e state in our time. I will try to say something about that shortly, but before doing so I would like to offer three rejoinders regarding the meaning of shari’a, and specifically to what extent we can understand it as Islamic “law.”
First, shari’a had historically referred to the sum-total of practical ways of being a Muslim in the world—i.e., it was meant more as a guide to everyday pious life rather than as a set of rules to be deposited unto a uniform state law. Hence, the historical diversity of the shari’a (even within territories and among populations ruled by a single state). This historical rootedness of the shari’a in everyday life appears to be responsible for why Muslims came to see it as organically fitting into their varied ways of life, without a need for force or coercion. Only in modern times does shari’a come to be understood as “law” in a more strict sense of the word, and only in this way did it become a problem.
Second, even when it is asserted as a guide for modern law, one could still maintain the old flexibility of the shari’a by highlighting not the formal rules of the shari’a itself but its “intentions,” maqasid al-shari’a. This kind of discussion is less attuned to what the rules should be, and more to how to make sense of the rules in terms of our values, interconnections, and sense of sociability or purpose in life. Thus whereas pure formalistic discussions of shari’a tend to posit it as external to human agency, discussions of the intentions of the shari’a are geared toward humanizing it and making it, again, into an organic outgrowth of a reflexive process or interactive reasoning.
Third—and this point has to be argued forcefully—no religion can survive if approached strictly or primarily as a set of “laws” that are external to the human interpreter. Indeed, as an-Na’im clearly argues, this is how religious reason itself develops, and in the final analysis it is the believer who is making sense of what their religion is. The problem arises when religion begins to appear entirely external to the individual psyche—that is, as a set of rules that requires obedience for no reason other than that it is the “law,” enforced by an authority (which might be the state), and requiring no personal spiritual investment. A proper religious life, then, is less about obeying the law and more about social and spiritual orientations. As such, religious life that is voluntarily chosen informs ethical conduct in society and spiritual experience vis-à-vis the self.
Many Muslims know that already, yet they highlight the need for shari’a-based life when asked, and often tie its application to state policies. The question then becomes why they do that. The basic problem seems to me to be that the virtues of the alternatives are not yet obvious enough. Secular states in much of the Muslim world were products of the colonial experience rather than of indigenous political development, and as an-Na’im knows well, a substantial part of the modern secular experience is tied to extreme authoritarian systems. Of course, all states, including those formed by arbitrary decisions of European powers, may over time appear natural and become accepted as such by their populations, but not at any price. Such states have to succeed in what modern states the world over are expected to succeed in: namely, they must demonstrate effective sovereignty; deliver public goods; establish universal meritocratic systems; be responsive to grievances; make “citizens” feel that they have an effective voice in their own national affairs (whether through formal democracy or other means); resolve remaining grave historical injustices of colonialism (the case of Palestinians being the most glaring example); and generally not appear to be arbitrary or beholden to foreign interests.
The “return” to Islam as a “total way of life” (including politics and law) is therefore not accidental, and can indeed be timed very specifically to a convergence of failures in the diverse missions of the modern state mentioned above. The modern, secular state failed to 