to a totalitarian mode of governance’.
Given the active participation of many Muslims in the public life of Muslim societies, historically as well as in some instances in modern Muslim states, it can be asserted that there is much room for an Islamic civil society. The presence of various intellectual traditions in the Islamic thought that seeks to check the excesses of the Islamic government established in a caliphate system, and a sustained emphasis on redistributive justice in the Quran and the prophetic traditions gives credence to the idea of a diverse Islamic society that accommodates equally diverse opinions and interpretations of the message of Islam.
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