Status Updates From The Caliphate of Man: Popul...

The challenges facing democratic Islam:

1) The moral pluralism of modernity, Muslims radically disagree with one another

2) The needs of politics often take precedent over high doctrine and utopian Islamism.

3) Islamist political thought occurs in the context of a state form.

4) Islamist political thought includes modern, post-Enlightenment political/moral assumptions (sovereign state, national will etc)

There has been an anti-democratic seen in anti-protesting. In addition, it covers the role of power and capacity to rule in restoring order over that of electoral legitimacy. Yet even they utilised popular sovereignty when Grand Mufti Ali Jum'a painted Sisi's coup as the "will of the people". In general, there is a transnational shift towards suppressing Islamist groups and drawing scholars close to the state.

Important to note in discussions of Islamist popular sovereignty is the basic principle of right and justice pre-existing the formation of any particular legal order, and because the people as vicegerent already have formed moral identities prior to unification under a state sovereign the excercise of political power can be imagined as legitimate outside of formally authorized political structures.

Islam's political morality is a consequence of individual conscience, usurpation by the corupt in a botched handoff of political power rather than political continuity (Mu'awiya's rule) is to blame. Traditional Sunnism sees a political order as prioviding for the material conditions for religion, Qutb sees politics as achieving in the individual moral perfection as corrupt institutions lead to corrupt individuals.

Islam to Qutb is practical because it takes into account man's psychology, which is innately tuned into the religions perfect balance. This transformation of the Shari'a-based political vision into a system for the modern era shares a "core anxiety" with Rawlsian and other forms of justificatory liberalism. Man has social needs/avarice and Shari'a concedes to human psychology, only limiting how far it can go.

Qutb's writings can be noted for their claims to the harmony of Islam with human nature which are both specific and placed at the level of the collective. This emancipatory aspect details how collective responsibility to the divine law can also carry collective freedom. Islamists stress Islam is a religion of application because it is an essentially practical religion that morally forms baser selves.

Qutb's writings can be noted for their claims to the harmony of Islam with human nature which are both specific and placed at the level of the collective. This emancipatory aspect details how collective responsibility to the divine law can also carry collective freedom. Islamists stress Islam is a religion of application because it is an essentially practical religion that morally forms baser selves.

Mawdudi believes that each believer has the authority to challenge the interpretation of the law to a supreme court, which creates the individual right among believers to represent divine law. That all the umma is a vicegerent is a theo-democracy because Muslims have been given limited popular sovereignty by God. The Caliphate is shared by all, and this means no one man can claim dictatorship over others.

Mawdudi's thought sees that the people are the origin and effective cause of executive power and the creation of new political/consultative institutions flows upwards from people's will. The people authorize the legal order. In addition, conflict between the executive and legislature are to be counted as emergencies solved by referendums which places the ultimate authority to solve emergencies with the collective.

Mawdudi believes in a body of legal experts who will be overseen by a supreme court, however, more important to preventing human domination is the right to disobedience against that which contravenes the Shari'a which the people have the right to do against their rulers. It is not difficult to see here anarchy of judgement where any individual judgement that a civil law goes against God justifies rebellion.

The Islamist project conceives of fitra as broader than just innate apprehension of monotheism and God. It is also emancipatory. Man must be socialized into virtue through the law to appreciate this after a socio-psychological revolution creates this legal order. The Islamic state is infused with the perfectionist mission of subject formation. There is a vision of popular acceptance and collective agency as needed.

To Mawdudi, a state should form rather than inform. The Islamic state must seek to mould every aspect of life and activity in line with its moral norms. No one can regard any field of affairs as personal and private. The state's mission is to help the indiidual bind himself to morality. Since this goal has no rational disagreement to Mawdudi, its essence can have no restriction as to how far it goes.

Mawdudi's divine sovereignty is against popular sovereignty. A nation of believers is not morally free to give itself independent legislation or modify God's laws. It can only authorize political authority to enact God's law. It undermines state authority by commanding the collective to disobey anything that goes against the Sharia because the origin of evil lies in unchallenged human sovereignty/human domination.

Mawdudi's writings heavily shaped the Muslim Brotherhood and other Arab thinkers. At this time the emergence of the "universal caliphate" as insisting on the umma's collective custodianship of God's sovereignty also comes about. Mawdudi's "theo-democracy" argues that the umma are the cause of any executive power, the role of the people in filling gaps in divine law, and universal human vicegerency (caliphate of man)

In Rida's view, the umma comes before the caliphate, the unity of its will must precede political unity backed by force. The consensus of the umma is identified through its representatives, although in the absence of a recognized institution that constituted them a prior consensus could not be found. In the caliphate council surrounding Sharifian claims no clear sense of agency or will for this was apparent.

Rida views renewal of Ijtihad as a central part of real Islamic government. The Rida precedents must not become sacrosanct, but it's not clear how an issue can be defined as either "religious" or "public policy". It might be said that consultative lawmaking collapses the distinction between law and policy in the spirit of modern reformism where an original period before the hardening of the law schools is imagined.

Rida sides with a view of the caliphal prerogative as reflecting phronesis or as the need for a sovereign decision when the law does not yield a particular ruling. But how does one interpret revelatory texts as strong enough to veto public policy decisions? Rida does not tackle this ambiguity. He regards semi-sovereignty as concentrated with holders of authority not the umma and views adaptation as survival.

Rashid Rida imagines the Caliph a kind of constitutional lawyer cum chief executive (knowledge up to a mujtahid and the ability to decide whether a matter is of public policy or ordinary application). The Caliph's use of ijthiad in public policy is less of his ability to decide on the exception and more of an ordinary apllication of his constitutional authority. Rida treats the Saharia ambiguously and as evolving.