An Islamic Perspective on Governance

2020

2020

This work is an attempt to deploy the maqasid (higher objectives of Shariah) approach to public policy. It argues that public policy in Islam is a qualitatively distinct enterprise and should not be looked at only from the fiqh perspective. It is the author's contention that the maqasid approach can resolve many of the governance dilemmas which have been dogging the Muslim world throughout its history.

2020

Symposium on Islam and Good Governance Welcome to the first IIIT symposium on good governance. This is the genesis of the Islam and Good Governance program at the International Institute of Islamic Thought. This program inspired by Dr. Muqtedar Khan's award-winning book, Islam and Good Governance: A Political Philosophy of Ihsan (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), seeks to explore the ideas, theories, practices and values that are informing contemporary discourse on public policy and good governance all over the World. This symposium is composed of six essays and an annotated bibliography. The essays by prominent scholars seek to advance a critical appreciation of the ideas advanced by Dr. Muqtedar Khan in his book and in the light of those ideas examine how universal values informed by faith can enrich the discourse on good governance. We hope that this symposium will benefit scholars as well as practitioners of good governance and will be read in classrooms and townhalls. Our next symposium will be on the impact of Authoritarianism on Governance.

2006

American Journal of Islam and Society, 2023

This book advances an Islamic political philosophy based on the concept of Ihsan, which means to do beautiful things. The author moves beyond the dominant model of Islamic governance advanced by modern day Islamists. The political philosophy of Ihsan privileges process over structure, deeds over identity, love over law and mercy and forgiveness over retribution. The work invites Muslims to move away from thinking about the form of Islamic government and to strive to create a self-critical society that defends national virtue and generates institutions and practices that provide good governance.

Kemanusiaan the Asian Journal of Humanities

The common perception of Islamic governance is a dark image of a nondemocratic and autocratic system, or a dictatorship with iron claws, or the governance of the cleric elite with the infringement of people's freedom under the banner of religion. This is mainly due to the fiqhī "legal positivistic" framework that is often used to explain issues concerning governance by mostly traditionalist and Islamicist scholars. Humanistic governance based on the preservation of the dignity of human beings, which has been the focal point in Islamic tenets, the inviolability of life, and responsible freedom should be explored and promoted as another alternative voice of the dominating conventional fiqhī legal positivistic hegemony. Thus, a new ijtihad (reasoning) in dealing with the subject is absolutely mandatory. This paper will look into a new approach to governance from the "consequentialistic" approach inspired by the general theory of Maqaṣ id al-Sharīʿah. This research will explore some conceptual grounds for the exploration by looking into the epistemological dimension of governance from Islamic sources and principles through "inductive qualitative method" to critically analyse the texts, as part of the deconstruction of discourse.

Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks, 2019

In this insightful, passionate book, Muqtedar Khan focuses on the importance of the Islamic principle of Ihsan in revitalizing Muslim life and thought globally in the contemporary world. He observes-correctly-that although this concept has traditionally animated Islamic ethics and mysticism, it has rarely been deployed in the political sphere. Khan goes on to make a compelling case for addressing this deficiency and to demonstrate how striving for beauty and excellence-as implied by the term Ihsanwill allow Muslims to govern themselves effectively in accordance with the highest ideals of their tradition. In an age marked by shallow religio-nationalist identities and the cheap instrumentalization of religion, Khan offers a way out of this morass by going back to foundational Islamic values, primarily Ihsan and foregrounding it for application in today's polarized and amoral world. This is a book that deserves to be read widely by both Muslim and non-Muslim readers who share an equal concern for the attrition of moral and ethical values today, particularly in the public sphere, and can be read with profit even in the hard-nosed worlds of academia and policymaking.

2011

International institutions have promoted a ‘good governance’ agenda as an archetypal model to achieve development for underdeveloped and developing countries. However, closer scrutiny can trace the root of this agenda back to the hegemonic nature of modernity that proposes a specific meta-narrative upon others, as part of Eurocentrism. Many, however, have criticized this Eurocentric paradigm, since the non-Western communities with their own constructed version of ‘good’ in governance have also proven their ability to develop and prosper in the present or in the past. Thus, the cultural and value-laden nature of such vernacular concepts provides the rationale for the existence and practice of other paradigms. In line with this argument, Islam, with its long history of governance and richness of its values can be considered as another alternative, which should be thoroughly examined to disclose and depict its conceptualization and paradigm of ‘good governance’. The aim of this researc...

Pakistan since its creation in 1947 has struggled to delineate the specific role of Islam in the politics of the country. On the one hand, it seemed certain that there is unanimity that religion should play a leading role in the polity of the country, paradoxically there were starve differences in the nitty-gritties of its implementation. This interplay was one of the reasons for the delay in the constitution-making of the country that took nine long years to draft an indigenous constitution. Department of Islamic Reconstruction was set up by the Government of Punjab in 1947 while Islamic Law Commission was provided by the first constitution of the country to provide recommendations for implementing Islamic values in the polity of the country. By skimming through Assembly debates and other contemporary works, this paper will argue that the establishment of these two institutions in nascent country manifests the inner thinking of the then governments to develop a control around the ulema to better control the population.

ICR Journal

The work currently under review, by M. A. Muqtedar Khan, professor at the University of Delware (USA) and expert in Islamic thought, governance and international relations, is a unique addition to the subject area, exploring new dimensions of Islamic political philosophy. A serious, critical evaluation of the subject—theory vis-a-vis practice—Khan challenges the many political understandings held by classical and modern Islamic political thinkers. Human minds (irrespective of their religious bents) have searched through the ages for a world order capable of providing peace and tranquillity to all people. Consequently, a number of political theories have emerged deliberating on the process and structure of governance and government.