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A CLOSER LOOK AT A MORAL CONUNDRUM
Habeebie Saif,
You will have come across a lot of Muslims who shake their heads at the state of the Muslim world
and mutter the words “If only people were proper Muslims, then none of this would be happening.” I
have heard this type of utterance so many times over the course of my life. It is used when criticizing
corruption in Muslim countries, or pointing out the spread of “moral” corruption. It is also used by
those who promote various forms of Islamic rule. The most famous example of this was the slogan
“Islam Is the Solution,” which was used by the Muslim Brotherhood political-religious party in Egypt
throughout its long history there.
I always used to wonder what the problem was if Islam was the solution. But, of course, this is
precisely the point they were making. They were saying that any problem that we face in life, from
personal to political, from moral to economic, is solvable by being better Muslims.
The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood—a religious political party founded in 1928—took this
approach to the extreme, and did not even really spend much time thinking about how they would use
political power, or even what political power was for. This is perhaps the reason why they then lost
power in Egypt almost as quickly as they got hold of it in 2012.
Let’s be honest. The slogan was a brilliant one. Lots of people believed in it. Lots of people still
believe in it. When I was younger I believed in it wholeheartedly. But something in me changed over
the years. I will explain why it is possible to be a devout and pious Muslim without needing to
believe that Islam Is the Solution in every case.
One of the most extreme examples of the idea that Islam Is the Solution can be found in the
appearance of ISIS in 2014 in Syria and Iraq. Deep down inside, the argument that is being made is
that all the most glorious periods in Islamic history—the conquests, the empires, the intellectual
achievement, the wealth—occurred under what seems to have been Islamic rule. Therefore, if we
want to acquire this past glory in the modern era, we need to impose a system of Islamic rule that
covers every aspect of life. Why would this be logical? If a little Islam is good, then more Islam is
better. And if more Islam is better, then complete Islam must be best. Who in today’s Muslim world
would be prepared to argue with this position?
Let’s look at ISIS then and see what problems this approach might bring and what solutions it