Since the waves of Western colonialism entered in the nineteenth century AD, followed by expansionist policies that affected most countries in the world, it was the turn of the Islamic world, which was still under the rule of the Ottoman Caliphate, to be affected.
It is intriguing to contemplate that the Islamic Caliphate fell shortly after the beginning of those Western expansionist ambitions. These European powers came to replace the Islamic rule that had been established for centuries in this region of the world. This replacement aimed to abolish the existing rule, in a binary that seemed zero-sum from its inception: either the West or Islamic rule. This has led to the lingering question we are still seeking an answer to: Can Islamic Caliphate be reconciled with the modern form of the state represented in its modern nationalist form?
The Islamic world witnessed futile attempts to shape a distorted model of the Western state with an Islamic imprint
The state is the material and spiritual domain that reflects the culture and identity of society. Since the emergence of Western colonization and attempts to impose the cultural background brought by the occupier on Islamic countries—whether culturally through scientific missions and the imposition of foreign languages or undermining the role of Islamic religion, or politically through the introduction of a new model of administration and governance unprecedented in the Islamic world and enforced by brutal force—several dilemmas have arisen that we still struggle with and remain trapped within without a way out to this day. These dilemmas have been imposed by a set of reasons that continue to exist and hinder the resolution of problematic issues they have introduced, including:
1- The Western civilization system has forcefully imposed itself on the Islamic world and continues to do so until today. This forceful imposition obstructs a genuine desire to study that model calmly and objectively, away from absolute rejection resulting from the hatred enforced by overwhelming power.
2- Major Western civilization models, represented in the form of governance and the organization of the relationship between religion and the state, among others, stemmed from a purely Western political, cultural, and historical evolution that the Islamic world did not experience. The attempt to impose these models by force distorts the Arab and Islamic historical course, pushes the Islamic world to grapple with dilemmas it did not know, and burdens it academically and intellectually in debates that do not offer solutions to its real problems. This situation hinders Islamic civilizational development.
Secularization of the Caliphate or Islamization of the Modern Western State?
The imposition of the modern Western model of the state on the Islamic world after the fall of the Caliphate resulted in futile attempts to shape a distorted model of the Western state with an Islamic touch. On the other hand, Islamic movements emerged calling for the restoration of the Islamic state represented by the lost Caliphate. These two phenomena have been intertwined in our Arab and Islamic world since the colonial era and post-independence period.
The diverse Arab experiences, particularly those of the major Arab states after independence, have shown significant failures on various levels. This includes both political regimes that adopted secularism while retaining some formal Islamic elements, and Islamic movements that attempted to restore the Caliphate within the framework of Western secular states that had already established themselves in many countries.
The National State Formed on Hostility to Religion Was Not the Optimal Model for Political Governance in the Islamic World
The failure of political systems can be attributed to the authoritarian and tyrannical nature of those regimes, which sought to dismantle all opposing forces to their power. This era witnessed the emergence of Islamic awakening movements in the seventies, primarily composed of Islamic movements. As part of efforts to undermine these movements, secular mechanisms were heavily reinforced in the major Arab-Islamic countries to counter the influence of Islamic movements. This was done through various methods, including state control over religion, domination of religious institutions, subjecting them to political authority, banning religious parties, and justifying any action against Islamic symbols and groups as an establishment of citizenship and human rights!
On the other hand, Islamic movements greatly assimilated with the modern nationalist state, using its mechanisms and integrating into its political, economic, and social structures. Secularism became an independent factor in the equation of the relationship between Islam and the modern nationalist state. Islamic movements were distributed across national borders, separated from each other, committed to the modern nationalist form, and complied with existing laws and political regulations. They became part of electoral and political processes, and over time, some academics referred to this as the secularization of Islamic projects in favour of the sovereignty of the modern nationalist state.
Religion and politics
The result of the West adopting and forcefully imposing secularism on the Islamic world, followed by the inheritance of post-independence Arab regimes using secularism as a weapon to eliminate Islamic opposition and the ongoing persecution of Islamic political figures, was a major cause of extremist forces using religion as a tool and weapon in the arena of conflict between regimes and opposition. Thus, the caliphate became the suppressed opposition, and secularism became synonymous with despotism, forming a new dichotomy resulting from Western attempts to impose the Western civilizational model in inappropriate contexts. This distorted the Islamic civilizational trajectory, where religion was not in conflict with the state and was not a tool in political struggles, but rather a cultural and civilizational background to which everyone, including non-Muslims, belonged, and was not a subject of dispute, questioning, or review.
The Islamic movements aligned with the nation-state by utilizing its mechanisms and integrating into its political structures
The modern nation-state, which initially emerged with hostility towards religion, was not the optimal form of political governance in the Islamic world. The imposition of the dichotomy of religion versus state distorted the Muslim state post-independence and exacerbated intellectual and cultural entanglements in unrealistic and illogical problems for which Muslims could not find solutions, as questioning the basis was not feasible or even raised.
This dichotomy led to the corruption of both religion and state in the Islamic world, turning religion into a tool of conflict between political power and opposition, or perhaps between political power and society as a whole. Religion became a tool for civilizational conflict between Muslims and the West, when the conflict between Muslims and the West was not necessary unless the West forcibly imposed its secularism against Muslims and imposed hatred of religion upon them.
The optimal solution is to return to neutralizing religion from the political arena not because it is a crisis to be eliminated, but because Islamic religion is an inherent and universally recognized cultural identity existing in the hearts and minds of the people of the Islamic world, which does not need to be forcibly imposed or fought against by political authority. Then, we should start questioning the most important problems faced by Arabs and Muslims in their reality, such as despotism, occupation, cultural backwardness, poverty, educational and cultural decline. These are the real problems for which solutions must be provided, and we must break free from the deadlock of religion and state imposed on us by others to distract us from our real issues and needs.
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