Egyptian Scholar Finds "Islam But No Muslims" Abroad, "Muslims But No Islam" at Home

By Greg Noakes

Dr. Tawfik El-Shawi is a university professor, an educator, an attorney, a jurist and a legal adviser, in addition to being a noted Islamic thinker. Though he hails from Egypt, he also has practiced law and taught in universities from Morocco to Saudi Arabia, and has worked with the United Nations, the Arab League, and the Organization of the Islamic Conference on a variety of projects. During a recent visit to the United States, Dr. El-Shawi discussed his belief that there is much that the West has to offer the Muslim world in terms of basic principles that, though always present in Islam, have fallen by the wayside over the centuries.

Dr. El-Shawi's opinion was shared by Sheikh Muhammad 'Abduh, a former rector of Al-Azhar university and a grand mufti of Egypt, who was also one of the most influential Muslim reformers of the past century. Sheikh 'Abduh, upon his return to Egypt from Western Europe, noted that in the West he had found Islam but no Muslims while back in Egypt he had found Muslims but no Islam. Basic Islamic principles were present in the non-Islamic West which had been forgotten or neglected in the Muslim world. El-Shawi, among others, believes that these principles must be reintegrated into Muslim society, and that Muslims in America have a vital role to play in this process of renewal.

A Vital Role for American Muslims

Muslims in the West have the advantage of living and working in a society that is more open and provides greater opportunities than those of the contemporary Muslim world. The task of delineating "the elements of Islam which are, in fact, practiced in the West and are missing in the Muslim world will take much time, " Dr. El-Shawi says. "I hope there will be scholars who will study this and write about it, because I think the list will be long. " These scholars must also examine Muslim societies in the Middle East in order to ascertain what they have retained of the original principles of Islam, and what has been lost. Muslims in North America have a duty to present to their brothers and sisters in the East "their experience in the West with these Islamic principles, which belong to Islam but which are found in the Western world," Dr. El-Shawi states.

El-Shawi rejects the wholesale importation of Western ideas without regard to the ideological strings and suppositions which are attached to them, however. "Of course, there are things in the West which we don't like, which we consider to be against Islam," he says. Rather than Western concepts, El-Shawi is interested in finding Islamic principles which have also found expression in non-Islamic societies and then trying to integrate these principles back into the Muslim world.

Among these concepts Tawfik El-Shawi stresses two: shura (consultation) and unity. "Freedom of opinion, freedom of thought, freedom to discuss all subjects so that the society can examine all opinions and then, after discussion, choose the right way; this is what you call democracy and what we call shura in Islam," he says.

During the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad and particularly in the period of the first four rightly-guided caliphs, shura was a crucial element in the rule of the community. Dr. El-Shawi points to the discussion, often heated, among the Companions of the Prophet after Muhammad's death. Different ideas were debated with regard to the leadership of the Muslim community, or ummah, until the Companions selected Abu Bakr by consensus to be the khalifa (caliph or successor) to the Prophet. In addition, the community agreed on the terms by which he would govern. Abu Bakr insisted that he was to be the caliph not because of any individual qualifications that he possessed, but because he had been chosen by the ummah after the exercise of shura.

Secondly, the community must obey the caliph so long as he governs in accordance with the Qur'an and the sunna, or example, of the Prophet. If the caliph deviated from these norms, the community had the right to disobey him or to replace him. This notion of caliphal accountability, a "social contract" which predated Rousseau by a thousand years, remained operative only until the rise of the Umayyad dynasty, which took the caliphate by force rather than by consensus in a clear deviation from shura.

Many Muslim reformers have called for a reactivation of this concept of consensus. "We have to revive our principle of shura and take advantage of the procedures you practice in the West, and especially in the United States," Dr. El-Shawi says. "You arrived at a kind of government based on democracy, which is near to shura.

"The basic concept of freedom is its fundamental principle. This is the principle we want, that we need in the Muslim world, because after many centuries of political despotism and foreign occupation we want to have a kind of government based on "shura."

Three Basic Differences

El-Shawi, however, sees three basic differences between shura and democracy. First , he rejects "democracy" which can be utilized for non-democratic ends. "This is another kind of democracy which is despotic, which was practiced by socialist and Communist parties, called 'popular democracy. 'Here one party imposed its dictatorship in the name of the people," he notes. "We don't want to arrive at this."

Also, Dr. El-Shawi sees a dichotomy between free market capitalism devoid of a moral element and Islamic economic concepts, "which are based on a kind of social solidarity between the individuals in the community. " Islam teaches that it is society's duty to meet its members' basic needs. It is reported in Bukhari's collection of hadith, for instance, that the Prophet said, "He is not a true Muslim who eats his fill while his neighbor is hungry."

While the Social Security system in the United States is designed to help maintain the poor, Dr. El-Shawi believes that the Islamic system serves as a more solid basis for an equitable distribution of wealth.

Finally, because it is based on revelation from God rather than a secular foundation, Islam imposes clear limits on the ability of the members of a Muslim society to alter certain fundamental principles. The Qur'an and the sunna, unlike the US Constitution, are not subject to amendment or abrogation.

A second principle, which is found in the West but which has largely disappeared from the Islamic world, is that of unity. The concept of the unmwh is found throughout Islamic history. This ummah transcends political, linguistic, and ethnic boundaries and encompasses Muslims from a variety of backgrounds. Yet the contemporary Muslim world is a patchwork of nation-states characterized by dissension rather than unity.

El-Shawi looks to the example of the United States. "We have to be united states as your states are united. This means that existing states must be subject to the Muslim nation, and that its law, the sharia, must be superior to all the countries' laws. " Full sovereignty can be accorded only to the larger Muslim nation, rather than the nation states. While the states could continue to enact their own laws within a federal system, these would be subject to the shari 'a, just as state laws in this country may be struck down as unconstitutional.

The implications of this "United Islamic States" are considerable. "Every Muslim must have the right to live anywhere in the Muslim world, to work anywhere, to participate in the natural resources in the area, " El-Shawi believes. "We cannot have a rich country like Kuwait or the Gulf states and a poor country like Bangladesh, or Egypt, or Sudan. No—this is not Islam at all."

This job of education and enlightenment falls to Muslims in the non-Muslim world, who face their own challenges. "I would like to suggest that you take your place as new Muslims, not as Muslims coming from the East, with this belonging to the Shi'i and this to the Sunni, with this to such-and-such country. Islam teaches that all Muslims are equal, that they share basic principles, and that they have to be together because the cause needs their unity."

This identity as new Muslims holds the most promise for a new generation of the American Islamic community: children. Dr. El-Shawi, who has founded over 25 Islamic schools in Saudi Arabia and has plans for schools in Egypt and Bangladesh, sees Islamic education as a crucial factor in this fresh start.

"I am keen about schools for the new generation of children that are born here; schools where there is no discrimination" on the basis of race, ethnicity, or school of thought and opinion.

"This is why I want to give importance to the question of having Islamic schools here, built on the Islamic principle of equality between all, on brotherhood and solidarity."

El-Shawi, who has organized an international association of Islamic schools which is engaged in teacher training, curriculum development, and the creation of teaching materials, met with a number of administrators, teachers and students from Islamic schools across the US during his visit.

Tawfik El-Shawi is optimistic about a bright future for the umniah, both in the New World and the Muslim world. "What we cannot do as a generation, the new generation will do. " Dr. El-Shawi's thoughts and ideas represent a challenge to the Muslim community in both the East and the West which, ultimately, can be ignored only at our own peril.

Greg Noakes, an American Muslim, is the advertising director for the Washington Report.