Nietzsche and Islam by Jackson Roy;

Author:Jackson, Roy;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge

The Qur'an and the state

Granted then, that the Qur'an adopts a pluralistic approach to religious belief and upholds the rights of the oppressed and weak. However, we must now move on to the ‘is-ought’ dilemma. Given the Qur'an's moral code, why should we impose this upon citizens of a state? What Qur'anic injunction is there that says that a Muslim can only be a true Muslim in an Islamic state? For many Islamists, perhaps most notably Mawlana Mawdudi, the view is adopted that Islam is, first and foremost, a particular sort of polity and society, through which religion is most perfectly expressed in accord with the divine will. Mawdudi, like so many modernists of the previous century, thought that though personal faith was essential, it is ultimately absorbed in the more general political and social dimension of Islam. It is through the Islamic political expression that the world will acknowledge Islam's truth and by which Islam will liberate humanity from the depravity of its secularism and the corruption of its religions.153

In contrast with this common view a leading contemporary modernist Muslim thinker is Mohamed Talbi. Born in Tunis in 1921, he was educated there and later in Paris. In his discussions on such subjects as religion and politics, Islam and human rights, women and Islam, religious pluralism, historical analysis and Qur'anic exegesis, Talbi makes clear his dependence upon the Qur'an, while also evincing an easy incorporation of certain Western ideas. In line with the arguments presented in this chapter, Talbi found in the Qur'an and other early sources and historical documents much evidence of Islamic mercy, critical reasoning, freedom and pluralism.

For Talbi, the Qur'an is Islam, and he understands Islam as personal piety and worship of God within an ethical framework. Importantly, the Qur'an, for Talbi, contains both universal ethical principles and more detailed timebound injunctions meant by God only for the particular situations of their revelation. Therefore, in his view, ‘the timeless “wheat” of revelation must be separated from its timebound “chaff”’.154 This, for Talbi, is essential if Islam is to avoid fossilisation by applying timebound principles to situations that are no longer appropriate. The whole ethos of Islam, specifically in the Qur'anic ethical universalism, is its timelessness, its ability to be relevant to different times and cultures. Talbi argues that for much of Islamic history since the Prophetic period, the development of Islam has been along the wrong path of a rigid application of ancient teachings to inappropriate times and situations on the assumption that it is the application of God's will. This ‘conservatism’ is as relevant to modern Islamic scholarship as it was to the classical and medieval scholars and, in fact, if anything, they are more conservative now (for example, on the issue of women's rights) than they once were.

In Talbi's article ‘Religious Liberty: A Muslim Perspective’,155 he argues for placing the Qur'an within context when we attempt to determine Islamic ethical values. Talbi considers the relationship between man and God by quoting the Qur'an: ‘He first created man from clay, then made his offspring from a drop of humble fluid.

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