Conference, Symposium, and Panel Reports

Good Governance in Islam: Classical and
Contemporary Approaches

The Summer Institute for Scholars 2012, held at the IIIT headquarters in Hern-
don, VA, from July 9-18, 2012, brought together twenty scholars to address
“Good Governance in Islam: Classical and Contemporary Approaches.” In
order to present as many of their ideas as possible, the wide-ranging and
thought-provoking comments of the chairs and the discussants are not re-
counted here.

In session 1, Yahya Michot (Hartford Seminary) denied that Ibn Taymiyya
could be the “father” of contemporary extremism. He sketched a picture of a
scholar who opposed the absolutism of occupied Iran’s Ilkhanid rulers and
Shi‘ah views as regards authority. According to him, Ibn Taymiyya was in-
terested not so much in the Shari‘ah as he was in those who implement it, on
the grounds that a person can only be a shepherd (a “politician”) if the sheep
(the “people”) follow him, either willingly or not. He based this on two ax-
ioms: there is no absolute human knowledge (a person cannot know every as-
pect of an issue, and therefore there can be no infallible Imam), nor can there
be absolute/unconditional obedience to anyone, even Muhammad (people
obey Muhammad only because he obeyed God). Therefore, he favors collec-
tive ijtihŒd and says that the community implements the Shari‘ah. As the au-
thorities are imperfect, the people must be patient and cannot rebel or revolt;
however, they can engage in critical obedience and civil disobedience. The
problems in Muslim societies are not due to ijtihŒd, but bagh¥y (impudence,
the belief that the little you know is the absolute truth). The authorities must
allow the freedom of debate so that Muslims can coexist and because they
have no right to enforce anyone’s opinion on anyone else.

In session 2, Mahmoud Ayoub (Hartford Seminary) discussed the Qur’an
and the Sunnah as the sources of Islamic law and morality, with the former
being the divine aspect and the latter being the human aspect of the divine-
human relationship. Muslim history, he claimed, began not with Muhammad,
but with Abu Bakr’s assumption of political power at Banu Sa‘idah. After de-

ajiss294_ajiss  8/14/2012  12:42 PM  Page 148



scribing how the meaning of shar¥‘ah has changed over time and its function
(viz., the voluntary subordination of the human will to the divine will [d¥n]
and making Muslims [fiqh]), he declared that a new fiqh is needed to deal
with contemporary science (e.g., genetics), human diplomacy, and dialogue.
In his capacity as a Shi‘i scholar, he said that the Shi‘ah have pushed the Imam
out of history, that the theory of the Imamate has never really been tried and
tested, and that Ali had ruled as a caliph of the Muslims and not as an Imam.
Today, given that the ideal Sunni and Shi‘ah governing systems are not avail-
able, the people should practice wilŒyah, which can be seen as a type of Is-
lamic democracy. As the fiqh of both branches is quite close, the ummah
should focus on worshipping the One God, for only then can it take its rightful
place on the world stage.

Session 3 featured David Warren (doctoral candidate, University of Man-
chester, UK) who spoke on Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s view that ijtihŒd is never
fixed and that the maqΤid are vital. After branching off into a discussion of
what is going on in Tunisia and Egypt, he mentioned that Tunisia’s decision
to keep the secular regime’s personal law is an example of the ability to ex-
press secular values in religious terms, thereby dispelling the fears of women
and the West. He then compared this with the former western view that Cathol-
icism was incompatible with democracy, which was disproven by the rise of
social democratic parties in Europe. He maintained that such parties are good
examples of how religious views can be expressed in secular terms, for they
are anti-communist and anti-fascist, aspire to social justice for everyone by
restraining capitalism/state socialism, and are sort of a middle way. 

Jasser Auda (Qatar Foundation) remarked that al-Qaradawi’s ideas are
going mainstream in the Middle East. Still, there is a certain vagueness over
al-d¥n¥ wa al-madan¥ (religious and civil): Are they absolutely separate (reli-
gion vs. civil) or the same (the religious is the civil state)? Do these two
spheres overlap partially or completely? He posited a third view: two concen-
tric circles moving away from a complete overlap and toward areas of exclu-
sivity: an area of personal freedom (pure religion; no state/secular control) vs.
an area of pure civil/state (secular/liberal values). According to him, this latter
area has much in common with maqΤid approach and is expanding. He then
went into a detailed discussion of ideas held in common by Islamists and lib-
erals, as well as differences among Islamists (e.g., where religion and secu-
larism intersect). He concluded by saying that there are calls for focusing on
civil society/service instead of the state, for enlarging civil service so society
can acquire some of the state’s power to run its own affairs (e.g., allowing so-
ciety to govern the awqŒf and operate Islamic groups, thereby placing them

Conference, Symposium, and Panel Reports 149

ajiss294_ajiss  8/14/2012  12:42 PM  Page 149



out of the state’s reach, along with the media and the Ministry of Information),
and for using education (especially in Egypt and Tunisia) and not the state to
spread morality and move the state in a more civil/liberal direction. There is
now an ongoing serious dialogue between liberals (who see principles of the
Shari‘ah as maqŒ§id) and Islamists (who still want aúkŒm in every area) about
whether the state should control personal freedom or not, and whether society
should be allowed to develop itself. Another new phenomenon is the emer-
gence of leftist politics, especially as regards economic issues. A great deal of
foreign pressure can be expected, given that the economy is now very right
wing. But, according to Auda, this is where the future lies.

Michot pointed out a very important fact at the end of this presentation:
There is no historical dictionary to define exactly what certain terms meant at
various times and how they were used by certain scholars. For example, before
European colonialism there was no concept of “state,” “citizen,” and similar
modern terms among Muslim scholars. Thus contemporary Muslim scholars’
attempts to use these to describe certain past realities are mistaken and only
cause confusion.

Session 4 featured two papers by Charles Butterworth (University of
Maryland). In his first paper, he overviewed the political ideas of several clas-
sical-era philosophers. According to him, al-Kindi had no political teachings.
Al-Razi was concerned with ethics and how to live a good life based on ethical
principles. People, in his view, acquired value only by becoming tools to re-
alize the ruler’s goals. Al-Farabi sought to restore philosophy to its proper
place as regards grammar, and to deal with the issue of reason vs. revelation.
Ibn Sina did not think much about politics until he was near death, and thus
placed its discussion at the end of his book on metaphysics. His main concern
was how a person can acquire a prophetic understanding and use it to live a
virtuous life. Ibn Bajjah focused on ethics, while Ibn Tufayl dealt with the
philosophical and mystical life. Ibn Tufayl held that the existence of truth is
not enough, for one must know how to use rhetoric to communicate it to oth-
ers. Ibn Rushd sought to bring together reason, revelation, and practice. Ibn
Khaldun was the first one who sought to get the past straight, instead of leav-
ing it as just a mass of stories that formed no larger picture. 

In his second paper, Butterworth defined philosophy as “an attempt to re-
place opinion by knowledge.” But what is “opinion” and what is “knowl-
edge”? Philosophy does not try to reform Islam or give answers, for its
purpose is to enable people to think about, analyze, and understand the “big
questions.” Philosophy teachers what the words mean, how to put them to-
gether in sentences, and what those sentences mean. He asserted that the mod-

150 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 29:4

ajiss294_ajiss  8/14/2012  12:42 PM  Page 150



ern era has rejected, but not refuted, ancient/medieval civilization without hav-
ing a nuanced grasp of its underlying philosophy. In the modern era, the main
presupposition is that reason, not faith, predominates. He concluded by men-
tioning that the hallmarks of a ruler are moderation and prudence, not knowl-
edge, and with a discussion about the ideas of al-Farabi and Ibn Rushd.

Session 5’s first presenter, Abdullah Al Arian (Wayne State University),
spoke on the experience of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt during the
1970s. He traced its gradual incorporation of a widespread youth movement
whose members were running for university posts, becoming more involved
in university affairs (universities are state institutions in Egypt), and wanting
to help others. After graduation, they joined and eventually led professional
syndicates. In the 1980s, they ran for Parliament as independents. Combining
their forces, the Brotherhood began spreading beyond the university. The Old
Guard’s acceptance of these young student activists showed its acceptance of
the modern state and its gradual shift away from the founding ideology.

The second presenter, Kenneth Honerkamp (University of Georgia,
Athens), remarked that respect, tolerance, and dignity sustain the ideals of
freedom and justice. As God calls for righteous governance to ensure His cre-
ation’s rights, there is a discourse between fiqh and virtue: How can core Is-
lamic values be integrated into the community’s material and spiritual realms?
The overall goal is to establish a just society so that the individual can realize
his/her highest potential. He discussed the role of takhalluq, a Sufi methodol-
ogy designed to build a better society by putting others ahead of oneself. Based
on the belief that no one can govern others until he/she can govern himself/
herself, this is accomplished by self-transformation, by seeking to manifest
His names in oneself. All of this leads to good governance.

Session 6 featured Muqtedar Khan’s (University of Delaware) “IúsŒn and
Good Governance.” He opened by saying that “good governance” is a buzz-
word for good management and that the word “good” is redundant because
what is necessary is “governance.” He then asked: What is the difference be-
tween good and effective governance, between doing things rightly and doing
the right thing? What is the motivation for good governance? Are we talking
about normative or ethical governance? Does this apply to the Arabs in the
post-Arab Spring era? Was all governance before bad (that is the assumption),
and will there now be good governance? Can we govern, and do the necessary
institutions exist? Should the Arabs look at East Asia, which made the right
economic decisions but boasts no democracies? Why, in the case of East Asia,
did the corporate sector and the government decide to work together? What is
the definition of governance, and why are we talking about it now? After men-

Conference, Symposium, and Panel Reports 151

ajiss294_ajiss  8/14/2012  12:42 PM  Page 151



tioning that governance is a process and the state is a structure, he stated that
Muslims should be concerned with the process of Islamization, not the Islamic
state, for the Prophet only gave an example of the Islamic process of gover-
nance. Modern Muslims have developed great and highly developed theories
of the Islamic state, but not of Islamic governance. He placed iúsŒn over and
above good governance, as it forms the philosophical base and assumptions.
An example of this would be the concept of reasonable doubt in American ju-
risprudence. IúsŒn is not a structural element, but rather a matter of detail, a
matter of process in governance. One reason why an “Islamic state” became
so important was that it was a way to assert Muslim cultural and geographical
independence, as well as an alternative, against western hegemony. It only be-
came a reality with the Iranian revolution. Now, an Islamic state is seen in ide-
ological terms as furthering a religious agenda, not as trying to establish the
virtuous life. The Shari‘ah is meant to give people the chance, via structures,
to live a virtuous life. These structures should not be used to coerce behavior,
because in that case it means that someone else’s interests are being enforced.
He ended with encouraging the audience to realize that “virtue matters.” 

Session 7 featured Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad (Minaret of Freedom), who fo-
cused on the need for an “Islamic” rules of order so that discussions will follow
a certain framework and everyone will be allowed his/her say. He said that
such a framework might have helped post-Mubarak Egypt avoid some of its
current problems. Marybeth Acac (doctoral candidate, Temple University)
discussed how Indonesia’s experience under pancasila might be a useful ex-
ample for Egypt and other Arab Spring countries to consider in setting up their
new governments. The Dutch, during their long rule, secularized Indonesia;
Sukarno brought Islam back into the public sphere via pancasila. The con-
cept’s very vagueness, however, allowed it to be used, especially by his suc-
cessor Suharto, as an authoritarian tool to repress civil society. 

Session 8 featured Douglas Johnston’s (International Center for Religion
& Diplomacy [ICRD]) account of using religion to help solve identity-based
problems. He recounted how ICRD was instrumental in bringing together 30
religious leaders/scholars (10 Muslim, 10 Christian, and 10 external) from
both northern and southern Sudan to sit down and discuss their grievances.
The end result was the establishment of an inter-religious council that would
meet monthly. One important point was the need to concentrate on second-
and third-tier leaders so that no one group benefits. 

He also described ICRD’s eight-year effort to enhance, not reform, Pak-
istan’s madrassas. ICRD’s main activity is to expand the curriculum to include
human rights, women’s rights, physical and social sciences, and to instill crit-

152 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 29:4

ajiss294_ajiss  8/14/2012  12:42 PM  Page 152



ical/creative thinking skills. Currently, 2,700 madrassa leaders are engaged,
many of them in the more radical areas. He mentioned the reasons for the pro-
gram’s success: ownership (it was “their” reform, not an imported one); they
were inspired with their own heritage (e.g., Muslims were tolerant when Chris-
tians were intolerant); all suggested changes were grounded in Islamic prin-
ciples (the most important reason); and a humble approach. After all, he said,
it was the United States who planted the seeds of terrorism during its campaign
to drive the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. He also discussed the establish-
ment of a National Madrassa Oversight Board comprised of five leaders of
the sects: Deobandi, Barelwi, Wahhabis (Ahl-e Hadith), Shi‘ah, and Jammat
Islam. ICRD is working with all of them. According to him it is usually a case
of Islam vs. tribalism, and Islam does not always win. He closed with saying
“The best antidote for religious extremism is religious reconciliation.”

The second speaker, Norton Mezvinsky (International Council for Middle
East Studies), discussed the influential Christian Zionist movement in the
United States. According to him, this “dangerous ideology” emphasizes Israel
and the Jews to the exclusion of all else, believes in the Bible as the literal word
of God, sees Israel as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, and is most pro-
nounced among Evangelical Christians. He stated that in 2012 there are an es-
timated 50 million Evangelical Christians in the country. He mentioned Hal
Lindsay (author of the best-selling The Late Great Planet Earth), Tim LaHaye
and Jerry Jenkins (authors of the wildly popular “Left Behind” series), Franklin
Graham (president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and
Samaritan’s Purse), Pastor John Hagee (president and CEO of the international
John Hagee Ministries and Christians United for Israel), and Pastor Jerry Fal-
well (founder of Liberty University and cofounder of the Moral Majority), and
discussed their views. Calling the Christian Zionists more influential than the
Jewish Zionists, he urged the seminar attendees to get a sophisticated and clear
understanding of this ideology and seek to refute it.

Session 9, “Challenges of  Education Reform in Muslim Societies,” fea-
tured Jamal Barzinji (IIIT), Ali Mazrui (Binghamton University), and Abdalla
El Sheikh Sidahmad (El Neelain University, Sudan). Barzinji stated that IIIT
regarded reforming education as a major challenge, for the institute was set
up to reform Islamic thought and to raise the ummah up to the level of being
an asset to humanity. He blamed the Muslim world’s current deplorable con-
dition on the Muslims’ general inability to plan and the idea that they only
have to do their best and leave the result to God. To counter this trend, IIIT
has spent the last thirty years pursuing the Islamization of Knowledge. One
of its successes has been the opening of the International Islamic University

Conference, Symposium, and Panel Reports 153

ajiss294_ajiss  8/14/2012  12:42 PM  Page 153



Malaysia, an institution that seeks to make its students feel responsible for
changing their societies via education. He stated that IIIT is ready to help the
new Arab governments reform their education systems.

Mazrui raised the idea of global universities, claiming that the Muslim
world started this trend (e.g., al-Azhar and the universities of Timbuktu and
Morocco). He cited Ibn Khladun as the founder of sociology and microhistory,
Ibn Battuta as the founder of global geography, the importance of Arabic nu-
merals, Arabic’s contributions to other languages, and various contributions
made by the Ottoman Empire and South Asia. After discussing the extension
of European colleges and universities into their colonies and how they have
evolved into independent institutions, he asked several questions: How do
these extensions affect the Muslims’ capacity for self-reliance and independ-
ence? Are they in competition with Islamic universities? Can one modernize
Islamic education without westernizing/eroding it? Can the scientific spirit of
objective neutrality be reconciled with faith? Can an Islamic university discuss
gay rights, atheism, and other controversial (if not prohibited-by-Islam) issues?
He called for educating students in the country’s main indigenous language,
the appropriate imperial language, and Arabic; decolonizing modernity to
lessen dependence upon the West and other non-Muslim civilizations; em-
powering women; giving men and women equal duties depending upon what
they can do; and Islamizing knowledge.

Sidahmad discussed the role of foreign organizations setting up and fund-
ing schools in Egypt. He noted that the Islamists have to be careful here, espe-
cially at the early childhood and pre-school education level, as the traditional
curriculum of these years, memorizing the Qur’an, has no value in the eyes of
the foreign schools. Other important concerns are developing appropriate cur-
ricula and syllabi, controlling the external funders’ influence in the education
system, and ensuring that the instructors are teaching what is important for the
children (as opposed to the funders) and are serving as Islamic role models.
He had similar recommendations for the other levels as well. Egypt’s national
debt problem is also a serious concern, along with whether the country should
be more concerned with the quantity of people educated or the quality of edu-
cation provided, how education for all can further social justice and lead to
jobs and a better quality of life for everyone, and spreading the nation’s wealth
in a fairer manner. While stating that no country can do without foreign edu-
cation, he said that a way must be found to ensure that it focuses on imparting
knowledge and learning instead of making a profit for the parent company.  

Session 10 featured Seifuddein Adem (Binghamton University), Ali
Mazrui, and Muhammad Nimer (American University). Adem spoke on the

154 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 29:4

ajiss294_ajiss  8/14/2012  12:42 PM  Page 154



relevance of Ibn Khaldun’s ideas to the discourse on good governance. He in-
troduced this figure by saying that we can learn from him how to conceptual-
ize historical change. He compared his ideas with those of Descartes, Locke,
Hobbes, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Machiavelli. His relevance to Muslims
today lies in his cyclical view of history (the West sees history as linear), the
theory of power transitions, and the theory of state formation. In closing, he
remarked that Ibn Khaldun has been marginalized due to the complexity of
his work, various linguistic/cultural factors, and the nature of the West’s hege-
monic discourse.

Nimer sought to put Arab Spring in a global context. His major ideas were
that people want democracy, the middle class’ involvement is something new,
that they have returned to history (they left it about fifty years into the
Umayyad dynasty), and that this is the first Arab uprising in the era of glob-
alization. He sees the revolt as an attempt by “people power” to root out any
form of hegemony based on people, money, or guns, rather than a populist
one (against the rich elites), an undertaking premised on respecting and pro-
tecting all members of society. Now, people are allowed to compete in im-
proving society. He noted that the old regimes (except in Libya) remain a
threat and that the pro-revolutionary forces have their own factions. He won-
dered if a mass revolt, as seen in Egypt, could be seen as a new source of le-
gitimacy for Arab regimes, who authorized the Muslim Brotherhood to speak
for all Egyptians, and why only one faction determined who was entitled to
talk with the old regime and the army.

Mazrui’s paper consisted of several maxims: In a technologically under-
developed society, power resides more among those who control the means of
destruction than among those who control the means of production; political
pluralism survives best in those societies that have successfully experimented
with economic pluralism earlier; in a multiethnic society, democracy can only
survive if the voters have learned to vote across ethnic and denominational
lines; democracy will only work when the primordial culture of consensus has
begun to give way to a modern culture of tolerance; and democracy will work
only when the rule of law is beginning to replace the rule of personal power
and rules are obeyed even by the most powerful. He then discussed how Islam
both facilitates and impedes democracy as regards the gender question,
mosque-state relations, inter-sectarian relations, and democratizing theocracy.

Session 11 featured Turan Kayaoglu (University of Washington), who
sought to analyze good governance at the global and other levels of governance,
such as the United Nations (UN), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and
the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). His main interest is the OIC,

Conference, Symposium, and Panel Reports 155

ajiss294_ajiss  8/14/2012  12:42 PM  Page 155



which claims to reflect the Muslim identity in international politics. He stressed
the need for Muslim nations to share their sovereignty with international or-
ganizations for human rights both to advance and to formulate some checks
and balances at the international level. But, he remarked, such sharing is at
odds with traditional concepts of national sovereignty that developed after the
Treaty of Westphalia (1648). He outlined a pattern of dealing with human rights
as a gradual process beginning with World War 2: (1) formulate a non-binding
declaration, (2) draw up a charter/covenant containing some kind of binding
rules, (3) establish a commission to enforce them, and (4) set up an international
court (e.g., the European Court of Human Rights). After remarking that the
Turkish model is usually ignored, he stated that the language of the Shari‘ah is
problematic not because its language is incompatible with human rights, but
because it empowers states. Another problem is that the state often controls the
meaning of the Shari‘ah and therefore ultimately controls the Islamic bodies
within its borders. He mentioned that the new OIC Commission for Human
Rights, set up in 2011, contains no mention of Islam and only a few references
to the  Shari‘ah. Despite being an international institution, countries have not
given it much authority. For example, it cannot visit any country or receive
complaints and NGOs have very limited access to it. Thus, in his view, the
main question is how to get Muslim states to share their sovereignty with in-
ternational organizations to advance human rights in a  meaningful way.

Louay Safi (Qatar Foundation) focused on combining Islam and gover-
nance. He stated that Islam provides the ethical foundation for action, which is
why Muslims find it so hard to separate politics from religion. Over the last
two centuries, the gradual decoupling of ethics and politics has caused all of
the troubles. He called for deconstructing the prevailing negative notion of
Shari‘ah in order to return the human being to the center of social concern. In
his opinion, the Shari‘ah is designed to help the ruler fulfill this task more ef-
ficiently and effectively. In legal terms, it deals with organizing relations be-
tween people; in terms of religion, it is a set of rituals and rules designed for
approaching God; in terms of politics, it is the parameters of ma§laúah (e.g.,
trust, competency, justice, participation, and public good). The challenge is to
rethink Islam’s spirit and principles and how they can be realized in terms of
the Madinan Covenant as well as the autonomy accorded to minorities and in-
dividuals in the past. Islam has a liberal outlook, but its outlook is not identical
with that of the liberal West.

Session 12 opened with Mohammad Faghfoory’s (George Washington
University) discussion of clergy-state relations both before and after Iran’s
1979 revolution. He has studied the clergy’s transformation from a purely re-

156 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 29:4

ajiss294_ajiss  8/14/2012  12:42 PM  Page 156



ligious group into one that is diluting its religious aspect in an attempt to be-
come more political and professional. He noted the decline of scholarship in
major seminaries in Qom and Mashhad. After dealing with clergy-state rela-
tions under the Pahlavis, he commented that under Khomeini, the clerical
leadership began to act more like politicians than religious leaders/scholars,
because the Islamic state was placed above everything else. Shortly thereafter,
their increasing professionalization and bureaucratization enabled them to,
unlike their predecessors, embrace technology and modern means of commu-
nication. All of these were used to serve the state (which violated tradition),
and the clerics became ministers, governors, intelligence agents, and holders
of other non-traditional jobs. A major problem now, however, is the inherent
contradiction of the Iranian political system: If the supreme jurist’s word is
law and the president is elected by the majority’s will, then who has the final
say?

Ahmad Kazemi Moussavi (University of Maryland) analyzed Ayatollah
Salehi Najafabadi’s concept of good governance. He said that the ayatollah
wanted people to choose their own leaders and sought to incorporate three
ideas: majority rule, the social contract, and human intellect. He mentioned
that the concept of vilayet-e faqih did not originate with Khomeini, but with
Mulla Ahmad Naraqi (1771-1829). But Naraqi only developed it as an abstract
idea, whereas Khomeini brought it into reality. Najafabadi believed that social
norms are the basis of any consensus and thus opposed the view of many oth-
ers that only the majority’s opinion mattered. 

Jamal Barzinji concluded the event by saying that the symposium’s topic
had arisen in response to Arab Spring and because of the ummah’s general
inability to govern itself. He hoped that a way could be found to guide the
ummah, one that is superior to both the way of the West and of traditional
Islam. He called upon Muslims to go beyond the Qur’an and Sunnah in their
attempt to organize modern Islamic society, one run by Islamists and reason-
able people. He restated that IIIT has been moving into the area of maqΤid
al-Shar¥‘ah and has a lot to offer the Arab Spring countries as regards helping
them reform their education systems.

Jay Willoughby
AJISS

Herndon, VA

Conference, Symposium, and Panel Reports 157

ajiss294_ajiss  8/14/2012  12:42 PM  Page 157