Ep.75 - Constructing an Ummatics Centered Caliphate with Ovamir Anjum
Since the destruction of the Ottoman Khilafah at the beginning of the twentieth century, many Islamic movements were formed to recreate the very institution behind much of our historic ascendency as an ummah. These calls tended to be top-down projects that borrowed much from the nation-state authoritarian political models of the twentieth century. Their vision for a caliphate was open to one-man rule, concentrated power, and erosion of citizen rights. The consequent failure of the Arab Spring, albeit its first wave, also challenged these twentieth-century movements, whose programmes were revealed to be ill-thought through and the rise of ISIS, no matter how aberrant and repulsive, merely showed the Muslim public why one needs to read more carefully Islamic political projects and their ambitions.
My guest this week, Professor Ovamir Anjum, has not given up on the duty to re-establish the caliphate. Instead, he argues that any future reconstruction of this sacred institution has to be premised upon what he calls an ummatic framework, an ummah-centric model. He argues that the Rashidun model was fundamentally based on the consent of the ummah, and through shura, that is, consultation, and this is how the earlier caliphs successfully built an empire unlike any other. In this interview, I ask him to spell out what it means to think in an ummatic way and elucidate on the practicalities.
Ovamir Anjum is the Imam Khattab Chair of Islamic Studies at the Department of Philosophy, University of Toledo; he wrote the article ‘Who Wants a Caliphate’, which I shall place in the show notes together with an earlier interview. He is a prolific writer and commentator on Islam and Muslim affairs.
Thanks to the team: Riaz Hassan, Musab Muhammad, Reem Walid, Adeel Alam, Ahaz Atif and Umar Abdul Salam.
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This is a largely accurate clean verbatim transcript. Please refer to the original programme where incomplete or unclear.
Ovamir Anjum: And anyone who thinks of the caliphate as a centralized totalitarian state is dead wrong. It will not last a day. And it will be horrible nightmare because it will never be Islamic.Muhammad Jalal: Since the destruction of the Ottoman Khilafah at the beginning of the 20th century, many Islamic movements were formed to recreate the very institution behind much of our historic ascendancy as a number. These calls tended to be top down projects that borrowed much from the nation state authoritarian political models of the 20th century. Their vision for a caliphate was open to one man rule, concentrated power and erosion of citizen rights. The consequent failure of the Arab spring, albeit in its first wave also challenged these 20th century movements whose programs were revealed to be ill thought through and the rise of ISIS, no matter how abhorrent and repulsive merely showed for Muslim public, why one needs to read more carefully Islamic political projects and their ambitions. My guest this week, professor Ovamir Anjum has not given up on the duty to reestablish the Khilafah.
Instead, he argues that any future reconstruction of this sacred institution has to be premised upon what he cause an Ummatic framework, an Umma centric model he argues about the Rashidun model was fundamentally based on the consent of the Umma and through shura that is consultation, and this is how the earlier caliphs successfully built an empire unlike any other. In this interview, I ask him to spell out what it means to think in an automatic way and elucidate on the practicalities. Ovamir Anjum is the Imam Khattab chair of Islamic studies at the department of philosophy, university of Toledo. He wrote the article ''Who Wants a Caliphate", which I shall place in the show notes together with an earlier interview, I conducted with him. He's a prolific writer and a commentator on Islam and Muslim affairs
Professor Ovamir Anjum, assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullah and welcome back to the Thinking Muslim Podcast.
Ovamir Anjum: Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullah, thank you very much for having me.
Muhammad Jalal: Now professor Anjum you wrote your piece on the Yaqeen website "Who Wants a Caliphate" in late 2019 and in that article you urged Muslims to develop a new consensus on the need for a caliphate. We spoke on this podcast a few months after publication, since then you began a project called the Ummatic Colloquium and you are developing the Ummatic Institute. I understand. Tell me about this journey and what you discovered after writing your article and what led you to create these initiatives .
Ovamir Anjum: The article was written after some, two decades of thinking and study and based on ideas that I developed in my first book length study which was sort of work for my dissertation. And other studies in which I explored the existing Islamic discourse. And then of course the experience of the Arab uprisings and geopolitical developments where I saw both great threats and great opportunities for Muslims.
Not the least of which of course the, what we saw in the context of the second Gulf war, the rise of the terrorist outfit of ISIS and the need for a new vision for Muslims. And when I say a new vision, I am thinking about how the 20th century, you know, late middle to late 20th century there is the Sahwa, there is a sense of reawakening of Islam, Muslim societies, after a bout of nationalism and of course, first colonialism and then secular nationalism are returning to Islam in the seventies and eighties and nineties. And there is a sense of exuberance, not withstanding all kinds of critiques and limitations.
And of course, very much a post-colonial reality where the world has been divided up and set up against you, right? There is a sense in that world of exuberance about Islam. Islam is the solution, right? You could say, well, that slogan is too simplistic, but it's also. Powerful and uplifting and one that allows Muslims, young Muslims to look to the world and say, look, I want to solve the problems of existence, I want to solve the problems of the world I want to go explore. Right. And that energy, that optimism, I think, is extremely important for any civilization, for any people to be alive. I think that ultimately is really the difference between those people who discover new worlds and, and, and make scientific discoveries and, and come together to solve their problems.
And those who don't, those who sort of, wait for others to take the initiative. And human beings of course go through bouts of both. And we see that around us and I felt that that optimism was disappearing or rather you, you could say disappeared overnight, almost in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, 2001.
And the global war on terror which allowed not only the west, but other state builders around the world to carry on their project and to terrorize their own Muslim populations using that global war on terror, whether it's China or India or what have you. So I felt that there is a state of sort of nightmare for Muslims, an absence of dreams.
And secondly, there is a, so there is an opportunity on the other hand that comes from the parallel development in the world of a global, a globalized world, the world that is, of course we all know varies very unequal, but also it has created great opportunities for certain winners. And it never, nevertheless has sort of intensified social interaction, exchange of knowledge, exchange of peoples around the world.
But especially among Muslims, Muslims from around the world are able to share sentiments, share a language, right? We are speaking English and many are speaking or learning Arabic, or are traveling from one part of the Muslim world to the other. So there are the great opportunities and threats and, and then I was in the middle of, you know, I was Tahrir square in the summer of 2011 after president Mubarak had stepped down as a result of popular peaceful protests. And that really just a moment of great exuberance for the Umma.
Muhammad Jalal: What was the role of Islam in the Arab spring?
Ovamir Anjum: Of course, I don't mean to imply that this was a great sort of, kind of great Islamic revolution or Islamic uprising, but it was a moment of agency when a very large number of people could come together and talk and sort of express and feel alive.
And then there, I also saw a great absence of an Islamic vision to move forward in an absence of an understanding of what the world was, what the problems were among Muslim intellectuals across the board.
Muhammad Jalal: And when I interviewed in late 2019, it was really about your article "Who Wants a Caliphate" found on the Yaqeen website. What was the response to that article?
Ovamir Anjum: The response was both more positive and encouraging than I had realistically anticipated, but of course I had also hoped for more like in the heart of my hearts and I, I I'd received notes of appreciation from places that I did not expect established Muslim professors, for example, in Western universities or, but equally importantly, perhaps most more importantly, it's from the Muslims in the heartlands of Islam who's who's stressed that for Muslims in the west to bring up the plight and hopes of the Umma to the attention of the world and to teach Muslims how to dream and express their dreams in this very unequal world, they felt empowered. They felt this was long overdue. And they felt that you know, they want to join and they want to think of different ways.
They also, you know, there was also an indication that people wanted to new solutions. One thing that was, and that's really part of the project that we are undertaking is that people wanted to know what new knowledge exists. Like, what are the social scientific knowledge, bodies of knowledge, humanities technical knowledge, scientific knowledge, right?
So people I think are instinctively appreciative of human, sort of newfound human powers. And when Islamic movements or some Islamic discourse either by the Ulema the traditionalists or Islamists and whatnot, they don't take those things seriously. Or don't master them. I think that that is something that that is felt by Muslims who are looking for a solution who are involved in the world in various capacities, where globally mobile upward moving Muslims who feel that there's so much more potential.
And that our Ulema, our vision makers aren't doing enough. I think those people were really excited by what they saw in the article. And then later, in the Ummatic Colloquium.
Muhammad Jalal: So you've started up this program, the Ummatic Institute, and that followed the Ummatic Colloquium, which I understand still continues. So let's talk about this word, Ummatics what is it? Who coined it? And how do, how does it differ with our general understanding of Umma the need to believe in a transnational community of Muslims?
Ovamir Anjum: Right, so my emphasis in fact, for a very long time has been on the term and the concept of the Umma and Ummatics, so let me talk a little bit about that. First of all, the word 'Ummatic' simply means pertaining to the Umma of Islam, the Muhammad ﷺ it's something as simple as that, that which pertains to the Umma but what's, what's, I think interesting about it is that just as the term 'politics' relates to Polis or the city state, in the ancient world and then the nation state in the modern world the word Ummatics pertains in that sense to the Umma. So when you think about politics, right, you think about shared resources and shared experiences and shared interests and how to negotiate, right? The politics are, is the language, as well as the institutions, through which people come together to negotiate a collected a collective existence.
I coined this term Ummatic over a decade and a half ago during my graduate studies. And it appears in my 2012 book, 'Politics, Law, and Community in Islamic Thought: the Tayymiyan Moment" when thinking about Islamic political thought looking through the early and classical Islamic literature, I realized that words are crucial in both understanding and obscuring ideas and the, and the word politics while still useful for Muslims in, in, in important respects, obscures, a crucial aspect of Islamic quote unquote political thought.
So politics, you see can be applied indiscriminately to any community that shares resources and, and, and, you know, struggles for them and competes for them. But it didn't capture what the Qur'an and the Sunnah and the great Ulema of Islam meant when they spoke of the Muslim collectivity. When, when they said, [Ayah]
Or other verses like that, referred to the collective affairs of Muslims and ahadith where the Prophet ﷺ speaks of you know, the Siyasa that Israelite prophets used to do Siyasa, offer Siyasa, management of the affairs of community or when Ulema speak of the Imamah as an obligation or the Khilafah as synonym for the Imamah.
Of course the word Imamah and Umma are two sides of the same coin right. And, and that's really the, the idea that I want to emphasize. When we talk about the Imamate the Imamah, literally, that just means leadership of an, Umma, And Umma could mean something as simple as collectivity, a group. And this, in this case, it's the group of that that is identified by the Qur'an in Surah Aal-Imran
This is, [Ayah]. So these are two titles that Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala gives, or
that you are the best community with these conditions that you are now the chosen community after the Israelites were chosen community. And. And now you are being given this honor, and you are 'Ummatan Wasatan', and you are the best community who is most balanced. Now, when this Umma is mentioned, there, there are clearly what we would consider political connotations here, because this Umma has agency.
This Umma has some job to do, but this isn't a person. When you assign a person a job, you assume that they can do that. They're have able, they're able to make choices. They're able to act. They have the rational capacity and intellectual capacity and physical capacity to act well. When you assign a job to a group of people, right, even if it's a small group of people, imagine yourself giving a job at work to a, a team. You are assuming that they're going to act as a unit because you're giving them, giving them a job with a certain, a certain set of goals. And this means that there is an internal organization that is required. And, and one scholar makes a great point about this, that when Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says
that you are the best of the community that has been brought forth for humankind, there are two elements. One is to be, and being the best of community is an, is an internal sort of, it's a description of the virtue, virtuous virtue of the community of piety and faith commitment, meaning that you are internally in yourself among yourself, within your ranks,
virtuous and pious, you commit to a Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, and that requires a certain kind of internal amr bi-l-maʿrūf wa-n-nahy ʿani-l-munkar. It requires establishing prayers and other, you know, charity and so on, so forth. But then the next phrase turns to the world outside that you have a job for the world, right? And this is an inherently political command because now this collectivity, this group of people is being told that you don't even, you don't have you don't merely have your personal lives to live and improve yourself and achieve piety in your personal lives,
but you have a job as a collectivity. So Muslims qua Muslims, those who are addressed by the Qur'anic phrase, the key Qur'anic phrase, "Ya ayyuhalladdeena aamanu", when Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala addresses them as a collectivity and then all the commands right, in the Qur'an the key commands come this way. So they're given to the Umma.
So that's very much a political command. And that's the idea that I'm trying to capture, Ummatan Wasatan. What does it mean to be a community that is that has these two aspects that is internally it must manage its relationship to God individually, each individual and families and communities within it.
But then it has a collective responsibility. So that's what Umma or then the word Ummatics is trying to capture that. When we talk about politics, we often mean territory, a nation, state and management of the affairs of that nation state. But when you talk about Ummatic therefore we are talking about something beyond just that.
Muhammad Jalal: And that's in, I'm trying to join the dots then, you start off in 2019. You talk about the caliphate and you've now you've and you've explained what Ummatics means, but you've developed this theory of this idea of transnational, I suppose, politics based on Islamic norms. What is the relationship between Ummatics and Caliphate? Like how do you see these two concepts coming together or do they come together?
Ovamir Anjum: Yeah, to me, there are two sides of the same coin just as even, you know, linguistically Imam and Umma are connected and Umma is in fact defined by an Imam And that Imam could be a book, could be an idea and a, or a person. So in that sense, and already going back to my my book, there is a tension that I identify that develops after the Rashidun period between a ruler centered vision of Islam, you could say Imam centered vision of Islam and an Ummah centered vision of Islam. And the tension there is that the prophet ﷺ is the recipient of the divine mission of, and he is infallible in so far as he can base that mission. He is infallible as a witness of God that, that who is conveying God's message.
And also Allah says in the Qur'an [Ayah]
"Thus we have made you, a middle balanced community so that you will stand and witness to humankind just as the Prophet Rasul will stand and witness to you or against you" right? So it could be to or against depending on how we respond to it, which means that our relationship to the world is what is the same as the relationship of the Prophet of Rasul ﷺ to us, you could take this in two different ways. Now, after the Prophet ﷺ passes, who does this charisma, this job, this duty, this great mission pass to? It passes to the entire Umma, right? That's the Qur'anic idea. It doesn't pass to one particular person, one particular family, one particular institution.
It passes to the community. And then how does this community carry out its job that is done through Shura through, you know, electing one person to hand over this responsibility, Hey, take care of our affairs, but that's secondary. And that's the key point in the Ummatic or Umma centered vision of Islam that the recipient of this mission is the Umma, which then appoints an Imam.
Now, the other interpretation that emerges in late first century and second century of Islam, both in the among the Ummayads and their opponents some Shia sects is that it is the Imam that has the person that has the charisma that is infallible or you know, their different attributes that are given to it by the Ummayads and by the, Shia sects.
I use the word word Shia sects because originally Shiat Ali, the party of Ali ؓ, that party is not the same as the Shia sects that emerged. But nevertheless, the point is that it is the Imam, now that becomes the center of this re this reci, this theological mission that Imam has the charisma and sort of the Umma is secondary, Umma is there to carry out your orders if you will. And then as history progresses you have these two visions competing throughout Islamic history. My argument is in the book and I believe this is the doctrine of Ahlus-Sunnah wal Jama'ah as well, that it is the Jama'ah the community that is the recipient of this mission.
And that hence the idea that the community, when it agrees on something, it cannot be wrong. For the Sunnis, there is no person after the Prophet ﷺ that has that honor that they are infallible only the Umma is infallible only when it agrees the famous, hadith of the Prophet. ﷺ So, that is where I see theologically, why we must begin with the Umma, even when we are talking about the Khilafah and Imamah
And secondly, I believe that the word Caliphate in Imamate can be overused and abused with, if it is not about the Umma it can be used as it was early on in early Islamic history to simply claim and garner authority for one person or one group of people and to do good political thought to do good Ummatic thought, we must put the Umma at the center and to avoid the kind of almost laughable claims that are made by people, either Daish or other people who, who claim that, you know, they are the Caliphs.
Well, you are, how could you be a Caliph right, regardless of your atrocities and terrorism apart from your conduct and your actions and your ethics and all of that. If you are not protecting the Umma? If you're not caring for the Umma if you're not responsible to the Umma if you haven't if you, if you don't have the relationship to the Umma that is described in in the best of our moments of Khilafah whether you look at the actions of Abu Bakr when he says I'm not the best of you, if I'm wrong, correct me.
Right? Or Umar ؓ when he says, you know, my relationship to the Umma is the relationship of a of a principle to an orphan who has been given the award. The property belongs to the orphans. I'm only taking care of it um, on their behalf or Ali ؓ when he describes four crucial functions, uh, of an Imam uh, which are defense of the Umma, distribution of resources among the Umma and so on, none of those apply when you simply claim that you are Caliph. So anyway, that's those are my motivations for emphasizing the Umma before the Imam.
Muhammad Jalal: So, I mean, that's really fascinating this Umma centric model you put forward. I mean, it sounds very similar to, I don't know how Western philosophers will describe the social contract. Where do you see the place of the ruler in Islam? What is the role of principle function of the ruler? If the Umma is passing to the ruler the role of governance, what role does he serve?
Ovamir Anjum: So, first of all, I want to say that the paradigm I have is really just it's there already in classical Islamic discourse, if you read Al-Ahkam as-Sultaniyyah [The Laws of Islamic Governance] of Imam Al-Māwardī' which is written in the fifth century, of Hijrah which is really a summary or culmination of this discourse from earlier centuries, that Imam or the Khalifa is there to stand in relation to the Umma that the Prophet had alaihi salaam, in so far as he was a leader, but without having infallibility and prophethood right.
Literal, literally, that's how it's defined. And that definition of the Khilafah really remains, you know, through different wordings, but it remains pretty constant. And throughout Islamic Sunni discourse, caring for the Umma both the deen of the Umma and then the Siyasat of the Umma through that deen, the word Siyasat by the way, it comes from caring for the horses.
The word Sa is somebody who manages the horses. And in, in that sense, managing the needs of a community. That's, that's Siyasah the word that's used for Khalifah now the question now is what is the distribution of authorities and powers. And there you have of course, great tension between the Imam centered vision of Islam in which the Imam is sometimes given absolute authority and considered infallible or not infallible, but untouchable, right?
So either there's a moral infallibility and untouchability, or simply power might is right. And its worst forms might is right. Because God has given you power and therefore a kind of sort of a jungle law kind of morality and theology is imposed on that, that Ummayads, certain Ummayads would say, for example, because we are in power, God must have chosen us.
And therefore by necessity, regardless of our conduct we must be obey. And so the Imam becomes the center. That was not the case either in the conduct of the early Caliphs or in the actual Islamic political Ulama discourse, right? So if you look at Greek or Persian influence discourse, you do find absolute is the visions of the ruler.
But if you look at the powers of the Khalifa, either in theory or in practice, they were never absolute. So in theory, for example, the Khalifa is answerable to and lives by the and is not above the law. And must, you know, if he should be an independent reasoner. But if not, so must listen to the Ulama.
One of the earliest treatises in this tradition is that of Imam Abu Yusuf the famous student of Abu Hanifa and Abu Yusuf, if you look at his, the book of taxation, which is one of the earliest complete texts we have on politics in Islam he died in the year, 180, I believe 182 of Hijrah. So, and he was the Grand Qadhi of the Chief Qadhi of Harun al-Rashid the most prosperous and powerful Abbasid Caliph
and if you look at the, how he describes the job of the Khalifa, he says one of the things, you know, among other things, if to be pious and, and obey Allah and the Messenger, but then he says you also have to follow the Sunna of the Imams of fIqh, meaning he is referring to, Abu Yusuf is referring to Abu Hanifa and Abu Hanifa
And people like him who were Persians, who were outsiders, who came into Islam right. In the pecking order of the day, they were nobodies. Their power was that they were speaking on behalf of the book of a law and the truth. And so Abu Yusuf is saying that you Harun al Rashid have to live by the ijtihad of somebody like Abu Hanifa and the Ulema and of the Salaf. You're far from absolutist, right? Not only can you not disobey the Quran and the Sunnah, but even on matters that Quran and Sunnah are silent. You turn to the Ulema and this remains the case throughout. And, you know, I discussed that in my book, but in practice, you see, of course, Muslim rulers sometimes act in ways in the same way that Muslims act in ways that are not Islamic.
But you find that as soon as Islamic order and Islamic jurisprudence and law become established and respected, that changes in all of the, you know, any regime. So you could look at the Ottomans, for example, early Ottomans before Islamic law becomes well established, they do act arbitrarily, but when Islamic law becomes established after the 16th century or onward, there are cases when the Caliph's consultants are deposed based on a fatwa of a judge. So my point is simply that the Caliph's powers are not absolute.
Muhammad Jalal: From your answer, they it seems that the Ulema acted as the as the restraining power, the Ulema acted as you know, I suppose, in, in your Ummatic paradigm representatives of the Umma who looked to who ensured that the ruler judged by Sharia and dispensed justice are we bound by this model? So in any future caliphate, would we have a group of Ulema who would act as judges, who would represent Muslims in general and they would be tasked at impeaching the Caliph if he, or reneged on his obligations?
Ovamir Anjum: Yes. For the most part. But let me sort of tweak that a little bit at least, you know, as I, as I said, there are at least four models of how Caliphs related to the Umma in Islamic history. The first one that of the Rashidun model was the ideal model that Sunis recognized as the ideal, all the four Caliphs and the Shia recognized the fourth Caliph Ali raḍiya -llāhu ʿanhū as the ideal Caliph ideal conduct of ruler. These people did not act arbitrarily but they were also ruling over a a small city that was growing rapidly.
And those institutions that they had at their disposal were not quite scalable. And as soon as, you know, overnight, you turn into world embracing empire, those institutions of simple face to face institutions of that are based on piety and, you know, did not scale. And we had the Umayyads developed new institutions, borrowed from others the Abbasids developed their own, borrowed from Persians, for example, the Persian empire and pious Muslims reacted to that in various ways.
And I, you know, I don't want to go into how that happened. Both institutions, in terms of institution and discourse, the, the Ulema and, and Ahl ut Taqwa if you will what if you read the Marshall Hodgson, the great American historian of mid 20th century. When he referred to them, he called them sharia minded Muslims.
Which is interesting because we normally think of early Muslims as everybody was sharia minded, but that was not the case because of the lack of literally just lack of education and means of means of education. So, those who were concerned with sharia with Islam primarily and have were modified, if you will, there were, they were their, they had those values as their primary values, as opposed to these being tribal people who sort of became Muslim, these Sharia minded Muslims, when they saw that the empire has lost mechanisms of ensuring that the Khalifa, the Imams are pious,
they did two things, at least two that I want to point out one. They never said that the Khilafah or the caliphate is not necessary, not important. We have plenty of studies that show that Ulema always considered the Khilafah to be the primary obligation in Islam. Yet at the same time, they develop independence law in Islam, right, famously developed in private circles and sometimes in critical relationship, often in critical relationship to government both the Umayyads and then the Abbasids and these Ulema became leaders of these if you will, this check in balance against the powers of the Caliphs when the Caliphs were powerful, but then there are other models where, so there is the Rashidun model.
Number one, number two, what I call Imperial model of caliphate later Umayyads and then Abbasids who were actually in power think of Harun al Rashid or , you know Abd al Malik ibn Marwan? And then the third model is when they lost actual power, but retained enormous prestige that all of these various Muslim sultans who sort of took away, you know, after the fragmentation of the Abbasid empire, who, who had local rulers, these sultans or governors, they continued to pay homage to the, a Caliph in Baghdad, even though the Caliph himself did not have military control over these in terms of sort of symbolic power and legitimacy and social structure.
The ABA, the Caliph remained the head of, of this structure throughout so much. So that famously Imam al Ghazali in sixth century of of Hijra and 11th, early 12th century of, of common era wrote that if the Caliph if the Caliphate ends so will legitimate, Sharia based life because our marriages and contracts of that, that make social life possible are, are dependent on the bodies who are appointed and authorized by the Khilafah.
So there is, this is the third model in which you have a Caliph of as a symbolic head of life that is otherwise governed locally in number of different ways. And then a, you could say a fourth model appears. Which is similar to the second model when the Ottomans come and over time, the 16th, 17th centuries claim the same kind of powers that the early Abbasids have, meaning that both the person of the Caliph and the actual power goes back in the person of the Ottoman Sultan
And, and of course, one could argue that a fifth model of caliphate is emerging in the 19th century when because of European pressure, modernization the Ottoman Caliphs submit to a constitution. This model, of course, doesn't last very long, but it's a conceivable model. One thing that I want to say in all of this is that we typically think and I think that it's an important historical block we have in our mind that we think synchronistically, that we think that the way to, to check and balance the power of a sovereign is through well articulated, rational institutions, like the parliament, like periodic elections and so on and so forth. But these are institutions that make sense, and that can function only under certain modern circumstances of post capitalist societies, individualistic societies in which there is enormous sort of, flow of information available.
But these institutions would have no meaning in a premodern world. So the essence of we were talking about is check and balance. How can the power be checked by mechanisms of Sharia and justice. And that is being done in different ways in these different times. So the Ulema are not a rationally articulated institution, a class of people or a parliament or chosen people, but they are natural leaders of the people.
Muhammad Jalal: Presumably if we were to take these four models or five models that you've articulated you could possibly could conceivably in today's technological age, in, in today's era where we do have liberal democratic institutes, but formally check the power of the central authority. Could you imagine institutions that are quite analogous in a modern caliphate to save the United States?
Ovamir Anjum: Yes, very much so only in so far, so I don't want to be misunderstood only in so far as the United States. And this the founding of the United States is a remarkable act because a relatively large number of people are able to articulate institutions that govern them and distribute their freedoms and, you know, and check and figure out a system of checks and balances, which isn't natural and organic, but rather constituted through an act of people who come together and write an institution constitution, but remember checks.
And the idea of check and balance is not new in human history at all. What is interesting in United States or other institutions like say the European union is that these are rational institutions that people come together and sort of figure out these are the norms. That's these are the, you know, these are the ways in which we are going to distribute powers now in pre-modern Islamic societies, check and balance I argue is much more organic and in some ways, much more successful. How so? I only say some ways, right? In some ways it's less successful. Today for example, take a typical liberal democracy and witness its decline into dissent into a dictatorship.
Is that not a common sight? I would say it's very common, right? It's something that we constantly worry about. And in the United States, in the last decade, people have been, you know, screaming like, Hey, we're turning into this or that, but that's common right? In this really couple hundred years of experiment of democracy many democracies have descended back into dictatorships precisely because those articulated institutions of separation of these three different, you know, branches of government, for instance the judiciary, the executive, the separation doesn't last, because power tends to aggregate those who are in power, get together with people, with money to exploit the rest.
That story is still the story of the modern nation state. So then how does this work in, in, in Islamic past in the medieval age or middle period? Well, you have much more organic limits on the powers of the ruler, whether it's a Sultan or a Khalifa or a king. One, there are natural limits because the capacity of the ruler to rule is extremely limited.
The ruler does not give law. For instance, that's the biggest thing. The biggest difference compared to the modern nation state, which makes the law, gives interprets the law and then applies the law, does all the three main functions of the law. And therefore if the three branches of the modern nation state come together and coalesce they have absolute and totalitarian power, which is impossible in pre-modern law.
Why is it impossible? Because number one, the ruler does not give the law. Ruler is ruler or government, right? They're all the ruler and the rulers family. And military come together, do not have the right to give the law. All they can do is make policies that are different from the real law, Sharia they can only make Siyasah at best. Right. And Siyasah is temporary. It changes from ruler to ruler. So that's number one. Number two, the ruler does not promulgate the law. It is the Qadhis who are trained as first and foremost. Ulema is, you know, who answer, who answerable to Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala and to their communities.
And there are practical examples. For instance, the, when the Abbasids want to chain appoint qadhis that are preferable to them in Egypt, for example, at their height, the Egyptians refused to listen to qadhis, Hanafi qadhis in a Maliki community doesn't work. So this tells you that even at their height, the Khalifas are limited by even what qadhis they can appoint, limited by their negotiating power if the, if local community doesn't accept.
Then your power is limited there. So we have very organic mechanisms by which the powers of the ruler are limited the ruler doesn't make the law, doesn't promulgate the law doesn't interpret the law. Really in some ways, as professor Wael Hallaq has argued in his book the impossible state, the ruler especially medieval Sultan is like a glorified Butler who simply applies the law and manages the affairs of the state.
This cannot be the case in the age of the modern nation state, where the mechanisms of government and control of population and surveillance and social engineering are enormous. And so populations need protections against such enormous powers. And also they need to be much more involved in choosing their rulers.
There was a time where, who the ruler was, didn't matter so much. It's kind of like as important as choosing a butler. If the butler's identity didn't matter so much because the powers of the butler are relatively limited. Now it's so much more important that the, you know, if you think about the four models of the caliphate that we talked about, we are closer to the first model, the Rashidun model, because the powers of the Caliph or perhaps the second model and therefore like in the Medina or early Medina, the actual piety and conduct the ruler mattered a lot because as a small community that holds the ruler accountable.
So there's two things that I'm saying one, we cannot go back to the middle period model. Where there are organic checks and balances and limited power that's available to the ruler because those assumptions do no longer exist. And the second thing I'm saying is that in some ways, this is not the end of the world, but rather we are, in some ways we have the opportunity to go back and learn more directly from the early models.
Muhammad Jalal: You in your answer there, you talked about the structure or shape of these five models of caliphates. And from my understanding then from what you've described could you envisage, because we know from Islamic history that I mean, you've described for different periods of history, but we know, or we were led to believe that the caliphate is a very centralizing state where the Caliph has power, but also the Caliph has ultimate rights over decision so over decision making and policy making could you envisage a modern caliphate to share maybe some of those qualities of the interregnum period you described between the Abbasids and Abbasid period and the Ottoman period where you have a high degree of what we would today, term federalism, where local communities are able to conduct their policy affairs almost completely separate from the central state.
Ovamir Anjum: Yeah. So let me begin by saying that model isn't seen by the very Ulema who inhabit those lands and, and theorize that as ideal, right? Even in fact, Al Ghazali refers to this situation where the Sultan has more power, the Sultan doesn't have the requisite piety and knowledge as eating carrion which is Haram, but you do it because you don't have an alternative.
So let me be clear about. That, that there is something that's not quite acceptable. Although I think that in general, if you look at particularly Imam Abul Hasan al Mawardi he does have a little more sanguine attitude about this. So what are, what is the distribution of powers there? The Caliph at least formally appoints the judges and the actual Sultan in power you know, would pick the next Caliph for example, from a given family.
So the powers of picking the Caliph are limited. There could be of course intrigue and all of that involved. So we do have it. It's not ideal, right? I don't want to set this up as an ideal next to for instance, the early Islamic ideal of the Rashidun Caliphs but this isn't, this is you know, has the advantage, perhaps that this is a practical model that govern a very large territory over a long period of time.
Now of course, technologically, I believe we are much more capable of doing better institutional design than was possible at that time, by the way, I should say that, you know, even in the Ottoman period, you have a similar kind of situation where even though the act the Caliph has Sultan has powers, but it's a very hands off system of government outside of Istanbul, partly because of sort of limitations government is hands off.
Now if you're going to go back to that model, and I think we, we should think about that. It has to be designed. It isn't merely a limitation of capacity. It has to be a limitation based in principle, but what are the distributions? I think that throughout Islamic history, the Cali caliphate has ruled with a relatively light hand in some ways by necessity, because already in the time of the Prophet ﷺ, non
muslims have Dhimma contracts and live by their own laws live by their own norms. And that, of course under the Ottomans becomes more regulated as the millet system at some point. But that is sort of a built in feature of Islam that Islamic government has to respect the fact that there are people whose beliefs are different and they're going to live by their own beliefs.
But if that is the case, then you know, that kind of respect also has to apply to Muslim communities, to various groups of Muslim communities by almost by necessity, cuz Muslims are going to look at, non-Muslim say, well, these guys have so much freedom. Why don't we? Right. We don't, you know, yeah, we accept you as a Caliph but we don't think that you are the most pious guy and we have our own Imams.
This is almost a built in feature of Islamic government that whenever you put into place, the main Islamic assumptions about you know, what Sharia the rights that Sharia gives people, one of the things that happens is local life develops based on local religious authorities. So I think that some, a high degree of federalism is a built in feature of Islamic law and anyone who thinks of the Caliph caliphate as a centralized totalitarian state is dead wrong.
It will not last a day and will be a horrible nightmare because it will never be Islamic because Sharia fundamentally considers life within a community as a right, even to non Muslims who according to Sharia are mistaken in their beliefs, but they have the right to live by their beliefs. Right? So you could think of that as in Islamic law, it's a, is as close as we get to a human right individual life, but a communal life, right.
Communal life is almost, you know, it's, it's one of the fundamental human conditions of existence in, in Islam. And whenever you are going to, Sharia in any kind of, no matter what ijtihadat that you make, if you're going to stick to the Sharia in any recognizable sense, you'll have to give people those rights first on.
Muhammad Jalal: I wonder whether your understanding of the caliphate is shared by by many Muslims.
We know that if we just were to survey, I don't know the Muslims of Nigeria or Pakistan, they see democratic governance to be pretty much a failed project. They are economically in the doldrums. They face daily crisis. And I suppose the call that comes from the street is for a strong man government and many connect that strong man government to Islam.
And maybe the region of Islamic history is not as refined as, as you know, as you've just laid out. But. But nevertheless, there is a belief that the modern nation state with its options and its freedoms have led us to a poorer path and made us into people. Who've got the freedom to to act in a profane way and to act contrary to the Sharia.
So there is fierce call in the Umma to return to, or to embrace a type of polity which I suppose would be regarded as being something closer to a Chinese model, an authoritarian model, perhaps. Do you see this and is that a challenge you feel we need to address when confronting this subject in the Umma?
Ovamir Anjum: Yes, absolutely.
I think when you talk about when Muslims are thinking any given period of time, there isn't one thing first us of all, they are fashions. You know, it really, if you look at the surveys, of course, Muslims generally are in favor of unity and unification.
And generally in favor of caliphate has great resonance with Muslims. The more religious people get the more likely, but also people like democracy. If you look at 2000, you know, or 2000 in the decade of 2000 survey was done, which was published in 2007 by Gallup Muslim Muslims, up to 80% like both democracy and Sharia or rather 80% like democracy, 80% believe in Sharia.
And I'm sure there is a great overlap between the two, right? To some degree, these are opinions of ordinary people depend on the existing discourse, which is kind of like, weather. It changes, but, but what we can sense underneath that I think is that yes, there is a sense in which the Chinese CCP is seen as much more successful in resisting the west, for instance, in taking care of the needs of a very large number of poor non westernized people.
That is true, I think, but that's also mistaken in my view. There were some 28 to 40 million people killed in China in the great leap forward that is greater than what we can imagine in the middle east today. Despite all that ISIS and these states are doing that number is far, far greater.
So I think that first of all, no, we don't want that. Second of all, There is a benefit historically China has had for thousands of years a developed state, but it has no concept of the rule of law or accountable government. Whereas in Islamic civilization, we haven't had a good, strong tradition of a centralized state.
We have had a very strong tradition of rule of law rule of divine law. So to some degree, China is falling back to its historical strength and historical strength of the Islamic world is not the same. Now finally, I do understand the need that people have for a strong man. I righteous a strong man in this case, somebody who will stop all this corruption.
And that is not unusual that in fact, people who live in large systems where there are a lot of middle men who corrupt people like that tend to want a strong government that will take care of those middle men and their corruption. So I think that those are part parts of the design that needs to take place where we do need good efficient government in various localities.
But I am sure that let's say people in Pakistan or of Afghanistan would not like to be governed by somebody who is sitting, let's say in Turkey or real, they would not like that. No matter what they're saying today, what they will accept is a strong government in Afghanistan, strong government in Pakistan that is unified.
And that maybe sits on a fair council in Riyad or Istanbul, or what have you people do have these nation states have created local cultures and local identities. I don't think they need to be destroyed. They are, you know, I am as a historian, I'm respectful of history and I do not like utopian projects that do not respect people's lived experiences.
So both from Islamic theory perspective, but also very much from the empirical perspective. I think that governments that do not respect local knowledge, local needs, local sentiments fail.
Muhammad Jalal: We know that when we consider projects, supernational projects around the world, like the European union project, which I suppose is the most integrated union in the world the ideas of this union, the general parameters of what the European union would look like in terms of its supernational unit were laid out in papers many decades before the 1950s when the first aspects of this union were created. I wonder how important in your mind is it to explain what the caliphate, this modern caliphate would look like in a detailed form and secondly, how important is it to convince large numbers of people, the Muslim masses, the intellectuals, the Ulema of this model?
Ovamir Anjum: I think this is very important, but also I start with the assumption that the Ulema is already Ummatic. Most Muslims think Ummatically there are blockers, if you will, that prevent us from acting in Ummatic ways. So I don't think that Muslims have to be convinced that this is a good thing. Muslims rather have to be convinced that this is feasible,
this is good, and this is what you need to change in order to make this happen. But also to go back to your earlier question of is an Ummatic discourse needed for, or could this be a top down sort of revolution or top down takeover? And I believe very strongly that an Ummatic discourse is necessary.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that if there were a takeover tomorrow and one single pious righteous Muslim ruler took over, I would say that the Ummatic discourse would be no less necessary. The reason is that we know from history, we know from our history, we know from our tradition. That power has to be held accountable in so far as we know that governments represent their people, whether they like or not governments are reflections of the expectations and habits and needs of their paper, of their people.
And the other way around as well, the people of course, are influenced by the kinds of fools that are chosen but to speak of the, that one side for now, which is that people, what they're thinking, what they're, what they expect as how they should be governed has enormous impact. Even in dictatorships and monarchies, you cannot imagine a more unequal monarchy where there is no check and balance down Saudi Arabia today.
Its power comes from oil that comes from outside, from its American masters, from the world. It doesn't have to care about its people, but if you look at the propaganda to look at how much it actually does depend on the opinions of its people. It's it's remarkable that even, and there's of course, a lot of scholarship in literature that shows that even dictatorships depend crucially on people agreeing with this is how they're going to be governed to a large degree.
At least the elites have to agree. And to give you an example, when Rasulullah ﷺ is insulted Muslims come out and Muslim governments follow, right? The masses lead and Muslim governments follow. They find this to be useful way to, to, you know, to vent you know, popular anger and so on. They, these same governments who know that they could not insult the Prophet ﷺ, they will massacre large chunks of their population and take away their rights because they know that people are not gonna come out on the street for those, right. Well, that is the problem, right? That is what needs to change because this right. This, our imaginative imagined Caliph what is the guarantee that that person is not going to turn into an MBS or MBZ or a at tyrant of one kind or another, if people are not if people don't expect to be governed in ways that are fair and just, and accountable.
So I think that's why this discourse is absolutely necessary. And in my view, a much more likely scenario is a mixture of cracks in the system, people emerging populous leaders who sense that this is what people want. And then a discourse is pushed in a certain way, which I think we are already seeing today and for some time.
Muhammad Jalal: Dr. Anjum you live in the west you want to establish an Institute, the Ummatics Institute here in the west but a caliphate is not gonna arrive in the west. What then is your relationship with the Muslim majority world? H how can your Institute make connections with activists and thinkers on the ground in Turkey and Saudi Arabia and in Pakistan?
Ovamir Anjum: Right. So I think that for one, I want to also say that relationship to the west, something that I haven't spoken to yet, I think that it's very important to understand and to re, to restate what you just said, that. What we imagine at the Ummatics Institute and that's the, their vision is an Islamic civilization in the heartlands of Islam.
One that is based in, you know, historical institutions and memories and desires of people, not, you know, to take over the world, but rather one that thinks of the world in terms of civilizational coexistence, rather than clash of civilizations. And as such, I believe that Western civilization is, does not need to be an enemy as many people religious and non-religious for various reasons, tend to think in any more than Eastern civilization, any more than China will be your enemy or friend.
I think that Islamic civilization needs to develop an attitude that Winston Churchill taught that we don't have permanent friends or enemies. We have permanent interests. And I think that's what, how Muslims need to think that we have Ummatic interests. Muslim minorities in the west will I hope continue to live and prosper, despite all the signs sometimes to the contrary, I heard your podcast, for example, with with a FRA with a French Muslim.
And it was really heartbreaking of what it's happening to Muslims in Europe. But we hope that this is going to continue and we hope that the caliphate is going to negotiate a better, more respectable existence for Muslim minorities as well. In a sense, this idea is very much one that thoughtful, moral people in the world should support
In the, you know, whether Muslim or non-Muslim because if the Muslim world right now is on the verge of breakdown failed states, and that means millions and millions of refugees on the shores of Europe and, you know, your America, and to prevent that, if nothing else, we need to think about stopping the current policy regime in the Muslim world of dividing and ruling and conquering and oppressing and exploiting.
So, what can we do as Western Muslims? I think that for one, we can convey this message to to what Western elite, I don't even think of Western countries as an as a unity anymore. I think that the elite live in a different world and they are the ones who are responsible for the misery of their own people and the world world over. We need to be conduits of this voice of Muslims around the world.
Muhammad Jalal: I ask the liberal world order is going through a pretty rocky period. But what underpins its success over the last century? So far as as so far as wealth generation is concerned is I suppose capitalism's ability to generate enormous amounts of wealth and to take large numbers of people out of poverty, even China, which both a, an alternative model is not free from this this global network of capitalist countries that all benefit from from interdependence.
How easy is it going to be for any Islamic government to break free from from global capitalism. And I suppose the capacity then to demonstrate how an Islamic economic model will serve humanity is probably going to be one of the most important factors in convincing both Muslims in Pakistan or in Turkey to switch away from economic liberalism to an Islamic project. How important is in developing this thinking about Islamic economy to this the Ummatic project?
Ovamir Anjum: First of all, I want to make a small intervention. I think what happens with globalization with the role of China was not so much that globalization lifted a large number of people or capitalism lifted a large number of people from poverty.
If you look at least neoliberal capitalism, since the 1980s, large number of people are far worse off than they were before. But there are a small number of winners. And if you look at the winners of globalization, they were those who did not listen to the west, right? So it's not Venezuela that won Venezuelan's, you know, Venezuelan leadership listened to every single, every last letter of the neoliberal program.
It is China that and India to a large degree that benefited from globalization because these were large. So these are their features. They are large systems, large successful governments, successful institutionally successful, large governments that had their own vision that did not listen, but they took advantage of the new changes and that the globalization and I think that's the lesson to be learned.
Do not, you cannot become a creature of Western run economic system, or you will be a Venezuela and a failed state rather than you know, don't look to China. You can't be China that way. You have to, you have to be large, right? The small economies tend to be more dependent. So you have to be independent.
You have to be large, you have to have internal unity and strong institutional design that that allows you to to have your own sort of internal dynamic that can sort of, by which you can negotiate with world powers. So the short answer to the question is I believe that economic independence is absolutely crucial.
But it needs to be thought of as piece of a larger puzzle because economy is a very you know, it's a very tricky business. It's like very much it's a independent interdependence is necessary for modern economies to exist. So therefore what's necessary is a larger Ummatic vision in which societies, not just one or two strong men, but societies think of the, these strateg economic strategies to become independent, to become, to, to engage in business more with other Muslims than with non Muslims or other than with hostile.
non-Muslims rather right. And so, this needs to be in my view, a civilizational strategy rather than a merely economic strategy. But other than that, I, I believe that economic region sort of built economic regionalism should be an important part of this policy.
Muhammad Jalal: I wonder whether so you've described those two models the model of Venezuela and a model of China, but what about the model of a failing North Korea?
If an Islamic government, if an caliphate tries to extricate tries to separate itself from the global trading system it is going to fail probably in this modern era. And there is just too much dependency between the current nation states, whether that's Turkey or Pakistan or Saudi Arabia and external trade.
Are you when you call for economic autarchy or a form of regionalism where muslim countries they serve each other's economic fulfillment, isn't there a danger that that many elites in a Muslim world would just see this as too idealistic. And that's where the project fails.
It fails on an assumption that an Islamic government is going to be any better than the the half baked that the problematic neoliberal projects that many Muslim countries have subscribed to.
Ovamir Anjum: Of course, there is a big difference between the Muslim world and North Korea in just in terms of size and diversity and resources.
And that's number one, number two, I don't think that North Korea is a model at all. There may be something to learn from. The need for independence, but I don't think that Muslims historically have ever, you know, stopped trading with non muslims right. We're talking about that's why I qualified, but I said that hostile non Muslim powers, as opposed to friendly non Muslim powers with whom we need to develop ways of coexisting and strengthening the initiatives that do exist.
So, but, but one thing, I guess, if, if you allow me to, to change years a little bit, but I have said here is really just one voice in an Ummatic discourse and imagination that the Ummatic Institute wants to amplify to discipline, to turn into a discipline, rather, I should say. So that these discussions are taking place
and they're multiplied and they're critically reviewed. So what I have said much of what I have said is one person's vision, but the point of the Ummatic Institute is not to amplify one person's vision, right? It's rather that we have this tremendous history and tradition. We have an obligation to each other as Muslims.
We have great threats to our fundamental existence, to our sacred places in the world, to our, to lives of Muslims. We cannot not do something on the other hand. We have great opportunities. We as Muslims today are resourceful in, in many respects we are beneficiaries in some significant respects of globalization and and the current world, of course we have lost a lot, but let us use the benefits that we have, the fact that we have Muslim scholars and academics and social scientists and Ulema everywhere.
And then we have Muslims today that are more interconnected than ever before. And use that to design better institutions of Islamic governance of Islamic interconnectivity and amplify the best solutions that are coming out of disciplined studies. For Islamic economics, for example, I would not want to pontificate because that's not my field, but I would like to ask questions and I would love muslim economists who are interested in what we have just talked about and to come join us support us at the Ummatic Institute. The same goes for Muslims who are doing political science or anthropology or social sciences or Islamic studies who feel that they have something to contribute to the Ummatic discourse? That's what this Institute is about.
Muhammad Jalal: Oh, finally, if I can then ask you about the Ummatic Institute if one, if someone wanted to get involved, how do they get involved and actually, who are you looking out for? You've described some areas there. So are you principally looking for Muslims involved in the social sciences in, in, in Islamic studies? Is, is that your focus at the moment?
Ovamir Anjum: I would say that we are looking for everybody and anybody who is committed to an Ummatic vision who think that they have something to contribute. There could be story writers for children there could be you know, mothers raising raising children or people in really any walk of life who believe that they have something to contribute to come join us.
More specifically, you know, we have defined certain projects or certain initial projects in our phase as we launch. And there we do, we are looking for people who are in who fall in roughly four areas, people who were interested in Islamic governance, political theory people who were interested in Islamic society and social harmony, unification solidarity, whether dealing with problems, you know, Muslim you know, think of racism or inter-ethnic problems immigrants, refugees, those are all things where Muslims are needed.
And Muslim thought is needed to bring out sort of the Ummatic solidarity. There is of course the discipline of Islamic economics, one that we are looking forward to building up. And perhaps last, but not least people who are interested in Islamic studies, Islamic norms, or generally the Ulema, Tullab ul ilm sharia who are interested in developing those aspects of Islamic tradition? You could visit our current website, theummaticscolloqium.org which has these areas, some of these areas listed and where you could register and contact us. And one of the things that we are doing, we have a team of people who are collecting people.
That's the most important resource that we have. So we in fact, have people who will reach out to you. If you give us your contact express your interest and tell us. Your areas of interest and expertise, and we'll try to figure out where you fit in.
Muhammad Jalal: Great. And, and are you looking out for experts? So someone who's you know, a graduate of, or a PhD of a particular discipline, or are you also entertaining or looking out for students who are starting out in their academic careers?
Ovamir Anjum: Mostly the former, at this point, we are looking for experts and people who have sort of a better idea of what they want to do. And, and they have an expertise. We do also encourage students to contact us to attend our colloqium. And we hope that in the coming year or so, we'll be rolling out programs for students as well. Reading lists. Resources for people to so for people to envision their own programs, their own Ummatic trajectory, if you will.
Muhammad Jalal: Dr. Ovamir Anjum, JazakhAllah Khair for your really insightful discussion today. And I hope to invite you back on to talk about some of these themes whenever inshaAllah.
Ovamir Anjum: I'd love to come back. Thank you very much wa iyyakum,
Muhammad Jalal: I hope you enjoyed that episode and found it interesting. If you did, please share this episode and the podcast with others. You may also want to subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast app, and do remember to leave a review on Spotify or apple podcasts. We also have a telegram group. You're welcome to join that. All links are in the show notes.