1 00:00:08,940 --> 00:00:13,920 The idea of the universal caliphate or the caliphate of man is not only a theory of 2 00:00:13,920 --> 00:00:19,710 the sovereignty of the Ummah as a body over its rulers and political institutions, 3 00:00:19,710 --> 00:00:27,540 although it is that but also of the restriction of the Obama's authority to whatever God has delegated and commanded. 4 00:00:27,540 --> 00:00:32,310 The sum of the Covenant of Vice Jahren C from the constitutional standpoint, 5 00:00:32,310 --> 00:00:39,420 is the supremacy of God's law over any other authority, but through the consultative activities of the people. 6 00:00:39,420 --> 00:00:47,250 The Covenant of Vice Jency can thus be summarised as the Shari'a of God and consultation of the people, 7 00:00:47,250 --> 00:00:54,840 or text and consultation, reason and revelation, constraint and freedom. 8 00:00:54,840 --> 00:01:03,510 This is the problem that remains to be untangled. How are all of these various materials woven together and what contradictions and 9 00:01:03,510 --> 00:01:09,150 ambiguities are produced by this attempt to do justice to the divine sovereignty, 10 00:01:09,150 --> 00:01:14,730 the rule of law, popular sovereignty of some kind, representation, 11 00:01:14,730 --> 00:01:22,260 expertise and the residual authority of ordinary believers to speak and act as God's Cale's? 12 00:01:22,260 --> 00:01:26,640 I believe the best way to do this is to proceed carefully to the distinctly divine 13 00:01:26,640 --> 00:01:32,040 and distinctly popular elements of this theory of legitimacy and sovereignty. 14 00:01:32,040 --> 00:01:42,500 For though divine and popular sovereignty are formed from the same relationship, their elements remain conceptually distinct and are often intention. 15 00:01:42,500 --> 00:01:47,510 Welcome Timidly Centavo took the Oxford podcast on new books about the Middle East. 16 00:01:47,510 --> 00:01:52,820 These are some of the books written by our members or books that our community are talking about. 17 00:01:52,820 --> 00:02:00,680 My name is a Summer Azami and I teach contemporary Islamic studies. My guest today is Andrew Much, a scholar who is no stranger to Oxford. 18 00:02:00,680 --> 00:02:07,070 He completed his detail at Ox's Department of Politics and International Relations as a martial scholar over a decade ago after graduating 19 00:02:07,070 --> 00:02:14,000 undertook for 10 years in the political science department at Yale University and has taught Islamic law at Yale and NYU law schools. 20 00:02:14,000 --> 00:02:20,620 His book, Islam and Liberal Citizenship The Search for an Overlapping Consensus, published by Oxford University Press in 2009, 21 00:02:20,620 --> 00:02:27,680 is an exploration of Islamic juridical discourse on the right societies and obligations of Muslim minorities in liberal polities, 22 00:02:27,680 --> 00:02:34,790 and won the 2009 Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion from the American Academy of Religion under a second book. 23 00:02:34,790 --> 00:02:40,700 The subject of today's podcast is The Face of Man Popular Sovereignty in Modern Islamic Sold, 24 00:02:40,700 --> 00:02:44,120 published by Harvard University Press in 2019, as we will see. 25 00:02:44,120 --> 00:02:50,030 It examines the problem to define and popular sovereignty in modern Islamic sold through to the Arab uprisings. 26 00:02:50,030 --> 00:02:53,540 Andrew, welcome to Book Talk. Thank you very much for having me. 27 00:02:53,540 --> 00:03:00,880 I'm delighted to be here spiritually in Oxford and I'm very, very grateful for your interest in my book. 28 00:03:00,880 --> 00:03:05,060 And thank you for joining us. I mean, this is one of the more positive aspects. 29 00:03:05,060 --> 00:03:12,250 And we need to take so many positives, if we can, of the kind of crisis that we can actually host people from different parts of the world. 30 00:03:12,250 --> 00:03:18,560 But it would be wonderful to have you in Oxford, but it's wonderful to have you been in it, so to speak, from Massachusetts. 31 00:03:18,560 --> 00:03:26,930 So tell us something about the writing of your book. When did you start? What sources did you use and when did it take you in terms of travel? 32 00:03:26,930 --> 00:03:31,910 Well, the origins of the book are around 2010, 2011. 33 00:03:31,910 --> 00:03:38,060 I had finished my first book and I was interested in a number of different things in Islamic thought and Islamic law at that time, 34 00:03:38,060 --> 00:03:43,190 some of which related to extensions of the themes that I had written in my first book. 35 00:03:43,190 --> 00:03:47,960 So I was interested in how to explore in greater depth some of the harder 36 00:03:47,960 --> 00:03:53,000 questions related to the encounter between liberal ethics and Islamic ethics. 37 00:03:53,000 --> 00:04:00,610 Right. So some of the really hard questions related to the scope and the limits of religious freedom, freedom of expression, 38 00:04:00,610 --> 00:04:04,580 use the core areas where liberal conceptions of autonomy or freedom of religion 39 00:04:04,580 --> 00:04:08,690 clash with Islamic conceptions of a belief in a conception of the good, 40 00:04:08,690 --> 00:04:18,650 the truth of a particular metaphysical tradition, and limits on the scope for human behaviour to do certain kinds of harms at the community 41 00:04:18,650 --> 00:04:24,860 level to religious goods or to the the freedom for a religious community to thrive. 42 00:04:24,860 --> 00:04:33,290 So I was interested in this. I was looking at certain modern and classical theories of the objectives of Islamic law or most of the city. 43 00:04:33,290 --> 00:04:35,970 So I was poking around in these kinds of areas. 44 00:04:35,970 --> 00:04:47,450 I had written a few papers exploring this on whether this particular Islamic legal theory of the McCrossin was a fruitful area for not resolving, 45 00:04:47,450 --> 00:04:54,500 but structuring ways of thinking about how Islamic aims can and might not be 46 00:04:54,500 --> 00:04:59,240 able to be advanced in non Islamic political communities in legal settings. 47 00:04:59,240 --> 00:05:06,620 So then you had the Arab Spring and I was actually gonna be giving a paper in Tunisia in the wake of the Arab Spring. 48 00:05:06,620 --> 00:05:12,230 So I was interested in the thought of Russia, of Alooshe, who I'd been action for a while, 49 00:05:12,230 --> 00:05:16,370 who figured sort of had a kind of minor appearance in my first book. 50 00:05:16,370 --> 00:05:21,230 But I was familiar with his 1993 treatise, Public Freedoms and the Islamic State. 51 00:05:21,230 --> 00:05:29,630 So I opened this and I was going to say, what do a new Xis views on Islamic law, Islamic legal theory, 52 00:05:29,630 --> 00:05:40,130 the application of Islamic law in a modernist say about the prospects for lawmaking in a future non authoritarian, democratic Tunisia. 53 00:05:40,130 --> 00:05:43,940 So the broad question was, what is his conception of Sharia? 54 00:05:43,940 --> 00:05:50,810 What is his conception of the balance between classical fefe and must lahar or consultation or something like this? 55 00:05:50,810 --> 00:05:52,820 And as I worked my way through his book, 56 00:05:52,820 --> 00:06:01,220 I realised these scenes absolutely figure and they end up becoming somewhat important for the arguments of the caliphate of man. 57 00:06:01,220 --> 00:06:08,570 But what I realised is the real action is this theory of the universal caliphate or the octet is the left. 58 00:06:08,570 --> 00:06:12,230 This is what appeared more than anything else in this book. 59 00:06:12,230 --> 00:06:18,260 This is what he himself described as the pillar or the foundation of Islamic political philosophy. 60 00:06:18,260 --> 00:06:27,230 The idea that the people, both individually and collectively, have been deputised as God's vice jahren on Earth. 61 00:06:27,230 --> 00:06:31,760 So this kind of hit me over the head. It rose. That's where the action is. 62 00:06:31,760 --> 00:06:35,300 And it's a really, really fruitful and complex area to look. 63 00:06:35,300 --> 00:06:42,670 Now, obviously, it was not the first person to discover this. So part of it was to go back and realise what is the secondary literature on this. 64 00:06:42,670 --> 00:06:47,560 What other kinds of questions does it open up? That was the kind of impulse that was sort of one of these moments where I said, that's it. 65 00:06:47,560 --> 00:06:56,290 That's my next book. Right. The problem of sovereignty as it brings in everything that, of course, you're taught as a first year student, 66 00:06:56,290 --> 00:07:00,310 you know that Islamism is this commitment to Hakimi or divine sovereignty. 67 00:07:00,310 --> 00:07:05,170 But then here's this robust commitment to what they are calling popular sovereignty. 68 00:07:05,170 --> 00:07:11,000 And so just a flurry of questions raised themselves. And I was kind of off to the races after that. 69 00:07:11,000 --> 00:07:16,660 Okay, fantastic. So that gives a really useful sort of overview of where the book came from. 70 00:07:16,660 --> 00:07:23,050 And of course, she is the only figure who gets to chapters himself, so to speak, rather than just the one which. 71 00:07:23,050 --> 00:07:30,910 Yes, I want to put up and do the and some of the other figures that I say that even there was somebody these figures get not as much attention, 72 00:07:30,910 --> 00:07:34,930 shall we say, as a machine. And I think the background that you've given, 73 00:07:34,930 --> 00:07:42,790 the fact that he figured I would call him sort of having a presence on your Facebook, but that you happened to be in Tunisia. 74 00:07:42,790 --> 00:07:51,670 And in a sense, you know, Tunisia is the only case within the Arab revolutions where there seems to have been something how the shaky 75 00:07:51,670 --> 00:07:57,130 still sort of coming out of that that's going in the social direction that one would hope that it would go. 76 00:07:57,130 --> 00:08:01,150 So thank you for that background. And if I can move on to my next question. 77 00:08:01,150 --> 00:08:07,600 It's that your book takes us on this journey that attempts to trace the genealogy, as you highlighted, 78 00:08:07,600 --> 00:08:12,850 of the important concept of sovereignty or popular sovereignty, more specifically in modern Islamic thought. 79 00:08:12,850 --> 00:08:16,270 So what you've described in the title of your book is The Caliphate of Man. 80 00:08:16,270 --> 00:08:21,100 And you you said this is kind of become the defining idea within contemporary Islamism. 81 00:08:21,100 --> 00:08:29,580 In broad strokes, could you perhaps offer us an outline of the genealogy that you present to give us an idea of the overall lock him to. 82 00:08:29,580 --> 00:08:33,520 Right. So I begin sort of in the present with an observation, right. 83 00:08:33,520 --> 00:08:39,020 That I actually opened the book with use of a part of Dowi sermon in. 84 00:08:39,020 --> 00:08:41,860 Ten Days After the Revolution or something like that. 85 00:08:41,860 --> 00:08:50,200 And it's not a work of political theory, but you see these themes in which popular agency and popular virtue, 86 00:08:50,200 --> 00:08:58,570 democratic political action, along with divine will or divine intent or the divine plan, are kind of fused together. 87 00:08:58,570 --> 00:09:03,370 So I have this idea that the voice of the people is the voice of God. 88 00:09:03,370 --> 00:09:11,230 And yet at the same time, you have this fundamental observation that it's not just any old people, right? 89 00:09:11,230 --> 00:09:14,920 It's a virtuous people. It's a pious people. It's a religious people. 90 00:09:14,920 --> 00:09:22,630 So this is the first sort of point of departure and point of comparison with lots of non Islamic democratic theory, 91 00:09:22,630 --> 00:09:31,450 which says that begin with a people, whether it's an arbitrarily defined group that has been sort of set off geographically 92 00:09:31,450 --> 00:09:35,830 or ethnically or because of some development of a national consciousness. 93 00:09:35,830 --> 00:09:42,760 And then you ask, how can that people be free or self-governing, legitimately governed? 94 00:09:42,760 --> 00:09:53,230 But you're really asking about how any people could be, whereas in the Islamic conception, the people already has a particular quality or attribute. 95 00:09:53,230 --> 00:10:00,940 But more importantly, the people already has a certain will that has a certain defined objective for itself. 96 00:10:00,940 --> 00:10:04,300 That's an important distinction because in a lot of Western Democratic theory, 97 00:10:04,300 --> 00:10:09,280 the point of democracy is to discover the people's will or to discover which 98 00:10:09,280 --> 00:10:15,070 popular will is legitimate or can be realised through law or coercive action. 99 00:10:15,070 --> 00:10:23,770 That's the point of deliberation or procedure or whatever it is, whereas in Islam you be the will is already given in advance. 100 00:10:23,770 --> 00:10:27,580 So that is itself a kind of complicated question, right? 101 00:10:27,580 --> 00:10:41,440 How can you have a legitimate commitment to democracy where certain aspects of the people's essence identity in will are already given either theory? 102 00:10:41,440 --> 00:10:47,050 So the people can't choose to be under the what it already is, which is the, um. 103 00:10:47,050 --> 00:10:54,160 OK, so that's the beginning set of questions. So then historically there was a question of, well, where does this come from? 104 00:10:54,160 --> 00:11:03,400 Right. What is the significance of this? How does this actually represent a kind of revolution over premodern Islamic thought? 105 00:11:03,400 --> 00:11:12,160 So there's a number of themes, right? One is which premodern Islamic thought is kind of predicated on if you're talking about the mainstream Sunni 106 00:11:12,160 --> 00:11:21,540 juridical tradition on a kind of condominium of authority between Suta on the one hand and on the other. 107 00:11:21,540 --> 00:11:30,220 So some form or another, whether it's the Sultan or the Hudnut foot individually or Suta as an entire governing apparatus. 108 00:11:30,220 --> 00:11:35,500 And the scholars collaborate in the governing of the community. 109 00:11:35,500 --> 00:11:41,760 And, you know, you have a understanding of the traditional way that that is divided between the sultan. 110 00:11:41,760 --> 00:11:46,500 Leaving many matters to the traditional Sharia court, right, 111 00:11:46,500 --> 00:11:56,380 vs. having a wide latitude for governance through CSA courts or in other kinds of non-starter, emotive or non 50 modes of governance. 112 00:11:56,380 --> 00:11:59,880 OK. These are outlined in Chapter two to this. Yeah. Interesting. Yes. 113 00:11:59,880 --> 00:12:02,650 Yes. And if not, that's not meant to be a super original observation. 114 00:12:02,650 --> 00:12:07,590 It's meant to be kind of schematically summarising things that are widely observed literature. 115 00:12:07,590 --> 00:12:12,600 Although I've I want to stress that that's kind of the Sunni juridical story 116 00:12:12,600 --> 00:12:17,460 about things if you actually read a lot of history of Ottoman political thought. 117 00:12:17,460 --> 00:12:28,290 We know that in reality, Ottoman political thought in particular is much more influenced by Sufi conceptions and shows Gothika conceptions than right. 118 00:12:28,290 --> 00:12:31,680 Centralise and prioritise the ethical character of the ruler. 119 00:12:31,680 --> 00:12:40,390 Right. There are a lot more rulers centred, caliph centred, charismatic than the classical Sunni juridical model once. 120 00:12:40,390 --> 00:12:43,530 Right? Right. Well, we'll leave that aside for now. 121 00:12:43,530 --> 00:12:53,490 So one major theme is how does the traditional condominium of authority, the guardianship of the sultan or the caliph, 122 00:12:53,490 --> 00:13:01,500 whatever the executive is called, and the scholars become devolved to some kind of popular political community. 123 00:13:01,500 --> 00:13:08,110 And then the other story is how does a fairly. 124 00:13:08,110 --> 00:13:17,650 Non utopian, realistic conception of politics in the Sunni juridical tradition become transformed to a much more ambitious, 125 00:13:17,650 --> 00:13:23,080 much more utopian aspiration for politics and much of modern Sunni thought. 126 00:13:23,080 --> 00:13:29,080 That's the kind of background. And then I moved through a number of thinkers to make just to add a point, 127 00:13:29,080 --> 00:13:36,310 you actually nicely sort of illustrate this rosy, an idea taken from his political liberalism, ultra realistic utopia. 128 00:13:36,310 --> 00:13:40,630 And when you're saying it's utopian, it takes people as they are to a certain extent as well. 129 00:13:40,630 --> 00:13:44,420 Yeah, that's that's my idea. So sometimes, right. You're me saying that it's utopian, right. 130 00:13:44,420 --> 00:13:48,220 And then the kind of popular folk sense of the word utopian. Right. 131 00:13:48,220 --> 00:13:51,930 We use that to mean unrealistic pie. Sky. Right. 132 00:13:51,930 --> 00:13:52,720 Right, right. 133 00:13:52,720 --> 00:14:01,560 Which itself is an interesting observation, you know, a kind of very, very accessible history of this relates to perhaps Cold War liberalism. 134 00:14:01,560 --> 00:14:03,460 Right. Right. Ice. I Eberlin. 135 00:14:03,460 --> 00:14:11,380 The idea that utopianism persay is the problem because it goes against the grain of human nature requires too much coercion. 136 00:14:11,380 --> 00:14:19,600 And so part of the Cold War liberal brief against totalitarianism was a brief against utopianism as such. 137 00:14:19,600 --> 00:14:26,890 And then, of course, you have that kind of period after communism in which there's this assumption that 138 00:14:26,890 --> 00:14:32,330 markets and liberal democracy can more or less provide for the needs of people. 139 00:14:32,330 --> 00:14:41,710 And this is also a non utopian story. Big rights were not meant to be prescribing a particular final and for individuals that holds for everybody, 140 00:14:41,710 --> 00:14:45,460 but rather creating the space for people to pursue different sorts of ends. 141 00:14:45,460 --> 00:14:49,390 Nowhere is I, on the other hand, don't use utopian as a criticism. 142 00:14:49,390 --> 00:14:58,300 So it's just a mode of thinking about politics. It's a mode of thinking about what is the best that we could hope for in ideal circumstances. 143 00:14:58,300 --> 00:15:08,530 And then you add to that a certain kinds of feasibility or plausibility constraints that result in a kind of aspiration for a realistic utopia. 144 00:15:08,530 --> 00:15:13,270 Right. Given the kinds of beings that we are, given the limits of our moral capacity, 145 00:15:13,270 --> 00:15:20,230 the limits of our selflessness, with the limits of our ability to act on perfect moral virtue. 146 00:15:20,230 --> 00:15:25,440 What then is the best that we could hope for? If we decide institutions in a certain way. 147 00:15:25,440 --> 00:15:27,820 So that's what I mean by a certain kind of utopianism. 148 00:15:27,820 --> 00:15:35,230 But what I mean, more specifically in the Islamic context and here I'm very, very open actually to being corrected on this. 149 00:15:35,230 --> 00:15:46,120 But on my reading, a kind of developed Sunni juridical model of politics doesn't see the political sphere 150 00:15:46,120 --> 00:15:54,260 as where human beings realise their good or their virtue or their path to salvation. 151 00:15:54,260 --> 00:16:07,390 Now, arguably in early Islam, the emphasis on following the right caliph, following the right vehicle of salvation did see politics in this way again. 152 00:16:07,390 --> 00:16:13,330 Arguably, some of these Sufi and philosopher inspired theories, 153 00:16:13,330 --> 00:16:21,190 which the ruler is the font of virtue and salvation, and it kind of flows down or eminence down to the people. 154 00:16:21,190 --> 00:16:27,940 Arguably, that also makes politics central to the realisation of our good and our salvation. 155 00:16:27,940 --> 00:16:32,830 But so much of classical Sunni political fight is very, very realistic. 156 00:16:32,830 --> 00:16:38,320 It's about removing the greatest harms of social life violence right now. 157 00:16:38,320 --> 00:16:43,180 Sedition, hunger, crusaders, bandits, all of this. 158 00:16:43,180 --> 00:16:51,140 And what's very minimal, I avoided using the word minimal on campus because I think it's minimal, but I think it's constrained. 159 00:16:51,140 --> 00:16:59,080 And then also, if you look at somebody like Ibn Haldun, who, as we know, is widely influential later on an autumn in political thought, 160 00:16:59,080 --> 00:17:05,080 it's not minimal, but it's a very constrained conception of what politics can bring. 161 00:17:05,080 --> 00:17:11,380 And even where somebody like even Khaldoon will say the difference between rational royal authority, 162 00:17:11,380 --> 00:17:17,500 mullock utterly right and the caliphate is that the caliphate brings a benefit in this world. 163 00:17:17,500 --> 00:17:25,090 And the next the next rise. It really explain why is that the caliphate is bringing Mustafah in the next world. 164 00:17:25,090 --> 00:17:28,210 It's kind of just absurd. Just to close out this show. 165 00:17:28,210 --> 00:17:36,760 What do you think any government can do by way of bringing about justice or peace or the good functioning of economies and so forth? 166 00:17:36,760 --> 00:17:40,300 That's all that the Khalifa model of governance can do. 167 00:17:40,300 --> 00:17:45,580 So I thought that the Khalifa model of governance brings about some greater heaven on earth. 168 00:17:45,580 --> 00:17:50,110 It just is in some way it provides benefit in the actual heaven. 169 00:17:50,110 --> 00:17:55,660 So that's the first out. The second thought is what then becomes remarkable. And again, feel free to disagree. 170 00:17:55,660 --> 00:18:07,200 How much in thinkers like MO Duty and put of in others the political world and the sense of bringing about Islamic law is a site. 171 00:18:07,200 --> 00:18:11,430 For moral perfection, realising our good. 172 00:18:11,430 --> 00:18:19,740 In addition to just removing injustice and trying to bring about basic rights, that's also part of what I mean by the utopian vision. 173 00:18:19,740 --> 00:18:28,410 Politics becomes a site for moral perfection in ways that I don't think is the norm in premodern. 174 00:18:28,410 --> 00:18:34,570 Certainly thought you know, I think I broadly, to be honest, I mean, and this will be somewhat impressionistic. 175 00:18:34,570 --> 00:18:40,980 You know, I've not set out to answer this in my own research, but I broadly think that your intuitions are correct in this. 176 00:18:40,980 --> 00:18:45,990 And you cite overmanaging and you have in your notes something which actually reinforces your point, 177 00:18:45,990 --> 00:18:51,240 which is to say even Thamir tried to move away from this rule essent inefficient to a community centre division. 178 00:18:51,240 --> 00:18:58,110 But the fact that Obama has a mutual friend of us, of course, says this is an illustration of the fact that that wasn't really the case. 179 00:18:58,110 --> 00:19:02,550 I mean, to answer your second point, which is why is the caliphate so central? 180 00:19:02,550 --> 00:19:08,540 Why is it that something doesn't really given response? He just says, you know, oh, it gives you salvation in the next life as well as in this world. 181 00:19:08,540 --> 00:19:12,720 You're getting sort of political, you know, benefits and justice. 182 00:19:12,720 --> 00:19:19,350 And my thoughts go back to as early in his decide this idea that I had where he makes a very stark statement, 183 00:19:19,350 --> 00:19:21,960 which I'm not sure is necessarily representative, 184 00:19:21,960 --> 00:19:28,770 how often he saw it, but saying that without the caliphate, nothing we do is, in a sense, legitimated eagle. 185 00:19:28,770 --> 00:19:37,320 But in the literal sense, it's not right. You need the caliph to authorise judge judges on the condition of possibility for legality. 186 00:19:37,320 --> 00:19:43,500 But it's not that. Therefore, you know that the site of moral development is elsewhere. 187 00:19:43,500 --> 00:19:52,700 Right. It's Sufism. Or if you read someone, because Ali's book on the here and so many of the books are actually chapters in law. 188 00:19:52,700 --> 00:19:53,040 Right. 189 00:19:53,040 --> 00:20:02,950 I mean, it's about how do you take the minimal bar that he's interested in and raise that engagement with the hip to a point of essence of speak. 190 00:20:02,950 --> 00:20:07,710 And my suspicion. And again, you know, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on this as well. 191 00:20:07,710 --> 00:20:13,470 And I think we're both, in a sense, exploring a question which is really profound and not necessarily straightforward. 192 00:20:13,470 --> 00:20:19,170 My suspicion is that the conditions of modernity suddenly allow for and you look at people I 193 00:20:19,170 --> 00:20:23,580 quoted and people like and I'll do the and who they're citing in a very often quote and Hadith, 194 00:20:23,580 --> 00:20:25,900 it's the earliest period, the earliest history. 195 00:20:25,900 --> 00:20:33,990 It allows for bypassing the classical sort of like crystallised form of what is and was and tries to go 196 00:20:33,990 --> 00:20:39,750 back to certain ideals where actually politics was a space for very serious contestation about salvation. 197 00:20:39,750 --> 00:20:44,640 Honest. So I do think that that does seem to be some of that happening there. 198 00:20:44,640 --> 00:20:51,930 I think these are tendencies that are latent or made more latent, if that's a way to put it in the classical Sunni tradition. 199 00:20:51,930 --> 00:20:56,340 But the ever present, because they're in the Torah, they're in the Koran, the Hadith. 200 00:20:56,340 --> 00:21:02,150 So and, you know, as we think. I had a recent discussion with Humaira and chassis, you may know about this, 201 00:21:02,150 --> 00:21:06,660 you know, through much of classical sunnism, hadiths almost seem a bit marginal. 202 00:21:06,660 --> 00:21:12,720 You know, you think of ourselves here and the extent to which it's criticised in the modern period for having weak ideas. 203 00:21:12,720 --> 00:21:16,620 But my remark as is what people blame on Hatzalah a little unfairly. 204 00:21:16,620 --> 00:21:17,670 If you look at any books, 205 00:21:17,670 --> 00:21:23,730 I think you can see they're not terribly interested in Hadith unless you like the hundreds who are the tiniest school anyway. 206 00:21:23,730 --> 00:21:31,620 So, you know, I think this rediscovery know to refer to Ahmed Tremseh, who I sort of interviewed a couple of days ago actually on his book, 207 00:21:31,620 --> 00:21:40,710 this rediscovery of the truth of these classics does dramatically reshape the way in which we see the possibilities of the tradition. 208 00:21:40,710 --> 00:21:47,480 And that's what allows people like me to put them to bed with, in some respects, novelties in other respects. 209 00:21:47,480 --> 00:21:52,240 You know, readings of things which are latent in the tradition. 210 00:21:52,240 --> 00:21:57,300 Yeah, I don't want to say too much about that. I'll leave that specific comment about the centrality of the Hadith to experts. 211 00:21:57,300 --> 00:22:03,990 I will say that when you read my studio, put it on the early period, it's not scholars. 212 00:22:03,990 --> 00:22:08,880 It's not about particularly. It's about first of all, there's an emotional aspect. 213 00:22:08,880 --> 00:22:14,980 It's motivating for action might be mythical. Again, a word that's often used in a negative kind of. 214 00:22:14,980 --> 00:22:21,420 Right. Right. Not right. It's writerly myth as opposed to fact. But I think more that it's creating meaning it in many ways. 215 00:22:21,420 --> 00:22:23,610 It's also it's simplifying things. Right. 216 00:22:23,610 --> 00:22:33,210 It's meant to smooth out things, not explore it as a space of contestation, but a space of deriving certain kinds of lessons for action. 217 00:22:33,210 --> 00:22:42,000 And I don't know, that's a good comparison or not. But I'll phrase it perhaps a little bit like the way that Machiavelli is going to 218 00:22:42,000 --> 00:22:46,650 read Livi or perhaps the American founders want to read the classical tradition. 219 00:22:46,650 --> 00:22:55,770 It's not as classicists or as scholars, they're trying to derive lessons and conclusions, and they're often involves smoothing out a lot of things. 220 00:22:55,770 --> 00:22:59,990 Right. So lucky Avella wants to explore what are the conditions for liberty in a republic. 221 00:22:59,990 --> 00:23:06,980 And he reads, you know, Livi in particular. And yet some of the most well-known lessons are the ways in which, like. 222 00:23:06,980 --> 00:23:14,660 Popular violence is a good thing for popular riots and so forth, because it's the language of the war against the gun. 223 00:23:14,660 --> 00:23:21,990 Now, that's not a scholarly observational show. It's an obviously pragmatic in a sense, it's a utilitarian reading. 224 00:23:21,990 --> 00:23:26,700 Maybe it's an intervention in contemporary debates about how much we fear the poor and right. 225 00:23:26,700 --> 00:23:33,920 Or these sorts of things going to lead to an expansion of liberty or not. Similarly for cooktop, you know, it's not a very sophisticated reading, 226 00:23:33,920 --> 00:23:39,930 but it's a very sort of ingenious reading in a way, in my reading of cooked up on the early period. 227 00:23:39,930 --> 00:23:42,840 What you get is only partial. It doesn't encapsulate everything. Sure. 228 00:23:42,840 --> 00:23:48,320 It's sort of like saying if you get the politics right, you get everything else right. 229 00:23:48,320 --> 00:23:53,360 I get the leadership right. Get the law right. Have righteous governance. 230 00:23:53,360 --> 00:24:05,670 And then lo and behold. How infused everybody is with zeal and virtue and right ire to protect Islam in order to help their brother. 231 00:24:05,670 --> 00:24:12,260 That's the kind of lesson that I think put that was tried to show is that the earliest the harbour. 232 00:24:12,260 --> 00:24:16,790 They were so virtuous and so pious because the politics was right. 233 00:24:16,790 --> 00:24:22,340 Anyway, that's my reading. Admittedly, it's not you know, it doesn't cover everything that he has to say about this period. 234 00:24:22,340 --> 00:24:29,570 But for me, it's a very distinctive contribution and it's part of what answers the question, what is political about political Islam? 235 00:24:29,570 --> 00:24:33,110 How are they giving a particular political reading of Islam? 236 00:24:33,110 --> 00:24:40,010 It's not just that they're emphasising the importance of politics or emphasising divine sovereignty or engaging in fear. 237 00:24:40,010 --> 00:24:45,500 If you don't implement Sharia, they have a theory of what politics does. 238 00:24:45,500 --> 00:24:51,200 And that's what I found particularly interesting. And I mean, in a sense, I've got some questions that are lined up. 239 00:24:51,200 --> 00:24:56,360 But I find much of your commentary so intriguing. It goes in so many interesting directions. 240 00:24:56,360 --> 00:25:05,030 I want to perhaps contest this notion not necessarily contested, but the way in which the term scholarly work that the term scholarly is done. 241 00:25:05,030 --> 00:25:07,550 In thinking about someone I quoted before saying, look, 242 00:25:07,550 --> 00:25:15,050 this isn't a scholarly sort of blank piece in the same way that Machiavelli isn't engaged in a cataloguing of the various ways in which 243 00:25:15,050 --> 00:25:22,730 someone like Livi is referring to ideas that are used by native peoples as a means of justifying liberty of some kind or and so on. 244 00:25:22,730 --> 00:25:29,380 But rather he's trying to get something out of that text and for something quite practical, something quite social, something. 245 00:25:29,380 --> 00:25:31,180 As you say, quite political. 246 00:25:31,180 --> 00:25:40,730 And to a certain extent, I think a lot of Islamic scholars through history, you know, their motivations are going to be very different, too. 247 00:25:40,730 --> 00:25:46,460 I mean, quite dramatically different to what a modern scholar would consider to be a scholarly engagement. 248 00:25:46,460 --> 00:25:50,210 There are the great sort of encyclopaedias and the people are cataloguing things and 249 00:25:50,210 --> 00:25:55,130 and also sort of maybe engaging in original reflections on my jarheads and so on. 250 00:25:55,130 --> 00:26:00,620 In his Helen. But you think someone like, again, has any writing in here? 251 00:26:00,620 --> 00:26:04,790 There's an urgency to the practicality of what he's writing about. 252 00:26:04,790 --> 00:26:11,780 And you read something like get a doctor's notes and it's supposed to shock your system, so to speak. 253 00:26:11,780 --> 00:26:16,970 And I think that spirit is carried forward by people like that in a very different way, 254 00:26:16,970 --> 00:26:22,970 because for Hasani, the political round is most of these kind of solved it in some level. 255 00:26:22,970 --> 00:26:27,430 He's also made his contribution to society in the way that Croner talks about that. 256 00:26:27,430 --> 00:26:32,030 You know, yeah, they're just there to be the muscle power that keeps everything going. 257 00:26:32,030 --> 00:26:36,470 But the Orlanda and the Shari'ah are basically as long as they're in power. 258 00:26:36,470 --> 00:26:40,820 And this is how Noah Feldman also presents it, as long as they're in control. 259 00:26:40,820 --> 00:26:44,170 That's all good. Right? But that's not the case with God. 260 00:26:44,170 --> 00:26:49,970 And so do the and these people. Suddenly everything's been unseated. Suddenly everything's up for grabs in a scary way. 261 00:26:49,970 --> 00:26:56,270 I think for these people. And that's the situation they're reacting to. And they're thinking, well, you know, what are we to do? 262 00:26:56,270 --> 00:26:59,880 Our societies are basically becoming hyper secularised and, you know, 263 00:26:59,880 --> 00:27:08,720 in our imagination and our values are being usurped and destroyed and people are being taken in by this sort of liberalism in the 264 00:27:08,720 --> 00:27:15,350 form that existed at that time by the conception of the nation state as the true seat of sovereignty and and popular sovereignty. 265 00:27:15,350 --> 00:27:20,960 Obviously, people like Madou, they were very exercised by those sorts of concepts as well as could have been his own way. 266 00:27:20,960 --> 00:27:25,520 So I think there are interesting things going on and that's just a reflection. 267 00:27:25,520 --> 00:27:29,510 I don't like to add something to that. I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts on that. 268 00:27:29,510 --> 00:27:36,290 If you think perhaps I know, do I think we're on the same page on that? So I wanted to sort of press time, too. 269 00:27:36,290 --> 00:27:44,060 I mean, this is really a fascinating discussion, to be honest. And I have a lot of questions I'm going to go on to, in a sense, 270 00:27:44,060 --> 00:27:48,500 because we're discussing we'll do the input, which I believe Chapter four and five in your book. 271 00:27:48,500 --> 00:27:53,780 I'm going to actually circle back to Chapter two for a moment where I think in a sense, 272 00:27:53,780 --> 00:27:59,690 you provide this compendious overview of what might be called the normative Piedmont's and conception of sovereignty. 273 00:27:59,690 --> 00:28:04,640 Of course, you also highlight that this is, in a sense, the received normative premodern, certainly conception of sovereignty. 274 00:28:04,640 --> 00:28:06,970 This is how Sundanese look back at their own tradition. 275 00:28:06,970 --> 00:28:12,510 Today and read it in the payment tradition, so there are all sorts of other possibilities, as you've suggested. 276 00:28:12,510 --> 00:28:18,760 So in subsequent chapters, you explore how modern Islamism radically reformulate this premodern conception in order to 277 00:28:18,760 --> 00:28:23,740 generate the Islamist notion of popular sovereignty that underlies Islamic democratic theory. 278 00:28:23,740 --> 00:28:29,710 And you in several instances, use the term invention to characterise this introduction of popular sovereignty. 279 00:28:29,710 --> 00:28:35,080 I think that's another, yes. I was just having a breeze through my engines. 280 00:28:35,080 --> 00:28:39,850 Come and tell me. But can he cites someone also speaks about the invention of popular sovereignty. 281 00:28:39,850 --> 00:28:41,910 Edmund Morgan is the famous historian. 282 00:28:41,910 --> 00:28:48,640 We talked about the invention of democracy, the popular sovereignty and human rights or the invention of the people in American Puritan thought. 283 00:28:48,640 --> 00:28:53,740 You know, and I wonder if you can maybe give listeners a sense of just how radical a 284 00:28:53,740 --> 00:28:57,970 transformation you consider this to be from the premodern to the modern conception. 285 00:28:57,970 --> 00:29:04,450 Well, what I try to argue is that like many inventions, it's based on certain kinds of materials. 286 00:29:04,450 --> 00:29:11,740 So when modern Islamic constitutional thinkers or democratic theorists talk about things like the 287 00:29:11,740 --> 00:29:19,510 importance of debate or the idea of the left foot or the MMR as a contract or the idea of the people, 288 00:29:19,510 --> 00:29:26,590 the OMA is actually the agency behind this or the idea of consultation shoura. 289 00:29:26,590 --> 00:29:30,470 These are materials that exist in the premodern tradition for sure. 290 00:29:30,470 --> 00:29:35,230 This is part of partially what a book is often tried to do, even time is to say them. 291 00:29:35,230 --> 00:29:40,720 There's also a tradition in premodern. Well, premodern Islamic thought, right? 292 00:29:40,720 --> 00:29:47,440 Wants to ground the important aspects of leadership and law and virtue and community as opposed to the caliphate. 293 00:29:47,440 --> 00:29:50,320 So these materials are there and they're meaningful. 294 00:29:50,320 --> 00:29:57,450 And of course, I think it's also fair to point out that there's both an apologetic motive to say we don't believe in the divine right of kings, 295 00:29:57,450 --> 00:30:04,690 not authoritarian. We never believed in absolutism. And there's also somewhat of a sectarian motive, which is to say we're not Shia. 296 00:30:04,690 --> 00:30:10,450 We never believed in divine designation. Right. We never believed that God chose the ruler. 297 00:30:10,450 --> 00:30:15,520 For us, the ruler was always just somebody that was appointed by the community or again. 298 00:30:15,520 --> 00:30:24,510 When you read Mounded and you see that one of the ways in which the ruler comes to authority is through your right, 299 00:30:24,510 --> 00:30:27,790 it is tempting to translate as election, but. 300 00:30:27,790 --> 00:30:33,670 Right. No selection or choice. Right. Right, right. It's within the semantic range of the time election. 301 00:30:33,670 --> 00:30:37,660 Yes, that's right. Yes. So these materials are there. 302 00:30:37,660 --> 00:30:46,780 It's just as we know historically, even in the most democratic moments, perhaps the election of man or something like this. 303 00:30:46,780 --> 00:30:48,800 It was six people deliberating. 304 00:30:48,800 --> 00:30:57,040 And it wasn't because they were representatives of the community, because they were the power brokers who might end up fighting amongst themselves. 305 00:30:57,040 --> 00:31:01,660 So sure, as the election of the ruler was a mode of conflict resolution. 306 00:31:01,660 --> 00:31:06,010 Not about empowering the OMA to choose its own rulers anyway. 307 00:31:06,010 --> 00:31:15,370 So I'm certainly unaware of any serious reflection on the idea that the OMA is the source of political authority or has them right dissipate right. 308 00:31:15,370 --> 00:31:25,150 Or governance to be legitimate. That's one way in which these democratic commitments rely on materials that are there, but they need something else. 309 00:31:25,150 --> 00:31:33,580 The other thing that this trope of what's ments in the Koranic versus that talk about God appointing a caliph on earth, 310 00:31:33,580 --> 00:31:37,120 that this is what God means is the entire amount. 311 00:31:37,120 --> 00:31:45,220 And then it's a political designation. Right. That it's a transfer friends of God's political authority to the people at large. 312 00:31:45,220 --> 00:31:49,270 That's a complete invention. And so one of the things that point. Can you say that once more? 313 00:31:49,270 --> 00:31:52,840 Forgive me. So the trope of the universal caliphate. Right. 314 00:31:52,840 --> 00:31:57,160 Right, right. The Obama is God's caliph. What I write was the caliphate of man. 315 00:31:57,160 --> 00:32:01,330 That this rests on certain Koranic versus most famously. 316 00:32:01,330 --> 00:32:08,140 Chapter two. Verse 30. Amongst many others. The idea that this unambiguously without discussion, 317 00:32:08,140 --> 00:32:14,740 without the need to go through traditional to see it means that if the Ummah at large or the 318 00:32:14,740 --> 00:32:21,760 people at large has been deputised by God as his deputy and that this is a political designation, 319 00:32:21,760 --> 00:32:27,040 it's the transference of his authority to then control the political apparatus. 320 00:32:27,040 --> 00:32:37,150 That's a complete invention. Right. So when I read the rights or compiled the articles that went into his book, he left or a member Earthman. 321 00:32:37,150 --> 00:32:41,840 He has as an epigraph to 30. Doesn't need. 322 00:32:41,840 --> 00:32:45,820 Doesn't need. Because the Omar chooses its caliph or. 323 00:32:45,820 --> 00:32:47,890 It means that you have to appoint a caliph. 324 00:32:47,890 --> 00:32:55,960 It really refers to the office of the Caliphate as occupied by a single individual with the classical shoes. 325 00:32:55,960 --> 00:33:01,960 Male Muslim frien reason all of the different virtues and qualifications is right there right now. 326 00:33:01,960 --> 00:33:06,970 You do have a tradition in which human beings are God. 327 00:33:06,970 --> 00:33:12,040 Caliph, you have this in law literature, you have this Sufi literature, 328 00:33:12,040 --> 00:33:19,420 you have right philosopher literature, but it's not really a collective political authorisation. 329 00:33:19,420 --> 00:33:23,910 Right. Right. Right. About how we become morally perfect win. 330 00:33:23,910 --> 00:33:31,780 Right. Or find ourselves morally again, whether that's understood the way that Sufis do or the philosophers do or suddenly, 331 00:33:31,780 --> 00:33:41,080 more or less to show you can aspire to being God's deputy on earth at an individual level by becoming, you know, the best that you can be. 332 00:33:41,080 --> 00:33:48,130 Sort of. Right. Right. Right. And certain kinds of theories. It's part of this tripartite theological anthropology. 333 00:33:48,130 --> 00:33:53,100 Right. What is the human function following Aristotle's argument and the ethics. 334 00:33:53,100 --> 00:33:58,230 Right. Interaction. Very simple yet. No, no, no, no, no. That our function is to be rattin, not our ethics, but. 335 00:33:58,230 --> 00:34:01,990 Ah, but ok. The Aristotle. You get the argument from the air. 336 00:34:01,990 --> 00:34:06,520 God right. The function. OK, and so Islamic ethicists do the same thing. 337 00:34:06,520 --> 00:34:10,810 So what is our function as human beings to worship God to. 338 00:34:10,810 --> 00:34:16,660 And Morrilton are right to symbolise or populate and didn't like the earth and to be gods caliph. 339 00:34:16,660 --> 00:34:24,940 That's what it means to be human. But it's not. It doesn't mean that it's collectively have this political sovereignty anyway. 340 00:34:24,940 --> 00:34:33,970 So the idea that becomes the central idea of Islamic political thought is rightly or wrongly a major revolution. 341 00:34:33,970 --> 00:34:38,710 OK, so untraced at this point. I'm going to conclude the podcast for this. 342 00:34:38,710 --> 00:34:42,740 If you are interested in listening to the full conversation, you you'll find it on YouTube. 343 00:34:42,740 --> 00:34:47,360 Andres, thank you so much for covering a broad range of topics. 344 00:34:47,360 --> 00:35:01,424 I've been speaking with author Andrew March about his book, The Caliphate of Man Popular Sovereignty in Modern Islamic Thought.