Abstract
This paper suggests that constitutionalism serves as a very ineffective covering to democracy, indeed that it is paper-thin. It can very easily be torn apart by some of the more erratic swings of democracy, especially in its more populist moods. The paper then goes on to reflect on the absence of democracy in many parts of the Muslim world and the supposed incompatibility between Islam and liberal democracy. However, there does seem to exist in many Muslim lands, a deep commitment towards constitutionalism. One of the major concerns of the paper then becomes to reflect over the reasons for this kind of constitutionalism sans democracy. There is also prevalent a strain of hostility towards the idea of nationalism, as being divisive of the potential unity of the worldwide Muslim ummah or community of believers. The preoccupation with constitutionalism in Muslim lands has led to the increasing centrality of the shariah, understood as a rather fixed and rigid legal code. It also surveys the enthusiastic bout of constitution writing that happened in many Muslims countries in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The paper ends on a rather gloomy note on the prospects of democracy.
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Notes
- 1.
On the transition from tyranny to despotism in European perceptions of Ottoman Turkey between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries, see Cirakman and Asli (2001).
- 2.
S. Sayyid (2014) in his book, Recalling the Caliphate, notes: ‘There are those who see in the so-called “Arab Spring” proof that the long march of democracy has finally reached the “Arab street”, thus confirming the universal validity of the democratic form’ p. 65. Sayyid further notes: ‘According to this view, part of US strategy has been to use apparently popular mobilization to try and weaken regimes that the US considers to be hostile. Those who would hold this view focus on popular mobilization in the former Soviet Union—the rose revolution of Georgia and the orange revolution in the Ukraine—that weakened Russian hold over the region, as well as the abortive cedar revolution in Lebanon and the Green Movement in Iran. They point to the level of material support the United States has given to those involved in these mobilisations as an indication of US conspiracy. They also point to the way in which Syria and the Baathist regime is being threatened with a regime change and also the US silence that has allowed Saudi arms to put down an uprising in Bahrain while supporting those in Syria and Libya’ (pp. 82–83).
- 3.
This is what Yuval Noah Harari (2016) has to say about the prospects of democracy in his much talked about book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, which is on the disastrous ramifications of technology:
Liberal habits such as democratic elections will become obsolete, because Google will be able to represent even my own political opinions better than I can. When I stand behind the curtain in the polling booth, liberalism instructs me to consult my authentic self and choose whichever party or candidate reflects my deepest desires. Yet the life sciences point out that when I stand there behind that curtain, I don’t really remember everything I felt and thought in the years since the last election. Moreover, I am bombarded by a barrage of propaganda, spin and random memories that might well distort my choice (p. 394).
- 4.
Christopher De Bellaigue (2017) in his book The Islamic Enlightenment. The Modern Struggle Between Faith and Reason: 1798 to Modern Times, notes: Beginning at the turn of the century the word ‘pan-Islamism had become a portmanteau to explain the political solidarity that seemed to extend across the Muslim lands in opposition to imperialism’. Further referring to the phenomenon of pan-Islamism he notes: ‘This “community of interests” had arisen at the same moment that an impulse to divide the world into smaller and smaller, secular units—nations bound by language, history and cultures—had spread from Europe and America to the Muslim lands. Clearly there would have to be some kind of truce or accommodation between the two, or they would turn on each other (pp. 202–203).
- 5.
The 1970 work in question by Ayatullah Murtada Mutahhari is Khadamat-i mutaqabil-i Iran wa islam (p. 354).
- 6.
Tezcur notes on page 489: ‘Religious loyalties endangered the ideological foundation of the Republic, as the notion of the “Turkish nation” irreversibly replaced the “Islamic umma” as the source of authority’.
- 7.
L. Ali Khan and Hisham Ramadan further note: ‘One reason why the idea of the written constitution has been immaterial to the development of Islamic law is the ever presence of the Basic Code. During the centuries, the Basic Code has served Muslim Empires and communities as the written constitution’ (p. 113).
- 8.
On the reverence for the Prophet Muhammad as a great law giver see also Humberto (2012), Islam and the English Enlightenment, 1670–1840.
- 9.
Martin (1986) notes on page 181 that around the time of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution beginning in 1905, Shaikh Fazlallah Nuri ‘declared constitutionalism (mashruta)to be seditious and contrary to the shari‘a (mashru‘a nist).
- 10.
Martin (1992) further notes again referring to Sayyid Muhammad Tabatabai on page 348 that, ‘He was sufficiently pragmatic to realize that it was not possible to introduce full constitutional government in Iran during that period, and adopted a gradualist approach, which aimed, not at an elected assembly with full powers, but what he called a majlis-i ‘adalat, a council of justice’.
- 11.
The first of these was written in 1906 and goes back to ‘Ali b. Znibar who was a Moroccan from Sale. A second version was published in four editions of the journal Lisan al-‘arab between 11 October and 1 November 1908. Lisan al-‘arab was a journal that came out from Tangier and founded by two Lebanese emigrants who lived in the city. The third version was published later and its authorship was for long unknown, this being established as late as the early 1980s when authorship was attributed to ‘Abd al-Karim Murad, a largely unknown figure. Reichmuth (2007) informs us that Murad belonged to a prominent Sayyid family from Tripoli and was born around 1860. Murad lived his life in a number of places, spending his time as a teacher in Medina, before moving onto West and North Africa. The different parts of West Africa that he travelled in were Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast and southern Nigeria. He is then purported to have moved to Fez in Morocco, which he left in 1908 and travelled back to West Africa to be found first in French West Africa (Senegal, Ivory Coast, Dahomey). After being expelled from here to Morocco in 1912 he is found back in West Africa, this time British West Africa in Sierra Leone, Lagos and finally settling in Kano to the north, where he died in 1926. In between he is supposed to have visited Amir Shakib Arsalan in Lausanne in Switzerland in 1922’ (pp. 165–166).
- 12.
In line with the recalcitrant aspect of democracy that paper has talked about a number of times, this is what Tezcur has to say about the element of the unpredictable in democracy:
Democratic politics are by definition unpredictable and may bring to power groups of suspect loyalty in the eyes of the guardians. Majorities might be swayed by populist politicians who seek to aggrandize their power while disregarding the ideological goals of the regimes. Guardians perceive themselves as the only force capable of containing and eliminating these “internal threats” before they irreversibly erode the revolutionary legacy (p. 482).
- 13.
Tibi (2008) notes that ‘today’s shari’a is a call to construct an Islamic state with an alleged shari’a as its constitution. The important questions are whether shari’a is really a constitutional law and how consonant the call for Islamization is with the envisioned democracy’ (p. 96).
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Ali, A. (2020). The Paper-Thin Covering of Constitutional Democracy. In: Roy, A., Becker, M. (eds) Dimensions of Constitutional Democracy. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3899-5_3
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