WHAT IS SO 'RIGHT' ABOUT ISLAM?

We are within an age where a seeming dichotomy between those of religious conviction and those with progressive values of social inclusion is increasingly pitted as 'right versus left', a neat yet irresponsible characterisation that likely fulfills ulterior agendas more than anything else. It is within the context of this mischaracterization that many assume that organised religion presupposes a disposition on the right side of the political spectrum. However, it is clear that in the interests of a need for greater perspective a more nuanced approach is required.

Eventually, one is led to the question of what side of the political spectrum Islam and Muslims should be better assosciated with. Would it be the right and its emphasis on the conservation of the status quo and long established values and practises? Or would it rather be a leftist religion based on the rights of society over any individual, a faith seeking to promote as wide a base of social enfranchisement as possible?

To arrive at the answer we must first make a distinction. As the political spectrum continuously shifts towards the left and redefines its positions, it is important to clearly define the positions being discussed. For example, conservatives of the 21st century would be liberals in the 7th Century, that of Islam's inception. Liberals of the 17th Century would be conservatives today. As such, it is important to establish whether we intend to contextualise our discourse of Islam's politcal stance as of 'today', or at the time of its origin.

Although its useful to discuss both scenarios, looking at Islam's origins would likely shed more light on the religion's original purpose. In the 7th Century, the status quo was that of autocratic monarchs who sought to centralise the power and resources of the state into as few hands as possible (royal family, aristocratic class). Hence, the Monarch and those loyal to him held the vast majority of the power, wealth, and influence. Any measures or attempts to subvert this order would be repressed by those in control, in an effort to 'conserve' such a status quo. This faction formed the right conservative arm of society, as it stood in their favour to retain the current political order. (In fact, the term 'right wing' was later coined after being inspired by the French Revolution, when those aristocrats loyal to the King sat to his right in Parliament, whereas the liberals who sought greater social participation and human rights sat to the left.)

Islam, much like the other two monotheistic faiths, did not arrive as a religion of the nobility. It was a religion whose movement caught popularity with the common and disenfranchised of society as it instantly guaranteed more liberal rights than they had ever enjoyed before. Women were guaranteed rights of inheritance and contract, and were hence given a greater sense of being individuals in society. Foreigners (non-Arabs) were declared to be equal to natives. Slaves were freed and were told to stand next to tribal chiefs as peers in prayer. The poor were exempted of certain obligatory rituals on the basis of financial incapacity. As the new faith was clearly antithetical to the political structure of the day, the early Muslim community was met with great hostility and repression by the nobles in Mecca, the founding city of Islam. The radically 'leftist' stance of equality between the races, sexes and classes proved far too radical for the majority of the Meccan elite. In fact, of the early converts to Islam, it can be argued that only three (Khadija, Abu Bakr, and Uthman) were from the wealthier stratosphere of society.

Although many religions can claim to have offered this to a people, what distinsguished Islam was that such values were institutionalised into a legal system of government within the lifetime of the religion's founder. The Islamic state was established in Medina in 622, and held true to its promises of greater social participation and enfranchisement. The hadith (Prophetic narrations) indicate to us that the Prophet sat amongst the people as one of them, and shattered institutions of the old guard such as the aristocracy and nobility. He founded a public treasury, a large portion of which was allotted to the poor and 'people of the bench'--individual paupers and ascetics who were provided the means of subsistence by the state similiar to the modern welfare system. During his Caliphate, Umar (634-644) also began to issue allowances to new and lactating mothers, to assist with the costs of weaning a new born child.

To fund the public treasury, the Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) partially relied on a mandatory luxury tax that modern scholars extraopolate amounts to 2.5 percent of an individuals annual residual wealth (dormant money that has accrued for a year). As promised, women were empowered by being given the right to inheritance and contract, including the right to refuse an arranged marriage, even dictating prenuptual terms to their intendeds. People were now expressly forbidden from burying female children, and paradise was now deemed to exist 'beneath the feet of your mother'. (It is this unique undercurrent of egalitarianism that must be at least partially credited for the emergence of a dynasty of former slaves in a 13th Century Muslim Sultanate in India.) In all, viewed within the millieu of 7th Century Arabia, such developments by vintage Islam were radical revolutions in the field of human rights.

Such a system of government promoted by the Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) differed markedly from the traditional aristocratic monarchy that offered little in the way of social compassion toward the masses and especially the underprivileged. Islam did not attempt to preserve any previous order or status quo, but rather sought to abolish the traditional order of its society. Such deviance from the right wing positions of the day dropped Islam far to the left, politically and economically. It seems obvious then, that Islam at its inception was never intended to be a rightist religion or employ such a model of governance.

Although some may dismiss the above as obvious, perhaps the answer to where Islam stands today is not as legible. In the context of modern liberal democracies, the right wing no longer harkens to values of feudalism and monarchical elitism but rather to 17th century liberalism, and the notion that 'the government that governs the least, governs the best'. Modern day conservatives on the right wing espouse ideas of individual liberty free from the bounds of societal intervention in a manner that allows them to pursue wealth and goodwill uninhibited. As per capitalism, any intervention by a state from the right would then amount to something of the negative variety, as the state's priority would be to simply remove as many obstacles from individuals' paths as possible in their pursuit of freedom and happiness. Such notions, while sounding wonderful in theory, are naive at best and willfully blind at worst.

The complexities of the world provide uneven circumstances for different members of society, which serve to deprive many individuals the same opportunities as others. If a state is to truly promise 'freedom' to its citizens then it must be willing to 'even the playing field' in order to allow the less advantaged in society the true freedom of opportunity to pursue their ambitions and life endeavours. This is the typical approach of leftist liberals today, which underscores the rationale for a welfare state that the Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) advanced 1400 years ago.

In any case, in order to 'even the playing field' the state must place limits on some freedoms in order to emancipate some from the shackles of their circumstance. Such limits would typically include taxation of the wealthy (directly and indirectly on luxury items for example) in order to fund governmental programs such as financial relief and education assistance for the less fortuante.

In the modern era, the 'right' further represents a 'pro-corporate' stance that idealogially leads to a greater centralization of national resources in the hands of private actors (in the absence of a central state authority). Conversely, what we can derive from the traditional Islamic model by its provision of welfare, its implemenation of luxury tax, and hence its emphasis on an entirely enfranchised society (with an even 'playing field'), is that Islam at the very least is not meant to fall on the right side of even today's spectrum. Perhaps it is this very leftist bias inherent in Islamic ideology that contributes to many Americans' misunderstanding of Islam, as that nation is a bastion of right-wingism in the present Western world.

Also typical of communities on the left is greater state activism and responsibility, as exemplified by Umar (the Second of Four Rightly Guided Caliph's) when he exclaimed "If (even) a sheep were to (injure itself) within my realm of responsibility, I would be liable for it." Later, in the years of the Ottoman Sultanate, there was a minister directly designated as 'Guardian of the Trees' responsible for the environmental issues of the state. Although the Ottoman Empire was not a truly Islamic State, the underlying rationale was that the Sultan and the state would be held accountible in Islam for any mistreatment of the environment. Rhetoric for expansive state responsibilities is engrained in the culture of Islam, a decidedly non-rightist quality.

Finally, there are many that would point to Islam's possession of certain unalterable values as being indicative of a right-wing stance. However, it is inaccurate to postulate that any vestige of religious values and morality belong to the right. Such would be to suggest that any movement towards the left would be coupled with a corresponding loss of those same values, which would be preposterous. For one, the values that those on the right retain (that are assosciated with right wing conservatism) are often those that are loyal to the political order rightists strive to recreate. More importantly, it is possible to exist on one side of the spectrum and to share a characteristic common to the other side; one can be a religious person on the left just as it is possible for another to be an atheist or civil-rights activist on the right. In other words, one side does not have complete monpoly over those tenets with which it is generally assosciated. Hence, the assumption that Islam is a right-wing religion SIMPLY on the basis of its steadfast devotion to certain values is unfounded, given the remaining of its political and economic principles and the historical context of its origin.

It is clear then, that Islam was never intended to be a religion of the right, regardless of any such confusion brought about by its instransigence on core values. At inception, it never sought to conserve any traditional political or economic order but rather shattered one. An investigation of vintage Islam against the context from which it emerged demonstrates its radical departure from the status quo of its day, clearly indicating its leftist stance at the time. It also has not attempted to empower the individual free of the bounds of society in such a manner as could be deemed capitalist, individualist, or libertarian--ideologies from the right.

Rather, the state took a more active role in the daily lives of its constituents often on the back of those who are more fortunate in society, creating an early incarnation of a welfare state. Thus even today, its fundamental politcal-economic doctrine starkly contravenes a typically rightist model. Islam envisages a society in which individuals are granted liberty and freedom to pursue their ambition, yet one where the welfare of society is still made top priority through the rectification of inequities.

Now it very well may even be that Islam falls on the centre of the political scale. It is after all Ummatun Mutawassita ("the nation of moderation") as proclaimed by the Prophet Peace Be Upon Him). Based on the above discussion, it is very likely that Islam has some leftist tendencies along with this moderation. Yet regardless of Islam's exact position on the spectrum, historically or current, one thing remains clear: If the Prophetic tradition is any indication, Islam is NOT a religion of the right.