Andrew Bostom, editor of The Legacy of Jihad, delineates the Islamic concept of freedom, which is considerably different from what the President probably has in mind when he proclaims the advent of freedom in the Islamic world. "In No 'Hurr(i)y(ya)' for Freedom," from The American Thinker:
During several notable speeches since 2003, including both inaugural and State of the Union addresses, President Bush has repeatedly stressed the paramount importance of promoting freedom in the Middle East. Speaking in an almost messianic idiom, he has termed such a quest“the calling of our time …the calling of our country.”Most recently, he reiterated this theme while speaking to The American Legion on February 24, 2006, and offered the following sanguine assessment of progress:
“Freedom is on the march in the broader Middle East. The hope of liberty now reaches from Kabul to Baghdad, to Beirut, and beyond. Slowly but surely, we’re helping to transform the broader Middle East from an arc of instability into an arc of freedom. And as freedom reaches more people in this vital region, we’ll have new allies in the war on terror, and new partners in the cause of moderation in the Muslim world and in the cause of peace.”
Despite President Bush’s uplifting rhetoric and ebullient appraisal of these events—which epitomize American hopes and values at their quintessential best—there is a profound, deeply troubling flaw in his (and/or his advisers) analysis which simply ignores the vast gulf between Western and Islamic conceptions of freedom itself.Hurriyya (Arabic for “freedom”) and the uniquely Western concept of freedom are completely at odds.
Hurriyya “freedom” is – as Ibn Arabi (d. 1240) the lionized “Greatest Sufi Master”, expressed it - “being perfect slavery.” And this conception is not merely confined to the Sufis’ perhaps metaphorical understanding of the relationship between Allah the “master” and his human “slaves.”
The late American scholar of Islam, Franz Rosenthal (d. 2003) analyzed the larger context of hurriyya in Muslim society. He notes the historical absence of hurriyya as “…a fundamental political concept that could have served as a rallying cry for great causes”. An individual Muslim
“…was expected to consider subordination of his own freedom to the beliefs, morality and customs of the group as the only proper course of behavior…”.Thus politically, Rosenthal concludes,
“…the individual was not expected to exercise any free choice as to how he wished to be governed…In general, …governmental authority admitted of no participation of the individual as such, who therefore did not possess any real freedom vis-à-vis it.”Bernard Lewis, in his analysis of hurriyya for the venerated Encyclopedia of Islam, discusses this concept in the latter phases of the Ottoman Empire, through the contemporary era. After highlighting a few “cautious” or “conservative” (Lewis’ characterization) reformers and their writings, Lewis maintains,
“…there is still no idea that the subjects have any right to share in the formation or conduct of government—to political freedom, or citizenship, in the sense which underlies the development of political thought in the West. While conservative reformers talked of freedom under law, and some Muslim rulers even experimented with councils and assemblies government was in fact becoming more and not less arbitrary….”Lewis also makes the important point that Western colonialism ameliorated this chronic situation:
“During the period of British and French domination, individual freedom was never much of an issue. Though often limited and sometimes suspended, it was on the whole more extensive and better protected than either before or after.” [emphasis added]And Lewis concludes with a stunning observation, when viewed in light of the present travails in Iraq and throughout the Muslim world, President Bush’s optimistic assessment notwithstanding:
“In the final revulsion against the West, Western democracy too was rejected as a fraud and a delusion, of no value to Muslims.”Hamas’ resounding victory in the January, 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections represents, unfortunately, a much wider trend in the Islamic Middle East. Each time open or even relatively open elections occur, authentic Islamic movements either emerge with outright electoral victories—as in Iraq, Kuwait, Morocco, and the West Bank/Gaza—or at minimum, bolster their representation dramatically, as happened in Egypt under more controlled (i.e., governmentally constrained) circumstances. Historian Meir Litvak notes aptly that this consistent contemporary phenomenon,
“..highlights once more the power of Islam as the primary framework of identity in the Arab world, and the structural weakness of non-Islamist ideologies and political movements.”The great 20th century scholar of Islamic Law, G. H. Bousquet, wrote in 1950,
“Islam first came before the world as a doubly totalitarian system. It claimed to impose itself on the whole world and it claimed also, by the divinely appointed Muhammadan law, by the principles of the fiqh, to regulate down to the smallest details the whole life of the Islamic community and of every individual believer….the study of Muhammadan law (dry and forbidding though it may appear to those who confine themselves to the indispensable study of the fiqh) is of great importance to the world today.”Bousquet’s admonition to study Islamic Law (Shari’a), or at least recognize the profound importance of its influence on basic Muslim conceptions, has perhaps even greater urgency more than a half-century later, in 2006. While electoral processes in the Islamic Middle East may have further enfranchised the Shari’a-based understanding of hurriyya, it is delusional to equate this conception with the freedom espoused by John Stuart Mill in “On Liberty.”
In The Legacy of Jihad, Bostom includes a tract by Qutb. The upshot is that the only freedom in Islam is from man-made law and rulers. It helps if you believe books aren't man made and that words don't require interpretation. If not, it all sounds pretty crazy.
Which, of course, does not mean that Western eyes should look kindly at such events, as Muslim apologists in the West sometimes aver. The Western constitutional tradition was never merely about majority wishes. The notion of representation, and of the consent of the governed, is important to it but so is much else. Americans will be aware that the Federalist Papers speak mostly of "republican government" (sometimes contrasted with democracy) and are much concerned with how individual rights might be safeguarded from majorities. (Of course, this is one thing that a written constitution is meant to do.)
Consider Federalist X
The writer, Publius, is thinking of democracy in the Greek sense here ("a society consisting of a small number of citizens who assemble and administer the government in person"), but one can apply the same thinking to representative democracy in a large-scale society. The worry for "the weaker party" - religious minorities in a predominantly Muslim state, for example - is equally relevant.
"Hamas’ resounding victory in the January, 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections represents, unfortunately, a much wider trend in the Islamic Middle East. Each time open or even relatively open elections occur, authentic Islamic movements either emerge with outright electoral victories—as in Iraq, Kuwait, Morocco, and the West Bank/Gaza—or at minimum, bolster their representation dramatically..."
This is the in your face fact that Bush and the Muslim apologists can no longer deny. Until this administration understands Islam, we are doomed.
That was no mere "Publius" who wrote Federalist Ten. That was James Madison.
John Sobieski,
I view the electoral process in the Mid-east that gives rise to Islamic parties, while in the short term to be very destabilizing, to be in a long term view a very positive development. I do not intend to imply that these parties will "mellow" over time with the responsibilities of being actors on the world stage. In fact, my implication of the positive development is that they will become even more extreme.
Let the appeasers, the leftists, the one-worlders, even the UN, allow these parties to become the modern day Nazis that they really are despite their collective protestations to the contrary. And when the reality becomes only too apparent, then they will discover the underlying ideology driving these parties. It's the Koran, stupid!
The reality of global politics is that we must still contend with nation states, and not parties within the states. When Islam acts as a party, or even a non-state actor, it is de-facto shielded by the concept of the state, irrespective of the level of support given by the state. Witness the contrasting relationship between Arafat and Hamas, on one hand, and Mubarak and the Muslim Brotherhood on the other.
While Islam acts as an official or nonofficial within a state, there is no recourse by any other state that can be made. Such recourse becomes "interference in the internal affairs of state" by an outside actor, generally perceived as an international taboo by all. Such is the failure of the "War on Terror." The protagonist must tread a delicate line between protection of its citizens from extraterritorial threats and interfering with the internal affairs of another sovereign state, i.e., Pakistan.
Furthermore, since terrorist of immediate interest are not identified with a state, irrespective of sponsorship by or alignment with a sovereign state, then pursuate of these terrorists becomes a police action, again an internal affair of state. ISlam arising to the level of the state allows the international community to recognize the the threat from a sovereign state against the interest of their own sovereignity. This is especially true of the European political elites.
There are many ordinary citizens worldwide that are too busy to earn enough for food, shelter and clothing to concern themselves with the intricacies of world politics. Many base their judgments on personal experience, just read many blogs proclaiming "I know 'a Muslim' and he seems like a good guy." In that persons mind, as being rightly taught, you can not judge a whole group by the actions of a few, but in this case he is making such a judgement as he is unaware of the actions of the many, being only aware of the rhetoric against the group. Therefore, he has no evidence to support the rhetoric, only a single point frame of reference that contradicts the rhetoric.
Put Islam in government on the world stage, and now there is state actor that can be identified as the threat. This is demonstrated in opinion polls in which an overwhelming majority view Iran as a threat but not (yet) the underlying ideology of Islam. With time, as more states become equated with Islam, the experience of the common man begins to equate Islam itself as the ideology of the threat, as our fathers and grandfathers perceived Nazism and Communism, thereby moving from the 'minority of extremists' or 'hijackers of Islam' perceptions. Depsite all the 1938 alerts posted by Robert, to most people it still may only be 1933 when the overriding concern of the general populace worldwide was locally economic, not globally politic.
That said, I am also a regular reader of your excellent website. Keep up the good work and the good fight.
Who was that guy again, born in India, who said:
"FREEDOM IS SLAVERY"?
Maybe he knew more about Islamism than Stalism.
Mr.Sobieski, again if people are free to vote for what ever party they want, they also have to accept the responsibilty of that party in power. So if they do not get money from Israel, and smart Western countries, they can only blame themselves that they elected a terrorist group as a government. to a much lesser extent we have the very leftist party in Canada, "NDP", they are the ones promising everything to all the poor people, people who are down, people who have been made to work for less, blah blah... but when these NDP actually govern, which they have in two have provinces "British Columbia and Ontario" they nearly destroyed these very weatlhy provines, worse in BC! So Hammas can promise all the things they want, and stupid people can beleive them and vote them in, but once in power they prove worse than previous goverments! the next time elections results will be very different! (if allowed with Hamas). Bush is always wrong with some people, but what has Clinton,Carter done, any better? l heard Victor Hanesn on talk radio this morning, was a great interview, and has a great piece in one of the Wash. papers. but he details the middle east very honestly and has points of view from a man who just came from there.