III.
The Universal Brotherhood under the Law: The World-Ummah
The third institution to dominate human association is the universal
community. It was first established in history in the Akkadian, and later
in the Babylonian, state in Mesopotamia. Although these states never
extended beyond the Tigris-Euphrates valley and/or geographic Syria, they
were thought by their rules and citizens to cover “the four directions
of the world.” Every Arab migration into Mesopotamia and/or the Fertile
Crescent (Akkadian, Amorite, Aramean) tended to repudiate the city states
in favor of one which included the whole region which was the extent of
their knowledge of the world. The peoples of the Semitic universal state,
as witness the code of Hummurabi; whereas the Egyptians, the Greek and the
Romans never looked upon the citizen of the distant lands except as
strange aliens and subject people to be colonized.
The ideal of the universal community was equally taught by Jesus, son of
Mary, as the antidote to Jewish ethnocentrism. The same teaching was
promoted by his followers who took the new religion outside of the Jewish
community and proselytized the world. The ideal remained active in the
Roman Catholic Church for almost a millenium and a half; but its history
has been made turbulent by two factors militating against it. The first
was the commonplace human failure to live by the high ideal. The second,
unique to Christianity, was her condemnation of all political life as
fallen, necessarily sinful and salvation.
Islam was the ideal’s greatest affirmation; and the Islamic State, its
greatest embodiment. Islam offers the universal community as base of human
association, instead of the nation, people or ethnic group. This is not
the ummah of the Muslims, or Muslims community, which is only a segment
of the constituency of the Islamic State. In the first written
constitution, which was given by the Prophet to the New Islamic State in
Madinah, the ummah of Muslims
was one community, and the ummah
of Jews was another. Later, the ummah(s)
of Christians, Zoroastrians, Hindus and Buddhists joined the Islamic
State. The Islamic State itself was an ummah
of a different order, an expanding world-ummah
designed eventually to include humanity as its citizens. The
communities which constitute the world-ummah
were to co-exist in peace. Each ummah
is to order the lives of its members according to its own religion. It is
to have its own institutions and its own laws, as well as the power to
activate the former and implement the latter. The Islamic State guarantees
these prerogatives in its shari’ah,
or God-given law and constitution. Within the world-ummah,
everyone should be free to convince and be convinced of the truth. The
divine commandment, “No coercion in religion” (Qur’an 2:256) is to
govern the relations of Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
The world-ummah of Islam was a
radical and new political ideal then, as it is today; for the need for it
continues persistently. It is a pluralistic universal society in which all
humans are members by virtue of their religious affiliation. Its pluralism
is based not on courtesies or arrangements and treaties which can be
denied or revoked at the whim of politicians, but on laws which no earthly
authority can change or revoke. Moreover, it is not a pluralism in the
matters which do not count, such as one finds today in London or New York.
It is a pluralism of law – an idea of which the West has not yet even
conceived. Beside the shari’ah, whose laws govern the lives of Muslim citizens and are
administered in Muslim courts, the Islamic State has the Torahic,
Christian, Zorastrian, Hindu and Buddhist laws which govern the lives of
their adherents and are administered by Rabbineic, Christian, Zoroastrian,
Hindu and Buddhist courts. Where the jurisdiction of these courts
overlaps, as when the cases presented to them involve adherents of many
faiths, the courts reconcile their verdicts together for the good of the
adherents and the world-ummah of
which they are the constituents. Only in matters of war and peace
affecting the world-ummah as a
whole is the Islamic State exclusively the judge.
The Islamic State is hence a world-state, with an army on the ready to
repel aggression as well as to prevent war between one ummah
and another. It is a pax islamica
in which a person is identified according to what he cherishes best, his
religion, ideology and law, not his tribal membership. It is a United
Nations with teeth so as to preserve the peace, and with respect and
concern for the spiritual identify of the members. It is the expression of
Islamic humanism.
The raison d’etre of the ummah – with its government and institutions
– is not merely to curb the evil tendencies of man. To restrict the
origin and purpose of political organization to the task of protecting the
individual from the bellum omnium contra omnes, the presupposition of liberal political
thinking in the West, debases the state and truncates it. Even if true,
such prejudgments against it reduce the state’s value to that of a
preliminary condition. Underlying this thinking is the doctrinal position
of Christian dogma, namely, that man is fallen, essentially vitiated by
“original sin”, and hence hopelessly embroiled in a predicament from
which he can never extricate himself. Such a view is the presupposition of
Christian soteriology. It has no place in Islam where man is held to be
innocent, created in the best of forms, higher than the angels, and
commissioned (mukallaf) with a
task of cosmic significance, namely, to do God’s will on earth, to
realize the absolute in this space and time. To this end, God has made the
whole of creation subservient to man, and created him capable of free
action. The causal system of creation which is sustained and ordered by
God was broken open only for human action to intervene and effectively to
change the course of events and transform creation into the pattern God
has commanded and revealed. This is the meaning of man’s khilafah,
or vicegerency of God; of his carrying the amanah,
or divine trust in space-time.
Evidently, if man is to pursue this end and actualize it, he needs the
state. Being an ethic of works rather than an ethic of faith or intention,
the ethic of Islam requires and presupposes the ordered society. For only
three will man be able to fulfill the commandments of God. These, being
all social, or ummatic in character, society, its institutions and the
whole web of societal relation in which man stands are necessary. The
state is not merely a policeman; though it does fulfill this function when
and where necessary. Rather, the state is the focus of ummatic activity.
It is the leader and mover which mobilizes and organizes human energies;
which leads the ordered energies of the ummah effectively toward the goal.
That history has known some men bent upon mischief, some rulers who have
fallen to corruption and tyranny, constitute no attack upon the state and
no argument against its desirability and legitimacy. The onward march of
humanity toward the khilafah-goal
is the only legitimate criterion of worth. It justifies the state and all
its institutions. But it also lays the greatest burden of responsibility
upon it – the responsibility of fulfilling or not fulfilling the diving
imperative, as well as that of Ultimate Judgment where every person, ruler
or ruled, will get exactly what
he or she has earned, blest or unblest.
