Ulema-state alliance fuels Muslim authoritarianism

Democracy is rapidly declining all over the world. This is a finding of reports published in 2021 by some influential non-governmental research and advocacy organizations such as Freedom House, V-Dem, International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance and Cato Institute. As a result, large democracies, including the US and India, have found themselves with, among other things, partisan pressure on the electoral process, bias in the criminal justice system, discriminatory policies, violence against Muslims, harassment of journalists and other government critics, and money, economic opportunity and Growing inequality in political influence.

Ulema-State Coalition

If this type of democratic recession is a recent phenomenon for most non-Muslim countries, Muslim nations have been suffering from it for a long time. In fact, after the prediction, the election of the first Caliph Hazrat Abu Bakr was embroiled in controversies. an estimated right The (authentic) hadith in Bukhari, after the death of the Prophet, the Ansar community in Medina wanted the Caliph to be jointly led by two Rich (leaders), one each from the Ansar and Mecca tribes, the Quraysh. But Quraysh Abu Bakr reportedly refused, saying, “No, we will be the rulers and you will be the ministers, because they [the Quarish] Arabs have the best families and are of the best origin.” He wanted the Ansar Qureshi to choose either Hazrat Umar or Abu Ubaidah bin al-Jarrah. But Umar’s refusal resulted in Abu Bakr eventually being chosen as the first caliph.

What is unbelievable about this whole episode is Abu Bakr’s alleged tribal malice. The Prophet upheld human equality in his famous farewell sermon and explicitly stated that every evil pre-Islamic practice, including all forms of racism, racial superiority and hereditary excellence, was abolished and trampled under his feet. went.

That Hazrat Abu Bakr being the closest companion of the Prophet did not go against any of his teachings is proved by the fact that his caliphate was not affected by any kind of discrimination or favouritism. Therefore, the only other possibility is that such hadiths were coined as part of a collaborative enterprise between later rulers and flexible Muslim theologians, in which the prophet or his companions did not make statements with a view to justifying dynastic caliphs. Had given.

Ahmet T. Kuru, a professor of political science at San Diego State University, calls this caliph-cleric symbiosis the “ulema-state alliance”. In his iconoclastic book Islam, Totalitarianism, and Underdevelopment: A Global and Historical Comparison, They describe how this punk guild began in 11th century Baghdad and continued for centuries to leave behind a legacy of authoritarianism and underdevelopment in the 20th century Muslim world.

The alliance was the dire result of some Sunni caliphs’ eagerness to unite Sunnis in the hopes of creating an ideological shield against rising Shia states in North Africa, Egypt, Syria and Iraq. This resulted in the establishment of a “Sunni sect” that killed Shias, rational theologians and philosophers as apostates.

Although this unholy alliance did not exist in early Islamic history, Prof. Kuru argues, the contemporary political and socioeconomic problems of Muslim countries cannot be simply attributed to Islam or Western colonialism.

The institutions promoting the ulema-state alliance were the Nizamiya madrassas established by Nizamul Mulk (d. 1092 CE), vizier of the Seljuk Empire, who served as its de facto ruler for two decades after the assassination of Sultan Alp Arslan in 1072. did. It was Nizamul Mulk who made the fatal decision in 1091 to appoint the polymathematic theologian al-Ghazali (d.1111 CE) as a teacher at the Nizamiya madrassa in Baghdad.

And it was a ghazali, Prof. Kuru, who helped legitimize the idea of ​​declaring even self-styled Muslims apostates. He pronounced free-thinking philosophers who held unconventional views on God and the nature of the afterlife infidels whose lives and property were to be taken over by the Islamic State. In short, Ghazali’s influential theology, which considered religion and state as interdependent twins, rendered extra-Qur’anic legalism almost unquestionable and eventually gave way to laws that created larger crimes of blasphemy and apostasy.

This would not have been possible if the earlier bourgeois-ulema alliance had not been ruined by the ulema-state alliance. Before its dramatic rise in the 11th century, it was the merchant class that was funding the ulema and philosophers, thus ensuring their independence. But the Seljuk policy of bringing the economy, especially agricultural revenues under military control, weakened the economic potential and social status of the merchants, forcing the Ulemas to rely on the state for support, at a great cost. had come.

The Seljuk model not only persisted but also spread to other nearby Sunni states. Pro. Kuru states that Crusader and Mongol invasions accelerated the expansion as Muslim communities sought refuge from these attacks by military and religious authorities.

Later, around the 16th century, three powerful Muslim states – Sunni Turks, Shia Safavids and Sunni Mughal Empires – established versions of the Ulema-state alliance in areas stretching from the Balkans to Bengal, resulting in socio-cognitive backwardness. the territories they ruled. In contrast, the printing revolution during this period led the West from the Dark Ages to the Age of Enlightenment.

In other words, the Muslim world was in a state of intellectual stagnation long before Western colonialism weakened economically, a fact symbolized by the 16th-century Ottoman edict against the printing press.

Secularization of Muslim States

Surprisingly, even the secularization of some Muslim states (such as Turkey) established in the early 1900s did not free them from authoritarianism. Pro. Kuru gives three reasons for this. Firstly, most of the secular leaders of the 20th century were former military officers and could not appreciate the importance of the intelligentsia and the bourgeoisie. Second, his authoritarian modernist ideas led him to impose state control over the economy by restricting the intelligentsia and the bourgeoisie. Third, secularist rulers used Islam to legitimize their rule by coordinating established ulema at the expense of independent Islamic scholars. In addition, secular Muslim states experienced the Islamization of public life as a result of policy failures and an anti-intellectual attitude under the influence of the ulema. The ongoing hijab controversy in India shows that this can happen in non-Muslim democratic states as well.

So, how can one undo the doctrinalism prevailing in most of the Muslim countries today, especially Turkey and Pakistan? Pro. Kuru recommends: The relationship between Islam and the state should be reshaped in a way that encourages intellectual and economic creativity.

Ulema and authoritarians should pay attention.

A Faizur Rahman is the General Secretary of the Islamic Forum for the Propagation of Liberal Ideas. Email: themoderates2020@gmail.com