Afghanistan: Ansari article in Payam-i Mujahid

The most recent Payam-i Mujahid, the organ of the Afghan Jami`at-i Islami
(a major stream in the "Northern Alliance") carries an article by Bashir
Ahmad Ansari on the history of absolutism in Islam. The article begins
with an assertion that consultative (mashvirat) government and voting were
normative in very early Islam. It argues that this early Muslim
republicanism was swept away by the subsequent caliphs, beginning with the
Umayyads and extending to the Ottomans, who preferred to rule by force and
to make claims to absolutism in politics. The article blames the medieval
Muslim clergy for going along with this corruption of Islam, and
attributes it in some part to ancient Iranian and Sasanian notions of
royal absolutism, imbibed by the Muslims. The article attacks virtually
every Muslim government of the past, from the Mamluks to the Mughals.


Ansari, who appears to have lived in the U.S. until recently, is putting
forth a conception of Muslim history that locates sovereignty in the
people or umma (the Muslim community), but it is an umma re-imagined along
Jeffersonian lines. It is anti-monarchical, and thus has the side effect
of rejecting the position of those Pushtuns who wanted to bring back Zahir
Shah either as monarch or president. It is anti-caliphate and thus has
the implication of condemning Mulla Omar, whom al-Qaida had tried to
promote as the neo-Caliph for the Muslim world. Indeed, among many
radical Islamists the revival to the caliphate is a prime goal, whereas
Ansari depicts the history of the caliphs as a sordid one of oppression
and skullduggery. Bin Ladin implied that the end of the Ottoman empire
over 80 years ago and the abolition of the caliphate were disasters for
modern Muslims. Ansari is breathing a sigh of relief that such tyranny
masquerading as Islam was overthrown. He argues that it never mattered
whether the "caliph" was Arab, Persian, Turkish or other, he was always an
unscrupulous despot.


Ansari's point of view as a committed Muslim is analogous to that of the
American Baptists of the 18th century, finding virtuous democratic
republicanism the system of government most compatible with religion.
Unlike Khomeinism, which is also anti-monarchical, Ansari does not seem to
want to give a leading role to the Muslim clergy, and I suspect he would
denounce the Supreme Jurisprudent in Iran as just another absolutist
caliph.


I am aware of the association of the Jami`at-i Islam with former President
Burhanuddin Rabbani, whose record was disastrous to say the least. It is
not clear whether Rabbani's party can overcome its past to achieve a truly
democratic vision. Ansari appears to be trying to move in that direction.
The sort of thinking Ansari and other Muslim democrats are doing in
post-Taliban Afghanistan might be fairly important to the fortunes of
Islam as a whole. It is most unfortunate that his essay will not be read
in most of the Muslim world, because it is in Persian.


Sincerely,


Juan Cole
U of Michigan