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DMI Bible study. The idea of the universal caliphate or the caliphate of man is not only a theory of

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the sovereignty of the Ummah as a body over its rulers and political institutions,

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although it is that but also of the restriction of the Obama's authority to whatever God has delegated and commanded.

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The sum of the covenant of Vice Jahren. From the constitutional standpoint, is the supremacy of God's law over any other authority.

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But through the consultative activities of the people,

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the Covenant of Vice Chairman SC can thus be summarised as the Syria of God and consultation of the people or text and consultation,

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reason and revelation, constraint and freedom.

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This is the problem that remains to be untangled. How are all of these various materials woven together and what contradictions and

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ambiguities are produced by this attempt to do justice to the divine sovereignty,

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the rule of law, popular sovereignty of some kind, representation, expertise,

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and the residual authority of ordinary believers to speak and act as God's CAYLUS?

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I believe the best way to do this is to proceed carefully to the distinctly divine

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and distinctly popular elements of this theory of legitimacy and sovereignty.

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For as though divine and popular sovereignty are formed from the same relationship,

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their elements remain conceptually distinct and are often intention.

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Welcome to Middle East Centre Book Talk. The Oxford podcast on new books about the Middle East.

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These are some of the books written by our members or books that our community are talking about.

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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.

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He completed his DFL at Ox's Department of Politics and International Relations as a martial scholar over a decade ago.

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After graduating, Andrew took for 10 years in political science in the political science department

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at Yale University and has taught Islamic law at Yale and NYU law schools.

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His book, Islam and Liberal Citizenship. The Search for an Overlapping Consensus, published by Oxford University Press in 2009,

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is an exploration of the Islamic juridical discourse on the right's loyalties and obligations of Muslim minorities in liberal

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polities and won the 2009 Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion from the American Academy of Religion under a second book.

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The subject of today's podcast is The Caliphate of Man Popular Sovereignty in Modern Islamic Thought.

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Published by Harvard University Press in twenty nineteen.

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As well as we will see, it examines the problem of divine and popular sovereignty in modern Islamic thought through to the Arab uprisings.

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Andrew, welcome to Book Talk. Thank you very much for having me.

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I'm delighted to be here spiritually in Oxford.

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And I'm very, very grateful for your interest in my book.

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And thank you for joining us. I mean, this is one of the more positive aspects,

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and we need to take so many positives and we can offer the sort of crisis of the

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kind of crisis that we can actually host people from different parts of the world.

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And so it's wonderful. It would be wonderful to have you in Oxford.

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It's wonderful to have you been in and so to speak, from Massachusetts to tell us something about the writing in your book.

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When did you start? What sources did you use and when did it take you in terms of travel?

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Well, the origins of the book are around 2010, 2011.

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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,

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some of which related to extensions of the themes that I had written in my first book.

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So I was interested in how to explore in greater depth some of the harder

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questions related to the encounter between liberal ethics and Islamic ethics.

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Right. So some of the really hard questions related to the scope and the limits of religious freedom and freedom of expression.

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These are the core areas where liberal conceptions of autonomy or freedom of

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religion clash with Islamic conceptions of a belief in a conception of the good.

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The truth of a particular metaphysical tradition. And limits on the scope for human behaviour to do certain kinds of harms at the community

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level to religious goods with all the freedom for a religious community to thrive.

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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.

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So I was poking around in these kinds of areas.

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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,

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but structuring ways of thinking about how Islamic aims can and might not be

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able to be advanced in in non Islamic political communities in legal settings.

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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.

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So I was interested in the thought of Russia of Alooshe, who I'd been Exton for a while,

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who figured sort of had a kind of minor appearance in my first book.

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But I was familiar with his 1993 treatise, Public Freedoms in the Islamic State.

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So I open this and I was going to say, what do her new Xis views on Islamic law, Islamic legal theory,

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the application of Islamic law, and a modest say about the prospects for lawmaking in a future non authoritarian, democratic Tunisia?

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So the broad question was. You know, what is his conception of Sharia?

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What is his conception of the balance between classical faith and must laha or consultation or something like this?

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And as I worked my way through his book, I realised these themes absolutely figure.

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And they end up becoming something important for the the arguments of the caliphate of man.

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But what I realised is the real action is this theory of the universal caliphate or or the octet is still left.

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This is what appeared more than anything else in his book.

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This is what he himself described as the pillar or the foundation of Islamic political philosophy.

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The idea that the people, both individually and collectively, have been deputised as God's vice jahren on Earth.

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So this kind of hit me over the head. It rose. That's where the action is.

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And it's a really, really fruitful and complex area to look.

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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?

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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.

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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,

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you know that Islamism is this commitment to Hakimi or divine sovereignty.

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But then here's this robust commitment to do what they are calling popular sovereignty.

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And so just a flurry of questions raised themselves. And I was kind of off to the races after that contesting.

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So that gives a really useful sort of overview of where.

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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,

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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,

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these figures get not as much attention, shall we say, as initially.

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And I think the background that you've given,

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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.

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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

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still sort of coming out of that that's going in that sort of direction that one would hope that it would.

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So thank you for that background. And if I can sort of move on to my next question.

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It's that your book takes us on this journey that attempts to trace the genealogy, as you highlighted,

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of the important concept of sovereignty or popular sovereignty, more specifically in modern Islamic thought.

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So what you've described in the title of your book is The Caliphate of Man.

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And you you say that this has kind of become the deep and the defining idea within contemporary Islamism in broad strokes.

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Could you perhaps offer us an outline of the genealogy that you present to, in a sense,

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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,

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as I see it,

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your sort of book is about the development of this idea of the universal caliphate translating into an Islamic conception of popular sovereignty.

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And so, you know, I hope that's a reasonable reading of the book.

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But how how sort of the notion of the character of man becomes this ideal, as you put it?

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It travels through certain scholars, you know, isn't present, for example, in Dubai.

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But it is by the time we get to know she the, as you put it, central idea.

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Right. So so I begin sort of in the present with an observation. Right.

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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.

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And it's not a work of political theory, but you see these themes in which popular agency and popular virtue,

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democratic political action, along with divine will or divine intent or the divine plan, are kind of fused together.

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You have this idea that the voice of the people is the voice of God.

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And yet at the same time, you have this fundamental observation that it's not just any old people, right?

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It's a virtuous people. It's a pious people. It's a religious people.

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So this is the first sort of point of departure and point of comparison with

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lots of non Islamic democratic theory which says that begin with a people.

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Whether it's an arbitrarily defined group that has been, you know,

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sort of set off geographically or ethnically or because of some development of a national consciousness,

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and then you ask, how can that people be free or self governed, more legitimately governed?

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But if you're really asking about how any people could be right.

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Whereas in the Islamic conception, the people already has a particular quality or attribute.

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But more importantly, the people already has a certain will and has a certain defined objective for itself.

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Right. And that's an important distinction, because in a lot of Western Democratic theory,

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the promotion of democracy is to discover the people's will or to discover which

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popular will is legitimate or can be realised through law or course of action.

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That's the point of deliberation or procedure or whatever it is.

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Right. Whereas in Islam, you beat the will is already given in advance.

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So that is itself a kind of complicated question, right?

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How can you have a legitimate commitment to democracy where certain aspects of the people's essence.

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Right. Identity and will are already given by the theory.

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So the people can't choose to be under the what it already is, which is the ummah.

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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?

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Right. What is the significance of this? How does this actually represent a kind of revolution over premodern Islamic thought?

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So there's a number of themes. Right.

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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.

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Right. On a kind of condominium of authority between Suta on the one hand and on the other.

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So. Right. Some form or another, whether it's the Sultan or the Hunniford individually or Suta as an entire governing apparatus.

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And the the scholars collaborate in the governing of the community.

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And, you know, we have a understanding of the traditional way that that is.

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That that is divided between the sultan, leaving many matters to the traditional Sharia court and.

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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.

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OK. And these are outlined in Chapter two to this. Yeah. Interesting.

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Yes. Yes. And I thought that's not meant to be a super original observation. It's meant to be kind of schematically.

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Right. Summarising things that are widely observed in literature.

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Although this again, I want to stress that that's kind of the Sunni juridical story about things.

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If you actually read a lot of history of Ottoman political thought.

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We know that in reality, Ottoman political thought in particular is much more influenced by Sufi conceptions and shadows,

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offical conceptions than right. Centralise and prioritise the ethical character of the ruler.

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Right. There are a lot more rulers centred, caliph centred, charismatic than the classical Sunni juridical model wants you.

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Right. But we'll leave that show Scheidt for now.

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Yeah. So one major theme is how does the.

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Traditional condominium of authority, the guardianship of of the sultan or the caliph,

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whatever the executive is called, and the scholars become devolved to some kind of popular political community.

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And then the other story is how does a fairly.

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Non utopian, realistic conception of politics in the Sunni juridical tradition become transformed to a much more ambitious,

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much more utopian aspiration for politics in in much of modern Sunni thought.

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Right. That's the kind of background. And then I moved through a number of thinkers to make.

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Just to add a point.

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You actually nicely sort of illustrate this concept Arolsen idea, I think, taken from his political liberalism, ultra realistic utopia.

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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.

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Yeah, that's that's my idea. So sometimes people write for me saying that it's utopian. Right.

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And then the kind of popular folk sense of the word utopian. Right.

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We use that to mean unrealistic high sky. It's right.

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Right. Right. Right. Which itself is an interesting observation. Right.

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Right. You know, a kind of very, very accessible history of this relates to perhaps Cold War liberalism.

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Right. Right. Ice. I Eberlin.

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The idea of that utopianism persay is the problem because it goes against the grain of human nature requires too much coercion.

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Right. And and so part of the Cold War liberal brief against totalitarianism was a brief against utopianism as.

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Right. Right. And then, of course, you have the kind of, you know,

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period after communism in which there's this assumption that markets and liberal democracy can more or less provide for the needs of people.

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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,

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but rather creating the space for people to pursue different sorts of ends.

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Nowhere is I, on the other hand, don't use utopian as.

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As a criticism.

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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.

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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.

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Right. Right. Given the kinds of beings that we are, given the limits of our moral capacity,

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the limits of our selflessness, with the limits of our ability to act on perfect moral virtue.

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Right. What then is the best that we could hope for? If we designed institutions in a certain way.

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So that's what I mean by a certain kind of utopianism.

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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.

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But on my reading, a kind of developed Sunni juridical model of politics doesn't see the political sphere

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as where human beings realise their good or their virtue or their path to salvation.

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Now, arguably in early Islam, the emphasis on following the right caliph, following the right vehicle of salvation did see politics in this way.

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Again, arguably, some of these Sufi and philosopher inspired theories.

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Right, in which the ruler is the font of virtue and salvation and it kind of flows down or eminence down to the people.

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Arguably, that also makes politics central to the realisation of our good and our salvation.

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But so much of classical Sunni political thought is very, very realistic.

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It's about removing the greatest harms of social life, violence right now, sedition, hunger, crusaders, bandits, all of this.

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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.

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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.

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It's not minimal, but it's a very constrained conception of what politics can bring.

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And even where somebody like Ibn Khaldoon will say the difference between rational got Royal authority, Moltke ugly.

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Right. And the caliphate is that the caliphate brings a benefit in this world.

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And the next next rise, it really explain why is that the caliphate is is bringing Muslim ha in the next world.

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It's kind of just. Heard it right? I mean, just to close out this show.

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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?

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That's all that the Khaleefa model of governance can do.

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So I thought that the Khalifa model of governance brings about some some a greater heaven on earth.

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It just yes, in some way it provides benefit in the actual heaven.

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So that's the first or the second thought is what then becomes remarkable. And again, feel free to disagree.

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Right. How much in thinkers like MO Duty and Collective in others, the political world,

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in the sense of bringing about Islamic law is a sight more moral perfection, realising our good.

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In addition to just removing injustice and trying to bring about basic rights, that's also part of what I mean by utopian vision.

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Politics becomes a site for moral perfection in ways that I don't think is the norm in premodern.

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Certainly thought. You know, I think I broadly and to be honest, I mean, and this will be somewhat impressionistic.

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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.

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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,

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which is to say Ebon Thamir tried to move away from this really centred vision to a community centred vision.

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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.

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I think I mean, to answer your second point, which is why is the caliphate, you know, so central?

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You know, why is it that it doesn't really given response?

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He just says, you know, oh, it gives you salvation in the next life as well as in this world.

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You're getting sort of political, you know, benefits and justice, as it were.

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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,

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which I'm not sure is necessarily representative, how awesome he saw it.

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But, you know, saying that without the caliphate, nothing we do is, in a sense, legitimated ego.

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But in the literal sense, it's not right. You need the caliph to authorise judge.

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Right. Judges are right. So he's the conversion of possibility for legality.

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Right. Right. But it's not. But it's not that. Therefore, you know that the site of moral development.

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Right. Is elsewhere. Right. It's Sufism.

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But but you read someone because Ali's book on their here and so many of the books are actually chapters in law.

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Right.

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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?

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I mean, my my suspicion. And again, you know, you can feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on this as well.

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And I think we're both, in a sense, exploring a question which is really profound and not necessarily straightforward.

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My suspicion is that the conditions of modernity some suddenly allow for and you look at, you know,

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people I quoted and people like I'm I'll do the and who they're citing, you know,

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very often, quote and Hadith, it's the earliest period, the earliest history.

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It allows for bypassing the classical sort of like crystallised form of Watson is and was and tries to go

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back to certain ideals where actually politics was it a space for very serious contestation about salvation?

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Almost. So I do think that there does seem to be some of that happening there.

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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.

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But they're ever present because they're in the Torah. They're in the end the Hadith.

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So, you know, it's we think I had a BRISON discussion with Humaira and chassis.

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You may know about this, you know, through much of classical sunnism, hadiths almost seem a bit marginal.

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You know, you think of myself here and the extent to which it's criticised in the modern period for having weak ideas.

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But, you know, my remarked, Tommo, is what people blame on Hatzalah a little unfairly.

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If you look at any books,

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I think you can see they're not terribly interested in Hadith unless you're like the hundreds who are the tiniest school anyway.

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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,

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this rediscovery of the truth of of these classics does dramatically reshape the way in which we see the possibilities of.

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The tradition, I think, and that's what allows people like me to then put them to pay with, in some respects,

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novelties, in other respects, you know, readings of things which are latent in the tradition.

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So speaker. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to say too much about that.

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I'll leave that specific comment about the centrality of the Hadith to experts.

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I will say that. Right. You know, when you read my Judy, it puts you on the early period.

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It's not scholarly, right? It's not about particularly what it's about.

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First of all, there's an emotional aspect. It's motivating for action.

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It's like mythical. Right. Again, a word that's often used in a negative kind of thing.

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Right. Right. Not right. That it's writerly myth as opposed to fact. But I think more that it's creating meaning.

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Right. And in many ways, it's also it's simplifying things.

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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.

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And I don't know, this is a good comparison or not, but I'll sri's it.

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It's a little, you know,

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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.

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It's not as classicists or as scholars, they're trying to derive lessons and conclusions.

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And that often involves smoothing out a lot of a lot of things.

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Right. So right now, so about Machiavelli wants to explore what are the conditions for liberty in a republic.

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And he reads, you know, Livi in particular.

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And yet, you know, some of the most well-known lessons are the ways in which, like popular violence is a good thing for,

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you know, popular, you know, riots and so forth, because this is the language of the poor against the ground.

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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.

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It's an intervention in contemporary debates about how much should we fear the poor and.

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Right. And are these sorts of things going to lead to an expansion of liberty or not?

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Similarly for. You know, it's not a very sophisticated reading, but it's a very sort of ingenious reading in a way,

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in my reading of put up on the on the early period. Right.

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Which again, is only partial. It doesn't capsulised everything. Sure.

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And it's sort of like saying if you get the politics right, you get everything else.

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Right. Right. I get the leadership right. Get the law right.

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Have righteous governance. And then lo and behold.

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How infused everybody is with zeal and virtue and great ire to protect Islam and desire to help their brother.

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That's the kind of lesson that I think is what I was trying to show. Is that right?

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The earliest, the harbour. They were so virtuous and so pious because the politics was right.

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Anyway, that's my reading. Admittedly, it's not you know, it doesn't cover everything that he has to say about this period.

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But for me, it's a very distinctive contribution. And it's part of what answers the question, what is political about political Islam?

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Right. Right. How how are they giving a particular political reading of Islam?

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It's not just that they're emphasising the importance of politics or emphasising divine sovereignty or engaging in tech fear.

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If you don't implement Sharia, they have a theory of what politics does.

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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,

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but I find sort of much of your commentary so intriguing. It goes into many interesting directions.

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I want to perhaps contest this notion not necessarily contested,

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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,

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this isn't a scholarly sort of blank piece in the same way that Machiavelli isn't

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engaged in a cataloguing of the various ways in which someone like Clippy is trying,

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is referring to ideas that are used by native peoples as a means of justifying liberty of some kind or and so on.

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But rather there's a sort of you know, he's trying to get something out of that text and for something quite practical,

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something quite social, something, as you say, quite political.

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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,

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you know, I mean, quite dramatically different to what a modern scholar would consider to be a scholarly engagement.

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There are the great sort of encyclopaedias to the people are cataloguing things and and also sort of maybe engaging in original reflection somewhere,

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jarheads and so on in his. That will happen. But you think someone like, again, has any writing in the air here?

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There's an urgency to the practicality of what he's writing about.

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It's a new read, something like Vicryl notes, and it's supposed to shock your system, so to speak.

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And I think that spirit is carried forward by people caught up in in a very different way,

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because for those early, you know, the the political realm is not one of these kind of solved it in some level.

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He's also made his contributions as society in the way that Croner talks about that, you know.

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Yeah. They're just there to be the muscle power that keeps everything going.

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But the arlena and the shaddy are basically as long as they're in power.

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And this is how Noah Feldman also presents it, as long as they're in control.

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That's all good. All right. But that's not the case with God.

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And nor do the and these people suddenly everything's been unseated.

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So suddenly it's all you know, everything's up for grabs in a scary way, I think, for these people.

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And that's the situation they're reacting to. And they're thinking, well, you know, what are we to do?

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Our societies are basically becoming hyper secularised in, you know, in our imagination.

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And our sort of values are being usurped and destroyed.

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And people are being taken in by this sort of liberalism in the form that existed at that time by a

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conception of the nation state as the true seat of sovereignty and popular and popular sovereignty.

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Obviously, people like Madou, they were very exercised by those sorts of concepts as well as could have been his own way.

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So I think there are interesting things going on. And yeah, I mean, that's just a reflection.

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I don't like to add something to that. I'd be very interested to hear your your thoughts on that.

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If you think perhaps I know. Do I think we're on the same page on that?

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Yes, sir. So I wanted to sort of press on, too.

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I mean, this is really a fascinating discussion, to be honest. And I have, you know, a lot of questions.

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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.

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I'm going to actually circle back to Chapter two for a moment where I think, you know, I think in a sense,

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you provide this compendious overview of what might be called normative premodern to need the normative Piedmont's and conception of sovereignty.

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Of course, you also highlight that this is, in a sense, the received normative premodern, certainly conception of sovereignty.

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This is how soon these look back at their own tradition today and read it in the premodern tradition.

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So there are all sorts of other possibilities, as you've suggested. So in subsequent chapters,

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you explore how modern Islamism radically reformulate this premodern conception in order to

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generate the Islamist notion of popular sovereignty that underlies Islamic democratic theory.

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And you in several instances, use the term invention to characterise this introduction of popular sovereignty.

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I think there's another Yale scholar. I was just sort of having a breeze through Emma and Jim's comment on your book.

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And he cites someone also speaks about the invention of popular sovereignty in Edmund Morgan as the famous.

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Right. Right, right. Right. We talked about the invention of democracy, of popular sovereignty and human rights,

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or the invention of the people's rights in American Puritan thought.

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And I wonder if you can maybe give listeners a sense of just how radical a

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transformation you consider this to be from the premodern to the modern conception?

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Well, what I try to argue is that like many inventions, it's based on certain kinds of materials.

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So when modern Islamic constitutional thinkers of democratic theorists talk about things like the

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importance of the bay or the idea of the left foot or the emem as a contract or the idea of the people,

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the Omagh is actually the agency behind this or the idea of consultation shura.

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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.

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He has to say then there's also a tradition in premodern.

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Well, premodern Islamic thought you might want to ground the important aspects of

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leadership and law and virtue and write nudity as opposed to the caliphate.

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Right. So these materials are there right in there and they're meaningful.

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And of course, I think it's also fair to point out that there's a little bit.

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There's both an apologetic motive to say we don't believe in the divine right of kings, not authoritarian.

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Right. We never believed in absolutism. And there is also somewhat of a sectarian motive, which is to say we're not Shia.

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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.

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Painted by the community or again, when you when you read Mal,

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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.

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Right. It is tempting to treat it as election, but.

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Right. No selection or choice. Right. Right. Right. It's one.

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It's within the semantic range at the time election. Yes, that's right.

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Yes. So these materials are there. It's just as we know historically, even in the most democratic moments.

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Right. Perhaps the election of Earthmen or something like this. Right.

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It was six people deliberating. Right.

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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.

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So so, Shora, as the election of the ruler was a way of.

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Was it was was a mode of conflict resolution. Not about empowering the OMA to choose its own rulers.

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Right. And so and anyway,

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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.

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Right. Or governance to be legitimate. That's one way in which these democratic commitments rely on materials that are there.

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Right. But they need something else.

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The other thing that this trope of what's meant in the Koranic versus that talk about God appointing a caliph on earth,

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that this is what God means is the entire Oma and that it's a political designation.

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Right. And that it's a transfer friends of God's political authority to the people at large.

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That's a complete invention. And so one of the things that point out.

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So can you say that once more? Forgive me. I sort of. So I know the trope of the universal caliphate.

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Right. Right, right. Yeah. The Oma is God's caliph. What I write was the caliphate of man.

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Right. Right, right. That this rests on certain Koranic versus most famously.

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Chapter two four 30. Amongst many others. Right.

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The idea that this unambiguously without discussion,

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without without the need to go through traditional tarsier means that it's the

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Ummah at large or the people at large has been deputised by God as his deputy.

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And that this is a political designation. It's the transference of his authority to then control the political apparatus.

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That's a complete invention. Right.

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So when when I read the rights or, you know, compiled the articles that went into his book, he left or a member Earthman.

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Yeah. He has. As an epigraph. Yeah. Yeah.

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To 30. Right. Doesn't mean doesn't he. Because the Omar chooses its caliph or.

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It means that you have to appoint a caliph.

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It really refers to the office of the Caliphate as occupied by a single individual with the classical showroom's male Muslim frien.

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Reason all of the different virtues and qualifications is right.

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That right now you do have a tradition in which human beings are gods.

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Caliph. Right. You have this in law literature.

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You have this right. Sufi literature. You have right philosopher literature. But it's not really a collective political authorisation.

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Right. Right. Right. About how we become morally perfect when.

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Right. Perfect ourselves morally. Again, whether that's understood the way that Sufis do or the philosophers do or suddenly more or less do.

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You can aspire to being God's deputy on Earth. Right.

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At an individual level, by becoming, you know, the best that you can be.

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To. Right. Right. Right. And and certain kinds of theories.

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It's part of this tripartite theological anthropology.

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Right. What is the human function following Aristotle's. Right.

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Argument in the ethics. Right. In a rational. Very simple yet.

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No, no, no, no, no. That our function is to be rattin on our ethics. But ah but ok.

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You're the Aristotle. You get the argument from the air. God.

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Right. The function. OK. And so Islamic ethicists do the same thing.

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So what is our function as human beings to worship God. Right to.

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And Martin are right to symbolise or populate and didn't like the Earth.

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And to be God's caliph. That's what it means to be human. But it's not.

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It doesn't mean that not. Collectively have this political sovereignty.

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So anyway. So. So that the idea that becomes the central idea of Islamic political thought is right.

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Wrongly, a major revolution. Hmm hmm. Hmm hmm.

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Right. So, Andres, thank you so much for covering a broad range of topics and for those of you who are still here.

385
00:40:54,440 --> 00:41:05,330
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.

386
00:41:05,330 --> 00:41:18,930
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.

387
00:41:18,930 --> 00:41:23,060
Whereas in a sense, disagreed with or disagreed with you were reading.

388
00:41:23,060 --> 00:41:27,410
And I think this is going to be quite interesting because hopefully what will happen is, you know,

389
00:41:27,410 --> 00:41:34,500
we'll I'll be able to understand perhaps how I misunderstand, misunderstood where where you're coming from.

390
00:41:34,500 --> 00:41:42,800
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.

391
00:41:42,800 --> 00:41:46,580
So you can keep your work with the suggestion that for a number of reasons,

392
00:41:46,580 --> 00:41:50,780
it does not seem possible to reconcile divine sovereignty and popular sovereignty and that it's like

393
00:41:50,780 --> 00:41:56,510
political foot may choose to discard sovereignty as a central idea in the next phase of its development.

394
00:41:56,510 --> 00:42:01,940
If you can indulge me for a moment, I wonder if you feel that an Islamic conception of popular sovereignty may legitimately

395
00:42:01,940 --> 00:42:06,140
be developed that is at odds with preventing Western conceptions of popular sovereignty.

396
00:42:06,140 --> 00:42:10,460
In other words, must concepts adhere to the European genealogies to be authentic,

397
00:42:10,460 --> 00:42:13,940
or can they be developed independently and other traditions to express,

398
00:42:13,940 --> 00:42:21,210
for instance, the rejection of authoritarian government while simultaneously upholding an Islamic vision of divine sovereignty?

399
00:42:21,210 --> 00:42:24,840
And if I arrange it briefly, add to that in a sense.

400
00:42:24,840 --> 00:42:30,200
I'm not suggesting I don't think you have a say that, you know, Muslims can't develop their own sorts of ideas.

401
00:42:30,200 --> 00:42:37,130
What you're saying is, you know, they end up being inconsistent with other ideas that they claim to uphold.

402
00:42:37,130 --> 00:42:44,750
And I wonder if that inconsistency is a perception of, you know, what democracy means, for example,

403
00:42:44,750 --> 00:42:51,800
within the West or what OK, and or what sovereignty means within sort of the liberal tradition.

404
00:42:51,800 --> 00:42:55,010
And you're saying, no, it's not. It's actually something. I don't think that's what I did at all.

405
00:42:55,010 --> 00:42:59,740
I think, in fact, what I did is treat them entirely in their own terms.

406
00:42:59,740 --> 00:43:07,280
Right. So my entire point is that there was this attempt to create a conception of sovereignty,

407
00:43:07,280 --> 00:43:17,240
a conception of democracy, a conception of legitimacy that was on their own telling entirely in their own terms.

408
00:43:17,240 --> 00:43:29,240
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.

409
00:43:29,240 --> 00:43:36,560
Human beings do not have the freedom to legislate for themselves in defiance of what God has revealed.

410
00:43:36,560 --> 00:43:47,060
Right. And yet God has not appointed any one between himself and the Ummah to bring this law

411
00:43:47,060 --> 00:43:54,830
into reality and to adjudicate its various modes of realisation in the real world.

412
00:43:54,830 --> 00:44:08,090
Therefore, the people can be sovereign because the people a is authorised by God with ringing about this law into reality,

413
00:44:08,090 --> 00:44:17,660
but also because the people is already united around its desire and its will to bring this about.

414
00:44:17,660 --> 00:44:31,590
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

415
00:44:31,590 --> 00:44:41,960
made universal carlotti so God can be sovereign because God is an entity that can speak in his own voice in a definitive way.

416
00:44:41,960 --> 00:44:52,880
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.

417
00:44:52,880 --> 00:45:00,620
Are nations, peoples, OMOs, the kinds of entities that can be sovereign, right?

418
00:45:00,620 --> 00:45:12,030
If so, that requires a certain assumption about, you know, the Carlotti beautiful Kaldi unity definitiveness finality.

419
00:45:12,030 --> 00:45:16,940
Now, what is it that allows you to even imagine that?

420
00:45:16,940 --> 00:45:25,030
Right. So we ask that question about. So we ask that question about other theories of popular sovereignty.

421
00:45:25,030 --> 00:45:29,870
Right. And so it's fair to ask that question about omic democratic theories like Nucci.

422
00:45:29,870 --> 00:45:40,530
Yeah. And all you have to point out, even as these theories as aspired to toleration, a certain kind of political.

423
00:45:40,530 --> 00:45:48,990
Oralism, there's always this assumption, right, that the that the people can only be God's vice chairman.

424
00:45:48,990 --> 00:45:57,620
Right. If it sees itself as God's vice chairman and not some other kind of political entity, that's what to say.

425
00:45:57,620 --> 00:46:08,720
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.

426
00:46:08,720 --> 00:46:11,180
Right. And I wanted to.

427
00:46:11,180 --> 00:46:19,190
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.

428
00:46:19,190 --> 00:46:26,300
I really don't think I know me because of my own ways of seeing the world.

429
00:46:26,300 --> 00:46:32,330
Exaggerate how much pluralism there is. Right. Or exaggerate the importance of moral pluralism.

430
00:46:32,330 --> 00:46:36,320
That would be the place, I think, to push back and say what? Right. Except for Tunisia.

431
00:46:36,320 --> 00:46:40,460
Turkey. Right. Right. Right. Object to coercive secularism. Right.

432
00:46:40,460 --> 00:46:47,270
Well, Muslim societies may be a lot more unified on morality than other rights.

433
00:46:47,270 --> 00:46:51,950
That would be a place where a writer I would be open to. Right.

434
00:46:51,950 --> 00:46:59,780
Sort of being proved wrong. But I don't think conceptually I'm doing anything other than taking these theories in the wrong terms.

435
00:46:59,780 --> 00:47:10,170
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.

436
00:47:10,170 --> 00:47:13,730
It's I think, again, to be a very edifying conversation for myself especially.

437
00:47:13,730 --> 00:47:20,800
But what I would say is that in a sense, I think this dilemma really arises with the Nucci.

438
00:47:20,800 --> 00:47:24,530
Right. The other theorists, democracy isn't really very high on their agendas.

439
00:47:24,530 --> 00:47:31,760
That sort of popular empowerment of the populace, in a sense,

440
00:47:31,760 --> 00:47:38,160
to the point of being legislators isn't quite as present in the way that, as you put it in the sort of preface.

441
00:47:38,160 --> 00:47:42,350
I know she is the most important theorist of the harmony of Islamic democracy.

442
00:47:42,350 --> 00:47:45,740
And this is one of the things that I find striking in its 2012 book.

443
00:47:45,740 --> 00:47:54,290
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.

444
00:47:54,290 --> 00:48:00,260
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,

445
00:48:00,260 --> 00:48:04,850
whether it's someone like Mohammed, the president, that he doesn't write, but he speaks a lot.

446
00:48:04,850 --> 00:48:12,330
What I noticed is they'll always make very clear, you know, that a Shambu,

447
00:48:12,330 --> 00:48:22,270
Lavaca Salahi at the end of the shittier, so to speak, so that the people have legislative prerogatives.

448
00:48:22,270 --> 00:48:27,310
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.

449
00:48:27,310 --> 00:48:32,900
Right. Right. And so once once you say that you're not giving them,

450
00:48:32,900 --> 00:48:37,540
you're giving them what madou they called basically limited popular sovereignty under the search for of God.

451
00:48:37,540 --> 00:48:43,100
Who is there to say when the people has legislated in a way that violates the Hillal in her own right.

452
00:48:43,100 --> 00:48:47,660
Right. Is that right? And you talk about questions. You talk about aristocratic authority.

453
00:48:47,660 --> 00:48:51,710
So in a sense, you have it. Good for you here, Mr. Kretz.

454
00:48:51,710 --> 00:48:57,700
Yeah. You have the scholars. You have your Elena. Yeah. Where do they get their political authority to.

455
00:48:57,700 --> 00:49:03,520
Right. Right. Right. No, no answer. And in a sense, what I'm suggesting and asking you.

456
00:49:03,520 --> 00:49:10,320
Yes. No, I mean, like in what capacity are you asking me if I were in my theory?

457
00:49:10,320 --> 00:49:17,180
Think those thinkers back to me. Right. I, I suspect there will be a number of options.

458
00:49:17,180 --> 00:49:21,800
But in a sense, one of the things that you highlight is that, you know, in a place like Pakistan,

459
00:49:21,800 --> 00:49:31,070
when they have set up a council, I forget what it's called or the Sharia, the federal court, the FSC.

460
00:49:31,070 --> 00:49:37,350
I think five out of the eight were not even all that. Right. Let me get your question the point.

461
00:49:37,350 --> 00:49:43,220
Sure. Even everybody the whole point is that the people is not radically free to legislate.

462
00:49:43,220 --> 00:49:47,520
Right. Right. Right. Law makes democratic. Right. Right. Right. Russo.

463
00:49:47,520 --> 00:49:53,330
Right. Right. Yeah. But that's that's rhetoric. How so?

464
00:49:53,330 --> 00:49:58,310
It's rhetoric to say the people can't violate the divine law.

465
00:49:58,310 --> 00:50:02,390
Right. How do you know when they have violated divine law.

466
00:50:02,390 --> 00:50:06,770
Who gets to pronounce on. Right. Right. Right. Gets a stab at that.

467
00:50:06,770 --> 00:50:10,970
That's a problem that's existed throughout Islamic history, right? Yes. But it never for.

468
00:50:10,970 --> 00:50:16,040
Were you saying that the people. Is the what you say the scholars or the rulers.

469
00:50:16,040 --> 00:50:25,040
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.

470
00:50:25,040 --> 00:50:29,240
Right. More often than not. Right. Not really allowed to develop.

471
00:50:29,240 --> 00:50:32,180
Right. Sure. Or you write or you have semigloss shows.

472
00:50:32,180 --> 00:50:40,130
A book on the ottoman in late Hannaford's them, which says, well, the sultan actually had a lot more authority with.

473
00:50:40,130 --> 00:50:44,000
In Hanafi fell more right than we previously understood.

474
00:50:44,000 --> 00:50:45,910
Not just the right as his own. Yes.

475
00:50:45,910 --> 00:50:51,440
So what I'm trying to say is, of course, everybody is going to say right to people's right to legislate is limited.

476
00:50:51,440 --> 00:50:55,010
Then you have to look at what they do with that idea. Sure.

477
00:50:55,010 --> 00:50:59,660
What institutions are established to litigate that or social hate it shows?

478
00:50:59,660 --> 00:51:04,570
Where do they get their authority? Right. I knew she will say in his previous work.

479
00:51:04,570 --> 00:51:08,570
Right. Course you create some body scholars or.

480
00:51:08,570 --> 00:51:14,420
But yet they only derive their authority from the people's right.

481
00:51:14,420 --> 00:51:23,090
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.

482
00:51:23,090 --> 00:51:29,660
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.

483
00:51:29,660 --> 00:51:32,900
A lot of this discourse is counter authoritarian.

484
00:51:32,900 --> 00:51:41,630
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.

485
00:51:41,630 --> 00:51:45,860
But I think that there could be more central in the sense that, yes,

486
00:51:45,860 --> 00:51:52,820
he's saying the people are given that authority as a way to bypass that sort of authoritarianism of the modern nation state.

487
00:51:52,820 --> 00:52:00,540
All right, Margaret, stay a little bit. Yes, that the obvious context. But that's all what the Islamist was always been.

488
00:52:00,540 --> 00:52:14,600
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,

489
00:52:14,600 --> 00:52:20,540
whether it had or through popular political action or through the fringe parties?

490
00:52:20,540 --> 00:52:26,030
It's because the rulers are or or the problem.

491
00:52:26,030 --> 00:52:29,950
So Islamism has always been a kind of populist movement.

492
00:52:29,950 --> 00:52:33,210
Right. OK. So it's not just that her new she is the first of the gwai.

493
00:52:33,210 --> 00:52:37,160
Do what, Ben Ali. To be appointing these judges. Right. Always been part of the problem.

494
00:52:37,160 --> 00:52:46,760
Right. Right. Of course, we know that Islamism has also been utilised by authoritarian rulers and collaborated, you know, station Islamism.

495
00:52:46,760 --> 00:52:55,160
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.

496
00:52:55,160 --> 00:53:00,960
In fact, quite the opposite. You know that the second there's a chance of cooptation, right, via virtuous king.

497
00:53:00,960 --> 00:53:06,600
Right. Right. Yes. Well, we'll take whatever you can get. Yeah. It's a pragmatic sort of ideology.

498
00:53:06,600 --> 00:53:13,280
Said, yeah. But the other problem is that. Yes. But the other point is that all of these things are part of the buffet.

499
00:53:13,280 --> 00:53:23,500
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?

500
00:53:23,500 --> 00:53:26,840
Yeah. I think all of these people are. Yeah, the people is in there.

501
00:53:26,840 --> 00:53:33,260
But like the scholars have not only the right, but the obligation to be on a lot of this authority.

502
00:53:33,260 --> 00:53:39,680
Yes. So that kind of creeps in. So when you have this tradition, I don't think I don't think it creeps in.

503
00:53:39,680 --> 00:53:50,010
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.

504
00:53:50,010 --> 00:53:53,240
And that's why I'm saying I think it seems like it creeps in.

505
00:53:53,240 --> 00:54:00,710
The people seem to creep in because of, you know, the dominant Western conception of what, you know, popular sovereignty should be.

506
00:54:00,710 --> 00:54:01,670
But that's what I'm saying,

507
00:54:01,670 --> 00:54:09,200
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.

508
00:54:09,200 --> 00:54:13,640
Yes, it's going to cause these kinds of misunderstanding. They're gonna say, no, this isn't proper popular sovereignty.

509
00:54:13,640 --> 00:54:18,590
You're not giving the people absolute legislative authority. And they're trying to say, this is my argument.

510
00:54:18,590 --> 00:54:29,420
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.

511
00:54:29,420 --> 00:54:36,050
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.

512
00:54:36,050 --> 00:54:40,280
But this is entirely legitimate and I'm quite coherent in our own context.

513
00:54:40,280 --> 00:54:44,930
Yes. You know, these sorts of challenges exist with respect to the application of this.

514
00:54:44,930 --> 00:54:48,350
And you kind of were saying, OK, so what's what's it gonna be like?

515
00:54:48,350 --> 00:54:50,930
What's what's the institutional mechanism and so on.

516
00:54:50,930 --> 00:54:59,930
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.

517
00:54:59,930 --> 00:55:05,630
I think the US sort of government, for example, or the popular sovereignty in the US,

518
00:55:05,630 --> 00:55:10,490
I mean, and representative democracy in general is also has elements of aristocracy.

519
00:55:10,490 --> 00:55:15,440
I mean, there's this great debate of Jemmy Woltman and Bruce Ackerman bring with respect to judicial review.

520
00:55:15,440 --> 00:55:22,310
Right. And for me, judicial review is basically at best ocracy of a certain kind.

521
00:55:22,310 --> 00:55:30,680
For me, the I mean, just to map on for purposes of comparison, the sacred document has the Constitution, the Oliner of the Constitution.

522
00:55:30,680 --> 00:55:34,700
The focus has, so to speak, are the Supreme Court and you have various branches of government.

523
00:55:34,700 --> 00:55:40,030
And that's one mechanism that has been developed. And I think historically, you know, Muslims have developed all sorts of.

524
00:55:40,030 --> 00:55:46,200
Storms of this kind and to deal with really the infinite possible, almost infinite possibilities of the,

525
00:55:46,200 --> 00:55:53,040
you know, the textural sources in the early history and no duty and quota represent an effort to try and see,

526
00:55:53,040 --> 00:55:59,830
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,

527
00:55:59,830 --> 00:56:05,560
which was a major concern, obviously, at that. And that in the end, I wonder what you think of that reading.

528
00:56:05,560 --> 00:56:07,930
So, of course, this efforts ocracy everywhere. And so. Yeah.

529
00:56:07,930 --> 00:56:13,390
But I would say the American context in the Western context, the Supreme Court, of course,

530
00:56:13,390 --> 00:56:19,160
is one example, but it's more common to look at the vast areas of bureaucratic administrative.

531
00:56:19,160 --> 00:56:25,390
Right. Right. So how much control does even Congress have for the president, for that matter?

532
00:56:25,390 --> 00:56:32,310
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.

533
00:56:32,310 --> 00:56:38,540
I mean, maybe. But but, you know, the idea is there's so much that we just assume is a matter of expertise.

534
00:56:38,540 --> 00:56:43,060
Right. Whether and how to deal with a pandemic or the military or the economy or the stock market work.

535
00:56:43,060 --> 00:56:48,970
Right. Right, right. Right, right. I mean, the way it works in it governed by the expert authorities and all kinds of areas.

536
00:56:48,970 --> 00:56:55,940
So, you know, that's the crisis. That's one dimension of the crisis of the modern Western idea of democracy.

537
00:56:55,940 --> 00:57:04,140
Right. In addition to concerns about oligarchy and all of that, which are which are obviously true and somebody like Mobutu himself talks about.

538
00:57:04,140 --> 00:57:11,460
Right. Why do you want Western democracy? They don't have that. They governed by financial interests.

539
00:57:11,460 --> 00:57:21,370
Right. But not entirely separate from that. But conceptually distinct is the idea that how could the people ever rule in these vast,

540
00:57:21,370 --> 00:57:33,220
complex societies in which you have permanent permanent sort of administrative or or bureaucratic aristocrats?

541
00:57:33,220 --> 00:57:37,360
OK. Right. Right. How do you split that difference? Will congressional oversight.

542
00:57:37,360 --> 00:57:43,110
Right. Or they can be removed or you can set policy directives that they then implement.

543
00:57:43,110 --> 00:57:53,920
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.

544
00:57:53,920 --> 00:57:57,640
Right. Used right at the right time. Answers. There's true knowledge. Right.

545
00:57:57,640 --> 00:58:01,840
And we don't care about Joe Schmoes opinion on masks.

546
00:58:01,840 --> 00:58:05,680
Right. Right, right. Brown, your damn mask. Yeah. Yeah. Because that's what the science says.

547
00:58:05,680 --> 00:58:09,610
OK. Yeah. So in the Islamic context.

548
00:58:09,610 --> 00:58:14,920
Well first I'll have to remember that mildewy himself does not use the language of sovereignty about the people here.

549
00:58:14,920 --> 00:58:22,060
So that's. That's me saying yes. Yes. He says limited popular sovereignty when you.

550
00:58:22,060 --> 00:58:26,160
Yeah. Or Suza. Right. So it limited the minority under the sovereignty of God.

551
00:58:26,160 --> 00:58:31,810
Right. So he's much more explicit that he will not. Yes. He will not refer to the people as sovereign yet.

552
00:58:31,810 --> 00:58:36,370
So that's a little bit of my own interpretive work saying fine.

553
00:58:36,370 --> 00:58:43,750
But when you start to call the people the Halifa. Yes. And when you remove intermediate authorities.

554
00:58:43,750 --> 00:58:50,080
Right. And you. And you ascribe to the Halifa all kinds of political agency.

555
00:58:50,080 --> 00:58:53,590
Right. Let's see where this goes. Right.

556
00:58:53,590 --> 00:58:55,360
And let's see what this implies.

557
00:58:55,360 --> 00:59:04,330
Now, if somebody like Mel duty, he will still say that the people have an obligation to listen to the scholars dollars,

558
00:59:04,330 --> 00:59:09,520
have an obligation to codify FIK to create these new codes.

559
00:59:09,520 --> 00:59:15,510
And that's more or less binding. But then there's the cracks, right, that I outlined in my Chapter four.

560
00:59:15,510 --> 00:59:22,340
Right. Showing the scholars don't agree or when it's a matter of indeterminacy or must not.

561
00:59:22,340 --> 00:59:30,670
Yeah. There are these cracks in at popular agency started entering in ways that didn't really exist before.

562
00:59:30,670 --> 00:59:33,500
Yes. Yes. So. Yeah. OK.

563
00:59:33,500 --> 00:59:41,830
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,

564
00:59:41,830 --> 00:59:43,720
the post-colonial you know,

565
00:59:43,720 --> 00:59:52,690
what what America that caused the liberal colonial state has established certain structures and mechanisms and bureaucracies, et cetera.

566
00:59:52,690 --> 00:59:58,180
And now he's having to actually answer questions that never occurred to the premodern tradition in many respects.

567
00:59:58,180 --> 00:59:59,830
In some respects they did.

568
00:59:59,830 --> 01:00:06,820
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.

569
01:00:06,820 --> 01:00:09,760
Right. It's the Hammamet and it's just the office of the caliphate.

570
01:00:09,760 --> 01:00:12,430
And there's assumptions that, yes, he's going to appoint various people, et cetera.

571
01:00:12,430 --> 01:00:20,200
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.

572
01:00:20,200 --> 01:00:28,270
And so my my sort of like, in a sense, a complaint in a sense.

573
01:00:28,270 --> 01:00:32,380
And this is not just directed at your sort of reading of modernity,

574
01:00:32,380 --> 01:00:39,890
but generally a lot of the readings about modern scholars is, oh, they're sort of radically transforming or.

575
01:00:39,890 --> 01:00:44,270
Formulating the classical tradition, and I'm like, yeah, of course they are.

576
01:00:44,270 --> 01:00:48,860
They have to if they want to be relevant and Islamic in any way, shape or form.

577
01:00:48,860 --> 01:00:54,320
So why is that something which is, you know, why?

578
01:00:54,320 --> 01:00:57,500
Why should that break be anything that surprises us a great deal?

579
01:00:57,500 --> 01:01:04,680
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.

580
01:01:04,680 --> 01:01:12,500
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.

581
01:01:12,500 --> 01:01:17,300
And here's how they're doing it. And you know, how how well are they doing it?

582
01:01:17,300 --> 01:01:21,500
Yes, there are all these periods that are coming up. How unusual is that?

583
01:01:21,500 --> 01:01:25,790
If you look at the classical tradition, in a sense, do you see similar periods?

584
01:01:25,790 --> 01:01:30,950
And I would suspect, yes, that B all sorts of approaches that exist because these are human endeavours by default.

585
01:01:30,950 --> 01:01:35,680
Does that make sense? I'm not surprised they're doing it. It's just that there are many ways of doing it.

586
01:01:35,680 --> 01:01:44,610
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.

587
01:01:44,610 --> 01:01:49,850
It's not really a historic argument that the state is ontologically incompatible.

588
01:01:49,850 --> 01:01:53,970
Yes. With what the Sharia is. And yet it is Islam. Yeah.

589
01:01:53,970 --> 01:01:58,910
Now so harlock d historia sizes what he wants to make historical.

590
01:01:58,910 --> 01:02:03,210
Right. And he ontologies is what is actually historical.

591
01:02:03,210 --> 01:02:14,870
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.

592
01:02:14,870 --> 01:02:20,840
Right. To whatever. Yeah. He wants to turn into a metaphysical reality.

593
01:02:20,840 --> 01:02:27,560
Right. Right. Such ideal art. Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad deal that everyone has to adhere to in order to be Islam.

594
01:02:27,560 --> 01:02:37,010
This is why it has to be is the city and the city is the organic relationship of the scholars to texts,

595
01:02:37,010 --> 01:02:44,600
to metaphysics and the people said right from the state. Now, in addition to being a historical,

596
01:02:44,600 --> 01:02:55,820
it also insofar as its historical takes something that is merely historical in turns it into Islam as such now.

597
01:02:55,820 --> 01:03:02,600
So it's a theological argument masquerading as an ethical, historic argument.

598
01:03:02,600 --> 01:03:08,870
So now that's not my point. The point is, yeah, fine. The state is bad for classical theft.

599
01:03:08,870 --> 01:03:20,720
It changes things. Nobody's going to say that a committee draughting a code is the same thing as scholars debating fit,

600
01:03:20,720 --> 01:03:24,590
you know, in an amended us on Damascus in the hundreds. Right.

601
01:03:24,590 --> 01:03:32,540
But so what? That's for Muslims to work out whether they still think it realises some some kinds of core purposes.

602
01:03:32,540 --> 01:03:40,250
So I don't take the argument that just because they're trying to develop Islamic law right through state institutions,

603
01:03:40,250 --> 01:03:45,200
that it's therefore an authentic schorsch. My point is to say they're not just doing that.

604
01:03:45,200 --> 01:03:56,720
They are also trying to create a theory whereby a modern state could be not just minimally legitimate.

605
01:03:56,720 --> 01:04:00,370
That's very easy within them, right? Yeah. Get rid of Fitna.

606
01:04:00,370 --> 01:04:04,400
Create order. Create the conditions for its operation.

607
01:04:04,400 --> 01:04:10,580
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.

608
01:04:10,580 --> 01:04:16,570
You know, you you mentioned, I think, in the chapter on Ryba possibly that they couldn't even,

609
01:04:16,570 --> 01:04:22,160
you know, or they could say was we have an absolute obligation to establish the Letha.

610
01:04:22,160 --> 01:04:27,800
But they didn't know how to do it in the sense that sort of resting on this historical obligation that exists.

611
01:04:27,800 --> 01:04:32,690
You know, in a sense, there's this imperative. But what if this actually released an earlier question you asked,

612
01:04:32,690 --> 01:04:40,520
which is it's not just that they want to go back to the early sahab over the period after the prophet.

613
01:04:40,520 --> 01:04:46,460
Right. They self consciously almost want to delegitimize from political purposes.

614
01:04:46,460 --> 01:04:53,450
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

615
01:04:53,450 --> 01:05:03,530
legitimate because rights never granted legitimacy through a freely given consensus of the Hellewell Act created.

616
01:05:03,530 --> 01:05:09,500
Now, that is a really age, historical, anachronistic census.

617
01:05:09,500 --> 01:05:19,880
No fully jurist's before that ever thought that there were actually had to come to power through that kind of consensual legalistic means?

618
01:05:19,880 --> 01:05:23,780
Right, right. Right. So there's something very, very good. They didn't require it.

619
01:05:23,780 --> 01:05:28,860
I mean, there were people overseas. Yeah, it's nice. But that certainly wasn't a requirement.

620
01:05:28,860 --> 01:05:32,330
Right. Since and a lot of the. At the very least. And so, so, so.

621
01:05:32,330 --> 01:05:39,910
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.

622
01:05:39,910 --> 01:05:46,310
We the scholars assembled in Cairo, don't have the physical shoka, the force.

623
01:05:46,310 --> 01:05:54,040
Right. Point a caliph. But without our consent, we don't want a Napoleon or a Salaheddine.

624
01:05:54,040 --> 01:05:59,380
Right. Or an heir to grow to come through here. Right. And establish what we wanted.

625
01:05:59,380 --> 01:06:05,140
So we wanted to be legal. We want. We want the Islamic Emam to be law all the way down.

626
01:06:05,140 --> 01:06:09,230
Right. Right. Right. And that's a really fascinating moment. Yeah.

627
01:06:09,230 --> 01:06:18,460
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.

628
01:06:18,460 --> 01:06:23,350
And they were uncomfortable with that, with that paradox. Right.

629
01:06:23,350 --> 01:06:28,150
So, I mean, that's. And in a sense, we've got a number of threads here.

630
01:06:28,150 --> 01:06:34,240
But I think the river point is interesting because what's happening at that point,

631
01:06:34,240 --> 01:06:38,470
I suspect if someone like uneatable father came out of the desert and, you know,

632
01:06:38,470 --> 01:06:45,160
conquered Cairo and established bluffer, that I would be willing to accept that because,

633
01:06:45,160 --> 01:06:52,420
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.

634
01:06:52,420 --> 01:06:57,550
Of course, you know, during the Ottoman period and possibly before that.

635
01:06:57,550 --> 01:07:03,460
But I'm thinking even hazardous Ghailani, who dies in I want to say 15, 52.

636
01:07:03,460 --> 01:07:10,600
I might be off by a century. So it's within the Ottoman sort of model looks under the Ottomans.

637
01:07:10,600 --> 01:07:14,890
You know, during that period, someone is basically saying, yes,

638
01:07:14,890 --> 01:07:20,080
you can if you cannot find someone who is, you know, Karachi, you can have someone else.

639
01:07:20,080 --> 01:07:25,470
But even before in a Gilani talks about, you know, this is something which is not absolutely necessary.

640
01:07:25,470 --> 01:07:31,030
And that's centuries. So there's enough latitude within the tradition to create those sorts of alternatives.

641
01:07:31,030 --> 01:07:34,480
The Ottomans, as Ahmed Tremseh talks about in his recent book,

642
01:07:34,480 --> 01:07:42,290
they tried to censor some of the early shaddy works because they actually Nakota Shia condition is very strong.

643
01:07:42,290 --> 01:07:45,910
And that's the dominant tendency within the whole Sunni tradition.

644
01:07:45,910 --> 01:07:51,250
Now, as a consequence of that, what what I'm suggesting here is that, you know, Reber taking that sort of stance,

645
01:07:51,250 --> 01:07:59,200
also probably has a historical dimension to it, which is who have the Egyptians dealt with the previous sort of century and a half?

646
01:07:59,200 --> 01:08:07,540
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.

647
01:08:07,540 --> 01:08:15,380
They've never had, you know, anything resembling, I think, a proper Islamic experience in recent centuries.

648
01:08:15,380 --> 01:08:22,930
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.

649
01:08:22,930 --> 01:08:28,000
You know, let's remember that Persia, so to speak, we don't want that again.

650
01:08:28,000 --> 01:08:34,120
So. And I also sort of wonder to what extent you signal this,

651
01:08:34,120 --> 01:08:43,930
but you're you kind of say that someone like Russia can nucci after the Arab Spring after writing in 2014, 2015.

652
01:08:43,930 --> 01:08:49,030
He basically throws his old theory out the window, as far as I'm concerned.

653
01:08:49,030 --> 01:08:55,540
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.

654
01:08:55,540 --> 01:09:03,100
And ultimately, it's really, you know, popular sovereignty is a real thing and it really does take control.

655
01:09:03,100 --> 01:09:11,350
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,

656
01:09:11,350 --> 01:09:15,700
and he's just survived a no confidence vote to actually speak his mind.

657
01:09:15,700 --> 01:09:23,440
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.

658
01:09:23,440 --> 01:09:28,690
So I'm not suggesting that he's being disingenuous in saying one thing and not not believing in it.

659
01:09:28,690 --> 01:09:35,650
But I do think the constraints in which these actors are operating really can bring into question.

660
01:09:35,650 --> 01:09:41,500
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.

661
01:09:41,500 --> 01:09:51,470
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

662
01:09:51,470 --> 01:09:58,930
thinker when it comes to thinking about the possibilities in the long term in this moment.

663
01:09:58,930 --> 01:10:04,270
Yes, this is project looks very untenable since at least 2013.

664
01:10:04,270 --> 01:10:07,030
And you mention also 2014 with ISIS.

665
01:10:07,030 --> 01:10:17,590
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.

666
01:10:17,590 --> 01:10:24,640
I guess my entire approach is a very different approach to a very rigorous analytical philosophical analysis.

667
01:10:24,640 --> 01:10:30,940
I think I'm very much conscious of the and as you as you are just it's a difference of emphasis,

668
01:10:30,940 --> 01:10:39,780
of the historical contingency of tradition, meaning not not just right now what Islamists are coming up with, but what Muslims.

669
01:10:39,780 --> 01:10:44,510
Come up with a significant amount of contingency, and it's always an effort.

670
01:10:44,510 --> 01:10:54,300
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?

671
01:10:54,300 --> 01:11:11,130
Yeah, right. So if what you're saying is a more commonsensical Sunni position would be to say you begin with reality.

672
01:11:11,130 --> 01:11:15,530
Which is not always entirely of your own making, if at all.

673
01:11:15,530 --> 01:11:21,230
You focus on the greatest harms and evils of political life.

674
01:11:21,230 --> 01:11:28,220
Right. Which are civil war, fitna bloodshed, disorder.

675
01:11:28,220 --> 01:11:32,370
And then all all the things that go on. Destruction of property.

676
01:11:32,370 --> 01:11:37,120
Destruction of honour. All of that. You minimise those.

677
01:11:37,120 --> 01:11:46,350
And then within that, you try to make things more just more pious, more amenable to human rights.

678
01:11:46,350 --> 01:11:53,670
So that's the default kind of Sunni position now. Yes. How does that not end up in support of well-heeled armour?

679
01:11:53,670 --> 01:11:58,290
Yeah. Whoever he is. Yeah. You know, rebell against Assad.

680
01:11:58,290 --> 01:12:01,710
Yes. Syria. Yes. Yes. We saw that. Also said that.

681
01:12:01,710 --> 01:12:06,950
Right. That's right. Now. Yes. We don't like it when he says that, you know.

682
01:12:06,950 --> 01:12:15,630
But but but it's there. It's in the tradition saying that, you know, that that is I mean,

683
01:12:15,630 --> 01:12:20,700
what I'm saying is somewhat different, which is to say that I like kind of double fuddled book.

684
01:12:20,700 --> 01:12:25,030
And, you know, as we speak, we're having a conversation about. Yeah.

685
01:12:25,030 --> 01:12:32,940
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.

686
01:12:32,940 --> 01:12:40,380
And it's about hashing them out. You know, I consider someone I know to the end, even someone with his more extreme meetings.

687
01:12:40,380 --> 01:12:45,500
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.

688
01:12:45,500 --> 01:12:51,150
Right. But, you know, all of these people for me are part of it.

689
01:12:51,150 --> 01:12:56,670
To use Jonathan Bakkies term, the formation of Islam, that there's an ongoing formation taking place.

690
01:12:56,670 --> 01:13:03,900
And so for me, it's like, yes, these have can come up and right now the authoritarians are politically ascendant.

691
01:13:03,900 --> 01:13:10,610
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.

692
01:13:10,610 --> 01:13:20,640
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.

693
01:13:20,640 --> 01:13:26,550
Not kind of the Prophet Mohammed father. His reading. OK. There's only two somewhat different individuals.

694
01:13:26,550 --> 01:13:32,670
Yes. A very basic. Of course. So. So. And temporarily, of course, a thousand years apart.

695
01:13:32,670 --> 01:13:36,240
But my father basically says, well, this only tradition.

696
01:13:36,240 --> 01:13:39,600
And same with Ibrahim Hassan, a couple of other people. The Sunni tradition legitimates.

697
01:13:39,600 --> 01:13:44,070
What happened in Egypt and what's what's going on it with UAE, etc.

698
01:13:44,070 --> 01:13:49,140
And for me, it's like actually, that's it. That's flattening the Sunni tradition.

699
01:13:49,140 --> 01:13:55,620
You read the befuddling. You see the diversity within the Sunni tradition. It took some time to like it somewhat over Muhammad.

700
01:13:55,620 --> 01:13:58,980
So my father, in his article on the authoritarian temptation,

701
01:13:58,980 --> 01:14:10,590
talks about the Ali representing kind of the Sunni aesthetic that is reflected of sort of alkalis behaviour in the present.

702
01:14:10,590 --> 01:14:15,800
But I'm saying that if you look at someone like Colaba befuddled on the question of rebellion,

703
01:14:15,800 --> 01:14:19,740
you know, you can't flatten cynicism on the question of rebellion. It's not possible. Yes.

704
01:14:19,740 --> 01:14:23,670
You have sort of a crystallisation of a certain position that emerges in a certain context.

705
01:14:23,670 --> 01:14:30,780
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.

706
01:14:30,780 --> 01:14:36,170
So that's my response to the so-called neo traditionalists.

707
01:14:36,170 --> 01:14:47,790
Yet for lack of a better term that, say, this classical doctrine of obedience to the will be lumbered right on problematically.

708
01:14:47,790 --> 01:14:51,520
I mean, this is your stuff, right? The stuff that a mind at all. Yes. Right. Right.

709
01:14:51,520 --> 01:14:59,460
So the people that just say, you know, Sisi is the Williard number here or the government in Abu Dhabi is the will.

710
01:14:59,460 --> 01:15:06,030
Now, that's obvious. And then using that as a or, you know, as people like to say,

711
01:15:06,030 --> 01:15:13,350
to weaponize that against what they call Islamists or cronies who want to write what critize like.

712
01:15:13,350 --> 01:15:16,260
Yeah. Right. That's a great argument to say. Well.

713
01:15:16,260 --> 01:15:24,520
You think with our argument you can just say that Sisi is the Williard murder like some of them looks fit on.

714
01:15:24,520 --> 01:15:29,790
Right. You know, come on. I got four degrees. Right. Right. So I absolutely agree with that.

715
01:15:29,790 --> 01:15:39,570
But the question is, if what you want to say is that Sunnism doesn't really do political philosophy or doesn't really.

716
01:15:39,570 --> 01:15:46,950
To political theory, it does. Legal theory, it does theology, right?

717
01:15:46,950 --> 01:15:51,060
That's an argument. I'm not I'm not saying that necessarily. I'm not saying that innocent.

718
01:15:51,060 --> 01:15:56,520
I'm just saying that Satanism hasn't at the moment.

719
01:15:56,520 --> 01:16:04,420
It's kind of formulating political theories. And the Islamists that you're studying are articulating what was the best effort.

720
01:16:04,420 --> 01:16:08,910
You know, and that's why I'm grateful that you've written this book, because these are in many respects,

721
01:16:08,910 --> 01:16:13,530
I think, the major attempts at trying to develop some kind of political theory.

722
01:16:13,530 --> 01:16:19,140
In my my doctoral dissertation, I kind of said, I think if I recall correctly that,

723
01:16:19,140 --> 01:16:22,500
you know, it's not clear that it can be called political theory yet,

724
01:16:22,500 --> 01:16:28,200
but it said certainly some kind of political reflection and engagement and thought it's political thought of some kind.

725
01:16:28,200 --> 01:16:30,420
I'm talking nice about it here, I think.

726
01:16:30,420 --> 01:16:40,980
And so I think that the modern sort of condition does force Muslims to try and develop that kind of political theory.

727
01:16:40,980 --> 01:16:49,260
But they can also resort to, OK. Let's just live with the authoritarians in Abu Dhabi or in Riyadh or in Cairo.

728
01:16:49,260 --> 01:16:55,390
And I personally think and in all frankness, I think these are all all options available to modern day Sunnism.

729
01:16:55,390 --> 01:17:01,110
You know, I happen to have no sympathies towards, you know, the more democratising type.

730
01:17:01,110 --> 01:17:10,590
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,

731
01:17:10,590 --> 01:17:16,470
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.

732
01:17:16,470 --> 01:17:21,960
So so what are the things that I argue over a piece coming out soon?

733
01:17:21,960 --> 01:17:26,610
Actually, in the Tunis journal Polio, that's one of the points I make as well.

734
01:17:26,610 --> 01:17:32,760
You won't talk about democracy. Let's talk about a minimalist conception of democracy, right.

735
01:17:32,760 --> 01:17:38,940
In which the rulers are limited, the rulers can be removed.

736
01:17:38,940 --> 01:17:44,870
There's cheques and balances. There is some kind of rule of law.

737
01:17:44,870 --> 01:17:48,300
Rulers are accountable. So that is a kind of minimalist concept, right?

738
01:17:48,300 --> 01:17:50,700
Democracy right now.

739
01:17:50,700 --> 01:18:03,630
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,

740
01:18:03,630 --> 01:18:08,730
very conservative Sunni tradition. Right. The ruler is not designated by God.

741
01:18:08,730 --> 01:18:15,810
The ruler can be removed. He has to fulfil certain conditions. He's bound by the law, so on and so forth.

742
01:18:15,810 --> 01:18:22,080
But what I want to say is, fine, it's not me that's saying, oh, if you really want to be democratic,

743
01:18:22,080 --> 01:18:25,830
you have to fulfil, you know, these conditions by Juergen Habermas.

744
01:18:25,830 --> 01:18:30,010
I'm not writing that. Right, right. Right. It's Islamist thinkers themselves.

745
01:18:30,010 --> 01:18:36,180
Yes. Yes. No, she is just I you know, I chose to do a deep dive into one thing.

746
01:18:36,180 --> 01:18:45,220
Right. Right. But he's kind of like standing in for many, many other thinkers, Tourabi, Moreau's, even our.

747
01:18:45,220 --> 01:18:48,560
Right. And I try to document a lot of this as they will.

748
01:18:48,560 --> 01:18:53,590
Right. There's this whole tradition from the 1970s. Yeah.

749
01:18:53,590 --> 01:19:00,420
Of host cook being thinkers. Right. That want to take democracy seriously and not just an apologetic way.

750
01:19:00,420 --> 01:19:05,310
Right. And so they all have these attributes in common.

751
01:19:05,310 --> 01:19:09,360
Right. And new she is kind of the apotheosis of this view.

752
01:19:09,360 --> 01:19:14,850
I would have chosen Tourabi or others. But. Right. Anyway, so it's known, Robin.

753
01:19:14,850 --> 01:19:20,040
Yeah. I think Tourabi is also would have exactly the same kind of support is there's a mushy MS.

754
01:19:20,040 --> 01:19:23,780
Suffers from as well. Yeah. So the most point, the most important theory is. Yeah.

755
01:19:23,780 --> 01:19:30,840
Yeah. It's not just that, you know, like I knew she is both important because he's also a politician.

756
01:19:30,840 --> 01:19:36,360
So we pay attention to him. Right. But he's also a stand in for a certain kind of tradition of fun.

757
01:19:36,360 --> 01:19:44,190
Yet that develops. Yeah. I want to say more about your other criticism of focussing on the Carlucci since 2011, which I founded.

758
01:19:44,190 --> 01:19:50,040
But I have to say. So the point is, they are the one signal we could do better than that.

759
01:19:50,040 --> 01:19:56,520
We could do better than just minimalist democracy as the rulers are accountable.

760
01:19:56,520 --> 01:20:06,870
Right. Actually are committed deeply to a kind of democracy as a realisation of a political theology.

761
01:20:06,870 --> 01:20:11,480
The Ummah is God's caliph. You know, all kinds of things follow from that.

762
01:20:11,480 --> 01:20:16,080
Right. So, so. So I'm not saying that.

763
01:20:16,080 --> 01:20:19,410
But but if he as soon as he brings that kind of religious language,

764
01:20:19,410 --> 01:20:28,600
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.

765
01:20:28,600 --> 01:20:32,730
I think it will get a lot of you know, if you really want to talk about that issue.

766
01:20:32,730 --> 01:20:40,110
Let's talk about it. Sure. What happens in Tunisia after 2011?

767
01:20:40,110 --> 01:20:47,580
Now, you mentioned his book earlier, a Democratic Senator Lambie, yes.

768
01:20:47,580 --> 01:20:53,240
Yes. Now what's interesting about that poll published in 2012. And I think I quote that in my book.

769
01:20:53,240 --> 01:20:58,710
Yes. Still talking in this very, very perfectionist vein.

770
01:20:58,710 --> 01:21:03,440
Right. Then, you know, the human being only thrives with religion behind.

771
01:21:03,440 --> 01:21:11,580
You know, the purpose of the state is to perfect the human by fusing our innate interests with the right.

772
01:21:11,580 --> 01:21:17,010
So what's interesting then is they return to Tunisia.

773
01:21:17,010 --> 01:21:24,210
They have democratic elections enough that does very, very well. They're not trying to bring about an Islamic state.

774
01:21:24,210 --> 01:21:31,500
And eventually they have this formal declaration that we no longer belong to political Islam.

775
01:21:31,500 --> 01:21:35,360
We adhere to something called Muslim of democracy. Now.

776
01:21:35,360 --> 01:21:40,080
When I can remember this is it was it 2016 was the party?

777
01:21:40,080 --> 01:21:47,130
Yeah, I think so. OK, yeah. But similar things have been going on like that for a long time now.

778
01:21:47,130 --> 01:21:52,920
At least two things are going on that may or may not be in contradiction.

779
01:21:52,920 --> 01:22:01,710
One, you have an actual political party that wants to not be crude, not provoke a military coup,

780
01:22:01,710 --> 01:22:07,680
not being thrown back in jail, not being rejected by the international community, not scare the rest of the parties.

781
01:22:07,680 --> 01:22:13,920
Right. So there's all the pragmatic influences. Right. Why do Republicans condemn Trump's insurrection?

782
01:22:13,920 --> 01:22:19,410
Not because they actually have a commitment to democracy, but because they feel that they have to.

783
01:22:19,410 --> 01:22:23,460
OK. Right. So there's a kind of pragmatism in what you might say.

784
01:22:23,460 --> 01:22:35,900
Nothing that they say has any significance for how we ought to understand Islamic political theory that they can on nothing.

785
01:22:35,900 --> 01:22:43,330
OK, hold on. That's one possibility. Like what? Hello. She says on a day to day basis as speaker of Parliament.

786
01:22:43,330 --> 01:22:56,280
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?

787
01:22:56,280 --> 01:23:04,140
How do we understand these values of consensus, compromise, stability, agreement,

788
01:23:04,140 --> 01:23:16,320
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,

789
01:23:16,320 --> 01:23:26,490
different from political Islam, different from Islamic democracy? Right now, there I think there is a genuine thing going on.

790
01:23:26,490 --> 01:23:30,150
Morocco, that trunk of Muslim democracy has been going on for a while.

791
01:23:30,150 --> 01:23:41,280
Right. Turkey. Indonesia. Right. Different kinds of Islamist thinkers and parties have tried to use that trope of Muslim democracy to signal.

792
01:23:41,280 --> 01:23:43,140
Don't be scared of us. But also,

793
01:23:43,140 --> 01:23:51,870
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.

794
01:23:51,870 --> 01:24:01,840
Right. Right. So that's one issue. Now, then the question is, is there any there there to this idea of Muslim democracy?

795
01:24:01,840 --> 01:24:05,520
Should we take it seriously intellectually at all? Right.

796
01:24:05,520 --> 01:24:11,220
As a toast, sovereigntist post utopian theory of politics.

797
01:24:11,220 --> 01:24:18,210
Right. So where should we go to look for it? What sources counts?

798
01:24:18,210 --> 01:24:25,950
Right. And so my view would be some of the news, his writings are extremely important or a roadmap to that.

799
01:24:25,950 --> 01:24:29,730
But you know, not what he says about the crisis with France.

800
01:24:29,730 --> 01:24:34,680
A few mature show. You know, Tunisia and the IMF, something like.

801
01:24:34,680 --> 01:24:40,950
Right. Right. Right. I mean, in a sense and you also mentioned Hibito as Zetten, your footnotes and just out there.

802
01:24:40,950 --> 01:24:45,690
And these are these are interesting figures. I mean, just that I feel a little bad about this now.

803
01:24:45,690 --> 01:24:52,710
But I mean, I critique tenanted harshly in my dissertation, you know, partly because I,

804
01:24:52,710 --> 01:24:56,880
I felt because this is something which has been in his writing for a while.

805
01:24:56,880 --> 01:25:01,110
This kind of wholesale acceptance, in my estimation,

806
01:25:01,110 --> 01:25:10,200
of the nation states and giving it priority over sort of any semblance of Islamic legal discourses.

807
01:25:10,200 --> 01:25:20,250
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.

808
01:25:20,250 --> 01:25:24,030
But I think you're right in pointing out that, you know,

809
01:25:24,030 --> 01:25:29,790
people like the Mucci and people people like I haven't read it off as atwork, but people like, yes, I would.

810
01:25:29,790 --> 01:25:39,820
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.

811
01:25:39,820 --> 01:25:52,240
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,

812
01:25:52,240 --> 01:26:04,420
for sort of foregoing or basically setting aside his past relatively sophisticated discourse that you deal with in Chapter six.

813
01:26:04,420 --> 01:26:09,160
I'm very conscious of your time. And, you know, this has been a wonderful conversation.

814
01:26:09,160 --> 01:26:14,970
So I don't want to sort of necessarily. And we've gone on for quite a while.

815
01:26:14,970 --> 01:26:23,110
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.

816
01:26:23,110 --> 01:26:30,760
And I want to, you know, really thank Andrew for taking so much time, so much of your time.

817
01:26:30,760 --> 01:26:34,690
And also we had a bit of technical difficulties. You were very patient with that.

818
01:26:34,690 --> 01:26:38,110
And I appreciate that. I really want to thank you for writing this book.

819
01:26:38,110 --> 01:26:45,760
It's really been, I think, as I put it, in a forthcoming review, I think this is the most sophisticated politically,

820
01:26:45,760 --> 01:26:52,450
sort of politically, philosophically sophisticated treatment of Islamism that's ever been written really in the English language.

821
01:26:52,450 --> 01:26:55,330
And so I think we're all grateful for for that.

822
01:26:55,330 --> 01:27:03,820
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.

823
01:27:03,820 --> 01:27:19,327
And this has been Moodley Centre Book Talk. Thank you for listening and goodbye from Oxford.