Ahmet T Kuru's book on Islam and State to be launched in Hindi

Story by  Atir Khan | Posted by  Aasha Khosa | Date 30-01-2025
Ahmet T Kuru and the Hindi version of his book on Islam
Ahmet T Kuru and the Hindi version of his book on Islam

 

Atir Khan/New Delhi

Awaz-The Voice gives space to new age scholars, who are doing interesting research in Islam and other religious studies. In this series some time back we had interviewed renowned author Ahmet T Kuru on his book Islam Authoritarianism. Underdevelopment- A Global and Historical Comparison. These days he is in New Delhi to promote the Hindi version of his book being launched by Khusro Foundation at the New Delhi World Book Fair on February 2.

Turkish-origin Prof. Ahmet, a Professor of Political Science and Director for Islamic and Arabic Studies at San Diego State University, suggests despite this illustrious past, many Muslim-majority nations today face significant developmental challenges, particularly in the areas of science, technology, and socio-economic growth. Kuru's analysis attributes this decline not to Islam itself, but to the authoritarian structures that have shaped many Muslim societies. The nexus between authoritarian regimes and religious institutions has stifled intellectual and scientific progress, a phenomenon deeply rooted in historical events.

Excerpts from the interview:

In your book you have suggested that religion and state in Islam cannot be separated is a myth. Could you please tell us more about it?

Before this book, I had another book published in 2009 on secularism comparing Turkey, France and United States. At that time, Turkey had a French type assertive secularism, with certain restrictions.And when I bring United States onto table, telling the Turkish policy makers that the French type laissez to secularism is not the only way, there is the American more religious friendly one. Their general response to me is that you don't know Islam or Islam is really incompatible with the model you are suggesting. It works in the United States with the Christian background.

So, this debate really has very long historical roots in Turkey. I was criticized and attacked by both side because secularists were telling me that a religious friendly secularism is not possible within Islam. Islam needs to be taken under control. And the Islamists were asking me, are you really a practicing Muslim, Ahmet?

They told me how dare you propose a secular state? So that was my first book, 2009. Therefore, I realized that I need to dig into history and theology of Islam to respond both sides. And today, still interestingly, worldwide, beyond Turkey, both Islamists and critics of Islam agree on this issue that there is no separation of religion and state in Islam.

The two polar camps have almost that consensus. But my data and analysis show that, first of all, in practice there are 50 Muslim majority countries in the world today. 20 have secular constitutions other 20 countries have constitutions referring to Sharia, either as a source of law or a principle of basis. And ten countries in the Muslim world are in between, both secular and Islamic law reference constitutions.

This show us that in practice there is a huge diversity within the Muslim world with multiple secularand Islamically inspired constitutional regimes. Second thing is that in the text of Islamic sources like the Quran and Hadiths, there is nothing about emergence of religion or politics or what some of my South Asian friends called Mullah-State nexus.

There is a very famous saying that religion and state are two ends. Religion is the foundation. State is the guardian. That without the foundation collapses, that without the God perishes. When I analyzed the origin of this so-called hadiths, I found that that it was a Persian maxim 300 years before Prophet Muhammad. So therefore, since there is no textual basis, they fabricated it.

Last but not least, let me conclude the historical data that from 8thto the 11th century out of about 4000 Muslims scholars 91% were privately funded only 9% a minuscule minority was paid by state patronage for being judges and prosecutors. Major scholars such as Abu Hanifa, Imam Malik, Imam Shafi, Imam Ahmed bin Hanbalrefused to obey state authority and they had both theological and historical reasons to see politics corrupt, and they avoided it.

So, these are the really many parameters to show that Islam has multiple interpretations. And yes, there was a history of separation between religion and state in Islamic history.

So Professor, then essentially this departure could it be described as some sort of Counter-Reformation given what happened to Christianity after the arrival of Martin Luther?

As an academic living in the United States, 22 years with Turkish origin and as a Muslim, I constantly almost every day compare Western societies with modern societies. And this comparison brought me some very interesting cases that historically, in fact what Europeans achieve or experience as Renaissance and the Reformation, as you mentioned, already had been done by Muslims in their early history between eight and 11 centuries, Muslims had an era of coexistence with Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, together they created a civilization of science and economic prosperity.

And Muslims at the time were so open minded that they allowed the contributions from other people with different religious backgrounds, even agnostics. And also, they appreciated early civilizations of Greek philosophy of society, Indian mathematics. And they brought together and made a synthesis and taught basic things to Europe. Muslims taught agricultural productions, papermaking techniques and mathematics and other things to Europeans, but they learned it from different neighbors and earlier civilizations.

So therefore, what Europe achieved and started to experience after the 12, 13, 14 centuries Muslims already did it in their own history. But somehow after the 11th century there was a reversal. Muslims became unfortunately more and more narrow minded and close minded on certain issues. The economic entrepreneurs,intellectuals, both religious and secular thinkers, independent of state authority were marginalized.

Whereas Europe, which was dominated by Catholic clergy and military aristocracy until the 11th century, started to experience the rise of economic entrepreneurs and intellectuals gradually in the 12, 13, 14 Centuries. And then what we see the result today is that more developed Europe and less developed Middle East and elsewhere in the Muslim world. So therefore, the West and the Muslim world learned from each other.They compete and there is a reversal of destiny starting in the 11thCentury.

Imam Ghazali is held in the highest esteem, at least in South Asia. Any kind of criticism against the imam is considered to be blasphemous. What could you tell us about the role of Imam Ghazali in facilitating this ultimate state-ulema alliance.

Imam Ghazali and his books have been cited in my book. He was very influential everywhere, from Turkey to Indonesia and other countries.

Second, he is very complex person and he had many changes in his life. We have to focus which Ghazali we are talking about, the early Ghazali when he was a young scholar. Or when he declared major figures like he'd been seen of Arab as infidel and their followers as apostate, punishable by death. These are the negative legacy of Ghazali. But Muslim scholars regret that he had such close relations with the state and he had a change in mid-life. Then after the age of 40, he went to the Prophet Abraham's mausoleum and took an oath that he will never receive money from public authorities again. And he will never teach state run madrassas again, he will never even join the debate gatherings of political authorities again. He had about a decade of isolation, his private teachings, putting himself in a humble super social way, avoiding politics.

Today when we read Ghazali, we should be critical to see the inconsistencies and change. Yes, the Muslim youth today may be inspired by some ideas, but at the same time, certain ideas need to be updated and sometimes rejected. For example, the declaration of certain scholars as infidels. Even Ottoman scholars reject and say Ghazali was wrong in doing so.

Ibn Sina was a Muslim and declaring him as infidel was a wrong idea. But at the same time,Ghazali had really open-minded views. For example, he said that Byzantium Christians since they don't know what the true character of Prophet Muhammad is, they may have salvation for their ignorance.

This brings us to the question that some countries see democracy as incompatible with Islam. What are your views?

First of all, you need to understand the definition of the two concepts democracy and Islam. If we understand democracy as the rule of majority, this is not enough because majority may decide to violate rights of minority. A true democracy is not only free and frequent and fair elections, but at the same time it must ensure the protection of certain level of freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, especially rights of minorities.

And with this regard, we really need to challenge or revise certain principles for Islamic law. For example, if it includes blasphemy and apostasy laws restricting religious freedom and freedom of speech, if they put minorities as secondary citizens, how can we have a democracy without giving everybody the full equal rights of citizenship? Therefore, some people say we need a completely secular system by putting religion aside or having a true democracy or others says that we need religious reforms.


Cover of the Hindi book published by Khushro Foundation

This is a big debate. My position is that even if people have very traditional views about their practicing religion, that's their private affairs. But when it comes to public if we agree on democracy, we really need to accept that there will be freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and the protection of the rights of minorities. That kind of Islam will be compatible with democracy.

But there are some who produce ideas of restrictions, operations and radicalism. Of course, their Islam is not compatible with democracy.

When you talk about restrictions, when you talk about acceptability to new ideas, how has the ulema  community received your book?

So far my book has been translated into Indonesian, Arabic, Persian, Bosnian and Persian in Malay. And Alhamdulillah I signed have signed contracts for other languages. So the translations are coming soon. People volunteer contributing to translate, to disseminate the book. It's really like that many people help me to really discuss these issues I'm thankful to all of them.

Some of them are conservative Muslims and then they think that these ideas should be discussed. Some ideas are also promoted by intellectuals and civil activists. There are also non-Muslims in Europe. They think these ideas contribute in the interest of civilizational, inter faith, dialogue and mutual understanding.

And another thing, interestingly, beyond all of them are the Western intellectuals and academia. Some of them treat it as a potentially Islamophobic book and telling me that Ahmet don't publish it in English, maybe you can publish in Arabic as that, because in the U.S. you may spread Islamophobia. And I say as a Muslim, I write a book. Yes.

I think this is the real solution to Islamophobia. If Muslims come up with new ideas, critical ideas, address the social problems series, then honestly, I think that's a good way to really destroy some prejudices that we are all brainwashed. We discuss issues,we look at the data and we are ready to talk and discuss.

What could be the way forward for the Muslim communities to negotiate the challenges which are thrown out by the modernity?

This is something we really need to think about and find the long-term solutions by referring to theology of course, these are important things but that's not the only thing because we live in a world with material factors, economic factors, politics, and geopolitics.

So, on the one hand, Muslims really need to revise their ideas, update and change the conditions to understand religion better. But there are also material factors. Major Islamic countries use oil money to spread their messages. Wahhabism or Salafism in general were funded by oil money. So is the Iranian understanding of political Islam now. But oil money is depleting. Eventually, it will be gone, either by new discoveries of alternative energy resources or by the basic fact that oil is if is not infinite.

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And by the decline of oil money, we'll see less funding for the propaganda. There will be multiple economic resources and the governments and authoritarian religious ulema state allies shall weaken.