What does a Ministry of Islamic Affairs do? (III)

1

Habermas once made the remark that public intellectuals cease to be intellectuals once they assume public office. [1] This, I think, is especially true where a bearer of public office argues for, or defends, intellectual issues publicly. This task of arguing for issues intellectually seems more apt to be reserved for the public sphere that should be in an insurgent position with respect to the state system. [2]

This does not mean, of course, public figures cannot and should not defend their positions. On the contrary, collective policies should be subjected to public exchange of reasons. The subtle distinction, I think, is that where you argue for intellectual issues as a bearer of public office, there is always reason to suspect your independence (from power) and credibility.

2

Another related matter is this: To the question why they had not publicly criticized the government of President Gayoom as cabinet members, Foreign Minister Ahmed Shaheed and advisor to the president, Hassan Saeed, frequently replied by saying that as a rule – or as a matter of etiquette – cabinet members would not, or should not, publicly criticize the government while they remain as cabinet members.

3

In matters of religion or the conception of the good life reasonable people may reasonably disagree. John Rawls and Charles Larmore call this the ‘fact of reasonable pluralism’ or ‘reasonable disagreements’ [3]. Whenever someone disagrees about the good way, it may not be the case they are simply ignorant, or bigoted, or stupid, or selfish. To be sure, sometimes these may be reasons why there are disagreements.

However, quite often the normal outcome of serious exercise of practical reason is that different people may think differently about the good life. For instance, some among us may reasonably (quite rationally too) think atheism is the right way. Similarly, the religious people among us too may reasonably believe there is a god and Islam is the way to reach him or her. Why would there be reasonable disagreements? Rawls attempted to explain this through what he calls the ‘burdens of judgment’: [4]

- The evidence involved in a case might be complex and conflicting

- The weight different people give to a relevant evidence or consideration might be different

- The case or concepts involved in the case, might be vague and that may lead to different interpretations

- The way one person weighs the evidence will depend on her total life experience, knowledge, and so on.

- Complexity of normative considerations of differing force on both side of an issue.

- Deep conflictuality of genuine and cherished values and their incommensurability. That is, for instance, liberty may conflict with security. And, when they conflict there may be no clear way to resolve the conflict. We have to make some choice, but still as Berlinians would agree there cannot be one correct answer which is true for all instances. If both values are equally important, how do we abstractly rank them? It seems when values conflict there can be different ways we may rank them. [5]

I think we can make use of these ‘burdens of judgment’ both in a narrow sense to explain reasonable disagreements within religion and in a broad sense to explain reasonable disagreements between different conceptions of the good life.

Afrasheem Ali, for instance, thought music is not a bad thing for the good life. Perhaps, Ali had greater background knowledge, and hence his weighing of some hadith evidence regarding the matter is different from that by Adaalat.

Gayoom, like many other religious scholars such as Khaled Abou El Fadl [6] and Abdullah Ahmed An-Nai’m [7], thinks that the interpretation of Qur’an to make religious ruling is inevitably a human affair subjected to human understanding. [8] Perhaps Gayoom knows more about hermeneutics than some Adaalat figures do. Or perhaps not.

4

Let’s summarise what I have claimed so far:

i. A person’s credibility and independence (from power) would be suspect if she plays the role of a ‘public intellectual’ while being a bearer of public office.

ii. A person would not (or should not) criticize her office publicly.

iii. Religious (philosophical and moral) matters are subject to reasonable disagreements.

5 Conclusions

a. If (i) is true, the Ministry of Islamic Affairs’s credibility and independence on religious intellectual matters, through, say, the proposed weekly newsletter, can be suspect. This is especially so where these issues have some positive bearing on government policies.

b. If (ii) is true, we have reason to doubt whether the Ministry of Islamic Affairs would genuinely, or at all, discuss religious issues that are critical of the government. [9]

c. If (iii) is true, (among other implications) spending public money on issues that are subject to reasonable disagreements would be unfair favoring of the views of the Ministry of Islamic Affairs.

6 Past evidence

Finally, do we have any past evidence to back up a, b, or c?

As for (a), it is Adaalat which has, in the recent history, mostly voiced that the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs was not credible and independent; that its head, Sheik Mohamed Rasheed Ibrahim, was a pawn of Gayoom; and what he said regarding religion quite often were not credible but biased, prejudiced, or false. Thus, suspicion existed. Also, there is widespread perception that the weekly Dheenuge was used as a propaganda tool.

As for (b), again, we saw little or no criticism from Sheik Rasheed and other government employed religious scholars, about the injustices of Gayoom’s regime. Moreover, they never, or rarely, criticized the apparently secular views of Gayoom. There are many other instances of their utter lack of criticisms.

As for (c) I have already argued that there are reasonable disagreements within Islam and between Islam and other conceptions of the good life.

If a, b, or c, are true, then, I think we have strong reasons to question the mandate of the Ministry of Islamic Affairs. [10]

Notes:

[1] Jurgen Habermas, ‘Public Space and Political Public Sphere’, p. 10
At: homepage.mac.com/gedavis/JH/Kyoto_lecture_Nov_2004.pdf

[2] John S. Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond: Liberals, Critics and Contestation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)

[3] Charles Larmore, The Morals of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) and John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005)

[4] See John Rawls, Political Liberalism, pp. 54-57

[5] For instance see George Crowder, Liberalism and Value Pluralism (London and New York: Continuum, 2002), p. 170

[6] See, for example, Khaled Abou El Fadl, ‘Democracy and the Challenge of Islam’. At. http://www.bostonreview.net/BR28.2/abou.html

[7] See, for instance, Abullahi Ahmed An-Nai’m, Islam and the Secular State (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2008)

[8] Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, 'Emme Furihama Shar'ee Dhaleelakaa Qur'an', Deenuge Magu, No. 38 (2008).
At: http://presidencymaldives.gov.mv/dheenuge_magu/22/2008-10-10-dm38.pdf

[9] Another obvious and quite possible reason for this is there is always fear of dismissal by the president.

[10] You may think that this newsletter is about religious issues, which are distinct from government policies. But is that so? In principle, that may be true. But, government policies and all laws in the country are subject to ‘tenets of Islam’. If this is so, public policies and laws cannot be evaluated without also taking into account religion.

This still does not mean all religious issues are subject to, or have a bearing on, laws and public policies. Assuming there are such religious issues, I still think the line between religious issues and government policies can be blurry, especially with the existence of laws such as ‘Religious Unity Act’. Can, for instance, an issue of purely ibadah be distinct from public policies and law, if deviation from a certain range or religious edicts can be interpreted as a threat to religious unity? Think about the case of qunoot throughout the greater period of Gayoom’s government.