Is Islam compatible with Democracy?

By TRoP

Islamic law is absolutely incompatible with democracy. It is a theocratic system with Allah alone at its head. Allah's law is interpreted by a ruling body of clerics. There is no room for a secular political system in which all people are treated as equals.

To quote the 20th century cleric, Sayyid Qutb, "It is Allah and not man who rules. Allah is the source of all authority, including legitimate political authority. Virtue, not freedom, is the highest value. Therefore, Allah's law, not man's, should govern the society."

Islamic law is based on the Qur'an and the Sunnah, which are set and fixed. There is no need for addition or correction. Neither is there any room for the law of fallible man (particularly non-Muslims). Nor should it take the place of Allah's perfect law, which tells a man everything he needs to know about daily life (down to which hand he should "hold it in" while urinating).

If Allah is not the authority then anything less is a secular dictatorship, including rule by the Muslim people. As an American-Muslim jurist complained in a recent fatwa, "democracy gives free reign to the authority of the Ummah, and puts no ceiling on it."

Also, the law of one person, one vote is essential to democracy, but heretical to Islam. According to the Qur'an, the testimony of a woman is worth only half that of a man, and Jews and Christians are never to have equal standing with Muslims under the law (and certainly never in a position of authority over Muslims). Atheists are to be killed outright.

Reform-minded Muslims prefer to ignore all of this and instead point to Qur'an (42:38), where the phrase "[Muslims] who (conduct) their affairs by mutual consultation" is used as evidence that Islam is compatible with democracy. Also recruited to this end is an oft-repeated hadith that has Muhammad saying, "My community will never agree on an error." On this is based the much ballyhooed concept of "ijma" or consensus among Muslims for determining matters of Islamic law.

But ijma, has always been controversial and rarely practiced within Islam. Some interpret it to mean "consensus of the scholars" - having nothing to do with the opinion of the community at large. Even when its legitimacy is recognized, ijma is accepted only as a secondary (or tertiary) form of authority, behind the fiqh councils. Also, it bears pointing out that ijma and consultation are applicable only within the Muslim community (and probably limited to the "consensus" of males).

American scholar Jamal Badawi says that it is the duty of Muslims to bring about Islamic rule:"The Qur’an is full of direct and indirect, implicit and many times explicit indications that show that the establishment of the Islamic order is a requirement on Muslims whenever possible." He also scoffs at secularism: “If a Muslim believes that there is any human being who has the right to make laws other than Allah then obviously this is total divergence from the path of Islam. Or any person who believes that secularism is superior to the law of Allah, he's violating the basic Quranic tenets"

Muhammad ruled on Allah's authority and did not submit his decisions to the will of the people. Neither is there any tradition of democracy in the 1400 year history of Islam in the Middle East and Persia. If the entire world became Muslim overnight, it is highly doubtful that democracy would last, since it would be applicable only to the most mundane of matters not already decided by Islamic law.

As another cleric, Sufi Muhammad, recently put it, "True Islam permits neither elections, nor democracy."

Qur'an (33:36) - "It is not fitting for a Believer, man or woman, when a matter has been decided by Allah and His Messenger to have any option about their decision."

Qur'an (45:21) - "What! Do those who seek after evil ways think that We shall hold them equal with those who believe and do righteous deeds,- that equal will be their life and their death? Ill is the judgment that they make." Unbelievers are not equal to Muslims. This is dutifully reflected in Islamic law.

Qur'an (39:9) - "Are those who know equal to those who know not?"

Qur'an (4:141) - "...And never will Allah grant to the unbelievers a way (to triumphs) over the believers." This is at odds with democracy, which allows anyone to serve in a position of power over others regardless of religious belief.

Qur'an (63:8) - "...might (power) belongeth to Allah and to His messenger and to the believers;" ie. not to anyone else.

Qur'an (5:49) - "So judge between them by that which Allah hath revealed, and follow not their desires, but beware of them lest they seduce thee from some part of that which Allah hath revealed unto thee" Allah's Qur'an takes priority over the desires of the people. A democratic nation is by nature one that is not governed by Islamic law, meaning that a Muslim citizen would have divided loyalty. It's clear from this verse which side he must choose.

Qur'an (4:123) - "Not your desires, nor those of the People of the Book (can prevail): whoever works evil, will be requited accordingly. Nor will he find, besides Allah, any protector or helper."

Qur'an (4:59) - "O you who believe! Obey Allah and obey the Messenger and those in authority from among you..." Obedience is strictly limited to a government drawn from believers, not from the broader community. This verse has also been used to justify submission to autocratic rule, however oppressive it may by. As an Arab tradition put is: "tyranny is better than anarchy."

Qur'an (9:3) - "...Allah and his messenger are free from obligation to the unbelievers..." Muhammad used this "revelation" to dissolve a standing treaty and chase non-Muslims from their homes if they wouldn't accept Islam. This practice would be incompatible with democratic rule, in which everyone is considered equal.

Muslim (19:4294) - "When you meet your enemies who are polytheists [Christians...], invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these, you also accept it and withhold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them ... If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah's help and fight them" Non-Muslims are intended to be subordinate to Muslims. Bukhari (88:219) - "Never will succeed such a nation as makes a woman their ruler."

Bukhari (89:251) - Allah's Apostle said, "Whoever obeys me, obeys Allah, and whoever disobeys me, disobeys Allah, and whoever obeys the ruler I appoint, obeys me, and whoever disobeys him, disobeys me." The ruler referred to here is the Caliph, who is appointed by Allah, not by popular election. Democratic rule has no legitimacy against the will of the Caliph who, as we see by chain of reference, has the authority of Allah.

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Can Muslim citizens be loyal to a non-Muslim government?

By TRoP

Many Muslims are loyal to the non-Muslim countries in which they live, of course, but it is in spite of Islamic teaching. Unlike other faiths, Islam is not just a religion but a political system as well. The state is intended to be inseparable from religious rule. Islamic law, or Sharia, is complete and not designed to coexist with or be subordinate to other legal systems.

Muslims are not meant to be ruled by non-Muslims. The Qur'an is very clear that they are to resist unbelievers by any means until Islam establishes political supremacy. This doesn't mean that everyone must be forced to become Muslim, but rather that everyone must submit to Muslim rule.

In Islam, loyalty is to Allah and his religion. It cannot be to a kafir country. As the former mufti of the Grand Mosque in Mecca put it in a recent fatwa, "His homeland may be not Islamic, so how can he be loyal to his homeland?"

Scholar Jamal Badawi insists that, "Muslims should not melt in any pot except the Muslim brotherhood pot."

The Calcutta Qur'an Petition says of Muslim communities that "even fresh converts tend to become highly orthodox people and follow the sayings of [the Qur'an] with a fanatical zeal with the result that whichever country as their sizable number amongst its population can never have peace on its soil." Where Muslim minorities exist, there is unusual social strain manifested by dissention, demand and disloyalty, as well as a cohesive group identity that resists self-reflection and thrives on the perception of victimization by the majority.

Islam teaches that nations are in one of two major categories - Dar-al Harb (house of war) and Dar-al-Islam (Muslim rule). Any nation that is not Muslim is therefore, by definition, at war with Islam (or, at best, in contradiction to the preferred order). Muslims cannot be expected to maintain loyalty to a nation that is at war with their religion.

To be fair, some Muslim scholars contend that there is a middle ground, Dar al-Ahd (land of covenant) or Dar al-Sulh (land of truce), in which non-Muslim countries agree to allow Muslims to practice their faith and evangelize freely in exchange for peace (rights that are formally denied to infidels in Islamic lands). Scholars consider this a transitional period leading to the eventual triumph of Islam via conversion.

The practical definitions of Dar al-Ahd and Dar al-Sulh are somewhat nebulous. Some feel, for example, that denying Muslims their own system of law and Sharia courts constitutes an interference with Islam. Others believe that these states of condition only applied in Muhammad's day. Still others feel that a truce has a ten year-limit, and can be broken anytime by the Muslim party.

Another difficulty with these "middle ground" options is that there is no central authority to declare which non-Muslim nations fall outside the category of Dar al-Harb. Ultimately, true Muslims are citizens of the ummah (Islamic community) and not of any country - and the ummah has no recognized leader.

Even a government of Muslims is not necessarily a Muslim government. Islam requires Islamic law, therefore theocracy is the only pure form of government. In fact, this is what propels the vast majority of violence in the Muslim world, which victimizes Muslims themselves more than any other group.

Although Muslim apologists sometimes claim that Islamic terrorists aren't Muslim by virtue of the fact that they kill other Muslims, the Qur'an advocates striving against both unbelievers andhypocrites, the latter of which are Muslims who profess Islam, but do not support Islamic rule over the way of the infidel as required (see Muslim 20:4696).

Hypocrites include any government which does not uphold strict Sharia, as well as those that make alliances with a non-Muslim country (thereby making covenants and truces quite difficult to legitimize). This is the real reason terrorists kill fellow Muslims, particularly local police, troops and officials who are in the service of such governments.

One of the most influential Islamic scholars of the modern age, Egyptian Sayyid Qutb, says that Muslims have a duty to overthrow any non-Islamic governments by violent means. He explains:

"Islam is not merely a belief, so that it is enough merely to preach it. Islam, which is a way of life, takes practical steps to organize a movement for freeing man. Other societies do not give it [Islam] any opportunity to organize its followers according to its own method, and hence it is the duty of Islam to annihilate all such systems, as they are obstacles in the way of universal freedom. Only in this manner can the way of life be wholly dedicated to Allah, so that neither any human authority nor the question of servitude remains, as is the case in all other systems which are based on man's servitude to man." [Quoted from Andrew Bostom's The Legacy of Jihad]

Elsewhere, Qutb puts it even more bluntly:

The foremost duty of Islam in this world is to depose Jahiliyyah (unbelievers) from the leadership of man, and to take the leadership into its own hands and enforce the particular way of life which is its permanent feature." [Quoted from Robert Spencer's Religion of Peace?]

In a book promoted by the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), Islamic scholar Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi writes that "Islam wishes to destroy all States and Governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and programme of Islam regardless of the country or the Nation that rules it. Islam requires the earth – not just a portion – but the whole planet.” (source)

Whether or not a Muslim believes in active rebellion against secular or non-Muslim rule (and most may not), it is does not change the fact that Islam is defined by allegiance to Allah and his self-proclaimed messenger, Muhammad. Therefore any extraneous loyalty that is in contradiction to what Allah has already established would be strictly forbidden.

[It should be noted that Muslims as individuals vary widely in their understanding of and allegiance to Islam. While ideological scrutiny may be appropriate for certain sensitive positions in the intelligence, military or law enforcement communities, simply being a Muslim is not sufficient grounds for denying employment to or making assumptions about any such individual.]

Qur'an (5:3) - "This day have I perfected your religion for you." This verse is often interpreted to mean that any government outside of Sharia is unnecessary at best, and corruptive at worst.

Qur'an (18:26) - "[Allah] maketh none to share in his government." This was probably intended as a slam against polytheists and the Christian belief in the Trinity, but it has also been used as the basis for criticizing earthly governments.

Qur'an (19:64) - "And we do not descend but by the command of your Lord; to Him belongs whatever is before us and whatever is behind us and whatever is between these, and your Lord is not forgetful."

Qur'an (4:141) - "...And never will Allah grant to the unbelievers a way (to triumphs) over the believers."

Qur'an (63:8) - "...might belongeth to Allah and to His messenger and to the believers; but the hypocrites know not." The "hypocrites" are defined as Muslims in name only, those who do not submit to the theocracy of Allah.

Qur'an (5:49) - "So judge between them by that which Allah hath revealed, and follow not their desires, but beware of them lest they seduce thee from some part of that which Allah hath revealed unto thee" Allah's Qur'an takes priority over the desires of the people. A democratic nation is by nature one that is not governed by Islamic law, meaning that a Muslim citizen would have divided loyalty. It's clear from this verse which side he must choose.

Qur'an (3:28) - "Let not the believers Take for friends or helpers Unbelievers rather than believers: if any do that, in nothing will there be help from Allah: except by way of precaution, that ye may Guard yourselves from them. But Allah cautions you (To remember) Himself; for the final goal is to Allah." The word 'friend' is Awliyaa which is inclusive of friends, protectors and helpers - the components of civil society. See also verse 5:51

Qur'an (4:123) - "Not your desires, nor those of the People of the Book (can prevail): whoever works evil, will be requited accordingly. Nor will he find, besides Allah, any protector or helper."

Qur'an (28:17) - "O my Lord! For that Thou hast bestowed Thy Grace on me, never shall I be a help to those who sin!" It is difficult to reconcile this verse with the civic duty of a public office holder in a pluralistic society.

Qur'an (4:59) - "O you who believe! Obey Allah and obey the Messenger and those in authority from among you..." Oddly enough, this verse is sometimes used in an attempt to make the case that Muslims should respect a non-Muslim civil government. But a careful reading makes it clear that the rulers Muslims are to obey are from among their own body of believers. This verse commands strict obedience to the leader (even if he steals and flogs them, according to a hadith reported by Sahih Muslim). How can this refer to a non-Muslim leader when other parts of the Qur'an call for violent Jihad against persecution from non-believers?

See also 9:29, which establishes the ideal relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims.

Muslim (19:4294) - "When you meet your enemies who are polytheists [Christians], invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these, you also accept it and withhold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them ... If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah's help and fight them"

Bukhari (53:392) - While we were in the Mosque, the Prophet came out and said, "Let us go to the Jews." We went out till we reached Bait-ul-Midras. He said to them, "If you embrace Islam, you will be safe. You should know that the earth belongs to Allah and His Apostle, and I want to expel you from this land. So, if anyone amongst you owns some property, he is permitted to sell it, otherwise you should know that the Earth belongs to Allah and His Apostle."

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Democracy is Forbidden in Islam

Government should be only in the hands of Allah

By Khaled Abu Toameh

Why are radical Muslims opposed to the upcoming parliamentary election in Jordan?

Because they believe that democracy is in contradiction with Islam's concept of the sovereignty of Allah's law. They argue that Islam and democracy cannot go together, and they are obviously right, especially if one considers the experiences of people living under Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Thanks to the "Arab Spring," which has seen the rise of Islamists to power in a number of countries, Muslim extremists today feel free to express their opinion on political and religious issues.

One of them, Abed Shehadeh, leader of the Salafi Jihadi movement in Jordan, ruled this week that democracy in its concept as "ruling of the people by the people" and "should be forbidden in Islam."

Shehadeh, who is also known as Abu Mohammad Tahawi, explained that sovereignty and government belong to Allah alone and not to the people.

He said that the upcoming parliamentary elections, which are scheduled for January 23, were forbidden and contradictory to Islamic Shariah "because the parliament legislates laws and regulations that contradict Allah's law."

Shehadeh also criticized electoral programs presented by the candidates and lists. He said that the "the electoral slogans used by the candidates were "impossible to implement on the ground."

He urged Jordanians to boycott the elections because "choosing legislators other than Allah is forbidden."

The Salafi Jihadi leader's call for boycotting the election does not seem to have fallen on deaf ears in Jordan, where many voters seem determined to boycott the vote.

Although it is banned in Jordan, the Salafi Jihadi movement has managed to recruit several thousand supporters over the past few years.

In April 2011, the movement held one of its largest demonstrations in the industrial town of Zarqa north of Amman. Eighty-three policemen were wounded, including four who were stabbed by Salafis.

It now remains to be seen whether the Salafi Jihadists will resort to violence to prevent or foil the parliamentary election.

Jordanian security officials have expressed deep concern over the radical movement's involvement in the civil war in Syria. Dozens of Jordanian Salafis have crossed the border to join various Islamist terror groups waging Jihad [holy war] against Syrian dictator Bashar Assad's regime.

The Jordanians' biggest fear is that when the Salafis are done with Syria, they will intensify their efforts to turn the kingdom into an Islamic state.

The Jordanian Salafis who are fighting in Syria are not seeking to install democracy. Nor are they seeking to enable Syrians to hold free and democratic elections to choose their representatives. As their leader, Shehadeh, explained, democracy and elections are forbidden in Islam.

The Salafis, like other radical Islamist groups, want to establish an Islamic empire and impose strict Shariah laws on Arabs and Muslims. They are convinced that sovereignty and "government should be only in the hands of Allah," who has entrusted them with serving as his representatives and messengers on earth.

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