A worth reading interview by Isaac Chotiner that analyses many challenges facing Muslims today, and where religious and liberal leaders are falling short in understanding the problems. Both liberals and conservatives will find it fascinating. ( f. sheikh).
Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, is the author of a new book, Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam Is Reshaping the World. The title gives some hint of his provocative analysis. As he writes, “If Islam is, in fact, distinctive in how it relates to politics, then the foundational divides that have torn the Middle East apart will persist, and for a long time to come.”
I recently spoke by phone with Hamid. During the course of our conversation, which has been edited and condensed for clarity, we discussed why liberals have trouble taking religion seriously, the future of Islamist politics in Turkey and Egypt, and what the rise of Donald Trump has meant for American Muslims.
Isaac Chotiner: What precisely do you mean by “Islamic exceptionalism”?
Shadi Hamid: I’m essentially arguing that Islam is fundamentally different from other religions in a very specific way: its relationship to law and politics and governance. I wanted to use “exceptionalism” because I felt, at least for me, that it was value-neutral: It can be either good or bad depending on the context. I also wanted to challenge the assumption—very common in the bastions of Northeastern liberal elitism—that religion playing a role in public life is always or necessarily a bad thing. That’s the idea of the title, and what that means in practice is that Islam has proven to be resistant to secularism, and I would argue will continue to be resistant to secularism and secularization really for the rest of our lives.
What do you think it is about Islam that makes it resistant to secularism in a way that, say, Christianity and Judaism are not?
I think you have to go back to the founding moment 14 centuries ago. Jesus was a dissident against a reigning state, so he was never in a position to govern. Naturally, the New Testament is not going to have much to say about public law. Prophet Muhammad wasn’t just a prophet. He was also a politician, and not just a politician, but a head of state and a state-builder. If Prophet Muhammad was in a position of holding territory and governing territory, then presumably the Quran would have to have something to say about governance. Otherwise, how would Prophet Muhammad be guided? That’s one thing intertwining the religion and politics that isn’t accidental, and was meant to be that way.
In practice, what that means is that if you’re a Muslim secular reformer today, you can make arguments for secularism. I’m not saying that’s impossible. There have been a number of fascinating, quite creative, secular-oriented thinkers in recent decades. But the problem is they have to argue against the prophetic model, so it’s unlikely that those ideas will gain mass traction in Muslim-majority countries.
The argument against that would be that religions are interpreted in different ways because of different historical circumstances, and thus the reason Islam is being interpreted in certain ways is because of the historical circumstances that Islam has found itself in.
Yeah, but I don’t think religions can be anything we want them to be. This idea that we can sort of transform ideas in our own image and in any way we want—if we could do that then what would be the point of different religions? Presumably religions are different because they’re different, and people make their choices accordingly. Every religion has its own boundaries of how far you can go. In the case of Christianity, you can’t really be theologically Christian in any meaningful sense if you think Jesus was just an ordinary dude, right? Christianity without Christ loses its meaning; you can be culturally Christian or nominally Christian, but the theological content isn’t really there. It’s the same thing with Islam, and that leads to the other factor that I talk about in the book in regards to exceptionalism: Muslims don’t just believe that the Quran is the word of God; they believe it is God’s actual speech. That might sound like a semantic difference, but I think it’s actually really important.
You yourself are Muslim correct?
Yeah, yeah, I’m Muslim.
Well, OK, but I assume you don’t believe what you just said about the Quran.
Laughs.] Here’s the thing: If something is a credal requirement and if you take that out of the religion, then you lose a lot of the foundation. Then you have to ask yourself what is actually the content or meaning of that religion. I don’t want to make an essentialist argument. I’ve been attacked quite a bit since the book came out for exceptionalism and orientalism, and God knows what else. I think what you said earlier about history mattering is really important, so I can imagine a counter-factual history: Let’s say Prophet Mohammad wasn’t able to capture whole territory. What if he lost some of those early critical battles? Then presumably Islam would be completely different today because the Quran itself would be different, because it wouldn’t have as much to say about governance if Prophet Muhammad never governed.
It just seems that lots of people define themselves as Muslim while not believing things that other Muslims consider essential to the religion. The thing you said earlier about Jesus: I’m in Berkeley right now, and I’m sure I could find some people who consider themselves Christian who believe Jesus was an ordinary guy.
Right, but then I think then we can use other terms like identity. It becomes a kind of cultural marker, but it’s not as much a theological thing if you don’t actually believe in the theology of the religion in question. If you don’t believe Jesus played an extraordinary role, then what does it really mean to be Christian theologically?
Where do you stand on the debate over whether or to what degree ISIS is “Islamic”?
Some of my Muslim friends and colleagues, and actually for that matter my parents, criticize me for how I talk about ISIS. Look, it’s not my job to make Islam look good. Sometimes people criticize me and say, “Someone might get the wrong idea from what you’re saying, or they just might misuse or abuse your argument.” Even the phrase “Islamic exceptionalism” can be used for purposes that I don’t agree with, for anti-Muslim bigotry and all of that. It’s not my job to make Islam look good; it’s my job to honestly reflect things the way that I see them. I don’t think it’s helpful to maintain this fiction that ISIS has nothing to do with religion or nothing to do with Islam. It’s so obvious to any ordinary American who’s watching TV that religion plays some role. If we’re telling them, “Hey, actually religion has nothing to do with this,” people aren’t going to take us seriously because it’s obviously not true.
It should go without saying, and I always have to offer this disclaimer, that the overwhelming majority of Muslims oppose ISIS. Polling is quite clear on this. That doesn’t mean that people in ISIS don’t believe what they’re doing is commanded by God. This idea that we’re always assuming people couldn’t possibly believe what they say they believe—I think that’s endemic in the way we talk about religion in the United States. It’s a problem that Obama has. Obama can’t take ISIS seriously. He refuses to take ISIS seriously as something beyond just a bunch of thugs and fanatics, as he said. We can’t take them seriously as an enemy if we just dismiss them as being a bunch of thugs. I’ll say, as an American Muslim: There’s no doubt it’s a perverted version of Islam. That doesn’t mean they don’t believe it.
You said that you wanted to challenge people who thought that religion’s role in public life is always bad. We’ve been talking about the ways that Islam is incompatible with democratic politics—
No, no. I’m not saying Islam is incompatible with democratic politics; I’m saying that Islam is in tension with liberalism, and this is why I think it’s important for us to distinguish between liberalism and democracy. Let’s say an Islamist party comes to power through a democratic election. Islamism is by definition illiberal, and they would promote things that are contrary to classical liberalism, in the sense of non-negotiable personal rights and freedoms, gender equality, protection of minorities.
Fareed Zakaria was the first one to really popularize the idea of illiberal democracy. I feel like the Americans I’ve talked to have struggled to really grasp the idea because we don’t really have much experience with that directly. With the rise of Trump it makes things easier because we can see quite clearly that, Hey, this is a guy who might be democratically elected but his commitment to classical liberalism is quite questionable, even antagonistic.