Tensions and Transitions in the Muslim World By Louay Safi (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2003. 230 pages.)

Abstract

Safi’s text interrogates the potential of Islamic reform movements to articulate
a democratic and pluralistic politics throughout the Middle East and the
broader Islamic world. He begins by arguing that these reform movements
exert the greatest influence in determining the direction of sociopolitical
reforms in the Middle East, and, as a result, constitute a core movement from
which to understand and interpret the dynamics of the region’s cultural and
sociopolitical reality. Furthermore, the author argues that in the contemporary
Middle Eastern intellectual climate, Islamic reformists represent a synthesis
between the opposing programs of moralist-Islamists on the one hand,
and nationalist-secularists on the other. This synthesis constitutes the most
viable and realistic program for genuine reform and for developing a pluralistic
society and participatory politics. In support of this thesis, Safi divides
the text into nine chapters constituting four interrelated parts: “Democratization
and the Islamic State,” “Visions of Reform,” “Islamic Law and Human
Rights,” and “Islam in a Global Cultural Order.”
The first part poses the question of whether democracy and pluralism can
flourish in a society in which Islamic law commands the majority’s allegiance.
His answer is cautiously affirmative, as it depends on the rejuvenation
of cultural and legal reforms grounded in a historical Muslim experience that offers the tools to transcend current political and cultural institutions.
As such, both the secular state and Islamist movements preclude such a
renewal: the former because its structures negate the possibility of pluralistic
politics, and the latter because its merging of state structures with the communal
structure of the historical Shari`ah contradicts the nature of the Islamic
polity as established by the Prophet.
These restrictions can be overcome through grounding the state in two
pillars. First, this means severing the link between the state and the ummah,
a separation necessary to ensure that the state and its institutions are not
hijacked by particularistic interests or erected as obstructions to the Islamic
community’s spiritual and conceptual development. Such an Islamic state,
which privileges the marshalling of state resources toward the Islamic
community’s spiritual goals, also has, as its second pillar, the concept of consensus
(ijma` ). Classical jurists viewed this concept as the fundamental
principle that confers legitimacy upon the state. Therefore, the state gains
its legitimacy insofar as it reflects the ummah’s will ...