Matthew Kaemingk:
Welcome to Zealots at the Gate, a podcast of Comment Magazine. I’m Matthew Kaemingk.
Shadi Hamid:
I’m Shadi Hamid.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Together, we research, politics, religion, and the future of democracy at Fuller Seminary’s Mouw Institute of Faith and Public Life.
Shadi Hamid:
We are writing a book together. This podcast represents an informal space where we can talk about how to live with deep difference. Thanks so much for joining us.
Matthew Kaemingk:
All right, friends, so make sure you subscribe wherever you listen, and please leave us a review. We love five stars, and feel free to join the conversation. You can ask us questions by using the hashtag on Twitter #zealotspod, or feel free to email us. Our email address is zealots@comment.org, and you can expect a friendly exchange with us.
My name is Matthew Kaemingk, and Shadi and I are good friends. That said, perhaps we shouldn’t be. I’m a Christian, Shadi’s a Muslim. I’m a conservative. Shadi’s a quasi liberal. I’m white, he’s brown. I study theology. He studies political science and theory. I’m from the rural northwest and he is from the elite urban bastions of liberalism in the Northeast. And so for many reasons, Shadi and I shouldn’t be friends. Our identity markers sort of label us as people who might even be enemies, but we are. And as we said, this is a place for us to work out and explore those differences. And Shadi, today we get to explore the differences around faith and politics with the caliphate. So why don’t you tell us a little bit more about what we’re talking about and our guest?
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah, sure. Thanks, Matt. So I’m really excited about this episode. We have a treat for you all. We have a special guest, Ovamir Anjumer, he is the Imam Khattab Endowed Chair of Islamic Studies at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toledo. He’s also the founder of the Amatics Institute, which is sort of like a Muslim research collective, and we’ll include a link to that in the show notes.
Ovamir, I think is one of the boldest and most original Islamic thinkers writing today. And some of his arguments are quite provocative, and that’s why we’re really looking forward to the discussion with him. He wrote an incredible article. It’s a tour de force of an essay three years ago. It has the title, Who Wants the Caliphate? And I suppose one answer to the question is that Ovamir wants a caliphate.
And so part of this essay is actually trying to make the case for some version of the caliphate, and that’s why we want to talk to Ovamir today. And I’m sure there’ll be a number of other issues that we get to the nation state, democracy, liberalism, you name it. And I think this is actually one of the first times that Ovamir will be talking to a largely Christian audience, certainly publicly and also to a Christian theologian, my friend here, Matthew. So I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but we’ll find out. And maybe just by way of starting the conversation then turning it to you, Ovamir, when it comes to the caliphate, I think most Americans associate that with fanaticism, extremism. The caliphate just, it has that power to it, which I think is unfortunate because if we look historically, the greatest moments of Islamic civilization were precisely those periods when there was a caliphate. And whether we’re talking about philosophical, scientific, intellectual vitality and progress and pluralism, that was happening under the historic caliphates.
And I think that maybe that’s one place to start, is to give people maybe a sense of what you mean when you use this particular word. And I’ll just say from my own standpoint, when I think about the historic caliphate, I don’t think about clerical despotism, I don’t think about authoritarianism. Actually, in the medieval period under the Bassett caliphate and other caliphates, we actually see a balance of powers. We see checks on the power of the caliph. The caliph oftentimes wasn’t even that powerful, and most of his power came from the symbolic meaning of his post. But maybe that’s a good place to start and then we can get into the heart of what you might want to say about why you think it’s worth it for us as moderns to actually draw inspiration from the past caliphates as we look to the future. Ovamir, over to you. Yeah, and Matthew, why don’t you just-
Matthew Kaemingk:
Just to add in there, I mean, for those in the Christian audience who maybe have no idea what a caliphate is, or maybe they’ve imagined it as some sort of totalitarian Islamic regime, just for beginners, how should we understand this thing called the caliphate?
Ovamir Anjum:
Well first of all, thank you very much, Shadi and Matt, for having me for this conversation. It is a real treat. I’ve been thinking about this since you guys reached out to me, and I’ve enjoyed your other conversations as well. I know Shadi a little bit more. In fact, Shadi may not remember, but it was almost a decade and a half ago that we first met perhaps in Madison, Wisconsin, where he was attending a conference I think on South Asia. And we had a very interesting conversation that I still remember.
The caliphate, I totally understand that people have a lot of apprehensions about it. But to some degree, what the article intended to do was precisely to create this provocation because, as I will explain the idea of the caliphate, when informed Muslims think about it, it’s precisely as Shadi hinted at, that it is thought of as an era of relative pluralism, tolerance and a continuity to the early days of Islam.
A way of governance that is not totalitarian or absolutist, as I’ll explain, it is emphatically not absolutist in any of its various eras. I will divide up the caliphate historically into at least four different eras, four different types of, if you will, relationships between power and religion. And in none of those manifestations was the caliphate absolutist. In many ways, the modern nation state is far more absolutist than the pre-modern caliphate.
But let me say something about the very idea, the word caliphate. The word caliph means merely a successor, a deputy. And the term was used for the first successor to the Prophet Muhammad, piece upon him, whose name was Abu Bakr, who the first thing that he said on his pulpit, an iconic speech in Islamic history, he said two things, one, “I’m not perfect. If I’m wrong, correct me and if I’m right, follow me.” And the second thing he said, “The task I have for myself is to take from the strong the rights of the weak.”
And these ideas effectively sum up what the caliph does. He is not infallible, unlike the Prophet Muhammad who was infallible at least insofar as he spoke on behalf of God. And yet at the same time, he leads the community of the Prophet Muhammad. The community is now defined by a territory, like what you think of the modern nation state, which is defined by a territory. And then the community is forged, if you will, based on the elements that are available through various mechanisms of imagination, propaganda and what have you.
The caliphate is a kind of political entity where it is the community that comes first, and the territoriality is secondary. Now, historically, the caliph was sometimes appointed, elected, designated, but the theory of early, especially in early days of Islam, was that the caliph is elected, chosen by the Muslims at large by the Muslim community.
So that model especially is a very important model in Muslim imagination. The Sunnis and the Shia, the two nominations of Islam will think of those early days differently. But they agree that those early days are… the golden, if you will, religiously speaking, the golden era, the golden age, because the normative, because ideals of justice and piety are upheld by first four caliphs for the Sunnis, and by the last of those caliphs, Ali [inaudible 00:10:44] for the Shia. And therefore, this early model, the first caliphate, which is called the rightly guided caliphate, is which lasted only 30 years, but it has this normative force which then applies as a standard to the rest of this history in which, if you will, all other rulers are judged against it and found wanting. But that ideal is seen as important. That very idea of having ideals that are perhaps sometimes impossible to reach is central to Islamic imagination in whether it’s ethics or piety or whatnot.
So in short, the caliphate is the Muslim government to which Muslims belong and non-Muslims have always had from the very beginning, a well-defined role in the caliphate has protected minorities [inaudible 00:11:56]. And the historical experience of the caliphate has been quite significant and quite different from what in one imagines when one thinks of Christian Europe, Christendom, in which there were no significant non-Christian communities or non-Christian communities that were recognized until of course the modern period. In the caliphate, there are always significant non-Muslim minorities, particularly Christians, but also Jews and Zoroastrians and others. So the caliphate was by definition a plural existence where the relationship to non-Muslims was seen as part of one’s faith to be good to them. It was not liberal democracy, it is not equality, but the legal status was certainly unquestionable.
Shadi Hamid:
Could I ask, Ovamir, on that? As you correctly note, we’re not talking about equality between citizens in the full modern sense. We are talking about communities that are protected. They have rights of worship and freedom to exercise their faith on the local level. But there are built-in limitations. And I think that critics of the kind of, let’s return to the caliphate argument, would say that it was great for the time compared to Christendom, there were considered… relatively speaking, there were greater rights for Jews and Christians. But if we’re comparing the historic caliphate to liberal democracy today, there is no real comparison because obviously in the historic caliphate, a Christian or Jewish person couldn’t aspire to be the head of state. Almost by definition, a non-Muslim couldn’t be caliph or hold certain senior positions in government because this was ultimately a state and an empire infused by Islamic ideals. And it’s hard for non-Muslims to be able to play that role of stewardship over the Muslim community.
So what would you say to that, that it was great for its time, but this idea of demis and protected minorities is still keeping non-Muslim minorities on a lower status.
Ovamir Anjum:
Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean, it goes without saying that what the modern secular forms of government produced is they create certain advantage, which is that faith, moral commitments, God are kept out of the public sphere in order to achieve a certain kind of equality. Now that equality we all know is never fully achieved. So liberal democracy is also an asymptotic kind of ideal where democracy has produced all kinds of inequalities and liberalism sort of tries to constrain democracy in some ways. So it’s a project that goes for certain kinds of ideals and doesn’t look at other kinds of ideals.
The kind of ideals that are held in the pre-modern world and in communities of faith in general, even today, are not seen as informing liberal democracy. So I think that if one is to think of some other way of constructing a public sphere in which the public square is not naked, in which it is possible to create a kind of a moral model for constraining forces of politics, capitalism, and other things, other great forces, I think, which are real… the true threats to humanity, if I may exaggerate or perhaps use hyperbole a little bit, many people would think that of course it’s common sensical. Our planet is almost certainly going to be transformed with this, the kind of regime that’s liberal secularism has produced in such a way that it may not continue. Its health is seriously questioned. So we certainly have to think about other models, right?
And if one diagnosis the problem of liberal secular democracy as the absence of moral, public moral example, public moral norms, then I would say Islam is, and Islamic caliphate is the biggest competitor as a model that still has large measures of tolerance and guarantee of certain communal rights, certain personal rights. And for Muslims who think that, who haven’t frankly gained much from liberal democracy, this is particularly attractive. But the claim I am willing to make that it is for even the rest of the world and for Christian friends, certainly something where dialogue and learning is possible.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Quick question for you on that point. So I have a number of Christian friends who speak very positively of secular modernity. They talk about technology and medicine and healthcare and education and all these aspects of secular modernity that seem to make our lives a lot better in a variety of measurable ways. But then I have other Christians who are very critical of secular modernity and they talk about the rise of anxiety and depression and the breakdown of the family and the rise of selfishness and individualism and loneliness. And I’m wondering, from your Islamic perspective, as you clearly have some questions about secular modernity and whether or not it’s good for human beings, could you just for a moment share with us your primary Islamic concerns about secular modernity as essentially what is it doing to human beings. It seems to me you think it’s rather unsustainable to live this way. So could you talk us through that as a Muslim, how you read that?
Ovamir Anjum:
Right. So I think that there are, let me categorize my concerns at least in two different categories. One are immediate political concerns that come out of Muslim experience of colonialism, post-colonialism, a world that is incredibly unequal, a world that seems bent on destroying Muslim flourishing and Islamic flourishing, where when you think of Islam, you think of innocent children being washed in the Mediterranean [inaudible 00:19:49] as refugees. Europe is building higher walls, there are failed states, one after another, all of them, or nearly all of them were secular experiments that have not brought the kind of flourishing or prosperity, even material prosperity that perhaps Christian majority countries or formerly Christian majority countries have seen.
So there is that internal history, which is why I don’t have to make that argument very hard speaking to Muslims at all. But then the concerns that I have as a Muslim in the West as a Muslim in western academic and somebody who is very much concerned with and interested in thinking about the world in conversation with secular scholars, scientists, historians where I share their concerns with ecological survival of the planet and the kind of inequalities that have go to… inequalities at the level that we see in the economic sense, but cultural inequality, where there’s hegemony of one culture that has eliminated up the rest of the world.
So let me speak from that perspective primarily in answer to this question, because I think that that’s the kind of question… that’s the angle that you’re coming from. I don’t see secular modernity as a kind of singular evil that many, perhaps more traditionalist Muslims tend to see. Not that I do not see myself as being super traditionalist or non-traditionalist. I see that merely as a question, as a balance. I think that the many aspects of modernity are indeed continuation of human history. And as Muslims, we do not condemn human history. We do not condemn the various opportunities God provides humanity.
There are different kinds of tests, but at the same time, to not recognize the hegemony of secularism and the disappearance of God. And with that, some really deep transformations, I think that also would not do justice to how I think any faithful person would evaluate modernity. So I think those are real serious concerns. But at the same time, I don’t use those concerns to say, “Hey, there is nothing in modernity. Medicine isn’t important, that we aren’t living better and longer lives, at least the top five, 10% people, that we haven’t overcome many of, not only material problems of pre-modern age, but also epistemic problems of biases and ignorance that modern bodies of knowledge have in fact have made available.” I just don’t attribute them particularly as products of modernity. I see them as human progress, progress understood in the small piece sense as a much more complicated idea, not the theological idea of progress that is often underwrites these things.
Matthew Kaemingk:
That’s really helpful. I’m sorry about that, Shadi. I took us off course here. I want to bring us back to the caliphate here because I have got a couple more questions for you on this. So within the western political imagination, we hear any discussion of an Islamic form of government and our minds immediately go to the term theocracy, and we use that sort of western label of theocracy for I think essentially what you’re talking about in this article about the revival of a caliphate. But you say very clearly, the caliphate is not a theocracy and that theocracy is not permissible for Sunni Islam. So I’m wondering if you could talk us through how is it not a theocracy?
Ovamir Anjum:
Well, it all depends on how we define theocracy, right? But it is not theocracy, if by theocracy is meant a direct government by people who are speaking, who have connection to God and they’re speaking on behalf of God and their public policies, their political choices are justified in the name of God alone, but rather the way Islamic government worked in history, most western scholars by the way categorize Islamic government historically as non theocratic, with few exceptions, exceptions in few… there’s some regimes which come close to being theocracies, relatively limited, but Sunni caliphates were not theocratic. Sometimes, they’re thought up as more nomocratic, meaning that it was a rule of law and the law was Shari’a, law of Islamic law. But that Islamic law is articulated not by a single voice that’s speaking for God, but by jurists who are based in communities.
And the Islamic law, or Shari’a is very much community-oriented and almost a bottom up law in a way that really constrains the powers of centralized autocratic government. So this also speaks to the question or to a point that Shadi raised earlier, which is that the caliph was not… the powers of the caliph are not absolute, because the caliph almost is a shepherd of the community in a very general sense, but not the repository of religious truth. Religious truth comes from scripture. And scripture is available to all the believers and is articulated by the walima, who there is no single institution of hierarchy that can authorize or control the walima as modern governments tend to monopolize that.
Matthew Kaemingk:
And that’s what I think was really interesting about your piece was how I think for many Western Christians, when we think about Islamic politics, we think about… we use images of authoritarian control. But throughout your piece you’re talking about checks and balances and federalism and pushing power down and holding leaders to account. Yeah, it’s just fascinating. Go ahead Shadi.
Shadi Hamid:
You even quoted the conservative author and pundit, George Will, as an inspiration for your ideas around reviving the caliphate. We’ll get to that where George Will might fit into that.
Ovamir Anjum:
Right.
Shadi Hamid:
And it will include, of course, a link to the whole essay in the show notes, for those of you who want to leave through it. Now, okay, I’ll put my cards on the table a little bit. I have my criticisms of the nation state, and I think one thing your essay does, it’s very, I think persuasive and powerful, is you remind modern audiences that the nation state isn’t always great. And particularly in the Middle East, the nation state has been, I would say, disastrous because it has centralized power, because it has made dictatorship more likely. And that’s one of the reasons that after the fall of the last caliphate in 1924, we don’t see a flourishing of pluralism and democracy and liberalism. We see a consolidation of authoritarian regimes throughout.
So this idea that people might think intuitively get rid of the old caliphate, people can make progress. What we’ve seen in the Middle East is almost the reverse. And there’s a number of reasons why that’s the case. We don’t have to get into all of it right now, but I think it’s really worth it for people who care about the Middle East, but also about religion more broadly, to just be aware of how the nation state can distort religion, because a nation state sees itself as absolute, it is the sovereign.
So it also inevitably wants to control religion and religious production and religious knowledge because if you leave that open, then people can challenge your rule. So you want to make sure that it’s under control. And that’s one reason that there are ministries of religious affairs, Islamic affairs, throughout the Middle East, even under ostensibly secular governments.
Okay. But then where I am probably a little bit more critical is seeing the caliphate as a viable alternative, as a preferred alternative. And I think there’s a couple complications that really stand out to me. One of them is in Muslim majority countries in the Middle East, we no longer just have people who believe in Islamic rule. There are now secularists and liberals and leftists and socialists. There might not be a whole lot of them. Still the majority of these populations tend to be religiously conservative. But we’re talking about, especially among elites, there’s a lot of Egyptians, Tunisians, Jordanians, who any thought of a caliphate would be anathema to them because they don’t want to live under any kind of religious rule, even if it’s non theocratic.
But still a caliphate is going to have a conception of the good life. It still is going to promote a particular understanding of Islam. And I think that to me is one of the big obstacles. And to say nothing of Christian minorities in some of these countries, and I think for Christian listeners in America, they might wonder, for example, the cops in Egypt, presumably they wouldn’t be thrilled if Egypt became part of a confederated regional structure, and that the head of state ultimately is a Muslim and only a Muslim, right? So I’m just curious, how would you think through some of those concerns?
Ovamir Anjum:
I would say that the nation state, just to underscore your point, is not merely… not merely does it tend to monopolize religious authority, but I belong to that school of scholars who argue that the nation state must necessarily, by definition, do so. And therefore, for those concerned with the flourishing of Islam as an ethical and religious entity, must also be concerned with the kinds of… There must also be concern with the post-nation state future. And you must think of alternatives.
And the nation state also is something that I don’t see as just a thing that is, but rather it’s many things coming together that are constantly in transition. So I don’t call for by destruction of the nation state, but simply its transition, which as I point out in the article, that Europe, the birthplace of the nation state in the era of globalization realizes that nation state must go in some of important ways.
European Union is a way to say that we must roll back the nation state. So the idea that there can be, or there needs to be some kind of federation is not really that new or interesting, although I would love to take that credit. But in fact, I don’t think that for people who are in the field, it really isn’t that new of an idea, either a radical critique of the nation state, which is very common, I would almost say that’s the standard narrative, or the idea that we could move toward some kind of regional reintegration or a civilizational state as India or China are being called today.
But going back to a question that, look, we still have religious authority, the public sphere is wearing a garb and a turban, what do we do about that? And I think that that is true, but nowhere and in no situation can we imagine a public life that is not wearing a garb one way or the other, right?
No clothes are still clothes. When you’re naked, you’re still making a statement. So secularism is not empty, secularism is a kind of expression. And there are increasing piling up of studies from anthropology, political science, political theory, that are arguing precisely that the nation state has never been neutral… sorry, secular nation state or secularism has never been neutral.
So in that sense, often this question about concern that, let’s say, Christians in the North might have, looking from the distance, those are concerns of Christians in the North that I want to be part of the dialogue with, but I just don’t think that their concerns are the priority for people living elsewhere. Now, thinking about Christians in the Muslim world, well those are different concerns. Often, Christians in the west or the North have very little idea and share very little with Christians in the south or the east.
So that’s a complicated conversations, which we can go in that direction. In Egypt, I’m sure you’re familiar that there are Christians who would rather be treated through the Pact of Umar or some version of the Islamic deal rather than be integrated into the nation state. And these were recent controversies, where the Christian community, for example, still prefers to be governed by particular Christian norms that are guaranteed by the remnant Islamic side of the Egyptian state, whereas a more secular younger Christians might want to give that up. But there are in fact fears that giving up those special protections for Christians that are provided by the Shari’a model will in fact lead to elimination or pulverization or disappearance of Christian community as they all become equally secular and perhaps disintegrated that you have a Christian community that has survived for 14th centuries.
Under Islamic rule, many Christians might think that’s a perfectly good way. If the kingdom is kingdom of heaven, you don’t have a particular political model, why not live under a thriving Muslim government that allows us to flourish, ask questions. So the question would only be, can we flourish as Christians? And I think that would be a different conversation, whereas often Western Christians’ concerns, which is how I understand Matt starting, those concerns are often of a very different nature because if those Christians were to talk to Egyptian Christians, there probably would have very little in common in terms of concerns.
Matthew Kaemingk:
So if I could flip the conversation completely on the other side, as we’ve talked about the status of Christians in a Muslim country, here in the United States, whether you call it a Christian country or a secular country, you have a substantial Muslim minority here. And one of the things you’ve talked about is the need for a level of authority or governance to be a legitimate sort of Muslim community.
And Shadi has said multiple times that he really loves America and he loves being a Muslim in America. But I think my question for you is this, America’s not going to join a caliphate, right, anytime soon. But if the American government were to make some form of concession to the Muslim community in America, to allow for some level of increased governance for the Muslim community, what might you want to ask the American government to provide to the Muslim community in America that it is not currently providing in terms of governmental structure or power or sovereignty for the Islamic community here in the United States?
Ovamir Anjum:
Yeah. I mean, it’s another great question that I think perhaps speaks to the concern that a lot of Americans in general have, which is how does a caliphate view the rest of the world, and what does that mean for Muslim minorities? Now I’d say that just again, looking historically at what the caliphate has been, it was effectively the civilizational state of Muslims in mostly Muslim majority lands. And go back and just give you a look at the Ottoman Empire, the last century, it was effectively not very different from how other empires were operating. Now I’m not saying going back to the Ottoman Empire because that’s the model, but there’s certainly a lot to be learned even from the Ottoman model, which I can get to later. But one of the things that was very clear to Muslims historically in Islamic law is there is a separation between Darul Islam or al-ahad, or dar al harb, or dar al kufr.
There are abode of Islam and then there is the abode of un-Islam, whether it’s seen as the abode of war because it was by definition there is no international order, so it’s seen as, or the abode of treaty.
And that distinction, which is central to Islamic law, although modern reformists are questioning that or have been questioning that, but I think that that’s ill-informed because one of the things that happens as soon as you realize that Islam has an abode is that there are other places where Islam is a guest, and it’s perfectly happy as a guest. Muslims in the West are not trying to convert, don’t need to try to convert Islam and establish a caliphate in Europe or America, especially if there is a caliphate that has formal treaties with other lands. And that’s an important thing for Muslims, again, who are thinking in terms of Shari’a, in terms of the historical model that I have in mind.
Matthew Kaemingk:
So you would not ask the American government for any kind of structural reform to provide Muslims with additional freedoms or anything? You would simply say, just continue as a guest in America?
Ovamir Anjum:
I would say that Muslims, in a certain sense, there are… Yes, of course there are kind of local problems. In Europe, for example, Muslims live absolutely… their life is miserable in a number of respects, where in America, it is far superior in terms of rights and opportunities. And if the trends go more in European direction, then I would have much more immediate concerns.
I think that there may be a number of grievances that Muslims have, but none that require a kind of radical overhaul of these relations. Often, for most Muslims, the grievances are very similar to the grievances Christians have. In other words, those are grievances about where America is going, but those grievances are not the relationship to this kind of power and how much government we can have, but rather if it’s moral decline in the American society or great inequality or violence, those are things that require addressing as Americans.
And I should also say, as I’m an American Muslim and I’m very happy living in America as an American Muslim where I have the rights and the freedoms to have these kinds of conversations. I’m not trying to change America according to this imperative. I am trying to change America insofar as any other American is, but in the model that I have, this caliphate model that I am proposing in that article, Muslims in fact can be happy within America, even if it goes more in a more Christian direction or a more secular direction. It’s just not the center of gravity. It’s whatever the majority wants. If it so happens that it moves in a direction, let’s say, Northern Europe and Muslims have less and less freedoms, then yes, Muslims ought to mobilize in ways that are available to them to make…
Matthew Kaemingk:
Shadi has said that. So Shadi said that he hopes America becomes a little more Christian. He thinks America would be better if it was a little more Christian. Do you feel similarly that like if there were-
Ovamir Anjum:
Yeah, absolutely.
Matthew Kaemingk:
… as opposed to secularism?
Ovamir Anjum:
I think most Muslims I talk to would appreciate, even those who are on the left or the right, relatively speaking, a kind of compassionate Christianity that sees… Well, let’s say that’s not the kind that people often have fear and it’s good reason to fear, but that’s reactionary and one that’s sort of, or anti-science or anti-reason or whatnot. But one that, if that’s what Americans want and it allows other people to live, then yes, I think that would be a more hospitable place for Muslims.
Shadi Hamid:
Okay. So if I could jump in here, a couple concerns. I still do consider myself a small liberal, albeit one who is quite critical of what liberalism has become. And I’m very much a believer of the American model. And I’ve said elsewhere that I think there’s a good argument to be made that the best place in the world to be a Muslim today is America. And I can’t think of… I mean I guess you could say Canada, if you want to count that as a country. No, sorry, sorry to the Canadians, I didn’t mean that. But yeah, I mean we got Canada and we got the US.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Comment magazine is in Canada.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah, I really-
Matthew Kaemingk:
Our host institution for Zealots at the Gate.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah, sorry.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Sorry, Canada.
Shadi Hamid:
Sorry Comment magazine. So when you say that secularism can never be value-neutral, that is actually a theme that we’ve explored in previous episodes. Both of us are very much of the view that what we call liberalism and secularism is full of value propositions. Even if liberals don’t act like they’re a value propositions, they’re there. And we have to recognize that.
But the US system does allow for at least, relatively speaking, a more neutral space. I mean, everything is relative. There isn’t a ministry of Christian affairs. I personally, as a Muslim, have a lot of freedom to pursue whatever understanding of Islam is most appealing to me. That seems like a pretty inspiring model. So the question is, if we like this, why wouldn’t we consider something more like the American version of secularism, a secularism that allows for a public religiosity? Or maybe that’ll change in a few years, but at least up until now, there is a lot of room for evangelicals, for Muslim conservatives, for orthodox Jews to reflect their beliefs in the public sphere. Again, it’s kind of going downhill.
So I just wonder, and then maybe just the other point I’d make is I’d worry that as an American Muslim who loves America, I wouldn’t want my fellow Americans to see me as having dual loyalties. I mean, one risk is that this caliphate emerges in the Middle East and you have a caliph who is speaking on behalf of Muslims throughout the world with this kind of spiritual power. And then people start wondering, “Wait, is Shadi sympathetic to that” Or any other American Muslim they know, there’s going to be a question of where ultimate loyalty lies. And I knew other critics of your argument, Ovamir, have made some version of this argument. I know that you’ve had debates with my friend and sparring partner, Mustafa Akyo on this. So I’m just curious, how would you respond to some of those concerns that are particularly concerns that would come from American Muslims, because they’re in a pretty good spot right now, relatively speaking.
Ovamir Anjum:
Sure. Well quick answers because I’m loving your questions. I’m going to try to make it quick, so I get more of them. To your first question, I think if you just take your own caveat seriously about America, I think that will be your answer. Meaning that this is a moment in history. Yes, Muslims happen to find themselves at the end of the era of globalization, after slavery or whatever, genocides are over and the problems of whatever capitalism are not big and serious enough that the rest of the Muslim world right now is on the receiving end of whatever barrel this is, that there are a thousand military bases in America. Yes, in that system, being American, anything is good. And okay, I will give you that, but with so many caveats, I could make anything look good.
The second question, however, is that I don’t care that much about anybody’s anxiety about dual loyalty. That is the problem. The problem that the nation state says, “You have to be loyal first and foremost to me,” I say that is what needs to go to hell, throughout the world, not just in America.
Matthew Kaemingk:
And there, many Christians, Christian theologians would cheer you on. We within Christianity, have a lot of trouble with Christians with divided loyalties between the nation state and their faith and-
Ovamir Anjum:
Right. And actually, I’m familiar with that literature and find that inspiring.
Shadi Hamid:
Okay. But, Ovamir, you can see where I’m coming from. I realize that it’s not your primary concern, but if you’re making your case to fellow Muslims, including presumably American Muslims, it’s reasonable for them to be a little bit worried about this. But also, there’s a number of other, I think, related issues. I mean a caliphate that… I mean, a caliphate does raise questions around… I know it’s an orientalist trope, but it’s a real one that people have, which is that Islam is a supremacist religion, that it wants to dominate, so on and so forth, which also raises some geopolitical questions of can we really imagine America as a superpower really being comfortable with the idea of this ultra Muslim state that kind of channels power more effectively. And I’m not saying it’s good that the US would be uncomfortable with that, but it does raise questions about domination and competition between different civilizations. I mean, anyway, there’s a number of concerning developments that would arise that maybe we haven’t fully anticipated.
Ovamir Anjum:
So liberal democracy is pretty colonialist, imperialist, expansionist ideology. I’m not sure if you agree with that, but I see that as sort of a given, I don’t know, given pretty much every fact over the 20th century and the 21st century. And I think that, so any ideology that is successful, it tends to be expansionist in one way or another. I think there are different modes of expansion, but you have people… in fact, there is a great article by, I believe Richard Shweder at the University of Chicago, who writes about Clifford Geertz, really, of course, iconic anthropologists who used to say that “I have these two loyalties as an anthropologist and a liberal, that on the one hand liberalism, I like my rights, I like liberalism, I also see it taking over the world. But at the same time, I study cultures that liberalism is eliminating or placing. And so as an anthropologist, I would want some difference in the world to continue to exist. But liberalism is really eliminating through capitalism, through values.”
So I would say that you could ask the question about Islamic expansionism in two modes. One, you could say, is this going to be an inveterate, unstoppable fighting machine like Isis? And if that’s the case, I agree that there is reason for everybody else to worry.
But just look at history. Islamic expansionism just saw few waves at the beginning. And then it’s really no different from any other empire, Christian or other empires. It’s doing pretty much the same thing. The idea of the doctrine of jihad, for instance, if you study the history of jihad, really until the crusades, people are not even talking about it, right? There’s good scholarship that shows that it sees a renewal in the era of the crusades following the crusades. But that’s sort of a dud. It doesn’t go anywhere.
And then the Iraq colonialism. So there is the lived reality in which Muslims have not been unstoppably expansionist. So you could now turn around and say, “Well, but the very fact that Muslims are supposed to make da’wah, call other people to Islam and so on. And again, that’s as a believer, it is my hope and desire that the whole world converts to Islam. As a Christian, would you not like that? Would you not like that?
Matthew Kaemingk:
I love it. No. Well, Shadi and I have talked about this a lot, right? Because we’ve talked about missions and evangelism a lot.
Shadi Hamid:
Okay, but Ovamir, on this point, I just want to say that not all believers agree with your statement. I mean, obviously yours might be a pretty mainstream one, but it’s perfectly possible for a Muslim believer to say, “Well, I don’t necessarily want or expect, or I’m not hoping for everyone in the world to convert to Islam.” I mean, first of all, I think there’s something good about pluralism. So I’m not sure I’d want to live in a world where everyone’s the same religion. I don’t want to get into this right now, but I don’t actually want to-
Matthew Kaemingk:
I don’t really want to get into this, but-
Shadi Hamid:
I don’t really want to convert Matthew, because if he did convert to Islam, it would actually be a big problem for him in the sense that his family, he’d have to leave his position at Fuller Seminary. He’d probably have to divorce his wife. He’d have a major issue with his kids. He’d lose a lot of his friends. I mean, that is not necessarily something that I’m going to sleep. And I’m like, “Oh, if only Matthew…” I know that’s a different, I just want to just put that out there and feel free to respond to it.
Matthew Kaemingk:
I want to hear the response. Yeah. What do you think that… I mean, Shadi doesn’t want to convert me to Islam. So what do you think about that? Because I said to him that I was hurt by that because if Islam is good for me, Shadi, why don’t you want that for me?
Ovamir Anjum:
Exactly.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Would you join us in this fight?
Ovamir Anjum:
Absolutely. Because I have number of amazing Christian friends, scholars, amazing scholars of Islam and/or of Christianity, and they make the same argument that it’s actually, if you do believe Islam is good, why wouldn’t you want it for us? But Islamic law prevents me from coercing people. And Islamic wisdom, which actually you find both in the Quran itself, reflecting, that there’ll always be differences.
So I’m not saying this is a realistic expectation that I lose sleep over, but it is a desire that one ought to have, that I want that good for everyone. How it’s going to work out? That’s precisely, I guess, the difference between perhaps a liberal and a non-liberal like myself, there are things I leave to God. I’m not saying that that’s going to be a political fact. I’m saying nevertheless, as a desire to save people, to guide people to God, that’s something that comes with the claim that I have something that is good, in the same way that a liberal Democrat… every liberal Democrat in the world, unstoppably features liberal democracy to everybody else who would listen and then some. So I don’t see that that’s a question I have to worry about.
Matthew Kaemingk:
I love this.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah, I mean it’s really interesting. Yeah, I don’t want to get sidetracked with this part of the… about-
Matthew Kaemingk:
Okay. Let me-
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. I was just going to…
Matthew Kaemingk:
I’ve got a different question for you. I’ve got a just different question for you. We will have you back on to talk about the ethics of evangelism and conversion some other time. Absolutely. Because we do need to continue to talk about this.
Shadi Hamid:
It is interesting though that you used the word save. That did stand out to me, because I don’t really see that word as being organic to the Muslim tradition, this idea of being saved and saving others, which I see as more of a kind of Christian orientation, but we don’t have to… But Matt, do you want to-
Ovamir Anjum:
I’ll ask you to translate in the chat for me then.
Shadi Hamid:
Okay. I mean, so you think salvation is as central to the Islamic imagination as it is to the Christian evangelical imagination, the idea of… Well, there’s also the issue that you don’t have to be a Muslim to be saved in the sense of entering paradise. That people of the book can be granted paradise, even if they don’t convert, which I do think is a key difference between Islam and Christianity, where many Orthodox Christians would say that if you don’t accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, there is no actual way to be saved. So there’s also that important difference, and you might be familiar, of course, Ovamir with our friend Mohamed Fadel’s paper, No Salvation Outside of Islam, where he makes the argument that really deep in the Islamic tradition, there is this idea that Christians and Jews can enter paradise without conversion.
Ovamir Anjum:
I don’t recognize that. I think that applies to everybody, not just Jews and Christians, but-
Shadi Hamid:
Wait, wait, sorry. What do you mean?
Ovamir Anjum:
So that’s going to be a different podcast, but if you want me to get into that.
Shadi Hamid:
No. No. I mean you are probably familiar with some of these arguments, I guess that you-
Ovamir Anjum:
No, I’m familiar with that. There is a lot of complexity and yes, I see where you’re going with it, which is that in a sense, Christian kerygma, Christian story of salvation requires believing in one particular historical moment and believing it and so on so forth. Whereas Islamic kerygma, Islamic belief is ultimately universal in the sense that anybody who turns to God in different forms, and people have done that for different eras, different times. So there is that difference. If that’s the difference you’re pointing at, I’m in agreement with you, it’ll require some time to unpack. But in terms of Muslims wanting salvation or Muslims wanting Christians or non-Christians to convert, I only see there is a difference…
I mean, the differences are in details. We don’t have a missionary movement in history, for example, like the way that one thinks of in Christianity. Conversions were often, historically, often organic. There’s no Muslim government that is going around converting primarily. And jihad is concerned primarily with political influence and then an opportunity for conversion rather than actual force conversions.
We have a fairly good historical, if you will, almost, I would say consensus now among historians that conversions to Islam did not take place by force, that conversions occurred mostly centuries later, often after the conquest. To all of that, it complicates the picture, I agree. But I think as an aspiration that people that I want to share and I want to guide, and I want other people to share the good I have, I don’t see that’s different from Christianity.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. And Matt really does agree with you quite strongly on this point. And he wasn’t joking about what he said earlier when I first told him that I didn’t have an interest in converting him. I think he was actually genuinely, first of all, surprised but also maybe slightly hurt because precisely, as you both say, if I believe Islam is true or most true and the most good out of the available options, and presumably I’d want to share that with my friend Matt and not leave him astray.
But just to get back to, in the final part of our conversation, I want to get to some of the practicalities of the caliphate. And one thing I wanted to raise with you, Ovamir, is the idea of a kind of multi-state supernational body that is maybe a kind of Muslim or Islamic European Union. And I take that analogy to be interesting and even useful.
I will note that the Muslim brotherhood often uses this analogy when people push the brotherhood and other Islamist movements on how they feel about the caliphate as a way of apologetics, they’ll kind of dial it down and be like, “Hey, hey, Westerners, don’t freak out or anything. We’re just talking about a regional association, sort of like the European Union.” That’s kind of what we mean.
But before we get to all that, why not have the more modest aim of just having democracy within nation states? That seems to me to be a more viable, near to medium term aspiration. Dictatorship is the fundamental evil in the Middle East. That’s what we have to push back against. And there can be more of a consensus and more support. And even perhaps one day, God willing, more support from the US government to actually respect the choices of Egyptians, Jordanians and Tunisians, that if they decide they want to vote for an Islamist party through the democratic process, that we should defer to that.
That seems more realistic to me and less controversial, because democracy is actually a universal good that the vast majority of humankind can at least relate to, unlike say, the caliphate, when you bring that word in, you’re going to cause some division, some consternation, and it’s going to maybe going to make it harder to get to what I think the goal should be, which is less repression in the Middle East.
Ovamir Anjum:
So we disagree on two accounts here, one, what the goal is, but two, with democracy and the evaluation of democracy. I think that your description of democracy is really hard to… Your evaluation of democracy is hard to maintain. I appreciate democracy as a tool, but you are thinking of it almost as religion, as an asymptotic goal, that even though it fails a million times, it’s my faith that one day it’s going to solve the problems and it’s going to be perfect. To me that-
Shadi Hamid:
No, okay.
Ovamir Anjum:
Let me finish. So that asymptotic belief is your religion. You have to basically believe in democracy as your religion, despite all the failures. And to me, if I’m going to do that, I’d better have some kind of guarantee, some kind of higher power telling me that this is worth it.
And that’s why to me, that is my faith and democracy is a useful tool that I appreciate, that I want to study, that I want to critique and people… And it fails in number of respects. I think there are even material prerequisites for democracy to be meaningful, the number of calories that need to be available or for people to every four years, waste enormous amount of time, resources, and breath, is just not possible historically in. I mean, I study history, it would’ve been laughably disastrous for people to talk about one person, one vote, or anything of this sort, which is not to say I don’t like democracy. It’s just I see democracy as possible, and even it may even be on its way out for something perhaps better.
Shadi Hamid:
But what would that better thing be? So maybe just to clarify, and I can say it a little bit more about my view on democracy in a moment, but so if democracy is a tool, what exactly is the end state? What is the ultimate end of politics for you? Just to be more clear about what you’re getting at.
Ovamir Anjum:
What’s the ultimate goal? An ultimate goal for me as a Muslim thinker, as a Muslim scholar is what God wants, which is that I want to understand the world in a way that makes sense based on the ultimate truths that I know to be the case. So as a scholar, I’m in search for the truth and the good.
To me, it wouldn’t make sense to base my political recommendations on truths that I… or to ignore in that calculation, the truths that I take to be fundamental. Whereas when you say, what are my goals for politics, given that I am who I am, and the vast majority of Muslims on this, I might say would agree with me, that’s why I see this is really important proposal that Muslims ought to think about all the different human experiences, whether it’s democracy or liberalism, and important insights of liberalism, of which I’m a fan.
In the way that they received Greek and Persian wisdom in the past, they didn’t have to get rid of the caliphate and their divine connection, their continuity to the prophet and to each other in order to embrace that wisdom. And in that sense, democracy and liberalism are in fact great human experiences, right? but when they become alternative religions, then there are problems.
So that’s why our political goal then is yes, we could agree the repression enormous amount of repression is… and not only that, but it’s not just repression. You could be all penniless and all die together, that there is an enormous economic inequality, there is, I mean, environmental disaster. Most of the goods of current material bonanza are being enjoyed by a tiny minority, the vast majority of people who are going to suffer. And so anyway, there are lots of things that-
Matthew Kaemingk:
If I could-
Ovamir Anjum:
Go with the goals.
Matthew Kaemingk:
If I could just kind of jump to the end, would your imagine caliphate be democratic? Would you hope for it to involve citizens voting?
Ovamir Anjum:
So I would say yes and no, because America isn’t… I mean, to what extent is American design of a democratic… it is a very, what’s the word? It’s a very curated-
Matthew Kaemingk:
No, no, not America. I’m saying your caliphate. Would it involve voting? Yeah.
Ovamir Anjum:
I would say yes and no, because I think of this as a much more local… So one thing that in my imagination, the caliphate will have to be very sensitive to local communities. So it could be that Tunisia, one part of the federation, if you will, one part of the caliphate is using democracy, and Yemen is not because they have a tribal system in which their representation works much better when tribal elders get together and talk about stuff. Democracy does not guarantee better government, nicer government, good government. It does not… never guarantee. No serious theorist of democracy says that. So if the goods that you’re looking for is accountable government, just government, good government, then I would say Yemen would be different and Punjab and [inaudible 01:11:09], it would be different than-
Matthew Kaemingk:
I understand.
Shadi Hamid:
But that sounds to me like a very outcomes-oriented approach to democracy, that democracy is good insofar as it produces other good outcomes. And that is not actually, at least from my perspective, at the heart of a democratic idea. And I do want to clarify, I am a very big democracy person, but I don’t see it as anything resembling an alternate religion. Because when I talk about, I use the term democratic minimalism, and I would emphasize here the word minimal. I want to actually readjust our expectations about democracy and say it’s not about the substantive ends of politics. It’s not about getting to some end goal. It’s not a panacea. It’s not meant to deliver necessarily great economic growth or deliver consensus or lead to other things that we like. Democracy is good because it allows us to select leaders, it allows us to rotate power, it allows us to aggregate preferences from the population, and it regulates conflict for that reason, because there’s no way that Egyptians are going to agree on what the nature of the good life is.
So the only way that they can live together is by agreeing to respect democratic outcomes, to put things to a vote every four or five years, and to have a political settlement that actually doesn’t invest so much into politics. When we’re talking about that politics should lead to the truth and to this kind of civilizational vision, that is putting a lot… that’s projecting a pretty heavy burden on what is ultimately a procedural mechanism.
So I just wanted to clarify that. But I think that also gives a lot of room for religiously conservative societies, because if you take my minimalist model, if the majority of Egyptians want to have more Islam in politics, if they want to have more implementation of Shari’a, then that’s something that they can pursue if they have enough buy-in from their fellow Egyptians. That requires persuasion, but that also leads to, I think a pretty fundamental issue is you have to have buy-in because let’s say you have this tribal system in Yemen. Well, I mean, what happens to the Yemenis who don’t actually… At some point, there has to be choice and there has to be agency.
Ovamir Anjum:
If I could just say one thing to Shadi, and I think this is a wonderful conversation about democracy that I’d love to have because I am very… I’m a student of democracy. I teach democracy, and I certainly do not want to dismiss it. I also think that it requires the kind of individualism and the kind of creed about human nature, which not all human societies share, so there have to be modifications.
But I do believe in accountability, and I do believe in sort of local autonomy and various forms of life that cannot all be broken down into individual voting, which I do want to preserve. I think my model one might say perhaps is less work, less destructive work. Remember, democracy is a lot of destructive work. There has to be destruction in order for people to become the individual, one person, one vote. And to me, a, that’s a lot of destructive work. A lot of the local life that is destroyed as a result might have been better than what you’re going to get. Second, I don’t have to do this to have accountable and good government. And more importantly, that’s not what people believe.
Shadi Hamid:
But why is accountable and good government… I mean, why is that be all end? Why are we orienting ourselves around this idea that democracy should or needs to, or other systems can better lead us to good governance and accountability? I mean, if we’re talking about what the vitra of human beings is, the innate disposition of creation, I think the argument would be a little bit more foundational, that democracy allows us to be closer to the way God created us as human beings because he created us as individuals that are accountable to him, that there is a day of judgment that is quite individualistic. And therefore allowing people to practice their religion and have the room to do that on the individual level is pretty central. And democracy does get us closer to that end goal.
That’s why I come back to this word agency or choice that people need to associate in decision-making, otherwise they’re under forces that they have no control over, a kind of despotism. And that actually takes them away from their nature. Because if they have other powers, mere men, mere mortals that are telling them how to live or how to be the right, correct Muslim, then their natural spirit is being distorted in some way, especially if there’s excess, if there’s authoritarianism. That’s oftentimes when you elevate men and you’re allowing them to make decisions about how other people should live in this very interventionist way, you’re going to have excess.
Matthew Kaemingk:
So I saw you shaking your head there when he was saying agency and choice and freedom and individual. What do you think about-
Ovamir Anjum:
No, I mean that’s like a theology or democracy. I don’t think that’s any kind of theory of democracy.
Shadi Hamid:
But you don’t think anti-despotism is inherent in the Islamic tradition?
Ovamir Anjum:
I agree with that. I just don’t see that democracy is the only way to it, it may be a good way.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Okay. So I’m going to push pause on the democracy thing. And as our guest, I want to give you the last word on something that I really did appreciate about your peace. I’m going to pull us back to that in one thing. And it’s on The Politics Of Nostalgia.
In my own Christian faith, from time to time, Christians look back to a past age when Christians were dominant. And with great nostalgia, we want to reestablish that power and just copy and paste what we did in the past again. And often these voices are rather angry and fearful and brittle.
And what I read, and I don’t hear that at all in your voice today or in this particular article, what I hear is a curiosity about the wisdom of the past and a desire to honor and imagine a way to develop that wisdom in the future. And so I’m wondering if you might close us out with perhaps a word of wisdom to Muslim listeners who really do value Islamic history and theology and tradition and want to imagine a faithful political life. How do they avoid a sort of romanticization of the past, a sort of brittle nostalgia politics? What sort of advice would you give to them as far as drawing resources from the past and reimagining them for today?
Ovamir Anjum:
Yeah, it’s a great question and a very generous description of what I do, one that I aspire to, but thank you very much for noticing that. I argue often that it is important in many ways to think about the caliphate as good government, as ethical moral government. If we don’t think together about good caliphate, we are going to get many bad ones. In other words, there is an ethical, moral impulse that I want to inculcate, that there is a reason why the Quran calls to doing good without specifying what that good is 200 times in the Quran, that God is concerned with us doing good, not just with winning power. And so the caliphate is the sight of that imagination, of Muslims being able to act as Muslims, Muslims being able to think together as Muslims while doing so.
And I make that very clear in the article as well as the Amatics Institute, this is one of our goals, to do so in conversation with other people, in particular with other people of faith, that this is very much a collective enterprise insofar as we are using resources developed by people all over the world. And we are using the very facts of globalization, technology and human experiences, whether with democracy or liberalism, nation state. So it is, we ought to recognize our indebtedness to the human experience. And even as we look at its failings, we ought to be grateful to the opportunities that other peoples good, other systems good has created.
So this idea of looking back at the past, I’m very critical of aspects of Muslim political tradition and my book 2012 book, Politics, Law and Community in Islamic Thought is really an internal critique of aspects of Islamic political thought. So what one might call nostalgia, even though that term itself is somewhat problematic… A student of mine very proud of wrote his thesis on the question of nostalgia and why the kind of nostalgia that is categorized as bad or good.
But I will say that there is a romanticization, specifically by untruths about our history and untruths about other people’s history that we let in, in order to… I guess in order to sort of reconcile our desire to have power. I think that as Muslims who are suffering and whose brethren are suffering all over, we ought to think about alternatives, but not in quest for power, but in quest for goodness. And that requires applying those standards of goodness and demanding more from Islamic tradition as much as we demand from the modern world.
Shadi Hamid:
That was a great note to end on. And I just want to say thank you so much. I absolutely loved this conversation. I’m so glad that we had you on. Honestly, we could probably go on for hours and hours. And so thanks for joining us.
And again, if you want to read more about Ovamir’s work, do check out his article, Who Wants The Caliphate? And also read more about the Amatics Institute as well to see more of what he and others are up to. And I’ll just say thanks to all of you for listening. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Thanks for listening to Zealots at the Gate.
Matthew Kaemingk:
If you like what you heard, you can check out this podcast, hostspace@comment.org. It’s an amazing online and imprint journal with incredible essays on politics, culture, and faith. And friends, once again, we’d love to hear from you and you can connect with us over at Twitter @ShadiHamid and @MatthewKaemingk, and you can write to us, our email is zealots@comment.org and you can expect a friendly reply. Our thanks as well to our sponsor, Fuller Seminary’s Mouw Institute of Faith and Public Life.
Shadi Hamid:
Zealots at the Gate is hosted by Comment magazine, produced by Allie Crummy, audience strategy by Matt Crummy, with editorial direction by Anne Snyder. I’m Shadi Hamid, thanks for joining us.
Matthew Kaemingk:
And I’m Matthew Kaemingk. We’ll see you next time.
Shadi Hamid:
Bye, everyone.