Islam and the State — The Logic of Faith and Governance United

Last time, in the New World of America, we saw how Christian faith flowed into politics through the channel of elections. But monotheism and politics do not meet in only one way. Turn our gaze to the Middle East, and religion and politics are said to have formed an entirely different relationship. Of Islam it is often said that faith and politics are inseparable. In one sense that is true. Yet if we leave it at those words alone, we overlook how varied the reality is. Holding the same faith, one country has placed religion at the heart of governance, while another has sought to separate religion from politics. In this episode, we make that very range of variation the protagonist of our story.

What ‘religion and politics are one’ really means

Many readers will have heard the explanation that in Islam faith and politics are one. Behind this understanding lies, it is said, the very origins of Islam. The early community guided by the Prophet Muhammad is recounted as having been a place of prayer and faith and, at the same time, a political community that judged disputes, set agreements, and faced the outside world. Faith, daily life, and governance lay within one and the same endeavor — and the memory of this origin point has been referred back to again and again in later ages.

For this reason, it is sometimes said that Islam lacks the notion of thinking about law and politics apart from faith. Indeed, Islamic law — the sharia — is held to cover life broadly, from the manner of prayer to the rules of commerce and the shape of family life, so that the norms of faith have overlapped directly with the order of society. From here arises the view that the modern Western European idea of separating religion and politics is not necessarily self-evident in the Islamic world.

Still, this word ‘one’ must be handled with care. It points to an ideal or a historical starting point; it does not mean that every country in the Islamic world is a religious state. As we will see, there are many countries that have governed politics in a secular manner while keeping their faith devout. It is precisely the distance between the principle of ‘oneness’ and the diverse realities standing upon the earth that makes this theme both fascinating and difficult.

What happened in Iran in 1979

The event often cited as one in which that principle crystallized into the very form of a state is the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Iran at the time, backed by the support of the United States, was pursuing rapid modernization on oil revenues under its monarch. This reform from above, accompanied by secularization, produced friction with traditional ways of life and values, and discontent over widening economic disparity and social distortion is said to have accumulated alongside it. In time the discontent of various strata joined together, and the swell of protest spread across the whole country.

The spiritual pillar of this movement was Khomeini, a Shia jurist who had continued to speak out from exile. He is said to have proclaimed the ideal that, in place of the Hidden Imam, Islamic jurists should bear the governance of the faithful — the so-called doctrine of the guardianship of the jurist. In 1979, when the monarch left the country and Khomeini returned, the establishment of an Islamic republic was declared following a national referendum. The new constitution incorporated this ideal of governance by jurists, and a distinctive system is said to have been born in which religious leaders served as the ultimate backing of state affairs.

This event sent a great shock through the world. In an age when it was believed that as modernization advanced religion would withdraw from politics, a revolution that placed the ideals of faith squarely at the fore had succeeded. While some voices praised it as a liberation of the people through religion, others criticized it from the standpoint of freedom and human rights, and assessments remain divided to this day. What is certain is the fact that this revolution left an indelible mark on the world’s debate over the relationship between religion and politics.

One faith, many politics

We cannot speak of the whole Islamic world by looking at Iran’s case alone. For under the same faith, entirely different forms of politics have stood side by side.

Turkey, for example, walked the opposite road. After the First World War, the caliphate was abolished, and the first president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and others are said to have switched the foundation of the country from governance by Islamic law to governance by secular law. This principle of separating religion from the state was later written into the constitution and long held to be a pillar of the country. It was not a denial of faith itself but an attempt to set the domain of politics apart from religion — and this too was a major modern choice within the Islamic world. Even afterward, however, tension is said to have continued between secularism and currents seeking to give greater weight to faith, and Turkey’s history is also a record of that tug-of-war.

Within the movements called Islamism, too, there is breadth. Among the efforts to rebuild society in line with the ideals of Islam, there are currents — like Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood — that seek to approach their goal through education, welfare, and lawful political participation, and there are also currents that strongly preach a return to origins. These differ from one another in their thinking and at times even come into conflict. To bundle them under the single word ‘Islamism’ makes the diversity within invisible.

The relationship between Islam and politics tends to be spoken of in simple schemes. In reality, however, the history, sect, and social circumstances of each region intertwine in complex ways, and the shape of faith among the people who live there is likewise not uniform. To take one form as typical and judge the whole by it makes that diverse reality, and the feelings of the people who live within it, invisible. How faith and politics ought to meet is an open question, still being asked even within the Islamic world.

Thus in the Middle East, faith has emerged as a question concerning the very form of the state. Where we head next is Asia. There, the faith of the majority becomes entangled with the consciousness of being a citizen, and it will come to shake — quietly, but deeply — a country that was supposed to have set out as a secular state.