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Balancing Hope and Fear: Muslim Modernists, Democracy, and the Tyranny of the Majority

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2023

Megan Brankley Abbas
Megan Brankley Abbas*
Affiliation:
Department of Religion, Colgate University, Hamilton, NY, USA
*
Email: mabbas@colgate.edu
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Abstract

During the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, many Muslim modernists exhibited mixed records regarding democracy. On the one hand, they articulated cogent arguments that Islam was, at its heart, democratic in nature and worked to counter Islamist claims to the contrary. Some crafted robust visions for Islamic democratic governance. On the other hand, many of the same modernists forged political alliances with military authoritarian regimes. How can we explain this seeming inconsistency between modernist democratic ideals and their not-so-democratic practices? This article argues that this paradoxical pattern stems from a classic dilemma within democratic theory: the tyranny of the majority. After providing a brief history of majoritarian fears in Western political theory, the article investigates two prominent case studies from mid-twentieth-century Pakistan and Indonesia. The first examines Fazlur Rahman’s ties to Ayub Khan’s military regime in 1960s Pakistan, and the second analyzes why a movement of young modernists was willing to collaborate with Suharto’s New Order regime in 1970s Indonesia. Together, the two cases demonstrate that Muslim modernists balance their genuine hopes for an Islamic democratic future with persistent fears of majoritarian tyranny by advocating for constraints on the majority will. While these constraints can be controversial and even authoritarian in nature, they have important parallels in Western democratic thought. Ultimately, this article argues that Muslim modernists’ mixed records are a function of democratic theory itself rather than some Islamic exception to it.

Keywords

Islamic modernismMuslim moderniststyranny of the majoritydemocracyauthoritarianismFazlur RahmanNurcholish MadjidPakistanIndonesia
Type
Hidden Lives of States
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 65 , Issue 3 , July 2023 , pp. 643 - 669
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History

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References

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2 Ibid., 209.

3 I define “Islamic modernism” as a loosely affiliated movement of scholars and activists who share two foundational commitments: First, they view Islam as a dynamic religion and therefore reject taqlid, or adhering to interpretative precedent within one’s school of Islamic law. Modernists instead endorse ijtihad, or deriving fresh interpretations from the Qur’an and Sunnah, as the primary way to ensure Islam’s contemporary relevance. Second, modernists tend to approach Islam and Western-style modernity as compatible rather than antagonistic ways of life. For similar definitions of Islamic modernism, see: Kurzman, Charles, Modernist Islam, 1840–1940: A Source Book (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 3–27 Google Scholar; and Euben, Roxanne and Zaman, Muhammad Qasim, Princeton Readings in Islamist Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009)Google Scholar, 5–9.

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5 For more on Muslim modernists and Suharto’s New Order, see Abbas, Megan Brankley, Whose Islam? The Western University and Modern Islamic Thought in Indonesia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2021), 92–200 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ali, Fachry and Effendy, Bahtiar, Merambah Jalan Baru Islam: Rekonstruksi Pemikiran Islam Indonesia Masa Orde Baru (Bandung: Mizan, 1986)Google Scholar; Feener, R. Michael, Muslim Legal Thought in Modern Indonesia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 118–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hassan, Muhammad Kamal, Muslim Intellectual Responses to “New Order” Modernization in Indonesia (Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1980)Google Scholar; Hefner, Robert W., Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 94–166 Google Scholar.

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55 Fazlur Rahman, review of Friends not Masters: A Political Autobiography, by Ayub Khan, Islamic Studies 6, 2 (1967): 197–99.

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64 Abbas, “Between Western Academia and Pakistan,” 748–59; Zaman, Islam in Pakistan, 72–74.

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73 Ibid., 205.

74 Hamilton, Jay, and Madison, Federalist, 327.

75 Rahman, “Islamic Modernism,” 321.

76 Ibid., 321–22.

77 For some of these insights, Rahman drew on Gunner Myrdal’s Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations, vol. 3 (New York: Penguin Press, 1968). Rahman, “Islamic Modernism,” 321.

78 Rahman, “Implementation,” 206.

79 Ibid., 210.

80 Ibid.

81 Ibid. Rahman once advised Khan that Mawdudi’s work was “a direct attack on his government,” which led to the Jamaat leader’s arrest. Nasr, Vanguard, 158–59.

82 Ibid., 215.

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86 In the early 1980s, Madjid earned his doctorate under Rahman’s supervision at the University of Chicago. Although Madjid would later draw inspiration from Rahman, he had not yet met him nor likely read his works during the period under examination. For more on their relationship, see Abbas, Whose Islam?, 122–54; Barton, “Neo-Modernism,” 5–6, 16; and Kersten, Carool, Cosmopolitans and Heretics: New Muslim Intellectuals and the Study of Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 69–84, 95–100 Google Scholar.

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97 Ibid., 1348.

98 Wahib, Pergolakan, 197.

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115 Ibid., 151.

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117 Ibid., 278.

118 For more on Madjid’s speeches and the resulting controversies, see Barton, “Neo-Modernism,” 17–21; Hefner, Civil Islam, 116–19; Feener, Muslim Legal Thought, 133–37; and Kersten, Cosmopolitans, 52–67.

119 Madjid, Karya Lengkap, 279.

120 Wahib, Pergolakan, 157, 208, 291.

121 Gaus, Sang Pelintas Batas, 106.

122 Madjid, Karya Lengkap, xlvii–iii.

123 Wahib and Effendi did take personal actions to protect leftist friends; Wahib, Pergolakan, 30–31, 184, 223–24; Gaus, Sang Pelintas Batas, 36, 68–69.

124 This latter question becomes all the more relevant when we consider the extent to which the earlier Western democrats were involved in Native American genocide, slavery, and imperialism.

125 Nyirkos, Tyranny, 103–5.