الإسلام والغرب: نحو عالم أفضل

Islam and the West… for a better world @

analyzed as Arab Thought in the Age of Liberalism ). Such secular democracy today may eventually secure a place in the political arena as a minority point of view, but it is unlikely to achieve majority status. In contrast to the earlier period, these liberal nationalist leaders find themselves crushed between a popular Islamic revival from below and political tyranny from above. The present age is that of Islamism. Therefore, the underlying culture of the Islamic revival is by definition culturally as well as politically resistant to the liberal democracy of American culture and power. Islamic republican democracy is in need of definitional clarification in order to distinguish it from the liberal American variety. This alternative definition begins with a very basic distinction advanced by the distinguished and widely quoted political theorist, Isaiah Berlin. He notes that the “negative” liberty of in effect American and European democracy is based upon the expectation that the individual is not being interfered with i.e. the autonomy of the individual is preserved. It is the California principle of, “I am okay, are you okay?” This is the negative liberty of the secular Middle Eastern intelligentsia i.e. the state leaves me alone and I leave the excesses of the state unchallenged. We all get along. There is, however, on the other hand “positive liberty” which is based upon resistance to tyranny and domination. Other scholars such as Skinner, Pettit, Viroli etc suggest that this is the republicanism of Cicero, Livy, Machiavelli, Montesquieu and even the Americans, Hamilton and Madison. They suggest that this republicanism seeks to control the state and in doing so, promulgates a law that permits the individual to look the ruler in the eye and to pursue res publica or “public things” for the good of all. This is the jumhuri or republicanism known to the Ottoman Empire and which was to become the republicanism of Kemalism. The etymology of jumhuri suggests a majority, but it is the majority of the learned and informed of society i.e. the ayyan or political class. Islamic republicanism is therefore politically top down as opposed to the bottom up model of liberal democracy. This is also the republicanism of Iqbal , Mawdudi and others

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