Conceptualising ‘Pluralistic Frameworks’

Islamic thinkers have mediated the link between Islamic ethics and politics in innovative, creative, and complex ways. Two such attempts to reconcile sharīʿa with the extra-Islamic traditions of Greek philosophy and liberal political thought can be observed in what I term the pluralistic frameworks of Ibn Rushd and Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im. As defined earlier in this section, pluralistic frameworks constitute a systematic mediation of Islamic ethics and politics that incorporates extra-Islamic traditions of thought from a diverse range of sources. Pluralistic frameworks, I argue, actively seek to incorporate novel insights from extra-Islamic sources, including theories and philosophies that may, from the Islamic thinker’s perspective, contain elements of truth or have demonstrated veracity through empirical validation. By harmonising these external truths with Islamic thought, pluralistic frameworks posit that alternative interpretations of sharīʿa can be developed that concord with the ethical foundations of the Islamic tradition. Although pluralistic frameworks may not always be theorised or defended in explicitly Islamic terms, their distinguishing characteristic is to present claims within a broadly Islamic ethical purview. This dynamic interaction with a wide array of political concepts and ideas is for the purpose of theoretical argument. Pluralistic frameworks include acts of selective borrowing, dialogue, and hybridity that are often tactical and strategic. They frequently involve synthesising, elaborating, and revising ideas from a diverse array of extra-Islamic traditions of thought to advance new political arguments or to make normative recommendations for Islamic political reform. Pluralistic frameworks contain legal, philosophical, and sociological dimensions and are informed by changing political and social contexts. Fundamentally, they seek to broaden the scope of normative political inquiry by making new claims on the role of sharīʿa in relation to politics and the state.

Pluralistic frameworks therefore operate at the level of epistemic and theoretical inquiry. Such inquiries are expansive and creative, displaying a willingness to incorporate and adapt extra-Islamic political concepts and ideas and employing them in specific contexts. The most striking feature of such an approach is its methodological commitment to plurality itself. Pluralistic frameworks exhibit two broad elements of similarity at the level of theoretical inquiry. The first element is epistemological flexibility. This is characterised by the recognition and accommodation of multiple ‘valid’ ways of acquiring and validating knowledge within the Islamic intellectual tradition. Epistemological flexibility is marked by the desire to establish intersections and commonalities between disparate sources to advance new approaches in Islamic thinking, whether radical, agnostic, or unorthodox. The idea of flexibility demonstrates an intellectual openness to consider various interpretations, perspectives, and sources of knowledge and to counterbalance the promising insights of these claims in light of an already established conception of Islamic normativity. Epistemological flexibility fosters a more inclusive and adaptable approach to political questions.

Epistemological flexibility is followed by a second related element, namely comfort with ambiguity. Comfort with ambiguity refers to the willingness to accept and engage with the inherent complexities, uncertainties, and lack of definitive answers that often arise in the realm of normative theory. Such a willingness embraces ambiguity and transcends the constraints of any single mode of reasoning or finite human world view. Ambiguity in the context of a pluralistic framework is not viewed as antithetical to Islam but as crucial to the project of harmonising reason and revelation. As Baueur (Reference Bauer2021) suggests, Islamic intellectual history reflects a conflict between two distinct orientations: one seeks to eliminate all uncertainties and to establish undisputed, ultimate truths, while the other, in contrast, contends with ambiguity and embraces complexity. This notion of a ‘tolerance of ambiguity’, as Bauer terms it, is evident in Islamic texts of law, politics, hermeneutics, and literature (Bauer, Reference Bauer2021, p. 1). Pluralistic frameworks are useful in providing content and meaning to Bauer’s conception of the culture of ambiguity. Foregrounding the ambiguity, equivocality, and complexity of Islamic political thought emphasises the contrast with the orientalist notion of its narrowness and absolutism.

In discussing the pluralistic frameworks of these two Islamic thinkers, I adopt an analytical approach that largely (but not entirely) avoids normative interjections. Instead, I focus on identifying the recurring patterns in their political questioning and on how their arguments relate to their mediation of Islamic ethics and politics. It is true that the particular and subtle techniques utilised by these thinkers to achieve this goal are not fully aligned, nor are their claims, purposes, or projects similar. To suggest this would be somewhat contrived and historically anachronistic. Like all thinkers in the history of political thought, Ibn Rushd and An-Na’im are products of their time and context. Moreover, they are Islamic thinkers from two distinct historical eras separated by some eight centuries. This temporal distance does not preclude the possibility of meaningful comparative inquiry so often sequestered by the question of modernity and born from the tendency to treat different historical periods as entirely separate and disconnected through a contrived historical chasm.Footnote ⁵ Rather than get mired in debates around modernity, this Element questions the primacy accorded to historicist frameworks which impose a false theoretical and methodological dominance by questioning the hegemony of history.Footnote ⁶

Yet admittedly the comparative nature of this inquiry is complicated by tremendous historical variance. The historical context of twelfth-century Muslim Spain was defined by the shifting political exigencies of Almohad imperial rule. This is reflected in Ibn Rushd’s personal biography, where his roles as a philosopher, court physician (ṭabīb), and grand judge (qāḍī) were facilitated by a peculiar form of court patronage. Likewise, the institutional arrangements of Almohad society were marked by medieval and premodern imperatives, principally the role of the imperial ruler (caliph), religious courts administered in line with Maliki law, and the influence of religious scholars (ulamā) on the political community. While Ibn Rushd’s philosophic endeavours were enabled by the rationalising spirit of the Almohad caliphate, his engagement with extra-Islamic traditions of Greek thought forms part of a longue durée of philosophical engagement by Islamic thinkers like Al-Farabi and Ibn Sina over the preceding two centuries. Notably, while Greek thought formed the foundation of the European intellectual canon, it held an equally seminal position within the Islamic philosophical tradition of that era. Ibn Rushd took this project further by developing a sophisticated methodological statement in favour of the harmonisation between Islamic thought and Greek philosophical precepts. This contribution alone makes him an exemplar thinker within the Islamic tradition and the progenitor, if we like, of the importance of the pluralistic method. It is a telling fact about the innovative nature of his approach that this contribution is better recognised today than in his own time. Ostensibly, as a legal scholar, he conforms in more rigid ways to the bounds of Islamic normativity, but this stands in contrast to his political commentaries and philosophical treatises where he seeks to harmonise sharīʿa with Greek philosophy by ascribing a tremendous role to human reason. In Section 2, I provide an account of his pluralistic framework and show how it is grounded in his novel theory of Islamic ethics, which is a systematic attempt to unify sharīʿa with Aristotelian philosophy and to harmonise reason with revelation.

An-Na’im is a Sudanese American legal scholar and professor of law. The central features of his biography include his early education, legal training, experiences of civil war, imprisonment, and political exile.Footnote ⁷ These latter aspects directly inform the tenor of his political thought, which promotes a radical, Islamic legal and political reform. Of singular importance is the impact of the Second Sudanese Civil War, a twenty-year conflict that fractured Sudanese society for decades to come. For An-Na’im, the deleterious impact of the civil war can be traced to a policy shift in 1983 by President Ja’far Nimeiry in a political move which converted Sudan into an Islamic state under sharīʿa law. Islamist factions like the National Islamic Front were co-opted to introduce harsh penal codes and restrictions on personal freedoms, leading to wide-scale persecution, including that of the Christian population in the south. An-Na’im’s reflections on these events have profoundly shaped his assessment of Islam in the postcolonial world. Writing for a contemporary Muslim audience, he grapples with the challenges Islamic postcolonial societies are confronted with amid global capitalism, nation state formation, and technological change. Critically, he seeks a solution negotiating sharīʿa within a liberal world order. Inspired by his spiritual and intellectual mentor, Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, An-Na’im is committed to reconciling Islamic values with those of liberal modernity. He views the damage colonialism has inflicted on the political and ethical structures of Muslim social life as a pernicious yet pragmatic reality. Consequently, he suggests that Islamic ethics must be radically reformed by appealing to a hermeneutic method that departs from Islamic tradition. As I explore in Section 3, in his pluralistic framework, such a method aligns with his liberal orientation, which seeks to incorporate aspects of the Rawlsian liberal tradition to advance a theory of a secular state in Islam where sharīʿa is negotiated through a kind of overlapping consensus. While An-Na’im’s political thought can be situated within a longer tradition of engagement by Islamic reformist thinkers with liberal ideas, I explore how a liberal, human rights discourse remains at the centre of his approach.Footnote ⁸

Despite the variances of historical context I have already noted, my argument is to suggest that both Ibn Rushd and An-Na’im adopt pluralistic frameworks which enable a peculiar form of methodological and conceptual reflexivity in their mediation of Islamic ethics and politics. These pluralistic frameworks selectively and self-consciously enable dialogue, synthesisation, and hybridity with the extra-Islamic traditions of Greek philosophy and liberal political thought while advancing a distinct conception of Islamic ethics that concords with their preferred set of political arguments. Within a broadly Islamic ethical purview, I suggest that both these thinkers reconcile the normativity of sharīʿa in innovative and unorthodox ways, but with a common end; Ibn Rushd lays out a method of harmonisation with Greek thought, while An-Na’im resorts to the radical subversion of sharīʿa under the instruments of liberal political thought. As we shall see more fully in Sections 2 and 3, the fact that these thinkers self-consciously aim to influence a Muslim audience serves to highlight a set of common challenges for mediating ethics and politics in Islam. In my analysis of these challenges, I seek to also bring to the fore the difficulty of theorising the notion of an Islamic orthodoxy, a term that is both elusive and muddied insofar as it denotes distinct, overlapping, and even contradictory meanings in Islamic scholarship.Footnote ⁹

Pluralistic Frameworks: The Challenges of Mediating Islamic Ethics and Politics

Navigating the complex terrain of Islamic law and ethics discloses several key challenges for Islamic thinkers concerned with theorising politics through pluralistic frameworks. Such challenges often relate to enduring debates that manifest in Islamic political thought across space and time on the place of reason, revelation, authority, and methodology. Outlining the contours of these challenges is useful insofar as they relate to broader questions of the Islamic tradition, its perceived singularity, or what constitutes its essence.Footnote ¹⁰ Asad’s formulation of Islam as a ‘discursive tradition’ is especially pertinent for answering these questions and for thinking about Islam beyond reductive and essentialising tropes (Asad, Reference Asad2009). Central to Asad’s argument is to consider Islam as a tradition of Muslim discourse with its own past: ‘the important point about tradition … is simply that all instituted practices are oriented to a conception of the past’ (Asad, Reference Asad2009, p. 21). For Asad, the Islamic tradition ‘includes and relates itself to the founding texts of the Qur’an and the Hadith’ and the discursive relationship of Muslims with these texts is paramount in its articulation (Asad, 1986, p. 14). What Asad provides us is a valuable starting point or ‘bedrock’ from which the term Islam can be constituted. In other words, Islam is moored to foundational texts which embed its tradition in a universe of meaning (Wilson, Reference Wilson2008, p. 182). As Anjum notes, ‘Muslims all agree – to the extent that an agreement is possible in a complex world tradition – to begin somewhere … [Islam] is a relationship with certain foundational texts and a particular historical narrative of their origins’ (Anjum, Reference Anjum2007, p. 667).Footnote ¹¹ For Anjum, Asad’s recognition of foundational texts as central to the Islamic discursive tradition is akin to a universal orthodoxy in Islam, distinct from shifting forms of local orthodoxy (Anjum, Reference Anjum2007, p. 667). In other words, a universal orthodoxy in Islam always designates a range of acceptable beliefs and practices (Wilson, Reference Wilson2008, p. 144). This distinction, I argue, allows us to traverse the knotty conceptual language of Islamic orthodoxy more easily. Its valence is illuminated in the three challenges for mediating Islamic ethics and politics that I present next.

The first challenge concerns ethics. In my analysis, I underscore how both Ibn Rushd and An-Na’im confront (whether explicitly or implicitly) a key theological conundrum on the limits of reason and the place of rationalism in Islam. Medieval Islamic theological debates were fixated on resolving this conundrum by positing various theories regarding whether God’s commands are beyond human approval, rejection, or alteration.Footnote ¹² Vast tracts of writing emanating from early Islamic thought, for example, were dedicated to the theological question of whether morality is subjectively willed by God as opposed to existing objectively and independently of God’s freely willed choice. But these debates were hardly settled and continued to elicit a variety of perspectives of Islamic rationalism. Intellectual historians of Islam also remain divided on whether ‘theistic subjectivism’ emerges as the dominant moral theology of Islam, in which God, not human beings, is proclaimed the decider of values (Makdisi, Reference Makdisi1991; Hourani, Reference Hourani1985; Jackson, 2009).Footnote ¹³ For example, Jackson disputes Hourani’s early formulation of ‘theistic subjectivism’ or the notion that value, particularly concepts of good and evil as solely determined by external sources such as scripture or divine decrees, can be deemed an orthodox Islamic position. Jackson presents an alternative perspective that emphasises the role of human reasoning, interpretation, and ethical deliberation in shaping moral values within Islamic theological discourse as a more dominant approach (Jackson, 2009, pp. 83–87). Considering these dynamics within Islamic ethical debates is important for understanding the fluidity of authoritative religious discourse at different moments in Islamic history which were invariably influenced by power. It further suggests that the nomenclature of an Islamic orthodoxy can be elusive in evaluating the history of political thought.

The second challenge relates to the centrality of sharīʿa in shifting historical contexts. Claiming sharīʿa’s link to a universal Islamic orthodoxy, I suggest, is a somewhat easier task if we acknowledge sharīʿa as an instantiation of the universal orthodoxy of foundational texts in Islam’s discursive tradition.Footnote ¹⁴ The challenge for both Ibn Rushd and An-Na’im centres on responding to the normative centrality of sharīʿa as a formalised and accepted tradition of legal jurisprudence and as a set of norms with a teleological end, the well-being and welfare of the political community. This latter conception holds the purpose of sharīʿa as the means to the way of God and the pathway of goodness and virtue; its objective is not simply compliance with the commands of God for their own sake. As Abou El Fadl points out, compliance is regarded as a means to an end – ‘the serving of the physical and spiritual welfare and well-being of people’ (Abou El Fadl, Reference Abou El Fadl, Esposito and Shahin2013, p. 11). Both Ibn Rushd and An-Na’im recognise the normative weight of sharīʿa in these two manifestations. For Ibn Rushd, the purpose of sharīʿa is to impart true knowledge of those actions by which the happiness of the whole of creation is guaranteed (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1974, p. 316). Similarly, An-Na’im recognises that ‘for Muslims sharīʿa is the Whole Duty of Mankind, moral and pastoral theology and ethics, high spiritual aspiration, and detailed ritualistic and formal observance; it encompasses all aspects of public and private good manners’ (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im1990, p.11).

The third challenge centres on the degree to which incorporating extra-Islamic traditions of thought – whether Greek philosophy or liberal political thought – complicates the theoretical endeavour to mediate Islamic ethics and politics within the pluralistic framework. In other words, since sharīʿa, which includes a combination of textual hermeneutics and embodied practices, directly informs Islamic ethics, any pluralistic framework (that remains Islamic) must consequently account for the place of certain fundamental sharīʿa norms in politics. It is true that the choice of extra-Islamic sources utilised in a pluralistic framework will determine the degree of adaptation and reformulation required for preserving the link between Islamic ethics and politics and the extent to which a reconciliation with sharīʿa must take place. While both thinkers, I suggest, are concerned with preserving this link, their reconciliation of sharīʿa within the pluralistic framework is fundamentally different. Ibn Rushd, for example, finds tremendous congruence with Greek virtue ethics and sharīʿa and attempts to achieve harmonisation on this basis. An-Na’im distils from Rawlsian liberal political thought its most promising ideals, which he amends and reformulates to fit into a framework that subverts sharīʿa to liberal instruments. As such, I argue that the extent to which the mediation of Islamic ethics and politics may or may not appear convincing and compelling to its intended audience will likely depend on the basic underlying premise of the moral philosophy being utilised and its overall ability to reconcile with sharīʿa. In the case of these thinkers, I explore the limitations of their approaches in Section 4.

Are Pluralistic Frameworks Rare?

Borrowing concepts, synthesising ideas, and engaging in dialogue through the incorporation of extra-Islamic traditions of thought are familiar practices in Islamic intellectual history. The thinkers explored in this Element are therefore not isolated examples but are part of a continuum in the history of Islamic political thought. What then are the specific reasons for singling out these two figures as part of a comparative study of pluralistic frameworks? This question, I suggest, can be answered in two ways. First, on multiple readings of the political ideas of both thinkers, it became evident to me that An-Na’im draws upon Ibn Rushd explicitly for the purpose of positioning him as an exemplary thinker who venerates reason, plurality, and theological innovation within the Islamic tradition. In the process, the longevity of the pluralistic framework in Islamic thought became strikingly evident insofar as it related to three interrelated themes: the primacy of reason, the accommodation of diverse sources, and the openness to reinterpretation and reform. This pairing is therefore not a coincidental or arbitrary choice but a deliberate one, driven by a recognition of the resonances between their respective intellectual projects which engage with plurality in a systematic and comprehensive way.

Second, a common thread in the pluralistic approaches of both An-Na’im and Ibn Rushd is their unconventional reconciliation of sharīʿa which departs from the traditional methods and sensibilities within the Islamic tradition. Such departures, I suggest, can be termed as unorthodox not for their mediation of Islamic ethics and politics or their incorporation of extra-Islamic traditions of thought but for their specific methods of harmonisation and subversion in reconciling sharīʿa in a pluralistic framework. In the case of Ibn Rushd, this unorthodoxy manifests in his attempt to fit Islamic legal norms within the interstices of Greek philosophical thought. An-Na’im’s unorthodoxy is reflected in his polemical theory of Islamic legal reform, which advocates for a radical reinterpretation of sharīʿa to align with a modern liberal, human-rights-centred discourse. Arguably, the limitation of both these approaches lies in their departure from the established contours of the Islamic tradition to achieve alignment with a preferred set of normative political arguments (something I explore in Section 4). However, I am not proposing that such limitations render pluralistic frameworks unworkable endeavours for Islamic political theorisation in general. In fact, I am arguing quite the opposite. As I outline in Section 4, pluralistic frameworks can provide a useful structure for proposing new normative possibilities in modern Islamic political theory that can potentially circumvent such limitations. Such a circumvention hinges on the principle of remaining credible and authoritative to Muslim sensibilities.

Mediating Islamic Ethics and Politics in the Postcolonial

Pluralistic frameworks also tell us about the possibilities and limitations of mediating Islamic ethics and politics in the context of the unprecedented transformation of modern Islamic societies. This transformation, triggered by the colonial encounter and the subsequent formation of postcolonial Islamic nation states, profoundly disrupted the traditional socio-economic and political structures of Islamic societies. It introduced secularism, economic dependency, legal reform, cultural hegemony, and social change that created lasting tensions and disjuncture in the Muslim world. But perhaps its greatest encroachment was redefining the role of religion through a universalising logic of secularism through the institution of the modern sovereign state. For Hallaq, modern Muslims were faced with the challenge of reconciling two facts: ‘first, the ontological fact of the state and its undeniably powerful presence, and second, the deontological fact of the necessity to bring about a form of sharīʿa as governance’ under this institutional form (Hallaq, Reference Hallaq2013, p. 7). Hallaq argues that an Islamic state is both practically impossible and a theoretical contradiction in terms because colonialism not only eviscerated the existing systems of Islamic governance but also installed the institutional form of the modern sovereign state, which is sustained by moral objectives antithetical to sharīʿa. Moreover, the modern sovereign state disassembled, codified, and redefined limited provisions of sharīʿa for its political expediency and legitimacy, resulting in fragmentation and disjuncture (Hallaq, Reference Hallaq2013, p. 18). Hallaq’s critique of the modern state presents an exciting challenge for reimagining an institutional form of politics that transcends the sovereign state model and coheres better with the notion of Islamic ethics. Postcolonial Muslim states inscribed by colonial boundaries remain mired in religious sectarianism, social unrest, and political instability. The utility of this rethinking should therefore not be understated.

In response to Islam’s encounter with modernity and colonialism, modern Islamic political thinkers have defended various positions in a contested attempt to reconcile Islamic ethics and politics. Islamic revivalist approaches encompass a diverse range of perspectives, from the theory of divine sovereignty as a counterweight to secular popular sovereignty, to more nuanced interpretations that emphasise the revival of Islamic principles and values within modern contexts. Curiously, the revivalist impulse, while often portrayed as a reactionary or oppositional force, contained normative dimensions that have deeply impacted the popular imagination of many Muslim-majority countries (Iqtidar & Scharbordt, Reference Iqtidar and Scharbordt2022, p. 278). Its most ardent advocates, Maududi (Reference Maududi and Ahmed1960) and Qutb (Reference Qutb and al-Mehri2006), for example, used the theory of divine sovereignty to posit the centrality of religion in all aspects of Muslim life. As a countenance to modernity, their ethico-political vision endeavoured to offer authentic Islamic solutions to modern social ills. Recent innovative readings of these influential thinkers offer alternative ways to understand their ideas and engagement with modernity (Euben, Reference Euben1997; March, Reference March2019; Iqtidar, Reference Iqtidar2021). These readings suggest that Islamic revivalist thinkers should be understood as part of a broader critique of rationalism and modernity, rather than mere reactionary responses. Maududi’s Islamist thought, for example, creatively and reflexively engaged with various intellectual resources, combining elements from different traditions to reconcile the sovereignty of God with the sovereignty of the modern state (Iqtidar, Reference Iqtidar2020, p. 287). While Maududi’s theo-democratic project ultimately reified rather than transcended the liberal, colonial state, revealing the limitations of mediating sharīʿa with the sovereignty of the modern state (Iqtidar, Reference Iqtidar2020, p. 616), his theoretical accounts highlight the polyvalent forms of pluralistic engagement that are present within Islamist writing, and that are generally overlooked.

Similarly, Islamic ‘democratic theorists’ and ‘modernists’ have engaged in mediating between Islamic ethics and politics through varied liberalising approaches that pronounce Islam’s compatibility with democracy, modern science, rationality, and legal reform. Prominent figures within this strand of thought, such as Fazlur Rahman (Reference Rahman1982), Mohammed Arkoun (Reference Arkoun1994), and Abdolkarim Soroush (Reference Soroush and Kurzman1998), have offered diverse perspectives on reinterpreting Islamic traditions and reconciling them with modern democratic principles and human rights frameworks. Their approaches range from advocating for a secular state with a separation of religion and politics to proposing reforms within the Islamic legal and political systems to align them with contemporary values and realities. There are of course historical reasons for the proliferation of these liberalising approaches in the postcolonial Islamic world. By the nineteenth century, liberalism, however multifariously defined, was imported into Muslim societies through colonialism. Colonised Muslim intellectuals were compelled to think about liberal values ‘in cultural or religious terms’ (Devji & Kazmi, Reference Devji and Kazmi2017, p. 5). Moreover, by the end of the Cold War, postcolonial Islamic states found themselves firmly situated within a prevailing global liberal order.

By the late twentieth century, political theory was also dominated by a liberalism that was formulated through a rationalist epistemology and committed to reading the political world as ‘knowable by way of human reason and methods’ (Euben, Reference Euben1999, p. 6). The paradox of the liberal theoretical endeavour to construct modern political society by rejecting the place of metaphysics, Euben argues, is that it occurred alongside a prevailing political reality that was quite the opposite (Euben, Reference Euben1997, p. 28). Such a political reality included the Islamist turn towards foundationalism, which began to play a more prominent role in the global order. This Islamist turn towards foundationalism emphasised the centrality of divine revelation as the ultimate source of knowledge and for deriving Islamic ethical principles to guide all aspects of Muslim life, including politics and governance. This tension between the liberal theoretical endeavour and the Islamist foundationalist turn underscored the complexity of mediating Islamic ethics and politics within the modern context of postcolonial states.

How, then, can pluralistic frameworks offer normative possibilities that go beyond the Islamic foundationalist impulse and the liberal, post-foundationalist theoretical discourse? This is a challenge that An-Na’im must confront in his engagement with Rawls. Such an account must clarify how a comprehensive moral doctrine such as Islam can be reconciled with or adapted to a Rawlsian account of political liberalism. The extent to which Islam can be reconciled with moral pluralism while taking seriously the authority of Islamic legal normativity, or sharīʿa, is at the heart of this analysis. As March contends, it is an inquiry that would involve a serious intellectual reckoning with ‘what ought to be the balance between the desire to bring people to one’s conception of truth’ and the recognition of a reasonable moral pluralism in a diverse society (March, Reference March2011, p. 182). Whether An-Na’im’s pluralistic framework succeeds in answering these questions is something I consider in Section 3.

The Place of Ethics in Islamic and European Thought

Pluralistic frameworks in the modern context might also consider whether mediating Islamic ethics and politics requires dispensing with post-foundationalist, liberal imaginaries altogether. Here, the work of Alasdair MacIntyre is instructive.Footnote ¹⁵ For MacIntyre, it is the Enlightenment project, with its rational justification of individual autonomy and freedom, that fails to develop coherent moral teleology for modern life (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre[1981] 2007, p. 51). In contrast to the Islamic tradition, where ethics and politics remained intrinsically linked, this connection was subject to major reconsideration in European philosophy from around the seventeenth century onwards. MacIntyre argues that the turn towards prioritising individual reason and rights represented a rupture with previous modes of moral theorising oriented towards higher goods and virtues. The reasons for this shift are complex and varied but include the rise of modern science, the scientific revolution, and the enhancement of rationalism. The social contract theories presented in Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651) and John Locke’s Two Treatises on Government (1689) are both attempts to separate politics and ethics at the level of abstract theoretical inquiry. Locke, for example, argued that political authority and jurisdiction originate in a social contract among equals. This contract is formed for the purpose of securing and protecting individual natural rights. For Locke, the role of the state was to ensure that these rights are protected; it is not to enforce a particular moral system or to legislate on ethical issues.

In general, modern Anglo-American political philosophy shifted away from the Aristotelian concern for moral virtue and towards the protection and recognition of individual rights and liberties. Aristotle’s emphasis on constituting a societal order conducive to the highest virtues and conception of the good life was narrowed in scope to questions of negative liberties and rights. Politics was thus viewed as a domain concerned with the regulation of society and the distribution of power, and ethics was concerned with individual morality. Political philosophers such as Kant and John Stuart Mill still developed comprehensive moral philosophies, but these philosophies were defined in terms of universal duties, utility maximisation, or inviolable human rights rather than Aristotelian virtue. The shift from Aristotelian virtue ethics towards these deontological and consequentialist frameworks that emphasise individual rights, freedom, autonomy, and welfare represents a normative revolution in European philosophy. Kant’s moral philosophy, for example, offered a deontological ethical framework based on the concept of duty and respect for individual moral autonomy (Kant, [Reference Kant1785] 2012) . In politics, this translated into an approach that prioritised individual rights and freedoms and the idea that the state should treat its citizens as autonomous moral agents. Following Kant, Rawls’ political philosophy emphasised the capacity of individuals to engage in reasoning about principles of justice.

Kant’s fundamental premises remain at odds with an Islamic ethical framework (however loosely defined), which highlights what is at stake in An-Na’im’s project of mediating Islamic ethics and politics through the incorporation of liberal thought. That said, two general points require emphasis here. First, Kant operated within a secular framework separating moral principles from religious and theological foundations. His secular approach thus dismissed ethical claims rooted in religious or divine law when reimagining politics. Such secularism poses a profound challenge for Islamic political thinkers aiming to integrate Islamic values and principles into their political accounts.

Second, Kant places a strong emphasis on individual moral autonomy and the use of reason to determine moral duties. In contrast, Islamic political thought must confront the authority of Islamic legal normativity derived from sacred textual sources and traditions. While there is room for applying reason to ethical questions within the Islamic moral tradition, Islamic debates on the limits of human reason contrast sharply with Kant’s emphasis on absolute rational autonomy. Reimagining Islamic ethics along Kantian lines of extreme individualism and rationalism could yield a more rights-based political approach, producing tensions between reason and revelation. The implications for politics depend on how this reconceptualised Islamic ethics engages with and is implemented within existing Islamic sociopolitical norms. Preserving core Islamic values remains crucial in the modern public and moral life of Muslim societies. Reconciling liberal thought with Islamic traditions thus requires carefully navigating this complex intersection between ethics and politics.

Harnessing the work of MacIntyre might be useful in this regard. The modern world’s emphasis on individual choice and rights, rather than the moral judgement of a community, has weakened the authority of traditional moral frameworks while failing to provide a coherent and rational foundation for ethics, as MacIntyre claims. His premise is that different moral traditions contain incommensurable metaphysical elements, making it difficult to ground moral judgements in something more than subjective preference, ultimately undermining the idea of a common good (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre2007, p. 10). Seeking an alternative, MacIntyre advocates for the revival of virtue ethics, which understands moral action in relation to the purpose and good of a given community. This return to virtue ethics provides an ethical framework that offers a more robust and contextually grounded approach to morality. To develop this framework, MacIntyre draws on resources from the European tradition, including figures such as Plato, Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas. As he rightly observes, rationality and ethics are embedded ‘in a tradition, a conception according to which the standards of rational justification themselves emerge from and are part of a history in which they are vindicated’ (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre1988, p. 7). Notably, Islam provides a formal foundational ethical system to define the notion of ‘the good’, which can be considered akin to the teleology of Greek virtue ethics (Kaminski, Reference Kaminski2017, p. 22). MacIntyre’s ‘meta-theory of tradition-constituted enquiry’ thus offers a way to balance the sanctity of scriptural sources, the relevance of intellectual traditions for interpretation, and the potential for reinterpretation in light of new experiences by engaging in empathetic dialogue with diverse traditions of thought (Harvey, Reference Harvey2023, p. 50). This approach provides a compelling theoretical foundation for Muslims to uphold their particular ‘tradition-constituted’ conceptions while also participating in pluralistic engagement with other traditions. Pluralistic frameworks exploring the mediation of Islamic ethics and politics could therefore find MacIntyre’s work a valuable intellectual starting point. By employing McIntyre’s arguments, Islamic pluralistic frameworks could seek to connect with these traditional sources of moral reasoning and practice and use them as a basis for constructive and collaborative engagement with contemporary ethical challenges. McIntyre’s emphasis on shared moral vocabulary could also be useful in bridging the gap between traditional Islamic concepts and contemporary political discourse. As such, McIntyre’s ideas might offer an alternative possibility, where the mediation of sharīʿa presupposes a place for ethics by claiming the primacy of a tradition-constituted enquiry.

Transcending Binaries through Comparative Political Theory

Pluralistic frameworks can also serve to transcend the simplistic confines of the secular/Islamist binary, which presents an oversimplified categorisation of approaches to the role of Islam in politics. This binary reduces Islamic thought to two opposing poles: the ‘secular’, which advocates universalising the separation of religion from politics, and the ‘Islamist’, which assigns a central role to divine sovereignty in matters of governance. However, such a dichotomous framing ignores the rich subtleties and myriad forms of normative contestation that exist within the Islamic theoretical tradition itself. By casting Islam as caught between these two polarising positions, the secular/Islamist binary fails to capture the nuance, complexity, and diversity of thought and commitment within Islamic political theory. It disregards the plurality of perspectives, interpretations, and frameworks that have emerged from the Islamic tradition over centuries of scholarly engagement with questions of ethics, law, and politics. Foregrounding pluralistic frameworks presents an avenue to transcend this reductive binary approach. Such frameworks recognise and elucidate the dynamic interaction of Islamic ethics with both religious and philosophical currents across contexts. They underscore how Islamic thinkers have long grappled with mediating divine injunctions and ethical norms in conversation with other extra-Islamic traditions of moral and political thought.

My attempt to foreground pluralistic frameworks is not only intended as a repudiation of binary discourses that oversimplify and constrain the possibilities within Islamic political theory. Instead, it contributes to a richer understanding of the depth, heterogeneity, and polyvalent nature of Islamic intellectual history. Emphasising the subtleties of the Islamic tradition on its own terms, rather than through rigid conceptual binaries, I suggest, carries potentially emancipatory consequences for thinking about Islam and politics. First, it counters the tendency to view the Islamic tradition as inherently oppositional or alienating but as a discursive tradition ensconced in its own rich practices of conceptual and ethical meaning-making. A key illustration of this is the remarkable continuity within Islamic political thought around the centrality of sharīʿa as a means of moral legitimation for governance. As An-Na’im observes, even practically, many contemporary Muslim-majority states continue to enlist the legitimising power of sharīʿa in supporting a form of political authority (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 17).

Second, as Asad’s (Reference Asad2003) path-breaking work reveals, there is no monolithic Islamic approach to ethics but rather a constant reconstruction and reinterpretation in response to changing social, historical, and political contexts. Aside from textual interpretations, Asad highlights how this process is shaped by evolving community practices, cultural norms, power relations, and social structures (Asad, Reference Asad2003, p. 109). The fact that Islamic thinkers across eras have grappled with mediating Islamic ethics and politics also reflects a particular form of intellectual dynamism that continues to endure. Recognising Islam’s internal diversity and capacity for reimaging politics challenges narratives of irredeemable conflict with, for example, democratic norms. It also centres Muslims as rational agents continuously cocreating and negotiating ethical-political norms rather than as passive inheritors of monolithic doctrines.

Third, reading Islamic ethics and politics through the capacious lens of pluralistic frameworks speaks directly to the task of comparative political theory. As an ‘immanent critique’ (Jenco et al., Reference Jenco, Idris and Thomas2020, p. 2), comparative theory identifies gaps and blind spots in mainstream political thought by drawing insights from traditions typically marginalised from its disciplinary core. Re-centring Islamic thinkers, texts, and ideas provides new substantive perspectives that can reshape and expand how we conceptualise political thought and ethics beyond the traditional European canon. This emancipates political theory from parochial limitations by pluralising its foundations. With its unique genealogies, methods frameworks, and interventions, Islamic political thought offers a revitalising counter discourse to the discipline’s entrenched universalising tendencies frequently presented through European enlightenment liberalism. Edward Said’s hugely influential text Orientalism (Reference Said1978) makes a powerful case for why scholarship on Islam often constitutes misrepresentations founded on Eurocentric premises that serve imperial interests and power structures. Said’s intervention offers conceptual and grammatical registers to identify, critique, and transcend the asymmetries and essentialism inherent in existing approaches to Islamic political theory.

One key task of comparative political theory, as articulated by Euben (Reference Euben1997), is to invoke comparison as a ‘heuristic device’ precisely to counter such biases – rendering Islamic ideas less unfamiliar and hostile by reading them on their own terms. This involves interrogating modes of analysis that are otherwise skewed or inadequate. For Euben, relinquishing prejudices and preconceptions about categories such as East/West or legitimate/illegitimate politics transforms how we relate to the unfamiliar (Euben, Reference Euben1997, p. 8). I suggest pluralistic frameworks as a key idea that contributes in clarifying the distinctiveness of the Islamic tradition by illuminating how thinkers such as Ibn Rushd and An-Na’im reconcile sharīʿa and mediate Islamic ethics and politics through dialogue, appropriation, and synthesisation with extra-Islamic traditions of thought. This approach acknowledges the deep intertwining of Islam with other intellectual traditions and underscores the complex historical interplay between Islamic and European ideas. It cautions against simplistic notions of ‘cross-cultural dialogue’, recognising that ‘ideas travel and the politics of appropriation, reclamation, and misrecognition are central to the lives and afterlives of such ideas’ (Jenco et al., Reference Jenco, Idris and Thomas2020, p. 2).Fundamentally, it offers an analysis of Islamic political thought that recognises a foundational core which operates alongside diversity and pluralistic expression.

As a final point, then, I return to the question of comparison in relation to the thinkers I have chosen for this inquiry by addressing March’s concern, which cautions against the temptation to single out ‘unorthodox’ Islamic figures such as Ibn Rushd and An-Na’im solely to challenge hostile caricatures of Islam (March, Reference March2009, p. 556). March’s insight prompts a crucial question: when we highlight these exemplary thinkers to illustrate the absence of profound conflict between civilisations or world views, how integral are they to the moral tradition under scrutiny? March urges rigorous consideration of whether we are genuinely engaging with the deep moral disagreements inherent in long-standing traditions when we focus on exemplar figures (March, Reference March2009, p. 556). While these questions are significant, my inquiry seeks to do something quite different. In its critical examination of the pluralistic frameworks of Ibn Rushd and An-Na’im, this Element presents a genuinely reflective exercise in comparative political theory that emphasises the comprehensive and systematic mediation of Islamic ethics and politics by two remarkable thinkers across space and time. Rather than simply employing Ibn Rushd and An-Na’im as symbols to challenge misconceptions about Islam, it engages in a rigorous analysis that furnishes for illustration the complexities and inherent limitations of their attempts to develop pluralistic frameworks. There is tremendous critical purchase in a study that emphasises the latter point alone.

Sharīʿa and the Mediation of Islamic Ethics and Politics

Ibn Rushd’s theory of Islamic ethics is distinctly philosophical in the form of its argument yet draws heavily from Qur’anic precepts to support its claims. In many of Ibn Rushd’s writings, sharīʿa is synonymous with the Qur’an to emphasise its divine and uncontested moral authority. For Ibn Rushd, the Qur’an contained the whole of the knowledge of the content of morality in the most perfect form possible. The Qur’an was a product of divine inspiration (wahy) acquired prophetically through a miraculous event (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1954, p. 359). Ibn Rushd’s key departure from the Islamic orthodoxy of his time was to claim that while the specific content of the Qur’an could only be accessed through divine revelation, the underlying principles of these commandments could be discovered and independently affirmed through human reasoning. This argument has important implications for Ibn Rushd’s political project. The latter proposed that while sharīʿa provides moral guidance for ethical living, its underlying principles harmoniously align with the goals of Greek philosophy both in aims and in purpose: ‘it is evident that, the good, the bad, the useful, the harmful, the beautiful, and the base are something existing by nature, not by convention … This is clear from these Laws and particularly this Law of ours’ (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1974, p. 81).

Ibn Rushd’s pluralistic framework mediates Islamic ethics and politics by harmonising sharīʿa with the political arguments and philosophic ethics of Plato and Aristotle. Such a mediation is underpinned by two philosophical claims: the indispensability of human reason and the idea that the Qur’an and Greek philosophy were united in their ethical objectives. Ibn Rushd’s first claim contends that rational inquiry is an essential and obligatory component of Islamic ethics: ‘if the activity of philosophy is nothing more than study of existing beings and reflections on them as indications of the Artisan … and the sharīʿa, has encouraged and urged reflections on beings, it necessarily follows that the sharīʿa, commands this study’ (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1961, p. 44).Footnote ¹⁷ Ibn Rushd then supplemented this argument with a second provocative claim – that what is morally right as determined by scripture can also be known and confirmed by rational proof: ‘for truth does not oppose truth but accords with it and bears witness to it’ (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1961, p. 50). These claims provided Ibn Rushd with a wide degree of latitude in ethical and political inquiry. It enabled him to fuse sharīʿa with Aristotle’s account of virtue and vice on the one hand and Plato’s conception of a hierarchically ordered state governed by a guardian class with a philosopher-king on the other.

While Ibn Rushd acknowledged the role of sharīʿa in guiding the moral actions of the political community, he did not rely solely on scriptural tenets to develop his theory of a just and well-ordered government. Instead, he sought to highlight the fundamental compatibility between sharīʿa and Greek ethics. For Ibn Rushd, Islamic law was a code of directives towards the finer qualities of human behaviour, a manifestation of the four qualities of generosity, courage, modesty and justice’ (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1974, p. 572). Ibn Rushd’s inclusion of this statement in the concluding portion of his extensive legal workFootnote ¹⁸, where he discusses the primary sources of Islamic law, is noteworthy, as it demonstrates his conviction that the principles of sharīʿa are consistent with the key virtues recognised in Greek philosophical ethics. In his theory of Islamic politics, Ibn Rushd paid less attention to the caliphate or the prophetic model of governance in the early period of Islam. Instead, he drew upon Aristotelian concepts to justify the existence of the state and turned to Platonic ideas to define political authority. It is true that Ibn Rushd was not the first Muslim thinker to engage with Greek philosophy and Aristotelian thought. Preceding him by two centuries, Al-Kindi, Ibn Sina, and Al-Farabi had extensively explored the extra-Islamic tradition of Greek thought. Thus, Ibn Rushd was building upon a well-established legacy of philosophical engagement when he developed his own theoretical ideas.

Yet what distinguished Ibn Rushd’s approach from that of his Islamic predecessors was his articulation of a comprehensive methodological framework that both emphasised the harmonisation of sharīʿa and Greek thought and advocated for a pluralistic method in mediating Islamic ethics and politics. This methodological statement contained in a text called The Decisive Treatise was perceived as an affront to the prevailing religious norms of his time, which were primarily shaped by the dominant methods of Islamic theology (kalām) and legal science (usūl al-fiqh). Ibn Rushd’s radical claims for incorporating the Aristotelian method in understanding the Qur’an antagonised his contemporaries, who favoured more traditional methods, such as Islamic jurisprudence, Arabic grammar, and Islamic theology, for such a crucial and sensitive endeavour. As Leaman suggests, the conflict around Islamic ethics in premodern Islam was thus less about propositions and more about methodology (Leaman, Reference Leaman1988, p. 7). In his defence of this project, Ibn Rushd claimed that the foreign nature of philosophy should not be resented, as it is the best and most reliable way to discover moral truth (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1961, p. 43).

Ibn Rushd’s The Decisive Treatise, written between 1178 and 1180, is known in the medieval Islamic literary genre as Jam’Bayna, as it seeks to reconcile seemingly conflicting ideas, opinions, or legal rulings by finding a synthesis or compromise between different viewpoints. Hourani (Reference Hourani and Hourani1961, p. 6) considers The Decisive Treatise the most rigorous attempt of such a unification of religion and philosophy in the premodern Islamic world. The main aim of the The Decisive Treatise was to defend the compatibility of reason and revelation vis-à-vis legal scholars of the time who were suspicious of philosophy. As such, this text furnishes a robust legal argument in favour of Greek philosophy, whose study, Ibn Rushd suggests, is ‘obligatory’ for anyone seriously concerned with the norms outlined in scripture (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1961, p. 44). In this treatise, Ibn Rushd clarifies the utility of logical methods for discovering moral truths and interpreting sharīʿa. Reason and intellect, he surmised, ought to be utilised in understanding religious texts to arrive at a comprehensive understanding of the truth. This rational study of sharīʿa enhances its meaning and contributes to a more profound awareness of its truths. As such, Ibn Rushd argued:

The Decisive Treatise asserts that the Qur’an directs its adherents (through education and training) to undertake a study of religion using methods akin to those employed in Aristotelian philosophy. Ibn Rushd cites the authority of scripture in his defence, pointing to verses such as ‘Reflect [oh] you who have vision’, which affirm the significance of individual human reason and urge Muslims to contemplate and acquire knowledge through rational reflection (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1961, p. 45). However, the Qur’an does not explicitly declare Greek philosophy or rational inquiry as prerequisites for attaining religious understanding, a critique potentially levelled at Ibn Rushd’s argument (Omar, Reference Omar2019, p. 8). Ibn Rushd maintains that drawing on the ideas, methods, and concepts of ancient traditions is not in conflict with Islamic teaching but rather a legitimate and mandatory Islamic endeavour: ‘everything that is required in the study of the subject of intellectual syllogisms has already been examined in the most perfect manner by the ancients, presumably we ought to lay hands on their books in order to study what they said about that subject’ (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1961, p. 47). According to Ibn Rushd, it is Aristotle who provides the intellectual resources for determining truth through his method of demonstrative reasoning: ‘demonstrative proof which affords necessary, absolute truth must be distinguished from dialectical and rhetorical proofs which only yield probability’ (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1954, p. 1). The conclusions reached through demonstrative reasoning, Ibn Rushd surmised, were certain and indisputable, as they are based on the necessity of logical inference. For Ibn Rushd, Aristotle was venerated as the ‘first master’ and ‘philosopher of truth’.Footnote ¹⁹

In his pluralistic framework, Ibn Rushd places particular emphasis on the role of reason in achieving a harmonisation between the extra-Islamic tradition of Greek thought and sharīʿa. He asserts that when confronted with ambiguity in scripture, reason, in the form of allegorical interpretation, becomes an indispensable supplement to revelation (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1961, pp. 51–52). For Ibn Rushd, allegorical interpretation (ta’wil) involves going beyond the literal meaning of the scriptural text to uncover deeper, hidden meanings that are compatible with reason and demonstrative truths. This process requires interpreting metaphorical or ambiguous passages in a way that aligns with Aristotelian logical principles. This determination was largely at odds with al-Ghazali’s earlier formulation which defined the criterion for allegorical interpretation by declaring that the Qur’an should be understood in its literal sense except when it may contradict another verse and that some verses like those on the afterlife could not be subject to rational investigation (Di Giovanni, Reference Di Giovanni, Adamson and Giovanni2018, p. 18). Ibn Rushd was not satisfied with these impositions on reason in interpreting scripture, despite his agreement with al-Ghazali on the danger of the proliferation of arbitrary opinions on the meaning of the Qur’an. He proceeded to formulate his own criterion for Islamic interpretative inquiry by outlining four categories of dealing with scripture:

Ibn Rushd’s crucial theological innovation here was to argue that the verses of scripture ranged from extremely complex and abstruse to very straightforward, and that allegorical interpretation of scripture’s complex aspects should accordingly be undertaken by a select group of trained philosophers with the skills in applying reason to determine its meaning: ‘The reason why we have received in Scripture texts whose apparent meanings contradict each other is in order to draw the attention of those who are well grounded in science to the interpretation which reconciles them’ (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1961, p. 50).Footnote ²⁰ Disclosing the hidden meanings of scripture on theoretical matters to all people would be impossible and even dangerous, as these ‘matters of doctrine’ are likely to violate Islamic consensus (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1961, p. 53). In contrast, he maintains that the hidden meanings related to practical matters, which concern action, should be disclosed to everyone to establish unanimity within the political community (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1961, p. 53). Moreover, he argues that when the authority to interpret scriptures fell into the hands of those who could not properly distinguish between the different contexts and audiences that various passages were intended for, it led to widespread confusion and misunderstanding (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd2001, p. 131). As a result, many divergent sects emerged, each accusing the others of being unbelievers based on their differing interpretations. This situation amounted to a fundamental ignorance of the true intended meaning behind the scriptures, essentially violating their original political purpose and intent (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd2001, p. 131). While framed as a theological critique, Ibn Rushd is making a pointed political statement about curbing the monopoly of religious authorities in determining the meaning of Islam, in order to reduce the destabilising effects of sectarian conflict. He is also implicitly making a case for the importance of pursuing a more rational-based Islamic orthodoxy grounded in demonstrative reason.

Ibn Rushd’s insistence on the primacy of human reason constitutes a bold attempt to address the central methodological question of ethical theology: what methods not mentioned in scripture are men authorised to use (if ever) to determine doctrine? (Hourani, Reference Hourani1985, p. 271). Theologians and jurists felt obligated to justify their use of reason as either derived from or at least not contradicting sharīʿa. The Decisive Treatise satisfies the latter condition through a central premise of Ibn Rushd’s pluralistic framework: the unity of purpose (telos). According to this premise, religion and philosophy teach the same truth in different ways, without any double truth or contradiction in their message. As a result, Ibn Rushd grants human reason unprecedented power to discover Islamic moral truths by incorporating the extra-Islamic tradition of the Greek philosophical method.

Islamic Ethics: Virtue, Happiness, and the Objectivity of Values

Ibn Rushd’s theory of Islamic ethics combines ‘theoretical’ and ‘practical’ arguments. The theoretical arguments, interlaced with Aristotelian natural philosophy and metaphysics, are especially complex and emphasise his more controversial views on the necessity of causality, the denial of the immortality of the soul, and the distinction between essence and existence (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1954). While Ibn Rushd defends these arguments with doctrinal proof, this aspect of his thought has invited interpretations that cast doubt on his fidelity to religion.Footnote ²¹ On the other hand, the ‘practical’ arguments of his ideas focus on less abstract concepts and are concerned with ‘voluntary actions’, virtue and the question of politics and governance (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1974, p. 7). Following Aristotle, for Ibn Rushd, ethics, as the prologue to politics, concerns the relationship between habits and volitional actions. Politics considers how these habits are established in the soul and how they are able to attain perfection in the context of a state (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1974, p. 4).

Ibn Rushd’s conception of Islamic ethics was markedly influenced by Plato and Aristotle insofar as he upheld the objectivity of values. He argued that scriptural commandments are objectively right: ‘it is evident that, the good, the bad, the useful, the harmful, the beautiful, and the base are something existing by nature, not by convention’ (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1974, p. 81). This question of the objectivity of values was a source of major disagreement in premodern Islamic ethical debates. This debate centred on whether values exist independently of human perception and belief or are subjective constructs dependent on scriptural authority (Hourani, Reference Hourani1985, pp. 1–5). The Mu’tazilite school argued for the inherent objectivity of values, which could be discovered through reason and/or scripture, while the Ash’arite school, influenced by Al-Ghazali, maintained that values align with God’s commands and can only be known through tradition, with reason playing a merely supplementary role (Hourani, Reference Hourani1985, pp. 1–5). This latter view, termed ‘ethical voluntarism’ or ‘theistic subjectivism’, held significant sway among traditionalist theologians and jurists. In contrast, Ibn Rushd advanced a third position, following Aristotle and Plato, who argued for the objectivity of values that could be apprehended entirely through the independent reasoning of philosophers. Here, Ibn Rushd’s theological innovation lay in his assertion that these objective values were communicated to the masses by prophets using the language of scriptural tradition. This move allowed him to reconcile the ethical contradiction faced by earlier Muslim philosophers who prioritised reason over revelation by claiming that both sources of ethics were united in the ultimate purpose of affirming truth.

Ibn Rushd’s approach to Islamic ethics, I suggest, was thus unorthodox in its emphasis on the role of human reason in apprehending objective moral truths. While earlier Muslim philosophers also championed the primacy of reason, Ibn Rushd’s argument that the truths of revelation could be fully comprehended and affirmed by philosophical inquiry was a bold and controversial claim in the context of Islamic intellectual history. Following Aristotle, he contends that there is a universal account of well-being grounded in human nature. Virtues are dispositions, engendered by education or habituation, to act by standards of moral excellence (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1974, p. 5). The ultimate aim (ghāya) of human existence is to attain happiness (saʿāda) by actualising the potential of the intellect through the cultivation of theoretical and practical virtue. Ethics and politics thus have an end goal or purpose (telos), namely happiness (as-sa’ada), which depends on the inculcation of virtue: ‘right practice consists in performing the acts which bring happiness and avoiding the acts which bring misery’ (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1961, p. 63).

Ibn Rushd’s philosophical conception of Islamic ethics oriented towards virtue and happiness implicitly challenges the voluntarist view adopted by some Ashʿarī theologians, who held that good and evil are entirely dependent on God’s will. He affirms the objectivity of moral values while insisting on their ultimate compatibility with revelation. Ibn Rushd identifies three main approaches to ethics in the Islamic world corresponding to different levels of human understanding: (1) demonstration (burhān), which is the preservation of the philosophers; (2) dialectic (jadal), employed by the theologians; and (3) rhetoric (khiṭāb), used by the jurists and preachers to instruct the masses. While all three methods can lead to the truth, demonstration alone yields certain knowledge. Dialectic produces mere opinion, while rhetoric persuades people without providing real understanding (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd2001, p. 77). The philosophers, qualified in the art of demonstrative reasoning, were thus in his view uniquely qualified to guide the community towards virtue. Ibn Rushd’s conception of Islamic ethics thus constitutes a powerful synthesis of Aristotelian virtue ethics and Islamic piety, emphasising the cultivation of character through the perfection of reason. The philosopher’s pursuit of theoretical and practical wisdom represents the highest form of worship, a spiritual endeavour that fulfils the deepest aspirations of sharīʿa.

Ibn Rushd’s unified conception of ethics has important implications for his account of politics. This can be explained in two parts. The first part suggested that the purpose of sharīʿa was political and ethical – to prescribe laws and rules that can be commonly accepted in a society to promote virtuous ends. These laws and rules, by dint of their divine nature, were the surest way of inciting the political community to virtuous action (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1954, p. 361). Religious laws were thus ‘necessary political arts’ (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1954, p. 359). Happiness through the cultivation of moral virtue and obedience to sharīʿa was the ultimate purpose of politics: ‘[i]t is this very Law that motivates and calls us towards the ultimate happiness’ (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1961, p. 49). The role of government is to engender virtuous ends in accordance with sharīʿa. Those brought up on the tenets of religion, he surmised, are more perfect in virtue than their counterparts; for example, the daily ritual of Islamic prayers prevents the political community from succumbing to wickedness and ignominy (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1954, p. 361). Ibn Rushd’s ideal state was therefore virtuous to the extent that it was capable of instilling moral education in the political community. Ethics and politics were thus intertwined in an unconventional and fascinating interpolation of Greek philosophy and sharīʿa.

The Ideal Islamic State: Plato and Sharīʿa

As a philosopher who undertook, in a substantive way, the revival of Aristotelian thought, Ibn Rushd lamented the lack of availability of Aristotle’s Politics, turning instead to Plato’s Republic to formulate a theory of government.Footnote ²² In his effort to theorise politics, Ibn Rushd thus draws on both Platonic and Aristotelian ideas and combines them in an intriguing way. He begins by drawing from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (rather than the Qur’an) the types of human perfection (theoretical and intellectual, moral and practical) that constitute virtue (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1974, p. 5). It is fitting, he argues, for every person ‘to obtain as many human perfections as are compatible with their individual nature’ (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1974, p. 10). Following Aristotle, Ibn Rushd argues that there is a universal account of well-being grounded in human nature, something akin to natural law. Ostensibly this raises an interesting discussion about the philosophical place of natural law in the Islamic tradition, given that the source of moral obligation is typically considered to be God, as derived from divine law.Footnote ²³ Ibn Rushd, for example, makes reference to an ‘unwritten law’, which can be understood as a theory of natural law mediating between divine and human law (Taliaferro, Reference Taliaferro2017, p. 22). The basic point here is that we may understand Ibn Rushd’s conception of natural law as situated within a broader Islamic intellectual tradition, where the relationship between reason and revelation was a central concern. By drawing on both Platonic and Aristotelian ideas, he sought to develop a political theory that recognised a form of Aristotelian natural law, while navigating the complexities of Islamic theology and jurisprudence. This was certainly another notable feature of his pluralistic framework.

Ibn Rushd’s ideal state respects the natural order among virtues and practical arts. In its organisation and administration, the state must mirror the natural order of virtues in the individual soul to ensure a perfect political community (Butterworth, Reference Butterworth, Adamson and Taylor2004, p. 282). Governments fail when they neglect the proper hierarchy of human virtues or pursue an errant end (Butterworth, Reference Butterworth, Adamson and Taylor2004, p. 282). Ethics and politics thus have an end goal or purpose (telos), namely the happiness of the entire political community. Happiness depends on the inculcation of virtue or right practices: ‘right practice consists in performing the acts which bring happiness and avoiding the acts which bring misery’ (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1961, p. 63). Ibn Rushd conceives of virtues as dispositions, engendered by education or habituation, to act by standards of moral excellence (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1974, p. 5).

The origins of government in Ibn Rushd’s political thought are also distinctly Aristotelian. The purpose of the state is not simply to fulfil human perfection but to realise basic and everyday needs ‘such as appropriating food, securing dwelling places and clothing, and generally anything that man is in need of, because of the appetitive or vital faculties within him’ (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1974, p. 5). Human beings are political by nature, and to acquire virtue, each individual stands in need of others (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1974, p. 5). With respect to Plato’s model of virtuous governance, Ibn Rushd constructed a hierarchical system based on the natural division of labour and the specialisation of classes. In Ibn Rushd’s ideal state, ‘not every man is fit to be a warrior, an orator or a poet, let alone a philosopher’ (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1974, p. 6). The state ought to rank groups in the correct order of status, from a lower artisan and producing class, to a higher guardian class containing philosophers capable of ruling. Without such ordering, happiness will not be achieved: ‘human virtues will not be attained at all or their attainment will be defective’ (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1974, p. 7). This epistemological theory of classes views Islamic political society through a Platonic lens rather than a Qur’anic lens (Black, Reference Black2001, p. 118).

As such, the particular features of Plato’s account of virtuous governance that Ibn Rushd appropriates include two important ideas. The first idea is that humans are naturally divided into distinct classes by the preordained function (ruling/fighting/trading) for which they are suited. Ibn Rushd defends Plato’s reasoning for the existence of this division of classes as follows:

The second idea that Ibn Rushd acquires from Plato’s theory of virtuous governance is that there are four virtues (wisdom, courage, temperance, justice) and that a just state is one in which the four virtues are as well cultivated as possible (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1974, p. 7). Following Plato, Ibn Rushd argues that both of these ideas are linked in that virtue in a state will be best cultivated if everyone has been given a job corresponding to the type of function to which they are naturally suited. Ibn Rushd determined that it is consistent to employ Plato’s hierarchical conception of political society and to argue that it is from sharīʿa that one finds the best articulation of what these virtues consist of or imply for Muslim public life. Unsurprisingly, the first of these ideas is contrary to human equality; that is, one’s status in life is dictated by one’s natural talent. Since for Plato there is no social mobility and one station is more noble or higher than the other stations, the price of combining sharīʿa and Plato in this way would be a tacit admission in which sharīʿa is consistent with the idea of human inequality. The implications of this last point are ambiguous and not clearly addressed in Ibn Rushd’s political writings, although they are contrary to those of the Qur’an.

In Ibn Rushd’s assessment of Plato’s criteria for selecting the leader among the guardian class, he emphasises the love for the welfare of the political community along with discipline (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1974, p. 34). Ibn Rushd suggests that individuals with such qualities are like ‘gold refined in fire’ and should be trained to govern and protect the state effectively (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1974, p. 35). He underscores Plato’s belief in the significance of education and training, outlining four conditions that the philosopher-king must meet: the ability to discover and teach theoretical sciences, wisdom in practical science, cogitative virtue, and great moral virtue (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1974, p. 71). The other attributes cannot be learned and are presented as natural, arising from the dominance of reason in the soul. They include all of the attributes emphasised by Plato: love of knowledge, distinctiveness, truthfulness, retentiveness of memory, courage, the despising of sensual desires, and relinquishing the love of wealth (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1974, pp. 73–75). Ibn Rushd (Reference Rushd1974, p. 75) adds eloquence in speech to this list because the ideal Islamic ruler must be able to interpret and teach the sharīʿa at the appropriate level of understanding. Such a blending and synthesisation of Islamic and Greek ideas is indicative of his pluralistic approach.

Ibn Rushd’s pluralistic approach is also apparent in his account of the virtuous qualities of the ideal Islamic ruler. These qualities include practical wisdom, intelligence, persuasion, imagination, military ability (for jihād), and freedom from physical defects (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1974, p. 106). The latter two are clearly influenced by the conventions of the Islamic political tradition in that they represent the traditional qualities of the caliph (Hourani, Reference Hourani1985, p. 267). By combining traditional and philosophical virtues, Ibn Rushd is able to equate Plato’s philosopher-king with the Islamic idea of a lawgiver or imam. He supports this alignment by asserting that the term ‘imam’ signifies ‘one who is followed in his actions’, a quality shared with the philosopher: ‘He who is followed in these actions by which he is a philosopher, is an Imam in the absolute sense’ (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1974, p. 72). Ultimately, for Ibn Rushd, the philosopher-king/imam should possess knowledge of both philosophy and Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh).

In his ideal Islamic state, Ibn Rushd identifies two primary methods for cultivating virtue in the political community: education and coercion. Education, the first and most important method, is the responsibility of the ruler, who must teach people wisdom and the truths of sharīʿa. Ibn Rushd argues that the guidelines for teaching virtue are already outlined in the Qur’an, which addresses the different levels of understanding among people: ‘for the natures of men are on different levels with respect to [their paths to] assent. One of them comes to assent through demonstration; another comes to assent through dialectical arguments … since his nature does not contain any greater capacity, while another comes to assent through rhetorical arguments’ (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1961, p. 49). To be politically effective, sharīʿa must appeal to a diverse cross-section of people, each possessing their own distinctive capacity to comprehend its laws. Ibn Rushd compares the purpose of sharīʿa to that of a doctor who aims ‘to preserve the health and cure the diseases of all the people, by prescribing for them rules which can be commonly accepted’ (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1974, p. 22). He places significant emphasis on the persuasive language and imagery of the Qur’an, which although varied in linguistic expression and reasoning, conveys a consistent moral and ethical message.

The second method of instilling virtue, coercion, is reserved for non-virtuous polities and is not recommended by Ibn Rushd for an ideal Islamic state. He criticises states that govern through harsh punishments such as castigation, disgrace, flogging, and execution, describing them as bad (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1974, p. 11). In contrast, sharīʿa promotes virtue primarily through speech and persuasion, limiting coercion to waging war against obdurate nations. In his Middle Commentary on Nicomachean Ethics (1177), Ibn Rushd presents a pluralistic notion of just war theory by referencing Aristotle’s definition of equity, which serves to rectify flawed laws that are excessively general (see Berman, Reference Berman1967). To illustrate this concept, he examines the question of jihād from the perspective of sharīʿa, which often states a general mandate for perpetual warfare against all non-Muslim nations (cited in Hourani, Reference Hourani1985, p. 268). In response, Ibn Rushd notes that Muslims have suffered significantly due to this overly broad interpretation and suggests, following Aristotle’s principle of equity, that peace should generally be preferred, with war being the exception (cited in Hourani, Reference Hourani1985, p. 269).

Ibn Rushd was convinced by the moral authority of sharīʿa, given its prophetically revealed nature. This belief in the divine nature of revelation was an article of faith that shaped his political thought and determined his mode of expression (Rosenthal, Reference Rosenthal and Rosenthal1956, p. 8).Footnote ²⁴ In the Exposition of the Methods of Proof concerning Religious Argument (1179/1180), Ibn Rushd adduces the miraculous nature of the Qur’an by pointing to the ingenuity of its theoretical and practical prescriptions, the confirmation of its predications, and its unmatched literary excellence (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd2001, pp. 100–101). Islam, he surmises, was ‘intended for all mankind … because of the universality of the teaching of the Precious Book [Qur’an] and the universality of the laws contained in it’ (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd2001, p. 103). Throughout his works, Ibn Rushd assertively proclaimed his commitment to faith and reason. The mission of the Prophet Muhammad as the lawgiver was to ‘instruct’ the ‘common people’ and the ‘learned’ ‘according to their rational capacities’ (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd2001, p. 77).

It is true that Ibn Rushd considered Plato’s political teaching valid for Muslims and deemed its actualisation a genuine prospect (Lerner, Reference Lerner and Lerner1974, p. xxviii). As such, he declared Plato’s regime the ‘quickest, easiest and best’ model for Islamic political reform (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1974, p. 79). The Qur’an did not preclude this possibility (even though Ibn Rushd does not address the point of human inequality as stated earlier in this Element). Indeed, Ibn Rushd was at pains to show that Plato’s model of governance offered all of the necessary normative prescriptions for perfecting the virtues contained in the sharīʿa. The success of Plato’s model, however, depended on the correct interpretation of sharīʿa and the political judgement of an ideal ruler. An imam, as a philosopher-king skilled in oratory, would exercise political judgement to convey the meaning of religious law at the appropriate level of understanding (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1974, p. 61).

Two fascinating aspects of Ibn Rushd’s theory of politics concern women and property. Regarding the former, he cites Plato’s analogy of the skilled female dog and his own example of the desert women of Daghuda to argue for the possibility of women philosophers and rulers (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1974, p. 58).Footnote ²⁵ Ibn Rushd draws on this analogy to make a similar argument about the potential of women to contribute to the intellectual and political life of the state. He observes that in his own society, women are confined to the domestic sphere and to the activities of procreation and child-rearing, depriving them of educational opportunities, which he sees as a waste of human potential and a cause of the poverty of the state (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1974, p. 97). By citing the example of the desert women of Daghuda, who presumably enjoyed greater freedom and participation in social and economic life, Ibn Rushd suggests that women are capable of much more than the roles assigned to them in his society . In Ibn Rushd’s (Reference Rushd2000) legal compendium, many of the juridical positions he advances regarding women’s prayer and property concur with his reading of Plato’s political theory (Belo, Reference Belo and Orwin2022).

On the question of property, Plato proposed that those in positions of political authority should dissolve their private households and abstain from accumulating personal wealth. Building upon Plato’s ideas, Ibn Rushd argues against property ownership for rulers, stating that it is the cause of conflict, corruption, and greed (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1974, p. 38). Observing his own context, he remarks that greed in acquiring private property results in extravagant rulers and corrupt elites who arouse the community’s enmity and hatred (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1974, p. 39). Ibn Rushd contends that while some might view wealth as a virtue, it does not constitute a form of virtue that rulers should adopt (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1974, p. 40). Significantly, both examples are illustrative of Ibn Rushd’s pluralistic framework, which uses reason to adapt and reformulate Plato’s political thought to foreground the sharīʿa’s alignment with the participation of women in the political realm and the importance of economic justice. It also remains uncertain whether Ibn Rushd would have given serious consideration to these ideas had he not presented them as part of his larger project of engaging with and adapting Plato’s political philosophy.

Practical Wisdom and Islamic Political Authority

Ibn Rushd’s emphasis on Aristotelean practical wisdom as a key virtue of Islamic political authority is crucial for understanding his pluralistic framework and his project of rethinking politics. Like Aristotle, Ibn Rushd argues that practical wisdom, acquired through years of theoretical education and possessed only by a select group of philosophers, is indispensable for governing a city, as it is the intellectual virtue concerned with moral judgement. Ibn Rushd’s ideal virtuous state rests on a philosopher-king/imam who directly exercises moral judgement (practical wisdom) to deduce the meaning of law. This ideal Islamic ruler has a special juridical insight with respect to sharīʿa (Rosenthal, Reference Rosenthal1953, p. 259), which is derived from his ability to engage in demonstrative reason. By granting the philosopher a higher political status than the jurist or theologian, Ibn Rushd’s account of the ideal Islamic ruler implies the superiority of philosophy – the method of the ancient Greeks – over the methods previously devised by pious Muslims for determining what is right and virtuous in a political community. Given Islamic political thought that the Islamic ruler should be versed in religious knowledge, Ibn Rushd’s position was unorthodox in arguing for a ruler to have special knowledge of religious affairs derived philosophically. This may explain why Ibn Rushd placed greater emphasis on the state’s role in developing virtue than either Aristotle or the Muslim philosophers preceding him (Black, Reference Black2001, p. 121). Ultimately, for Ibn Rushd, the ideal Islamic state guided by the ruler’s practical wisdom was to ensure the prevalence of the right kind of moral decision-making while maintaining political stability and order.

Ibn Rushd’s pluralistic synthesis of the philosopher-king/imam is also interesting for thinking about the question of true religious knowledge (ilm) and its separation from the conventional sites of power and authority vested in Islamic theologians and jurists. Here, Ibn Rushd contends that Islamic jurists, caught up in worldly affairs, lack the intellectual virtue of practical wisdom required for applying sharīʿa to practical political situations (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1961, p. 49). Moreover, the jurist’s activity ‘is not the direct exercise of moral judgement (practical wisdom) but the deduction of moral decisions from scripture. This is legal reasoning or legal analogy’ (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1961, p. 50). Moral judgement can be understood as political judgement informed by practical wisdom, an art which, for Ibn Rushd, is developed through a deep knowledge of the theoretical sciences (i.e., Aristotelian philosophy). This determination reveals that, for Ibn Rushd, sharīʿa had a political purpose which could be best managed if the philosopher was tasked with political authority. Dialectical reasoning applied by jurists used commonly accepted premises rather than principles of pure reason to guide the political community towards virtue (Hourani, Reference Hourani1985, p. 268). Ibn Rushd’s theory of politics was therefore not simply an endorsement of rational inquiry but also a radical Aristotelian proposal for Islamic political reform that reimagined the role of sharīʿa.

In Ibn Rushd’s ideal state, those tasked with political authority must recognise the three levels of reasoning in the Qur’an – demonstrative, dialectical, and rhetorical – and call various classes within the political community to virtue by applying the appropriate level of instruction: ‘summon to the way of your Lord by wisdom and by good preaching, and debate with them in the most effective manner’ (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1961, p. 49). The vast majority of people respond to moral action through rhetorical reasoning, as they are easily convinced by persuasive language and attractive imagery, which the Qur’an employs abundantly (Leaman, Reference Leaman1988, p. 154). In contrast, the intellectual class can uncover concealed meanings in the Qur’an through rational inquiry and demonstration, although the philosopher may choose not to disclose these meanings to those lacking the necessary capacity for comprehension (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1961, p. 64).

One of the problems Ibn Rushd identified with the political authority of his own time was the influence of religious scholars (ulama) in determining political affairs, despite their lack of practical wisdom and theoretical knowledge: ‘their thought and their leadership over the cities … is indeed the greatest of the causes for the loss of wisdom and the extinguishing of light’ (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1974, p. 74). He praises his patron Almohad Caliph Abu Ya’qub Yusuf for supporting philosophy but criticises his failure to discipline misguiding scholars (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd1961, p. 19). He also laments the condition of Muslim philosophers, whose value and practical wisdom were not properly recognised. This suggests that the ideal Islamic state envisaged by Ibn Rushd was not simply an abstract notion derived from Plato’s Republic but a model he hoped would materialise in his own context (Rosenthal, Reference Rosenthal1953, p. 259). Ultimately, Ibn Rushd’s conception of political authority and damning critiques of the jurists and theologians of his time further solidified the view of his unorthodoxy. This not only challenged the dominant theological and juridical paradigms of his time but affected him personally. By 1195, not even his patron the caliph could prevent his trial, which sentenced him to temporary exile on charges of heresy and disbelief. Consequently, the Almohad caliph Abu Yusuf Ya’qub al-Mansur condemned Ibn Rushd’s philosophical works and ordered the burning of his books. Ibn Rushd was exiled to Lucena, a small town near Córdoba, and was stripped of his position as a judge and banned from teaching or engaging in public life. This banishment was likely due to political reasons, as Ibn Rushd’s philosophical views had become increasingly controversial and were seen as a threat to the authority of the Almohad dynasty. The reception of Ibn Rushd’s ideas during his period also elicited consternation. Notable scholars of his period accused him of heresy and of prioritising philosophical reasoning over the sacred truths of religious revelation.Footnote ²⁶

Finally, Ibn Rushd’s pluralistic framework was not simply to produce a variety of religious arguments that could be demonstrated philosophically. His methodological approach was more careful and considered. It sought to reconcile a wide array of philosophical propositions (‘theoretical’ and ‘practical’ as discussed previously in this Element) by claiming its harmony with sharīʿa. Such harmonisation depended on the complex use of religious and philosophical language. As Leaman suggested, the notions of ‘equivocation’ and ‘linguistic ambiguity’ must be recognised as central to his methodology (Leaman, Reference Leaman1988, p. 196). Following Aristotle, Ibn Rushd recognised that words could have different meanings in different contexts. The determination of whether a word or concept is ambiguous is influenced by social factors. In other words, whether something is considered ambiguous or not is not solely a matter of inherent linguistic properties but is shaped by the way that language is used and understood within a specific social and cultural context. This leads Ibn Rushd to another insight concerning equivocation as a feature of language both in religion and in the ordinary world (Leaman, Reference Leaman1988, p. 195). For Ibn Rushd, equivocation implies the flexibility of language in capturing a diversity of views that accord with a common truth. In his philosophical methodology, Ibn Rushd attempts to show that apparently contradictory views can be reconciled if they manifest a common truth (Leaman, Reference Leaman1988, p. 196). This approach was central to his mediation of Islamic ethics and politics, which sought to harmonise reason and revelation as complementary sources of truth within a pluralistic framework.

By closely engaging with Ibn Rushd’s own writings and situating these ideas within the debates of his time, this section has sought to highlight the distinctiveness and originality of his political thought. Ibn Rushd’s pluralistic framework, I have argued, represents a bold attempt to expand the scope of Islamic intellectual thought by incorporating the sources of Greek philosophy and reconciling its central methods and ideas with sharīʿa. His distinctive theological innovation, asserting the compatibility of sharīʿa with the rationalistic methods of Greek philosophy, represents a significant departure from the dominant theological and juridical approaches of his time. By arguing for the discovery and affirmation of sharīʿa principles through Greek philosophical methods, Ibn Rushd opens up new possibilities for the understanding and application of Islamic ethics in the political realm. Recovering his mediating approach between Islamic ethics and politics offers a model for grappling with the complex relationship between religion and philosophy in both historical and contemporary contexts. Ibn Rushd’s intellectual legacy is therefore a powerful example of the potential for pluralistic modes of thinking to enrich and transform the Islamic tradition from within. Yet it also reveals the limitations of his pluralistic approach, which embraces a form of ambiguity and flexibility that unsettles the conventional boundaries between Islamic and extra-Islamic traditions of thought by claiming a reconciliation with sharīʿa that does align with its traditional methods and sensibilities.

Islamic Ethics and the Reform of Sharīʿa

A core endeavour of An-Na’im’s political thought is to redefine the concept of sharīʿa and examine the implications of this reinterpretation. This is a crucial task given his acknowledgement that sharīʿa plays a fundamental role in shaping and developing ethical norms and values for Muslims, retaining relevance whether Muslims are a majority or minority community (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 1). The term sharīʿa, An-Na’im argues, has two distinct dimensions. The first is a transcendental dimension that is unknowable. It comprises ‘God’s law in its divine and revealed sense’ (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 264). The second dimension, historically developed through Islamic legal and juristic techniques (usūl al-fiqh), is formed through human interpretation and reasoning. It is this latter dimension which An-Na’im interrogates and seeks to reform on the grounds that sharīʿa, as positive law, is subject to human fallibility and error, and that its normative content is limited in scope and applicability (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 13). An-Na’im questions the origins, continuity, and authority of the Islamic jurisprudential tradition by abandoning its methods and techniques and nominally rehabilitating the principle of abrogation (naskh).Footnote ²⁸ As such, he seeks to reinterpret sharīʿa by advancing two radical propositions for a modern Islamic ethics: an alternative hermeneutics of the Qur’an, and the replacement of traditional methods of Islamic positive law with a more ‘dynamic and creative development’ of Islamic law (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, pp. 12–13). Both of these moves are controversial departures from the theological and juridical methods of Islamic moral argumentation.

The first of these propositions is directly influenced by the methodology of An-Na’im’s intellectual and spiritual mentor, Ustadh Mahmoud Taha.Footnote ²⁹ As An-Na’im explains: ‘Taha proposed a revolutionary reform methodology, which he described as the evolution of Islamic legislation – in essence a call for the establishment of a new principle of interpretation that would permit applying some verses of Qur’an and accompanying Sunna instead of others’ (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im1990, p. 34). Following Taha, An-Na’im advocates for a controversial hermeneutical scheme that divides the message of the Qur’an into the Meccan and Medinan historical periods (Taha, Reference Taha1987). Taha’s rationale for this division is that early revelations of the Qur’an in Mecca represented the ‘universal’ and ‘humane’ message of Islam, while later ones in Medina were specific responses to the historical context of the early Islamic community (Taha, Reference Taha1987, p. 161). For Taha, the earlier Meccan revelations of the Qur’an contain verses of peace (ismah) which emphasise freedom of choice, and these verses can be relied upon for constructing a new Islamic legal and ethical theory (Taha, Reference Taha1987, pp. 125–126). While such a hermeneutical scheme accepts the totality of revelation, it employs the method of counter-abrogation (Taha, Reference Taha1987, p. 31).Footnote ³⁰ Taha’s execution by the Islamic state of Sudan in 1985 on charges of apostasy signified that his ‘death was the ultimate act in the advocacy of a liberal Islam, something he termed the second message of Islam’ (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im1986, p. 206).Footnote ³¹

In Toward an Islamic Reformation, An-Na’im’s key legal text, he elaborates Taha’s methodology to clarify its reformist aims:

For An-Na’im, the innovative and radical hermeneutics proposed by Taha could form a new intellectual foundation for a progressive, liberal conception of sharīʿa compatible with human rights and modern democracy. An-Na’im acknowledges that Taha’s re-interpretive approach may appear objectionable to many Muslims. However, he insists that his theory should not be viewed as an external imposition or departure from Islam. Rather, it must be treated and evaluated as an internal reformation effort aimed at reformulating Islamic law from within the tradition itself: ‘since the technique of naskh has been employed in the past to develop shari’a which has hitherto been accepted as the authentic and genuine Islamic model, the same technique may be employed today to produce an authentic and genuine modern Islamic law’ (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im1990, p. 10). Recognising the ambitious and lifelong nature of the undertaking he has set for himself, An-Na’im remains steadfast in his pursuit of reformulating Islamic jurisprudence through innovative re-interpretive approaches. In his seminal work, Islam and the Secular State, he reaffirms his endorsement of Taha’s methodology, citing his earlier works as a testament to its ‘coherence’ and ‘viability’ (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 124) in aligning Islam with liberal values.

An-Na’im’s second proposition for a modern Islamic ethics is a reform of Islamic positive law. He argues that the fundamental structure and methodology of sharīʿa has remained largely unchanged since the tenth century, with only limited practical adaptations in specific contexts (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 15). Although the tradition of Islamic jurisprudence likely served to stabilise Islamic societies in the early period of Islam, An-Na’im questions its durability and relevance for the contemporary context: he contends that the principle of consensus, which played a unifying role in bringing together the substantive content of Islamic legal schools, reduced the opportunity for creative thinking through ijtihād, the principle of independent juridical reasoning. An-Na’im criticises the limited scope assigned by Islamic jurists to independent reasoning, arguing that the ‘closing of the gates of ijtihād’ on the assumption that sharīʿa had been exhaustively elaborated is a problematic approach to sharīʿa since the tenth century (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 15).Footnote ³² Moreover, ‘no human being institution should control this process’ (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 14). While modern proponents of sharīʿa often champion ijtihad and its accompanying juristic techniques for rethinking sharīʿa in the contemporary context, An-Na’im surmises that is unlikely to engender sufficient reform, particularly in matters related to constitutional law, criminal justice, international law, and human rights. This is because many of the contentious rules in sharīʿa stem directly from clear and unambiguous texts found in Islam’s foundational sources of law, the Qur’an and Sunnah (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im1990, p. 49). There are tactical and political reasons for An-Na’im’s radical reform of the foundational aspects of sharīʿa which become clearer when we evaluate his pluralistic framework.

Curiously, An-Na’im holds Ibn Rushd as an exemplary thinker from the Islamic intellectual tradition and draws explicitly on two of his ideas to strengthen his case for rethinking sharīʿa.Footnote ³³ First, An-Na’im cites Ibn Rushd to argue that the content of sharīʿa evolves and changes over time as alternative methodologies come to be accepted and applied by Muslims: ‘it should also be emphasised that sharīʿa principles are always derived from human interpretation of the Qur’an and Sunna; they are what human beings can comprehend and seek to obey within their own specific historical context’ (Ibn Rushd cited in An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 10). Second, An-Na’im references Ibn Rushd’s favoured method for Qur’anic hermeneutics which suggests that even when there is wide consensus on a particular meaning of the Qur’an among many generations, that meaning remains a claim about human understanding of the divine text. Consequently, Islamic consensus, An-Na’im argues, ‘is what Ibn Rushd calls suppositional (zanian) and not certain’ (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 47). An-Na’im contends that these arguments from Ibn Rushd highlight the inherent contradictions involved in identifying and ascribing legal normativity and by extension provide scope for radical reinterpretation of sharīʿa. Presumably, An-Na’im turns to Ibn Rushd both for his veneration of reason and for finding juristic precedence for his argument on the evolution and reinterpretation of sharīʿa. The question remains whether Ibn Rushd’s statements are sufficient grounds for providing the kind of legal legitimacy An-Na’im requires for endorsing his radical project of Islamic legal reform. It is also altogether unlikely that Ibn Rushd would endorse a scheme of selective Qur’anic hermeneutics based on counter-abrogation. After all, as a rationalist thinker, Ibn Rushd emphasised internal coherence and lack of contradictions in understanding the Qur’an in its entirety and the act of selective abrogation of verses would greatly undermine this effort. Moreover, while extending the juridical scope for interpretation based on reason, Ibn Rushd largely operated within the mainstream Maliki jurisprudential tradition of his time. The notion of subjectively counter-abrogating verses would be an affront to the established juridical methods he operated within. Above all, however, Ibn Rushd remained wedded to the view that the Qur’an in its totality was a product of a miraculous event of divine revelation, ‘that all matters are found in the Qur’an in the most complete way possible’ and that the inviolability of the ‘precious book’ was a proof of the message of Islam (Ibn Rushd, Reference Rushd2001, p. 102).

Modernity and the Mediation of Islamic Ethics and Politics

Modern Islamic political thought has been fundamentally shaped by its encounter with European modernity. European modernity has been conceived as both an intellectual project and a historical period. However, as Iqtidar (Reference Iqtidar2011) and Bilgrami (Reference Bilgrami2012) suggest, its broad use makes it difficult to analyse conceptually. This problem can be addressed without abandoning the term ‘modernity’ and by questioning its normative values and universalising logic. For many Islamic political thinkers, including An-Na’im, the problem of modernity is inseparable from the hegemony imposed on Islamic societies through colonialism and the advent of the nation state (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 31). The 1648 European Treaty of Westphalia not only formalised the indefeasible claims of political modernity but also reconfigured the relationship between politics and ethics through the notion of Lockean religious toleration.Footnote ³⁴ While this may have settled centuries of war and conflict in Europe, paradoxically, it did not prevent the violent and anti-egalitarian conquest of indigenous people and lands, including those occupied by majority-Muslim societies. Islamic societies were rapidly transformed into modern polities devised along nationalistic lines, with a centralised form of authority and territorial sovereignty circumscribed by colonial borders that presupposed shared ethnic, religious, and political allegiance. An-Na’im argues that the territorial nation state defined citizenship in a contrived and coercive manner, disregarding the pre-existing historical and cultural formations in the Muslim world (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 33).

The rise of the nation state in the modern period presented key challenges for the Islamic world. On the one hand, it provided a prism for ordering politics and ethics across both East and West, by universally imposing a common institutional reality and a shared conceptual and normative framework (El Amine, Reference El Amine2016, p. 102). On the other hand (and this is one of the key features of European modernity), it sought to critically redefine and limit the role of religion. As such, the modern secular state now served to continuously ‘manage the place of religious thought and action’ (Iqtidar, Reference Iqtidar2011, pp. 64–65). At stake was the very nature of Islamic identity, the role of religion in public life, and the relationship between Islamic societies and the broader global community. The tradition of Islamic political theory has evolved eclectically in response to these developments. Various intellectual trends within modern Islamic political thought coalesced around the need to offer genuine ‘Islamic solutions’ to the challenges posed by Western colonialism and the resulting political and economic vulnerabilities experienced by Muslim societies (March, Reference March, Gaus, D’Agostino and Muldoon2012, p. 11). As Muslim thinkers grappled with these issues, they navigated a complex landscape shaped by the legacy of colonialism, the demands of modernisation, and the desire to maintain authenticity and integrity in their religious traditions. The ongoing debates within modern Islamic political thought, exemplified by the contrasting approaches of An-Na’im and revivalist thinkers like Maududi and Qutb, reflect the urgency and significance of these challenges. An-Na’im contributes to these debates in a somewhat cautious manner. Islamic revivalist thinkers such as Maududi and Qutb, he suggests, are too concerned with creating a comprehensive alternative to modernity solely within an Islamic framework (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 273). By advancing limited and static conceptions of Islamic politics, their ideas are akin to the Soviet and fascist models of the totalitarian state which seeks to transform society in the image of the ruling party (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 292). The impetus to provide comprehensive solutions from within the Islamic tradition to modern problems, An-Na’im concedes, is a natural response of Muslims to social disorder, political powerlessness, and economic frustration (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im1990, p. 4). At its core, it represents the right to self-determination. However, this right must be balanced against the self-determination rights of others, especially in the public sphere where competing claims in Islamic pluralistic societies require ‘mediation and accommodation’ (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im1990, p. 4). One way this may be achieved is by reconciling Muslim commitment to sharīʿa with a form of secularism that coheres within a religious framework (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im1990, p. 10). While this is the guiding premise of An-Na’im’s pluralistic framework, a key aspect of its practical realisation is contingent on the radical reform of sharīʿa as I have illustrated. As An-Na’im affirms, ‘demonstrating that the public law aspects of sharīʿa developed by founding jurists are not truly divine would enable their replacement without violating Muslim religious sensibilities’ (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im1990, p. 10). This statement brings into sharp relief the ethico-political problem An-Na’im sets up for himself. Does a radical reform of sharīʿa achieve the intended reconciliation with secularism that An-Na’im desires, or does it produce the opposite effect – alienating large segments of the Muslim public?

Islam and the ‘Secular’

An-Na’im’s defence for a secular state in Islam argues that it holds greater promise for promoting Islamic ethical values such as ‘social justice, peace, goodness, and virtue’ than any Islamic state which implements sharīʿa as state law (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 293). Yet to truly grasp the significance of this defence, I argue, one must first examine the concept of the secular itself. The secular, unassailable to the logic of the modern state, is a concept that not only serves to separate religion from politics (or church from state) but also assumes that its own ideas and values are universally applicable and normatively superior, regardless of their context-specific origins and limitations. Talal Asad’s (Reference Asad2003) ground-breaking Formations of the Secular clarifies why the term ‘secular’ should also be thought of as conceptually prior to the political doctrine of secularism. Asad suggests that the term ‘secular’ evolved over time ‘through a variety of concepts, practices, and sensibilities’ (Asad, Reference Asad2003, p. 16). As a temporal and spatial concept, the term ‘secular’ functioned to establish, authorise, and perpetuate distinctively modern and European modes of being and knowing, revealing its inherent normative power. In a secular purview, religion, as a domain of faith and passion, was considered to be at loggerheads with politics, the domain of rational argument and interest-guided action. As such, religion, rooted in divine authority and constraint, was viewed as a threat to individual freedom and the freedom of others (Asad, Reference Asad, van der Veer and Hartmut1999, p. 182). The place of religion in modern life therefore needed to be revised: ‘in order for a society to be modern, it has to be secular, and for it to be secular, it has to relegate religion to non-political spaces’ (Asad, Reference Asad, van der Veer and Hartmut1999, p. 179). Asad’s critique encapsulates the limitations of the concept of the secular for Islamic normative inquiry. By retaining a normative power in defining and delimiting what is considered religious or non-religious, the term ‘secular’ lacks conceptual impartiality.

The doctrine of secularism should not be thought of as a neutral framework but a form of power that inflects political institutions and ideas such as liberalism, human rights, and the modern state. As Iqtidar points out, secularism can be better understood as a political project imbricated in the complex interplay of history and politics, distinct from the European historical process of secularisation and theories of secularisation (Iqtidar, Reference Iqtidar2011, p. 20). Secularism, constituted as it is by liberal ideas, possesses a normative and universalist currency that is often asserted polemically against Islam, such that the latter is perceived as inimical to progress (Gellner, Reference Gellner1991; Huntington, Reference Huntington1993; Lewis, Reference Lewis2002). The tension that modern Islamic political thinkers thus seek to resolve is how to reconcile liberal democracy sustained by secularism with the theological resources at their disposal (Hashemi, Reference Hashemi2009, p. 1). Hashemi suggests that one way of confronting this paradox is to interrogate the form of secularism that has been integrated into the political culture of Muslim societies (Hashemi, Reference Hashemi2009, p. 2). In societies where religion plays a significant role in identity, one path to reconciling secularism with religion might involve the development of a theory of secularism rooted in religious perspectives (Hashemi, Reference Hashemi2009, p. 2). To accomplish this, Islamic thinkers must formulate a theory of secularism that harmonises with both the essential operational prerequisites of liberal democracy and their own political and theological perspectives.

An-Na’im’s theory of a secular state in Islam might count as one such effort.Footnote ³⁵ It takes as its starting point a distinct theological position on the radical reform of sharīʿa. From here, it proceeds to advance a case for the secular in Islam, despite the conceptual complexities of its linguistic appropriation. As Piscatori and Eickelman (1996, p. 39) suggest, the idea of the secular is commonly viewed by Muslims as a foreign concept antagonistic to religion. For the most part, An-Na’im acknowledges the complexity of such a theoretical endeavour. Muslims, he suggests, tend to be hostile to the concept of secularism because of the polemical nature of its use and the rigidity of some of its theoretical definitions (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 36). To overcome this, An-Na’im suggests that secularism must be thought of as a fluid and variegated concept that can be usefully appropriated rather than rejected. This is because secularism does not constitute the exclusion of religion from the public life of any society. Those who define it in this limiting way are chasing an ‘illusory notion’ that is not even valid for liberal societies where secularism is rooted (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 36). Curiously, An-Na’im abandons the term ‘secularism’ on the grounds that it conflates the state and politics, opting instead for the term ‘secular state’. This has obvious definitional implications which he proceeds to qualify. A secular state in Islam is an institutional form where there is neutrality regarding religious doctrine and the freedom of individuals within the state are safeguarded through the mechanisms of human rights, constitutionalism, and citizenship (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 24). This separation of Islam from the state does not mean the relegation of Islam to the private domain and its exclusion from Muslim public life (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, pp. 8–9). Islam can continue to interact productively with politics, and religious values can positively influence political debate: ‘allowing sharīʿa principles to play a positive role in public life without permitting them to be implemented through state institutions … is a delicate balance that each society must strive to maintain for itself over time’ (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 38).

The idea of completely separating Islam from politics is deemed unnecessary or even undesirable. Muslims, An-Na’im contends, naturally integrate their religious beliefs into their political actions (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 4). Such an assertion sheds light on the paradoxical nature of a secular approach which seeks to actively delimit the operationalisation of Islam in the political sphere whilst conceding that Muslims infuse their political aspirations with their deeply held religious beliefs. It would therefore benefit readers if An-Na’im provided further insight into why he believes this separation is neither necessary nor desirable. Could sharīʿa, according to his perspective, yield positive outcomes for Islamic politics? If so, what might these outcomes entail, and which aspects of the religious principles of sharīʿa would meaningfully cohere with the liberal instruments of human rights and constitutionalism that he sets up as institutional safeguards? A resolution to this question appears to depend on his crucial formulation for a radical methodology for the reform of sharīʿa. Taha provides An-Na’im with a juristic foundation for constructing a modern Islamic public law: ‘whether this particular methodology is accepted or rejected by contemporary Muslims, the need for drastic reform of the public law of sharīʿa’, is for An-Na’im, ‘beyond dispute’ (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im1990, p. 186). In An-Na’im’s definition of the secular state in Islam, we can also identify the complex interplay of mediating Islamic ethics and politics. By suggesting a drastic reform of sharīʿa and by implementing human rights and constitutional safeguards, An-Na’im is making an important move vis-à-vis sharīʿa: diminishing its existing status and calling for its regulation under liberal political instruments. Critics may perceive this attempt to liberalise sharīʿa by challenging its epistemic foundations as reinforcing the universalising pretensions of secular and liberal values and asserting their superiority. Arguably, a serious engagement with the endogenous modes within the Islamic tradition to achieve a form of reconciliation that exemplifies Islam’s commitment to the values of plurality and tolerance is likely to have prevented such a critique.Footnote ³⁶

Institutional Forms: Islam and ‘the State’

An-Na’im’s normative proposal of a secular state in Islam is predicated on the acceptance of the modern sovereign state as the unit of analysis. While conceding that this European model of state formation is a colonial imposition on Muslim lands, An-Na’im views the ubiquity and universalisation of the state in the international order in realist terms. Any attempt to articulate norms for Islamic societies must take into account the drastic transformation brought about by the modern state and its impact on premodern state formations (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 285). An Islamic prototype for governance cannot be excavated from the life of Prophet Muhammad (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 53). That was a model that is impossible to re-enact because no other human being can claim the Prophet Muhammad’s combination of religious and political authority: ‘[a]s the ultimate embodiment of this model, the Prophet was accepted by Muslims to be their sole legislator, judge, and commander. That experience was unique and cannot be replicated because Muslims do not accept the possibility of prophets after the Prophet Muhammad’ (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 53). This determination that an Islamic prototype for governance cannot be excavated from the Prophetic example grants An-Na’im latitude to revisit the question of political legitimacy in Islam. Specifically, it allows him to deny the possibility of merging religious and political functions within a single authority, an idea that aligns with his broader argument advocating for an Islamic secular state.

An-Nai’m observes that two types of Islamic governance can be extrapolated from Islamic history: one of conflation and the other of convergence (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 53). Conflation exists when there is no separation between state and religious institutions, while convergence marks the complete separation between religious and political authorities. Contemporary Muslim rulers tend to implicitly combine religious and political roles, even if they do not explicitly admit to doing so, likely due to the importance of appearing Islamically legitimate in the eyes of their populace (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 53). The point of identifying this distinction is to prompt Muslims to accept the impossibility of the conflation and convergence models, and to redirect their attention to the possibility of a secular state in Islam. Such a state accedes to territorial sovereignty and other normative apparatus of the European model as a pragmatic and historical reality: ‘Islamic societies choose to be bound by a minimum set of national and international obligations of membership in the world community of territorial states’’(An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 19). These changes cannot simply be reversed as the state is a firmly embedded sociopolitical reality. Muslims now live within territorial nation states characterised by a centralised and bureaucratically organised administrative and legal order (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 19). Citing Weber, he clarifies that the purpose of the state is to exert authority over what occurs within its area of territorial jurisdiction through a monopoly of the use of legitimate force (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 285).

A secular state in Islam rests on both the ineluctability of the modern state system and the impossibility of reviving precolonial modes of Islamic governance. This is a clear endorsement of political realism, sharply at variance with those approaches that seek to reinstate a modern caliphate unconstrained by colonial borders. The emphasis on the viability of the modern state for Muslims is most prominently critiqued by the thinker Wael Hallaq (Reference Hallaq2013). Hallaq argues that the modern state is a highly problematic institutional arrangement for all societies but poses an additional problem for Muslims: the harm it can do to sharīʿa when sharīʿa is imposed through the state. Hallaq takes for granted the long tradition of reform within sharīʿa and suggests that the modern state is an inferior model to premodern forms of Islamic governance (Hallaq, Reference Hallaq2013, p. 5). The adoption of the modern state by Muslims, Hallaq contends, generates an impossible and self-contradictory task for reconciling ethics and politics in Islam, which Islam has never regarded as separate domains. This is because the state is not politically neutral but dominates the process of subjectivity formation through universalising ideals and a paradigm of ethics often hostile to Islam (Hallaq, Reference Hallaq2013, p. 75).Footnote ³⁷ For Hallaq, Islamic ethical values, in contrast, are grounded on noumenal reason with an entirely different consciousness of self and entirely different interpretation of man. Premodern Muslims, Hallaq surmises, viewed sharīʿa as an ethical system with a lived tradition of moral values that permeated social and political life.

While both An-Na’im and Hallaq reject the possibility of the modern state enforcing sharīʿa, their rationales and prescriptions for mediating the tension between Islamic ethics and politics differ significantly. There are two major points of disagreement between them regarding the nature of this rejection. First, Hallaq argues that any conception of a modern Islamic state is ‘inherently self-contradictory’ because sharīʿa, by definition, constitutes the informal rulings of jurists based on a commitment to God’s legislative sovereignty, whereas the modern state requires top-down codification of law premised on the state’s own sovereign authority (Hallaq, Reference Hallaq2013, ix). Thus, for Hallaq, the authority of sharīʿa cannot be re-enacted through the institutional apparatus of the modern state. An-Na’im’s rejection of sharīʿa codification by the modern state differs in its emphasis on the nature and interpretation of sharīʿa itself. He contends that sharīʿa cannot be conclusively and infallibly interpreted, especially by Islamic jurists, and those states seeking to apply sharīʿa as law enforce tyranny (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 28). The second disagreement concerns mediating Islamic ethics and modern politics. Hallaq posits that Islamic ethics, embedded in sharīʿa, exhibits flexibility, adaptability, and internal pluralism – resources capable of nourishing a modern Islamic politics. Conversely, An-Na’im argues that while some Islamic ethical principles and social values are necessary for Islamic societies’ proper functioning, sharīʿa requires reformation to cohere with liberal values such as equality, freedom, human rights, and democracy. There is also a profound difference between An-Na’im and Hallaq in terms of identifying what needs greater reform: the state or sharīʿa. An-Na’im takes the state as a given and seeks to reform sharīʿa, while Hallaq takes sharīʿa as a given and seeks to reform the state. It is open to debate which is the more ‘realistic’ or pragmatic position. At its core, An-Na’im’s mediation of Islamic ethics and politics by reforming sharīʿa forms part of a broader intellectual project to reconcile sharīʿa with the extra-Islamic tradition of liberal thought, the specifics of which we can observe in his pluralistic framework.

Reconciling Sharīʿa and Liberal Thought

An-Na’im notes the guiding principles of his pluralistic framework as follows: a repudiation of dichotomies between so-called Western and Islamic concepts and institutions, and a consideration of the relevance and utility of extra-Islamic traditions of thought, ‘regardless of their origin’ (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 97).Footnote ³⁸ These principles reveal the contours of An-Na’im’s pluralistic approach which strives to collapse artificial binaries between the ‘West’ and Islam and to synthesise and incorporate diverse traditions towards accommodation rather than conflict. Such an argument posits that it is misleading to view the ‘West’ or the ‘Muslim world’ as monolithic entities, as historical interactions between early Islamic scholars and diverse traditions of thought proved intellectually generative in the past (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 98). Such cross-pollination of ideas must continue into the present for Islamic thought to remain dynamic and pluralistic. Moreover, due to cultural and intellectual hegemony, Muslim readers likely have a greater sense of ‘familiarity’ and ‘appreciation’ of ‘Western’ intellectual ideas as opposed to their own traditions of thought (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 98). In this spirit of unquestioning pragmatism, An-Na’im sets forth to engage with the ideas of John Rawls, albeit with a caveat. To explore liberal political thought without being bound or limited by it, and with a recognition of the risks of transplanting its premises and theoretical assumptions onto Islamic societies (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 100).

There is no doubt that the ideas of John Rawls, the influential twentieth-century American liberal philosopher, have sparked extensive debate within contemporary political theory. These debates have inflected Islamic political thinking, initiating important debates that scrutinise the compatibility of Rawlsian liberal principles with Islamic teachings (Haider, Reference Haidar2006; Fadel, Reference Fadel2008; Khan, Reference Khan2017; March, Reference March2011). An-Na’im’s political thought can be analysed as part of this tradition of pluralistic engagement with Rawls, marked by what he terms as a ‘friendly amendment’ to Rawls’ account of political liberalism (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im, Bailey and Gentile2014, p. 242). This ‘friendly amendment’ involves a re-evaluation of Rawls’ concept of public reason, with the objective of reconciling its key features within an Islamic framework. The starting point of his engagement is to reconsider Rawls’ contention that in a just and stable democratic society, public reason is neutral with respect to religion. Public reason as Rawls defined it comprised ‘the reason of equal citizens who, as a collective body, exercise final political and coercive power over one another in enacting laws and in amending the constitution’ (Rawls, Reference Rawls1993b, p. 223). In liberal societies, public reason therefore operates as political value which citizens who seek or hold public office employ to justify their political decisions through a set of publicly endorsed values and standards (Rawls, Reference Rawls1993b, pp. 213–216). Public reason as a core feature of Rawls’ liberal thought underlines the principle of reciprocity, the notion that political power is used in ways that all citizens may reasonably be expected to endorse. The content of public reason is formulated through a ‘political conception of justice’ that specifies key liberal principles which include ‘basic rights, liberties, and opportunities’ (Rawls, Reference Rawls1993b, p. 223).

Rawls maintains that a central feature of liberal democracy is the presence of ‘reasonable pluralism’, marked by conflicting comprehensive doctrines, including religious belief (Rawls, Reference Rawls1993b, p. 765). One way to establish a common ground, or an ‘overlapping consensus’ where citizens can agree on a shared set of principles for the basic structure of society, is public reason. The doctrine of public reason holds that ‘comprehensive doctrines of truth or right be replaced by an idea of the politically reasonable addressed to citizens as citizens’ (Rawls, Reference Rawls1993b, p. 766). Public reason for Rawls must be insulated from the comprehensive religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines that these citizens may hold as true in other contexts. The reason for this is simple; if public reason were to incorporate specific religious doctrines, it could exclude some citizens whose beliefs do not align with those doctrines.Footnote ³⁹

For An-Na’im, Rawls’ theory of public reason does not accommodate Islamic societies, where sharīʿa is central to ethical and political life (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im, Bailey and Gentile2014, p. 245). An-Na’im critiques two main claims about religion and politics that Rawls advances: first, that religious reasons are not appropriate in public political discourse because they are not accessible to all citizens and cannot be subject to public scrutiny and debate; and second, that it is not possible for citizens to affirm a religious doctrine and hold a reasonable political conception that supports a just democratic regime. Both of these are objectionable, according to An-Na’im, as they impose a ‘stipulation of what qualifies as “public” reason in one setting or another’ (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im, Bailey and Gentile2014, p. 245). In other words, while it is important for citizens to have a shared conception of political authority, this shared understanding should not be limited or defined by a set of principles: ‘If the reasons that citizens advance and their manner of reasoning actively undermine a shared conception of political authority, then that is a separate inquiry to pursue, without insisting on a blanket rejection of one type of reason or another’ (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im, Bailey and Gentile2014, p. 245). This determination does not constitute a dismissal of Rawls, but an amendment of his theory.

To further articulate his critique of Rawls’ limited conception of public reason in relation to comprehensive doctrines, An-Na’im draws on another thinker from the tradition of liberal thought, Jurgen Habermas. Habermas’ (Reference Habermas1995) critique of Rawls’ distinction between comprehensive doctrines and political values, as well as the division of public and private life, provides An-Na’im with the intellectual resources to further solidify his argument. As Habermas outlines, Rawls’ conception of comprehensive doctrines fails to recognise the historically fluid boundaries between the public and private realms and the significance of independent and non-governmental spaces as essential areas for the expression and development of public reason (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 100).Footnote ⁴⁰ Building on Habermas’ critique, An-Na’im attempts to formulate a conception of public reason within an Islamic framework, something he terms ‘civic reason’. Civic reason is a political structure that mediates public policy and legislation through reasoning that citizens can accept or reject. It promotes public debate and deliberation to develop a common set of shared values and ethical principles (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im, Bailey and Gentile2014, p. 257). The word ‘civic’ is deliberately used by An-Na’im to invoke the need for policy and legislation to be accepted by the public at large, and for fora of rational debate to remain open and accessible to all citizens (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 7). This conception of civic reason seeks to balance the individual’s right to freedom of religion and the collective pursuit of justice by recognising that religious beliefs can contribute to public discussion and decision-making in politics. Unlike Rawls’ concept of public reason, which relies on impartial reasoning, civic reason accommodates for religious beliefs to shape the discourse of public policy and law. In this sense, civic reason aims to negotiate the centrality of sharīʿa by providing a mechanism for its deliberation in the context of a secular state (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im, Bailey and Gentile2014, p. 257). Civic reason allows aspects of sharīʿa to reflect public law and policy insofar as it adheres to constitutional and human rights safeguards (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im, Bailey and Gentile2014, p. 247).

An-Na’im’s pluralistic framework enables the normative rethinking of Islamic politics through civic reason. By repurposing Rawls’ conception of public reason and presenting it through a new register of civic reason, An-Na’im suggests that Islamic societies can achieve a Rawlsian form of overlapping consensus. The basic problem with Rawls’ approach is that it does not consider societies outside of the Anglo-American experience, including Islamic societies where religious identity and values extensively shape the public sphere. The sharīʿa is an integral part of the common understanding of Muslims and its precepts extend beyond merely religious rituals and jurisprudence (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im, Bailey and Gentile2014, p. 246).

In the context of An-Na’im’s theory of a secular state in Islam, civic reason can be operationalised by creating a space for public discourse that is open to diverse perspectives of sharīʿa. This approach can help to defuse the tensions that arise from separating Islam from the state while recognising its place in the Muslim public. Islamic principles and ethical norms can, for example, be proposed for adoption by these states as official public policy or legislation through the process of civic reason but without reference to specific religious laws. Since forms of civic reason are already present to some degree in most Islamic societies, An-Na’im calls for their ‘further conscious and incremental development’ in the Islamic postcolonial world (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 8). Implementing civic reason in Islamic societies is a complex and ongoing process that would require ongoing dialogue and negotiation and can be regarded as an idea that is ‘tentative and evolving’ (An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 101). Crucially, civic reason should vary according to Islamic local histories and conditions because the principles of human rights and democracy ought to be understood and applied within specific cultural, historical, and social contexts (An-Na’im Reference An-Na’im2008, p. 101).

An-Na’im is correct in arguing that sharīʿa even in its present iteration cannot be excised from Islamic public life. In the contemporary world its influence extends even into liberal secular democracies, where it continues to shape Muslim attitudes and discourses around ethics and morality. If observed voluntarily, sharīʿa is more likely to play a significant role in shaping and developing ethical norms and values that can ultimately be reflected in legislation and public policy through the democratic political process. To address concerns around codifying religious norms in a secular state, An-Na’im could delineate between prescriptive/proscriptive norms and permissive norms with a religious content An-Na’im’s argument may be enhanced by delineating between prescriptive or proscriptive norms and permissive norms. Secular liberals may endorse permissive norms with a religious content, such as allowing religious ceremonies for marriage or attending religious educational institutions. However, they may worry about prescriptive or proscriptive norms with a religious content, such as mandatory attendance at religious educational institutions. Further clarification from An-Na’im on the specific kinds of ‘official policy and legislation’ he envisions enacting Islamic religious values, and whether these include prescriptive or proscriptive norms, could enhance his argument. Additionally, it would be beneficial to understand what differentiates An-Na’im’s legislative and policy proposals from those of liberal multiculturalism (see, for example, Kymlicka, Reference Kymlicka1995). To distinguish his approach, An-Na’im could further elaborate on how his sharīʿa reforms notions of civic reason that diverge from or expand upon Kymlicka’s prescriptions for accommodating cultural pluralism through differentiated citizenship rights.

The Plausibility of An-Na’im’s Pluralistic Framework

In his paper ‘The Idea of Public Reason Revisited’, Rawls (Reference Rawls1997) discusses the challenges of accommodating reasonable pluralism and acknowledges the limits to which some comprehensive doctrines can be accommodated within a liberal democratic framework., Rawls cites An-Na’im’s writings on Islamic constitutionalism as a perfect example of an overlapping consensus (Rawls, Reference Rawls1997, pp. 782–783). Rawls argues that An-Na’im’s reinterpretation of sharīʿa is far more consistent with the constraints of public reason and essential constitutional liberties, providing a way for Muslims to reconcile their religious and political commitments in a liberal democratic framework (Rawls, Reference Rawls1997, p. 782).Footnote ⁴¹ Curiously, Rawls makes two important remarks related to Islamic ethics. First, he notes that An-Na’im presents his interpretation of sharīʿa as ‘correct and superior’ to gain acceptability amongst Muslims. Second, Rawls observes that An-Na’im’s main arguments for radical reform of sharīʿa flow from the teachings of Taha, which reject the traditional understanding of sharīʿa (Rawls, Reference Rawls1997, p. 783). Rawls’ observation here is significant insofar as its implicit suggestion that the sophistication of An-Na’im’s political theory is enabled by a particular reformist vision. An-Na’im’s adoption of Taha’s method that includes profane and arguably heretical elements enables, from Rawls’ vantage point, its success in reconciling political liberalism and Islam through an overlapping consensus. The question then remains, does the possibility of reconciling Islam and liberal thought through an ‘overlapping consensus’ rely on radical proposals for metaphysical and hermeneutical innovation of sharīʿa?

In conclusion, An-Na’im’s pluralistic framework represents a bold attempt to mediate Islamic ethics and politics by incorporating the extra-Islamic tradition of liberal thought and reconciling its ideas with sharīʿa. However, as I have outlined in this section, this mediation of Islamic ethics and politics radically departs from authentic or traditional understandings of sharīʿa. Such a departure is exemplified in the subversion of sharīʿa under liberal instruments by recommending the radical reform of Islamic legal normativity, principally through the theological innovation of the method of counter-abrogation. While An-Na’im seeks to make a case for the interdependency of ethics and politics in Islam, he does so from premises that are unlikely to be acceptable to the vast majority of devout Muslims. What is lacking from An-Na’im’s pluralistic framework, I argue, is the ‘principle of plausibility’, described by March as follows:

The principle of plausibility posits that any framework devised for the ethical and political reform of Islamic society should aim to mitigate conflict with prevailing Islamic doctrinal beliefs, as embraced by its adherents. March’s study Islam and Liberal Citizenship (Reference March2011) demonstrates the efficacy of this principle by exploring the potential for an overlapping consensus between Islamic ethics and political liberalism. March argues that Islam, as a reasonable comprehensive doctrine, contains sufficient moral and legal resources for accepting the demands of liberal citizenship. This insight is important because it highlights the need for ‘pluralistic frameworks’ that seek to mediate Islamic ethics and politics by incorporating extra-Islamic traditions of thought in a way that recognises the central moral questions of the Islamic tradition. This principle serves as a crucial guideline for evaluating the success and potential impact of such frameworks. A successful pluralistic framework must find an equilibrium that minimises conflict with the score beliefs and principles of the Islamic tradition while still achieving a meaningful synthesis or dialogue between them. Finally, it underscores the importance of considering the reception and acceptance of pluralistic frameworks within the communities they seek to address. A framework that departs too radically from the established beliefs and practices of a community may struggle to gain traction, even if it is intellectually innovative or compelling from an outsider’s perspective. To be effective, Islamic pluralistic frameworks must be sensitive to the lived experiences, moral intuitions, and religious commitments of the Islamic audience it seeks to engage.

Finally, it is reasonable suggest that An-Na’im does not fully succeed in circumventing the theo-political problem he sets out to resolve. It remains to be seen whether An-Na’im’s normative proposal for a secular state in Islam can be persuasive within majority-Muslim societies, given its entanglement with a highly unorthodox, revisionist approach to Islamic law and ethics.Footnote ⁴² To answer this question, one must ask to what extent An-Na’im’s conception of Islamic ethics directly informs his normative theory of politics. While An-Na’im gestures at the possibilities of utilising other methodological approaches to reform, it is highly unlikely that such possibilities might look to the internal resources of sharīʿa in the traditional sense, given An-Na’im’s excoriating critique of the tradition of Islamic legal normativity. This is unfortunate, considering the breadth of sharīʿa, which possesses a formidable capaciousness for accommodating a range of positions. Ultimately, a radical break from the Islamic ethical tradition runs the risk of appearing as a marginal contribution to the Islamic political tradition. Despite An-Na’im’s creativity, sophistication, and originality in developing a pluralistic framework, this claim rings true.