Is the concept of a "Muslim State" altogether invalid?

I ask because the whole debate goes in circles:

One side says, “if the people in a country are essentially all Muslims then it’s fair to call it a Muslim state.”

The other side says, “that is unfair because the people of Afghanistan are Afghanis, the people of Libya are Libyans, etc.” and you can’t claim that their cultural norms are reflective of the Muslim religion.

I personally see this as a way to deflect the influence of Islam in the cultural practices of some of these countries. The common refrain is that Sharia Law is an embedded cultural system of governance, not one which stems from Islamic law. Despite the fact that only devout Muslims want Sharia Law, some say you can’t claim it has any relation to the religion itself.

Is this fair? To draw a corollary, is it fair to claim America and similar European nations are “Christian nations?”

Personally, I think that is absolutely fair. Though not everyone is Christian, our system of law is said to derive from Judeo-Christian values. I think even most atheists would have to agree. But one could turn around and say there is no such thing as “Judeo-Christian” values, there are only cultural practices that happen to have been prevalent in Christian nations. I find this difficult, if only because when you have large regions of the world with similar practices and the common denominator is that they share the same religion, it is simplest to refer them by their common religion. Others may disagree.

This is said, but that doesn’t make it the case. Our Bill of Rights expressly permits the violation of several of the Ten Commandments, and the only Commandments that are mandated by law were also mandated in pre-Christian societies. There’s nothing in the Constitution that alludes to any specific religion whatsoever, much less Christianity. Plus, we have the words of the founders themselves. Among other things, John Adams signed a treaty with the following phrase: “As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion…”

Further, the “Judeo” bit is just nonsense – while surprisingly few of the founding fathers were religious Christians, none were Jews.

Sharia is Islamic law. Most countries that incorporate Sharia into their laws also incorporate other cultural and traditional sources into the law too, but Sharia itself is Islamic law.

What is a state? If a state is constituted by law, and that law is not explicitly Islamic law, then it’s not fair to call the state Islamic even if the country’s culture is soaked with Islam.

Almost no Muslim majority states are specifically constituted as such, though government rhetoric and clauses about a country’s laws being compatible/inspired by Islam complicate this. What further complicates things is that the laws of many Muslim countries are actually based on European law, which as you note is deeply influenced by Western Christian intellectual traditions.

Shariah law is divine law. The human understanding of it is called fiqh. There are various recognized schools of fiqh in the Islamic world (the big 4 in Sunnism, Jaafari in twelve Shiism, some other small ones) and they take into account local conditions and customary law (albeit in a somewhat haphazard way). This is why generalizing is complicated. Saying “disagreeable practice x is from culture, not Islam” is meant to stress that a practice is localized, not that Islam is not involved in any way. I don’t think it does a good job of that but that’s a different debate.

Fallacy. There are rather more than two “sides” in this discussion and your attempt to make a binary choice appears to be an attempt to shoehorn several different arguments into one simplistic mold.

There may be people arguing that Libyans are Libyans, etc. I note, in contrast, that there are multiple versions of Islam (regardless of nationality), and that lumping them together as one indicates a simplistic approach that guarantees a wrong answer to any question about it. The Wahabbist version of Islam that dominates Saudi Arabia, for example, does not really exist outside the Middle East and even there it occurs only in some countries. It is not practiced in Turkey. It is not practiced in Jordan or Lebanon and was not practiced even in most of Afghanistan until the Soviet invasion disrupted the society, allowing a minority religious group to seize power and impose their rules on the majority. Similar differences appear throughout the Muslim world.

Or, more accurately, the views that you oppose appear to be looking to discern facts rather than lumping personal and simplistic belief under a single blanket of ignorance.

This is an example of such simplistic rhetoric: Sharia refers to the concept of Islamic laws, but there are multiple legal philosophies that are identified by the word. Claiming that there is simply “Sharia” as if it was a monolithic entity, (and claiming that only the most extreme version of it represents Sharia), is a display of ignorance regarding the way that it exists throughout the world.

Well, it is certainly easier to reduce every phenomenon to a simplistic singularity. That hardly makes it accurate, of course.

Well, the OP is basically a yes or no question…I take it your answer is “yes when it’s a moderate country but no when it isn’t?”

Cool story. There’s also a plethora of denominations (including non-denominational denominations) within the Christian religion. Most people are comfortable to broadly describe them all as Christian. Are you not? Does Islam get its own rules because sometimes it is interpreted violently in some places of the world?

So Sharia Law is representative of Islam and it is fair to call the countries that practice it Muslim countries?

But it is a monolithic entity, existing in a number of variations. My question is why people will claim that it is not Islamic when it is interpreted in a violent, inhumane manner. They are being wishy-washy.

I once read that intelligence is pilfering a wide range of data into smaller, comprehensible forms. I suppose seeing the common denominator and ignoring it suits some minds.

No. My answer is that the question is meaningless, setting up a “yes” or “no” response where no serious interrogation would seek a binary answer. It is like asking “Is purple blue or red?” and demanding either blue or red for the answer.

I have no problem with identifying Islam as Islam regardless of the sect or denomination. The problem comes when someone arbitrarily attempts to assign values or predict responses to “Islam” when the factors that control the outcomes are so variable.
“Christians” in Germany persecuted Jews, going so far as to attempt to eradicate them. “Christians” in Denmark put their own lives in danger to sve nearly all the Jews who lived among them. Is “Christianity” anti-semitic or not?

If you can find a country that includes Sharia in its civil law, it would be a Muslim country. Other countries that do not include Sharia in their civil law are also Muslim when the overwhelming majority of the citizens are Muslim? So what? Given that there are different varieties of Sharia and that a country may or may not be Muslim based on the presence of some form of Sharia, any generalization of behavior or attitudes based on a simplistic linking of the word Sharia to a country is inevitably false.

bzzzzt! If it exists in a number of variations, it is, by definition, not monolithic. Twisting words around to give them nonsense meanings fails to make your argument persuasive.

I doubt that you even understand what the words you typed mean. However, it should be noted that you are claiming a “common denominator” that you have utterly failed to demonstrate exists. If you pretend that all different forms of Sharia are one, you are adding apples and oranges. If you pretend that all forms of Islam are identical, then you are comparing apples and grapes. Pretending that different things are the same is the fallacy of equivocation.

It seems to me that the idea of a “Christian State” seems kind of silly. I don’t see much in common between Denmark, Rwanda and Peru, though all are mostly Christian and have enormous Christian influence.

With that in mind, sure, you could have a concept of a “Muslim State,” but I don’t think you can really get much out of such a lumping.

Given that one group of Muslims thinks that another group of Muslims are heretics who need to be grouped up and slaughtered, I think that it’s pretty reasonable to conclude that they aren’t a single group.

State: A singular entity that: a) controls territory, b) has external legitimacy (is recognized by other entities that call themselves states, c) has internal legitimacy (the people in the territory it controls accept it as the rightful entity that controls said territory) and d) has sovereignty–this is chiefly defined as meaning it is second to no other entity in its authority over its territory and its actions are not subject to any form of legal control by any other entity.

To my mind a State can be Islamic or Christian if any of these things are true:

  1. The laws of said State specifically establish said religion as the official religion of said State.
  2. The State incorporates ecclesiastical law into its body of laws, and applies that law to its people using organs of the State. Specifically this means laws created by church officials are enforced by secular authorities.
  3. Religious leaders have secular authority within the State by virtue of their position as religious leaders or vice versa.
    So some quick checks:

Iran: Yes, its leadership contains elements that are leaders based on their religious position. I’m less clear on the law aspects, but since it meets one of the criteria we can say Iran is an Islamic State. Iran says as much in documents referring to itself, by the way.

United Kingdom: Yes, the State specifically establishes a State religion. And yes, religious leaders have secular authority by virtue of their position. It isn’t much (the Lords Spiritual have seats in the House of Lords), but it is real. Also the Queen has religious authority by virtue of her secular title. The United Kingdom is very specifically and explicitly a Christian State.

United States: No. There is no established religion. There is no incorporation of religious law into secular law. Religious leaders have no secular authority based on their position as religious leaders nor do secular leaders have any religious authority based on their position as a secular leader.

At various times we can see extremes of behavior across the spectrum. Pretty much all Middle Age European countries were explicitly Christian States and met all the definitions above, and were quite vigorous in prosecuting and punishing persons who committed crimes that were crimes solely because the Church and its leaders said they were crimes.

Personally I don’t think Sharia law or for that matter various forms of Christian ecclesiastical law and its association with the state are the sole criteria we should be using when determining if a State is Islamic or not. I do think there is perhaps too ready a desire to distance anything ugly from Islam to avoid promoting hatred of all Muslims based on the more extreme sects. I’m not sure that’s healthy, Christianity largely is better off because it acknowledges its extremists but the majority denounce them (Westboro Baptist, abusive Mormon heretical polygamists etc.)

A nation and a State are not interchangeable terms. A nation is a people with shared culture, which largely means language, religion, cultural practices etc. Germans are members of the German nation, which includes German speakers in Germany but also in Switzerland and Austria. Russians are members of a Russian nation that include Russians in Russia as well as those in various former Soviet Republics that are now independent countries.

Some nations are more clearly defined than others. Some argue there is a meta-American nation, that includes some peoples that identify as part of a broader (and vaguer) American nation but while also being part of a smaller nation distinct within the American nation. An example would be Native Americans who may view themselves both as part of the “American” nation defined by various cultural views associated with being a citizen/resident of the United States, but while still being members of their Native American nation.

Since nation is culturally defined it’s a lot squishier as to what “religion” a nation practices. For Americans, we are still vastly a Christian religion, but there are atheists who are part of the meta-American nation and there are some very devout Christians and some who are very secular/only vaguely religious. You could Germans are a Christian people, but a very areligious one.

On the other hand in some cases it’s a lot easier, some nations have extremely small % of atheists or minority religion members.

It’s probably fair to call America a Christian nation if you even recognize America as a nation (many argue America is properly viewed as a multi-national State, or a State comprised of many nations with no singular dominant one, in contrast to Germany which is a nation-state meaning one nation overwhelmingly is in dominant control of the state to the point the State and the nation are one.)

Now some of this is IR pedantry but it serves a clear purpose here. It’s questionable if you can call America a Christian nation, but it’s undeniable that it’s not a Christian state. Iran is both a Muslim state and the Iranian nation is a Muslim nation. The Turks are a Muslim nation, but Turkey is not a Muslim state. Saudi Arabia is a Muslim State, but there is no “Saudi Arabian nation” instead there is an Arab nation, and Saudi Arabia is one State of many Arab states.

I think it’s pretty much valid to say that the U.S., Britain, France, etc. are “Christian nations.” They aren’t “Christian states,” because their statehood is not related to the religious make-up of their people, but, yeah, there are more Christians in those nations than in any other. The U.S. is a “white nation” in more or less the same way.

Europe and the Americas are still “Christendom” in a fairly meaningful sense.

But we are also so much more. We have walls of separation of church and state; we have immense secular institutions that outweigh the influence of our religious institutions.

Calling the U.S. a Christian Nation is kind of true…but almost as meaningless as calling us a Female Nation, because our populace comprises more women than men.

I think it is important to look at where Muslim-majority countries are broadly coming from, with regards to the idea of whether the idea of a Muslim State is valid or not. I cobbled this together from some notes and my memory, so I am sorry if it reads a little disjointedly. On preview - Wow, this got long. Sorry

When thinking about Islam today, exposed as we are to the discourses of modern Islam, it is easy to think of it first and foremost in terms of law. As if the law represents the final point of normative recourse, that all other claims are somehow just claims, but that the law is what Islam is really about. This is not correct.

Major sects in Islam emerged over disputes about what constitutes the legitimate polity. Thinking about where, historically, a link existed between Islam and the polity in terms of secular and religion is unhelpful because from the outset issues of religion and issues of polity were fused.

This does not mean that Islam is a political religion or that there is no separation of religion and state in Islam. Referring to it as such is initially helpful for a basic understanding, but ultimately we ought to leave behind that language altogether, because the societies under discussion did not fit into that western, post-enlightenment discourse.

Islamic lands spread across a tremendous range, and in them what arose were local regimes. These regimes faced the problem, first of ruling, then of ruling successfully. You have to make sure people don’t starve. You have to monopolize violence. You need to have stakeholders who see benefit in supporting you and fighting for you. People have to see that the body politic in which they exist is healthy with plain evidence, so that they are more likely to accept that the ruler is ruling as God wants, in accordance with divine law. The sultan’s legitimacy, therefore, as a divinely sanctioned ruler arose from being a ‘good’ ruler.

This sets up a tension between the state and what divine law looks like. Is the polity that is legitimately administered in accordance with divine law the polity in which the many legal rulings given by jurists are followed to the letter, irrespective of the consequences, or is legitimately Islamic state recognized by its general ends, rather than the means?

Here we see the notion of the Islamic ruler - the one who makes policy - develop in distinction of the legal scholar, who is conducting a private discourse, who has the luxury of not ruling. Their duty is to understand divine law. The rulers made policy. But the Arabs had no empire experience. They had no blueprint to run their empire, so they took what was available: Greek philosophy and Persian statecraft. Rulers came to be seen as physicians throughout Classical Islamic thought, tending to the health of the body politic to create an environment where people can be virtuous and then be happy. Justice, in Islamic societies, is therefore not just about law but also about producing a virtuous and happy society. Of course, what these terms mean and how to achieve them became a debate, and in Muslim political thought, this debate was between philosophical modes of thinking that proceed from reason and experience and scriptural modes of thinking that proceed from the hermeneutical reading of scripture as the foundation of law.

In other words, there is a tension between form and meaning that permeates Islamic discourse on polity throughout the medieval era. Over time, you have sultans who promulgate qanun, a body of law alongside Shariah that derives its legitimacy from the political and divine legitimacy of the sultan. This typically dealt with the person’s relationship with the state (tax, criminal law, etc.) and became increasingly important as modernity was imposed on the Islamic world and problems arose that were not covered by Shari’ah law.

Law, indeed, as the foundation of the nation-state and therefore the modern state has become transformed in the Islamic world. Today, the discourses of law have acquired a definitive primacy in the way that they did not in pre-modern Islam. Law was important but not constitutive. Now everyone is asking, what does a modern Islamic state look like? What do we do with the Muslim-majority states we have now? What Islamic law and how should it be applied? These questions and more are disputed in ways that are new in Islamic history, and the temptation to look back for precedent is almost asking the impossible.

Remember that up until halfway through the 18th century almost no Muslim populations lived under non-Islamic rule. By 1939, colonialism or de facto control by European powers controlled everyone except (secular) Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Modernity, for Muslim lands, is an experience imposed, not an experience that they authored, as it was for the West. It was a deep historical transformation that for many meant colonization, political marginalization, and exploitation. With the destruction and denouncing of pre-modern Islamic political structures as, well, pre-modern, you have a crisis of a simultaneous inferiority complex imposed by the modern narrative of progress, and a sense of grievance because a sense of what was lost and what is currently happening.

Compounding this problem, we also have a class of modern Muslims who are not educated in traditional Islamic schooling but by the state, in a fashion modeled in some way or another on the west, and these people emerge with some authoritative agency. They are not someone who will defer to a traditional scholar in answering the question: ‘what is Islam, is x Islamic or not.’ Indeed, they often see the traditional scholars as the source of the trauma that afflicts Islamic lands. This is the social group that is the foundation of all of the modernist Islamist movements in the Islamic world (as well as almost all of the liberal/progressive movements), and their role with the traditional scholars, and with the West, and with their governments, is very much combative.

So when you are talking about a “Muslim State,” its important to remember that what is going on now is the result of an imposed transformation, with every side proposing something innovative and every side suffering from imposed assumptions. So it isn’t so much that the idea of a Muslim State is invalid, it is that, in a very real way, it is in its modern sense still being reforged and disputed. This is why there is such a problem with trying to generalize from locality to locality, yet we cannot ignore the large trans-local trends and movements happening. It’s important to talk about, because the concept of a Muslim State is something deeply important to millions and millions of Muslims and it matters for the world. But we have to be careful about drawing conclusions about a process that is in such chaos.

Given that Christianism has in fact much more political influence and is more pervasive in society in the USA than in the UK, you’re definition appears flawed, or at least partial.