Two Theses on the Problem of Politics (al-siyasa) in Comparative Political Theology

ABSTRACT

The nascent conversation in comparative political theology has been preoccupied with the question of the appropriateness of the theological as an exchangeable category across vast geographies and timescapes. What has gone nearly unexamined in this welcome process of deprovincialization, however, is the category of the political and its comparative purchase. Beginning with a vignette of a media interview with a Sudanese religious leader who makes use of the Arabic word we define as “politics,” al-siyasa, in a way that is confounding to common understandings of the term, my essay asks if we have too quickly embraced as taken-for-granted what we mean by the political in comparative conversations in political theology. Due to particular histories of secularization and stateifcation in Sudan, al-siyasa itself remains a contested category, as the fraught relationship between religious authority and political power persists unsettled.

KEYWORDS:

• Political theology
• siyasa
• Islam
• Sudan‌

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Kordofan is an Arabic speaking, mostly rural, area of western Sudan in which Sufi orders proliferate among the semi-nomadic and settled peoples of the region. I describe this region, and al-Bura‘i himself, in more detail in my 2016 book, For Love of the Prophet: An Ethnography of Sudan’s Islamic State.

2 This remains true even though comparative political theory, the umbrella field under which conversations in comparative political theology might take place, insists that we be attentive to the particularity of what we mean by politics when working across time and space (see, for example: Jenco, Idris, and Thomas, “Comparison, Connectivity, and Disconnection”). When it comes to political theology, however, the political is often projected stably across vast reaches of space and time with little discussion of its differentiation (for one example, see the otherwise useful collection of essays in Campanini and Di Donato. Islamic Political Theology), the theological acting as a blinding light.

3 See Chapter 5 of For Love of the Prophet.

4 Such conversations must be had as well in the case of Islam where theology (kalam) is a category active in the classical tradition but of unstable status in the modern tradition, even if it trickles through various and disparate fields. The concerns of the classical schools can still be read in subjects from ‘aqida (doctrine) to usul al-fiqh (theoretical jurisprudence), the latter particularly in the Shi‘i tradition where debates over the Creator and His relationship to the human mind are still very much active. However, “theology” is rarely an explicit frame in Islamic debate today.

5 تراني لا أميل إلى السياسة--ولم أصحب مدى الأيام ساسة--لعلمي مبدأها نفـــــاق-- تموه بالبلاغة والمــلاسة

6 Though he doesn’t mention it here, this well-known poem continues: “And those who possess [politics] sell religion for the world, for obtaining power and honor … .”

7 No author, “ba‘d faqd al-jalal.”

8 See Abdel Rahman, “Middle Class Sufism.”

9 Salomon, For Love of the Prophet, 127.

10 Shalakany, “Islamic Legal Histories.” For both orientalists and Muslim scripturalists: “We find the opposite logic [to shari‘a] in siyasa, a policy-driven logic seeking the vindication of secular ethico-utilitarian values, not of God’s revealed law, and whose qanuns in particular do not count as shari‘a since ‘[s]trict Islamic law is by its nature not suitable for codification because it possesses authoritative character only insofar as it is taught in the traditional way by one of the recognized schools [i.e. mazhabs]’” (32).

11 Salomon, For Love of the Prophet, 16ff.

12 This latter stance was often highlighted by authors trying to prove the shaykh’s neutrality as a practical consideration. For example, as two journalist-scholars put it:

Shaykh al-Bura‘i … is close to [politics] and far from it at the same time. As for his nearness, it is not possible for him but to have a relationship with leaders and politicians because even if he stood aloof from them, they would not stand aloof from him … As for his farness, he is not a political activist and not integrated into a party nor is he partial to a party or political faction or group. His paths are clear for all people [to approach him] and his abode is open to all, leaders and those who are led. So due to the nature of his social role, it is incumbent upon him that he not join a party or assume a political position, so he doesn’t oppose any government nor does he become a patron of it. As we mentioned above, in front of his khalwa [center for study and worship] have been placed the shoes of almost all the rulers who have ruled Sudan. (al-Buni & Sa‘id, al-bura‘i rajil al-waqt)

13 For an incisive argument that contends that it is politics that has moved into Islam, rather than the other way around, as is often assumed, see Hirschkind “What is Political Islam?”

14 Murad Idris makes this point clear his brilliant essay “Political Theory and the Politics of Comparison,” which has inspired me here. He writes,

To take “comparative” to mean the study of equivalent, coherent forms of “non-western” otherness is to elide the historicity of “the Western” and the ways in which it has been made in relation to non-Europeans … If the challenge that comparative political theory mounts is to contribute to projects of provincializing “the West,” decolonizing theory, or undoing latent forms of exceptionalism, then the apparatus of comparativism and the lexicon of West/non-West must be troubled. More basically, if political theorists share a concern with power, it is necessary to always underscore the politics of comparison … . (2&5)

15 Anjum, “Al-Siyasa al-Shara‘iyya.” Anjum writes at more length on this topic in his book Politics, Law, and Community in Islamic Thought, 102–7, where he quotes the Mamluk Shafii jurist Maqrizi (d. 1442) as writing,

Siyasa … is a Satanic word the origin of which most people of our time do not know and which they utter negligently and indifferently, saying: this matter is not included in the domain of the Shari‘a and constitutes part of the siyasa judgement. They deem [this hypothetical issue, on which they believe shari‘a to have been silent] a light matter while before God it is an enormity. (104).

16 Anjum, Politics, Law, and Community, 195.

17 March, “Modern Islamic Concepts of Sovereignty in Comparative Perspective,” 552. March explains siyasa shar‘iyya as follows:

the term refers to the authorization of discretionary public policy exercised by “secular” authorities beyond the letter of the sharia. This is partly a power-sharing arrangement, or division of labor, between the religious scholars and the rulers. Most areas of social and economic life are in the hands of jurists who derive their legitimacy from their administration of the sharia. Their authority is moral and epistemic … However, they in turn recognize the right and obligation of the holders of sulta [political power] to craft and enforce policies in all other areas to preserve the welfare (maslaha) of the people. (550)

One would be hard pressed to argue that al-Bura‘i is inhabiting such a frame, but I quote here at length only to point out the multiple ways the Islamic tradition has sought to carve out “religious” and “political” spheres that are not thereby secular.

18 See e.g., Fernando, The Republic Unsettled; Mahmood, Religious Difference in a Secular Age.

19 For Love of the Prophet, Introduction.

20 Salomon, “New Histories for an Uncharted Future.”

21 Agrama, “Asecular Revolution.”

22 Ibrahim, At‘ajib! At‘ajib!

23 Ralston, “Political Theology in Arabic.”

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Noah Salomon

Noah Salomon is Irfan and Noreen Galaria Research Chair and Associate Professor in Islamic Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia.