In this book, Wael Hallaq at first seems to take aim at Islamist political movements with his claim that “any conception of a modern Islamic state is inherently self-contradictory” (p. ix; emphasis in the original). And indeed, Hallaq does dismiss much of the Islamist project, which he sees as Islamizing society through the state. His book misses the mark a bit in that effort. But that is largely because his true targets are far broader: modernity, the West, and the state—terms that he sees as inextricably linked.
The Impossible State is an audacious book. It is also erudite in its engagement with various bodies of writing and entire disciplines. Should it be interesting to political scientists? I think so, but only in a much more modest way than the author intends.
Hallaq’s critique of modernity rests on an essentialism so sweeping that most students of politics will find it unhelpful. But in the process of arguing from essences, he gives a sympathetic view of the Islamic shari’a that will help many appreciate how it has been understood, pursued, and practiced—and why it continues to have appeal even in the midst of a modern state system. In that way, he (unintentionally) provides an extremely brief and limited but useful way to understand the Islamist resurgence.
Let us begin with Hallaq’s essentialism. He does use the word “essence” on occasion, but he prefers “paradigmatic” instead: “In our account of paradigm, what is involved is a system of knowledge and practice whose constituent domains share in common a particular structure of concepts that qualitatively distinguish them from other systems of the same species” (p. 8). There, are of course, discordant, irregular, or abnormal elements within any domain, but they subvert the paradigm and are not part of it—and if they ever become dominant, then they form the basis for a new paradigm.
Historical departures from the paradigm do not touch its essence; for the Islamic shari’a, for instance: “The mess of social reality—the victimized child, the robbed trader, the overtaxed peasant—could always rely on a hegemonic moral system that did its best to address the reality. That it was not always successful is a fact that we should take for granted—for perfect success is the lot of no society, past or present—but the paradigmatic efficacy of the moral disposition cannot be questioned” (p. 11; emphasis original).
The reference to “reality” and “fact” at variance with paradigms should not mislead. Hallaq’s paradigms themselves are not mere names but are quite real for him (he refers at one point to the “reality” of the “legal culture” of a Muslim jurist (p. 73; emphasis original). His paradigms are not timeless, however; they are socially and historically created. And they can die.
In short, Hallaq is concerned with the essence of the modern state, on the one hand, and the Islamic shari’a, on the other, after all of their accidental variations, accretions, and distorted applications are stripped away.
How does the author decide what is paradigmatic in modernity, the West, and the state? What are the “fundamental structures or properties that the state has in reality possessed for at least a century and without which it could never be conceived of as a state, being that essential” (p. 21; emphasis original)? Hallaq turns to many critics of modernity and the state, but perhaps no voice speaks louder than that of Carl Schmitt. The modern state “exists for its own sake”; it is “a means to no other end” with its own supremacy “the highest value, which the citizen must always privilege.” Possessing absolute sovereignty, the modern state is predicated on the “sacrifice of the citizen” because the state is more precious than life (p. 28). Demonstrating his historical understanding, Hallaq dismisses anything he deems “utopian or futuristic,” instead focusing on “the real, existing, and paradigmatic state” (p. 21), suggesting that actual injustices committed by modern states are part of their essence and not accidental. And indeed, the modern state, with its “exclusively European” (p. 3) genealogy, is capable of an enormous amount of killing, domination, and destruction.
When he turns to the Islamic shari’a, Hallaq seems to subtly (and only implicitly) shift his method; rather than examine actions, he stresses institutions and discourses. There is an element of modernization theory in reverse here; not only is the Islamic shari’a essentially different, but it is also better than modernity in its provision of justice, protection of the weak, and insistence on holding those in power accountable to moral standards that they themselves cannot set. It was not necessarily unique in this respect: “Premodern societies—i.e., prestate social formations and outside of Europe . . . differed from one another significantly, yet for all their dissimilarities, they still differed considerably more from the discipline and order of the modern state’s social creation” (pp. 98–99).
Yet again, Hallaq is not ahistorical; the Islamic shari’a was formed sociologically and historically. But paradoxically, it was precisely because the Islamic shari’a promised to be good for all times and places that it was applied by those who were guided by particular social needs and overriding goals. Its primary concern “was the regulation, on moral grounds, of social and economic relations” (p. 59).
Many other scholars have noted that when discourses, institutions, and practices deriving from the Islamic shari’a operate in the context of the modern state, they do so in a very different manner; Hallaq has contributed to that realization in past works in some stark ways. But in this book he goes farther. Not only does he declare the Islamic shari’a “institutionally defunct” (p. 13), and not only is it clear that the modern state is the murderer. The modern state and the Islamic shari’a are fundamentally and absolutely incompatible because of the difference in their essences. There is an odd echo of Sayyid Qutb’s claim that all existing societies are jahili (operating in pre-Islamic ignorance) because they involve domination of man by man rather than rule in accordance with God’s instructions (though there are, as we shall see, two critical differences between Sayyid Qutb and Hallaq).
This is a radical claim; it is also one that most political scientists will find unhelpful precisely because it is so extreme and essentialist. Hallaq is dismissive of anything that departs from his absolutes: The separation of powers is chimerical; the rule of law and democracy “must be called into question” (p. 47). Only globalization might temper the modern state (he speculates on this issue but issues no definitive judgment), but if it does, the resulting tension is likely to produce unstable results.
Yes, if one draws one’s understanding of the state from fascism, one will be repulsed. And if one’s understanding of an Islamic society is as absolutist as Sayyid Qutb’s, the fundamental incompatibility is obvious. But what is gained by talking not of tensions, contradictions, hybridity, appropriation, even mongrelization but instead of absolute incompatibility and impossibility? Of course there is a tension between the modern state and the Islamic shari’a as it was historically practiced and understood. But so is there tension between some practices associated with some modern states and liberalism, republicanism, constitutionalism, Catholicism, and many other ideas and approaches that seem to operate (hardly unchanged) in the modern world. Few scholars would find such categorical thinking useful or interesting.
What many should find helpful is Hallaq’s brief portrayal of how the Islamic shari’a was understood and practiced. Here he departs from the extremely general nature of his argument to delve into some details of the system he finds so admirable. The details themselves are of less interest—and most readers will not be able to assess his claims—but the picture of the Islamic shari’a that emerges from them gives us a far better understanding of how issues that might seem to some eyes as quite distinct—such as prayer and business transactions—can form part of a single moral/legal discourse; how the Islamic shari’a can be understood as a total system rather than as a series of legal rules; and how it can be understood as just, practical, and merciful—in short, why the term has such positive connotations in so many Muslim societies.
And indeed, this is where Hallaq parts from Sayyid Qutb: For the latter, Muslims had to return to their very origins in seventh-century Mecca and Medina in order to find their way forward. He dealt with the centuries after that period in a remarkably cavalier fashion. But Hallaq’s golden age was the developed form of the Islamic shari’a, beginning some centuries after the first generation of Muslims and continuing up until the modern era. He is far more respectful of the tradition than Sayyid Qutb; indeed, it is there, and not in the original revelations, that he finds the Islamic shari’a’s essence.
In another sense, however, Hallaq is even more radical. Sayyid Qutb and his defenders insist that he was decrying existing societies as non-Islamic, but he was not interested in questioning the status of individual Muslims. For Hallaq, however, the end of the Islamic shari’a has very dire consequences: “There is no Muslim identity without this ethic” (p. 70; emphasis original).
That leaves Muslims in a difficult position indeed. How are they to lead Muslim lives when the path developed to do so has been permanently blocked? Hallaq does not quite abandon them; while he does not think the Islamic shari’a can be revived, in the book’s final pages he suggests some signposts on the road to a recovery of parts of its virtues. In keeping with his claims, that road does not run through the modern state but around it. He suggests quite briefly that Muslims experiment with new (and unspecified) forms of governance and that they “engage with their Western counterparts with respect to the necessity of positioning the moral as the central domain” (p. 169).
The sudden intrusion of (admittedly guarded and qualified) optimism suggests that Hallaq may have been too dismissive of Islamist movements, or indeed insufficiently attentive to much of what modern Muslims say, think, and do. It is true that some movements have focused on reforming the states that govern them along Islamic lines and that these efforts have brought different and fewer fruits than their proponents expected. But Islamism is a far more varied phenomenon that can be used to describe a large family of approaches designed to ensure that individual Muslims and the broader society can live in accordance with divinely sanctioned moral instructions. And there are a host of other approaches that Muslims have developed in the modern world in an effort to live by Islamic principles. Some might be helped by particular state policies; others might be hindered. But those approaches are real, they are followed, and they have consequences.
Hallaq begins his book by posing the question “what type of political rule are Muslims presently adopting or likely to adopt in the future?” But he quickly describes this as “a separate field of enquiry for another book and decidedly another author” (p. 1). By helping us understand what may motivate Muslims, he might help us write such books on the choices that they actually make.
