The Islamic Secular and Liberal Citizenship

Abstract

Abstract This chapter engages with the thesis of Andrew March in his book Islam and Liberal Citizenship: The Search for an Overlapping Consensus. Unlike Hallaq and An-Na’im, March’s primary focus is on Muslims as minorities in the West, especially America. His argument is that, read as he reads it, Islamic juristic doctrine provides ways for accommodating liberal citizenship. I argue that by limiting his discourse to juristic “doctrine,” March overlooks the prudential side of Islam-cum-sharī‘ah, which is what the Islamic Secular addresses. On this omission, I argue, even if March were correct in his argument that it would be “permissible,” according to Islamic law, for Muslims to accept and fully participate in liberal citizenship, this understanding obliterates the material and practical side of Islam-cum-sharī‘ah by ignoring the question of what Muslims actually should or could do, based not on doctrine and questions of permissibility but on the basis of what they identify as their concrete interests as Muslims in the specific context of American socio-political life. I also argue that positioning liberalism as the interlocutor through which Muslims negotiate their relationship with American democracy places them at a marked disadvantage. I end the chapter with an alternative approach for Muslims to negotiate their relationship with American democracy based on the Constitution, a fuller reading of American socio-political reality, including the centrality of race, and a fuller understanding of Islam-cum-sharī‘ah, as something broader and thicker than “ideal theory” as March depicts it.