History has witnessed numerous schools of thoughts devising projects to integrate state with their own principles including major religions, manifesting itself into Christianity in the form of Kingdom of God, Motherland in Hinduism and so is the demand of Islamic State. The theorization of Islamic state extends vastly in modern times producing practical layout of installing Islam in modern conception of State, courtesy of the scholarly contributions of thinkers such as Abu Ala Maududi who evaluates power to be the source of political overhauling in favor of Islam intersecting private sphere along with the public sphere to counter the embedded Western imperialism. He also relies on an instrumentalist view of a state which would operate under the influence of Islam accountable to the sovereignty of one God that will prevail in all conflicts with the state power.
But this tradition concerning politics of means is challenged by Hallaq, who highlights the incompatibility of the modern state with Islam. Another view is introduced by Iqbal, a philosopher and poet, who envisions a project for Islamization of the State as a substantial means to confront colonialism and bring Muslims together. When observed comparatively, Iqbal overtones unprecedented optimism in conception of Modern state (broadly same as the view of Islamist) while Hallaq outrightly rejects the modern state as an Islamic entity given its objective.
The following enquiry counterposes two communitarian thinkers, Iqbal and Hallaq, scrutinizing their politics of means in a parallel yet unified in objective of realising the meaning of State for the Muslims to unify Ummah. What would be the points of disagreement between Hallaq and Iqbal if they were contemporaries or would they come together in their thesis? Would Iqbal reject the state in its totality as un-Islamic and criticise the quest of Islamists as Hallaq does to reconcile the state with Islam? On this spectrum of statecraft would Iqbal still find himself vouching for the blend offered by Islamist thinkers given today’s circumstances?
IQBAL’S VIEW OF MODERN STATE
Iqbal in his spirit, advocated for liberal reasoning of the human mind following the tradition of the prophet, who Himself granted autonomy to the human concerned while facing a conundrum revolving around the principle of justice, equality and rights. One such instance was recorded when Ma’ad ibn Jabal was appointed as ruler of Yemen, the Prophet asked him to employ his own reason in jurisprudence if there is absence of any clue in Quran and Hadith. But for Iqbal the monopoly of reason imparted through unrestrained liberal thinking could possibly disintegrate the individual from the community through availing maximum autonomy with minimum accountability.
While laying the steps for regaining the glorious political unity of Islam Iqbal also puts an emphasis on power as a means to acquire the lost reverence of Ummah. It stems from the poetic description which Iqbal quotes in his work written by a nationalist poet, Ziya that ‘In the international world the weak find no sympathy; power alone deserves respect.’ (Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, pg. 134). Although spiritual as may Iqbal sounds, his practicality of solutions are to be taken as the cornerstone of creating a cohesive, objectively intertwined Muslim state which prioritizes self-development temporarily before embarking on its mission of forming a communion of republics i.e., League of [Muslim] Nations.
As Iqbal goes on with his argument, he makes it clear that “For the present every Muslim nation must sink into deeper self, temporarily focus her vision on herself alone, until all are strong and powerful to form a living family of republics”. (Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, pg. 134). Iqbal also warns of the unforeseen rise in chauvinism and imperialism among the republics and makes an appeal for the harmonization and unification of common spiritual aspirations eliminating racial and cultural differentiation and inspiring the project of transcendental egalitarianism of Islam.
When faced with this enormous task that is integration of republics there is a tacit requirement of an entitled law-making body for a state whether assigned to an individual or a group of individuals, commonly known as Ijtihad in Islamic terminology. The enquiring nature of human intellect is not to be understood as the product of unrestrained liberal thought only but it also holds a central image in Islamic jurisprudence although differing in its moral framework which is inclined toward Islamic principles. Iqbal maintains his stand on the problems of nationalism causing barbarism subject to occurrence within a civilization in the process of building universalistic principles of Ijtihad.
A crude example adopted by Iqbal complimenting Turkey which was going under modern state-building blended with Islamic values. And for the coming of Ijtihad there must be an authority (Khilafat) to regulate the governance. The Turkish solution involves a modern yet Islamic interpretation concerned with the institution of Khilafat that supersedes the authority from individual to a body of persons (in this case, democracy) which Iqbal finds perfectly sound with the spirit of Islam.
IQBAL ON MODERN FEDERAL STATE
The route to self-development holds a pivotal position in Iqbal’s view of state primarily drawn on communal outlines, whether it involves an individual or state. In his Allahabad address, Iqbal discards the narrow definition of communalism and illuminates a viewpoint in which the community enhances individuality of man through laws, customs, literature and cultural notions.
Moving to the project of state building in India, Iqbal calls for a tolerant cultural autonomy among communities to ensure their free self-development and to achieve harmonic conditions within and outside its sphere. This leads to the demand for the federal state comprising Muslim nation within an Indian state defying centralizing tendencies in favor of the majority Hindu community and the imperial British. For Iqbal, communalism in its constructive aspect could lay the foundation for a harmonious state which embraces heterogeneity while keeping the unity of state intact.
Iqbal outlines the religion of Islam in opposition to the institutional nature of Christianity in the form of the Church. The backlash witnessed by the church from the thinkers of Enlightenment comes short to Iqbal who claims that it fails to capture the landscape of Islamic state through the same logic. He says,.
“It is a State conceived as a contractual organism long before Rousseau ever thought of such a thing, and animated by an ethical ideal which regards man not as an earth-rooted creature, defined by this or that portion of the earth, but as a spiritual being understood in terms of a social mechanism, and possessing rights and duties as a living factor in that mechanism.” ( Presidential Address, Allahabad, 29th December 1930)
HALLAQ’S VIEW OF MODERN STATE
The endpoint of Iqbal’s proposition of modern state is the starting point for Hallaq’s critique of modern state. He basically compares various variables of the pre-modern Islamic Governance with the modern State and comes to an end of the former and latter being incompatible together.
Hallaq’s starts with an offence to the metaphysics of modern state which is an inward looking complex focused on its own creation and also bounded by its own standards due to the anthropocentric nature which emphasises positivism as the governing element of the state. What happens is the positivist conception gives primacy to the present and the philosophy of ‘here and now’ and observes history and traditionalism as a mere collection of facts created with outdated intelligence. For the state it becomes a necessity to impart its own truth to legitimise its own will in monopolising power to subordinate and marginalized other present truths.
Drawing a parallel, Hallaq highlights the rift of this empirical metaphysics with Islam that discards dominance of positivism and assigns the moral autonomy to be the leading value. The application of moral values creates a moral subject with restrained autonomy operating under the instruction of a sovereign working beyond our conventional reasoning (God’s Will). On the other hand, a modern state creates a rational subject based on unrestrained autonomy of his own reason who also bears the will of the state and promotes the absoluteness of the state’s will through his own actions under the veil of science and logic. The individual’s intrinsic economic nature is also manipulated by the modern state through placement of material realm above the moral realm. Devoid of accountability, the modern economic man becomes naturally inclined to a selfish perception of material accumulation and profit-making. The modern state tends to collaborate with globalisation and subsequently manufactures nature as a brute force to be exploited by homo economicus. The material orientation is adequately challenged in Islamic purview of economy having its guiding principle vested in a moral dictum of God (Allah), although Islam creates conditions of material acquisition for humans while at the same time it maintains a touch of generosity in the favour of poor and underprivileged humans.
CONCLUSION
The unfolding of postcolonial history proved to be contrary to the expectation of Iqbal. The emergence of globalization in its different forms changed the whole trajectory of state building. Although Iqbal has talked about individual progress of a Muslim nations but that was on a temporal basis which fails to translate and the pitfall of self-centric policies soon paved the way to state egoism/power politics (Baylis. J, The Globalisation of World Politics) i.e. state become an end in itself sacrificing the moral framework of Iqbal.
Globalization gave impetus to information and communication technology which helped in the creation of a surveillance state that enjoys the monopoly in the art of surveillance over the bodies of the subjects through its own institutions (governmentality) as demonstrated in the Western states and adopted by present so-called Islamic states.
Also, nationalism reached its highest point with the rise of far-right movements despising the cultural, economic, political and social impact of globalisation responsible for national disintegration. Paradoxically, the state building in the premise of Islam as proposed by Iqbal proved to be in stark contrast in recent decades with his basic philosophy of Ummah.
Can it be argued that Iqbal has gone too far with his compliments regarding devoted republicanism which is one side of the coin of modern statecraft but couldn’t envision the other side riddled with rational majoritarianism and state egoism? Was it more than just a desperate attempt in which Iqbal relied on a modern state solution to mobilise Ummah as one coherent body against colonial powers?
References
Iqbal, M. (1989). The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam. California: Stanford University Press.
John Baylis, S. S. (2020). The Globalisation of World Politics, 8th Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sheridan, M. F. (2012). Discipline and Punish:The Birth of the Prison. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
Wael.B.Hallaq. (2012). The Impossible State, Politics and Modernity’s Moral Predicament. New York: Columbia University Press.
Sir Muhammad Iqbal’s Presidential Address, 25th Session of the All-India Muslim League,Allahabad, 29 December 1930 (Speech)
