ʿAshura Articles (5): The Political Question and the Discourse of the Self and the Other
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The Political Question and the Discourse of the Self and the Other
Sayed Mahmoud Al-Mosawi
The idea of establishing justice and extending rightful rule according to the Islamic conception has taken its hold in the literature of contemporary Islamic thought, and treatments of the idea of the religious state, its legitimacy, its aims and its forms have continued. Perhaps the most important things at which the thinkers of Islam have paused are two problems: the problem of the legitimacy or otherwise of the religious state in the era of the Occultation, and, on the other hand, the problem of the form of the state and the way it manages affairs.
Intellectual discussion of those two questions was an internal matter among the masters of Islamic thought themselves and between them, given that the source of the disagreement is a difference in their reading of the legislative evidence, and some of it goes back to a difference in foundational principles of jurisprudence—that is, in the very way of looking at the evidence and the extent and manner of drawing from it.
However, the scope of that debate widened, and the greater debate came to be between the leaders of Islamic thought on the one hand, and the leaders of Western thought, Western politicians and everyone whose methodology differs from religious thought on the other. These deliberately intervened in this field because it is fertile ground for casting doubt on the fitness of religious thought to lead the umma, and for undermining the influence that religion exerts in the arena of life.
Hence the religious discourse that speaks about the legitimacy of uprising and the legitimacy of Islamic rule may fall into confusion and error in presenting the discourse, or in the very adoption of this idea or that, if it does not take note of which circle it is speaking in. And this leads to the type of reading of history as well.
Imam al-Husayn (a) rose up for the sake of reform in the umma of his grandfather, the Messenger of Allah (s), to restore matters to their proper order and to what Allah and His Messenger wanted the umma to be upon. He openly declared his will for change and rejected the injustice of Yazid and his way of ruling. The Imam (a) rose up to take hold of the reins of affairs in order to establish justice, spread security and establish the religion. The Imam’s purposes are clear, and he declared his goals from the outset; they cannot be distorted or read contrary to what they are. On that basis, the fitness of religious thought to manage the affairs of the umma is considered a settled matter within the religious sphere, and it is not a point of contention in scholarly discussion among the masters of Islamic thought.
The error occurs with some when one discusses the very legitimacy of uprising and of founding a religious state, or when one discusses the form of the religious state, in a skeptical spirit, attributing his rejection to doubt about the competence of the religious idea itself. This is a confusion in discussion and in the questions at issue: he is discussing an internal matter while his eye is on the outside. We can say—at the outset—that internal discussion is governed by legal (sharʿī) evidence and its field is jurisprudence and legislation, while discussion with the different other is governed by rational evidence and its field is doctrine and theology.
