Book Report: The Impossible State
The book report is based on The Impossible state: Islam Politics, and modernity’s Moral predicament by Wael Hallaq. The author identifies the Islamic state as an impossible state because the modern Islamic state devoid of morality from a European intervention perspective as the morality referred in this case is drawn from European genealogy. Hallaq development is a contrast of the European development with “paradigmatic Islamic governance” with a deep focus on morality based on paradigmatic sharia, which has overtime failed to accommodate absolutism and a hierarchical disciplining apparatus.
Hallaq arguments are based on the rise of the modern state and how Islamic governance compares to the European monarchs. According to Hallaq,[1]power monopoly, sovereignty, subjectivity formation process dominance, and the discursive abstraction of a state as a timeless, universal, and enduring state are modern state’s delineating features. Hallaq thus results in tracking the rise of sovereign, powerful European monarchs. These European monarchs, according to Hallaq, had legislative power and used the power to instill power order and discipline in the society. Comparing the European sovereign monarchs with the Islamic state that lacked sovereignty because, in the Islamic State, sovereignty belongs to God. Thus the Islamic state lacked legislative power as it remained in the hands of Ulama as the divine law interpreters. Dawla, a modern state equivalent, which is characterized by “executive Sultanism,” which means that power and rule are transitory. Thus, the book proves that the Islamic State has become an impossible state when its governance is contrasted with the European monarch.
The modern Islamist movements attempt to Islamise most Islamic nations with epistemology and ontology from western civilization has completely failed because of western civilization remain incompatible with Islamic civilization. The modern Islamic state’s attempt to enforce Shari’a law has completely failed. Hallaq criticizes the modern Muslim state for applying partial Shari’a, which disregards both the procedural laws and the communal context giving an example of punishment such as stoning and dismemberment.[2] Thus, Hallaq says that the Islamic state civilization is impossible because modern civilization and the use of partial sharia law has utterly failed. Hallaq quotes Muhammad Asad’s 1940’s lamentation that sharia had. Don't use plagiarised sources.Get your custom essay just from $11/page
“now come to resemble nothing so much as a vast old-clothes shop where ancient thought-garments, almost unrecognizable as to their original purport, are mechanically bought and sold, patched up and re-sold, and where the buyer’s only delight consists in praising the old tailor’s skill[3]
According to Hallaq, it is the inherent incompatibility of enlightenment modernity with Islam that has led to these failures. Islam is a sovereign, viable way of life that consists of both moral cosmology and social-economical order that is entirely different from enlightenment-modernity. Shari’a Paradigm defined pre-modern Islamic governance. Hallaq uses Paradigmatic Shari’a interchangeably with central dominance. He entirely depends on Carl Schmitt’s central dominance interpretation. Central domain tradition meant that moral upbringing, education, and worldly desiderata where all other life aspects were considered as a secondary domain. Hallaq has identified that the Shari’a provides the solutions to secondary domains such as logic, linguistics, dialectic, hermeneutics, and epistemology. According to Hallaq, Islamic tradition consists of
“the theoretical-philosophical, sociological, anthropological, legal, political, and economic phenomena that have emerged in Islamic history as paradigmatic beliefs and practices[4]
Hallaq Contrasts the Islamic Shari’a domain with enlightenment as the central domain, which was the primary reference in the creation of Europe. Thus the western paradigm was created from a different central domain and also drew from other sets of varying traditions.
In the second chapter, takes an approach of defining a modern state and how its creation came about and how it differs from a European and Islamic State. Hallaq notes that Europe took a completely different path during the 17th and 18th centuries. The period Hallaq terms as enlightenment-modernity when Europe undertook the path of Great Divergence. It was at this period that state emerged as an institutional, philosophical and material products’[5]. However, he notes that the modern state is entirely different from that of the pre-modern era. In the pre-modern era, “state” meant a single life sphere that competed with others. Allegiances and identities overlapped because of the singularity of the state, making life complicated. The modern state comprises of the totality of our lives, meaning that it demands the allegiance of the citizens, shapes the culture of a people, and it control or negates the religion.
“We take it for granted that no one can live outside of citizenship, for no one can find an independent space outside the state. There is no neutral site between one state and another and nothing that allows a human being to be just a human being, one without political, state-based affiliation”[6].
The modern state stands as a sovereign entity. It does not recognize any higher power other than that of itself, and it is its reference. Hallaq, identify that when the Islamic State tries to incorporate these elements of modern society to the Shari’a paradigm, it is a total failure. Thus, using these elements of a modern state, the Islamic State remains an impossible state.
Hallaq identify separation of powers theory as a modern state’s foundation[7]. Hallaq charges the modern Islamists movements from trying to assimilate the modern state by Islamifying the government branches. Hallaq wants the states that the Islamic movement has failed to identify Islamism as a form of governance. Hallaq poses the question of how the Islamist movements who have a completely different epistemological and ontological approaches are trying to assimilate the aspect of separation of powers while the western countries cannot operate it in practice in their state and yet they are the ones who developed it. The idea is parallel with modern Islamic liberalism reformists calling for Islamic liberalism to cure the problems in the affiliated Muslim states, yet the western countries are abandoning liberalism[8]. Hallaq notes that sharia’s paradigm offers a better alternative to the separation of power. He, therefore, suggests that the Islamic state does not need to adopt the separation of power.
The modern Islamic state was impacted mainly by colonization. European colonizers put to an end to the moral sense of a pre-modern Islamic man, which was found in Ulema and not in any political organization. Hallaq, identify the concept of “Technologies of the Self” which is based on the five pillars of Islam including fasting, testimony of faith, the daily prayers, charity and pilgrimage which are the compass to human moral purpose[9].The Europeans forced its paradigm on Islamic civilization, thus affecting political economic and social structures. Therefore, technologies of Self was replaced with regulations and disciplines of the modern state. The modern state seems to require two attributes of its subject, which include submission and utility. The two attributes act as the external force which contradicts what the Islam traditionof “technologies of the Self”[10]. The modern state government that in the Islamic State might not work because it will be in constant conflict with the self-governance. The Muslims might find it hard to bend to obeying and the material productiveness as required by the western paradigm because it is at odds with the internal discipline embedded in technologies of the self-found in the moral framework of Islam.
Does the modern Islamic state face the dilemma of how it can exist along with the modern western countries while it still maintains a government that is Islamically founded? And how at the same time, the Islamic state would protect and sustain itself without accepting the western accepted capitalist system. The dilemma of whether a country that engages with western economies through financial systems, consumer economy, and participating in a capitalist global borrowing and lending can term itself as independent or Muslim in the sense of paradigm? Hallaq identifies that globalization has created a complication for the countries that term themselves as Islamic state because as much as they want to hold to the Muslim paradigm, the modern world keep on having a significant impact on the governance of these countries.
Conclusion
Hallaq successfully delivers his argument showing why the Islamic State is seen as an impossible state. Hallaq says that the attempt to incorporate the western state paradigm has utterly failed because the Islamic paradigm is independent of its own. Hallaq proves his argument by showing clear evidence on areas where the modern Islamic world has failed in trying to assimilate the western modern state paradigm into its Islamic embedded traditions.
Hallaq says that while everything in Muslim is embedded in Islam, modern western culture is embedded in different aspects. The modern state exists as a sovereign entity, as well as the Islamic paradigm, trying to assimilate the west form of state for the Islamic state is impossible as it collides with the Islamic paradigm. The concept of separation of power is hard to incorporate in the Islamic state because of its overlapping nature, and the Islamic State has the Shari’a paradigm, which is a better alternative. The western political aspect seeks to create subjects who are submissive and can create a utility that goes against the Islamic technologies of the Self, thus creating a conflicting nature. Therefore, Hallaq concluded that it is impossible to create a state that has two independent forms of paradigm.
Bibliography
Asad, Muhammad. This law of ours: And other essays. Islamic Book Trust, 2001.
Hallaq, Wael. The impossible state: Islam, politics, and modernity’s moral predicament. Columbia University Press, 2014.
[1]Hallaq, Wael. The impossible state: Islam, politics, and modernity’s moral predicament. Columbia University Press, 2014.
[2]p. X, The Impossible State, Hallaq (Wael)
[3].”
[4].” p. 6, The Impossible State, Hallaq (Wael) – Columbia Press, 2014
[5]p. 23The Impossible State, Hallaq (Wael)
[6]p. 91, The Impossible State, Hallaq (Wael)
[7]P. 37, The Impossible State, Hallaq (Wael)
[8]P. 54-57, The Impossible State, Hallaq (Wael)
[9]P.98, The Impossible State, Hallaq (Wael)
[10]P. 101-106, The Impossible State, Hallaq (Wael)