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Abstract:
Logical arguments on whether the basic concept of a theocracy, which governs also dissenters and non-believers, is impossible in practice. Examples from Islam and Pakistan, where the theocratic ideal is being most actively pursued.
Notes:
Adapted from an email, shared with permission.
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In Pakistan there is are blasphemy laws prohibiting insults to Islam and the Prophet Muhammad and prescribing a mandatory death sentence, whether or not the insult was deliberate. In practice these laws are applied mainly against Christians and Ahmadis, members of a heterodox Islamic sect. I once attended a protest meeting directed against these laws and listened to a series of speakers, many of them Christians. An Anglican bishop made a strong argument from the Qur'an that this law was not a correct application of Islamic teachings. He was not the only non-Muslim to argue against this law on Islamic premises and, indeed, the arguments made against the law by Pakistani Christians were as likely to appeal to the Qur'an than to the Bible, international norms of human rights, or enlightenment ideas of religious freedom. This struck me at first as an interesting rhetorical strategy, made necessary by the fact that the Muslim majority would not accept non-Muslim ethical norms and notions about human rights. I was wrong. The bishop, I eventually realized, was part of an Islamic theocratic system-a strong theocratic system, to use the terminology that I will introduce below-and had as much right as any Muslim to argue for his interpretation of Islamic law. By its nature the blasphemy law presumed the right of the Muslim community to hold non-Muslims to Islamic law. The bishop was thus in a double relation with Islam. As a Christian qua Christian he had no concern with Islamic law and did not recognize its truth or authority except insofar as it was enacted by legitimate political processes in the common secular law of Pakistan. As a citizen of an "Islamic Republic," as Pakistan now styles itself, he was a dhimmi, a non-Muslim subject of an Islamic state subject to such laws as the Islamic state chose to impose on him. Since the legitimacy of this particular law in the eyes of the state and those who had voted it into law came from the sacred law of Islam, the bishop had every right to argue points of Islamic law. He was a citizen-albeit a second-class citizen-of a theocracy. Since the rulers of Pakistan accepted the common Islamic view that Islamic law was revealed in its completeness in the time of Muhammad and could only be expounded and expanded by interpretation, he was entitled to participate in that interpretation. The question thus raised for me was whether such a theocracy is viable, or whether the basic concept of a theocracy governing dissenters and non-believers is flawed in such a way as to make the success of any given theocracy unlikely or impossible.[1] This is not, of course, the same as asking whether any particular religion is true or not. My examples are mostly taken from Islam, and particularly Pakistan. Partly this is because they are the examples I know best, but more particularly because at present the theocratic ideal is being most actively pursued by Muslims. Definitions First general definition of 'theocracy': The first problem is what is meant by 'theocracy'. Literally, it means "rule by God," by analogy to 'democracy' and 'monarchy'. It will be clearer to formulate the definition in terms of principles, hence "God is the rightful ruler of human society." This is too general to be useful since almost any believer in God could accept it in some sense because it leaves undefined the way in which that authority is to be exercised. For that reason too, almost any government could claim to be a theocracy since one might plausibly argue, as Americans and monarchists often do, that the existing government is ordained by God's providence. Second general definition: To distinguish between theocracies and non-theocracies-however pleasing the latter may actually be to God in His hidden wisdom-we must add the specification that the government actually rules under authority that the rulers claim comes from God and according to norms believed laid down by God, in other words according to a specific religion. Such a specification allows us to distinguish between the theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran and the non-theocratic United States of America, both large democracies in which religion plays a major role in public life. This might give us the definition "God as He reveals Himself in the true religion is the rightful ruler of human society, which should be administered in accordance with the norms of the true religion." This definition is perfectly satisfactory to a theocrat,[2] who presumably is satisfied as to the identity of the true religion, but it is not satisfactory to the scholar or the philosopher, who would like to deal with all of the regimes that claim to be theocratic. If we are to include both true and false theocracies under a single definition, then the definition cannot be based on the will of God but rather on the self-understanding and behavior of the theocrats loyal to each system. We do not want to have to determine the will of God before we even start talking about our subject. Third and final general definition of 'theocracy': "The authoritative institution in a particular religion is the rightful ruler of human society because it will rule in accordance with the norms of that religion." We have removed God from this definition and replaced Him with religious institutions, thus relieving us of the necessity to decide whether a religion is true before we decide whether a government is a theocracy. A theocracy is distinguished from a religiously-oriented non-theocracy, like the United States, or from a regime with a state church, like Britain, by the fact that the religious leadership claims the right to enforce the religion, not just to appeal to consciences. Theocracies would thus include such regimes as the Islamic Republic of Iran, modern Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, Puritan Massachusetts, the early Islamic state, early Mormon Utah, Cromwell's English Commonwealth, and Calvin's Geneva. States like modern Britain, the United States, Spain under Franco, and most medieval Islamic states would not be considered theocracies because, however influential the religious authorities might have been, they did not directly exercise power or have the authority to enforce religious norms by coercion. Obviously, there are many issues of definitions, and most theocratic regimes will be mixed. Pakistan, the example I started with, is not formally under the rule of religious leaders, but the state does claim to be ruling in the name of Islam and claims the right and duty to enforce Islamic law, which has been adopted as a sort of super-constitution. From the bishop's point of view, Pakistan certainly is a theocracy, at least an aspiring one. My starting point was the relationship between the theocratic state and non-believers, so I need to make some definitions of theocracy based on the relationship between the theocracy and the non-believer. Weak theocracy: "The authoritative institution in a particular religion is the rightful ruler of human society, and it exercises that rule through the voluntary submission of believers to its authority." This definition is too weak to be interesting to us since it poses no particular conflict with non-believers, dissenters, or secularists. One might ask whether a theocracy could be based on so weak an authority claim, but it seems to be possible. The Islamic state of the time of Muhammad is an example, since the worldly authority of the Prophet was only exercised over those who voluntarily accepted it, and relations with the non-believing society was based on generally recognized social norms, the authority of treaties, for example. In traditional Arab states like Jordan and Saudi Arabia, the fiction-and to some extent, the reality-survives that an individual can only be ruled by his own consent. Other examples are Mormon Utah and Puritan Plymouth. Such voluntary authority arrangements seem not to be stable, however, and such theocracies eventually have to compel the consciences of non-believers and dissenters or to cede some authority to a secular state. The latter is the situation in modern Utah, where something like two parallel governments exist, a secular State of Utah and a Mormon commonwealth whose authority is accepted voluntarily. Moderate theocracy: "The authoritative institution in a particular religion is the rightful **ruler of human society, and it exercises its authority over all the believers in that religion, regardless of whether they accept the general authority of that institution or its specific rulings." An example is the Orthodox Rabbinate in Israel, which claims authority over all applications of Jewish law, regardless of whether the individual Jews affected are orthodox themselves or whether they agree with that particular interpretation of Jewish law. Other examples are strong state churches-traditional Catholic Spain, for example-and religions with strong central leadership and sharply defined boundaries of membership, such as the Baha'i Faith. Such systems rely on the presumption that the authority claim of the religious institution is obviously correct, a claim whose plausibility obviously varies depending on the particular cases. The key feature of such systems is that they enforce their norms on those who in any sense claim allegiance to that religion, regardless of whether the individual accepts or dissents from the particulars of that institution's exercise of authority. Coercion is possible due either to state sponsorship or the internal means of enforcement exercised by that institution within its community-the power of excommunication, for example. Such systems are less likely to involve the **state directly, since if they did, then they would be forced to treat non-believers according to religious law. Since the situation of the dissenter in a theocracy is much the same as the situation of the non-believer, I will simply treat the moderate theocracy as a special case of the strong theocracy, where the philosophical issues are clearest. Strong theocracy: "The authoritative institution in a particular religion is the rightful ruler of human society and exercises authority over believers who accept its authority, dissenting believers, and non-believers." Hereafter, when I use the term 'theocracy' it is in this sense, unless I specify otherwise. Examples are the Islamic theocracies such as the Islamic Republics of Iran and Afghanistan. In such systems the rights of dissenters tend not to be recognized. Non-believers in such theocracies may have rights-indeed, usually will-but the important fact is that these rights are defined in terms of the norms of the theocracy and not in terms of absolute rights or the religious frames of reference of the non-believers. Such rights are therefore conditional and may either not be granted or may be taken away, as happened respectively to the Baha'is of Iran and the Ahmadis of Pakistan. We now reach the philosophical issue that is the core of this paper: Is it possible for there to be a theocracy that (a) exercises coercive authority over dissenters and non-believers yet is (b) ethically defensible and (c) stable in practice? (a) may be rephrased as "Is it ever right to compel an individual to submit to the authority of a religiously-based legal system whose authority he did not voluntarily accept and which he had, in principle, no role in making?" Assumption: For our purposes I will assume that the authority of a secular legal system can be justified by some sort of social contract, democratic process, custom, common interest, or other factor sufficient to compel its willing acceptance by all or most of the people subject to it. For example, my father had a small role in writing the current constitution of the American state of Michigan and voted with the rest of the citizens of the state on whether it should be adopted. I accept the current constitution of the State of Indiana because it was once voted on and because there are democratic procedures for changing it. A member of a tribe might consider old custom sufficient authority for tribal law. This assumption can, in any case, be defended dialectically. One might, as libertarians sometimes do, object that no law can be binding on one who has not voluntarily accepted it, arguing that it is always wrong to compel an individual to act against his conscience. A theocrat cannot make this objection, however. If he grants the right of conscientious objection in the case of secular law, whose justification and claims are practical and which an individual can simultaneously obey and disagree with without doing violence to his conscience, he must obviously grant it in the case of religious conscientious objectors, who believe that their souls are at stake in obeying or disobeying religious law. (c) is the claim that a theocracy ought to be a viable system in practice. I will return to this claim later. The case for theocracy The case for theocracy is simple and superficially strong. It is based on three claims that though controversial are plausible and widely held. If (T1) there is revelation, and if (T2) revelation commands theocracy, and if (T3) people ought to do what revelation commands, then (T4) a theocracy ought to be implemented. The conditional (T5) If (T1 _____T2 ____T3) t___ T4 would seem to be valid. T1 is a philosophical claim, in the sense that it must be validated from outside a given religious system[3] by considerations external to that system. From within a given religious system it is unchallengeable, since it is implied by the existence of that system. It is, of course, true that there can be religion without revelation, but a religion with a theocratic ethic that denies revelation in every sense is a contradiction in terms; theocracy implies that God reveals His will to man. T2 is a theological claim, in the sense that it can only be proven or disproven from within a given religious system. One can argue that Christianity is or is not theocratic, and there have been major Christian thinkers and sects on both sides, but it cannot be decided on the basis of reason without reference to Christian scripture and tradition. In the case of Islam, for example, the theological argument for theocracy is quite strong and is generally accepted by Muslims. It is less strong in Judaism, though it has its defenders. T3 is more difficult. At first sight it would appear to be obvious, but it is not. One difficulty has already been brought out in our definitions of 'theocracy': which people, and what does 'ought' mean in this context? In a strong theocratic system, 'people' means everybody, and 'ought' means 'should be made to', so T3 becomes T3' "Everybody ought to be made to do what revelation commands." Put that way, the claim is still plausible-after all, if God has commanded something, which has already been assumed, why should it be bad to make people do it-but obviously it is open to philosophical challenge. If it is provably false on rational grounds, presumably any religion unequivocally advocating it is also false. It is also open to challenge on theological grounds; in a given religious system the execution of sacred law might be constrained by other considerations: rational ethics, equity, prudence, or timeliness. It might even be assumed that the religious law is non-obligatory, symbolic, or capable of being transcended-which is more or less the view of Reform Jews. It seems safe that say that theocrats who can defend these three propositions on appropriate philosophical and theological grounds have given themselves sufficient warrant for establishing a theocratic system, for any counterargument would have to be theological and based on a different religious system, whose principles would not be probative for the theocrats. To put it concretely, suppose an orthodox Jew, a Mormon, or a Muslim can show philosophically that revelation exists and that there is no philosophical contradiction involved in supposing that God commanding something creates an obligation to see that that command is carried out. Suppose also that he can show that within his religious system it can be proven that God has commanded a theocratic regime and that it is our obligation to carry out God's command. If he can do that, then he has warrant for creating a theocratic regime. Further, it is possible to make a plausible case for (T6) If (T1)_______T2 ____T3) That is, the concept of revelation implies both that human society ought to be governed in accordance with the norms given by revelation and that revelation creates an obligation both to obey and to enforce. If so, the theocrat need only prove that there is a real instance of revelation to have proven his case. I think this is wrong and that T2 and T3 are independent of T1 (although obviously not vice versa). Nonetheless, given most understandings of revelation, T5 is plausible or even presumptively valid. The case against theocracy There is a kind of joke called "irregular verbs," of the form: "I am principled; you are stubborn; he is a pigheaded fool." Theocracy and opposition to theocracy are somewhat similar. There are three possible ways to be against theocracy: (N1) "I should not impose a theocracy." (N2) "You should not impose a theocracy." (N3) "Neither you nor I should impose a theocracy." For "I" read "the religious system I accept," and for "you" read "any religious system that I do not accept." One need not accept all of these, but it seems to me that these propositions are related in uncontroversial ways. (C1) If (N1_ ____N2) t_____N3) is analytic and obvious. (C2) Not (if (not N2)_t____(not N1)) or not ((not N1) ____N2) This is the theocrat's position; his theocracy is right and those of other people are wrong. It is not, of course, the kind of opposition to theocracy that we are interested in here. (C3) If (not N1), t____(____N2) In other words, if I do not have the right to impose a theocracy, neither does anybody else. This is not logically true, but it is difficult to imagine that anyone who holds N1 would deny N2. If I think that my religious system is correct and that it does not justify imposing a theocracy, I cannot genuinely think that there is another religious system to which I ought to grant the right to establish a theocracy. There can only be one true religion, and each person who genuinely accepts a religious system believes that his religion in that one. There is an obvious objection to this, that it is perfectly possible to believe that there is more than one true religion. It might be that different religions are (i) more or less complete reflections of the truth, as the Christian believes about the relationship between Christianity and Judaism, or (ii) they are alternate partial representations of the unknowable absolute truth. However, if (i), then the believer necessarily thinks that his own religion is the most complete reflection of the truth, and his situation for our purposes is the same as the person who thinks that he believes in the only true religion. If (ii), then the believer has actually accepted a metareligion, and he is unlikely to accept absolutizing one partial truth through a theocracy and is highly unlikely to grant someone else's partial truth the right to theocracy. The point remains: if a person grants to any religion the right to establish a strong theocracy, it will only be to his own. Now, to return to the main question: What are the arguments against theocracy? The obvious approach is to attack T1, T2, or T3; in other words, is it the case that (N4) If ((not T1) or (not__T2) or (not_T3)), then (not T4)? Formally, N4 does not follow from T5, but a theocracy ought to be based on something stronger than material implication. Certainly, most theocrats would accept N4. What would it mean to hold that (T6) ((not T1) or (not T2) or (not _T3)) _____T4? Obviously, it would mean that one was advocating the establishment of a theocracy not based on true revelation, a "pseudo-theocracy," we might call it. Could there be grounds for doing such a thing? There seem to be two.
The empirical case against theocracy A common criticism of theocracies is that they are not nice places, being in practice harsh, grim, and tyrannical, often with a strong element of hypocrisy being the factor that makes life possible. Depending on one's tastes one might cite as examples Calvinist Geneva, Puritan Massachusetts, the English Commonwealth, Fatimid Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Islamic Iran, and Taliban Afghanistan. Such regimes are frequently unstable. Early Islam is an example of a quite successful theocracy, but very serious problems had arisen within fifteen years of the death of the Prophet, and many of the Prophet's companions lived to see the Islamic commonwealth turn into a kingdom run mainly for the benefit of the ruling family, no different in most respects from the regimes it replaced. Likewise, none of the theocracies established in America in the seventeenth or nineteenth centuries outlived the founders' children. It is this phenomenon that gave the word 'theocracy' a bad connotation. Therefore, on empirical grounds it is reasonable to assert that (N5) Theocracies are consistently unsuccessful in practice. For this proposition to be relevant to the question at issue, it must at least imply a denial of T3 and, depending on the particular religious system under discussion and the degree of its commitment to T2 and T3, possibly also a denial of T1 and T2. It is relevant because of most theocrats would hold that (T7) A true theocracy will produce optimal results in a given social situation. But are we justified in attributing T7 to all or most theocrats? It is certainly common for theocrats to attribute social problems to a failure to follow God's laws. Modern Islamists, for example, are almost always convinced that Islam is a perfect system and that by implementing Islamic laws, the social problems of Islamic societies will be automatically cured. In general, rational justifications of religious law-for example, the Islamist explanations of religious taxes as means of reducing the gap between rich and poor and attempts to explain dietary laws as promoting health-presume that the purpose of religious law is at least partly the betterment of the physical and social conditions of human beings. The justification of a benevolent pseudo-theocracy is the good effects that it will have on society. But even if most theocrats do accept T7, are we justified in thinking that this proposition says something essential about theocracy? While there is nothing implausible about a theocrat explaining religious law in terms of the well-being of the people, we might object that it is perfectly possible that the justification for a theocracy is that certain things are intrinsically pleasing or displeasing to God and that they therefore ought to be done or not done, irrespective of the effect on society. Certainly, examples of dysfunctional (at least, in the view of outsiders) religious laws are not hard to find-the Hindu reluctance to kill cows or the Catholic prohibition on the use of artificial birth control, for example. The obvious response is that such matters are really disagreements about the nature of a good society, and the Hindu's defense of untended cows in the streets of Indian cities is analogous to the Western liberal's defense of care for the disabled and retarded. Still, we may object, there is nothing logically inconsistent about God willing a society that is not in the temporal best interests of its people. If we accept that, it perhaps casts doubt on T3. Still, since there do not seem to be major religions whose advocates hold that God is malevolent, it is questionable whether this is actually different from the previous case, a disagreement about the relative importance of worldly and spiritual goods. In any case, there seems no reason to doubt that all but a few theocrats would accept T7. Responses to N5 The theocrat, however strong his proofs for T1, T2, and T3, can scarcely avoid replying to N5. Three general arguments can be used.
Interim conclusions It is time to take stock and see where the arguments stand. So far I have been trying to clarify the concepts and define the disputes. In each case here I am talking about the strong interpretation of theocracy, that which claims the right to subject dissenters and non-believers to the authority of the theocracy.
The Theocratic Antinomy The believer: "I believe that God has commanded the believers to carry out his commands in the secular realm and that this command gives us the right to impose God's will on the unbelievers. Since God's will is the ultimate source of moral authority, I would be acting immorally if I failed to obey this divine command." The unbeliever: "The believer's action is based on his conscience, his sincere conviction about what is right and wrong and what is God's will. I do not accept his conviction, and do so by the same right of conscience. I therefore am justified in rejecting his theocracy." The dissenter: "The believer has misunderstood the revelation. In fact, God has commanded us to do something different. It is therefore my obligation to resist the believer's theocracy." This is the basic conflict concerning theocracy. The acceptance of a religion would seem to impose an absolute obligation on the believer to carry out its commandments, even if they concern unbelievers and dissenters. The unbelievers and dissenters do not share belief in the authority of the theocracy. The problem here is not disagreement-disagreement is a normal feature of every aspect of human social and political life-but the fact that disagreement is absolutized. If we are parliamentarians disagreeing about tax policy, members of the local garden club disagreeing about arrangements for the annual flower show, or a married couple disagreeing about where to go on vacation, we can compromise, insist, deal, bully, give in, or walk out, depending on how strongly we feel about the particular issue and what we might expect to get in return for either giving way or getting our way. There are well understood methods of settling differences. With religion the problem is different; we are dealing with the will of God and the well-being of our eternal souls. Compromise is not an option unless compromise itself is religiously sanctioned. All disputes are potentially absolute, and compromise is a betrayal of the truth. Worse, the same dynamics exist within the theocratic community. God, after all, does not rule a theocracy directly; He rules through the actions and opinions of those who believe that they have correctly divined His will. But humans being humans, there is no guarantee that the theocratic community itself will be immune from disagreement--hence, the phenomenon of dissenters. This would seem to indicate that a theocracy will steadily divide against itself, being ruled by an ever-shrinking group who both believe and manage to hang onto power. Indeed, it is usually internal dissension that brings down theocracies. That bring us to the anti-theocratic theorem: (N6) Theocracies are unable in the long run to avoid unresolvable internal dissension and are therefore inherently unstable. N6 is fatal to any defense of theocracy with the possible exception of the model that makes theocracy an ideal not necessarily attainable in practice. I will discuss the implications of N6 later, but first it is necessary to see whether there is some way around it. For the theocrat to reject N6, he must show that there is some way to make theocratic rule acceptable to those who do not accept the divine basis either of the theocracy as a whole or of a particular policy--those who reject T2 or T3 with respect to that theocracy. It is not necessary to assume that the unbeliever accepts the authority of the theocracy for the same reason that the believer does; there might be practical advantages, or no better alternatives, or threats. Alternatively, the theocracy might be made acceptable by reducing its claims over the dissenter and the non-believer.
Conclusions and new problems We might have thought that the critical question with respect to theocracy is whether God has in fact commanded us to establish one, and if so which one. This is a question that combines a philosophical question--is there revelation--with a theological one--what are the content and practical implications of that revelation. These questions remain unanswered. While they can be answered to the satisfaction of particular individuals, and sometimes to the satisfaction of entire communities, there is no reason to think that as a practical matter they can be answered to the satisfaction of mankind as a whole. Determining God's will is something that each of us has to do for himself. My major conclusion is that theocracies are unstable because they make normal politics impossible. If policies are a matter of God's will, all disagreements become matters of principle. Since the rulers of a theocratic state must make judgments about the implications of divine law for particular cases, disagreements are inevitable, and these disagreements, however petty, are by definition matters of conscience rather than practical politics, certainly not matters to be settled by compromise, deals, or majority vote. An inexorable logic thus drives theocratic communities towards tyranny and schism. Unless the absolute claims of the theocratic state are relaxed--as happened in Mormon Utah, for example--the dissolution of the community in schism and disillusionment is inevitable. The reader should particularly note that this does not depend on whether the theocracy is actually true or false; at best one might expect that a true theocracy would produce fewer disagreements and thus be more stable. The kingdom of God cannot endure forever on earth, for it cannot by its nature produce an effective political system. Thus, the quest for a method of distinguishing true from false theocracies has little point in the long run. The reader may also have noticed a certain vagueness in my use of the concept of theocracy. I am sometimes talking about states ruling in the name of God and sometimes talking about religious institutions insofar as they impose their authority through coercive means. This is because I conceive the essence of theocracy to be the imposition of religious law on those who have not voluntarily accepted it. This can happen in a variety of ways, not all of which involve the state directly. At one extreme are regimes where the religious authorities rule more or less directly, as in Muhammad's Medina, early Mormon Utah, or Islamic Iran. Alternatively, the state may enforce religious law, as in Pakistan, or allow some religious institution to enforce it, as in Israel. Other possibilities are that private individuals or groups enforce a particular form of religious law with the passive agreement of the state, as happens in Saudi Arabia. These would be strong or moderate theocracies in my terms. In some cases the authority of a religious institution within its community is strong enough that it is able to enforce law on dissenters even without assistance or acquiesence of the state, as is the case in Baha'i Faith, where a strong central organization and clear community boundaries make the situation of dissenters extremely precarious. The problem is not the state's recognition of religion as such--regimes with state churches are often perfectly stable--but the attempt to impose religious law on those who do not voluntarily accept the law or its particular application. The reader will notice that the situation of moderate theocracies is similar to that of strong theocracies, though their problems concern only dissenters, not unbelievers. A moderate theocracy may involve state sponsorship, as is the case with the Orthodox Rabbinate in Israel and medieval Islam, but it may not, as is the case with the modern Roman Catholic Church and the Baha'i Faith. Such systems are vulnerable to the same problems as strong theocracies. The Baha'i Faith, for example, has been consistently unable to deal with dissidents, and its experience is probably typical of small, tightly organized religious communities. However, in practice moderate theocracies can be stable over long periods. The Roman Catholic Church, a decidedly theocratic institution, is the oldest continuously functioning institution in the world, and Orthodox Judaism has stayed united despite an ancient tradition of disagreement about legal questions. The experience of Sunni Islam is much the same. As essentially voluntary organizations, they are forced to find ways to accommodate disagreement if they are to survive at all. Sunni Islam early accepted the principle that good-faith disagreements within broad limits on matters of law were to be accepted as legitimate, and the state remained aloof from such disagreements. Roman Catholicism, while certainly unsympathetic to innovations in matters of belief, hit on the system of religious orders as a way of constructively channeling disagreement, especially on matters of spiritual style. A group that wishes to live in a way significantly at variance with the Catholic norm is allowed to form a voluntary autonomous community governed by its own laws. Orthodox Judaism simply make lively debate and disagreement about the fine points of religious law the central activity of religious life. But all this is to say that moderate theocracies are stable precisely to the extent that they are not actually theocratic. So, theocracy--theocracy in my sense, a government that seeks to enforce the laws of God--is not a viable form of government because it makes workable politics impossible. But that raises a new issue: how can religious values be injected into public life? Some laws--traffic laws, much criminal law, much law governing the economy--simply reflect the state's need to keep order and keep society functioning efficiently. On the other hand, a great deal of law reflects values. American law prohibits polygyny because polygyny is viewed with consistent horror in the European Christian tradition. Pakistani law allows it in accordance with Islamic standards. American law tolerates the private practice of homosexuality but denies official recognition to homosexual relationships, a precise reflection of the ambivalence of American religious attitudes towards homosexuality. My account would seem to point towards a system in which the law of the state is entirely indifferent to religious values and religious law is purely a matter of private allegiance. But this seems extreme, a prescription for a coldly utilitarian state in which morality is private and the motivating principle of public life is expediency. If we take religion seriously, it must inform the norms--the laws--of society. The question is particularly acute in the case of religions in which law is important and there is little or no intellectual justification for the separation of church and state. The most important case is Islam, which includes more than a billion people and forty states. Serious Muslims throughout history have held that the state in some way should enforce the laws of Islam, and a great many serious Muslims now attribute the ills of their society to the willingness of their states to have non-Islamic laws. The theocratic ideal is at the heart of the Islamic value system and cannot be removed without doing fatal damage to the spiritual core of Islam. Yet the use of state power to enforce Islamic law is obnoxious to non-Muslim minorities. Moreover, there is no agreement among Muslims as to which form of Islamic law should be enforced. Shiites resist being subjected to Sunni law, Hanafis resist Hanbali law, and modernists resist traditional law. The problem is compounded by confusion about the relationship between local tradition and more universal forms of Islamic law. Nor is the controversy unique to Islam, as the American controversies about abortion, homosexuality, and the teaching of evolution show. It is beyond the scope of this paper to offer a solution to this problem, but from what I have argued here, I think that any solution to the problem of introducing religious values appropriately into public life must involve the following components. First, religious values cannot be incorporated into the law of the state in such a way that they force citizens to recognize a religious system that they do not themselves accept. The state, in other words, must not challenge the consciences of its citizens, whether dissidents or non-believers. Second, recognition of religion must be evenhanded. If there is a state religion, other religions must nonetheless receive what their believers accept as appropriate recognition. Third, to the extent that the state does reflect the values of the dominant religion, it must do so in a way that encourages rather than enforces, and it must leave room for legitimate dissent. In a sense, this is an appeal for tolerance, but I think that tolerance is too weak a principle. It works--barely--as a way of mediating disputes in the Christian world, where tradition has become weak and the underlying religion stresses morality and personal conscience over law while encouraging indifference to one's neighbor's sins. Islam is a religion based on law in which the principle of actively encouraging the good and discouraging evil is fundamental to ethics. A tolerant indifference to one's neighbor's doings is not a legitimate option. An Islamic society must be actively engaged in furthering good. Islam, I think, provides an instructive comparison to the moral economy of the nominally-Christian West. But I do not yet have an answer to the question of how these divergent values can be combined in general principles that can be the basis of the moral order of living societies. Notes
November 28, 2000 |
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