Non-Muslims in a Contemporary Islamic State
By
Sanusi Lamido Sanusi
D.S.
Yola’s article “Reassessing
Islamic Movements” [Weekly Trust, December 18, 1998) is a welcome continuation
of our dialogue on the correct definition of the Islamic imperative in a
multi-religious entity. Such dialogues are essential and long overdue from the
perspective of those who recognize the need for raising the intellectual
consciousness levels of this Ummah
and defining clearly its political theory and its role in revolutionary praxis.
For
this dialogue to be constructive, it must retain its focus and direction, and
avoid degenerating into a debate between “proponents” and
“opponents” of Islamic Movements. It has never been one’s intention
to primarily castigate or attack the Islamic Movements, with which one has been
closely associated over a long time and with whose leading lights, cutting
across moderate and radical divides, one has maintained a close relationship of
brotherhood and mutual respect. An exposition of the limitations of the movement
in theory or praxis does not constitute a complete negation of its otherwise
commendable achievements in other areas. Conversely, respect for these
achievements need not lead to exaggeration or undue embellishments, nor to the fallacious equation of
valuable communal, educational and evangelical work with a pragmatic and
progressive political strategy.
A
second factor which needs to be borne in mind is that this dialogue will not
increase the body of knowledge of this Ummah,
or contribute positively to its search for direction through mere repetitions of
settled matters. This is a point which has been stressed elsewhere. It is no
addition to the body of knowledge to assert that the Islamic State guarantees
non-muslim citizens( Ahl- al-Zimmah)
civil rights in exchange for the protection tax (Jizya). Whole works have been written on the legal status of non-muslims in the Islamic State, prime
among which is Ibn al- Qayyim’s two
–volume master-piece, Ahkam ahl-al-
Zimmah ( the legal status of
the people of the protection-covenant). The
question of their status and their rights is, for me, a settled issue, and
therefore not a subject for debate . The real issue is whether this literal
state of affairs represents an ideal toward which Muslims must aspire and
strive in all historical time, or a pace-setting model in a historical
epoch whose time has passed. It seems to me this is at the heart of the
disagreement between Yola and myself. Yola clearly believes in, (and actually
invites those he refers to as “self-acclaimed revolutionaries” to have the
courage to recognize), “the validity and feasibility of this paradigmatic
construct in contemporary Nigeria”. On the other hand, I do not accept it as a
necessarily valid interpretation, for the contemporary Nigerian muslim,
of the Islamic imperative(theoretically), or a feasible and viable political
construct in practical terms. This rejection is not a matter of courage or lack
of it. It is a question of intelligence and simple common sense.
To
clarify this position, I will seek in this piece to answer two questions. First,
does this ‘paradigmatic
construct’ reduce Nigerian Christians to second-class citizens in an Islamic
polity? Second, is it a blue-print for war undertaken in the name of religion,
or is such an interpretation merely an exercise in ‘galvanizing cheap
frenzy’ as Yola asserts? By taking
this approach I hope first to respond to Yola and second to further clarify the
essence of the weaknesses in metaphysical paradigms.
Without a doubt, the
Islamic State in its golden age was an epitome of justice and freedom and the
freest kingdom in terms of respect for religious beliefs, relative to what
existed at that point in time. On the eve of the dawn of Islam, the catholic
state had risen to a state of ascendancy in Rome and stimulated anti-semitism.
In the late fourth century, for instance, during the reign of the Emperor
Theodosius, he had been faced by the indignation of the church when he tried to
exact recompense from a bishop who had instigated Christians
to burn a Jewish synagogue. The bishop was supported by St. Ambrose, the
powerful bishop of Milan, who insisted that christian money
could not be used to build a temple of unbelief and that the destruction
of a synagogue by christians was a religious duty to which the law must bow.
St. Ambrose reminded the Emperor Theodosius of how, when Julian
“commanded that the temple of Jerusalem be restored, those who were clearing
the rubbish were consumed by the fire”, a clear warning of what could befall
him if he proceeded with his verdict. Thus was the state of non-christians in
christian Rome when the religion of Islam emerged under the leadership of a
prophet who said , as Yola correctly quotes “whoever inflicts harm on a non-muslim
in violation of a covenant with his people or deceived him or took something
forcefully from him, I myself shall be his plaintiff on the day of
judgment".
It was therefore natural
that Jews and non-catholics ran to the domain of
Islam to escape persecution and willingly paid the Jizya
in exchange for state protection of their civil rights . In the heydays of
the Abbasid empire , Jewish and
Christian doctors and scholars were responsible for the translation into Arabic
of the great philosophical and scientific works of Greek Greats such as
Aristotle, Plato, Democritus, and Hippocrates. These works were the take-off
point for great Islamic philosophers, mathetheticians and scientist such as al-Kindi,
al-Farabi, Ibn Sina(Avicenna), Ibn Rushd (Averroes), and al-Khawarizmi.
In the same way the Islamic polity guaranteed slaves and women rights which they did not have in any other societies. Slaves in the domain of Islam were not subjected to the same dehumanizing treatment meted to them in Christian Europe and the Americas. While Islam did not prohibit slavery outright, it encouraged liberation of slaves either as atonement for such sins as breaking of the fast deliberately, or of an oath, or simply as an act of piety seeking God’s bounties in this world and the hereafter.
Similarly, long before
women had inheritance in the West, Islam gave them inheritance, education and
the right of participation(albeit within limits) in public affairs. This was at
a time when the Old Testament story of Noah’s curse on his son was used to
legitimize the enslavement of the latter’s presumed descendants (the black
race) and the doctrine of Original Sin
and the role Eve ostensibly played in the fall provided theological basis for
discrimination and prejudice against Woman, the source of all evil. Without
question Islamic society was a major advance in human civilization when viewed
in its proper historical context.
This much is true. But in
spite of these freedoms and liberties, Islamic society never equated the muslim
citizen with the non-muslim, the freeborn with the slave( or even with the freed
slave), and the man with the woman in terms of social and political rights. In
the theory of the Imamah,
(leadership), it was clear that non-muslims, women and slaves were excluded from
certain positions of responsibility. In the Maliki,
Shafii, and Hanbali schools of law,
a muslim who kills a non-muslim is not to be executed. The blood money(diya)
must be paid, but a muslim life is worth more than that of a non-muslim. There
is even controversy over whether a free
born should be sentenced to death for murdering a slave or a man for killing a
woman. The Hanafi school equates life
to life and in theory calls for the execution of a muslim murderer of a non-
muslim. But as Al-Qadi Abu Yusuf, the great jurist and companion of Abu Hanifa
discovered when he sentenced a muslim to death for the murder of a non-muslim,
this became practically impossible in Baghdad. He had to reverse his judgement
on the instructions of Haroun al-Rashid when the Muslim majority raised
disaffection against the Qadi for passing the verdict of a death sentence on a
Muslim on account of a non Muslim (See Muhammad Ali Sabuni’s
tafsir ayat al-ahkam for this episode). From the earliest days of Islam, the
second Caliph, Umar b. Khattab, is on record as having chastised the companion
Abu Musa al-Ash’ ari for employing a christian scribe. This episode and
several similar ones have been documented by Ibn Taymiya in his work, Iqtidha’
al-sirat al-mustaqim mukhalafah ashab al-jahim. Even the question of
marriage between muslim males and non-muslim females is not as settled as Yola
would have it. Students of comparative Islamic law(al-fiqh al-muqaran) would confirm that the main Shiite schools of
law, the
Ja’ fariyya( Imamiyya ) and the Zaydiyya, for instance do not permit
this based on the Qur’anic text (in 60:10) “and do not retain your
(marriage) ties with unbelieving women”.
Some of the issues
concerning the legal status of non-muslims, slaves an women, were historically
and culturally determined, and reflected an essentially patriarchal, muslim-dominated
polity in which slavery had a place with slaves used as servants, emissaries and
soldiers. Whether or not this was the intent of the law, the reality is that
non-muslims, slaves and women were, to varying degrees, second-class citizens
compared to free, muslim males, although the latter were, in their dominance,
benevolent and gracious with regard to the rights and liberties granted the
former. The assertion that non-muslims, while guaranteed civil rights, are still
consigned to the status of the second class citizens in an Islamic State is
therefore a statement of fact and not, as Yola puts it, “uncharitable and a
crass slur”. What I hold as certain however, is that these interpretations are
not binding on all generations of muslims in all societies. We must adopt a
historical approach to the political and social dimensions of our religion which
separates the ideological from the purely religious.
Human civilization has moved on. The Christian world has come to show tolerance and respect for the religious beliefs of its citizens. The dehumanizing treatment of slaves has stopped, and their descendants in America have become senators, congressmen, generals and presidential aspirants. Women have been given freedoms and have come to attain and properly manage the highest offices available in the land such as Margaret Thatcher being British Prime Minister.
The
rights and privileges given to these hitherto oppressed groups by the
trail-blazing Islamic State have faded into relative insignificance. Every
civilized democracy guarantees its citizens the rights Yola lists out as being
guaranteed to non-muslims by the Islamic State. Indeed these rights are, in the
main, available to prisoners of war under International Law.
The
surprise, for me, is that an intelligent muslim can consider this
"paradigmatic construct" both "viable and feasible" in
"contemporary Nigeria". It is also a travesty of Islam to insist on
holding on to the interpretations
of the law which were made by scholars of earlier generations, rather than the
spirit of preserving the status of Islamic Society as a model for human
liberation and happiness to which human beings would converge and which they
would emulate. To be fully consistent, Yola should perhaps insist that since
Islam never outlawed slavery, and since verses of the Qur’an and several
hadith can prove that, an Islamic State which permits slavery while giving
slaves their assigned legal status is a sine-qua-non,
and a feasible and viable "paradigmatic construct" for contemporary
Nigeria. It is those who stick to
these models without regard to history that are "uncharitable” to Islam
and guilty of a "class slur” on it. It is for this reason that the
Islamic Government of the Sudan, for instance, does not ask non-muslims to pay Jizya
and has adopted the Hanafi
position of " a life for a life", irrespective of the creed of the
murderer.
This
brings us to second question, will Christians voluntarily accept an Islamic
state in which they are given civil rights in exchange for payment of a
"protection tax"? Will they voluntarily pay those levies to a state
that excludes them from holding public office on account of their faith and does
not treat them in law as the exact equals of Muslim citizens? Will they accept
this without first going to war and being vanquished?
The
naivete in this dialogue is in reality displayed by those who insist that their
" paradigmatic construct" is not a blue-print for an endless war. They
assume christians have no faith, or are willing to move from equal to second
class citizens without a war. The position of these individuals would be more
respectable if they recognized the implications of their construct, planned for
it and ensured that they are capable of pursuing a strategy for achieving it and
resolving the conflicts on the way in the better interest of the Ummah. The
reality on the ground, however, is that they are dreamers who do not even know
the implications of their “construct” and have therefore made no plans for
dealing with their consequences. In their idealism, they will lead Ummah to a
civil war that will be inconclusive with all the attendant consequences for
muslim life and property.
Indeed,
that Jizya is linked to war, to
victory of muslims and defeat of non-muslims and the subjugation and humbling of
the latter is clear from the Quranic verse on Jizya:
“Fight those people of the book who do not believe in God and the Last
Day, who do not prohibit what God and His Apostle have forbidden, nor accept the
religion of truth, until all of them pay the Jizya (Protective tax) in subjugation”.
(9:29). The Arabic command for fight (Qatilu)
is from Qital, or war.
After their subjugation, the non-muslims are described by the
adjectival noun, Saghirun, the
humbled or belittled or subdued ones. These are clearly not of the same class as
the victorious muslim forces.
This situation leaves the contemporay muslim in a dilemma. There seems to be a conflict (Ta’arudh) between a text and the general interest (Al-maslahah al-mursalah). The legal basis for resolution will need to be grounded on the rules of Islamic Jurisprudence (Usul). My position is grounded on the position of jurists of the Maliki school of law. But that is another lesson, for another day.
You can read more about my article from my web page at http://www.gamji.com/sanusi.htm
RETURN TO GAMJI HOMEPAGE