The reflections presented below are part of a broader research project (both theoretical and “interventionist”) devoted to the reconstruction and reaffirmation of the positive social and political philosophy of liberalism, with social development (human development) as its guiding principle. The most well-known, effective, and recognized variant of this broad intellectual family, which has achieved measurable theoretical, practical, and institutional respect and success, is – represented most significantly today by Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum, Sabine Alkire, and Ingrid Robeyns – the concept of human capabilities, which is implemented through the development and implementation of multi-scale (micro, meso, macro) trans-, inter-, or multi-disciplinary projects that combine and integrate numerous fields of social sciences and humanities, with a distinguished role for social philosophy, political philosophy, positive psychology, philosophy of economics (meta-economics) and, increasingly, “world philosophy (humanities)” (comparative/pluralistic philosophy [humanities]). In my research, I focus on a lesser-known and less frequently discussed (and therefore less frequently applied) version of this orientation, introduced into contemporary political thought by C.B. Macpherson with his anti-possessive, developmental theory of democracy, whose decisive foundations and components are a series of normative and ontological assumptions and implications. Macpherson’s theoretical concept is rooted in the tradition of J.S. Mill’s socio-pluralistic, idealistic liberalism, which finds its current heterogeneous exemplifications in the ideas and practices of participatory/radical/deliberative democracy and in the concepts of positive freedom, human autonomy, and broadly understood “republican goods” (Carole Pateman, David Held, Carol C. Gould, John Christman, Nancy Hirschman, Philip Pettit, Elizabeth Anderson, etc.). Macpherson’s approach can also be seen as an extension of other major critiques of the “fast-paced,” Western, liberalized, laissez-faire economy and society, such as Thorstein Veblen’s analysis of the phenomenon of “conspicuous consumption,” R. H. Tawney’s egalitarian critique of the “acquisitive society,” or Karl Polanyi’s concept of “fictitious commodities.” According to the latter, land, labor, and capital should be understood primarily as factors necessary for the establishment and consolidation of economic processes in social life, without which all members of society are vulnerable and sooner or later must fall victim to selfishness, greed, and unlimited accumulation/concentration of capital. Macpherson’s concept and the entire current of developmental liberalism (which can also be described as eudaimonic liberalism) are considered in this study in a comparative dimension, in the context of world philosophy/pluralistic (de-parochial) philosophy. One of the main themes considered here are the developmental, emancipatory-egalitarian (primarily in the areas of human rights, environmental rights/environmental ethics, gender equality, and broadly understood human and social flourishing/welfare) dimensions and potentials of Muslim law and the Islamic normative system. I concentrate especially on theoretical and applied proposals developed within the methodological paradigm of maqasid al-shari’a (Jassir Auda, Adis Duderija, David Johnston, Carool Kersten, G. Hussein Rasool) or the more general framework of the “justice approach” (‘adliyya) in Muslim legal philosophy (jurisprudence) (Ramon Harvey, Ali Reza Bhojani). The problem and phenomenon of Islamophobia is considered in the context of this research in relation to ontological and epistemological injustices (exclusions, polarizations, antagonizations, self-segregated tribalism, biases and bubble-mentality/distortions, general distrust about public opinion and the value of knowledge/expertise/scientific institutions) caused by Islamophobic tendencies in contemporary societies (non-Muslim and Muslim alike).
Liberal political philosophy: The creation and the demise of ontological-epistemological meta-empire. Mapping the problem
The text provides an outline of the diagnosis and consequences relating to a series/cascade of crises/criticism/challenges to the prospect of social development (human capabilities, developmental democracy) understood and challenged as a manifestation (and core, understood as hegemonic and meta -imperial for knowledge structures) liberal-centrist “geoculture of modernity.” The problem of the relationship (its ambiguity?, challenges associated with it?) between liberalism and liberal political philosophy and the category of social development (human capabilities, growth, prosperity, happiness, quality of life, development ethics, developmental democracy, and other related theoretical programs) is addressed in the present project (necessarily only fragmentarily) in reference to two series/cascades of crises/injustices that determine the conditions of (im)possibility of using this category in contemporary political and social philosophy (thought). The first of these series/cascades are ontological in nature. These include, above all, de-/post-/anti-colonial, post-Eurocentric, environmental-climatic/post-anthropocentric, and “auto-possessively” anti-patriarchal concepts and discourses, e.g. in the form of legally understood “Muslim feminism” analyzed within the framework of the “maqasid methodology” in Muslim jurisprudence and ethics by Adis Duderija and Jassir Auda, belonging to the family of neoliberal, “co-optative” feminisms (also in the form of “boardroom feminism”) from meta-studies on the condition of contemporary feminism proposed by Lorna Finlayson. On the other hand, we are dealing with a series/cascade of criticisms/crises in a methodological sense. This group includes post-foundationalism, anti-idealism/ anti-normativism/anti-moralism/realism, the post-analytical turn, and the postulate of the impossibility or exhaustion of left-wing social criticism (the turn or claims of post-emancipation, post-dialectics, post-organization, post-“movementality,” or post-imperialism/post-imperiality).
The above cascades take the form of a massive attack aimed at the idea of social development (human capabilities) and contemporary (or more broadly – modern, but understood not only historically, but also systemically, functionally, and structurally) “centrist liberalism” as such. Liberalism and liberal political philosophy are here the subject of criticism and claims of the crisis of the structures of knowledge, which they experience as a discipline (a specific way of managing, normalizing, standardizing, and normativizing). It is therefore a crisis of the idea of the practice and practicing of philosophy/ theory/political thought (applications, implementations, realizations, but also in the opposite direction – conditions for the opening of theory/philosophy to influences, determinations or conditioning from the environment/context, various ontologies/ontics, phenomena, processes, tendencies, orientations, movements, etc.). This crisis (regardless of whether it is incidental/single/exceptional/circumstantial or permanent/systemic) should be linked to the dynamics of the development and transformation of the discipline (professionalization) of political philosophy as an expression and reflection of liberal political culture. The crisis/terminal stage of “centrist liberalism” (social, political, economic, cultural, inter-state/inter-social, i.e., global order/system) entails epistemic/ epistemological and methodological revolutions (changes, paradigm shifts) that take place in the structures of knowledge and the institutions that function alongside them. These changes take many forms and encompass vast and deeply rooted domains/areas/territories of knowledge production. In this presentation, I will limit myself to one of the trends that appear on the map outlined above: post-colonialism/post-coloniality (de-colonialism/de-coloniality). This trend—along with the other ontological-epistemological series/cascades outlined above—can be described as a movement that is simultaneously de-centering, post-centric, and neo-centric (rejecting and going beyond existing forms of disciplining structures of knowledge and taking on new ones). In the specific context under consideration here, this movement concerns the phenomenon and problem (considered ontologically and epistemologically, rather than “ontographically” and “epistemographically”, as in the case of standard/classical/canonical sociological, political and ethnographic studies) of Islamophobia.
Islamophobia and the spectres of the „Third World”?
Islamophobia appears an obvious, powerful and important, theme for liberal political thought (and, broadly speaking, for the academic-institutional mainstream of contemporary social sciences and humanities based on and elaborating the 19-century, centrist-liberal paradigm). Studies of instances of various forms of prejudices, discrimination, exclusion, persecution, violations of basic rights and freedoms, related to religious beliefs/identity/membership of victims of such practices are both intellectual/scientific and moral/ideological challenge and strategic task for sociologists, political scientists, social and cultural anthropologists, ethnographers, social psychologists etc. of today’s academia.
Research on this topic intensified particularly in the second half of the 20th century, thanks to its connection with power structures, systems of norms, and practices of political societies. This is reflected in numerous public debates, publications, research projects, the activities of a number of institutions, programs, and the public/state and private spheres, and—above all—the domain of civil society, etc. Islamophobia, primarily as an empirical phenomenon/fact in the area of epistemic (epistemological) injustice related to the functioning of contemporary societies, is considered in two main dimensions: political-sociological and anthropological-cultural. In the main current literature on the subject, concerning the first dimension, we deal with three main groups of issues: general trends related to the location and position of Islam and Muslims in non-Muslim societies (the socio-political roles assigned to them/played by them) ; migration, integration, and radicalization (based on discourses and legal policies); and nationalism and racism (prejudice, discrimination) as manifestations of power in the horizontal, social, and agonistic dimensions (Islamophobia as a source of social unrest and antagonism/polarization). In anthropological and cultural terms, Islamophobia is understood as a phenomenon concerning individuals or individual-society relations and society (individual and culture) in relation to the formation and structure of personality and norms (morality) from an ethnographic, psychological, pedagogical, religious, cognitive (including disorders, stereotyping, prejudice, and perceptual distortions), behavioral, etc. perspective.
The main research question guiding the search in the above-mentioned areas is: How can the consequences of striving for “ideological purity and essentialist antagonisms” be avoided? This question is posed in the context of the undermining of one of the most important paradigms in the social sciences and humanities to date, based on the identification of modernity with secularization (one of the main components of modernization theory). De-secularization and the return of religious intolerance influence the patterns of social structuring that determine the definition and normative distinction between values and the valorization of cultures (modernity). The presence of Islam and Muslims within these frameworks is subject to exploitation and stigmatization because they represent “inferior modernity.” In the case of Europe, the context for all studies on this subject is the failed political and cultural reintegration project after 1989 (the emergence of new intra-European patterns of marginalization). Attempts to create a common, three-tiered structure of European identity—local, multicultural, and global/cosmopolitan (supranational)—have failed. Instead, we are dealing with the creation (and consolidation) of minorities, pluralism, particularisms, and diversity. At the same time, there is a return of “large,” dominant national/nationalist identities, which were supposed to be broken down in the name of a new unified identity. All these processes were influenced by the “pessimistic beginning of the 21st century” — 9/11, the war on terror, urban protests (UK 2001, France 2005), terrorist attacks (Madrid 2004, London 2006), and the waves of economic -existential crises in the case of the second and subsequent generations of immigrants in Europe, the cultural crisis (the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in the Danish press in 2006), and the de-radicalization of European Islam (refusal to integrate into a liberal, secular society). The project (pressure) concerning the cultural (in the name of liberal values, inclusive democracy) reintegration of New Europe (Eastern Europe), with all its consequences, is taking place within the framework of the establishment and subsequent consolidation of the language of “clashes of civilizations” that occurred in the conditions described above. The post-communist condition has led to the establishment of a new radical “other” (representing different values/“anti-values”) in order to (ideologically) blur the differences between New and Old Europe. However, openness and belief in Europe’s internal cohesion remain unstable. The process of broadening and deepening EU integration is faced with problems related to “social/welfare tourism” and threats to the labor markets of the old EU. Sarkozy’s expulsion of Romanian Roma from France (2009) and the wave of similar resentments that led to Brexit a decade later seem to be a natural illustration and consequence of these trends. In yet another decade of the 21st century (after 2020), we are facing another phase of the de-integration cycle related to the policy of territorial and border control, which is moving from the UK, France, and the Netherlands towards Eastern Europe—Germany and the internal borders of the EU. Joint, constructive, proactive action in the face of the “immigration crisis” (currently the main “tool and guiding factor” in Europe’s “civilizational war” with Islam, which is a new manifestation of “intersectional-trans-methodological” racism, combining biological, cultural, sociological/social/economic, political, systemic, “fluid,” realistic, constructivist, etc. accounts) is effectively prevented by the belief that social (socio-economic) problems in the EU have invalidated earlier political ambitions and achievements (the victory of democracy over authoritarianism).
The above reflections refer to the standard, “epistemological” level of research on Islam, Muslims, and Islamophobia in the contemporary world. This level should actually be described as epistemo-graphic (and also potentially onto-graphic), i.e., presenting the state of knowledge about a given, specific object, subject, area, or issue. The question of “ideological purity (purism, puritanism?)” and “antagonistic essentialisms” should be viewed from an ontological (and epistemological) perspective, i.e., one that reveals the deeper sources, foundations, and more general dimensions of the observed phenomena. In this view, the conflict between Europe/the West/the Global North and Islam/Muslims should be defined (with all its consequences and theoretical challenges) as a clash of civilizations between “liberalism” (secularism vs. what is degenerated) and “Islamism” (true religion vs. rational or irrational fanaticism), rather than simply a socio-constructivist conflict, a struggle for hegemony between two ideologies, where the “essence” is excluded as something temporary, incidental, something that always remains ‘empty’ in the process of social and imaginative construction (“signification,” giving meaning). The ontological anti-essentialism (positive ontology) that I attempt to outline in the rest of this text undermines ideological purism/purification not by opposing holism (negative ontology), but by inter-changing ontological (thus precisely holistic) “components” (e.g., searching for what is liberal/the essence of liberalism outside the secular West, and for spirituality and “authentic, deep moralism” within modernity). Replacing anti-Islamism (anti-Islam, Islamophobia) with anti-/post-liberalism does not seem sufficient from this perspective. Remaining at the onto-graphic (i.e., negative ontology) and epistemo-graphic (i.e., constructivist epistemology) levels does not allow us to reach the deeper foundations (and in fact excludes their existence) of injustice, violence, “exploitation,” polarization, the domain of agon/polemos, and instead focuses on the phenomena of ideological movements or conflicts (‘Islamism’ versus “white nationalism”).
Let me begin then with an attempt to identify an “essence of the ‘Third World’” (and thus of “Europe”). The term “Third World” itself is subject to the actions of “engaged social sciences and humanities” presented here, aimed at the hegemony of “centrist liberalism” (with the division into first, second, and third worlds being an essential part of the global liberal order and the accompanying geo-culture of modernity). Although it is not an exact, technical, and formal synonym for the terms “colony,” “colonization,” and “colonized,” these categories are closely related, especially in relation to the issue of development. Post-third world, post-colonial/post-coloniality, and post-development discourses should therefore be considered together. In the case of attempts to destabilize conventions accepted in the liberal order, such research may take the form, for example, of a critical analysis of the criteria for defining and measuring the differences between the “developed” and ‘developing’ worlds, while at the same time unequivocally questioning “liberal fantasies” about Third World underdevelopment/backwardness. In the context of the current reflection, it is about the consequences of questioning, suspending knowledge (“unthink,” to use Wallerstein’s terminology) about the distinctive nature and role of experience and the superiority/advantages of the West/North of the world/ earth/planet over the rest of the world, as presented in successive generations/waves of anti-Eurocentric interventions, culminating in Edward Said’s concept of “Orientalism” and the “Subaltern Studies” approach (Homi K. Bhabha, Gayatri C. Spivak, Ranajit Guha, Dipesh Chakrabarty).
According to the above explanation, Eurocentrism is gradually being replaced by anti-Eurocentrism as a category that is not only/no longer critical but also/primarily affirmative (a kind of point of arrival, not just a moment of “epistemic transition”) with a distinct understanding of what is Oriental and what is European/Western. Islam, Muslims, the Arab-Muslim world (by extrapolation also Central Asian, Indian, Turkish, North African, South African, etc.) along with every aspect of reality recognized within the narrative or ideas about this world, are defined as the radical – and at the same time strictly concretized and personalized – “Other” of Europe/the West. The Orient and Orientalism self-shape and self-define their essence. One example of this kind of post-/anti-/neo-Saidian self-essentialization is the strong version of “reverse/inverted Orientalism,” which can take the form of both Occidentalism (as studied by Couze Venna and Jack Goody, and within the trend represented by the authors of “ambivalent post-modernity” in contemporary Muslim theories of law, political theories and, more broadly, Muslim social sciences and humanities, as critically discussed by Fazlur Rahman, Akbar Ahmed, Mahmoud Ayoub, Asma Barlas, Khaled Abou El Fadel, Mahmoud Taha, Abdulhamid A. Abusulayman, Ingrid Mattson, Andrew F. March, and Jasser Auda), as well as auto-Orientalization based on a complete break, rejection, and separation of the East and West, treated here as two distinct, impenetrable and mutually exclusive essences, whose relations should be considered only in terms of “practical imagination” rather than the reflective, intellectual potentiality of imago mundi. The point of this approach is not – as dominant tendencies in knowledge production would like us to believe – about an opposition between the real and the constructed, empirical domain (studied by social theory, thus sciences as such) versus domain of discourse and text (studied by allegedly semi-scientific post-modern literary theory), just as it is not about “Orientalism” constructed/studied by the West (usually based on Islamophobic motivations) and the reverse procedure of “Occidentalism” invented by “Islamic” “obscurantists” (enemies of the West). It is about the “Oriental true essence” as understood and protected by the representatives and advocates of the Orient related to similar efforts in the “Occident”. The empirical (related to facts) and the discursive (related to epistemological and ontological foundations of knowledge and ideology) necessarily overlap and condition each other.
As an example of the auto-orientalist/auto-essentialist approach described above, illustrating the consequences of post-colonial (post-Orientalist) polemics against the liberal-centrist “geoculture of modernity” (understood and challenged as a manifestation of meta imperial and hegemonic tendencies in the domain of structures of knowledge), with specific consequences for the perspectives of the concept of social development (human capabilities, developmental democracy – necessarily with the “liberal” qualifier/modifier), I would like to refer to Wael Hallaq’s studies of the contrast between modernity and Sharia law. Hallaq is best known for one of his recent works, devoted to the idea of the state in Islamic thought (doctrine). He had previously gained recognition as a specialist in the history and study of the sources (jurisprudence) of Muslim law, as well as for his polemical studies on the contemporary Western/European canon of Islamic studies (but also the theory of knowledge in general), which are criticized here as a continuation of classical Orientalism described (although, according to Hallaq, often in an insufficiently precise, in-depth – and therefore ultimately ineffective – manner) by Said. In this context, however, I would like to refer to two shorter monograph articles by him, which can be considered representative of all the main areas of his research (Muslim law, political theory and the concept of the state in Islamic tradition/doctrine, and Orientalism). I draw attention to them as illustrations of the thesis of auto-orientalization/auto-essentialization formulated above, as well as because of the more general background of the project the current text is a part of – the concept of maqasid as a normative-methodological position in the system of Muslim law (sharia), which serves as a “comparative partnership” (and a “comparative modifier”) for the concept of social development (human capabilities, developmental democracy/developmental liberalism) known from contemporary “canonical” debates and trends in European/Western political philosophy. In the mentioned articles, Hallaq addresses the relationship between Islam (religious doctrine, practices, and normative system, including acceptable hermeneutic and interpretive principles and the management of the results of their application) and modernity (change or preservation of Revelation and Tradition in their original form?). According to Hallaq, Islam cannot be reconciled with modernity due to the fundamental, ontological, and discursive-symbolic distinctiveness of both these domains. Modernity is defined, on the one hand, by the “fluidity” of the “semantic field,” which is in a constant process of creation and development (“progress”), and on the other hand, by the formalism (structural-functional) of the institutions of the bureaucratic nation-state. Islam, on the other hand, refers to the content of a message whose hermeneutics are narrow and strict. For Islam, modernity is still like a “train that has already left the station” due to constantly changing social, moral, economic, and technological conditions. The “universals” formulated within the framework of Muslim law (interpretations, judgments, rulings) must be related to the specific, strictly defined context of a particular moral community, where values and ethical principles serve as the basis and source of the legal system, rather than something established by (human) law. In the case of modernity, this kind of moral community has been lost. Revealed texts of Islam appear fundamentally ill-equipped to deal with such modernity. Hallaq considers the possibility and conditions for its “restoration”/ “revival” to be one of the most important and urgent challenges, which, in his view, goes beyond the sphere of research, argumentation, interpretation, and application, signifying (requiring) a change in modernity itself, going beyond it (the creation of a new moral, legal, cultural, educational, economic, etc. order) .
Hallaq offers a broader critique of humanistic, secular, progressive liberalism (identifying it with capitalism, consumerism, materialism, and technocracy), which he rejects in favor of the language of realism in political philosophy. This trend can be called “essentialist realism,” “realism of (political) essence,” or “realism of the essence (of politics).” Since the beginning of the 21st century, it has slowly become the dominant perspective and methodological paradigm (and institutional-normative) perspective, supplanting the main trends of “centrist liberalism” associated with the analytical orientation in the second half of the 20th century (liberalism of the theory of justice as fairness, political liberalism/liberalism of public reason, and cosmopolitan and humanitarian theories of politics and socio-political ethics). What we are dealing with here is a fundamental revaluation, a radical reconstruction of political philosophy as such, analogous to a certain extent to that experienced in the 20th century by political science (especially international studies and international relations theory) built on the paradigm of “statism” and positivism (states as subjects and actors of positive international law, governed by the laws of anarchy and chaos) . These projects primarily question normative models of political thought/theory/philosophy, while at the same time attempt to “rewrite” the history of political thought (including the redefinition of liberalism or republicanism) with an emphasis on the role of authors such as Machiavelli, Nietzsche, Lenin, and above all Schmitt, instead of Locke, Rousseau, or Kant (the main sources of inspiration for John Rawls and his argument about justice as the first virtue of social institutions). The very understanding of politics (the political) is undergoing a fundamental redefinition here, and in fact, the recognition that it is precisely the concept of politicality (and the accompanying suspension of the idea of a moral /ethics in politics as a set of rights, duties, or principles referring to the heritage of natural law/natural rights, considered here to be untenable) constitutes the substantive and systemic core of political thought as such. In his realistic political analyses directed against “liberal modernity” (liberal democracy), Hallaq draws on the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche and Carl Schmitt, supplementing the canonical considerations on this matter with contemporary concepts of Michel Foucault, John Gray, Giorgio Agamben, and Hannah Arendt.
The “revaluation of all values” that is taking place as a result of the above trends is factual in nature, with real ideological and practical consequences, including for the way in which the significance and implications of Islamophobia are understood and, more broadly, for the place of Islam in the modern world. Thanks to Hallak’s interventions and polemical tirades, this religion – the way it is understood and lived with, both by its followers, neutral witnesses/observers, but also by its opponents, both external and “internal” – is becoming a full-fledged part of European/Western modernity. In this particular case, it is primarily about the domain of knowledge structures. Even if these were not the original intentions and the general subject and tone of the author’s research, he revealed a fundamental tension concerning Islam, Muslims, but also Islamophobia in a post-Eurocentric, de-colonial world (especially the ways in which followers of this religion can understand and develop it – or question and reject it – and perceive their identity without passivity and a sense of lack of agency resulting from “metropolitan domination”). Western/European knowledge structures (the “epistemic empire” of the global north) are criticized here from anti- or post-Orientalist positions, while at the same time leading to a paradoxical reinforcement of an essentialist and reductionist understanding (in terms of strict identities and boundaries between them) of what is Islamic and what is European (Islamicity and Europeanity, using ontological categories). Distinctions (and discourses about them [the ideological sphere], and real, practical actions in their favor in the social/public domain [the ontic sphere]) are sharpened and radicalized. Islam and Muslims, like Europe and Europeans, are becoming double victims (of Islamophobia on the one hand and anti-Western sentiments on the other) of these strategies. Firstly, on the part of “mainstream” fundamentalism and the logic of religious wars (disputes between orthodoxy and heterodoxy/heresy [what is “true Islam?”] as part of the establishment of a system of doctrinal domination, analogical to the one described by Leszek Kołakowski in his monumental, classic study on the particularization of religious sects of Reformed Christianity in the 17th century). On the other hand, we are dealing here with a refusal to recognize, contact, or value the “other” in the spirit (again paradoxically, both confirmed, continued, and developed in a “reversed” manner, with altered roles and positions regarding what is civilized and what is barbaric) Koneczny-Huntington’s theory of civilizational clashes (a kind of criminalization or “securitization” of dialogical, multicultural, and ecumenical discourses and practices [“true Islam” must be guarded and defended]). Both “ontological-epistemological partners” have a choice of two available scenarios (or variants of their combination, fluidity of differences between them, which became the experience of late modernity/postmodernism in the case of Europe/ the West/global North) concerning the consequences and lessons learned from the (European?) Enlightenment, which was a systemic consequence and conclusion of the pre-Westphalian centuries of religious slaughter and the expansion of imperialist/racist capital. Will this tradition, which led to racism, fascism, Nazism, and the Holocaust, as well as neoliberal class exploitation (oligarchization/neo-feudalization at the local level and the continuation of imperialism [with the exchange of centers and semi-peripheries] at the global level) and environmental exploitation, be continued? Or perhaps there are opportunities to opt for the second post-Enlightenment legacy: one that resulted in the strengthening (but also a significant correction, aimed at avoiding the tendency to degenerate into “bad/corrupt” systems) of the traditional, classical doctrine of republican sovereignty of the people, equality (and inclusion) of citizens, the division and control of power, the rights of individuals (including autonomy/political, economic, social, and cultural/religious subjectivity), and restrictions imposed on statutory law and the judiciary (especially the inadmissibility of absolutism and arbitrariness)? We are dealing here with two variants of critical social and political theory, which can be considered the most important achievement of broadly understood centrist liberalism in its “developmental” variant: the one based on a critique of the Enlightenment (with its reason and instrumental rationality or the domination of the “system” over “forms of life”) by successive “generations” of the Frankfurt School and other currents of critical sociology, and that associated with the philosophy of positive freedom and normative economics (welfare economics). Both of these variants are combined in Macpherson’s approach.
The question of Islam, Muslims, and the phenomenon and problem of Islamophobia in the modern world becomes, within the framework presented above, a variant of the debates concerning the dispute between realism (realpolitik) and idealism (normativism, moralism) that are being conducted in contemporary social sciences and humanities. Following Hallaq’s proposal, we should expect decisions regarding the vision of politics and politicality to be made solely by “naked force,” since all moral communities with their traditions and narratives have ceased to exist or have any meaning outside the private/sentimental sphere. It seems that, according to this argument, the normative system of Islam (Shari’a) can only be constituted if new foundations of geopolitical order are established, implicitly replacing the foundations of the meta-empire (no longer only epistemic-cognitive) of Europe/the West/the global North. Will this vision be considered attractive by Muslims, critics of Islamophobia, Orientalism, and Eurocentrism, and victims of all forms of socio-economic, cultural-symbolic, patriarchal, patrimonial-oligarchic, and environmental domination that are manifestations of colonialism and imperialism? The neo-realism defended by Halla is a continuation of the disputes between idealism and anti-idealism concerning the theory of democracy at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Conservative Victorian thinkers such as Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, and Mathew Arnold criticized “economism,” “parliamentary anarchy,” and “dehumanized liberal political culture,” as do the followers of Carl Schmitt’s political theory (theory of the political) today. One can also refer here to John Dewey’s “disputes” with Walter Lippmann about defining the relationship between politics/politicality and the political identity of individuals and the public sphere—the circulation of information, opinions, attitudes, preferences, choices, etc. In both cases, the appeal of realism goes hand in hand with arguments against active democracy – deliberative, participatory – accused of inefficiency resulting from idealistic, utopian assumptions and expectations. Will we be able to deal with Islamophobia and Orientalism, but also Occidentalism, through epistemocracy, a combination of expert rule and aristocracy, which is a paradoxical consequence of assumptions and claims about what is truly/essentially/naturally real/factual when it comes to the domain of politics? According to J. Dewey, “Democracy ‘is a way of life,’ it ‘cannot’ ‘consist or be expressed solely within the framework of institutions”. The humanistic spirit, which Dewey saw as the essence of democracy, must be introduced into ‘all dimensions of our culture—science, art, education, morality, and religion, not to mention politics or economics’. This was to be achieved through the achievements of science: ‘the future of democracy must go hand in hand with the dissemination of scientific ideals’. This should be achieved through “pluralistic, partial, and experimental methods”. Within the framework of such procedures/programs, the question of the relationship between Islam and European modernity would be conjunctive rather than disjunctive—it would concern actual, authentic, essential, holistic coexistence, interpenetration, and interdependence (“Islam and Europe/ anti-Islamophobia“), rather than manipulation (ontological and epistemological), adapting the ‘other’ to what is ”one’s own“ (”Islam and Europe/Islamophobia”) – despite the hard, anarchistic rules of the realistic-political world (the way it is constructed and imagined).
It is precisely this kind of approach that can be found in Islamic studies in the case of the perspective (rejected by Hallaq) of maqasid al-shari’a developed by Jasser Auda, a critique of the thesis of the incompatibility of Islam with modernity (“Europe”). This is how he justifies pluralism in the interpretation of Muslim law based on refraining from sacralizing (pontificating, as we would say, citing the “Western” context) the opinions of “human sources” in the interpretation of the revealed text (and thus in the methodology and practice of ijtihad):
“The position of a group of jurists, known in the literature of Islamic law by ‘al-musawwibah’ (The Validators), is that rulings are ‘assumptions’ (zunun) on the part of mujtahidun (“independent deliberator”) when they reflect upon the scripts. This position makes a clear and much needed distinction between human ideas and the scripts. Furthermore, al-Musawwibah concluded that different juridical opinions, however contradictory they might be, are all valid expressions of the truth and are all correct (sawab). Al-Muzawwibah went further to conclude that, ‘there are multiple truths,’ an idea that had later influenced medieval ‘western philosophy’ through Ibn Rushd. Jurists who, often, subscribed to this position were from the jurist/philosopher category, such as Abu al-Hasan al-Ash’ari, Abu Bakr ibn al-’Arabi, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Ibn Rushd, and a number of Mu’tazilis, such as, Abu al-Huzail, Abu ‘Ali, and Abu Hashim. Al-Ghazali expressed their view by saying: ‘God’s judgement, from the jurist’s perspective, is what the jurist judges to be most probably true.’ However, al-Ghazali excluded rulings that are ‘prescribed according to a nass (text).’ We have demonstrated above how any ‘nass’ could bear a number of interpretations and implications, which would make all judgements be in accordance with what the jurist ‘judges to be most probably true.’ A systems approach to the Islamic law, entails viewing it as a ‘system,’ in the ontological sense of the word. Hence, applying the ‘cognitive nature of systems’ feature would lead to a conclusion identical to al-Musawwibah’s, i.e., rulings are what the jurist judges to be most probably true, and different juridical opinions are all valid expressions of the truth(s) and are all correct.”
. Burada çektiğimiz acılar, kazanacağımız mallar, yaşadığımız eğlenceler büyük resimde, ahiretle kıyaslandığında önemsizdir. Ama buradaki eylemlerimiz ve sorumluluklarımız ahiret hayatımızı belirleyeceği için başka bir açıdan önemlidir. Zalimlerle mücadele etmek ve zulmetmemek bu yüzden çok önemlidir
“[…] her iki cinsin de en iyilerinin en fazla, en kötülerinin de en az çiftleşmeleri gerekir. Ayrıca en kötülerin değil, en iyilerin çocuklarını büyütmeliyiz ki sürünün cinsi bozulmasın.”
İnsan, dünyada istenmeyen misafir olduğunu bilirse ne yapar?
Sfenks’in Midas’ın “İnsan için en iyi olan nedir?” sorusuna ilginç bir cevabı vardır: “İnsan için en iyisi, hiç doğmamış olmaktır; hadi doğdu, o zaman da hemen ölmektir!” Bu cevap, “istenmeyen misafirliğin” bir görünümüdür. Dünyada istenmeyen insan, ya dünyada olmaktan vazgeçecek ya da kendisini istemeyene karşı “direnişe” geçip savaşacaktır. Tragedyanın “kozmosu” işte bu ikili dünyada kurar kendini.
Meşruiyet… Din, ideoloji, ahlâk, hukuk, gelenek gibi toplumun benimsemiş olduğu değerler sistemine uygunluk… Bir düşünce ya da eylemin bir ana ilkeden ya da nedenden hareket edilerek haklılığını ispat etme arayışı… İlk neden arayışı olarak sağlam bir temellendirmeyi, gelecek için davranış kalıplarını içeren sistemlerin popüler bir yönetim ve kuşatıcı bir bütünlük arayışı… Eylemlerin, ilişkilerin toplumsal kabul görecek hukuksal, zorunlu, makûl gerekçelere dayandırılması… Siyasal iktidarın nüfuz alanı, sınırı… Bir iş ya da eylemin hangi ilkeye göre onaylanacağının referans kaynağı… Siyasal iktidarın amaçlarını, eylemlerinin niteliklerini topluma kabul ettirme sorunu… Bir kuralın kendinin üstünde bulunan hukuksal veya etik bir norma uygun olması… İslami literatürde, dinî kaynaklara dayalı hükümlere ya da dine, onun ilkelerine uygun olan iş ve işlemler…
Bireyin ve Toplumun İnşası İlahi İradenin Tarihe Müdahalesi Yüce Allah, sadece yaratmakla yetinmemiş; ayrıca, yarattıkları için uymaları gereken yasaları da takdir etmiştir. Varlıklar ve olaylar bu yasalara göre vücut bulurlar. Hiçbir varlık veya olay kendisi için takdir edilen yasanın dışına çıkma güç ve iradesine sahip değildir. Bununla, halkın arasında yaygın kabul gören “kader”i değil, Kur’an’da …
Islam and Islamophobia in the post-liberal world of late democracy. Neo-real-political foundations of racism
Introduction
The reflections presented below are part of a broader research project (both theoretical and “interventionist”) devoted to the reconstruction and reaffirmation of the positive social and political philosophy of liberalism, with social development (human development) as its guiding principle. The most well-known, effective, and recognized variant of this broad intellectual family, which has achieved measurable theoretical, practical, and institutional respect and success, is – represented most significantly today by Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum, Sabine Alkire, and Ingrid Robeyns – the concept of human capabilities, which is implemented through the development and implementation of multi-scale (micro, meso, macro) trans-, inter-, or multi-disciplinary projects that combine and integrate numerous fields of social sciences and humanities, with a distinguished role for social philosophy, political philosophy, positive psychology, philosophy of economics (meta-economics) and, increasingly, “world philosophy (humanities)” (comparative/pluralistic philosophy [humanities]). In my research, I focus on a lesser-known and less frequently discussed (and therefore less frequently applied) version of this orientation, introduced into contemporary political thought by C.B. Macpherson with his anti-possessive, developmental theory of democracy, whose decisive foundations and components are a series of normative and ontological assumptions and implications. Macpherson’s theoretical concept is rooted in the tradition of J.S. Mill’s socio-pluralistic, idealistic liberalism, which finds its current heterogeneous exemplifications in the ideas and practices of participatory/radical/deliberative democracy and in the concepts of positive freedom, human autonomy, and broadly understood “republican goods” (Carole Pateman, David Held, Carol C. Gould, John Christman, Nancy Hirschman, Philip Pettit, Elizabeth Anderson, etc.). Macpherson’s approach can also be seen as an extension of other major critiques of the “fast-paced,” Western, liberalized, laissez-faire economy and society, such as Thorstein Veblen’s analysis of the phenomenon of “conspicuous consumption,” R. H. Tawney’s egalitarian critique of the “acquisitive society,” or Karl Polanyi’s concept of “fictitious commodities.” According to the latter, land, labor, and capital should be understood primarily as factors necessary for the establishment and consolidation of economic processes in social life, without which all members of society are vulnerable and sooner or later must fall victim to selfishness, greed, and unlimited accumulation/concentration of capital. Macpherson’s concept and the entire current of developmental liberalism (which can also be described as eudaimonic liberalism) are considered in this study in a comparative dimension, in the context of world philosophy/pluralistic (de-parochial) philosophy. One of the main themes considered here are the developmental, emancipatory-egalitarian (primarily in the areas of human rights, environmental rights/environmental ethics, gender equality, and broadly understood human and social flourishing/welfare) dimensions and potentials of Muslim law and the Islamic normative system. I concentrate especially on theoretical and applied proposals developed within the methodological paradigm of maqasid al-shari’a (Jassir Auda, Adis Duderija, David Johnston, Carool Kersten, G. Hussein Rasool) or the more general framework of the “justice approach” (‘adliyya) in Muslim legal philosophy (jurisprudence) (Ramon Harvey, Ali Reza Bhojani). The problem and phenomenon of Islamophobia is considered in the context of this research in relation to ontological and epistemological injustices (exclusions, polarizations, antagonizations, self-segregated tribalism, biases and bubble-mentality/distortions, general distrust about public opinion and the value of knowledge/expertise/scientific institutions) caused by Islamophobic tendencies in contemporary societies (non-Muslim and Muslim alike).
Liberal political philosophy: The creation and the demise of ontological-epistemological meta-empire. Mapping the problem
The text provides an outline of the diagnosis and consequences relating to a series/cascade of crises/criticism/challenges to the prospect of social development (human capabilities, developmental democracy) understood and challenged as a manifestation (and core, understood as hegemonic and meta -imperial for knowledge structures) liberal-centrist “geoculture of modernity.” The problem of the relationship (its ambiguity?, challenges associated with it?) between liberalism and liberal political philosophy and the category of social development (human capabilities, growth, prosperity, happiness, quality of life, development ethics, developmental democracy, and other related theoretical programs) is addressed in the present project (necessarily only fragmentarily) in reference to two series/cascades of crises/injustices that determine the conditions of (im)possibility of using this category in contemporary political and social philosophy (thought). The first of these series/cascades are ontological in nature. These include, above all, de-/post-/anti-colonial, post-Eurocentric, environmental-climatic/post-anthropocentric, and “auto-possessively” anti-patriarchal concepts and discourses, e.g. in the form of legally understood “Muslim feminism” analyzed within the framework of the “maqasid methodology” in Muslim jurisprudence and ethics by Adis Duderija and Jassir Auda, belonging to the family of neoliberal, “co-optative” feminisms (also in the form of “boardroom feminism”) from meta-studies on the condition of contemporary feminism proposed by Lorna Finlayson. On the other hand, we are dealing with a series/cascade of criticisms/crises in a methodological sense. This group includes post-foundationalism, anti-idealism/ anti-normativism/anti-moralism/realism, the post-analytical turn, and the postulate of the impossibility or exhaustion of left-wing social criticism (the turn or claims of post-emancipation, post-dialectics, post-organization, post-“movementality,” or post-imperialism/post-imperiality).
The above cascades take the form of a massive attack aimed at the idea of social development (human capabilities) and contemporary (or more broadly – modern, but understood not only historically, but also systemically, functionally, and structurally) “centrist liberalism” as such. Liberalism and liberal political philosophy are here the subject of criticism and claims of the crisis of the structures of knowledge, which they experience as a discipline (a specific way of managing, normalizing, standardizing, and normativizing). It is therefore a crisis of the idea of the practice and practicing of philosophy/ theory/political thought (applications, implementations, realizations, but also in the opposite direction – conditions for the opening of theory/philosophy to influences, determinations or conditioning from the environment/context, various ontologies/ontics, phenomena, processes, tendencies, orientations, movements, etc.). This crisis (regardless of whether it is incidental/single/exceptional/circumstantial or permanent/systemic) should be linked to the dynamics of the development and transformation of the discipline (professionalization) of political philosophy as an expression and reflection of liberal political culture. The crisis/terminal stage of “centrist liberalism” (social, political, economic, cultural, inter-state/inter-social, i.e., global order/system) entails epistemic/ epistemological and methodological revolutions (changes, paradigm shifts) that take place in the structures of knowledge and the institutions that function alongside them. These changes take many forms and encompass vast and deeply rooted domains/areas/territories of knowledge production. In this presentation, I will limit myself to one of the trends that appear on the map outlined above: post-colonialism/post-coloniality (de-colonialism/de-coloniality). This trend—along with the other ontological-epistemological series/cascades outlined above—can be described as a movement that is simultaneously de-centering, post-centric, and neo-centric (rejecting and going beyond existing forms of disciplining structures of knowledge and taking on new ones). In the specific context under consideration here, this movement concerns the phenomenon and problem (considered ontologically and epistemologically, rather than “ontographically” and “epistemographically”, as in the case of standard/classical/canonical sociological, political and ethnographic studies) of Islamophobia.
Islamophobia and the spectres of the „Third World”?
Islamophobia appears an obvious, powerful and important, theme for liberal political thought (and, broadly speaking, for the academic-institutional mainstream of contemporary social sciences and humanities based on and elaborating the 19-century, centrist-liberal paradigm). Studies of instances of various forms of prejudices, discrimination, exclusion, persecution, violations of basic rights and freedoms, related to religious beliefs/identity/membership of victims of such practices are both intellectual/scientific and moral/ideological challenge and strategic task for sociologists, political scientists, social and cultural anthropologists, ethnographers, social psychologists etc. of today’s academia.
Research on this topic intensified particularly in the second half of the 20th century, thanks to its connection with power structures, systems of norms, and practices of political societies. This is reflected in numerous public debates, publications, research projects, the activities of a number of institutions, programs, and the public/state and private spheres, and—above all—the domain of civil society, etc. Islamophobia, primarily as an empirical phenomenon/fact in the area of epistemic (epistemological) injustice related to the functioning of contemporary societies, is considered in two main dimensions: political-sociological and anthropological-cultural. In the main current literature on the subject, concerning the first dimension, we deal with three main groups of issues: general trends related to the location and position of Islam and Muslims in non-Muslim societies (the socio-political roles assigned to them/played by them) ; migration, integration, and radicalization (based on discourses and legal policies); and nationalism and racism (prejudice, discrimination) as manifestations of power in the horizontal, social, and agonistic dimensions (Islamophobia as a source of social unrest and antagonism/polarization). In anthropological and cultural terms, Islamophobia is understood as a phenomenon concerning individuals or individual-society relations and society (individual and culture) in relation to the formation and structure of personality and norms (morality) from an ethnographic, psychological, pedagogical, religious, cognitive (including disorders, stereotyping, prejudice, and perceptual distortions), behavioral, etc. perspective.
The main research question guiding the search in the above-mentioned areas is: How can the consequences of striving for “ideological purity and essentialist antagonisms” be avoided? This question is posed in the context of the undermining of one of the most important paradigms in the social sciences and humanities to date, based on the identification of modernity with secularization (one of the main components of modernization theory). De-secularization and the return of religious intolerance influence the patterns of social structuring that determine the definition and normative distinction between values and the valorization of cultures (modernity). The presence of Islam and Muslims within these frameworks is subject to exploitation and stigmatization because they represent “inferior modernity.” In the case of Europe, the context for all studies on this subject is the failed political and cultural reintegration project after 1989 (the emergence of new intra-European patterns of marginalization). Attempts to create a common, three-tiered structure of European identity—local, multicultural, and global/cosmopolitan (supranational)—have failed. Instead, we are dealing with the creation (and consolidation) of minorities, pluralism, particularisms, and diversity. At the same time, there is a return of “large,” dominant national/nationalist identities, which were supposed to be broken down in the name of a new unified identity. All these processes were influenced by the “pessimistic beginning of the 21st century” — 9/11, the war on terror, urban protests (UK 2001, France 2005), terrorist attacks (Madrid 2004, London 2006), and the waves of economic -existential crises in the case of the second and subsequent generations of immigrants in Europe, the cultural crisis (the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in the Danish press in 2006), and the de-radicalization of European Islam (refusal to integrate into a liberal, secular society). The project (pressure) concerning the cultural (in the name of liberal values, inclusive democracy) reintegration of New Europe (Eastern Europe), with all its consequences, is taking place within the framework of the establishment and subsequent consolidation of the language of “clashes of civilizations” that occurred in the conditions described above. The post-communist condition has led to the establishment of a new radical “other” (representing different values/“anti-values”) in order to (ideologically) blur the differences between New and Old Europe. However, openness and belief in Europe’s internal cohesion remain unstable. The process of broadening and deepening EU integration is faced with problems related to “social/welfare tourism” and threats to the labor markets of the old EU. Sarkozy’s expulsion of Romanian Roma from France (2009) and the wave of similar resentments that led to Brexit a decade later seem to be a natural illustration and consequence of these trends. In yet another decade of the 21st century (after 2020), we are facing another phase of the de-integration cycle related to the policy of territorial and border control, which is moving from the UK, France, and the Netherlands towards Eastern Europe—Germany and the internal borders of the EU. Joint, constructive, proactive action in the face of the “immigration crisis” (currently the main “tool and guiding factor” in Europe’s “civilizational war” with Islam, which is a new manifestation of “intersectional-trans-methodological” racism, combining biological, cultural, sociological/social/economic, political, systemic, “fluid,” realistic, constructivist, etc. accounts) is effectively prevented by the belief that social (socio-economic) problems in the EU have invalidated earlier political ambitions and achievements (the victory of democracy over authoritarianism).
The above reflections refer to the standard, “epistemological” level of research on Islam, Muslims, and Islamophobia in the contemporary world. This level should actually be described as epistemo-graphic (and also potentially onto-graphic), i.e., presenting the state of knowledge about a given, specific object, subject, area, or issue. The question of “ideological purity (purism, puritanism?)” and “antagonistic essentialisms” should be viewed from an ontological (and epistemological) perspective, i.e., one that reveals the deeper sources, foundations, and more general dimensions of the observed phenomena. In this view, the conflict between Europe/the West/the Global North and Islam/Muslims should be defined (with all its consequences and theoretical challenges) as a clash of civilizations between “liberalism” (secularism vs. what is degenerated) and “Islamism” (true religion vs. rational or irrational fanaticism), rather than simply a socio-constructivist conflict, a struggle for hegemony between two ideologies, where the “essence” is excluded as something temporary, incidental, something that always remains ‘empty’ in the process of social and imaginative construction (“signification,” giving meaning). The ontological anti-essentialism (positive ontology) that I attempt to outline in the rest of this text undermines ideological purism/purification not by opposing holism (negative ontology), but by inter-changing ontological (thus precisely holistic) “components” (e.g., searching for what is liberal/the essence of liberalism outside the secular West, and for spirituality and “authentic, deep moralism” within modernity). Replacing anti-Islamism (anti-Islam, Islamophobia) with anti-/post-liberalism does not seem sufficient from this perspective. Remaining at the onto-graphic (i.e., negative ontology) and epistemo-graphic (i.e., constructivist epistemology) levels does not allow us to reach the deeper foundations (and in fact excludes their existence) of injustice, violence, “exploitation,” polarization, the domain of agon/polemos, and instead focuses on the phenomena of ideological movements or conflicts (‘Islamism’ versus “white nationalism”).
Let me begin then with an attempt to identify an “essence of the ‘Third World’” (and thus of “Europe”). The term “Third World” itself is subject to the actions of “engaged social sciences and humanities” presented here, aimed at the hegemony of “centrist liberalism” (with the division into first, second, and third worlds being an essential part of the global liberal order and the accompanying geo-culture of modernity). Although it is not an exact, technical, and formal synonym for the terms “colony,” “colonization,” and “colonized,” these categories are closely related, especially in relation to the issue of development. Post-third world, post-colonial/post-coloniality, and post-development discourses should therefore be considered together. In the case of attempts to destabilize conventions accepted in the liberal order, such research may take the form, for example, of a critical analysis of the criteria for defining and measuring the differences between the “developed” and ‘developing’ worlds, while at the same time unequivocally questioning “liberal fantasies” about Third World underdevelopment/backwardness. In the context of the current reflection, it is about the consequences of questioning, suspending knowledge (“unthink,” to use Wallerstein’s terminology) about the distinctive nature and role of experience and the superiority/advantages of the West/North of the world/ earth/planet over the rest of the world, as presented in successive generations/waves of anti-Eurocentric interventions, culminating in Edward Said’s concept of “Orientalism” and the “Subaltern Studies” approach (Homi K. Bhabha, Gayatri C. Spivak, Ranajit Guha, Dipesh Chakrabarty).
According to the above explanation, Eurocentrism is gradually being replaced by anti-Eurocentrism as a category that is not only/no longer critical but also/primarily affirmative (a kind of point of arrival, not just a moment of “epistemic transition”) with a distinct understanding of what is Oriental and what is European/Western. Islam, Muslims, the Arab-Muslim world (by extrapolation also Central Asian, Indian, Turkish, North African, South African, etc.) along with every aspect of reality recognized within the narrative or ideas about this world, are defined as the radical – and at the same time strictly concretized and personalized – “Other” of Europe/the West. The Orient and Orientalism self-shape and self-define their essence. One example of this kind of post-/anti-/neo-Saidian self-essentialization is the strong version of “reverse/inverted Orientalism,” which can take the form of both Occidentalism (as studied by Couze Venna and Jack Goody, and within the trend represented by the authors of “ambivalent post-modernity” in contemporary Muslim theories of law, political theories and, more broadly, Muslim social sciences and humanities, as critically discussed by Fazlur Rahman, Akbar Ahmed, Mahmoud Ayoub, Asma Barlas, Khaled Abou El Fadel, Mahmoud Taha, Abdulhamid A. Abusulayman, Ingrid Mattson, Andrew F. March, and Jasser Auda), as well as auto-Orientalization based on a complete break, rejection, and separation of the East and West, treated here as two distinct, impenetrable and mutually exclusive essences, whose relations should be considered only in terms of “practical imagination” rather than the reflective, intellectual potentiality of imago mundi. The point of this approach is not – as dominant tendencies in knowledge production would like us to believe – about an opposition between the real and the constructed, empirical domain (studied by social theory, thus sciences as such) versus domain of discourse and text (studied by allegedly semi-scientific post-modern literary theory), just as it is not about “Orientalism” constructed/studied by the West (usually based on Islamophobic motivations) and the reverse procedure of “Occidentalism” invented by “Islamic” “obscurantists” (enemies of the West). It is about the “Oriental true essence” as understood and protected by the representatives and advocates of the Orient related to similar efforts in the “Occident”. The empirical (related to facts) and the discursive (related to epistemological and ontological foundations of knowledge and ideology) necessarily overlap and condition each other.
As an example of the auto-orientalist/auto-essentialist approach described above, illustrating the consequences of post-colonial (post-Orientalist) polemics against the liberal-centrist “geoculture of modernity” (understood and challenged as a manifestation of meta imperial and hegemonic tendencies in the domain of structures of knowledge), with specific consequences for the perspectives of the concept of social development (human capabilities, developmental democracy – necessarily with the “liberal” qualifier/modifier), I would like to refer to Wael Hallaq’s studies of the contrast between modernity and Sharia law. Hallaq is best known for one of his recent works, devoted to the idea of the state in Islamic thought (doctrine). He had previously gained recognition as a specialist in the history and study of the sources (jurisprudence) of Muslim law, as well as for his polemical studies on the contemporary Western/European canon of Islamic studies (but also the theory of knowledge in general), which are criticized here as a continuation of classical Orientalism described (although, according to Hallaq, often in an insufficiently precise, in-depth – and therefore ultimately ineffective – manner) by Said. In this context, however, I would like to refer to two shorter monograph articles by him, which can be considered representative of all the main areas of his research (Muslim law, political theory and the concept of the state in Islamic tradition/doctrine, and Orientalism). I draw attention to them as illustrations of the thesis of auto-orientalization/auto-essentialization formulated above, as well as because of the more general background of the project the current text is a part of – the concept of maqasid as a normative-methodological position in the system of Muslim law (sharia), which serves as a “comparative partnership” (and a “comparative modifier”) for the concept of social development (human capabilities, developmental democracy/developmental liberalism) known from contemporary “canonical” debates and trends in European/Western political philosophy. In the mentioned articles, Hallaq addresses the relationship between Islam (religious doctrine, practices, and normative system, including acceptable hermeneutic and interpretive principles and the management of the results of their application) and modernity (change or preservation of Revelation and Tradition in their original form?). According to Hallaq, Islam cannot be reconciled with modernity due to the fundamental, ontological, and discursive-symbolic distinctiveness of both these domains. Modernity is defined, on the one hand, by the “fluidity” of the “semantic field,” which is in a constant process of creation and development (“progress”), and on the other hand, by the formalism (structural-functional) of the institutions of the bureaucratic nation-state. Islam, on the other hand, refers to the content of a message whose hermeneutics are narrow and strict. For Islam, modernity is still like a “train that has already left the station” due to constantly changing social, moral, economic, and technological conditions. The “universals” formulated within the framework of Muslim law (interpretations, judgments, rulings) must be related to the specific, strictly defined context of a particular moral community, where values and ethical principles serve as the basis and source of the legal system, rather than something established by (human) law. In the case of modernity, this kind of moral community has been lost. Revealed texts of Islam appear fundamentally ill-equipped to deal with such modernity. Hallaq considers the possibility and conditions for its “restoration”/ “revival” to be one of the most important and urgent challenges, which, in his view, goes beyond the sphere of research, argumentation, interpretation, and application, signifying (requiring) a change in modernity itself, going beyond it (the creation of a new moral, legal, cultural, educational, economic, etc. order) .
Hallaq offers a broader critique of humanistic, secular, progressive liberalism (identifying it with capitalism, consumerism, materialism, and technocracy), which he rejects in favor of the language of realism in political philosophy. This trend can be called “essentialist realism,” “realism of (political) essence,” or “realism of the essence (of politics).” Since the beginning of the 21st century, it has slowly become the dominant perspective and methodological paradigm (and institutional-normative) perspective, supplanting the main trends of “centrist liberalism” associated with the analytical orientation in the second half of the 20th century (liberalism of the theory of justice as fairness, political liberalism/liberalism of public reason, and cosmopolitan and humanitarian theories of politics and socio-political ethics). What we are dealing with here is a fundamental revaluation, a radical reconstruction of political philosophy as such, analogous to a certain extent to that experienced in the 20th century by political science (especially international studies and international relations theory) built on the paradigm of “statism” and positivism (states as subjects and actors of positive international law, governed by the laws of anarchy and chaos) . These projects primarily question normative models of political thought/theory/philosophy, while at the same time attempt to “rewrite” the history of political thought (including the redefinition of liberalism or republicanism) with an emphasis on the role of authors such as Machiavelli, Nietzsche, Lenin, and above all Schmitt, instead of Locke, Rousseau, or Kant (the main sources of inspiration for John Rawls and his argument about justice as the first virtue of social institutions). The very understanding of politics (the political) is undergoing a fundamental redefinition here, and in fact, the recognition that it is precisely the concept of politicality (and the accompanying suspension of the idea of a moral /ethics in politics as a set of rights, duties, or principles referring to the heritage of natural law/natural rights, considered here to be untenable) constitutes the substantive and systemic core of political thought as such. In his realistic political analyses directed against “liberal modernity” (liberal democracy), Hallaq draws on the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche and Carl Schmitt, supplementing the canonical considerations on this matter with contemporary concepts of Michel Foucault, John Gray, Giorgio Agamben, and Hannah Arendt.
The “revaluation of all values” that is taking place as a result of the above trends is factual in nature, with real ideological and practical consequences, including for the way in which the significance and implications of Islamophobia are understood and, more broadly, for the place of Islam in the modern world. Thanks to Hallak’s interventions and polemical tirades, this religion – the way it is understood and lived with, both by its followers, neutral witnesses/observers, but also by its opponents, both external and “internal” – is becoming a full-fledged part of European/Western modernity. In this particular case, it is primarily about the domain of knowledge structures. Even if these were not the original intentions and the general subject and tone of the author’s research, he revealed a fundamental tension concerning Islam, Muslims, but also Islamophobia in a post-Eurocentric, de-colonial world (especially the ways in which followers of this religion can understand and develop it – or question and reject it – and perceive their identity without passivity and a sense of lack of agency resulting from “metropolitan domination”). Western/European knowledge structures (the “epistemic empire” of the global north) are criticized here from anti- or post-Orientalist positions, while at the same time leading to a paradoxical reinforcement of an essentialist and reductionist understanding (in terms of strict identities and boundaries between them) of what is Islamic and what is European (Islamicity and Europeanity, using ontological categories). Distinctions (and discourses about them [the ideological sphere], and real, practical actions in their favor in the social/public domain [the ontic sphere]) are sharpened and radicalized. Islam and Muslims, like Europe and Europeans, are becoming double victims (of Islamophobia on the one hand and anti-Western sentiments on the other) of these strategies. Firstly, on the part of “mainstream” fundamentalism and the logic of religious wars (disputes between orthodoxy and heterodoxy/heresy [what is “true Islam?”] as part of the establishment of a system of doctrinal domination, analogical to the one described by Leszek Kołakowski in his monumental, classic study on the particularization of religious sects of Reformed Christianity in the 17th century). On the other hand, we are dealing here with a refusal to recognize, contact, or value the “other” in the spirit (again paradoxically, both confirmed, continued, and developed in a “reversed” manner, with altered roles and positions regarding what is civilized and what is barbaric) Koneczny-Huntington’s theory of civilizational clashes (a kind of criminalization or “securitization” of dialogical, multicultural, and ecumenical discourses and practices [“true Islam” must be guarded and defended]). Both “ontological-epistemological partners” have a choice of two available scenarios (or variants of their combination, fluidity of differences between them, which became the experience of late modernity/postmodernism in the case of Europe/ the West/global North) concerning the consequences and lessons learned from the (European?) Enlightenment, which was a systemic consequence and conclusion of the pre-Westphalian centuries of religious slaughter and the expansion of imperialist/racist capital. Will this tradition, which led to racism, fascism, Nazism, and the Holocaust, as well as neoliberal class exploitation (oligarchization/neo-feudalization at the local level and the continuation of imperialism [with the exchange of centers and semi-peripheries] at the global level) and environmental exploitation, be continued? Or perhaps there are opportunities to opt for the second post-Enlightenment legacy: one that resulted in the strengthening (but also a significant correction, aimed at avoiding the tendency to degenerate into “bad/corrupt” systems) of the traditional, classical doctrine of republican sovereignty of the people, equality (and inclusion) of citizens, the division and control of power, the rights of individuals (including autonomy/political, economic, social, and cultural/religious subjectivity), and restrictions imposed on statutory law and the judiciary (especially the inadmissibility of absolutism and arbitrariness)? We are dealing here with two variants of critical social and political theory, which can be considered the most important achievement of broadly understood centrist liberalism in its “developmental” variant: the one based on a critique of the Enlightenment (with its reason and instrumental rationality or the domination of the “system” over “forms of life”) by successive “generations” of the Frankfurt School and other currents of critical sociology, and that associated with the philosophy of positive freedom and normative economics (welfare economics). Both of these variants are combined in Macpherson’s approach.
The question of Islam, Muslims, and the phenomenon and problem of Islamophobia in the modern world becomes, within the framework presented above, a variant of the debates concerning the dispute between realism (realpolitik) and idealism (normativism, moralism) that are being conducted in contemporary social sciences and humanities. Following Hallaq’s proposal, we should expect decisions regarding the vision of politics and politicality to be made solely by “naked force,” since all moral communities with their traditions and narratives have ceased to exist or have any meaning outside the private/sentimental sphere. It seems that, according to this argument, the normative system of Islam (Shari’a) can only be constituted if new foundations of geopolitical order are established, implicitly replacing the foundations of the meta-empire (no longer only epistemic-cognitive) of Europe/the West/the global North. Will this vision be considered attractive by Muslims, critics of Islamophobia, Orientalism, and Eurocentrism, and victims of all forms of socio-economic, cultural-symbolic, patriarchal, patrimonial-oligarchic, and environmental domination that are manifestations of colonialism and imperialism? The neo-realism defended by Halla is a continuation of the disputes between idealism and anti-idealism concerning the theory of democracy at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Conservative Victorian thinkers such as Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, and Mathew Arnold criticized “economism,” “parliamentary anarchy,” and “dehumanized liberal political culture,” as do the followers of Carl Schmitt’s political theory (theory of the political) today. One can also refer here to John Dewey’s “disputes” with Walter Lippmann about defining the relationship between politics/politicality and the political identity of individuals and the public sphere—the circulation of information, opinions, attitudes, preferences, choices, etc. In both cases, the appeal of realism goes hand in hand with arguments against active democracy – deliberative, participatory – accused of inefficiency resulting from idealistic, utopian assumptions and expectations. Will we be able to deal with Islamophobia and Orientalism, but also Occidentalism, through epistemocracy, a combination of expert rule and aristocracy, which is a paradoxical consequence of assumptions and claims about what is truly/essentially/naturally real/factual when it comes to the domain of politics? According to J. Dewey, “Democracy ‘is a way of life,’ it ‘cannot’ ‘consist or be expressed solely within the framework of institutions”. The humanistic spirit, which Dewey saw as the essence of democracy, must be introduced into ‘all dimensions of our culture—science, art, education, morality, and religion, not to mention politics or economics’. This was to be achieved through the achievements of science: ‘the future of democracy must go hand in hand with the dissemination of scientific ideals’. This should be achieved through “pluralistic, partial, and experimental methods”. Within the framework of such procedures/programs, the question of the relationship between Islam and European modernity would be conjunctive rather than disjunctive—it would concern actual, authentic, essential, holistic coexistence, interpenetration, and interdependence (“Islam and Europe/ anti-Islamophobia“), rather than manipulation (ontological and epistemological), adapting the ‘other’ to what is ”one’s own“ (”Islam and Europe/Islamophobia”) – despite the hard, anarchistic rules of the realistic-political world (the way it is constructed and imagined).
It is precisely this kind of approach that can be found in Islamic studies in the case of the perspective (rejected by Hallaq) of maqasid al-shari’a developed by Jasser Auda, a critique of the thesis of the incompatibility of Islam with modernity (“Europe”). This is how he justifies pluralism in the interpretation of Muslim law based on refraining from sacralizing (pontificating, as we would say, citing the “Western” context) the opinions of “human sources” in the interpretation of the revealed text (and thus in the methodology and practice of ijtihad):
“The position of a group of jurists, known in the literature of Islamic law by ‘al-musawwibah’ (The Validators), is that rulings are ‘assumptions’ (zunun) on the part of mujtahidun (“independent deliberator”) when they reflect upon the scripts. This position makes a clear and much needed distinction between human ideas and the scripts. Furthermore, al-Musawwibah concluded that different juridical opinions, however contradictory they might be, are all valid expressions of the truth and are all correct (sawab). Al-Muzawwibah went further to conclude that, ‘there are multiple truths,’ an idea that had later influenced medieval ‘western philosophy’ through Ibn Rushd. Jurists who, often, subscribed to this position were from the jurist/philosopher category, such as Abu al-Hasan al-Ash’ari, Abu Bakr ibn al-’Arabi, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Ibn Rushd, and a number of Mu’tazilis, such as, Abu al-Huzail, Abu ‘Ali, and Abu Hashim. Al-Ghazali expressed their view by saying: ‘God’s judgement, from the jurist’s perspective, is what the jurist judges to be most probably true.’ However, al-Ghazali excluded rulings that are ‘prescribed according to a nass (text).’ We have demonstrated above how any ‘nass’ could bear a number of interpretations and implications, which would make all judgements be in accordance with what the jurist ‘judges to be most probably true.’ A systems approach to the Islamic law, entails viewing it as a ‘system,’ in the ontological sense of the word. Hence, applying the ‘cognitive nature of systems’ feature would lead to a conclusion identical to al-Musawwibah’s, i.e., rulings are what the jurist judges to be most probably true, and different juridical opinions are all valid expressions of the truth(s) and are all correct.”
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