At the height of my time on Facebook I had over 75,000 friends and followers; mostly Egyptians interested in what I had to say regarding strategies for opposing the Sisi regime and combatting the economic subjugation of the country. When the IMF deal was signed, and Egypt surrendered its sovereignty for the next 20 years, I moved away from writing about Egypt, and my followers naturally decreased in number.
I have always considered myself to be Islamist – that is, I have always believed that Islam is best suited for guiding political, social, and economic policy. At a younger age, I was one of those people who unquestioningly believed the slogans of political Islam, and echoed the abstract calls for Islamic government. But this topic becomes much more complex when you begin actually focusing on a particular government in the real world – like Egypt — and the discussion ceases to be abstract. I began questioning what Islamic government actually even means; when we call for Shari’ah, what exactly are we talking about? What does Islamic government look like? And so on.
I would ask the Islamists I knew in Turkey, people from across the spectrum of Political Islam; from the Ikhwan types to the more radical Khilafah-ists; and of course, I researched. I also sporadically wrote these kinds of queries on FB, and all in all, I can tell you that no one has a coherent or meaningful answer.
The more I questioned the ideology of Political Islam, and the more no one could convincingly respond, the more my following declined. Ibn Taymiyyah said that the Qur’an only contains about 500 ayaat which constitute explicit legal rulings, yet no one among the Islamists can list them, nor how many of them clearly pertain to governance; while still endlessly demanding Shari’ah and an Islamic state. Am I the only one who finds this problematic?
An old acquaintance of mine invited me to join a Facebook group comprised of fans of the American Muslim pundit Daniel Haqiqatjou – who most of my followers (thankfully) will not know. He is a pseudo-intellectual who sort of aspires to be the Muslim equivalent of Ben Shapiro; mostly railing against feminists and Liberals, and regurgitating the same tired old dogmas of semi-educated hardliners that I thought faded away in the 1990s.
Out of, perhaps, morbid curiosity I posted a few pieces to this group about democracy and Islam, about Shari’ah, and about practical steps to defining what Islamic governmental reforms should be. Unsurprisingly, I was excoriated as a hypocrite, Zionist shill, a deviant, and so forth. OK, so it is more or less confirmed that this group – the most stringent advocates of Islamic government – have no idea what they are talking about, and have no interest in figuring it out. The only Islamic state which is Islamic enough for them can only exist in their livingrooms.
But, we do need to figure this out, people. I don’t care if my followers dwindle to the single digits, we have to have this discussion.
Many of you will have become familiar with my belief that we are living in the Mulk Jabryy period, and that government upon the Minhaj of the Prophet will only be re-established by the Mahdi; but I genuinely believe in our ability, if not to achieve the ideal, to at least make things better. But the only way we will ever do that, is if we seriously scrutinize what the religion actually mandates in terms of the state, in terms of governance, and identify those things which Islam authentically obliges us to strive to implement.
It should not need to be said, but I am asking these questions on the basis of belief, not doubt; so if the questions make you uncomfortable, I apologise, but you might need to check your own certainty.