Islam and politics is offering another model

which is quite different from Christianity,

and that’s why it’s probably so difficult

to take into account Islam

when we are observing it

from the western culture

and from western countries.

It’s another model because when Islam

was created at the 7th century

by Prophet Mohammed,

it was first of all based on community,

the famous Ummah,

the community of those

who were sharing the same faith.

Islam was created

in a very special historical context,

which was a context

of a strong and very harmful,

painful, tribal fragmentation.

This fragmentation that we could observe

at this time on the Arabic peninsula

was creating and was perpetuating

a kind of anarchy

which was very harmful for all the people

and trade men on the peninsula.

So Prophet Mohammed tried to define

a new order of social

and political integration,

this integration was a priority in the context

of fragmentation of these period,

and Islam must be considered,

approached, understood,

as a way of overcoming it.

That’s why when Christianity

is stressing delegation and representation,

Islam is stressing, emphasizing,

unity and solidarity, integration.

All the main features and the main creations

in this religion were focused

on this need of integration.

When Prophet Mohammed decided to leave

the city of Mecca for creating another city,

he was then creating a new integrated system,

in which religion, social structures,

political structures, law,

were strongly connected

and this is the starting point

of this vision not only of integration,

but also of politics and religion

strongly merging together.

The new city which was created

was not a secular city,

was not a religious city,

it was a city in which all the human functions

were connected, strongly connected and merged.

That’s why in the Muslim tradition,

the concept of Ummah is so important,

that’s to say the real basis of Islam

is no more a church, a centralized church,

but is a community of individuals,

is the solidarity of individuals,

creating a new body, which is the Muslim body,

the Muslim community of faithful.

And that’s why after Ummah,

the most important concept is Tawhid,

that’s to say unity.

As the main issue which was at stake

was a dangerous fragmentation,

the new invention was totally

organized around this concept of unity,

Tawhid, that’s why God is unity,

is unique and is no more considered

through three persons,

as it was the case with Christianity.

Unity of God, unity and unicity of legitimacy,

in this vision, only one legitimacy

is to be considered,

it is the legitimacy coming from God.

No legitimacy is supposed to come

from individuals and human beings,

the only possible formula of legitimacy

has to be found in the God willing,

and that’s why the famous Christian opposition

between a temporal, secular

and a spiritual religious legitimacy,

this coexistence of two legitimacies

is totally meaningless in Islam.

And this unicity of legitimacy

is given by a unique source,

which is law of God, that’s to say the Sharia.

After Ummah and Tawhid,

Sharia is playing a very structuring role

in the global vision, not only religious,

but global vision of Islam.

If there is one God, one community,

one legitimacy, one law,

so allegiance of individuals to this community,

to this law, and of course to God,

must be a strong, a total allegiance,

which is much more demanding

than the citizen allegiance

which takes place in the western tradition.

Allegiance, submission to Ummah, to truth,

that’s to say to Sharia, to God, and so,

these main elements are organizing a new politics

in which the solidarity around God

and his willing is the cornerstone.

That implies some important consequences;

first of all, in the Muslim tradition,

in the Muslim culture, legitimacy of power,

of political power is low.

If the only source of legitimacy

is coming from God,

the legitimacy of the human prince

is always a very low and poor formula.

That’s why, this is the second consequence,

the legitimacy of protest

is much more important

and much more structuring

than the legitimacy of the human power,

that’s why, in this vision,

protest is much more legitimate

than ruling the power, than ruling the city.

This kind of inversion

if we compare with Christianity,

is very very central, very crucial.

As the western culture is bringing a model

which is organizing the legitimacy of the state,

which is providing legitimacy to the state,

Islam is much more inclined

to provide legitimacy to protest.

And the last consequence

is to be found in law,

law is much more important than power

and this is a little bite similar

to the reformed Christianity,

that’s to say; in the reformed Christianity,

as I mentioned, law is much more important

than power as itself.

We can find a similar vision

in this conception of political order,

which is deriving from the Muslim history.

There is a kind of contradiction

because if Islam was created

for containing the risk of fragmentation,

the new political formula

is much more oriented to protest

than to support power,

and in fighting against fragmentation,

Islam is probably weakening human power

which is not able to find its own legitimacy.

This is probably one of the sources

of the political instability

of all the political systems,

which were conceived, constructed in the world

through this mobilization of Muslim culture.

Of course, Ladies and Gentlemen,

we have to take into account

the plurality of Islam.

I tried to give the main axes of Islam

in a global perspective,

but we have to take into account

several positions.

The first one would be

between Sunnism and Shiism.

As you know, Shiism

is the vision of Islam

coming from those who were stressing

the importance of inheritance

in the legitimacy of the caliph.

The caliph was considered as descending

from the prophet and Shiism

was supporting a vision of politics,

which was exercised by those

who were descending from the prophet.

And so from this vision we can find

a kind of valuing the role of hierarchy.

Valuing the role of hierarchy is giving

a new model to Islam and Islam and politics.

When Sunnism doesn’t consider

that the caliph must be chosen

among descendants of prophet,

and so is more decentralized

and giving more importance

to the role of preachers

and preachers networks.

We have also to discriminate inside Sunnism.

Sunnism is also constituted by several visions.

Wahhabism which is coming from Saudi Arabia

is stressing the role of the real

and the fundamental believes of Islam,

when reformed Islam which took place

in several times

tended to adapt Islam to modernity.

We have also to discriminate

between societies, among societies,

as Clifford Geertz made the point,

Islam in Morocco and Islam in Indonesia

is not the same.

That’s why when we take into account

Islam and politics,

we have to consider the special,

the specific history of Islam in each country.

Islam and Politics

Espace mondial：法国视角下的国际研究

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