If religion does not work before death, it certainly will not work after it.
—ʿALI SHARIATI, “Eslam-Shenasi (Islamology)”
The resilience of ordinary people taking to the streets in the Arab Spring and their strong desire for democracy is extraordinary for a region known for robust authoritarianism. These protests also reflected a longing for justice, Islamic faith’s primary value. Many observers discredited the role of religion in the Arab Spring. Like its predecessors, the protests in various squares and corners of the Arab world were not religious revolutions, but religion did play a significant role in these uprisings. This is because Islam has always been a formidable social force shaping values, attitudes, and behavior over centuries. Justice was the most significant value in the discourses of the Arab Spring protesters. Ironically, the counterdiscourse against the Arab Spring also used religious conceptions of justice to undermine the protests. How can Islamic justice simultaneously be a source for democratic and authoritarian discourses?
Two years after the Arab uprisings, participation of some Islamist groups in the Gezi Park protests against an Islamist party with the word “justice” in its name, in Turkey, was quite puzzling. These groups’ discourses of freedom heavily relied on Islamic conceptions of justice. However, AKP also used the Islamic justice conception to undermine the legitimacy of Gezi protests. From Cairo to Istanbul, both people’s quest for democracy and the repression of these demands were justified by the Islamic conceptions of justice. This book is about “Islam and democracy,” a significant puzzle that kept many intellectuals, scholars, and pundits busy for many years. It argues that justice discourses are the substance of this puzzle, stimulating rival legitimacy claims about governance. This volume tried to understand these discourses and their relation to democracy by examining the implications of conceptions of justice in Muslim agency’s attitudes and behavior.
This book’s main contention is that conceptions of justice are the primary cultural determinants of democracy in Islam. Because justice is the most significant notion in Islam’s ethicopolitical system, this relationship should be most clearly visible in Muslim political experience. It is this perspective that sets this book apart from many other studies on Islam and democracy. Rather than delving into endless debates about macro or structural determinants of democracy in Islam, this volume primarily focused on Muslims and democracy. As such, the central question guiding this volume is not whether Islam and democracy are compatible. Instead, the motivating questions concern what kind of democracy religious Muslims want and would accept, and to what extent Islamic justice values inform support for democracy by pious Muslim men and women. This approach puts a premium on understanding ordinary people’s attitudes and value orientations instead of focusing on institutional and structural roots of democracy. To that end, previous chapters explored what Muslim agency thinks and does about democracy from past to present and in various contexts.
The volume does not propose a deterministic link between culture and democracy. Democratization occurs when specific constellations of political, economic, and cultural factors give way to institutions aligned with popular sovereignty, accountability, and mass participation. Given this complicated process, democracy is a phenomenon that may or may not occur within a favorable cultural framework. However, if culture plays a role in the masses accepting democracy as a desirable government system, this book demonstrated that Islam may provide such a basis because of its emphasis on justice and this central concept’s potential in engendering outlooks conducive to democracy.1 The volume employed a longue durée perspective about the legacy of justice discourses and their capacity in shaping political preferences, attitudes, and behavior to elaborate on this point.
The legacies of Islamic justice engender rival legitimacy claims about governance. While Islamic justice values and the related preferences and orientations may provide a cultural foundation for democratic thinking, the same forces may also justify authoritarianism. In fact, Islamic conceptions of justice are also used to legitimize the authoritarian rule, which has been the prevailing governance model for much of Islamic history. This outcome resulted from many factors, including the alliance of political and religious elites2 and the monopoly of legal tradition as a truth-claim controlling the social, religious, and political spheres against the philosophical and mystic alternatives.3 While acknowledging that there might be a path to authoritarian rule passing through Islamic discourses of obedience and order, this volume did not deal with this complicated history, leaving it to future studies as a fruitful research endeavor. However, the book made a case for the role Islamic conceptions of justice can play in stimulating mass democratic tendencies in Muslim democratization.
This conclusion about Islam’s potential to engender democratization relies on two interrelated trends within the Islamic tradition. First, starting from the doctrine that man is God’s vicegerent, one Islamic worldview gave way to critical thinking, flexible interpretations of religion, and a political stance against injustice—all implied by a specific understanding of Islamic justice.4 Second, throughout Islamic history, this worldview became the basis of numerous uprisings, rebellions, and revolutions—most prominently in the modern age and with respect to democracy.5
Previous chapters deployed evidence from Islamist texts, public opinion surveys, and ethnographic research to demonstrate that Islamic conceptions of justice shape prodemocratic attitudes and value orientations among ordinary men and women in the Muslim world. Based on this evidence, a critical implication of this study is that devout Muslims support and want democracy because of their preferences and orientations originating from Islamic conceptions of justice. Two caveats should be mentioned. First, the Muslim agency’s support for democracy is contingent on the perception of democracy as a regime with a comparative advantage in implementing social and political justice by most religious citizens in a given polity. Such perception is related to the central role of justice in Islam and democracy’s capacity in generating public deliberation according to rational-civic reason, allowing the realization and enactment of Islamic justice.6 Second, despite favorable opinion and numerous waves of mass mobilization to bring democracy to the Muslim lands, domestic and international forces prevented the realization of this goal.7 The centripetal force of masses toward democratization has been countered by the centrifugal force of domestic dictators and their international collaborators, resulting in authoritarian, corrupt, and inefficient governments in Muslim-majority societies.8 This volume did not explore these centrifugal forces in detail, which, among other strategies, use security and order-oriented discourses of justice to maintain authoritarian political systems in the Muslim world. Exploring the linkages between Islam, justice discourses, and these centrifugal forces will be a fertile research subject for future studies.
This book’s explanatory framework relied on a stylistic distinction between social and political justice. Islamic conceptions of justice originate from two critical junctures that gave way to lasting legacies in Muslim politics. Significant political events accompanied by conceptual, theological, and ideological debates marked these moments. The first critical juncture came about after Muhammad’s passing. Succession to the Prophet and the leadership question divided the first Muslim community, seen as a perfect society despite simmering disagreement in the background. Such disagreement resulted in the first civil war between ʿAli and Muʿāwiya’s supporters and other groups who did not affiliate with them. These parties claimed to uphold justice and came up with justifications about their entitlement to rule the Muslim community. Their inspiration was the same, Koran and Muhammad. Nevertheless, they reached contrasting opinions about what justice is and how it should be implemented in a community of supposedly pure believers. It was all political in the beginning, and the debates concentrated on such issues as the right to rule, legitimacy, and a wise ruler’s morals. Political rhetoric spilled over into the doctrinal/legal sphere, and the latter eventually came to shape the former over time as the initial divisions repeated with different actors creating new traumas over time.
This first communal division and the resulting differences in doctrine, law, and Islamic interpretations are the foundations of various political theories building on conceptions of justice. Two legacies followed this first critical juncture. Some believed in free will, individual choice, and man’s responsibility as God’s vicegerent to represent a principled opposition and mobilization against tyranny for establishing political justice. A second position started from the necessity of bringing order and security to the community long-marred with fitna and conflict. Thus, it was unethical and against God’s justice to rebel against a ruler, even if unjust. These two positions left a lasting imprint on Muslim political experience to shape values, preferences, and attitudes over centuries. The first position culminated in democratic and the latter authoritarian orientations. At the turn of the twentieth century, the first constitutionalist movements built on these legacies to develop democratic solutions to the state decline and prevent foreign intervention. Discourses of Islamic justice were instrumental in reaching masses and mobilizing them for this cause. Coating modern political ideas with Islamic justice has been the primary strategy in independence movements, labor mobilization, and popular uprisings since the nineteenth century. Arab Spring is the latest example of this approach as observed in the contentious acts demanding justice and freedom in MENA. On the flip side, traditional political forces similarly built on the authoritarian implications of the political justice trajectory. Their justifications for a type of enlightened despotism relied on discourses of predetermination, order and security, rulers’ wisdom, and forbearance. Despite favorable public opinion and widespread mass action for a democratic system, various domestic and external forces prevented democracy from taking root in Muslim-majority societies. The main conclusion of this book, nonetheless, remains—religious Muslims long for democracy and periodically take action to bring it home.
A second critical juncture came about when the Muslim world faced disintegration and suffered under the Mongol invasion. While political justice discourses still mattered regarding rulers’ qualities and executive constraints imposed by Islamic law’s imperatives, it was the imminent danger to society that concerned the scholars most. In the face of weakening political authority, the primary issue became the protection of society: The state should protect life, property, religion, and progeny to ensure order and security. Welfare and public interest were the primary concerns of the scholars at that time. To prevent the abuse of power and implement social justice, scholars aimed to keep the rulers in check according to the end goals of sharia.9 In reality, however, this political arrangement gave more power to the rulers and resulted in the co-optation of scholars.10 A new social justice paradigm legitimized the authoritarian rule to the extent that an abstract notion of public interest took precedence over individual well-being and human dignity. Justice discourses of order, security, and public interest strengthened the hand of “benevolent dictators.” To the extent that a ruler provided security, order, and public goods or protected the religion, the benefits of obedience to him would outweigh the cost of rebellion for freedom and justice. In a sense, a particular lineage of social justice trumps the freedom-oriented lineage of political justice to legitimize authoritarianism.
This stylistic distinction helps us better evaluate the implications of Islamic political and social justice trajectories in contemporary politics. In reality, the picture is much more complicated than this simplified version. There is significant synergy between political and social justice discourses. For example, the notion of human dignity resulting from man’s vicegerent status implies a preference for egalitarian distribution, an important social justice goal. This emancipative approach provides an alternative to the medieval social justice model by putting human agency and dignity to the center of social order rather than prioritizing communal benefit. Because the former is more likely to occur in democracies, the path to social justice goals through one legacy of political justice will engender support for democracy among the pious. This book presented some empirical evidence supporting this hypothesis by using surveys conducted in the Muslim world.
There also appears to be an inherent tension between the implications of political and social justice. For example, many authoritarian leaders in the Middle East supported the Palestinian cause as a rallying point for social justice. From Nasser to Saddam Hussein, many leaders used Islamic justice discourses to push for the Palestinian statehood, presumably for political gains. However, domestically, they repressed social movements or ethnic/religious groups demanding their rights. In that, these leaders used fear of fitna and necessity of order to legitimize their unjust acts.
A similar dynamic is also in play in the programs and policies of Islamist political parties. Most Islamist parties use the word “justice” in their names, and their programs emphasize welfare provision. This tendency becomes visible when these parties gain political power giving them an Islamist economic advantage.11 The primary example for an Islamist party government, AKP in Turkey, demonstrates that Islamists exploit this advantage. Social service provision has been an important rallying point for voter recruitment for AKP, and it became the main instrument of maintaining electoral support once the party came to power. However, as the party consolidated its power into the third term, the ability to continue to provide these services allowed the party leaders to buy off loyalty against democratic backsliding. AKP leaders repeatedly mentioned the difficulty of maintaining distributive policies and public interest when the social order was threatened. According to this approach, a benevolent but strong leader who does not have to bother with democratic institutions could ensure public interest. In the Turkish context, discourses of order and public interest can be traced back to the 1960s when Islamist intellectuals took issue with communism and put the needs of the society over the individual and the idea of social order over equality. This is a familiar dynamic also seen in rentier monarchies of the Middle East, where the price of loyalty is security, protection of religion, and welfare provision. Discourses of order and benevolence are crucial elements in this political strategy.
Social and political justice discourses have considerable sway over the attitudes and value orientations of the pious. The statistical analysis of public opinion surveys provided significant support for this proposition. Religious individuals are more likely to support democracy because they hold egalitarian distributive preferences and value orientations that are conducive to individual autonomy. The analysis of protest behavior in the Arab Spring showed that perceived social and political justice violations are among the leading causes of protest participation. Therefore, perceptions and orientations of social and political justice values greatly influence pious men and women’s attitudes and behaviors.
There is a longing for democracy and justice in Muslim-majority societies. Democracy lacks in these societies, but most people seem to have a strong desire to bring it home. Simultaneously, grievances due to perceived injustices have resulted in widespread protests in the Muslim world. These two notions are inherently connected insofar as justice demands appear alongside a longing for democracy, and democracy is viewed as the political system more conducive to justice. As stated previously, the Arab Spring protests took many by surprise, but protests inspired by the ideals of justice have frequently occurred in these societies. Before the Arab Spring, people took to the streets against colonialism, domestic dictators, and corruption on many occasions. They demanded freedom, constitutional government, independence, and social justice. Justice has always been the primary value shaping contention and politics in the Muslim world. Since the age of constitutional revolutions more than a century ago, Islamic justice demands repeatedly appeared alongside the calls for democracy in the Muslim world.
Justice is the substance of Islamic political discourse. Its origins contain a liberation ideology. In Mecca, Prophet Muhammad preached political and social justice to emancipate man from the social and economic shackles of his time. From the prophetic community to contemporary society, justice values have shaped Muslim agency’s attitudes and behaviors, frequently according to this liberation ideology. However, over time, Islamic conceptions of justice have taken various forms attaching themselves to discourses of obedience and conformist ideologies. For example, medieval ulema seeking to constrain the executive for the sake of social justice defined justice as order and security.
In contrast, Islamic justice discourses took an anti-imperialist tone against colonialism and legitimized rebellion against foreign powers at the turn of the twentieth century. Muslims saw justice as the opposite of tyranny and protested the corrupt despots. The opposition groups of Islamist and secular types operating within authoritarian regimes have been using the discourse of opposition to tyranny for a long time to justify rebellion against political authority. In short, Islamic justice discourses have always been present in Muslim politics. That Muslim agency is free, responsible, and has control over her destiny is the cornerstone of much-desired justice and democracy within the Muslim political experience.
This book brought significant evidence about the attitudes and behaviors of Muslim agency. For example, Qutb and Shariati’s justice theories rely on the idea of man being a free agent striving for dignity, only serving God. They argue that social justice practices can emancipate the man leading him to rebel against injustices. There is a revolutionary and democratic quality to this approach. In practice, however, the same conceptions can also legitimize authoritarian government for the sake of harmony, solidarity, and communal order.
The dual nature of justice discourses swinging between democratic and authoritarian preferences is easily visible in the development of Turkish Islamist ideology. In a relatively short period (1960–2010), mainstream Turkish Islamism went full circle from defending obedience to political authority for the sake of social justice and public order, to fierce opposition to the hegemonic world order against political injustices targeting Muslim communities, and back to the legitimization of Turkey’s descent into a competitive authoritarian regime using the same justice-oriented discourses. This book aimed to explain these different outcomes. To that end, it presented the first systematic account of political implications of justice discourses from an agency-centered perspective by bringing evidence from diverse settings and putting individual attitudes and value orientations at the center of its exploration.
Since Islam has substantial sway over individual attitudes, value orientations, and behaviors, and justice is the central concept of Islamic political discourse, it is essential to conduct further studies examining the relationship of Islam and democracy through the discourses and rhetoric of justice. As one of the first volumes taking this direction, Islam, Justice, and Democracy explored the synergies between religion and support for democracy from the perspective of intellectuals, social activists, and, most prominently, ordinary people whose common denominator is piety.
The effect of religiosity on support for democracy is rarely clear-cut. This book employed two approaches to clarify this ambivalence. First, it cast a wide net and employed a longue durée perspective to capture continuities in conceptions of justice from the beginnings of Islam to contemporary contentious politics. It explored the interplay of justice and democracy in contemporary Islamist thought and journals. It examined the mass contentious acts from the nineteenth century to the Arab Spring as sites of justice and democracy demands. This approach proved to be fruitful for demonstrating the complex nature of this relationship.
Second, Islam, Justice, and Democracy examined the specific mechanisms that link religion to democracy. Statistical analysis of survey data demonstrated how social and political justice values shape distributive preferences and value orientations, which affect support for democracy. The analyses in Chapters 6, 7, and 8 revealed that religion informs social and political justice orientations, and these orientations mediate the effect of piety on support for democracy. A surprising finding concerned the divergent effects of individualistic value orientations. Islam encourages obedience to parents and religious authority, but, at the same time, it cherishes hard work and individual success. Religious individuals are less likely to encourage independent thinking as a quality to teach children, but they also value hard work and believe one can control her destiny. Overall, individualistic value orientations can swing between implications of free will and predetermination axes to create opposing views about democracy.
According to these extensive analyses, we can confidently say that Muslim religiosity increases support for democracy by generating prodistributive preferences and certain types of individualistic value orientations. This conclusion, however, is contingent on the nature of religious outlooks. Because religiously inspired justice values may engender democratic and authoritarian attitudes, religion’s positive effect on support for democracy will be conditional on prodistributive social justice preferences and individualistic value orientations cherishing belief in the power of Muslim agency as the shaper of her destiny. Religion may also inspire collectivist value orientations favoring social harmony and order. Individuals holding such religious communitarian outlooks are more likely to support obedience to authority in social relations and, thus, authoritarian systems.12
This book did not propose that religious values, as a cultural foundation for democracy, will democratize Muslim-majority societies. However, the analyses showed that culture matters, and religion as the leading determinant of culture in Muslim-majority societies can be conducive to democracy. There is significant potential for legitimizing democracy through Islamic values that are familiar to religious Muslims. Islamic justice values are, essentially, this component, arguably the missing link in converting supporters of democracy to practitioners of democracy.
Islamic justice values are necessary but not sufficient for making democracy the only game in the Muslim world. Democratization is a complex process shaped by social and economic forces. Despite widespread support for democracy, neither elite-led nor mass movements managed to bring democracy to a good portion of the Muslim world. One can blame the international powers, which crushed democratic rebellions, orchestrated numerous coups, and supported authoritarian governments for economic gains. This would be a necessary but an insufficient condition for explaining the lack of democracy in Muslim-majority societies. There needs to be a conscious effort to build a democratic culture according to Islamic values. Just as authoritarian leaders employ religious scholars to justify their rules with Islamic values, democracy supporters need to use the same values to point to Islam’s liberating potential.
The critical element is man’s vicegerent status that implies free will, individual choice, and responsibility to correct injustices. There is considerable evidence that citizens in the Muslim world have employed this element over different periods. Numerous uprisings, rebellions, and revolutions seeking justice and democracy unfolded in the past century in all corners of the Muslim world. The discourses of order and security and Islam’s authoritarian interpretations were instrumental in crushing these democratic rebellions.
We need to closely examine the discourses of freedom and better understand how religion shapes Muslim political attitudes. An important question that could be explored in future studies is why the liberation discourse did not succeed, whereas discourses of order and obedience prevailed. One answer to this question concerns the naive assumption about forbearance. That is, for so long, pious Muslims assumed that just for declaring to be a believer, by obtaining the blessing of religious scholars, or paying lip service to Islamic principles, a ruler would constrain himself and avoid tyranny. In reality, rulers have rarely followed forbearance norms, except for some exceptional figures like Muhammad, ʿUmar, and ʿAli. It is crucial to understand these dynamics and related perceptions in the Muslim world. Examining the synergies between discourses of justice and ideological and structural conditions inhibiting their democratic potential will provide valuable new insights about the democracy question in the Muslim world.
In conclusion, if we define culture as the total sum of individual values, orientations, preferences, and attitudes, it should be clear that Islamic justice values provide great potential for democracy’s acceptability and implementation. This is not to argue that only pious individuals make up the citizenry of Muslim-majority societies. Quite the contrary, there are both pious and less religious individuals in Muslim-majority societies as well as atheists and adherents of other faiths as in any society. Notwithstanding the differences in piety and faith of communities among the citizenry in the Muslim world, Islam is a formidable social force, even among the less religious. Its presence is felt in every corner of life, including the political sphere. Thus, Muslim democratization will have to pass through the gate of Islam to survive.13 Islamic justice discourses will be the primary key to unlocking this gate with their impressive presence and long-lasting legacies.