al-Ghazali on Democracy

[This essay was written before the military takeover of January 11, 2007]

There are some writers who would identify democracy with Christianity. One of them is Larry Siedentop. In his book Democracy in Europe, he observes: “For the Christian God survives in the assumption that we have access to the nature of things as individuals. That assumption is, in turn, the final justification for a democratic society, for a society organised to respect the equal underlying moral status of all its members, by guaranteeing each ‘equal liberty’. That assumption reveals how the notion of ‘Christian liberty’ came to underpin a radically new ‘democratic’ model of human association.” (The italics are the author’s.)
His words are not to be taken cum grano salis. In respect of the family, he makes a trenchant observation. The family, in Christian teaching, takes a back seat to the individual. “And he said unto them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me” (Luke 9: 23) Here is Christ asking for free, voluntary sacrifice on the part of his disciples. So did the Prophet Mohammed; but the difference lies in the fact that Christ asked his follower to ‘deny himself’ – renounce family life, earthly good – in a voluntary association. According to Siedentop, this supremacy of the individual over the family was the herald of the civil society and western democracy. This supremacy is absent in Islam. “And he sent them to preach the kingdom of God, and to heal the sick. And he said unto them, take nothing for your journey....” (Luke 9: 2-3) Siedentop concludes: “...Christian and liberal norms have always had difficulty with assessing the claims of the human family, often treating it primarily as a preparation of adult freedom – a view which can perhaps be traced back as far as Jesus’s radical pronouncement on the need to reject family ties when the service of God, in conscience, requires it”.
This explains many anomalies in the practice of democracy in Bangladesh. Its chief proponents – ambitious men and women with careers rooted in the west - hold despotic sway over their children’s lives and careers. The nepotism that is rife within so-called ‘civil society’ in Bangladesh appears inevitable. In their desire to maximise their gains from the west, our democrats and NGO people try to have the best of both worlds – the Christian and the Muslim. They preach against nepotism, and practice it openly with donor money. They preach against despotism, and practice it openly in their institutions and organisations. For we admire the man who takes care of his family – it is an Islamic injunction – and we despise the person who neglects his family. We are awe-struck when we see Catholic priests give up home and hearth to come to this God-forsaken country from the United States or Europe to ‘serve the people’. If any one of us did the same thing, we would ostracize him – or bung him in an asylum!
Thus, Muslim society cannot be an association of individuals; there has to be a father figure at the top. There can be no democracy in Muslim society. In 1990, we rebelled against despotism: this was un-Islamic, a sin. This is not my view: it is the view of al-Ghazzali.
Al-Ghazali and al-Mawardi are only two examples of Muslim political philosophers who defended absolute despotism absolutely. “Sixty years of tyranny are better than an hour of civil strife,” maintained al-Ghazzali. Even today, Arab children are taught since childhood to fear chaos. Al-Ghazzali said that it was a religious duty never to overthrow a ruler "no matter how mad or bad". So long as he could maintain the peace and protect against external enemies, he must be tolerated – nay, it is our religious duty to preserve and respect his rule.
To quote al-Mawardi: ‘An evil-doing and barbarous sultan, so long as he is supported by military force, so that he can only with difficulty be deposed and that the attempt to depose him would create unendurable civil strife, must of necessity be left in possession and obedience must be rendered to him, exactly as obedience is required to be rendered to those who are placed in command”. The individual has a positive duty never to resist the sovereign.
I have deliberately emphasised the reference to military force – for this reference is not accidental. From the Prophet onwards, every khalifah and sultan and emir in Muslim civilisation was a military ruler. Initially, of course there had been no standing army - the citizen body itself was the army - just as there was no bureaucracy. Later both army and bureaucracy developed together. Whoever had military power had civil power as well, and never the other way around. (This extends to the navy also; Muawiyah was the author of the Muslim navy - the English word "admiral" comes from the Arabic "amir al-bahr", Commander of the Sea).
Our civilisation is, therefore, based on military rule and obedience.
Then Europeans came along and told us that it was barbaric for the military ruler to be the civilian authority – the former must serve under the latter. Since the Europeans conquered us and offered us rich rewards, we accepted their views and renounced 1,400 years of our civilisation.
If democracy and Christianity are identical (and they share many aspects, as Siedentop has demonstrated), what we are witnessing today is nothing short of mass conversion of our society. Even in Pakistan, the mawlanas – yes, even the mawlanas – insist that General Musharraf must relinquish his military post if he is to remain president: what arrant rubbish! Surely, one would expect learned mawlanas to recall the words of al-Ghazzali! But no! They, too, have sensed power, and election as the avenue to power, and are singing western songs. Throughout Muslim history, after the period of the Khalifa-i-rashidun, religious authority had been subservient to the secular powers, as al-Mawardi makes plain.
I can vividly imagine what al-Ghazzali would have said today had he been here: “Unhappy people! Fifteen years ago you rose in rebellion and sinned; today, you and your children suffer for that act of impiety; rape and murder are your everyday lot; some among you, inspired by alien ideas, think that merely because you can criticise your rulers, your are blessed. Criticise rulers! Heaven forbid! Would you criticise your father and mother? It is your religious duty not to criticise your ruler – of whom there must be only one, not many. You have learnt to despise military rule, and yet I lived and wrote under military rule. Your ancestors have prospered under military rule: and you think your ancestors barbaric! Where will you hide your shame? You who spit on yourself! The calamities that befall you daily can only be reversed if you reverse your rebellion of fifteen years ago. May Allah show you the true way, and may He protect you!”