In this installment of the Rites and Responsibilities dialogue series, I met with the Boston University anthropologist and scholar of Islam Robert W. Hefner. A world renowned expert on Muslim culture, politics, and education in Southeast Asia and beyond, Hefner is the author or co-editor of more than a dozen books, including

The following is a brief excerpt of the interview. Click here to read the entire transcript (pdf).

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DKK: If we consider concepts like “Muslim democrats” or “Muslim democratic formation”—I don’t know if you use that phrase—it seems clear that these concepts have either been under-acknowledged or under-recognized. Given these conditions, can you give us an example of democratic formation in a Muslim-majority country that would be an instructive example to and for the West? An example that says, “Here is a vibrant form of democratic life, and it took place or is taking place within the Islamic world, not despite Islam.” I think one of the bad-faith narratives about Islam says that democracy happens in the Muslim world despite Islam, despite what Islam wants for itself.

RH: Well, I think there are two striking examples. And then there are a number of still important but, for a variety of reasons, less salient examples. But the two most striking examples of Muslim democracies today are Indonesia and Turkey. People will point out that the Turkish state was until recently Kemalist, and was therefore a largely laicist state. On these grounds some would say that the Turkish case is too exceptional to figure in any discussion of Islam and democracy. But since the 1970s Turkey has experienced an Islamic resurgence comparable to that which we’ve seen across most of the Muslim world. In Turkey, as the political scientist Ahmet Kuru has so insightfully argued, the state structure that was put in place during most of the twentieth century was more aggressively secularist than that in the great majority of Muslim societies around the world. Inevitably, then, Turkey’s democratization shows some path-dependent contingencies and imperfections, not least of all with regard to ethnic minorities like the Kurds or religious minorities like the Alevis. That said, the continuing relaxation of military controls, the growing openness of electoral competition, and the preference among observant Muslims for an ethicalized profession of Islam rather than a woodenly formalistic implementation of sharia codes—all this bespeaks a political development of global importance.

The path-dependent nature and imperfection of democratization in Indonesia is somewhat different. Indonesia is sometimes described as a secular-nationalist state, but the reality is more complex. The country’s constitutional framework is a multi-confessional, “confessionalized” state, in the sense that the state is actively committed to the promotion of religion as a public good.

But the way in which this confessional commitment has been realized has varied over time, in a manner that both expressed and influenced Indonesian politics. From ‘65-‘66 until 1998, Indonesia was ruled by an authoritarian and, at first, conservative, nationalist ruler, President Suharto. However, in the last fifteen years of Suharto’s New Order government, the country witnessed an unprecedented resurgence of Islamic observance in society. Although, in the last five years of his rule, Suharto attempted to deflect the growing opposition to his rule by cultivating ties to anti-democratic Islamists, in the 1990s the country nonetheless developed a lively pro-democracy movement at the forefront of which were Muslim activists and intellectuals. Since Suharto’s fall, conservative Islamists have been consistently rebuffed in national elections. But small alliances of radical Islamist militias have taken advantage of the post-Suharto spring to press, sometimes violently, for curbs on Christian church-building as well as non-conformist Muslim groupings like the Ahmadiyah. So yes, there are path-dependent peculiarities and imperfections to democratization in Indonesia, as in Turkey, but this is par for the course in the democratization game, including here in the West. Democratization is always characterized by heightened levels of public participation, and at times this participation may result in massification that undermines rather than strengthens citizen rights and democratic institutions.

DKK: By massification, I assume you mean, not just popularization, but a sort of populism that can infuse democratic systems. As you know, there is an anxiety even among democratic theorists that thoroughgoing democracy—not quite radical democracy—in that sense, isn’t necessarily a good thing, insofar as there are popular formations that are primarily concerned to establish the authority of a particular mindset.

RH: That’s right. Indeed, I use the term to refer to a situation in which one sees, in whatever sphere—be it religion, politics, cultural life, the economy, etc.—heightened rates of popular participation, but without that participation necessarily being regulated or regularized by democratic or pluralism-embracing norms. So, massification can lead in some instances to democratization, but it need not: it can team up with highly uncivil and anti-pluralist movements or imaginaries. The challenge in any modern democratic system, then, is to take that heightened mobility and mobilization that characterize so much of modern society and canalize them in ways that reinforce a culture of democratic proceduralism and citizen rights for all. The history of mass politics in the mid-twentieth century West reminds us that the outcome of efforts like these is never a foregone conclusion.

DKK: You have written that Suharto had, at one point, sought out either moderate or even liberal Muslim leaders as he was trying to re-think what Indonesia was as a nation. And then he moved away from these moderates and liberals toward more conservative, traditionalist, and dogmatic figures. How do you explain this move? Would you ascribe Suharto’s shift in policy to anxiety about massification, and the anxieties about the loss of control?

RH: There were issues related to massification, but Suharto, actually, was a fairly effective administrator and, more importantly, a brilliant if at times ruthless tactician, a master of selective mobilization, which in many instances took the form of “divide and conquer.” As the Islamic resurgence gained momentum, in the mid-1980s, he realized that it posed a threat to his rule. Indeed, as one of his advisers told me in 1992, he looked at what had happened in Iran, and he realized that, for tactical reasons, he’d better engage the organized Muslim community more effectively. But his first tack, as you said, was to reach out to Muslim moderates, if you will—indeed, even Muslim liberals, such as a dear friend and teacher of mine, Nurcholish Madjid, who died a few years ago, and who was really one of the great thinkers of late twentieth-century Islam. So, Suharto first reached out to Madjid, as well as to other Muslim reformers who were linked to mass organizations, thinking that intellectuals and leaders of Muslim mass organizations would allow him to co-opt and control the Muslim community.

DKK: Normatively speaking, in terms of these moderate or liberal Muslim political theorists, what were they telling Suharto, particularly in contrast to the conservative views he sought out later on? I’m curious about that difference.

RH: What those leaders told Suharto is that he had to take steps to contain corruption, including that of his children, and to transition to a democratic political order. Nurcholish Madjid was quite explicit about this in his speeches and writings, though he was not a vociferous, street-fighting opponent of Suharto—other people, like Abdurrahman Wahid, the now-deceased head of Nahdlatul Ulama, and the man who was president of Indonesia from late 1998 to 2001, played a more complex and mass-politics game. Both men, however, spoke of the importance of free elections, a deepening of citizen rights, religious freedom, and civil society, and both too saw parallels between Indonesia and the earlier processes of democratization in Taiwan and Korea.

DKK: “Five Tigers.” That sort of rhetoric.

RH: That’s right. Indonesia has always been unusual in that, although it is the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, on matters of politics and economics many in the political class have looked as readily to East Asia as they have the Middle East for political and economic lessons.

In any case, because Madjid, Wahid, and others continued to press for democratic reforms, from about 1994 to 1998 President Suharto reached out to hardline Islamists who had earlier been his critics, and he succeeded in winning them to his cause by alleging that the democracy movement was really a kind of Christian-influenced organization, and that democracy itself was antithetical to Islam. But the great majority of Muslim leaders in the late 1980s and early 1990s had already concluded that constitutionalism and democracy were not merely compatible with Islam but required by the circumstances of modern life and politics.

To continue reading, click here for a complete transcript (pdf).—ed.

Robert Hefner and John Bowen are correct in emphasizing that I am advocating a religiously neutral state in order to facilitate a vigorous engagement of Islam in the public life of Muslims and their communities, and not for the purpose of rendering Shari^‘a into a system of purely personal ethics. Since I claim to make an Islamic argument for the theory I am advocating, that theory must be consistent with what Shari^‘a prescribes on the subject. Hefner is also right that I approach this subject from the perspective of what I call an “interpretative framework,” simply because every representation of what Shari^‘a says on any issue is necessarily determined by the situational contingency of someone’s interpretation of Islamic sources. This is as true about an interpretation that I am personally inclined to accept as it is of those interpretations I oppose or reject.

Since this is my position, I am unable to assert in good faith the sort of “substantive grounding” Daniel Philpott is calling for. He finds that my arguments “ground the secular state not in the Quran, not in claims about the presence of the imago Dei in the person or in some other source of the person’s intrinsic dignity, not in natural law, some closely similar type of practical reason, or universal moral precepts, but rather in what might be called ‘second order’ observations about the phenomenology of belief, the character of government, the lessons of history, and the like.” Philpott encourages me to follow the example of Michael Perry who argues that “human rights are ‘ineliminably religious,’ meaning that only the sort of transcendent foundation that religions provide can support the universal claims that a defense of human rights requires.”

The reason I don’t make that sort of argument is that it requires or presupposes a shared “interpretative framework” that cannot be assumed even among Muslims regarding the Qur’an, let alone more broadly among all the people I need to persuade to share my commitment to a secular state. Consider the counter view of Jenny White, who disagrees with my call for an Islamic justification of constitutionalism, human rights and citizenship and asserts that “citizenship and human rights discourses on their own have enough moral caliber and emotional appeal to guarantee their legitimacy as frames for people’s civic lives.”

Instead of such mutually exclusive claims and counter-claims of competing “substantive grounds,” I am calling for multiple foundations on the basis of an overlapping consensus that must be constructed and cultivated over time through internal dialogue within cultures and cross-cultural dialogue among them. I would rather have more inclusive consensus on the secular state, constitutionalism, human rights and citizenship, on whatever foundations people choose to hold, than share a commitment only with those who accept my interpretative framework, to the exclusion of all others. The relevant question I am concerned with in Islam and the Secular State is how to create and sustain the most conducive environment for that overlapping consensus to evolve and be sustained among people of different cultural, religious and ideological orientations.

The sort of substantive grounding Philpott is calling for can and should be attempted, but only on the basis of a prior argument for a shared “interpretative framework.” I have tried to do that in Toward an Islamic Reformation, and remain committed to that endeavor on its own terms. But regarding the different project of a secular state and its institutions, I need to make a more inclusive argument that does not presuppose a prior commitment to a particular interpretative framework. At this level, the case for a secular state resonates with the notion of civic reason. It is true that the legitimacy of the secular state can also benefit from “substantive grounding” among co-adherents of the necessary interpretative framework, but I need the secular state and its safeguards to be established in order to have the freedom and facility to make that “internal” sort of argument.

In his comment on Philpott’s summary of my arguments for a secular state, Christopher Eberle wonders: “how central is An-Na`im’s commitment to public reason (or secularism if he cashes secularism out in terms of public reason)? …. It seems that it might be an unnecessary add-on: he provides four reasons to affirm liberalism (understood as a political system that effectively protects certain basic human rights), but he doesn’t need to associate liberalism with either secularism or public reason.”

I don’t mean to offend theorists in this field, but I wish I could communicate what I mean without ever using terms like secularism and liberalism because they tend to distract rather than facilitate understanding. As I briefly explained in Islam and the Secular State, I hesitated in using the term secularism because of its negative associations among Muslims in particular. Robert Crane holds that my “major failing is my use of the term ‘secular’ in the sense of neutrality toward ‘religion.’ In American parlance … secularism means hostility toward all religion.” I disagree and expect many of the readers of this blog to disagree with Crane’s view, but my point here is the distraction caused by arguing about the meaning of this term, regardless of what I or others think it means.

Since the use of this term is usually the only point of contention whenever I present my proposal to Muslims, I often suggest: “let us call it X, and focus on what I mean.” The same is true about liberalism, though it is not as notorious among Muslims as secularism. What I mean is that a secular state is necessary for safeguarding my ability to be a Muslim on my own terms, protecting my human rights, and exercising my citizenship, rather than advocating secularism as such as a theoretical ideal or philosophical project. I do not subscribe to secularism as a personal philosophy or socio-political order, but fully respect and will do my best to protect the right of others to hold and live by such views because that is the moral justification and political basis of my own demand regarding my choice to be religious.

Similarly, I see civic reason (not public reason) as the means for mediating the paradox of the separation of Islam and the state, on the one hand, and the connectedness of Islam and politics, on the other. I don’t have an independent commitment to civic reason other than as a necessary means to that end, and would not mind using another term to make the point. I mention “public reason” and refer to Rawls and Habermas only to distinguish what I mean from their views on the subject, and not to endorse their arguments or align myself with such proposals in western political philosophy. I am therefore concerned that Philpott apparently drew the opposite conclusion from what I said.

On the political side, I agree with Hefner’s reading of my position with respect to the paradoxes of current Muslim politics he identifies, and wish to add the following point. In my view, assertions of “neo-conservative accommodation of ulama and state” by some Muslims are incoherent in the modern context of the drastic demographic and sociological transformations of the post-colonial Muslim world. Traditional patterns of interpersonal relations that formed the basis of the religious authority of the ulama in the past are simply untenable in the increasingly urbanized social environment in which Muslims live today. This is perhaps part of what Jon Anderson means by citing Dale Eickelman on the consequences of mass education, and the application of alternative intellectual techniques for interpreting Islam.

These realities weaken the legitimate basis of the idealized relationship between the ulama and their followers, though some may succeed in conjuring that illusion through elaborate “public relations” schemes. Recent drastic demographic and sociological transformations also diminish the accountability of the ulama to their followers. At the same time, these realities render those who may qualify as ulama in the traditional sense more vulnerable to intimidating coercion and corrupting inducement by the massive powers and resources of the modern state. The mutual accommodation of ulama and state is an unholy alliance that is counterproductive to its alleged benefits.

The second paradox of Muslim politics identified by Hefner relates to calls for the “positive role of the state in promoting Islamic learning and piety” through such activities as religious education in public schools, calls to prayer on radio and television and state-coordinated alms collection. Bowen also raises the challenge that Shari^‘a “constitute a set of norms and values that appropriately shape the nature of social institutions, from banks to pious trusts to the operation of mosques and religious judges” and many Muslims consider it proper for the state to provide and supervise some of these institutions.

Bowen also wonders whether reformulations of Shari^‘a around ideas of its objectives (maqasid)—presumably as opposed to the literal letter of classical jurisprudence (fiqh)—might produce social outcomes that are similar to what I am seeking through the secular state model. Mohammed Bamyeh notes that Shari^‘a 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, and calls for maintaining the old flexibility of Shari^‘a by highlighting its intentions (objectives- maqasid) rather than its formal rules.

It seems to me that such paradoxes and challenges of Muslim politics are matters of mediation and contestation within the realm of what I call “negotiating the future of Shari’a.” As I mentioned above, the model presented in Islam and the Secular State is simply a framework for mediating the paradox of the separation of Islam and the state, on the one hand, and the connectedness of Islam and politics, on the other. The best this model can do is to secure the space for and facilitate theological debates and political contestations that must continue indefinitely. As can be observed in any country, whether we characterize its state as secular—or “call it X”—or not, the relationship between religion and the state is a constant negotiation. The same is true about countries where Muslims constitute the majority of the population, regardless of claims of ruling elites that their state is Islamic. The state cannot be religious, though some are more “secular” than others in the sense I mean. The question for me is how to improve the terms and conditions under which such negotiations can continue and evolve. This is the realm of the struggle that Jenny White is calling for.

I find support for this model of constant negotiation in Mohammed Bamyeh’s view that no religion can survive if approached strictly or primarily as a set of “laws” that are external to the human interpreter, and that it is the believers who make sense of their religion. While Muslims know this, he reasons, they tend to tie the need for Shari^‘a-based life to its application to state policies because of the failure of the post-colonial secular state to demonstrate effective sovereignty, deliver public goods, and so forth. In his view, the problem 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. The question to Bamyeh is not which Islam is “pure,” because, sociologically speaking, Islam is what Muslims make of it, how they assert the status of Islam as a living and rich repertoire of ideas, which can include the secular state if it proves its virtues.

Bamyeh’s view of Islam as a living, interactive human enterprise is helpful for me in accepting the point made by Joel Migdal about “the effect of colonialism on Islam itself.” The point is well-taken in terms of the effect of colonialism on Muslims’ understanding and practice of Islam and its relationship to social and political institutions, or its legal implications. But I am unable to see how this point can be true of “Islam itself” simply because it is not coherent to speak of Islam as an “entity” that can change as such. In terms of my analysis, the three dissertations Migdal highlights are about the deeply historical and contextual nature of the secular state and its relationship to religion, which is as true of European and North American states as it is true of post-colonial countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Consequently, it seems to me, the question is always about particular conceptions and experiences with religion and the secular state. If what Migdal calls the “politics of deliverance” is experienced by China and Russia, who are also “geared toward redemption, toward gaining their rightful place in the world,” it is not peculiar to Muslims in post-colonial states. This is not to say that Islam is irrelevant to whether or not “Muslims are ready for” what I am proposing, but only to emphasize that the question has to be framed for each people and their state, on their own terms, and not indiscriminately for all Muslims. This framing should be different for Senegalese in contrast to Egyptian society, as each is “Islamic” on its own terms, and to each state, which is secular in its own deeply historical and contextual way.