Islam is a comprehensive way of life, and hence, it governs Muslims' lives as individuals, societies and states. However, this does not mean that Islam is a theocracy, in which religious authorities necessarily govern people 'in the name of God', and, therefore, no other opinion or party is allowed.
To the contrary, the coexistence of multiple cultures, religions, and political agendas is part of the 'nature' of the Islamic view of state. After all, Allah made differences amongst human beings a natural part of His creation of everything, and a sign for His power.
There is a traditional jurisprudential difference of opinions regarding whether imamah (political leadership) is 'an obligation based on rationality' (bel-`aql) or 'based on revealed knowledge' (bel-shar `) (Al-Mawardi, 5).
In other words, scholars differed on whether having an imam or leader for Muslims is something that Muslims should have because it achieves the people's best interest, or it is something that could be read from the scripts.
Regardless of which of these two views is correct, a Muslim majority in a certain society ought to have a leadership and a government that represents all their views and judge or govern according to Islamic principles, whether because this is the 'right thing to do' or whether this is the 'divine order'.
However, Islamic law is neutral about the specific political system that a Muslim society endorses; Muslim societies are free to choose any political system they wish, without making any of them an Islamic 'obligation'.
Many contemporary writers on the subject choose to support a specific system of government and insist on calling it 'the' Islamic system of government. This is a methodological error because one cannot claim absolute truth in a pre-determined exemplary political system that is supported through a process of reinterpreting the scripts.
Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, for example, supported the idea that "Islam is both democratic and socialist" through a different interpretation of the verse: [You (Muhammad) have no dominion over them] (Al-Ghashiyah 88:22).
He also interpreted the verses requiring shura (mutual consultation) and zakah (obligatory alms) to be "necessary stages in preparation" for democracy and socialism, respectively (262).
Sadek Sulaiman concluded from the same script on shura that "democracy and shura are synonymous in conception and principle… and are thus one and the same" (98).
Muhammad Khalaf-Allah interpreted the same shura concept, in light of the Prophet's implementation of it, as the 'authority of majority vote' (45).
Abdulaziz Sachedina explored the "Islamic roots of democratic pluralism" in the Qur'an and evidences of 'civil society' in Madinah's early Muslim community in order to "legitimize modern secular ideas of citizenship in the Muslim political culture" (38, 83, 132).
Although all of the above interpretations could be linguistically valid, given the flexibility of the Arabic language, none of them should necessitate that the Qur'an is meant to endorse a specific political system.
Rachid Ghannouchi was more cautious than other modernists when he supported democracy not based on a direct interpretation of the scripts, but rather on the fact that "the essence of God's laws, for which all divine messages were sent, is the establishment of justice for mankind" (95).
Mohammad Khatami followed the same line of argument and added that he supports democracy because the only available alternative is dictatorship, which goes against Islam's principles.
Works Cited:
Al-Mawardi, al-Ahkaam al-Sultaniyah.
Ghannouchi, Rachid, "Participation in Non-Islamic Government," in Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook, ed. Charles Kurzman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Khalaf-Allah, Muhammad, "Legislative Authority," in Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook, ed. Charles Kurzman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Khatami, Seyyed Mohammed , Islam, Liberty and Development. New York: Institute of Global Cultural Studies, Binghamton University, 1998.
Sachedina, Abdulaziz, Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Sulaiman, Sadek, "Democracy and Shura," in Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook, ed. Charles Kurzman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Taha, Mahmoud Mohamed, "The Second Message of Islam," in Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook, ed. Charles Kurzman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, p.262. "Islam Is Both Democratic and Socialist" is a title of a book that Mahmoud Mohamed Taha promised to write but never got to. In 1985, he was executed for protesting the application of certain 'Islamic laws' in Sudan.
