DMI Bible study. The idea of the universal caliphate or the caliphate of man is not only a theory of
the sovereignty of the Ummah as a body over its rulers and political institutions,
although it is that but also of the restriction of the Obama's authority to whatever God has delegated and commanded.
The sum of the covenant of Vice Jahren. From the constitutional standpoint, is the supremacy of God's law over any other authority.
But through the consultative activities of the people,
the Covenant of Vice Chairman SC can thus be summarised as the Syria of God and consultation of the people or text and consultation,
reason and revelation, constraint and freedom.
This is the problem that remains to be untangled. How are all of these various materials woven together and what contradictions and
ambiguities are produced by this attempt to do justice to the divine sovereignty,
the rule of law, popular sovereignty of some kind, representation, expertise,
and the residual authority of ordinary believers to speak and act as God's CAYLUS?
I believe the best way to do this is to proceed carefully to the distinctly divine
and distinctly popular elements of this theory of legitimacy and sovereignty.
For as though divine and popular sovereignty are formed from the same relationship,
their elements remain conceptually distinct and are often intention.
Welcome to Middle East Centre Book Talk. The Oxford podcast on new books about the Middle East.
These are some of the books written by our members or books that our community are talking about.
My name is this summer Azami and I teach contemporary Islamic studies. My guest today is Andrew Much, a scholar who is no stranger to Oxford.
He completed his DFL at Ox's Department of Politics and International Relations as a martial scholar over a decade ago.
After graduating, Andrew took for 10 years in political science in the political science department
at Yale University and has taught Islamic law at Yale and NYU law schools.
His book, Islam and Liberal Citizenship. The Search for an Overlapping Consensus, published by Oxford University Press in 2009,
is an exploration of the Islamic juridical discourse on the right's loyalties and obligations of Muslim minorities in liberal
polities and won the 2009 Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion from the American Academy of Religion under a second book.
The subject of today's podcast is The Caliphate of Man Popular Sovereignty in Modern Islamic Thought.
Published by Harvard University Press in twenty nineteen.
As well as we will see, it examines the problem of divine and popular sovereignty in modern Islamic thought through to the Arab uprisings.
Andrew, welcome to Book Talk. Thank you very much for having me.
I'm delighted to be here spiritually in Oxford.
And I'm very, very grateful for your interest in my book.
And thank you for joining us. I mean, this is one of the more positive aspects,
and we need to take so many positives and we can offer the sort of crisis of the
kind of crisis that we can actually host people from different parts of the world.
And so it's wonderful. It would be wonderful to have you in Oxford.
It's wonderful to have you been in and so to speak, from Massachusetts to tell us something about the writing in your book.
When did you start? What sources did you use and when did it take you in terms of travel?
Well, the origins of the book are around 2010, 2011.
I had finished my first book and it was working. I wasn't sure a number of different things and Islamic thought and Islamic law at that time,
some of which related to extensions of the themes that I had written in my first book.
So I was interested in how to explore in greater depth some of the harder
questions related to the encounter between liberal ethics and Islamic ethics.
Right. So some of the really hard questions related to the scope and the limits of religious freedom and freedom of expression.
These are the core areas where liberal conceptions of autonomy or freedom of
religion clash with Islamic conceptions of a belief in a conception of the good.
The truth of a particular metaphysical tradition. And limits on the scope for human behaviour to do certain kinds of harms at the community
level to religious goods with all the freedom for a religious community to thrive.
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 Shariah.
So I was poking around in these kinds of areas.
I'd written a few papers exploring this on whether this particular Islamic legal theory of the McCrossin was a fruitful area for not resolving,
but structuring ways of thinking about how Islamic aims can and might not be
able to be advanced in in non Islamic political communities in legal settings.
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.
So I was interested in the thought of Russia of Alooshe, who I'd been Exton for a while,
who figured sort of had a kind of minor appearance in my first book.
But I was familiar with his 1993 treatise, Public Freedoms in the Islamic State.
So I open this and I was going to say, what do her new Xis views on Islamic law, Islamic legal theory,
the application of Islamic law, and a modest say about the prospects for lawmaking in a future non authoritarian, democratic Tunisia?
So the broad question was. You know, what is his conception of Sharia?
What is his conception of the balance between classical faith and must laha or consultation or something like this?
And as I worked my way through his book, I realised these themes absolutely figure.
And they end up becoming something important for the the arguments of the caliphate of man.
But what I realised is the real action is this theory of the universal caliphate or or the octet is still left.
This is what appeared more than anything else in his book.
This is what he himself described as the pillar or the foundation of Islamic political philosophy.
The idea that the people, both individually and collectively, have been deputised as God's vice jahren on Earth.
So this kind of hit me over the head. It rose. That's where the action is.
And it's a really, really fruitful and complex area to look.
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 theme?
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.
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,
you know that Islamism is this commitment to Hakimi or divine sovereignty.
But then here's this robust commitment to do what they are calling popular sovereignty.
And so just a flurry of questions raised themselves. And I was kind of off to the races after that contesting.
So that gives a really useful sort of overview of where.
In a sense, the book came from. And of course, this and she is the only figure who gets to chapters himself, so to speak,
rather than just the one which know someone put up and do the and some of the other figures thought even the rise of the century,
these figures get not as much attention, shall we say, as initially.
And I think the background that you've given,
the fact that he figured I would call him sort of having a presence in your initial book and your first book, but that you happened to be in Tunisia.
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
still sort of coming out of that that's going in that sort of direction that one would hope that it would.
So thank you for that background. And if I can sort of move on to my next question.
It's that your book takes us on this journey that attempts to trace the genealogy, as you highlighted,
of the important concept of sovereignty or popular sovereignty, more specifically in modern Islamic thought.
So what you've described in the title of your book is The Caliphate of Man.
And you you say that this has kind of become the deep and the defining idea within contemporary Islamism in broad strokes.
Could you perhaps offer us an outline of the genealogy that you present to, in a sense,
give us an idea of the overall argument of your book pertaining to the idea of a universal caliphate or in general about the in a sense,
as I see it,
your sort of book is about the development of this idea of the universal caliphate translating into an Islamic conception of popular sovereignty.
And so, you know, I hope that's a reasonable reading of the book.
But how how sort of the notion of the character of man becomes this ideal, as you put it?
It travels through certain scholars, you know, isn't present, for example, in Dubai.
But it is by the time we get to know she the, as you put it, central idea.
Right. So so I begin sort of in the present with an observation. Right.
That, you know, I actually open the book with useful part of Darwin's sermon in here year, ten days after the revolution or something like that.
And it's not a work of political theory, but you see these themes in which popular agency and popular virtue,
democratic political action, along with divine will or divine intent or the divine plan, are kind of fused together.
You have this idea that the voice of the people is the voice of God.
And yet at the same time, you have this fundamental observation that it's not just any old people, right?
It's a virtuous people. It's a pious people. It's a religious people.
So this is the first sort of point of departure and point of comparison with
lots of non Islamic democratic theory which says that begin with a people.
Whether it's an arbitrarily defined group that has been, you know,
sort of set off geographically or ethnically or because of some development of a national consciousness,
and then you ask, how can that people be free or self governed, more legitimately governed?
But if you're really asking about how any people could be right.
Whereas in the Islamic conception, the people already has a particular quality or attribute.
But more importantly, the people already has a certain will and has a certain defined objective for itself.
Right. And that's an important distinction, because in a lot of Western Democratic theory,
the promotion of democracy is to discover the people's will or to discover which
popular will is legitimate or can be realised through law or course of action.
That's the point of deliberation or procedure or whatever it is.
Right. Whereas in Islam, you beat the will is already given in advance.
So that is itself a kind of complicated question, right?
How can you have a legitimate commitment to democracy where certain aspects of the people's essence.
Right. Identity and will are already given by the theory.
So the people can't choose to be under the what it already is, which is the ummah.
OK. Right. So that's. So that's the beginning set of questions. So then historically there was a question of, well, where does this come from?
Right. What is the significance of this? How does this actually represent a kind of revolution over premodern Islamic thought?
So there's a number of themes. Right.
One is which premodern Islamic thought is kind of predicated on if you're if you're talking about the the the mainstream Sunni juridical tradition.
Right. On a kind of condominium of authority between Suta on the one hand and on the other.
So. Right. Some form or another, whether it's the Sultan or the Hunniford individually or Suta as an entire governing apparatus.
And the the scholars collaborate in the governing of the community.
And, you know, we have a understanding of the traditional way that that is.
That that is divided between the sultan, leaving many matters to the traditional Sharia court and.
Right. Vs. having a wide latitude for governance through CSA courts or through other kinds of of non-starter emotive or non 50 modes of governance.
OK. And these are outlined in Chapter two to this. Yeah. Interesting.
Yes. Yes. And I thought that's not meant to be a super original observation. It's meant to be kind of schematically.
Right. Summarising things that are widely observed in literature.
Although this again, I want to stress that that's kind of the Sunni juridical story about things.
If you actually read a lot of history of Ottoman political thought.
We know that in reality, Ottoman political thought in particular is much more influenced by Sufi conceptions and shadows,
offical conceptions than right. Centralise and prioritise the ethical character of the ruler.
Right. There are a lot more rulers centred, caliph centred, charismatic than the classical Sunni juridical model wants you.
Right. But we'll leave that show Scheidt for now.
Yeah. So one major theme is how does the.
Traditional condominium of authority, the guardianship of of the sultan or the caliph,
whatever the executive is called, and the scholars become devolved to some kind of popular political community.
And then the other story is how does a fairly.
Non utopian, realistic conception of politics in the Sunni juridical tradition become transformed to a much more ambitious,
much more utopian aspiration for politics in in much of modern Sunni thought.
Right. That's the kind of background. And then I moved through a number of thinkers to make.
Just to add a point.
You actually nicely sort of illustrate this concept Arolsen idea, I think, taken from his political liberalism, ultra realistic utopia.
And I'd say, you know, when you're saying it's utopian, it's not that it's you know, it takes people as they are to a certain extent as well.
Yeah, that's that's my idea. So sometimes people write for me saying that it's utopian. Right.
And then the kind of popular folk sense of the word utopian. Right.
We use that to mean unrealistic high sky. It's right.
Right. Right. Right. Which itself is an interesting observation. Right.
Right. You know, a kind of very, very accessible history of this relates to perhaps Cold War liberalism.
Right. Right. Ice. I Eberlin.
The idea of that utopianism persay is the problem because it goes against the grain of human nature requires too much coercion.
Right. And and so part of the Cold War liberal brief against totalitarianism was a brief against utopianism as.
Right. Right. And then, of course, you have the kind of, you know,
period after communism in which there's this assumption that markets and liberal democracy can more or less provide for the needs of people.
And this is also a non utopian story because we're not meant to be prescribing a particular final end for individuals that holds for for everybody,
but rather creating the space for people to pursue different sorts of ends.
Nowhere is I, on the other hand, don't use utopian as.
As a criticism.
It's a it's just a mode of thinking about politics to mode thinking about what is the best that we could hope for in ideal circumstances.
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.
Right. Right. Given the kinds of beings that we are, given the limits of our moral capacity,
the limits of our selflessness, with the limits of our ability to act on perfect moral virtue.
Right. What then is the best that we could hope for? If we designed institutions in a certain way.
So that's what I mean by a certain kind of utopianism.
But what I but what I mean, more specifically in the Islamic context and here I'm very, very open actually to being corrected on this.
But on my reading, a kind of developed Sunni juridical model of politics doesn't see the political sphere
as where human beings realise their good or their virtue or their path to salvation.
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, arguably, some of these Sufi and philosopher inspired theories.
Right, in which the ruler is the font of virtue and salvation and it kind of flows down or eminence down to the people.
Arguably, that also makes politics central to the realisation of our good and our salvation.
But so much of classical Sunni political thought is very, very realistic.
It's about removing the greatest harms of social life, violence right now, sedition, hunger, crusaders, bandits, all of this.
And what and what's very minimal. I avoided using the word minimal on campus because think it's minimal, but I think it's constrained.
And then also, if you look at somebody like Evan Hudood, who, as we know, is widely influential relator on an autumn in political thought.
It's not minimal, but it's a very constrained conception of what politics can bring.
And even where somebody like Ibn Khaldoon will say the difference between rational got Royal authority, Moltke ugly.
Right. And the caliphate is that the caliphate brings a benefit in this world.
And the next next rise, it really explain why is that the caliphate is is bringing Muslim ha in the next world.
It's kind of just. Heard it right? I mean, just to close out this show.
What do you think any government can do by way of bringing about justice or peace or or, ah, the good functioning of economies and so forth?
That's all that the Khaleefa model of governance can do.
So I thought that the Khalifa model of governance brings about some some a greater heaven on earth.
It just yes, in some way it provides benefit in the actual heaven.
So that's the first or the second thought is what then becomes remarkable. And again, feel free to disagree.
Right. How much in thinkers like MO Duty and Collective in others, the political world,
in the sense of bringing about Islamic law is a sight more moral perfection, realising our good.
In addition to just removing injustice and trying to bring about basic rights, that's also part of what I mean by utopian vision.
Politics becomes a site for moral perfection in ways that I don't think is the norm in premodern.
Certainly thought. You know, I think I broadly and to be honest, I mean, and this will be somewhat impressionistic.
You know, I've not gone out to set out to answer this in my own research, but I broadly think that your sort of intuitions are correct in this.
And you kind of you know, you cite of a management. You have in your notes, too, to kind of give something which actually reinforces your point,
which is to say Ebon Thamir tried to move away from this really centred vision to a community centred vision.
But the fact that I is a mutual friend of us, of course, says this is an illustration of the fact that that wasn't really the case.
I think I mean, to answer your second point, which is why is the caliphate, you know, so central?
You know, why is it that it 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.
You're getting sort of political, you know, benefits and justice, as it were.
And, you know, my my thoughts go back to those early and early in his decide this idea that I had where he makes a very stark statement,
which I'm not sure is necessarily representative, how awesome he saw it.
But, you know, saying that without the caliphate, nothing we do is, in a sense, legitimated ego.
But in the literal sense, it's not right. You need the caliph to authorise judge.
Right. Judges are right. So he's the conversion of possibility for legality.
Right. Right. But it's not. But it's not that. Therefore, you know that the site of moral development.
Right. Is elsewhere. Right. It's Sufism.
But but you read someone because Ali's book on their here and so many of the books are actually chapters in law.
Right.
I mean, it's about how do you take that the minimal bar that he's interested in and raise that engagement with the hip to a point of essence of speak?
I mean, my my suspicion. And again, you know, you can feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on this as well.
And I think we're both, in a sense, exploring a question which is really profound and not necessarily straightforward.
My suspicion is that the conditions of modernity some suddenly allow for and you look at, you know,
people I quoted and people like I'm I'll do the and who they're citing, you know,
very often, quote and Hadith, it's the earliest period, the earliest history.
It allows for bypassing the classical sort of like crystallised form of Watson is and was and tries to go
back to certain ideals where actually politics was it a space for very serious contestation about salvation?
Almost. So I do think that there does seem to be some of that happening there.
I think these are tendencies that are latent in, you know, made more latent, if that's a way to put it in the classical Sunni tradition.
But they're ever present because they're in the Torah. They're in the end the Hadith.
So, you know, it's we think I had a BRISON discussion with Humaira and chassis.
You may know about this, you know, through much of classical sunnism, hadiths almost seem a bit marginal.
You know, you think of myself here and the extent to which it's criticised in the modern period for having weak ideas.
But, you know, my remarked, Tommo, is what people blame on Hatzalah a little unfairly.
If you look at any books,
I think you can see they're not terribly interested in Hadith unless you're like the hundreds who are the tiniest school anyway.
So, you know, I think this rediscovery to refer to Ahmed Shamsi, who I sort of interviewed a couple of days ago actually on his book,
this rediscovery of the truth of of these classics does dramatically reshape the way in which we see the possibilities of.
The tradition, I think, and that's what allows people like me to then put them to pay with, in some respects,
novelties, in other respects, you know, readings of things which are latent in the tradition.
So speaker. Yeah. 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.
I will say that. Right. You know, when you read my Judy, it puts you on the early period.
It's not scholarly, right? It's not about particularly what it's about.
First of all, there's an emotional aspect. It's motivating for action.
It's like mythical. Right. Again, a word that's often used in a negative kind of thing.
Right. Right. Not right. That it's writerly myth as opposed to fact. But I think more that it's creating meaning.
Right. And in many ways, it's also it's simplifying things.
Right. It's meant to smooth out things, not to explore it as a space of contestation, but a space of deriving certain kinds of lessons for action.
And I don't know, this is a good comparison or not, but I'll sri's it.
It's a little, you know,
perhaps a little bit like the way that Machiavelli is going to read Livi or perhaps the American founders want to read the classical tradition.
It's not as classicists or as scholars, they're trying to derive lessons and conclusions.
And that often involves smoothing out a lot of a lot of things.
Right. So right now, so about Machiavelli wants to explore what are the conditions for liberty in a republic.
And he reads, you know, Livi in particular.
And yet, you know, some of the most well-known lessons are the ways in which, like popular violence is a good thing for,
you know, popular, you know, riots and so forth, because this is the language of the poor against the ground.
Now, whether that's not a scholarly observation should say it's it's an optimistic, pragmatic in a sense, it's a utilitarian reading on it.
It's an intervention in contemporary debates about how much should we fear the poor and.
Right. And are these sorts of things going to lead to an expansion of liberty or not?
Similarly for. You know, it's not a very sophisticated reading, but it's a very sort of ingenious reading in a way,
in my reading of put up on the on the early period. Right.
Which again, is only partial. It doesn't capsulised everything. Sure.
And it's sort of like saying if you get the politics right, you get everything else.
Right. Right. I get the leadership right. Get the law right.
Have righteous governance. And then lo and behold.
How infused everybody is with zeal and virtue and great ire to protect Islam and desire to help their brother.
That's the kind of lesson that I think is what I was trying to show. Is that right?
The earliest, the harbour. They were so virtuous and so pious because the politics was right.
Anyway, that's my reading. Admittedly, it's not you know, it doesn't cover everything that he has to say about this period.
But for me, it's a very distinctive contribution. And it's part of what answers the question, what is political about political Islam?
Right. Right. How how are they giving a particular political reading of Islam?
It's not just that they're emphasising the importance of politics or emphasising divine sovereignty or engaging in tech fear.
If you don't implement Sharia, they have a theory of what politics does.
And that's what I found particularly interesting. And I mean, let me sort of perhaps I mean, in a sense, I've got some questions that are lined up,
but I find sort of much of your commentary so intriguing. It goes into many interesting directions.
I want to perhaps contest this notion not necessarily contested,
but the way in which the term Scollard the what the term scholarly has done in thinking about someone that to be a saying, look,
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 someone like Clippy is trying,
is referring to ideas that are used by native peoples as a means of justifying liberty of some kind or and so on.
But rather there's a sort of you know, he's trying to get something out of that text and for something quite practical,
something quite social, something, as you say, quite political.
And to a certain extent, I think a lot of Islamic scholars through history, you know, their motivations are going to be very different to,
you know, I mean, quite dramatically different to what a modern scholar would consider to be a scholarly engagement.
There are the great sort of encyclopaedias to the people are cataloguing things and and also sort of maybe engaging in original reflection somewhere,
jarheads and so on in his. That will happen. But you think someone like, again, has any writing in the air here?
There's an urgency to the practicality of what he's writing about.
It's a new read, something like Vicryl notes, and it's supposed to shock your system, so to speak.
And I think that spirit is carried forward by people caught up in in a very different way,
because for those early, you know, the the political realm is not one of these kind of solved it in some level.
He's also made his contributions as society in the way that Croner talks about that, you know.
Yeah. They're just there to be the muscle power that keeps everything going.
But the arlena and the shaddy are basically as long as they're in power.
And this is how Noah Feldman also presents it, as long as they're in control.
That's all good. All right. But that's not the case with God.
And nor do the and these people suddenly everything's been unseated.
So suddenly it's all you know, everything's up for grabs in a scary way, 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?
Our societies are basically becoming hyper secularised in, you know, in our imagination.
And our sort of values are being usurped and destroyed.
And people are being taken in by this sort of liberalism in the form that existed at that time by a
conception of the nation state as the true seat of sovereignty and popular and popular sovereignty.
Obviously, people like Madou, they were very exercised by those sorts of concepts as well as could have been his own way.
So I think there are interesting things going on. And yeah, I mean, that's just a reflection.
I don't like to add something to that. I'd be very interested to hear your your thoughts on that.
If you think perhaps I know. Do I think we're on the same page on that?
Yes, sir. So I wanted to sort of press on, too.
I mean, this is really a fascinating discussion, to be honest. And I have, you know, a lot of questions.
I'm going to go on to sort of in a sense, because we're discussing Madou, the input, which I I believe Chapter four and five in your book.
I'm going to actually circle back to Chapter two for a moment where I think, you know, I think in a sense,
you provide this compendious overview of what might be called normative premodern to need the normative Piedmont's and conception of sovereignty.
Of course, you also highlight that this is, in a sense, the received normative premodern, certainly conception of sovereignty.
This is how soon these look back at their own tradition today and read it in the premodern tradition.
So there are all sorts of other possibilities, as you've suggested. So in subsequent chapters,
you explore how modern Islamism radically reformulate this premodern conception in order to
generate the Islamist notion of popular sovereignty that underlies Islamic democratic theory.
And you in several instances, use the term invention to characterise this introduction of popular sovereignty.
I think there's another Yale scholar. I was just sort of having a breeze through Emma and Jim's comment on your book.
And he cites someone also speaks about the invention of popular sovereignty in Edmund Morgan as the famous.
Right. Right, right. Right. We talked about the invention of democracy, of popular sovereignty and human rights,
or the invention of the people's rights in American Puritan thought.
And I wonder if you can maybe give listeners a sense of just how radical a
transformation you consider this to be from the premodern to the modern conception?
Well, what I try to argue is that like many inventions, it's based on certain kinds of materials.
So when modern Islamic constitutional thinkers of democratic theorists talk about things like the
importance of the bay or the idea of the left foot or the emem as a contract or the idea of the people,
the Omagh is actually the agency behind this or the idea of consultation shura.
These are these are materials that exist in the premodern tradition for short part of partially what a women's book is often tried to do, even time.
He has to say then there's also a tradition in premodern.
Well, premodern Islamic thought you might want to ground the important aspects of
leadership and law and virtue and write nudity as opposed to the caliphate.
Right. So these materials are there right in there and they're meaningful.
And of course, I think it's also fair to point out that there's a little bit.
There's both an apologetic motive to say we don't believe in the divine right of kings, not authoritarian.
Right. We never believed in absolutism. And there is also somewhat of a sectarian motive, which is to say we're not Shia.
We never believed in divine designation. Right. We never believed that God chose the ruler for the ruler was always just somebody that was a.
Painted by the community or again, when you when you read Mal,
what did they and you see that one of the ways in which the ruler is is is comes to authority is through the yard.
Right. It is tempting to treat it as election, but.
Right. No selection or choice. Right. Right. Right. It's one.
It's within the semantic range at the time election. Yes, that's right.
Yes. So these materials are there. It's just as we know historically, even in the most democratic moments.
Right. Perhaps the election of Earthmen or something like this. Right.
It was six people deliberating. Right.
And it wasn't because they were representatives of the community yet because they were the power brokers who might end up fighting amongst themselves.
So so, Shora, as the election of the ruler was a way of.
Was it was was a mode of conflict resolution. Not about empowering the OMA to choose its own rulers.
Right. And so and anyway,
so I'm certainly unaware of of any serious reflection on the idea that the Ummah is the source of political authority or has the right dissipate.
Right. Or governance to be legitimate. That's one way in which these democratic commitments rely on materials that are there.
Right. But they need something else.
The other thing that this trope of what's meant in the Koranic versus that talk about God appointing a caliph on earth,
that this is what God means is the entire Oma and that it's a political designation.
Right. And that it's a transfer friends of God's political authority to the people at large.
That's a complete invention. And so one of the things that point out.
So can you say that once more? Forgive me. I sort of. So I know the trope of the universal caliphate.
Right. Right, right. Yeah. The Oma is God's caliph. What I write was the caliphate of man.
Right. Right, right. That this rests on certain Koranic versus most famously.
Chapter two four 30. Amongst many others. Right.
The idea that this unambiguously without discussion,
without without the need to go through traditional tarsier means that it's the
Ummah at large or the people at large has been deputised by God as his deputy.
And that this is a political designation. It's the transference of his authority to then control the political apparatus.
That's a complete invention. Right.
So when when I read the rights or, you know, compiled the articles that went into his book, he left or a member Earthman.
Yeah. He has. As an epigraph. Yeah. Yeah.
To 30. Right. Doesn't mean doesn't he. Because the Omar chooses its caliph or.
It means that you have to appoint a caliph.
It really refers to the office of the Caliphate as occupied by a single individual with the classical showroom's male Muslim frien.
Reason all of the different virtues and qualifications is right.
That right now you do have a tradition in which human beings are gods.
Caliph. Right. You have this in law literature.
You have this right. Sufi literature. You have right philosopher literature. But it's not really a collective political authorisation.
Right. Right. Right. About how we become morally perfect when.
Right. Perfect ourselves morally. Again, whether that's understood the way that Sufis do or the philosophers do or suddenly more or less do.
You can aspire to being God's deputy on Earth. Right.
At an individual level, by becoming, you know, the best that you can be.
To. Right. Right. Right. And and certain kinds of theories.
It's part of this tripartite theological anthropology.
Right. What is the human function following Aristotle's. Right.
Argument in the ethics. Right. In a rational. Very simple yet.
No, no, no, no, no. That our function is to be rattin on our ethics. But ah but ok.
You're the Aristotle. You get the argument from the air. God.
Right. The function. OK. And so Islamic ethicists do the same thing.
So what is our function as human beings to worship God. Right to.
And Martin are right to symbolise or populate and didn't like the Earth.
And to be God's caliph. That's what it means to be human. But it's not.
It doesn't mean that not. Collectively have this political sovereignty.
So anyway. So. So that the idea that becomes the central idea of Islamic political thought is right.
Wrongly, a major revolution. Hmm hmm. Hmm hmm.
Right. So, Andres, thank you so much for covering a broad range of topics and for those of you who are still here.
We're going to continue our conversation. Sorry, Andrew and my stuff on a number of points that have arisen in the course of this discussion.
And I'm going to actually, if it's all right with yourself, Andrew, sort of take on one of the innocence, one of the questions that I find.
Whereas in a sense, disagreed with or disagreed with you were reading.
And I think this is going to be quite interesting because hopefully what will happen is, you know,
we'll I'll be able to understand perhaps how I misunderstand, misunderstood where where you're coming from.
And and hopefully I'll be able to share with you my own thoughts about why I think in a particular way about this question.
So you can keep your work with the suggestion that for a number of reasons,
it does not seem possible to reconcile divine sovereignty and popular sovereignty and that it's like
political foot may choose to discard sovereignty as a central idea in the next phase of its development.
If you can indulge me for a moment, I wonder if you feel that an Islamic conception of popular sovereignty may legitimately
be developed that is at odds with preventing Western conceptions of popular sovereignty.
In other words, must concepts adhere to the European genealogies to be authentic,
or can they be developed independently and other traditions to express,
for instance, the rejection of authoritarian government while simultaneously upholding an Islamic vision of divine sovereignty?
And if I arrange it briefly, add to that in a sense.
I'm not suggesting I don't think you have a say that, you know, Muslims can't develop their own sorts of ideas.
What you're saying is, you know, they end up being inconsistent with other ideas that they claim to uphold.
And I wonder if that inconsistency is a perception of, you know, what democracy means, for example,
within the West or what OK, and or what sovereignty means within sort of the liberal tradition.
And you're saying, no, it's not. It's actually something. I don't think that's what I did at all.
I think, in fact, what I did is treat them entirely in their own terms.
Right. So my entire point is that there was this attempt to create a conception of sovereignty,
a conception of democracy, a conception of legitimacy that was on their own telling entirely in their own terms.
But what I'm saying is, in their own terms, they were trying to do two things say God is the original sovereign, God is the original legislator.
Human beings do not have the freedom to legislate for themselves in defiance of what God has revealed.
Right. And yet God has not appointed any one between himself and the Ummah to bring this law
into reality and to adjudicate its various modes of realisation in the real world.
Therefore, the people can be sovereign because the people a is authorised by God with ringing about this law into reality,
but also because the people is already united around its desire and its will to bring this about.
The only thing that I think that I'm smuggling in is this semantic idea that the language of sovereignty is the language of unity
made universal carlotti so God can be sovereign because God is an entity that can speak in his own voice in a definitive way.
Acting can be sovereign because a king is a physical natural being that can give commands in his own voice that have finality right now.
Are nations, peoples, OMOs, the kinds of entities that can be sovereign, right?
If so, that requires a certain assumption about, you know, the Carlotti beautiful Kaldi unity definitiveness finality.
Now, what is it that allows you to even imagine that?
Right. So we ask that question about. So we ask that question about other theories of popular sovereignty.
Right. And so it's fair to ask that question about omic democratic theories like Nucci.
Yeah. And all you have to point out, even as these theories as aspired to toleration, a certain kind of political.
Oralism, there's always this assumption, right, that the that the people can only be God's vice chairman.
Right. If it sees itself as God's vice chairman and not some other kind of political entity, that's what to say.
It's a paradox. I just want to say it's a dilemma that is built on certain kinds of metaphysical and sociological assumptions about the world.
Right. And I wanted to.
So I really want to push back at the idea that I'm holding them account to a Western theory of democracy or theory of sovereignty.
I really don't think I know me because of my own ways of seeing the world.
Exaggerate how much pluralism there is. Right. Or exaggerate the importance of moral pluralism.
That would be the place, I think, to push back and say what? Right. Except for Tunisia.
Turkey. Right. Right. Right. Object to coercive secularism. Right.
Well, Muslim societies may be a lot more unified on morality than other rights.
That would be a place where a writer I would be open to. Right.
Sort of being proved wrong. But I don't think conceptually I'm doing anything other than taking these theories in the wrong terms.
So what I would say to that. And, you know, I really appreciate the opportunity really to build to talk to the author about that book.
It's I think, again, to be a very edifying conversation for myself especially.
But what I would say is that in a sense, I think this dilemma really arises with the Nucci.
Right. The other theorists, democracy isn't really very high on their agendas.
That sort of popular empowerment of the populace, in a sense,
to the point of being legislators isn't quite as present in the way that, as you put it in the sort of preface.
I know she is the most important theorist of the harmony of Islamic democracy.
And this is one of the things that I find striking in its 2012 book.
Democratic hopeful in Central Islam is that he literally uses democracy and sure as synonyms, which a lot of theorists are very loath to do.
And I think, you know, what other theorists, whether it's something that I'm out or whether it's somebody who's got a body,
whether it's someone like Mohammed, the president, that he doesn't write, but he speaks a lot.
What I noticed is they'll always make very clear, you know, that a Shambu,
Lavaca Salahi at the end of the shittier, so to speak, so that the people have legislative prerogatives.
Now, let me look, Halonen. We had a MOHARRAM and there's a very clear red line as long as they don't make use just the same.
Right. Right. And so once once you say that you're not giving them,
you're giving them what madou they called basically limited popular sovereignty under the search for of God.
Who is there to say when the people has legislated in a way that violates the Hillal in her own right.
Right. Is that right? And you talk about questions. You talk about aristocratic authority.
So in a sense, you have it. Good for you here, Mr. Kretz.
Yeah. You have the scholars. You have your Elena. Yeah. Where do they get their political authority to.
Right. Right. Right. No, no answer. And in a sense, what I'm suggesting and asking you.
Yes. No, I mean, like in what capacity are you asking me if I were in my theory?
Think those thinkers back to me. Right. I, I suspect there will be a number of options.
But in a sense, one of the things that you highlight is that, you know, in a place like Pakistan,
when they have set up a council, I forget what it's called or the Sharia, the federal court, the FSC.
I think five out of the eight were not even all that. Right. Let me get your question the point.
Sure. Even everybody the whole point is that the people is not radically free to legislate.
Right. Right. Right. Law makes democratic. Right. Right. Right. Russo.
Right. Right. Yeah. But that's that's rhetoric. How so?
It's rhetoric to say the people can't violate the divine law.
Right. How do you know when they have violated divine law.
Who gets to pronounce on. Right. Right. Right. Gets a stab at that.
That's a problem that's existed throughout Islamic history, right? Yes. But it never for.
Were you saying that the people. Is the what you say the scholars or the rulers.
And then that's the point of chapter two of my book. Yeah. You have this embryonic yet clash between the scholars and the rulers.
Right. More often than not. Right. Not really allowed to develop.
Right. Sure. Or you write or you have semigloss shows.
A book on the ottoman in late Hannaford's them, which says, well, the sultan actually had a lot more authority with.
In Hanafi fell more right than we previously understood.
Not just the right as his own. Yes.
So what I'm trying to say is, of course, everybody is going to say right to people's right to legislate is limited.
Then you have to look at what they do with that idea. Sure.
What institutions are established to litigate that or social hate it shows?
Where do they get their authority? Right. I knew she will say in his previous work.
Right. Course you create some body scholars or.
But yet they only derive their authority from the people's right.
Right. All right. And in a sense, what I'm saying is that, you know, the reason someone that is emphasising it's they're getting that authority.
It's a contextual thing, which I'm sure you're aware of, the fact that he doesn't want these bodies to be appointed by authoritarians.
A lot of this discourse is counter authoritarian.
And so in reaction to that, I think that contingency doesn't you know, the contingency is often she's thought mentioned in your sort of piece.
But I think that there could be more central in the sense that, yes,
he's saying the people are given that authority as a way to bypass that sort of authoritarianism of the modern nation state.
All right, Margaret, stay a little bit. Yes, that the obvious context. But that's all what the Islamist was always been.
Right. Right. So why in my duty and input to and in others is the Omar, given this same tragedy in restoring Islam to the world,
whether it had or through popular political action or through the fringe parties?
It's because the rulers are or or the problem.
So Islamism has always been a kind of populist movement.
Right. OK. So it's not just that her new she is the first of the gwai.
Do what, Ben Ali. To be appointing these judges. Right. Always been part of the problem.
Right. Right. Of course, we know that Islamism has also been utilised by authoritarian rulers and collaborated, you know, station Islamism.
So I'm not going to I'm not trying to say short termism has always been a populist or an anti authoritarian movement, far from an right.
In fact, quite the opposite. You know that the second there's a chance of cooptation, right, via virtuous king.
Right. Right. Yes. Well, we'll take whatever you can get. Yeah. It's a pragmatic sort of ideology.
Said, yeah. But the other problem is that. Yes. But the other point is that all of these things are part of the buffet.
So there are some like 12 things that argue about maturity is that he's his thumb or his hand is still on the scale of a stock receipt yet?
Yeah. I think all of these people are. Yeah, the people is in there.
But like the scholars have not only the right, but the obligation to be on a lot of this authority.
Yes. So that kind of creeps in. So when you have this tradition, I don't think I don't think it creeps in.
I think for all of these people, you know, that's going to be something which, you know, I think it seems like it creeps in because of simple creeps.
And that's why I'm saying I think it seems like it creeps in.
The people seem to creep in because of, you know, the dominant Western conception of what, you know, popular sovereignty should be.
But that's what I'm saying,
that in the Islamic conception of sovereignty and they are trying to adapt a term which is used widely and they want to be intelligible to people.
Yes, it's going to cause these kinds of misunderstanding. They're gonna say, no, this isn't proper popular sovereignty.
You're not giving the people absolute legislative authority. And they're trying to say, this is my argument.
And hopefully if we article kind of about my duty that no, I I'm using this in this time to get and garner some intelligibility with you.
But to say that, no, that might be your concept initially. But I've taken it and I've adopted it in a way that you might not recognise as coherent.
But this is entirely legitimate and I'm quite coherent in our own context.
Yes. You know, these sorts of challenges exist with respect to the application of this.
And you kind of were saying, OK, so what's what's it gonna be like?
What's what's the institutional mechanism and so on.
I mean, I'm if you indulge me for a minute and I hope that we can stay in touch on this point because I'm kind of working on a project on this.
I think the US sort of government, for example, or the popular sovereignty in the US,
I mean, and representative democracy in general is also has elements of aristocracy.
I mean, there's this great debate of Jemmy Woltman and Bruce Ackerman bring with respect to judicial review.
Right. And for me, judicial review is basically at best ocracy of a certain kind.
For me, the I mean, just to map on for purposes of comparison, the sacred document has the Constitution, the Oliner of the Constitution.
The focus has, so to speak, are the Supreme Court and you have various branches of government.
And that's one mechanism that has been developed. And I think historically, you know, Muslims have developed all sorts of.
Storms of this kind and to deal with really the infinite possible, almost infinite possibilities of the,
you know, the textural sources in the early history and no duty and quota represent an effort to try and see,
OK, how might that work in our own time in a way that doesn't sort of lend itself to the authoritarianism of the modern state,
which was a major concern, obviously, at that. And that in the end, I wonder what you think of that reading.
So, of course, this efforts ocracy everywhere. And so. Yeah.
But I would say the American context in the Western context, the Supreme Court, of course,
is one example, but it's more common to look at the vast areas of bureaucratic administrative.
Right. Right. So how much control does even Congress have for the president, for that matter?
Right. What's that? Or the president, for that matter. The executive is so limited domestically that this is why we can't he can't do very much.
I mean, maybe. But but, you know, the idea is there's so much that we just assume is a matter of expertise.
Right. Whether and how to deal with a pandemic or the military or the economy or the stock market work.
Right. Right, right. Right, right. I mean, the way it works in it governed by the expert authorities and all kinds of areas.
So, you know, that's the crisis. That's one dimension of the crisis of the modern Western idea of democracy.
Right. In addition to concerns about oligarchy and all of that, which are which are obviously true and somebody like Mobutu himself talks about.
Right. Why do you want Western democracy? They don't have that. They governed by financial interests.
Right. But not entirely separate from that. But conceptually distinct is the idea that how could the people ever rule in these vast,
complex societies in which you have permanent permanent sort of administrative or or bureaucratic aristocrats?
OK. Right. Right. How do you split that difference? Will congressional oversight.
Right. Or they can be removed or you can set policy directives that they then implement.
Right. Right. But that's that's I think, you know. You know, much vaster area in which the language of Epper stock recy it.
Right. Used right at the right time. Answers. There's true knowledge. Right.
And we don't care about Joe Schmoes opinion on masks.
Right. Right, right. Brown, your damn mask. Yeah. Yeah. Because that's what the science says.
OK. Yeah. So in the Islamic context.
Well first I'll have to remember that mildewy himself does not use the language of sovereignty about the people here.
So that's. That's me saying yes. Yes. He says limited popular sovereignty when you.
Yeah. Or Suza. Right. So it limited the minority under the sovereignty of God.
Right. So he's much more explicit that he will not. Yes. He will not refer to the people as sovereign yet.
So that's a little bit of my own interpretive work saying fine.
But when you start to call the people the Halifa. Yes. And when you remove intermediate authorities.
Right. And you. And you ascribe to the Halifa all kinds of political agency.
Right. Let's see where this goes. Right.
And let's see what this implies.
Now, if somebody like Mel duty, he will still say that the people have an obligation to listen to the scholars dollars,
have an obligation to codify FIK to create these new codes.
And that's more or less binding. But then there's the cracks, right, that I outlined in my Chapter four.
Right. Showing the scholars don't agree or when it's a matter of indeterminacy or must not.
Yeah. There are these cracks in at popular agency started entering in ways that didn't really exist before.
Yes. Yes. So. Yeah. OK.
No, I mean, in a sense what I would add there is, you know, do these confronting a situation which is unprecedented naturally in Islamic history,
the post-colonial you know,
what what America that caused the liberal colonial state has established certain structures and mechanisms and bureaucracies, et cetera.
And now he's having to actually answer questions that never occurred to the premodern tradition in many respects.
In some respects they did.
But the state was such a small I mean, you kind of signal this the discussions about the state are actually the discussions about the imams.
Right. It's the Hammamet and it's just the office of the caliphate.
And there's assumptions that, yes, he's going to appoint various people, et cetera.
There's going to be a kind of bureaucracy, but it's not anywhere near as elaborate as the modern sort of BMF that we except we live with.
And so my my sort of like, in a sense, a complaint in a sense.
And this is not just directed at your sort of reading of modernity,
but generally a lot of the readings about modern scholars is, oh, they're sort of radically transforming or.
Formulating the classical tradition, and I'm like, yeah, of course they are.
They have to if they want to be relevant and Islamic in any way, shape or form.
So why is that something which is, you know, why?
Why should that break be anything that surprises us a great deal?
I think we we can start off by saying, well, again, I don't think you ever question his right to do these sorts of things, but.
Well, obviously, they're going to do that. They have to. If Islam is to be relevant in the modern world, they will have to radically adapt.
And here's how they're doing it. And you know, how how well are they doing it?
Yes, there are all these periods that are coming up. How unusual is that?
If you look at the classical tradition, in a sense, do you see similar periods?
And I would suspect, yes, that B all sorts of approaches that exist because these are human endeavours by default.
Does that make sense? I'm not surprised they're doing it. It's just that there are many ways of doing it.
So, yeah. So if you have. OK. So let's just take the argument of well, harlock about the modern state, which is an ontological argument.
It's not really a historic argument that the state is ontologically incompatible.
Yes. With what the Sharia is. And yet it is Islam. Yeah.
Now so harlock d historia sizes what he wants to make historical.
Right. And he ontologies is what is actually historical.
Right. Perhaps rightly so. What is actually not Islam as such, but is the way that Islam developed from the eight hundreds or the 8th century.
Right. To whatever. Yeah. He wants to turn into a metaphysical reality.
Right. Right. Such ideal art. Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad deal that everyone has to adhere to in order to be Islam.
This is why it has to be is the city and the city is the organic relationship of the scholars to texts,
to metaphysics and the people said right from the state. Now, in addition to being a historical,
it also insofar as its historical takes something that is merely historical in turns it into Islam as such now.
So it's a theological argument masquerading as an ethical, historic argument.
So now that's not my point. The point is, yeah, fine. The state is bad for classical theft.
It changes things. Nobody's going to say that a committee draughting a code is the same thing as scholars debating fit,
you know, in an amended us on Damascus in the hundreds. Right.
But so what? That's for Muslims to work out whether they still think it realises some some kinds of core purposes.
So I don't take the argument that just because they're trying to develop Islamic law right through state institutions,
that it's therefore an authentic schorsch. My point is to say they're not just doing that.
They are also trying to create a theory whereby a modern state could be not just minimally legitimate.
That's very easy within them, right? Yeah. Get rid of Fitna.
Create order. Create the conditions for its operation.
Is he having. Yeah. I mean, it's not just legitimate. One of the things you point to is the fact that it's an obligation.
You know, you you mentioned, I think, in the chapter on Ryba possibly that they couldn't even,
you know, or they could say was we have an absolute obligation to establish the Letha.
But they didn't know how to do it in the sense that sort of resting on this historical obligation that exists.
You know, in a sense, there's this imperative. But what if this actually released an earlier question you asked,
which is it's not just that they want to go back to the early sahab over the period after the prophet.
Right. They self consciously almost want to delegitimize from political purposes.
So much of what happened in the meanwhile and so did the and others go so far as to say the Ottoman Empire was never
legitimate because rights never granted legitimacy through a freely given consensus of the Hellewell Act created.
Now, that is a really age, historical, anachronistic census.
No fully jurist's before that ever thought that there were actually had to come to power through that kind of consensual legalistic means?
Right, right. Right. So there's something very, very good. They didn't require it.
I mean, there were people overseas. Yeah, it's nice. But that certainly wasn't a requirement.
Right. Since and a lot of the. At the very least. And so, so, so.
So this is part of this. Why I began the story here is because there is something about the fact that not only did they recognise.
We the scholars assembled in Cairo, don't have the physical shoka, the force.
Right. Point a caliph. But without our consent, we don't want a Napoleon or a Salaheddine.
Right. Or an heir to grow to come through here. Right. And establish what we wanted.
So we wanted to be legal. We want. We want the Islamic Emam to be law all the way down.
Right. Right. Right. And that's a really fascinating moment. Yeah.
So they they they knew in principle how to bring it about. They just recognised that, you know, that's not the way things actually happened.
And they were uncomfortable with that, with that paradox. Right.
So, I mean, that's. And in a sense, we've got a number of threads here.
But I think the river point is interesting because what's happening at that point,
I suspect if someone like uneatable father came out of the desert and, you know,
conquered Cairo and established bluffer, that I would be willing to accept that because,
I mean, your father would probably take him under his wing and the other LNA locally. I think she said, oh, that's that's a question as well.
Of course, you know, during the Ottoman period and possibly before that.
But I'm thinking even hazardous Ghailani, who dies in I want to say 15, 52.
I might be off by a century. So it's within the Ottoman sort of model looks under the Ottomans.
You know, during that period, someone is basically saying, yes,
you can if you cannot find someone who is, you know, Karachi, you can have someone else.
But even before in a Gilani talks about, you know, this is something which is not absolutely necessary.
And that's centuries. So there's enough latitude within the tradition to create those sorts of alternatives.
The Ottomans, as Ahmed Tremseh talks about in his recent book,
they tried to censor some of the early shaddy works because they actually Nakota Shia condition is very strong.
And that's the dominant tendency within the whole Sunni tradition.
Now, as a consequence of that, what what I'm suggesting here is that, you know, Reber taking that sort of stance,
also probably has a historical dimension to it, which is who have the Egyptians dealt with the previous sort of century and a half?
Muhammad Ali, his children. And then, you know, the the KEDO under the suzerainty of the Ottomans, but then really under the control of the British.
They've never had, you know, anything resembling, I think, a proper Islamic experience in recent centuries.
And he's kind of reacting to that, saying, no, we have to choose who it is, because otherwise we're we're just going to have another.
You know, let's remember that Persia, so to speak, we don't want that again.
So. And I also sort of wonder to what extent you signal this,
but you're you kind of say that someone like Russia can nucci after the Arab Spring after writing in 2014, 2015.
He basically throws his old theory out the window, as far as I'm concerned.
Well, as far as I can tell, based on what I've read from you, which is to say that we're no longer Islamists were Muslim Democrats.
And ultimately, it's really, you know, popular sovereignty is a real thing and it really does take control.
And my you know, my theory here and it's very difficult for someone to brush up on this who's currently the speaker of the House,
and he's just survived a no confidence vote to actually speak his mind.
And he's constantly conscious of the dynamic within and to a certain extent, it's not just vacant until you make it, but actually become it as well.
So I'm not suggesting that he's being disingenuous in saying one thing and not not believing in it.
But I do think the constraints in which these actors are operating really can bring into question.
And, you know, I can recognise that for a Western scholar to say this about sort of a Middle Eastern scholar can be very problematic.
And I don't mean to say any sort of Orientalist fashion, but I don't want to dismiss it out of hand that he's perhaps not the most representative
thinker when it comes to thinking about the possibilities in the long term in this moment.
Yes, this is project looks very untenable since at least 2013.
And you mention also 2014 with ISIS.
But I you know, I think that there are so many sort of unexpected occurrences in history and we just have to hold our breath to certain extent.
I guess my entire approach is a very different approach to a very rigorous analytical philosophical analysis.
I think I'm very much conscious of the and as you as you are just it's a difference of emphasis,
of the historical contingency of tradition, meaning not not just right now what Islamists are coming up with, but what Muslims.
Come up with a significant amount of contingency, and it's always an effort.
You know, I'm speaking for a moment as a Muslim here of trying to get to the bottom or do what you can, right?
Yeah, right. So if what you're saying is a more commonsensical Sunni position would be to say you begin with reality.
Which is not always entirely of your own making, if at all.
You focus on the greatest harms and evils of political life.
Right. Which are civil war, fitna bloodshed, disorder.
And then all all the things that go on. Destruction of property.
Destruction of honour. All of that. You minimise those.
And then within that, you try to make things more just more pious, more amenable to human rights.
So that's the default kind of Sunni position now. Yes. How does that not end up in support of well-heeled armour?
Yeah. Whoever he is. Yeah. You know, rebell against Assad.
Yes. Syria. Yes. Yes. We saw that. Also said that.
Right. That's right. Now. Yes. We don't like it when he says that, you know.
But but but it's there. It's in the tradition saying that, you know, that that is I mean,
what I'm saying is somewhat different, which is to say that I like kind of double fuddled book.
And, you know, as we speak, we're having a conversation about. Yeah.
With my Chassy about what Sunnism is. And he used this nice term cacophony that all of these possibilities are present within the Sunni tradition.
And it's about hashing them out. You know, I consider someone I know to the end, even someone with his more extreme meetings.
I mean, you know, it's not not the first time you will not be the last to engage in pretty intense the career clear.
Right. But, you know, all of these people for me are part of it.
To use Jonathan Bakkies term, the formation of Islam, that there's an ongoing formation taking place.
And so for me, it's like, yes, these have can come up and right now the authoritarians are politically ascendant.
That's true. But there are all sorts of alternative possibilities. If you'll forgive the S club, I have a book coming out in June.
Islam in the Arab Revolutions. And in Chapter nine of it, I kind of tried to push back against all of the troubles reading of mullahs, Ali.
Not kind of the Prophet Mohammed father. His reading. OK. There's only two somewhat different individuals.
Yes. A very basic. Of course. So. So. And temporarily, of course, a thousand years apart.
But my father basically says, well, this only tradition.
And same with Ibrahim Hassan, a couple of other people. The Sunni tradition legitimates.
What happened in Egypt and what's what's going on it with UAE, etc.
And for me, it's like actually, that's it. That's flattening the Sunni tradition.
You read the befuddling. You see the diversity within the Sunni tradition. It took some time to like it somewhat over Muhammad.
So my father, in his article on the authoritarian temptation,
talks about the Ali representing kind of the Sunni aesthetic that is reflected of sort of alkalis behaviour in the present.
But I'm saying that if you look at someone like Colaba befuddled on the question of rebellion,
you know, you can't flatten cynicism on the question of rebellion. It's not possible. Yes.
You have sort of a crystallisation of a certain position that emerges in a certain context.
But in the absence of that context, why would that ruling apply? Right. I mean, we're not anywhere like that context in the present.
So that's my response to the so-called neo traditionalists.
Yet for lack of a better term that, say, this classical doctrine of obedience to the will be lumbered right on problematically.
I mean, this is your stuff, right? The stuff that a mind at all. Yes. Right. Right.
So the people that just say, you know, Sisi is the Williard number here or the government in Abu Dhabi is the will.
Now, that's obvious. And then using that as a or, you know, as people like to say,
to weaponize that against what they call Islamists or cronies who want to write what critize like.
Yeah. Right. That's a great argument to say. Well.
You think with our argument you can just say that Sisi is the Williard murder like some of them looks fit on.
Right. You know, come on. I got four degrees. Right. Right. So I absolutely agree with that.
But the question is, if what you want to say is that Sunnism doesn't really do political philosophy or doesn't really.
To political theory, it does. Legal theory, it does theology, right?
That's an argument. I'm not I'm not saying that necessarily. I'm not saying that innocent.
I'm just saying that Satanism hasn't at the moment.
It's kind of formulating political theories. And the Islamists that you're studying are articulating what was the best effort.
You know, and that's why I'm grateful that you've written this book, because these are in many respects,
I think, the major attempts at trying to develop some kind of political theory.
In my my doctoral dissertation, I kind of said, I think if I recall correctly that,
you know, it's not clear that it can be called political theory yet,
but it said certainly some kind of political reflection and engagement and thought it's political thought of some kind.
I'm talking nice about it here, I think.
And so I think that the modern sort of condition does force Muslims to try and develop that kind of political theory.
But they can also resort to, OK. Let's just live with the authoritarians in Abu Dhabi or in Riyadh or in Cairo.
And I personally think and in all frankness, I think these are all all options available to modern day Sunnism.
You know, I happen to have no sympathies towards, you know, the more democratising type.
But I also recognise that that democracy is not going to satisfy Western sort of observers because it doesn't give the kind of popular sovereignty,
even though it might use that term, but it's adopted that term in a sense that would not be recognised by a lot of Westerners.
So so what are the things that I argue over a piece coming out soon?
Actually, in the Tunis journal Polio, that's one of the points I make as well.
You won't talk about democracy. Let's talk about a minimalist conception of democracy, right.
In which the rulers are limited, the rulers can be removed.
There's cheques and balances. There is some kind of rule of law.
Rulers are accountable. So that is a kind of minimalist concept, right?
Democracy right now.
I think even a lot of the neo traditionalists have to recognise that a lot of that minimal conception of democracy is compelling within a very,
very conservative Sunni tradition. Right. The ruler is not designated by God.
The ruler can be removed. He has to fulfil certain conditions. He's bound by the law, so on and so forth.
But what I want to say is, fine, it's not me that's saying, oh, if you really want to be democratic,
you have to fulfil, you know, these conditions by Juergen Habermas.
I'm not writing that. Right, right. Right. It's Islamist thinkers themselves.
Yes. Yes. No, she is just I you know, I chose to do a deep dive into one thing.
Right. Right. But he's kind of like standing in for many, many other thinkers, Tourabi, Moreau's, even our.
Right. And I try to document a lot of this as they will.
Right. There's this whole tradition from the 1970s. Yeah.
Of host cook being thinkers. Right. That want to take democracy seriously and not just an apologetic way.
Right. And so they all have these attributes in common.
Right. And new she is kind of the apotheosis of this view.
I would have chosen Tourabi or others. But. Right. Anyway, so it's known, Robin.
Yeah. I think Tourabi is also would have exactly the same kind of support is there's a mushy MS.
Suffers from as well. Yeah. So the most point, the most important theory is. Yeah.
Yeah. It's not just that, you know, like I knew she is both important because he's also a politician.
So we pay attention to him. Right. But he's also a stand in for a certain kind of tradition of fun.
Yet that develops. Yeah. I want to say more about your other criticism of focussing on the Carlucci since 2011, which I founded.
But I have to say. So the point is, they are the one signal we could do better than that.
We could do better than just minimalist democracy as the rulers are accountable.
Right. Actually are committed deeply to a kind of democracy as a realisation of a political theology.
The Ummah is God's caliph. You know, all kinds of things follow from that.
Right. So, so. So I'm not saying that.
But but if he as soon as he brings that kind of religious language,
people like who are the hardcore secularists that are constantly trying to sort of kick him out of office will get a lot of cannon fodder.
I think it will get a lot of you know, if you really want to talk about that issue.
Let's talk about it. Sure. What happens in Tunisia after 2011?
Now, you mentioned his book earlier, a Democratic Senator Lambie, yes.
Yes. Now what's interesting about that poll published in 2012. And I think I quote that in my book.
Yes. Still talking in this very, very perfectionist vein.
Right. Then, you know, the human being only thrives with religion behind.
You know, the purpose of the state is to perfect the human by fusing our innate interests with the right.
So what's interesting then is they return to Tunisia.
They have democratic elections enough that does very, very well. They're not trying to bring about an Islamic state.
And eventually they have this formal declaration that we no longer belong to political Islam.
We adhere to something called Muslim of democracy. Now.
When I can remember this is it was it 2016 was the party?
Yeah, I think so. OK, yeah. But similar things have been going on like that for a long time now.
At least two things are going on that may or may not be in contradiction.
One, you have an actual political party that wants to not be crude, not provoke a military coup,
not being thrown back in jail, not being rejected by the international community, not scare the rest of the parties.
Right. So there's all the pragmatic influences. Right. Why do Republicans condemn Trump's insurrection?
Not because they actually have a commitment to democracy, but because they feel that they have to.
OK. Right. So there's a kind of pragmatism in what you might say.
Nothing that they say has any significance for how we ought to understand Islamic political theory that they can on nothing.
OK, hold on. That's one possibility. Like what? Hello. She says on a day to day basis as speaker of Parliament.
Yeah, that's different, I think. Yeah. Now, at the same time, they did try to say, how do we understand the Constitution from a religious standpoint?
How do we understand these values of consensus, compromise, stability, agreement,
and then how do we relate that to this claim that there's this other theory of politics called Muslim democracy that is different from Islamism,
different from political Islam, different from Islamic democracy? Right now, there I think there is a genuine thing going on.
Morocco, that trunk of Muslim democracy has been going on for a while.
Right. Turkey. Indonesia. Right. Different kinds of Islamist thinkers and parties have tried to use that trope of Muslim democracy to signal.
Don't be scared of us. But also,
we're no we no longer think that bringing about an Islamic state is going to be easy or it's going to be the solution to all of our problems.
Right. Right. So that's one issue. Now, then the question is, is there any there there to this idea of Muslim democracy?
Should we take it seriously intellectually at all? Right.
As a toast, sovereigntist post utopian theory of politics.
Right. So where should we go to look for it? What sources counts?
Right. And so my view would be some of the news, his writings are extremely important or a roadmap to that.
But you know, not what he says about the crisis with France.
A few mature show. You know, Tunisia and the IMF, something like.
Right. Right. Right. I mean, in a sense and you also mentioned Hibito as Zetten, your footnotes and just out there.
And these are these are interesting figures. I mean, just that I feel a little bad about this now.
But I mean, I critique tenanted harshly in my dissertation, you know, partly because I,
I felt because this is something which has been in his writing for a while.
This kind of wholesale acceptance, in my estimation,
of the nation states and giving it priority over sort of any semblance of Islamic legal discourses.
And it's like, you know, I find that an interesting move. But it doesn't cohere terribly well with what he I think wants to do.
But I think you're right in pointing out that, you know,
people like the Mucci and people people like I haven't read it off as atwork, but people like, yes, I would.
Blazing a new trail in a sense of post sovereigntist political political Islam, as you put it in your book drawing, I think, on Dorkin.
And but, you know, I in a sense, doing 30 Lessel over two years, an Arabic phrase like I'm I'm trying to make excuses for I just for the Nucci,
for sort of foregoing or basically setting aside his past relatively sophisticated discourse that you deal with in Chapter six.
I'm very conscious of your time. And, you know, this has been a wonderful conversation.
So I don't want to sort of necessarily. And we've gone on for quite a while.
So I hope listeners have found this very beneficial. But I think this is probably a good place as any for us to complete the evening.
And I want to, you know, really thank Andrew for taking so much time, so much of your time.
And also we had a bit of technical difficulties. You were very patient with that.
And I appreciate that. I really want to thank you for writing this book.
It's really been, I think, as I put it, in a forthcoming review, I think this is the most sophisticated politically,
sort of politically, philosophically sophisticated treatment of Islamism that's ever been written really in the English language.
And so I think we're all grateful for for that.
And I've been speaking to the author, Andrew Much about his book, The Kind Of Fate of Man Popular Sovereignty in Modern Islamic Thought.
And this has been Moodley Centre Book Talk. Thank you for listening and goodbye from Oxford.