Secular Confusion

Assalamu alaikum. To everyone. This is Shahid Bolson. Welcome to the Middle Nation. The whole discussion about secularism is very confused in the Muslim world because it's a western concept to begin with and a western reaction to theocracy in Europe.

So whenever we talk about secularism, we're talking about a whole phenomenon that developed out of someone else's experience. And then we take the anti secularist side as it exists in the West in accordance to their definitions and in the framework of a debate that simply does not apply to Muslims. We never had the theocratic system that Europe had, and their secular rejection of that system is just as foreign to us. In Islam and throughout the history of Islamic governance, we have always understood that there are religious matters and there are worldly matters. There are matters that are explicitly covered by the sharia and there are matters that are not explicitly covered by the sharia.

There's a huge realm of issues that are mubah, and any government has the complete latitude and discretion to enact laws and rules to regulate those areas. There can be sharia and there can be khanun, and these things don't conflict at all. The Zaha'abah understood this and they used to ask when he would say something, is that or is it your opinion? Is it from Allah or was it from you? And if it was his opinion, then they would give their input and their opinions and their views and their suggestions, and maybe their suggestions would be taken instead of what the prophet had originally said.

So the idea that there can be no man made laws in a Muslim government is just plain ignorant. There always have been man made laws because of course there have. There isn't a hukam for every single conceivable issue that could ever possibly arise in the maintenance of a state. The point is that the secular versus theocratic frame of discussion in western discourse has nothing to do with us. We never had the concept that the caliphate was divine.

The khulafa or successors to the prophet not in prophethood, but just in administrative authority. We were never like Europeans who treated the pope as God's mouthpiece on earth or who regarded their monarchs as agents of divinity. We never had the confusion that they had. And the confused counter reaction that they have, adopted to that previous confusion also doesn't apply to us. And of course, they're going to go from confusion to confusion to confusion because they don't have guidance.

Look, most states have a constitution and any policy or law that gets enacted must be in compliance with that constitution. This is a man made document which practically speaking they treat as divine. So this is not significantly different from Muslims insisting that any laws or policies that a state enacts must be in compliance with the Sharia, which we regard as divine and non Muslims regard as man made. Every state has some sort of foundational document that determines the legitimacy or illegitimacy of any policy or law or regulation that comes into existence in that state. For us, it's the sharia.

For them, it's a constitution. Now non Muslims will reject the Sharia as a basis for the legislation of a state because they believe it is not defined, but that's self contradictory. They only acknowledge man made laws. So saying that the Quran and the Sunnah are essentially man made sources of legislation, that doesn't discredit them in any way. That's the only type of legislation that they do recognize.

They'll also claim that the Sharia is too old to be relevant. But that's a false argument, obviously, because the only thing that matters with any type of legislation is whether or not it works. And because we have a system of fiqh in Islamic law, the Sharia remains relevant and up to date to address any and all modern situations and circumstances and conditions. Again, this is something they don't have, they don't understand, and can't appreciate. So we really have to avoid falling into their paradigms.

Those paradigms grew out of a history and an experience that we do not share with them. I've said it many times before, their problems are not our problems, their solutions are not our solutions, and their paradigms do not fit our societies. We don't have to take sides in their debates, and we shouldn't. Because when we take sides in their debates, then we are subject to their frames of discussion, and we have to start adopting their terms and definitions. And these terms and definitions did not originate from our experience, our history, and from our sources of law and knowledge.

Their frames of reference are not our frames of reference.