The Purpose Toward Which the Social Contract Is Oriented

Zbigniew Brzeziński notes that between 1914 and 1990 “mega-deaths” are estimated to have reached 187 million—roughly 9 percent of the world’s population at the time. With the collapse of the Soviet system and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in the early 1990s, a faint atmosphere of optimism emerged. Fukuyama even declared the “end of history,” announcing that, aside from “boredom,” liberal democracy and the market economy had resolved humanity’s major problems. In his view, only a few minor anomalies remained—figures such as Saddam Hussein, the Iranian Islamic Revolution, or a handful of “cranks” who might object somewhere in the world—and these could be managed with ease. In this sense, the two Gulf interventions were partly directed toward that horizon. Yet soon thereafter Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington advanced the “clash of civilizations” thesis, arguing that the continuation of national unity and hegemony depended on the presence of an “other.”

At the global level, conflicts did not cease. Alongside active conflict zones, latent or potential conflicts also became activated. Moreover, within nation-states, massacres, repression, civil wars, uprisings, torture, and assimilationist policies continued with increasing intensity. Brutal regimes and internal conflicts on the national level displaced millions, forcing them to flee their homes and become refugees. As Eric Hobsbawm observed, during the Cold War the demonized enemy figure that democracies “needed” was kept alive by exaggeration. It can be said, in general, that torturers apply this crime against humanity to those whom they cannot subdue by other means. According to a report published in 1992 by the World Human Rights Guide, only fifteen countries fell into the “clean category.”

The tragic condition of the Islamic world in the first quarter of the twenty-first century is plain to see. Religious adherents, sectarian partisans, countries, ethnic groups, rulers and ruled, the poor and the wealthy, civil groups, and organizations continually clash with one another. Each group’s accusation that the other is guilty of treason does not remedy either the conflicts themselves or the moral degradation and socio-political chaos into which social life has fallen. As conflicts persist, external powers find it easier to intervene in the society experiencing them.

A crucial question, then, is whether this chaotic condition in the Islamic world stems from Islam itself or entirely from its historical trajectory. Edmund Weber’s analyses on this issue can offer a useful perspective.

Weber argues that an important factor enabling Islam’s rapid spread in the East and in Iran was that dominant religions and sects (Christianity and Zoroastrianism) regarded others as infidels who possessed no right to live. In that context, many populations perceived Muslims as liberators. In its essential form, Weber contends, Islam accepted the diversity of civilizations and cultures; it also treated the diversity of races, languages, and religions as a requirement of divine ordering. This acceptance of diversity was not grounded in political tactics. For Muslims, a religiously and culturally homogeneous society was not the goal. The need they felt for the state was to protect religiously and culturally distinct communities against external threats, to mediate (arbitrate) among them, and to regulate their relations and communications with one another. The Islamic state protected a non-Muslim majority: there was one state, but diverse religions, languages, and ethnic groups lived together. Historically, Muslims never imposed a single identity upon all groups.

In modern times, however, regimes that present themselves as “Islamic republics” are far removed from this historical experience. Even if this is a judgment that requires deeper analysis and critique, Weber suggests that these republics—if not “anti-Islamic”—are nonetheless “non-Islamic.” These states, he argues, take as their model early Christian patterns in which an orthodoxy was proclaimed. After Rome placed Christianity under state patronage, all non-orthodox religious beliefs were prohibited; throughout the Middle Ages, different religious groups had little chance to exist within public life. Martin Luther was the first to object: he rejected the idea of Christian unity because, in his view, God’s kingdom was not of this world. Christians, he argued, could obey even a non-Christian sovereign—such as the “godless Caesar,” or a Turkish sultan who did not believe in Christianity—because religious affiliation was not a condition of political legitimacy. The state is worldly; it attends to worldly affairs. Luther’s outlook later provided a strong foundation for secularism. One reason secularism was more easily accepted in Protestant regions than in Catholic ones is precisely this background.

With the Enlightenment’s new understanding, being Christian—or not—did not prevent one from being a citizen. The worldly state concerns itself with its citizens’ affairs regardless of their religion; whether believers establish congregations is their own decision. If a government permits every faith to organize as a community, this does not mean defying God’s command. With the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which ended the Thirty Years’ War, Luther’s religious views—though once treated as heretical—came to be recognized as one branch within the same religion. Yet since the cantons followed the principle of cuius regio, eius religio (“whose realm, his religion”), the citizens of a Protestant prince were compelled to be Protestant, and the citizens of a Catholic prince Catholic. Those who did not belong to the prince’s religion could emigrate—an option regarded as an unprecedented right for its time.

In later phases, religion was transformed into an instrument of state morality and of the realization of state aims. This, Weber suggests—beginning especially in Germany—can be seen as the start of the West’s transition into a multicultural era. At this stage, a religion or sect was acceptable insofar as it served the state’s goals and contributed to social life. Indeed, if it produced social benefit, even Islam could organize itself and live as a community. But if communities engaged in “empty” pursuits, they would not only be denied support; they would be abolished like parasites. In this way, new opportunities and spaces opened for Protestants, Jews, and Orthodox Christians.

This multicultural structure, however, was interrupted in the nineteenth century as the nation-state began to shape politics and governance. The modern nation-state, in order to protect itself and set boundaries vis-à-vis other states, felt the need to construct an artificial culture imposed from above. Thus emerged the idea of a single state-centered culture. Diverse religions and cultures were pruned back; the republic was imposed upon the populace through coercion.

In fascist regimes, religion was reduced to a state religion. Under Nazism, Stalinism, and Maoism, the state declared war on religion. The reason satisfactory solutions could not be found for new demographics produced by inevitable waves of migration, Weber argues, lies in a model without historical precedent: one state, one language, one nation, one culture. For Weber, the victims of this archaic turn in twentieth-century modern history—and the barbarism that followed—have no parallel. The republics established in the name of Islam (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran), he maintains, are not outside modernity; yet they stand against their own religion, Islam. Weber distinguishes the United States from this process and claims that, whether consciously or not, the U.S. is the only example that has adopted the multicultural model of “traditional Islam.” In his view, multiculturalism does not merely protect the individual’s freedom vis-à-vis the state; it also safeguards the individual’s freedom vis-à-vis the community to which one is bound—by birth or by voluntary choice. As he puts it: if becoming a world society means that the culturally sovereign citizen embodies cultural diversity, then for a modern society that increasingly becomes a “society,” the diversity of cultures is productive.

Indeed, on closer inspection it is possible to identify parallels between the Ottoman social structure—marked by a loose, bottom-up mode of organization—and the American model of association. Historically, the Umayyad, Abbasid, and Seljuk arrangements were not fundamentally different.

Between Weber’s account of the Western historical experience and the conclusion we derive from the Medina Document (the Medina Charter), three major differences become apparent:

1. Whether in Constantine’s adoption of Christianity or the German Enlightenment’s incorporation of religions and sects into the system, religion is accepted not li-ʿaynihi (for its own sake), but li-ghayrihi—for an external purpose, a practical benefit. In the Medina Document, by contrast, the parties are recognized as they are, according to their own declarations; coexistence with their religions and beliefs is secured through a legal compact. In this model, religion is not an instrument of the state.
2. The Peace of Westphalia introduced the principle of cuius regio, eius religio and thereby accepted Protestantism, previously treated as heresy/atheism. Yet it did not permit two different religions to live under the same prince’s territory; it merely granted adherents of different faiths and sects the right to emigrate. In the Medina Document, by contrast, even if some parties (the three Jewish tribes—Banū Qaynuqāʿ, Banū Naḍīr, Banū Qurayẓa) lived in separate fortifications outside the city—though they had long resided there—within the city Muslims, Jews, and polytheists lived together. The contract does not segregate them from one another.
3. While the modern nation-state seeks political unity through a single identity, a single legal order, and a single culture, the contractual model we derive from the Medina Document is grounded in one public law alongside multiple civil-societal laws. Communities with sociological reality determine public law through consultation and deliberation (mushāwara and muzākara) conducted among themselves. There is no pope, king-prince, or state apparatus imposing public or civil law from above.

From Weber’s analyses we draw two important conclusions. First, Islam is the only historical example that has been able to sustain multiculturalism or pluralism. Second, the practices and models of contemporary regimes established in the name of Islam lie outside Islam; their inspiration is drawn from the modern nation-state. This analysis therefore also sheds light on why conflicts in the Islamic world appear unending.

The question we must pursue, then, is this:

Can we, by returning to the Qur’an and to the Prophet’s Sunnah and Sīra, and by revisiting historical practice with a different lens, find a solution—both to the conflicts within the Islamic world and, more broadly, to the polarizing and conflict-producing process that continues at the global level? Looking at the early practice and the deep traces it left in history, we can say this: even today, using only the possibilities that Islam offers us, we can find solutions to the problems we are living through.