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Abstract:
This paper introduces views both hostile to and supportive of the ideas of secularism and religious neutrality in the jurisprudence of Muslim minorities (fiqh al-aqalliyyat).

Abstract:
This paper examines what is involved in using comparative methods within political theory and whether there should be such a sub-field as "comparative political theory." It argues that "political theory" consists of multiple kinds of activities which are either primarily "scholarly" or "engaged." It is easy to imagine how scholarly forms of political theory can, and have been, comparative. The paper critiques, however, existing calls for the creation of "comparative political theory" (CPT) sub-field focused on the study of "non-Western" texts. CPT needs to explain why it is not merely "expanding the canon" to include non-Western texts and why a certain non-Western text is "alien," thus justifying the moniker "comparative." I argue, systematically though 10 discrete theses, that the strongest warrant for an "engaged" comparative political theory is the first-order evaluation of the implication of the contestations of norms, values and principles between distinct and coherent doctrines of thought.

comparative political theory, religion, religious political thought, Islam, Islamic political thought

Abstract:
In this paper I discuss the controversy over the career and thought of Tariq Ramadan. I offer an account of what Western liberals ought to hope for from the thought of such a figure and then show, pace Ramadan's critiques, that his views on European citizenship and social cooperation are largely "reasonable" from the standpoint of political liberalism. I also situate Ramadan's views in the context of Islamic law and contemporary Islamist thought on life in the West.

Islam. liberalism, Islamic law, Tariq Ramadan, citizenship, secularism

Abstract:
This paper argues that the four most plausible arguments compatible with public reason for an outright legal ban on all forms of polygamy are unvictorious. I consider the types of arguments political liberals would have to insist on, and precisely how strongly, in order for a general prohibition against polygamy to be justified, while also considering what general attitude towards “marriage” and legal recognition of the right to marry is most consistent with political liberalism. I argue that a liberal state should get out of the “marriage business” by leveling down to a universal status of “civil union” neutral as to the gender and affective purpose of domestic partnerships. I then refute what I regard as the four most plausible rational objections to offering this civil union status to multi-member domestic partnerships. The most common objection to polygamy is on grounds of gender equality, more specifically, female equality. But advancing this argument forcefully often involves neglecting the tendency of political liberalism (by whatever name it goes in contemporary, complex, multicultural societies) to tolerate a certain amount of inequality in private, within the bounds of robust and meaningful freedoms of choice and exit. Properly understood, polygamy involves no inherent statement about the essential inferiority of women, and certainly not more than many other existing practices and institutions (including many expressions of the main monotheistic religions) which political liberals regard as tolerable, even reasonable. Arguments from the welfare of children, fairness in the spousal market, and the abuse of family subsidies are also considered and found insufficient for excluding polygamy.

polygamy, political liberalism, marriage, justification

Abstract:
This article surveys four approaches to moral obligation to non-Muslims found in Islamic legal thought. The first three approaches I refer to in this article as the "revelatory-deontological," the "contractualist-constructivist" and the "consequentialist-utilitarian." The main argument of this article is that present in many of the contemporary works on the "jurisprudence of Muslim minorities" (fiqh al-aqalliyyat) is an attempt to provide an Islamic foundation for a relatively thick and rich relationship of moral obligation and solidarity with non-Muslims. This attempt takes the form of a fourth "comprehensive-qualitative" approach to political ethics in that it appeals not to juridical reasoning of the type "is x permissible and in which conditions?" but rather to Islamic ideals of what it means to live a good life, of what believing, normatively-committed Muslims want to pursue in this world, not only what they may pursue without fear of punishment. This meta-ethical approach builds on and goes beyond the first three. The force of this argument is that this fourth "comprehensive-qualitative" approach to moral obligation to non-Muslims is novel, emergent and not found not in the writings of outright reformers but in those of conservative, "neo-classical," shari'a-minded - even Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated - Islamic scholars. What also adds to the force of this argument is that the other meta-ethical discourses, particularly of contract and utility (maslaha), already get these scholars quite far towards a doctrine of "loyal resident alienage" in non-Muslim societies. That even orthodox Islamic scholars go further shows that they have some interest in giving a theological or principled foundation to a much thicker and richer form of moral obligation to non-Muslims, a relationship which involves recognizing non-Muslims qua non-Muslims and contributing to their well-being.

Islam, Islamic law, Muslim minorities, Islamic ethics, comparative ethics, moral obligation

Abstract:
In this article I take up John Rawls's invitation to investigate the capacity of a given comprehensive ethical doctrine to endorse on principled grounds the liberal terms of social cooperation. In the case of Islamic political ethics, however, far more is at stake in affirming citizenship in a (non-Muslim) liberal democracy than state neutrality and individual autonomy. Islamic legal and political traditions have traditionally held that submission to non-Muslim political authority and bonds of loyalty and solidarity with non-Muslim societies are to be avoided. In this article, I examine the Islamic foundations for affirming on principled grounds residence, political obligation and loyalty to a non-Muslim state. My research shows not only that such grounds exist even in classical Islamic legal discourses, but also that the concerns of Islamic scholars vindicate political liberalism's claim to successfully accommodate the adherents of certain non-liberal doctrines by refraining from proclaiming controversial metaphysical truth-claims.

Islam, Islamic law, liberalism, overlapping consensus, Rawls

Abstract:
Perhaps the most popular trend in contemporary Islamic legal and political thought is to view shari'a as embodied not primarily in specific rules nor in terms of a painstaking, thorough extraction of those rules from the revelatory texts according to the methods of classical legal theory (usul al-fiqh), but rather as defined in terms of the overall 'purposes' (maqasid) for which God revealed the law. The theory of the 'purposes of divine law' (maqasid al-shari'a), which I refer to as a form of 'Complex Purposivism' in legal interpretation and argumentation, is often viewed as a panacea for modern reformers and pragmatists who want to establish Islamic legitimacy for new substantive moral, legal and political commitments in new socio-political conditions, because it allows Muslims to ask not whether a given norm has been expressly endorsed within the texts, but whether it is compatible with the deeper goods and interests which God wants to protect through the law. All maqasid theories posit that there are five universal necessary interests the protection of which the law prioritizes: life, religion, lineage, property and reason. For all of these interests, protection can involve both positive and negative liberties, as well as various forms of restrictions on other less fundamental acts. The purpose of this paper is to examine some treatments of the meaning and extension of the Islamic legal purpose (maqsid) of protecting religion (hifz al-din), with an eye towards Islamic legal theorists' explicit or implicit encounter with modern liberal and secularist understandings of what it means to 'protect religion'.

Abstract:
In this article I seek to establish what political liberalism demands of Muslim citizens living as minorities in liberal states by way of a doctrinal affirmation of citizenship. This is an inquiry of a special nature. My interests are not directly in what policies a liberal state should have, nor in what practices on the part of citizens are compatible with justice and equality, but rather in what views emerging from a comprehensive doctrine are reasonable responses to the liberal terms of social cooperation. My aim is to establish with as much precision as possible when it can be said that there is a consensus on the terms of social cooperation in a liberal society and thus that the comprehensive doctrine in question is providing its adherents with moral reasons for endorsing those terms. Thus, this is an inquiry into liberal political theory, but one inspired by the special concerns, misgivings and anxieties of a particular comprehensive doctrine.

Islam, liberalism, citizenship, overlapping consensus, loyalty

Abstract:
In this article I consider whether the legalization of sex-same marriage implies a right to incestuous marriage. I begin by suggesting that the liberal state get out of the "marriage" business by leveling down to a universal civil union or "registered domestic partnership" status. Removing the symbolism of the term "marriage" from political conflict, privatizing it in the same way as religion, would have the advantage of both consistency and political reconciliation. The question is then whether incestuous unions should be both legal and eligible for this status. I argue that the arguments compatible with public reason for prohibiting them outright, or even for excluding them from the permissible types of legally registered partnerships, are quite weak. The objections to allowing such relations are those from (1) child abuse; (2) unfair burdening of society; and (3) the creation of bad lives. I argue that while rape and other forms of child abuse would be no more legal or tolerated than they are now, the concern about any form of weakening a society's legal and political resources to combat such abuses does indeed register on the justificatory scale, but does not prove that such first-degree incestuous sexual relations are inherently bad enough to warrant intervention in their own right. I then argue that the concern about unfairly burdening society with unhealthy persons is not as dangerously totalitarian as we might initially fear, but nor is it strong enough to justify an outright prohibition. Finally, I argue that a concern to dissuade persons from creating certain kinds of lives (children with extreme birth defects) is also not as dangerously totalitarian as we might initially fear, and in fact goes further towards explaining why we might have a legitimate interest in intervening. Nonetheless, I argue that the criminalization of such acts only make sense when they are indicators of other offenses, namely negligence or abuse, and it thus seems that the act of consanguineous reproduction is itself insufficient. One potentially surprising conclusion of this inquiry is that far from creating strong reasons for tolerating these practices, religious or cultural reasons for valuing incest (as well as polygamy) actually seem to count against tolerating them. The reason is that from a liberal perspective, tolerating polygamy and incest involves the assumption that it is possible to disassociate polygamy and incest simpliciter from abusive practices associated with them, including environments where children are raised to devalue their own sexual (and other) autonomy. However, the presence of comprehensive doctrines which include polygyny or incest as part of a good life actually makes it harder to justify disassociating polygamy and incest themselves from the likely abuse and coercion practiced by those who would value polygyny or incest.

Abstract:
This paper presents an interpretation of Sayyid Qutb’s political theory based on a prominent feature of his thought: the claim that Islamic law and human nature (fitra) are in perfect harmony, and that the demands of Islamic law are easy and painless for ordinary human moral capacities. I argue that Qutb is not only defending Islamic law as true and obligatory, but also as a coherent “realistic utopia” – a normative theory which also contains a psychological account of that theory’s feasibility. Qutb’s well-known fascination with the earliest generation of Muslims (the salaf) is an integral part of this account which serves two functions: first as a model of the feasibility and realism of an ideal Islamic political order, and second as a genealogy of the political origins of moral vice in society. Qutb’s project is thus an account of exactly why and how Islam requires politics and how modern humans can be both free and governed.

Abstract:
I examine the way in which President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan has attempted to legitimate authoritarian rule since the transition from communism. A comparison is made between late-Soviet modes of authoritarian legitimation and those of the Karimov regime, and the success of the project at the conceptual level is examined. The article closes with a consideration of the implications of this study for evaluating Juan J. Linz's classical thesis on the relationship between authoritarianism and ideology and some general propositions on the structure of authoritarian legitimation.

authoritarianism, legitimacy, Uzbekistan, ideology

Abstract:
This article analyses the rhetorical legitimation strategy of post-Soviet Uzbekistan under Islam Karimov as an authoritarian state. I show that the most important mode of legitimation in this case is neither the consequentialist appeal to stability, order or welfare, nor a direct appeal to guardianship, i.e., special knowledge. Rather, Karimov and his court intellectuals seek to advance a conception of 'ideology' as the comprehensive pre-political consensus of the political community. Their concept of 'ideology' is used to advance a political logic whereby the nature of the political community, the purpose of the state, the unifying political telos and the present regime are fused into a single entity. This ontological fusion is presented as a hegemonic reality and occurs at the pre-political level, resulting in the vanishingly small space left over for politics that characterizes authoritarian systems. I then suggest that such analysis of the hegemonic strategy of authoritarian regimes, and above all the teleological conception of politics it advances, is a superior approach to authoritarian legitimation than the search for explicit 'consequentualist' versus 'principled' arguments.

Abstract:
Perhaps the most popular trend in contemporary Islamic legal and political thought is to view sharī‘a as embodied not primarily in specific rules nor in terms of a painstaking, thorough extraction of those rules from the revelatory texts according to the methods of classical legal theory (usūl al-fiqh), but rather as defined in terms of the overall “purposes” (maqasid) for which God revealed the law. The theory of the “purposes of divine law” (maqasid al-sharī‘a), which I refer to as a form of “Complex Purposivism” in legal interpretation and argumentation, is often viewed as a panacea for modern reformers and pragmatists who want to establish Islamic legitimacy for new substantive moral, legal and political commitments in new socio-political conditions, because it allows Muslims to ask not whether a given norm has been expressly endorsed within the texts, but whether it is compatible with the deeper goods and interests which God wants to protect through the law. All maqasid theories posit that there are five universal necessary interests the protection of which the law prioritizes: life, religion, lineage, property and reason. For all of these interests, protection can involve both positive and negative liberties, as well as various forms of restrictions on other less fundamental acts. The purpose of this paper is to examine some treatments of the meaning and extension of the Islamic legal purpose (maqsid) of protecting religion (hz al-dīn), with an eye towards Islamic legal theorists’ explicit or implicit encounter with modern liberal and secularist understandings of what it means to “protect religion.”

Abstract:
Tariq Ramadan's recent book, 'Radical Reform: Islamic Ethics and Liberation,' boldly proclaims the need for Muslims to completely rethink the very meaning of Islamic law, traditionally the preeminent Islamic normative discourse and a primary distinguishing feature of Islam from other religions, replacing it with a more ecumenical applied ethics. He begins the book by rejecting the moderate reformist methods adopted in his previous books as insufficient for the 'radical reform' of their epistemologies and mentalities which he believes contemporary Muslims must undertake. It is tempting, therefore, to see this work as a radical break with Law. In this article, I offer a different interpretation. On my reading, throughout his previous works Ramadan systematically advanced and elevated a certain interpretation of Law, based on an appropriation of certain concepts taken from mainstream Islamic legal theory and crucial to the efforts of all reformist thinkers. It is these concepts, which he retains but completely recasts, which mediate his move to a post-legal Islamic ethics. I argue that Ramadan's long-term project neither merely abandons Islamic law, nor merely reforms it, but dissolves the framework of Law through its own devices.

Tariq Ramadan, Islamic law, Islamic ethics

Abstract:
This paper discusses an important feature of much modern Islamic writing on law, politics and morality. The feature in question is the claim that Islamic law and human nature (fitra) are in perfect harmony, that Islam is the “natural religion” (din al-fitra), and thus that the demands of Islamic law are easy and painless for ordinary human moral capacities. My discussion proceeds through a reading of the Moroccan independence leader and religious scholar ‘Allal al-Fasi (d. 1974), with a brief comparative reference to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood theorist Sayyid Qutb (d. 1966). I argue that simply suggesting that this represents a turn toward “natural law” is insufficient. First, on many understandings of the term, Islamic law in all forms has always been a “natural law” theory. Second, advocates of the natural religion doctrine often go to great lengths to avoid heterodoxy and distinguish their views from natural law theories. Third, merely pointing to similarities with natural law does not explain the rhetorical or justificatory function of the natural religion doctrine. I discuss the ambiguities within Fasi’s treatment, and suggest that the natural religion doctrine might be better understood as a concern with realism and feasibility within normative ethics, and the tradition within political theory of constructing “realistic utopian” theories of justice.