On Islam, morality and politics

Politics is, in its essence, a moral act. It is a mode of existence that begins to be realized from the moment the human being starts to change the world. Among all created beings, there is no being other than the human that can put forth a will aimed at changing the world, at making it different from what it is.

This characteristic too has been given to the human being by God as a trust. The human being who takes up this trust and sets out to change the world has two options. Either he will develop the world, or by causing corruption and mischief he will make it worse than it was. That is why, when our Lord said He would create a vicegerent on earth, the angels asked, "Will You place on it one who will cause corruption on it and shed blood, while we glorify You with praise and sanctify You?" and God said, "I know what you do not know."

In the continuation of this answer, we are told that God taught Adam all the names and presented these names to the angels. Names, language, naming things with their true names are the most important faculty given to the human being to fulfill his mission on earth. Politics, too, takes place within this faculty. That is why the corruption of the world runs parallel to the corruption of language, or the world's being exposed to mischief always takes place together with a falsification at the level of language.

For political action, there is a broad field before the human being in which he goes back and forth between development and corruption. Those who do not reconcile the political with religiosity, let alone pure religiosity, render religiosity ineffective by falsifying it under the control of a certain corrupting (mufsid) politics. In this case nothing remains in the way of religiosity but idolatry. It makes no difference at all that this idolatry is put forth under the appearance of an extremely mystical religiosity or a withdrawal from the world. In fact, in whatever situation, the human being can in no way shed the political, because, 1, from the moment he intervenes in the world with his language or his action, and 2, in the sense that he defines relations of friend and enemy, from the moment he places himself in the "we" parenthesis with certain people, the human being has performed a political act. With whom are you a friend, to whom an enemy? With whom do you rejoice, with whom do you make merry, and with whom do you grieve? For what do you rejoice and weep with these friends of yours? On whose side are you, and for what reason, and against whom, and for what reason?

Let even those who today claim to be furthest from the political examine themselves on this point. They can immediately understand how far from or near to politics they are.

It is also clear that, by its nature, the political requires a demand or will for power. Nietzsche and the political thinkers who followed him underline that this "will to power" is essentially a will in human nature. Thus they reduce the political to the most fundamental human existence. In fact this is correct as the plainest and most realistic observation about the human being. But what matters is how this desire is directed, or in whose name it acts.

In human nature there is also a claim and demand of appropriation, and this claim always makes him a candidate for associating partners with God. Dominion belongs to God, and judgment too is His. In using this power, to the extent that he desires power for himself, there is also a disposition toward deification, or toward becoming a slave to deified human beings, against God, who created him and charged him with the mission of developing the earth, the vicegerency. It is precisely here that the corruption on earth that the angels foresaw is realized.

In politics in a narrower sense, how well Muslims act in accordance with the mission of developing the earth should of course always be a question hanging over their heads. It should even put serious pressure on their style of politics. With these questions: Are the offices and positions demanded and obtained in politics, which are commanded only to serve God, being used in a direction befitting human dignity? In whose name is power sought? In whose name is it used? Is the power entrusted to him seen as stemming from himself, or as "a power obtained by the right of his own wrist and therefore to be enjoyed to the end"? Does he see the offices he holds in politics as a bird of fortune alighted on his head, or as a trust like a shirt of fire he has put on?

It is very clear that what Taha Abdurrahman brings to our minds under The Principle of the Unity of Morality and The Morality of Politics should prompt us to reflect somewhat on ourselves. These are questions that people engaged in politics in the narrow sense should stop and ask from time to time: What are we doing in politics? For what did we set out, where have we arrived, and what comes after this?

When we see politics as an existential journey, this is not an accounting held in anyone's monopoly or one that anyone will use as a separate means of power against another. After all, these are also questions that those who are not in political offices in the narrow sense must ask themselves. The friend-enemy relation is the most fundamental level of politics. Where do we position ourselves within this relation? If Islamism, as being conscious of one's Muslimness, has an arche that can be traced back to the first human being, is it not this: to position oneself on the side of the good, with the good, against evil, against Satan as an enemy...?

For those who see politics merely as a means for their personal advancement, even if they entered with these sublime meanings, it is destined that in the end they will position themselves on the side of the evil. For Muslims, the political is, first and last, being the development of the earth for God and in the name of God, and, for that, friendship, solidarity and empathy with good people, with the believers.

So what does it mean that those who see politics as too evil to be mixed with religion, with Islam in particular, are themselves up to their necks in politics? What can be seen here other than a human cunning in the claim to godhood, to avoid involving God in one's own affairs?