Insights on The Islamic Legitimacy of the Muslim Uprisings

To begin to analyze the existing condition in the Heart East and North Africa, each of the activities in the many affected places would need to be assessed on an incident-by-event basis. Conditions in each country are distinctive and thus any blanket record would probably not just be incorrect, but in addition irresponsible. What follows are some factors that would need to participate in any significant debate of the Islamic legitimacy of the many activities that can perhaps reshape the political road of the Heart East.

To begin with, we have to keep in mind that established treatises and writings working with Muslim political theory won’t give people the whole reply to the issue of the Islamic legitimacy of the constant uprisings in the Muslim world. That is so since those writings happened in a sociopolitical atmosphere that differs entirely from the existing one. Especially significant in that respect may be the arrival of the modern nation-state and their associated ideas of state sovereignty, legitimacy, allegiance, citizenship, the social contract, and the national interest. All these ideas, in the modern placing, differs from their premodern conceptual version or were as yet not known in the premodern world. Thus, the writings of premodern Muslim scholars, no matter how excellent, can not give people a full perception of the social, political, and national problems that Muslims are dealing with.

Secondly, the character of the neocolonial measures that prevail in lots of Muslim nation-states, where a “comprador bourgeoisie” “manages” the indigenous masses on behalf of an international power renders the whole issue of the legitimacy of the state a controversial point. In other words, if the state is only a top for international get a grip on, and the plans it pursues are focused to offer the interests of an international elite, first and foremost, it is useless to discuss the allegiance people owe to the state without wondering a further question. Particularly Tafsir al ahlam, if the truth is allegiance to the state is a sort of p facto allegiance to international non-Muslim power, how can issues of allegiance to the state have any definitive meaning or relevance from an Islamic perspective?

The third dilemma of significance may be the hegemonic nature of the modern state and their ability to exert get a grip on the lives of their citizens in manners that were inconceivable during the time medieval Muslim political theorists were writing. Generally speaking, the modern state controls the financial living chances of their citizens, it defines the variables of political involvement, it controls the scope and nature of training, it could intrude very nearly at will to the private lives of their citizens, it could establish the conditions of mass incarceration (i.e. the Japanese Internment Act, or the existing Medicine Conflict in the United States) and, when it prefers, it could tyrannize the citizenry with impunity, as by description the state monopolizes the legitimate usage of force in the society it presides over.