Law‐Abiding Citizen: Recent Fatwas on Muslim Minorities' Loyalty to Western Nations1

Modernity constructed a different meaning of loyalty that seems to contradict Muslims' traditional position towards their affiliations that were mainly religious or religio‐tribal‐based. In modern nation‐states, loyalty requires certain convictions and practices that reveal the nature of one's relationship to the land, the state and the people of the locality where people live. This modern understanding of loyalty challenged Muslims' perception of their identities, especially in the context of Muslim minorities. For them, the question of loyalty became critical as they were portrayed, in certain circles, as disloyal subjects and a threat to the national unity of the non‐Muslim society. To respond to that claim, Muslim jurists attempted to provide an Islamic justification or rationale, not only to respond to the Islamophobic arguments on the threat of Muslims living “among us”, but also to empower the inner self of Muslims by showing that living and interacting with non‐Muslims is permitted, required and heavenly‐rewarded. How this rationale was articulated is the main focus of this paper. Reviewing jurists' fatwas to the question of loyalty of a Muslim subject to a non‐Muslim polity reveals that there are at least three distinctive legal positions: the alienation position, the conciliatory position and the engaging position. The three positions constitute a spectrum from rejection to recognition to positive engagement and loyalty with the wider non‐Muslim society. The paper attempts to critically review these positions, to examine the legal precepts that led to these positions and to demonstrate how these positions reflect both the status quo of the questioner, i.e. context, and the Islamic legal tradition as it stands today.