rnal 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 become modern enough. Muslims waited quite patiently—from the end of the colonial era until roughly the late 1970s—before returning to Islam. There was nothing natural or eternal about the appeal of Islam as a total way of life, and Sayyid Qutb and Abu Ala Mawdudi alone could not have changed many minds if the conditions were not suitable for that. Indeed, during their own lifetimes, both had little effect on the political systems of their national societies. The fact that so much political energy is credited to their legacy now belies the fact that, given a different set of conditions (see above for a short list of tasks), history could have taken a different turn, and Islam, while remaining important as a reference point for most Muslims, would not have required being “tamed.” What an-Na’im advocates now would in all likelihood have been accepted without needing a book to be written about it.
The arguments of the book are of course very sound. Yet, as tremendously learned, wide ranging and probing as they are, I am afraid they do not address the real problem. The problem, for me, has less to do with arguments about how we should understand Islam, and more with the nature of social and political developments befuddling Muslim societies. A liberal interpretation of Islam, or at least an interpretation that accommodates (or, as in this case, demands) a secular state, can indeed be based on the Islamic heritage itself. So can an authoritarian, dogmatic and intolerant interpretation mandating a state that applies the shari’a as law, and then really only one version of such shari’a.
The question therefore is not which Islam is “true,” or even what kind of arguments are needed in order to prove one approach to Islam to be more valid than another. If we are speaking of a living, interactive human enterprise, then sociologically speaking, Islam is what Muslims make of it. And in making it fit various needs—political, social, cultural, economic, spiritual—Muslims assert the status of Islam as a living and rich repertoire