Tensions and Transitions in the Muslim World

Safi’s text interrogates the potential of Islamic reform movements to articulatea democratic and pluralistic politics throughout the Middle East and thebroader Islamic world. He begins by arguing that these reform movementsexert the greatest influence in determining the direction of sociopoliticalreforms in the Middle East, and, as a result, constitute a core movement fromwhich to understand and interpret the dynamics of the region’s cultural andsociopolitical reality. Furthermore, the author argues that in the contemporaryMiddle Eastern intellectual climate, Islamic reformists represent a synthesisbetween the opposing programs of moralist-Islamists on the one hand,and nationalist-secularists on the other. This synthesis constitutes the mostviable and realistic program for genuine reform and for developing a pluralisticsociety and participatory politics. In support of this thesis, Safi dividesthe text into nine chapters constituting four interrelated parts: “Democratizationand the Islamic State,” “Visions of Reform,” “Islamic Law and HumanRights,” and “Islam in a Global Cultural Order.”The first part poses the question of whether democracy and pluralism canflourish in a society in which Islamic law commands the majority’s allegiance.His answer is cautiously affirmative, as it depends on the rejuvenationof 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 arenewal: the former because its structures negate the possibility of pluralisticpolitics, and the latter because its merging of state structures with the communalstructure of the historical Shari`ah contradicts the nature of the Islamicpolity as established by the Prophet.These restrictions can be overcome through grounding the state in twopillars. First, this means severing the link between the state and the ummah,a separation necessary to ensure that the state and its institutions are nothijacked by particularistic interests or erected as obstructions to the Islamiccommunity’s spiritual and conceptual development. Such an Islamic state,which privileges the marshalling of state resources toward the Islamiccommunity’s spiritual goals, also has, as its second pillar, the concept of consensus(ijma` ). Classical jurists viewed this concept as the fundamentalprinciple that confers legitimacy upon the state. Therefore, the state gainsits legitimacy insofar as it reflects the ummah’s will ...