Thoughts on Shura and Democracy

This article was inspired by a discussion I recently had on Facebook with some friends. It was on Sheikh Sayed Qotb's opinion on government and democracy. Briefly, Sheikh Sayed Qotb, may Allah bless his soul, thought that the best way to govern is through just dictatorship that guarantees political freedom to only righteous people rather than all people. In other words, he believed in the democracy of the elite.

First and foremost, we have to remember that "every human could be debated on his opinions, except the occupant of this grave" as said the great scholar Imam Malik pointing to the grave of Prophet Mohamed. 

How can "just" be an adjective of "dictatorship"? How can a "dictator" be "just"? A dictator, by definition, cannot be held accountable. How can we guarantee that the dictator remains just with no one telling him that he is sometimes (at least) wrong and with out the dictator being afraid of accountability?

This "just" dictator is supposed to be chosen via the democracy of the elite. The elite is a group of people who are presumably religiously righteous and intellectual. As soon as a group of people designates itself as the "elite", justice immediately goes through the window. And then, what are the mechanisms for selecting those elite? Are we going to assume that all university professors, for example, are among those elite or are we going to judge their religiousness first? We will probably need a second group with higher "eliteness" to appoint the first group. If we can actually do all of that, how do we guarantee that this group of elites will not abuse the power and oppress the people (LOL, do not get me wrong, I did not mean the July 23rd 1952 military coup, but it is a good example anyway). Of course, since they are already designated to be elite, their accountability is not of question at all because they already know better.

The nature of humans teaches us that as soon as some one or some authority assumes a higher status than the rest of people, social justice disappears. The very same applies perfectly to religious authority as well. Look at the Salafi paradigm -- they truly believe they are right and every body else is wrong, just for disagreeing with them. Any person/authority who speaks for God automatically become beyond criticism, not only in the Muslim world, but also every where on earth.

In Islam, the religious authority (al-marje3yah al-shar3eyah) has all the respect. However, this does not mean it is beyond questioning and accountability, especially at a time when many of us (admit it or not) lost faith in this authority. Many of the Prophet's decisions were (politely) questioned by the companions (e.g Badr) and he was never irritated. Moreover, with the huge divergence in all aspects of life, the limited knowledge of religious scholars makes it virtually impossible to refer to this authority all the time. Can we really ask a scholar his opinion on illegal software copying and intellectual property if he does not even know what a software is?

Now to my friends who say that Islam does not recognize democracy because it may lead to non-Islamic constitution, and instead there is the Shura system -- there are many unanswered questions. Examples? What are the details of the Shura system? How are the Shura members appointed? Who holds them accountable? In more than 1400 years, these questions have not been properly answered in order to say that we do not want democracy because we have a better system. We have to remember that every one of the first four khalifahs has been appointed very differently from the previous, clearly indicating there is no cast-in-stone Islamic system.

The argument that democracy can end-up with a non-Islamic constitution is also debatable. Let us assume that we have a 100% Islamic Shura system and we adhere to Qur'an and Sunnah in all aspects of life and government. What happens if the people suddenly get crazy and decide to revolt against the system and use a totally secular system? Are we going to see a miracle from the sky punishing them? They might be punished through natural disasters, etc. but we will not see Thamud-like punishment. The true punishment will be in the hereafter because they deviated from what Allah commanded.

Here in the US, the public is paying the price of electing Bush eight years ago. Now, they learned the lesson and elected an extraordinarily smart guy. Responsibility, on earth and the hereafter, comes in tandem with freedom of choice.

Rather than thinking about the elite group that govern, I believe that the real role of the elite and intellectuals is to enlighten the society so that the entire public learns to make better choices, instead of making these choices for the society.

Finally, a couple of quick notes:

1. I used to be one of the believers of democracy of the elite, but computer science taught me that "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is."

2. When Shiekh Sha3rawi was asked about TV he said it is lawful if you watch something lawful and unlawful if you watch something unlawful. Democracy?

3. Can we think of a democratically elected parliament or congress as the politically elite? Of course without dictating that at least 50% must be farmers and workers like in Egypt.