Bilal Al-Talidi (*)

Introduction:
The observer of the Arab Islamic political scene can do no more than record instances of political attraction and polarization between two main currents towards which other susceptibilities gravitate, strengthening this argument, and sometimes taking it to the high levels of conflict.

There is the broad Islamic trend, towards which the Arab Nationalist trend gravitates and with which it is in accord on a number of topics; and there is the secular trend, which encompasses many susceptibilities, whose referential frameworks have almost lost their elements of proximity and conformity, but they are all united around one heading – the separation of religion from the political realm and the restriction of religious ideology, and in consequence, the confrontation with the Islamic movement. The ruling regimes adhere to strands of the political equation, which does not possess any fixed reference point except what political need advocates in order to allow them to renew the elements of their control, hegemony and government in the political realm.

For the sake of this task, they are always keen to reveal their dual identity, which is based on the religious Sharia at times, and on democratic legitimacy at other times. This contradiction in their interpretational and occupational approach reflects two levels of political management.

·         The Level of Managing Internal Relation with the Outside World: by means of blending a duality of the universal and the particular, permitting a large margin for political manoeuvre.

·         The Level of Regulating Internal Political Movement: by means of employing the Islamist/secularist struggle to induce the required political balance, and pronouncing the democratic form of government to which all sides have recourse, and which represents national unity and protection of the nation’s strategic interests.  

Its task has gone beyond the role of controlling and governing alone, to fuelling this struggle and finding other foci to activate it so that the situation is characterised by a type of political vitality permitting the reproduction of the same existing conditions.

From a Culture of Exclusion to a Culture of Recognising the Other
Since the formation of the country state, the Arab world has known a single revivalist model resting on a broad heading which has meant that the renaissance cannot be conceived outside the power of the state.

The power of the state equally cannot be conceived without the unity of the Umma, and for their part, the Umma cannot be conceived except through a single party which expresses the aspirations of the Umma and bears their greater goals of growth, liberty, and independence.

The ideology of the renaissance in the Arab world was based on abnegating political pluralism and considering it as a precursor to strengthening the enemies of revolution and pluralism. It meant standing up against the rays of revolution and the threat to the doctrinal and political unity of the state and the community at once. 

So it was natural that the community and the state should be framed by a leading and directed ideology. The ideology of the ruling party was the programme for the state and the revolution. Every thought or idea which departed from this framework, or at very least originated from somewhere other than its curricular foundations and doctrinal points of departure was considered to be not only an embodiment of intellectual and political dissonance but it was also posited as being against the identity of the Umma and the aspirations of the people, and a threat to public order.

Within this framework intellectual and political totalitarianism sprang up in our intellectual and political scene, producing what is called the culture of primacy – the culture of exclusion, condemnation and violence.

Our Arab and Islamic culture remained governed by this rhythm until the renaissance nationalist project began to collapse, and many Arab states began to establish political pluralism within their countries’ constitutions.

This foundation did not depart from that exclusionary culture, and was not built on a tentative persuasion overseeing this pluralism to induce political growth which can serve as an introduction to carrying out greater reformist workshops; rather it was in essence a political idea, the intention of which was to accelerate the toppling of all of the gains achieved by the nationalist renaissance movement, particularly those relating to the greater issues of the Umma.

The intellectual and political elites realised after a while that the pluralist political project that had been established for them by some of the governing regimes did not aim to build democratic constitutional institutions. This was proved by the fact that the political scene after this pluralism was instituted increased in nothing but obscurity and distress, and the institutions of the state and their modes of behaviour remained far removed from responding to the exigencies of democratic practice.

The political elites became convinced of the need to enter into the battle of democratic strife on this level, and found themselves on a par with many susceptibilities that were concerned with the same thing, even if they were not organised by the same authority. They united around one heading, which in brief was the democratisation of institutions and effecting political and constitutional reform to strengthen the democratic path and activate social dynamism so that everyone could participate in forging the future of this nation.

On the frontiers of this battle, elements of the exclusionary and oppressive culture began to retreat into the background, and elements of the culture of recognition of the Other were accepted by the mature amongst the intellectual and political elites, and they moved to the level of forming an intellectual and political phase in many Arab Islamic countries. Moreover, some of the intellectual and political elites began to try to transcend the phase of mutual recognition to achieve a more refined and mature phase of operating. We can term this as a culture of pluralism and acceptance of difference and persuasion of the necessity of agreement on the mechanism and channel for discharging this intellectual and political discord.

Many of the intellectual and political elites, and in particular the two main trends on our Arab Islamic scene, were convinced that the real entry to our renaissance project and to social and economic development was democracy, in the sense of putting political decision-making in the hands of the people and the democratisation of institutions and the organisation of political life on democratic bases.

These elites embarked on detailed reviews of their literature, and most of their components were brought around to this persuasion. The forces content that democracy no longer only represented small and isolated groups unable to influence the social fabric and the political order. However, with faith in democracy, its value and capability in constructing an Arab future, each power’s forms of reference remain intact, for democracy cannot be established on anything other than values, and each trend can adopt a specific model and vision for the value project that it suggests to the people.

The Islamic trend believes that entering into the renaissance relies on fundamental values that are not envisaged outside of Islamic vitals, and it believes that uniformity within Islamic culture and the starting point of Islamic tenets is the natural entry to the establishment of democracy in our Arab nation; a democracy that assists in strengthening the resistance front against the global hegemony and arrogance. The Islamic trend believes that western values that the west tries to give to the ‘universal’ suppository can do nothing but establish a brittle type of democracy – subservient, menial and completely in keeping with the Western project. It fulfils the worst forms of its political agenda in the region, contrary to the aspirations of the Arab people – honour, freedom and justice – particularly in monumental issues.

Meanwhile, the secular trend, concerned with the western experience in Arab democracy, cannot conceive of the values of modernity and universalism and the salvation of the political community from religious ingredients except in their absolute and uniform sense. They see the religious components in politics as a real obstacle in front of any democratic attempt. Moreover, the secular trend in some of its vocalizations goes as far as saying that the ideology of the Islamist movement constitutes a real threat to democracy and freedom of expression and the right to difference and freedom of innovation.

Within these referential polarisations, the problem of intellectual and political pluralism returns to the fore, and the culture of exclusion and oppression occupies its traditional place on our cultural and political scene.

Layout of the Paper
This paper attempts to impose an intellectual image and create a theoretical vision that can comprise the grounding for the bottom line for democratic civic discourse, genuinely establishing intellectual and democratic pluralism in which the Islamist and the secularist are both to be found, without either side abandoning their referential framework.

By considering all of the polarised and discordant debates between the secular and Islamist trends, the complexities that comprise the foci of conflict can be summarised into the following points:

·         Religion and the social role.

·         Religion and politics.

·         The Sharia and the law.

·         Values and the societal project.

We will attempt, in the course of this paper, to present intellectual views relating to these elements, by means of which we can arrive at intellectual and political pluralism, and create a natural channel for draining away discord within social activities and peaceful political action occurring under the same roof of the nation.

On the Social Role of Religion
It is not the case in religion that it recommends an individual propensity towards psychological equilibrium estranged from the cultural context. Religion in this sense is not an answer to the relation between God and the individual. Rather, religion is the comprehensive system that responds to the problems of the individual, the universe and history, from a starting point of the relationship with God based on belief and Tawhid [unity, or monotheism].

The theology of liberation or the revised Marxist movement that became reconciled with religion and worked towards its values in the context of the political action was successful in saving Marxism from its orthodox troubles, and was also successful in saving religion from its reactive image. The theology of liberation was a powerful jolt to the secular logic that tried to isolate religion from its crucial sphere, the sphere in which it makes the individual into a historical actor.

It is fair that we should exploit the values of religion and its social concepts in making the desired changes to the community as long as this community itself has confidence in the religious idea and goes along with it, and as long as the religious idea itself possesses  the greatest power of mobilisation in that it is enrooted in the fabric of society.

It is also fair that we should incorporate these values into our social and political action as long as we welcome, albeit in their confused form, the rights values produced by the equilibrium of international powers.

If our elite pays no attention to the importance of this religion in forging the peoples’ future, and in liberating the historical actor to undertake his social role, then it will exclude itself from the most important tolls of the required social change; it will lose the roots of power, and it will lose the means of mobilizing and persuading [opinion]. It will equally lose the ability to direct and control, as it will lose the historical initiative.

The complexities resulting from the interpretation of religion and the understanding of its texts are nothing but methodological and cognitive aspects whose nature, circumferences, controls and precepts can be rotated by opinion.

However, consideration of religion should not be a sight of discord within an intellectual and political elite until social change has been implemented, and democratic transition as the horizon for intellectual thought is imperative between bodies of political and cultural entities.

Dialogue on this level requires everyone to revise one dimensional opinions and hasty approaches taken for political necessities. Dialogue requires a vision based on the precept of the importance of religion in effecting social change, together with starting a real fundamental curricular debate that raises the issue of dealing with the religious text and the mechanism of interpreting it and understanding its evidence and revealing its regulations and objectives.

In this sense, we can cease the intellectual and political warring that some of the sides justify for the Other’s ostracism of the Islamic authority, and the opposing sides justify for the Other’s use of religion and its monopolisation of speech in the name of religion.

When the groups agree on the social role of religion, and on its form as a historical impetus that equips the individual to undertake the required change and mobilise wide social groups to realise democratic transition by inaugurating true debate around the understanding of the texts and their interpretation, there will thereupon be no doubt that the one who possesses power is the one who is most faithful to the objectives of the law, and most able at the same time to link himself to changes in the situation. The one who is able from within this vision to respond to the puzzles of the situation in ways that safeguard the interests of people and the aspirations of the masses, is the one who is socially and methodologically qualified to possess the legitimacy of historical leadership.

Politics and Religion
The correction of the religious perspective and the identification of the social role of religion have brought us closer to an organisational construction linking politics with religion, permitting both secularist and Islamists to live within this public space.

However, in this regard we need to review some of the fundamental premises that will without doubt assist us in maturing this sort of image:

The first of those premises is that politics within the customary furnishings is not one of the precepts of religion, and its sphere is governed by public rules and regulations confined to justice, public interest, wellbeing and disposing of oppression and tyranny. The sphere of politics is left to rational evaluation and broad administrative consideration of creating better means of achieving these purposes.

In this respect, politics revolves around the exercise of the ‘correct’ and the ‘incorrect’ evaluation, not between the ‘true’ and the ‘false’. This is of vital importance, since one of its requirements is to withdraw a range of doctrinal vocabulary from the realm of political practice, which by its nature creates a sort of sectarian divisions and doctrinal distinctions.

This curricular precept establishes a grounding for recognition of the Other and his right to administrative consideration and evaluation, and recognition of his contribution to activating political activity and advancing the political initiative.

Leaving the sphere of political evaluation to administrative consideration means that both the Islamists and the secularists possess the insight into the components of the political situation and its structure, and possess the innovation that they see as suitable in terms of means and plans and programmes to bring justice and public interest and wellbeing closer.

The second precept: the fundamental distinction in the actions of the prophet also helps us to construct the same pluralist image to define a position and a place for religion, and define for the individual his taste and choice, and recognises for the  politician, with his reform vision and estimation that realises the objectives of justice and public interest and wellbeing for this Umma.

Actions of the Prophet (Peace be Upon Him) in his capacity to identify the place of religion and its social role
The Prophet’s actions as a human being identify personal choices and tastes as human beings – since they are human. This of course opens the door to multiple tastes, natures, blends and ideas.

His (Peace be Upon Him) actions as an Imam and leader identify the anchoring points on which politics are established. They are based on the rational perception and reformatory evaluation in which every individual shares and all of the components of the political factions – be they Islamic or secular – share.

The fundamental distinction made in the actions of the Prophet (Peace be Upon Him) creates a great possibility to build an intellectual image that achieves pluralism  - not only political pluralism, but also social and intellectual.

Building on these premises, it is possible for the Islamic trend to create its programme and political image from the starting point of its vision and independent judgement from within the texts of the Sharia. It is possible for the secularist to use independent judgement in interpreting the situation and its components from the starting point of its specific perceptual device, and it can in turn create its image and political programme which it sees as being closer to achieving justice and interest for the whole nation.  Beyond that, it is not permissible for him [the secularist] to be perturbed by the reliance of the Islamists on their Islamic sources or their use of religion so long as he has chosen to base his discourse on the opposite values of modernity, on the basis that the fusion of these choices and the experimentation of their correctness is political action and societal dynamism. When a trend possesses the ability to mobilize and convince it is more able to present its project and initiative, and inability to do so is no justification for regression to a position of clamping down and exclusion.

Democracy, with its procedural mechanisms, remains the only channel for draining away discord on the basis that everyone accepts its ground rules, which  allow the majority to direct the public issue.

The Sharia and the Law
This duality poses a real problem for the Islamic and secular trends; for whilst the Sharia, its rulings and regulations, comprise the Islamic movement’s discourse, the secular trend is wary of this discourse and considers it to be a threat to democracy and to the law.

It would appear that the confusion can be traced back to defining the concept of the Sharia and the conditions of applying it to the law. The Sharia is the sum total of the religion that assimilates the tenets of belief and the values of creation and the motives of practical action and regulation. In this sense the Sharia is not just about the legal and penal dimensions.

The Sharia is a complete receptacle for faith, adoration, morals and regulations. This sort of understanding of the Sharia allows us to start by agreeing on the closest point between the two sides, for the secularist has no objection to anything below the legal and criminal dimension in the Sharia, when it [the Sharia] is regarded and investigated.

As for the second case: it is concerned with discord and feuding, and it is what is connected with the legal dimension of the Sharia. This dimension cannot be interpreted as what we today call ‘law’ until it gains social legitimacy and popular acceptance. So long as this Sharia is not implemented or accepted it remains in the best of cases merely an intellectual pitch within the dynamism of society waiting to be realised by social legitimacy. The law cannot take on a compulsory task until there is agreement and consensus over it. So long as the legal dimension in the Sharia does not approach this level it will merely remain one of the choices cast into the field. The Islamic trend solicits all means of persuading, and socially instructing in a peaceful democratic context to win social legitimacy. In the same context, the secular trend can solicit its persuasive tools to transmit another discourse and other concepts and legal regulations. This occurs within a social dynamic where democracy is decisive in choosing whichever intellectual and social project has acquired the social legitimacy to transform from mere options cast into the arena and disseminated in the intellectual and political arena to social laws approved by the people, or most of them, in a limited-term democracy, until the point when it is reviewed or consolidated and confirmed in a new term.

Through this intellectual vision we can achieve intellectual and political pluralism, settling the subject of the Sharia and secular law, and reviewing the age-old conundrum, whose polarised and infighting duality still governs Arab political rationality.

Values and the Societal Project
The Islamic movement has a balance of values emanating from its authoritative precepts, and the secular trend has values derived from the essence of the intellectual gains from the ‘existential rationality’. Between the values of these two sides there is a society reverberating back and forth, and while its precepts and peculiarities pull it towards the values that the Islamic movement evokes, the changes of globalisation which are imposed upon it are affiliated to the types of modern relations and values evoked by the secular trend.

Nobody doubts that we view the issue of values as two contradictory social projects. But they must live together under the same roof, for there is no alternative but a state of war.

Societal dynamism remains the best method to settle the subject of values, and social action remains most capable of practical transmission in this subject, and trying out whichever of these two projects is more capable of endurance and of attracting the masses and of faithfulness to its aspirations and forms of identity.

However, this poses realistic complexities that we often see expressed when one of the two trends has recourse to the tenets of the constitution and the exigencies of the law to boycott the extension of the values of the other trend. Perhaps this is what truly reflects all of the competition in the values of the two trends on the Arab Islamic street.

Whilst the Islamic trend adheres to the requirements of the law that are firm on the need to prevent whatever encroaches on the tenets of the Umma and clashes with the public morals or incites the susceptibilities of the Muslims, the secular trend adheres to all of the requirements of the law that call for freedom of thought and innovation, or that prevent the slippery slope into fitna [civil unrest] and sectarianism. All of these requirements brandish a drawn sword at the Islamists in the interpretative and functional context.

To summarise this subject, the intellectual gateway for instituting intellectual and political pluralism at this pivotal point should start off from distinguishing between two completely different contexts:

The Context of Encroaching on Religion and targeting beliefs and mocking the founding rules forming the criteria for the social regimes, this by its nature provokes the susceptibilities of Muslims and incites them to react and engage in civil war and social disorder, the outcomes of which cannot be controlled.

In this context, we must establish stable ground rules in global and human consciousness that prevent the use of freedom to threaten the bases of social stability, without that meaning the confiscation of the thought connected to the tools of knowledge and procedure. The intellectual discussion close to these tools should not be banned even if the subjects of that discussion treat issues of religion with questioning doubt.

What is intended in this context is the targeting and provocation that threatens the unity of all and ridicules the precepts and basic standard of the social order, and contributes in creating social hot-beds which threaten societal peace and stability. It is precisely in this context that prohibition is justified not for targeting freedom of opinion and expression, but to preserve group unity and the precepts of social co-existence.

The Context of Societal Values: At this level, the highest level of dynamic social action is needed, and every trend must promote his project of values and convince people of it, and strive towards changing all of the legal requirements connected to the subject of values, but by democratic legitimate means. We must rely on social legitimacy in settling the value project which requires all parties to convince society to adopt it.

Through this distinction between the two contexts we have on the one hand established social precepts and from the other hand we have grounded the intellectual pluralism that settles this subject, enables all of the trends to operate from within this space, assured of having the best way to convince people, satisfying the democratic requirements with a dynamic social and political leaning, always awaiting opportunities within the democratic circles available to repeat the experience, and to strive towards consolidating the values project after reorganising its priorities and the ways of presenting it to the people.

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(*)  Member of the Justice and Development Party, Morocco.