Shura, Nasiha, Jihad and Authority

The next two Islamic concepts I will now consider briefly (shura and nasiha) bear on both whether a ruler (or political system) should be consultative and whether it should be answerable in any way to anybody. To that extent, they can be seen as the basis for a form of Islamic constitutional democracy. The third concept, jihad, bears on questions of the international law of peace and war. It may be viewed as the basis for a theory of 'the just war' comparable with the Western theories. I won't write much about the developments in the political theory surrounding these concepts now but I hope I will be able to later.

Shura (originally meaning consultation) is a concept that was developed in the writings that I discussed in the last post that may be compared with democracy or at least the basis of a form of constitutional monarchy. It has been generally accepted that consultation with the community of believers is enjoined by the Qur’an with regard to some matters. Scholars have extrapolated from that a Qur’anic principle of consultation. Advice provided during the consultation was never made binding, however, so a Qur’anic democratic principle has not been extrapolated. A consultative rather than legislative pattern in both the naming and activities of modern Islamic parliaments reflects the value accorded to Shura (rather than democracy).

Nasīha is another Qur’anic concept that has been further developed originally meaning both advice and sincerity. While Shura is a process of putting ideas for discussion by an ultimate decision-maker, Nasīha is the earlier process of qualified advisors giving advice to the decision-maker. The idea developed was that the decision-maker ought to be given the truth as the advisor sees it regardless of the consequences for the advisor (i.e. telling truth to power). In this sense, the earliest Caliphs consulted relatively widely. Again, there was no compulsion on the decision-maker to follow the advice. Pious Muslims see it as a duty, therefore, to tell the truth to power.

Jihad means essentially effort and can also be extended to mean holy war. In most cases, scholars determined that the jihad called for in the Qur'an is to be interpreted today as commanding an internal struggle against worldly temptations. The Qur’an does not generally use the word jihad in the sense of holy war according to the generally accepted interpretation.

Symbolically, Islam has used a number of things to represent a ruler's authority. They include the seal ring (khatam), the mantle/cloak (burda) especially if once worn by Muhammad, the sceptre (qadib) and mention in Friday prayers (in the khutba) and on coinage (sikka).

There is relatively little written by Shi’a jurists in the area of political theory until the 19^th Century. The jurists arguably began writing then because of the contemporary end of the successful Shi’a Persian Safavid regime which had supported the jurists financially (as Ja’fari law required). As a result, the area was a relatively free field of endeavour available for the exploration of such clerics as the Ayatollah Khomeini and his immediate antecedents. I'll be discussing what those theories were in a later post.