Most Arabs’ love of Islam is total. Arab rulers’ exploitation of Islam is total as well. To stay in power, Arab kings and presidents mobilize the palace ulama (Islamic priests) to add God’s hellfire to police brutality. They preach that obedience to the Muslim ruler is a form of piety. To free Arab societies from the demagoguery of predestination, fate, evil eye, angels and djinn, Shari’a laws need to evolve with the modern age. The Lutheran Revolution in the early 1500s released Christians from the control of the church to spectacular results.
Cementing Arab Rulers’ Dictatorship
The Qur’an, Prophetic Sunna, and Jurists’ opinions enjoin Muslims to blindly obey the Muslim ruler and those in authority. In 4:59, the Qur’an orders:
Obey God and obey God’s messenger and obey those of authority among you.
Verse 4:59 tightly controls all layers of societal hierarchy—the male over the female, the old over the young, the father over his children and wife (wives), the teacher over the students, the employer over the employees, the ruler over the ruled, and so forth.
Sunna traditions amplify the Qur’an. Answering how a Muslim should react to a ruler who does not follow the true guidance, the Prophet is reported to have said, according to the Hadith collection of Muslim Bin al-Hajjaj (d. 875), “He who obeys me obeys God; he who disobeys me, disobeys God. He who obeys the ruler, obeys me; he who disobeys the ruler, disobeys me.” Such wording or its equivalent occurs two dozen times in Sahih Muslim. To emphasize the point, the Hadith collections of Abi Dawood (d. 888) and Ibn Maja (d. 886) quote the Prophet as imploring Muslims to hear and obey their ruler, even if he were an Ethiopian slave. Al-Bukhari (d. 870) quotes similar sayings in his Hadith collection.
In addition to Qur’anic and Hadith injunctions, Arab kings and presidents invoke one thousand-year-old opinions of jurists to legitimize their dictatorships. For example, Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali (1058-1111) taught that, “any ruler is better than chaos, no matter what the origin of his power” [[1]]. Badr Al-Din bin Jama’a (1241-1333) advocated that the ruler is “the shadow of God on the Earth… The community must accept him whoever he be… The imam can either be chosen or can impose himself by his own power, and in either case, he must be obeyed… If he is deposed by another, the other must equally be obeyed… We are with whoever conquers,” declared Ibn Jama’a [[2]]. Taki Al-Din Bin Taymiyya (1263-1328), the scholar whose teaching influenced the Wahhabis the most, believed that the essence of government “was the power of coercion… The ruler… could demand obedience from his subjects, for even an unjust ruler was better than strife and dissolution of society.” [[3]]. Notwithstanding that the opinions of these scholars were a product of the political turmoil of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Arab rulers today exploit these opinions. During the life of these scholars the Seljuk Turks dominated the Baghdad Abbasid caliphs, the Fatimid caliphs were entrenched in Egypt against the Baghdad caliphs, the Crusaders had taken Jerusalem in 1099, and the Mongols destroyed Baghdad and killed the caliph in 1258.
Arab kings and presidents exploit the Islamic Creed to keep their subjects under the influence of religious dogma as a psychological defense against political dissent, supplementing brigades of cruel security forces.
Characteristics of Arab Rule
Arab rule is non-representative, non-transparent, and non-participatory. It is a family affair generally mired in tribalism, nepotism, favouritism, and corruption. European powers created the monarchies around the time of the First World War and the presidents seized city hall through army putsches. Kings and presidents, manage to rule for life, unless forcibly removed from office or killed. They hand power from father to son through royal successions or uncontested farcical referendums. They exercise absolute powers—political parties are banned, free media does not exist, and political dissent often leads to death. Arab parliaments, if they exist, are rubber-stamp assemblies, either appointed by the palace or approved to run in elections by the police. Ruling families, surrounded by a narrow coalition of supporters comprise the ruling groups. Self-enrichment and corruption are the glue that keeps the ruling group together.
The Role of the Palace Ulama in Cementing Arab Rulers’ Dictatorships
Arab dictators exploit Islam to prolong their hold on power. They deploy the palace ulama to preach on every turn that blind obedience to king or president (waliy al-amr) is obligatory. They threaten disobedience with hell’s fire.
How did the ulama secure for themselves such influence in Muslim societies? Two-and-a-half centuries after the death of the Prophet, the ulama succeeded to enshrine the Sunna (acts and sayings of the Prophet) as a source of law equal to the Qur’an, although the Qur’an never made the Sunna a source of law—the Qur’an contains everything people need to know (6:38, 16:89). Equating the Sunna with the Qur’an made the Prophet “the divinely certified exemplar, whose practice itself had a revelatory status.” [[4]] That the Prophet had reportedly said, “the learned are the heirs of the prophets.” [[5]], enabled the ulama to become the natural providers of guidance on every detail of the Prophet’s way of daily life. They made themselves indispensable to ruler and ruled.
Equating the Sunna with the Qu’ran expanded the otherwise narrow coverage of Qur’anic law considerably—of the 6,236 verses in the Qur’an, “no more than approximately eighty verses deal with legal topics in the strictest sense of the term.” [[6]] This development handed the ulama wide ranging powers of control. As the teachers, preachers, muftis, judges, and court officials, the ulama became the experts on all and every matter, worldly and spiritual, from personal hygiene, diet, and healthy living to good manners, family affairs, and rituals.
Following the Mongols’ destruction of Baghdad and the Arab caliphate in 1258, the ulama of the Ottoman Empire (1280-1918) took over. After the First World War, while the Turks diagnosed that a rigid Islam was responsible for the decline and ultimate destruction of their empire, the Arab ulama proclaimed that Islam would be their path to greatness. While the Turks were busy secularizing what was left of the Ottoman Empire, the Arab response was to establish in 1928 the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and declare Wahhabism as the state religion of the newly created kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932.
To appreciate the depth and extent of the control that the ulama exercise over ordinary people, the religious advice sections of most Arabic newspapers, magazines, television and radio programs answer questions like: Is it permissible to have a tattoo, colour one’s hair, thin or darken a woman’s eyebrows, wear a silk tie or a silk garment, wear a gold ring, how to greet a guest, what to say to a person who sneezes, what to eat, how to eat, etc.
Non-Arab Muslim Cultures vs. Arab Culture
Non-Arab Muslim Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Turkey, representing more than a half of world Muslims, hold democratic elections and allow women to become prime ministers and presidents. Why such differences with their Arab co-religionists? Is it Arabs’ low-income level and short experience with democracy? Not entirely. Bangladesh, established in 1971 and relatively poor, is democratic and has had more than one female prime minister. Pakistan, established in 1947, also relatively poor, has had periods of democratic governments and a female prime minister more than once. Indonesia, which gained independence in 1945, is relatively poor, democratic and had a woman president.
The Belief in Predestination and Blind Obedience to Authority
The belief in predestination enshrines blind obedience to authority as if it were predestined by the will of God. As a result, a culture of obedience to hierarchical authority developed throughout Arab societies: The male ruling over the female, the father over the children and wife (wives), the older over the younger, the teacher over the student, employer over the employee, etc. Where women freedoms are encouraged by the government to be controlled by family male guardianship rules, 50% of society’s potential political opposition to the government would be curtailed.
The Belief in Monotheism and Blind Obedience to Authority
Like Judaism and Christianity, monotheism reigns supreme in the Islamic faith. The first article in Islam is ‘La Ilaha Illa Allah,’ meaning, “there is no God but God.” Monotheism transferred in one swoop all the powers of the many gods of the pre-Islamic polytheist Arabs into the hands of the one and only omnipotent god, Allah. As the Messenger of Allah, the Prophet’s authority became rooted in the unlimited powers of Allah. After the Prophet’s death, the caliphs claimed His authority. The first four caliphs (632-661) were Companions of the Prophet. They asserted firsthand knowledge of how the Prophet would have reacted to new situations. By controlling the financial and the military powers of the state, the Umayyad caliphs (661-750), the Abbasid caliphs (750-1258), and the Ottoman Sultans (1280-1918) controlled the temporal and the spiritual. Today, Arab kings and presidents are absolute rulers in the tradition of the caliphs. Pandering ulama preach that blind obedience to king or president (waliy al-amr) is a core doctrine of the Islamic faith, a form of piety.
The Desert Habitat and Blind obedience to Authority
Extreme temperature fluctuations, dry and burning summer winds of over 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit), freezing winter nights, a topography of seemingly endless open spaces, mirages and moving sand dunes, low-density population, loneliness, personal freedom, scarce resources and often a limited quantity of food and clean water have contributed to shaping the personality, beliefs, and the way of life of the Bedouin. Survival requires the efficient use of the desert’s meagre provisions. Any waste of clean water could mean death. There is little margin for error. To Hitti, “Nomadism is as much a scientific mode of living in the Nufud [a part of the Arabian Desert] as industrialism is in Detroit or Manchester”.[[7]]
Solidarity and harmony among tribesmen are critical for the protection of the scant necessities of the tribe from internal disputes. Solidarity and harmony require blind obedience to the authority of the father, the clan’s elders, and the tribe’s chief. The tribal community needs to be managed by the most able manager. The tribe’s chief must be obeyed if the tribe’s resources are not to be wasted. Tribal obedience to hierarchy is a strategy for survival. The Prophet, being a product of desert living, enshrined blind obedience to authority in the Islamic creed.
The Likelihood of Islamic Renaissance in Arab countries
How likely is it that Arab kings and presidents might engage in genuine religious and political reforms in the foreseeable future? The answer is zero. To Arab rulers, Islam is the anesthetic that supplements their security forces.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Albert Hourani, “Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1789-1939” Cambridge University Press, p. 14
[2] Ibid., 15
[3] Ibid., 19
[4] Marshall G. S. Hodgson, “The Venture of Islam”, The University of Chicago Press, Vol. 1. 1977, 328.
[5] Abi Dawud Hadith collection, 3641, https://sunnah.com/abudawud:3641
[6] N. J. Coulson, “A History of Islamic Law”, Edinburgh at the University Press, 1971, p. 12.
[7] Philip Hitti, “History of the Arabs”, 10th edition (MacMillan Press Ltd., London, 1970), p. 23.