[Islam-Online- Politics]

That which is known of liberal democracy, in terms of its claims to freedom, justice, equality, popular sovereignty, and so on, is of a certain reductive nature which renders those components distinct from their Islamic equivalents. Claims of compatibility, based on mutually recognized values, are therefore inherently fallacious. They prohibit the process of reversing binary opposites and reverting to essentials.
Binder's claim that "we look in vain for unique ideological elements that will explain the radicalism of those presumably influenced by Sayyed Qutb," whose calls for social justice, equality, freedom, order, and economic justice conform well enough to Western liberal notions, is a typical example of such fallacies.51 Apart from his expectation that Islam should conform to Western liberalism as the standard of reference, Binder betrays a lack of insight into the dimensional distinctions between religious and secular language. Those ideas, be they expressed by Qutb or any other Muslim, are set in a totally distinct governing principle. Expressed linguistically-in lower case and capital letters-it is the distinction between social justice and Social Justice, equality and Equality, freedom and Freedom, and so on. Binder's obsession with stamping Islam with the seal of the liberal bourgeois state betrays a patronizing and condescending discourse which he claims to have set out to avoid. So too does his call for the appropriation of religion by the bourgeois ideology so as to preempt its appropriation by some rival, "undesirable" force.52 In fact, he becomes part and parcel of the power relationship which justifies the ending of what he terms as "dialogue."
At the same time, Binder fails to detach himself from the Western linear-causal paradigm of modern development in his understanding of the complex phenomenon of the Iranian revolution. In a tone of inevitability, he states that the Iranian masses "have not yet emerged from their material, cultural, and moral wretchedness sufficiently to recognize the contradictions between their own interests and the structure of the regime of the clergy."53
Binder's tone echoes a similar expectation voiced earlier by Theda Skocpol. Referring to the Iranian clergy, Skocpol concludes with certainty that:
Those Islamic Jacobins may well endure quite a bit longer than their eighteenth century French predecessors. Nevertheless, they cannot last indefinitely. For when the oil runs out, or if international demand goes severely slack for a prolonged period, then the material basis for an unproductive revolutionary utopia will be gone.54
While ignoring the issues of legitimacy and authority in Islamic societies, which the Iranian revolution addresses head on, Skocpol does not make it clear why she arrives at such conclusions. Why, in other words, should the Iranian revolution be anticipated as unproductive? Why would the clergy not be aware of the dangers posed by being a rentier state? And why would they not be willing to do something about it? Too many presuppositions seem to be involved here which cast doubt on the clergy's ability to handle what perhaps is seen as an appropriated secular domain of competence.
Instead of reexamining their preconceptions and the assumptions of their Western paradigms in light of the Iranian revolution as a religious phenomenon and an authentic Islamic paradigm, Binder and Skocpol choose to deny the facts in favor of their presuppositions. The Western system of knowledge has determined that, in a modern world, there can be no religiously founded social relations and actions. And, as Binder puts it, "as mere ideology, Islam may . . . serve any political design,"55 as if no criteria are available or could be developed to determine the parameters of Islamic action.
The problem, as Said has noted, is that Orientalist discourse is "produced and exists in an uneven exchange with various kinds of power, shaped to a degree with power political, . . . power intellectual, . . . power cultural, . . . [and] power moral."56 Objectivity, in reality, becomes the reasoned articulation of a discursive bias.
It does not suffice, however, to recognize and critique such a condition, since, in the absence of concrete and practical criteria, intellectual curiosities offer limited help. Ziauddin Sardar has suggested that only a "steady state," based on the principles of "homeostatic growth, domesticity, social justice and cultural authenticity," could ensure the perpetual move of all the Muslim community towards its ideal being.57 The Iranian revolutionary experience may be understood and analyzed dialectically, in light of its provision of this steady state. Rather than attempting to fit the Islamic revolution into Western paradigmatic criteria, structures and processes are to be judged and assessed in terms of the above principles.
A prominant consideration is to determine how far the revolution has been able to achieve a steady state as opposed to the chaotic condition pervading most Islamic societies. As a regime, how far has it been capable, through a process of selective growth, to respond to change while maintaining its fundamental, internal balance? The policies of Iran in the post-Khomeini era, for example, can be assessed in terms of the maintenance of the relevant critical variables within identified limits acceptable to the regime's value and organizational structure.58
At the level of domesticity and as part of the Muslim Ummah, Iran's policy performance can further be measured in terms of its strategy of "selective interdependence" with other Muslim communities to achieve maximum self-sufficiency and self-reliance.59 This would include the process of institutional creation which, on the domestic level, should be capable of establishing social justice, and on the international level of pursuing a foreign policy in light of Islamic principles and interests. Within the context of such formulations, cultural authenticity should be reflected as the essential criterion of purposeful change. As Sardar puts it, this is "the principle that ensures that traditional and cultural values of Islam are not undermined by pursuing goals and policies that on the surface are innocent enough but, in essence, incorporate Occidental values and norms."60 Imam Khomeini's theory of Welayat al-Faqih could be tested as an innovative reflection of such authenticity.
It may be fair to argue that the Iranian revolution has to a large extent achieved a steady state in as far as it has consummated-though not necessarily finalized-the process of divorce from Western discourse and systems of knowledge. While much still needs to be done before the full horizons of Islamic existence are unfolded, the revolution-given its situational constraints-has laid the necessary foundations for a genuine conversation between the Islamic political process and its socially translated existence. The Iranian revolution is both theoretically and empirically testable. It remains the first genuine and authentic religious phenomenon that has endeavored and expressed the will to operationalize Islamic principles. Above all, it has addressed the complex issue of the relationship between religious "Legitimacy" and popular will. In short, it provides Muslims something concrete with which to work.
At this foundational level, the Iranian revolution has the unique potential to render two main services towards the articulation of an Islamic paradigm. In the context of this experience, the Islamic perception of freedom can be disappropriated and made distinct from its virtual monopolization by liberal democracy. While the Islamic regime in Iran has been responsive to political expressions of popular will through voting, elections, and the circular nature of the Faqih-followers relationship, the concepts of freedom should not be confused. Islamic Freedom remains subliminal; liberal freedom remains hedonistic. The two understandings are different in form, substance, and essence.
Nor should the expressions of popular will be confused with democracy. While the authority of the Iranian government rests on the consent of the people, its Legitimacy is based on its ideological commitment to Islam. The Ummah, as Binder rightly observed, "is not the constituent power in the sense of originating the constitution. The constitution of a Government of Muslims is the Qur'an and the Sunna."61 The Legitimacy of the Islamic government, in other words, is based on a higher principle than the authority rendered to it. Contrary to liberal democracy, where legitimacy and authority are derived from the same source of popular obligation, and therefore are two sides of the same coin, the two concepts in an Islamic system are derivatively distinct.
Legitimacy is derived from upholding the Shari`ah as an approximation of Divine will, and is therefore absolute. Authority, on the other hand, is derived from the control of the instruments of political power, based on the Ummah's recognition, and is therefore relative. Thus, while popular will is the determinant of authority as government, both are constrained by an independent criterion of Legitimacy. It is the pattern of interplay between those two components which helps determine the nature and authenticity of an Islamic regime.
One perceived implication of such distinction is that people are deprived of any legitimate claim to abandoning or altering the nature of the Islamic state. While this may be seen as an expropriation of freedom of choice in the democratic understanding, it is important to observe here that Islam, as Eric Voeglin would put it, "is not a suicide pact." Nor is a genuine Islamic regime, like a democratic regime, "supposed to become an accomplice in its overthrow."62 As an Islamic criterion, the Ummah can only confer authority on a government; but only the government's Islamic character can confer Legitimacy. Only then could the Ummah's consciousness and its socio-political structures be reconciled and harmonized.
For this reason, no measure of democracy in the Islamic world will resolve its political crisis of legitimacy. In the final analysis, democracy, far from being a solution to the problem of freedom, in fact constitutes the essence of its contradictions. In the absence of the necessary settlement of the issue of Legitimacy, or, in Sardar's terms, the attainment of a "steady state," liberal and democratic superimpositions will simply exacerbate two destructive tendencies overwhelming Islamic societies to various degrees?conflict among those conscious of their challenged world view and apathy among those who are not. In either case, no society can lead a healthy existence nor achieve a steady state.

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