Dr. al-Hibri opened today’s class about Islam Ethics and the Other with a crucial question for the LLSP program: if democracy is the will of the people, and Islam is the will of God, does that necessarily mean that Islam and democracy are incompatible? Dr. al-Hibri refuted this argument because Islam is not coercive and supports freedom of thought and freedom of conscience. Therefore, when conflict and violence arise in Muslim communities, it is our beliefs and behaviors that are the problem, not Islam.
Dr. al-Hibri next asked the class what comprises democracy? Our participants answered, among many things, consultation, voting, free and informed consent, and the three branches of government. She then pointed out a specific example of democracy in Islam. If in the Quran women pledged their allegiance to the Prophet, how can it be that some Muslim communities still insist that women do not have the right to vote? After all, the women and the Prophet entered in a social contract through a democratic process, which was repeated in the same exact way with the men that pledged their allegiance to the Prophet afterwards. This social contract is based on the idea that women and men both were free to retract their allegiance, an essential freedom in democracy.
Dr. al-Hibri introduced the topic of the American constitution and how Islam influenced its making. The founding fathers created the American constitution, a document that contains nothing a Muslim would see and feel they have to reject in the name of Islam. Dr. al-Hibri supported this statement by talking about Thomas Jefferson, who was familiar with Islam since his younger days, and used the Quran for consultation in making a suitable constitution. This is an example of how Islam is not only compatible with Western democracy, it actually helped establish Western democracy.
One could argue that Islamic thought influenced the West even before the time of the founding fathers. Spanish literature was deeply rooted in Moroccan culture, which later influenced the Renaissance. During Roger II’s reign in Sicily, Muslim culture cooperated and influenced other cultures. We have to know that Islam influenced other countries and civilizations, and that we have benefited from the cultural transfer as well.
Islam gives us the basic principles by which we should live. But how we fill out these basic principles depends on our culture, the history of our country, what people in our country want, whether there is conflict in our country, and what is being done for conflict resolution. Democracy and Islam can coexist and even flourish together. Therefore, rejecting Western culture or the American system should be heavily reconsidered because no culture is an island among itself.
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