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".... I might add that what I consider to be Westernized wings of the ikhwan al muslimin, the Muslim Brotherhood, have done the same to the extent that they have perverted the essentially non-violent teachings of Hassan al Banna, whom I consider to be the "Karl Marx" of Muslim activism, into the confrontational teachings of Syed Qutb, whom I liken to Leninism, with its inevitable further perversion into Stalinism. Following this comparison, Osama bin Laden would be the modern Trotsky, who for idealistic revolutionary reasons, and building on the pre-revolutionary, 19th-century Russian equivalents of Wahhabi and Deobandi fanaticism, wanted to save the world by a brilliant but self-defeating strategy to lead the world first into chaos. Trotsky and Osama bin Laden might be considered to be early advocates of what nowadays might be known as the natural law of chaos theory. "

The classical American paradigm vs.

The classical Islamic paradigm
by Robert Crane
(Excerpt from his Paper read at a Conference in Khartoum)

The Western paradigm is not modern secular liberalism but what the Founders of America called traditionalism, which they borrowed from the century long Whig movement in England. This was to bring out the best of the past. The American revolutionaries unnecessarily staged a revolution because they were too impatient.
This impatience killed the movement in England that gave rise to the Great American Experiment.

As a footnote to this view of the Western paradigm, I might add that what I consider to be Westernized wings of the ikhwan al muslimin, the Muslim Brotherhood, have done the same to the extent that they have perverted the essentially non-violent teachings of Hassan al Banna, whom I consider to be the "Karl Marx" of Muslim activism, into the confrontational teachings of Syed Qutb, whom I liken to Leninism, with its inevitable further perversion into Stalinism. Following this comparison, Osama bin Laden would be the modern Trotsky, who for idealistic revolutionary reasons, and building on the pre-revolutionary, 19th-century Russian equivalents of Wahhabi and Deobandi fanaticism, wanted to save the world by a brilliant but self-defeating strategy to lead the world first into chaos. Trotsky and Osama bin Laden might be considered to be early
advocates of what nowadays might be known as the natural law of chaos theory. Some neo-conservatives in Washington seem to share this view of global dynamics.

The classical American paradigm of thought and the classical Islamic paradigm, shorn of their utopian and therefore fanatical
perversions, are almost identical. Failure to appreciate this fact may be why Noah Feldman in his new book After Jihad (which is a terrible title no doubt demanded by his publisher) proposes seven models (permutations and combinations) or possible ways to fit what one can of Islam into Western democracy.

My contention that this is a basically Orient list approach to Islamic law and thought is why in my posting on the NAML list serve on November 17th, 2003, I made the controversial statement that Noah Feldman is a wolf in beguiling sheep's clothes. His constitutional orientalism endangers the integrity of Islamic principles, because he does not take account of the maqasid al shari'ah or universal purposes, which provided much of the dynamism of Islamic civilization before the entire concept of universal principles died out suddenly after Al Shatibi wrote his masterworks on the subject six centuries ago.

Noah Feldman's typology ranges from "Khomeinism" (in the sense of wilayat al faqih as described by some of the extremists around the Imam) to Kemalism (where democracy means merely that Islam is not forbidden in private life). All seven of his possible combinations make a single assumption that may be fatal to popular acceptance by Muslims. He assumes that democracy and Islamic law are different cats. Islam, according to his approach, can be massaged or manipulated to fit the requirements of secular democracy, but representative government is not inherent in Islamic political thought.

The Orientalist error in this approach is to use the Western paradigm of thought as the base case and then compare his
understanding of Islam (whether in theory or practice) with it, rather than the reverse. The reverse, suggesting the combinations of secular democracy that might be compatible with Islam, might be termed Occidentalism, but, in fact, it is universalism because only Islam is proudly a universal religion that accepts the wisdom of all religions.

The first approach, namely, starting from a secular Western framework, might be necessary to gain acceptance of an Islamic
constitution in the American White House, but the second, starting with Islam, is necessary to gain acceptance by the populace in any Muslim-majority country.

The architectonics of the universal principles of Islamic thought (the maqasid or purposes, the kulliyat or universals, or
the dururiyat or essentials) constitute by the far the most sophisticated code of human rights ever developed by the human
mind. Their sources are the combination of:

1) divine revelation (in any faith tradition), known as haqq al yaqin;

2) natural law or ethics, known as 'ain al yaqin; and

3) human reason or 'ilm al yaqin, though the latter is not accepted as an independent source by most scholars of either istislah or istihsan in the 'usul al fiqh.

Whether Islamic scholars under the aegis of the OIC or other Muslim umbrella are up to the challenge of devising a generic
Islamic constitution based on the maqasid for adaptation to the specifics of any given country is one issue. Whether they should be given the chance to do so with the expectation that it might be supported by the U.S. government is another. Perhaps Noah Feldman is merely being a pessimistic pragmatist on both issues, but this is no reason why Muslims have to follow him as the best bet available or as the only game in town.

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