Democracy in Late Medieval Islamic Political Thought

• In Event: Democracy in the Middle Ages? Views from Islam and the West

Abstract

It is well established that after Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d.1210) and his work, the gap between theology (Kalam) and philosophy (Hikma or falsafa) shrank. Moreover, a new wave of scholarly attitude in dealing with predecessors emerged, the tradition of Tahqiq or authentication, authenticating conventional wisdom through demonstrative proof and not only accepting it as simply authoritative. However, this was not only in metaphysics and theology generally but also in the fields of practical philosophy, chiefly ethics and politics. And it is in this vein that I want to explore Democracy in Late Medieval Islamic Political Thought.

When Sunni Muslim theologians spoke of the Imamate before Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, the focus was mostly on sectarian arguments against Shia claims of the Imamate. However, after Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, inquiry into the Imamate, like all other theologically related topics, became more philosophical, and vice versa, as will be shown here. The significance of beginning with Fakhr al-Din al-Razi’s work is to see how late Sunni political theology became more democratic and, to be more accurate, more republican in spirit. This is shown by Fakhr al-Din al-Razi’s arguments against the supremacy of scripture as the guide to the “one Imam,” contra the Shia, through elevating the nation, the Muslim Umma, and in some non-Islamic cases, the collective people, as the sole form of legitimate political power. Of course, Fakhr al-Din al-Razi draws on various sources to reach his argument: scripture, history, and reason. His rational argument against the supremacy of the One in front of the Whole (of the people) is rooted in an infinite regress argument. If the One is to be chosen by the One before him and the like, it will go back to the One who is pre-eternal, God, which goes back to revelation, since it is the vehicle to know what God said. But even here, it is the people, specifically the Umma, who are the transmitters of such revelation. Thus, the people are the sole authority, even in matters scriptural, let alone political. This is the first and main example of what I shall call the democratic sentiment in Kalam theology.

The second strand of thought explored here lies in the philosophical tradition. Here we have mainly the work of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi’s chief competitor, Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (d.1274). Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī’s work, The Nasirean Ethics, lays down his opinions on all three parts of practical philosophy: ethics, economics, and politics. When discussing political philosophy in the last part, despite his loyalty to the Farabian framework, we observe a shift towards a more positive view of democracy. Nonetheless, it is not a pure democracy which he favors, according to philosophical reason, but it is a restricted democracy. A democracy guided by a dependency on the first laws of the philosopher-lawgiver or the prophet. This is what I shall call the conditioned democracy of the late philosophers.

After Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, ‘Adud al-Din al-‘Iji (d. 1355), the famous Sunni theologian and polymath, would author a short but influential treatise on ethics, the Risāla fī l-akhlāq or The Treatise on Ethics. In his Treatise, Iji also goes over ethics, economics, and politics in a very similar way to al-Ṭūsī. However, his commentators, especially his Sunni students and later Ottoman scholars, like Taşköprüzade (d. 1561), have illuminated the same role of the Umma or nation in governance like al-Razi. There, we see the commentators agree that democracy, more precisely to use their term, the Madina al-Jama’a, the collective or popular city, is the best regime after the virtuous city. In fact, we see them call it the city of freedom or the free city, while this might not seem very original since al-Farabi is the one who gave these titles long before them, we see them, especially Shams al-Din al-Kirmani (d.1384), holding this city of the free as the city which best assimilates into the best end of humans, happiness. However, this is not unqualified happiness but happiness as defined by the divine law which is as such conditioned on freedom. The freedom to be able to choose to be among the followers of the divine law.

In conclusion, in this paper, I aim to explore how the late Kalam discourse on the Imamate and the philosophical discourse on political philosophy and ethics have accounted for democracy and collective rule under, or without divine rule. Of course, discussions like the possibility of natural law or al-Tahseen wa al-Taqbeeh (deeming things good and evil), the role of religion in life and its limits, the question of the relationship between reason and revelation, and the like, are all essential and will be accounted for in the paper.

Author

• Abdulaziz Alotaibi, University of Pennsylvania