Babar Ahmad, the 34-year-old terrorist suspect released from GuantanamoBay, testifies to being beaten by the Metropolitan police, forced to kneel and asked ‘Where is your God now?’ This is not so much faith rearing its head in the public sphere as a reminder of its constant presence.
The question is loaded, not only with echoes of first-century
Predictably this is an question with which Ali A. Allawi, the former Minister of Defence for the post-war Iraqi government, is more than capable of engaging. Less predictable is Allawi’s answer with a vision of rejuvenated Islam. The question of Islam’s role in today’s public sphere needs attention now and Allawi does well to push his book, The Crisis of Islamic Civilisation, out into these turbulent waters.
Islam is undoubtedly a holistic religion and the notion of distinct public and private spheres is a supposedly alien concept to its adherents. The space of faith cannot be privatised as it derives life and resonance from its dealing with society.
This assumption must be constantly questioned and Allawi is not afraid to hold the mirror to contemporary Islam. But the practical realities of founding a state, ruling a far-flung empire, and finding ways to treat non-Muslim and Muslim heterodoxies have generated alternative political treatises. These were treatises not based on theology but dealing with the real and the live issues of statecraft and of power.
Problems begin, however, when a theological treatise is understood as the antithesis of what is real and live. If Islam is privatised, ushered into the corners of a conscience that is understood as divorced from the real and live, it cannot live long. Islam can only flourish in dialogue with the present. Allawi calls for this rejuvenation of Islam by asking potent questions:
Is Islam inherently opposed to modernity? Can it be separated from the public sphere? Should it be separated? What forces in today’s Islamic world could productively contribute to a rejuvenated Islamic civilization?
These are worthwhile questions and useful for engaging not just Islam but all faiths. What religion is not in need of continuing rejuvenation? For each of these questions ‘Christianity’ could be substituted for ‘Islam’. The Anglican Church, for example, may bring about rejuvenation by allowing women bishops, an action which would, albeit belatedly, resonate with the rest of a country that embraces equal rights in such issues.
This is not just about keeping up with (post-)modernity. It is about asking where God is now. Allawi is right to be concerned about an Islamic faith separated from the public sphere. Whatever is banished from the state, its antithesis will fill the vacuum. But equally, the state should not be subservient to Islam or to any faith. There must be a solution that does not privilege one over the other.
Finally, we must ask whether human governance is a human business only. Faith is holistic and so, by its very nature, bears influence over every action we take. This is by no means to advocate theocracy. But it does mean that Islam, like all religious and non-religious faiths, deserves a voice and a seat at the table of government.
Eddie Pitcher graduated from Emmanuel College, Cambridge in June 2008.
