Articulating “Responsibility” as a Prerequisite for the Arab Spring Ahmed Elewa Abstract In delineating the causes behind nonmilitant uprising and revolution in the Middle East, I propose that the import, the Arabization and Islamization of the term responsibility, as a key catalyst. Although the concept of responsibility is fundamental to the message of Islam, it is alluded to by an assortment of terms that seem to have fallen out of the day-to- day vernacular of Arab communities. The adoption of the term mas’uliyyah has served to express this fundamental concept. Furthermore, given its origin in post-Enlightenment Western political philosophy, the term provides a rare conceptual bridge between regions termed Western and Middle Eastern, in addition to being a linguistic vehicle capable of coarticulating modern Western and traditional Islamic thoughts. In this article, I trace the Arabization and Islamization of the term responsibility to nineteenth-century nahDah literature and its current establishment in different Islamic currents and schools. Moreover, I explain the utility of the term to express authentically Islamic vocabulary that has been forsaken in political terminology of the past two centuries. ________________________________________________________________ Ahmed Elewa is a graduate student at the Islamic American University (IAU) where he is researching the articulation of “responsibility” in Islamic jurisprudence. He is also a doctoral candidate at the University of Massachusetts Medical School where he studies early embryo development with Nobel Laurette Craig Mello. Ahmed Elewa would like to thank Dr. Basyouny Nehela (IAU) for constructive feedback that aided in developing the idea behind this paper. Gratitude is also expressed to Dr. Vickie Langohr, Dr. Laury Silvers, and Dr. Sarah Eltantawy for commenting on the original manuscript. Elewa: Articulating “Responsibility” as a Prerequisite for the Arab Spring 43 Introduction On January 18, 2011, Egyptian activist Asmaa Mahfouz posted a vlog on Youtube.com exhorting her fellow Egyptians to take to the streets on Janu- ary 25th and protest the corrupt government of Hosni Mubarak. Her video today is considered one of the main mobilizers that lead to the success of the protests.1 Her call included a warning that those who observe the pro- tests idly behind their computers and TV sets are responsible for the harm that will occur to those who decide to take part and participate: Your presence with us will make a difference, a big difference. Talk to your neighbors, your colleagues, friends and family and tell them to come. They don’t have to come to Tahrir Square, just go down anywhere and say it, that we are free human beings. Sitting at home and just following us on news or Facebook leads to our humiliation. Leads to my own humiliation! If you have honor and dignity as a man then come. Come and protect me, and other girls in the protest. If you stay at home, then you deserve all that’s being done to you, and you will be guilty, [and you will be mas’ul], before your nation and your people. And you’ll be responsible [shayel mas’uliyyah] for what happens to us on the street while you sit at home.2 On February 12 2011, Egyptians returned to Tahrir Square in hum- ble triumph, to clean up after eighteen days of protest that indeed forced President Hosni Mubarak to step down.3 With brooms, garbage bags, and disinfectant, it was almost a spiritual-civic act of repentance and baptism ingraining a new mode of citizenship, long sought after and long struggling to be expressed. “Yesterday, Egypt gave birth to a new baby.” a participant said, “Right now we’re not sure what it is going to grow up like but we all have a responsibility to do our best.”4 Responsibility features in the Arab Spring as a self-evident concept and authentic term. Used by activists to mobilize protesters and by protesters to explain their actions, it may therefore come as a surprise that the term is relatively novel both in English and in its Arabic translation, mas’uliyyah. The coinage of the term in the West and its incorporation in the East encap- sulates the modern interaction of both as it is received by populations in a tip-of-the-tongue state on both sides. I propose that the presence of this now familiar term was instrumental in articulating the necessity of political change in a manner that resonated with millions of Arabs educated according to a modern Western model of education. Finally, I predict that the term responsibility will allow for a “new kinda fiqh” appropriate for an activated citizenry. The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 29:344 The Emergence of Responsibility Origins in the West Richard McKeon maps the three dimensions in which “responsibility” is currently used to (1) an external dimension in legal and political analysis in which penalties are imposed on actions and officials are held account- able, (2) an internal dimension in moral and ethical analysis in which one is cognizant of the consequences of an action, and (3) a comprehensive or social dimension in social and cultural analysis in which “values are ordered in the autonomy of an individual character and the structure of a civilization.”5 Despite these analyses being the subject of ancient discus- sions, the term responsibility is a modern invention that substituted the more traditional terms such as punishability, accountability, and imputa- tion. The first appearance of responsibility recorded by Murray’s Oxford English Dictionary is from the Federalist Papers,6 where it is used several times including the following paragraph from Paper No. 69 published in 1788 by Alexander Hamilton (1755‒1804): The President of the United States would be liable to be impeached, tried, and, upon conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes or misdemeanors, removed from office; and would afterwards be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law. The person of the king of Great Britain is sacred and inviolable; there is no constitutional tribunal to which he is amenable; no punishment to which he can be subjected without involving the crisis of a national revolution. In this delicate and important circumstance of personal responsibility, the President of Confederated America would stand upon no better ground than a governor of New York, and upon worse ground than the governors of Maryland and Delaware.7 John Stuart Mill (1806‒1873) later introduced the word responsibility in philosophical discourse as a semantic maneuver to bypass the impasse faced when discussing accountability and imputation. The deadlock en- countered by these two topics arises from the unresolved discussions on freedom versus necessity and intentions versus consequences ‒ in addition to whether the true source of moral and political criteria ought to be senti- ment instead of reason, or approbation rather than duty.8 For Mill, it was a moot point to be avoided. Instead, he deemed it sufficient that we “believe that there is a difference between right and wrong”9 and that regardless of the reason behind preferring one over the other, it is a fact that whoever commits wrong will fall out of sympathy with society, and that if people become aware of one’s disposition to wrong they will actively dislike him. Elewa: Articulating “Responsibility” as a Prerequisite for the Arab Spring 45 This would therefore render the wrongdoer “liable to whatever they may think it necessary to do in order to protect themselves against him; which may probably include punishment.”10 Mill considers this social dynamic sufficient to make one accountable “at least to his fellow creatures, through the normal action of their natural sentiments,”11 and from this pragmatic perspective, he offers a definition: What is meant by moral responsibility? Responsibility means punishment. When we are said to have the feeling of being morally responsible for our actions, the idea of being punished for them is uppermost in the speaker’s mind. But the feeling of liability to punishment is of two kinds. It may mean, expectation that if we act in a certain manner, punishment will actually be inflicted upon us, by our fellow creatures or by a Supreme Power. Or it may only mean, knowing that we shall deserve that infliction.12 Thus, Mill gave responsibility a meaning based on the tradition of ac- countability ‒ with responsibility meaning punishment, and by which a distinction between right and wrong is uncovered, while at the same time generalizing it beyond the expectation of actual punishment to knowing that one deserves to be punished.13 From so simple a beginning, responsibility evolved to its current per- vasive presence where its definition goes beyond “responsibility means punishment” to become a principle by which one has the “obligation to fulfill certain duties, to assume certain burdens, and to carry out certain commitments.”14 In that sense, its center of gravity has shifted from the judicial plane to the plane of moral philosophy.15 Arabization and Islamization I conducted an extensive literature search to explore the usage of the term responsibility in Arabic.16 Although the passive participle mas’ul occurs in the Qur’ān more than once, the now familiar artificial verbal noun mas’uliyyah was virtually absent in Arabic literature until the nineteenth century. Morphologically, the term responsibility in Arabic is derived from the root seen-hamza-laam, the base for the verb sa’ala (he asked) and the word su’aal (question). The passive participle mas’ul is one who is asked (about) or questioned (about) something. The artificial verbal noun almas- dar alsina`iy is derived by adding a doubled yaa’ and a haa’/taa’ to the end of a nonverb to create an abstract noun depicting a state or a quality, similar to the effect of the suffix –ity in English. By a first approximation, a mas’ul is one who is responsible, and mas’uliyyah is responsibility. However, this is not entirely accurate. Responsible is derived from the act of responding, while the root of mas’ul connotes asking. Nevertheless, while at the core The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 29:346 they are derived from opposite verbs, the passive participle renders mas’ul to mean one who is to be questioned about something and is expected to respond ‒ and therefore the approximation of mas’uliyyah as responsibility is sufficiently functional. The earliest texts in which the term mas’uliyyah was found could be described as nineteenth century nahDah literature by virtue of its authors Butrus al-Bustani (1819‒1883), Muhammad Abdu (1849‒1905), Rifa’a el-Tahtawi (1801‒1873), and Abd El-Rahman el-Kawakbi (1849‒1902).17 With its origins in Syria and Egypt, the nahDah (Renaissance) movement flourished between 1850 and 1914, with the mission of assimilating the great achievements of modern European civilization hand in hand with reviving classical Arab culture.18 Al-Bustani, a leading pioneer of the nahDah movement19 appears to be the first to include the term mas’uliyyah in an Arabic dictionary.20 Announc- ing in 1862 his plans to compile an Arabic dictionary “the likes of which has never been conceived,”21 al-Bustani based Muhit al-Muhit largely on the Qamus of al-Firuzabadi, as well as al-Jawhari’s al-Sihah,22 while intro- ducing numerous foreign terms, among which we find mas’uliyyah: al-mas’ul is an ism maf`ul (passive participle). In the [Seventeenth Qur’ānic] Chapter of ‘The Children of Israel’: “Indeed [every] pledge will be mas’ulan (questioned [about])”. That is, requested from the pledger to fulfill and not renege. Or to “be questioned about”, as in questioning the reneger [about his going back on their pledge] and punishing him. From it (i.e. mas’ul) is [derived] the term used in Politics and Business, mas’uliyyah, by which a person is requested [of].23 Also first published in 1870 was the Curricula for Egyptian Hearts on the Marvels of Modern Civility and Arts in which Rifa`a el-Tahtawi attempts to help “expand the extent of urbanity” through material he col- lected from “the fruits of ripe Arabic books and beneficial French compo- sitions.” 24 As head of the school of languages and editor of the first offi- cial gazette, al-Tahtawi was well-positioned to import and arabize foreign terms,25 and it appears that he was the first to introduce the concepts of fatherland (watan) and patriotism (wataniyyah) into Arabic.26 He writes in the section on governance: Kings in their kingdoms have exclusive rights and upon them are obligations towards their people. Among the exclusivities of a king is that he is God’s vicegerent on Earth and is held into account by his Lord [alone]. [Thus] upon him is no mas’uliyyah by any of his subjects for his actions.27 Elewa: Articulating “Responsibility” as a Prerequisite for the Arab Spring 47 El-Tahtawi continues and justifies this irreproachable status of kings explaining that they should be left to their inner conscience, endowed in them by their creator as a personal censor.28 In what appears to be a re- sponse, Abd El-Rahman Al-Kawakbi later wrote in The Nature of Despo- tism and the Harm of Enslavement (first published in 1900 and currently an Arab Spring best-seller): Muhammad Abdu used mas’uliyyah in more mundane terms. In an ar- ticle published in al-Waqa’i` al-Masriyyah (the official Egyptian Gazette30) and dated December, 23, 1880, he wrote: Mas’uliyyah in Fiqh Literature From the portal of nahDah, responsibility has slowly made its way in to the Arabic lexicon and Islamic literature. In fiqh literature, the term is virtu- ally absent in classical and medieval texts.32 Even the recent Kuwaiti Fiqh Encyclopedia (a project that began in 1967) does not include an entry to explain mas’uliyyah, despite it being used to explain other terms, for ex- ample: Mas’uliyyah of the Judge: Jurists differed on the mas’uliyyah of the judge, is he to be held accountable for mistakes in his rulings or whether it is impermissible to hold him accountable, due to many duties he is in charge of.33 Perhaps, one of the earliest incorporations of the term in fiqh literature is to be found in Sayyid Saabiq’s (1915‒2000) Fiqh al-Sunna (first volume published in 1945): If a person bites another and the one bitten pulls away causing the biter’s teeth to fall . . . then there is no mas’uliyyah on the [bitten], because he was not the original offender.34 The first appearance of the term mas’uliyyah in Egyptian fatwā issued by Dar al-Iftaa’ al-Masriyyah (Egyptian House of Fatwa)35 appears to be Who knows from where jurists of despotism derived that rulers are sanctified from mas’uliyyah, to the extent that they deem it obligatory to praise them when just and to be patient when unjust and consider any criticism a transgression punishable by death?! O Allah, despots and their partners have transmuted your religion; there is no power but from you.29 The Administration of Education published a memo . . . that from now on all must exert an effort to improve the level of education and pedagogy and warning that whoever does not do so will fall under the mas’uliyyah of the Diwan.31 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 29:348 in a lengthy response by Sheikh Jad el-Haq Ali Jad el-Haq (1917‒1996) in 1979 about the ruling on Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel: by the same logic, the Messenger (SAAS) defines mas’uliyyah and lays it on the shoulders of those in charge in any position, for he says “Certainly! Everyone of you is a guardian and is mas’ul about his charge. The leader of the people is a guardian and is mas’ul about his subjects” (al-Bukhari) . . . and when we examine this treaty in light of a Muslim ruler’s mas’uliyyaat [pl. of mas’uliyyah], we find that the Egyptian president acted towards [his] people sincerely with mas’uliyyah, to preserve his people as he preserves himself. He went to war when he found there was no alternative and after due preparation, and he negotiated and extended the hand of peace when it appeared that there was no other alternative and that he can reclaim our rights peacefully without war.36 The term has also made its way into fiqh literature originating from the Arabian Peninsula, which is often characterized by literal interpretations committed to an earlier historical practice. Sheikh Abdulaziz ibn Abdullah ibn Baz (1912‒1999), the former Mufti of Saudi Arabia, wrote in a paper titled “The Role of Youth in Islamic Movements”: Indeed the mas’uliyyah of those in charge: leaders, scholars and intellectuals, is a great mas’uliyyah. They must take the hands [of youth], care for them, and guide them to the [traditional] path of Islam; explain it to them so that they embrace it as tradition and practice, in order that they may proceed according to the model and application of the Shari’ah.37 In a response to a question on parenthood, renowned scholar Muham- mad ibn al-Uthaymin (1929‒2001) used the term mas’uliyyah abundant- ly. For example, in elaborating on the verse “O you who believe, save yourselves and your families from a Fire whose fuel is Men and Stones” [Qur’ān 66:6], he said: Allah explains that this address directed to believers includes an important mas’uliyyah, which is that they protect themselves and their families from a Fire. This means that the mas’uliyyah of family is similar to the mas’uliyyah of the self in this regard. . . . So in the same way that upon you is a mas’uliyyah towards yourself, upon you is a mas’uliyyah towards your children as well, which you must fulfill and will be asked about on the Day of Judgment.38 Thus, despite differences in legal school or sociopolitical vision, mas’uliyyah has begun to be utilized in fiqh literature to articulate legal concepts such as culpability, accountability, and the sense of guardianship that comes with authority. Elewa: Articulating “Responsibility” as a Prerequisite for the Arab Spring 49 Mas’uliyyah in Tafsir Literature As for tafsīr (Qur’ān exegesis), the situation is similar as the case with fiqh literature, the term mas’uliyyah is introduced in modern Qur’ānic exege- ses.39 A single occurrence is found in the tafsīr of Allameh Seyyed Muham- mad Husayn at-Tabataba’I (1892‒1981) known as Tafsir al-Mizan. From this it appears that [Allah’s] saying: “Indeed you are slogging towards your Lord” [Qur’ān 84:6] includes an affirmation of the hereafter, for Lordship is not complete except with servitude, and servitude is not complete except with mas’uliyyah, and mas’uliyyah is not complete except with a return and an account of deeds, and an account of deeds is not complete without jazaa’ (reward and/or punishment).40 Another single occurrence is found in Sheikh Atiyya Salim’s (1927‒1999) completion of the exegesis started by his mentor Muhammad al-Amin al-Shinquiti (1897‒1972), Adwaa’ al-Bayaan: “Nay. Indeed this is a reminder. So let those who wish, pay heed.” [Qur’ān 80:11‒12]. A declaration; for the Messenger (SAAS) does not make a consideration for the wealthy or poor when calling to Allah, and the Believers must be patient with him not being empowered. For the message is to be communicated and upon [the messenger] is no mas’uliyyah for what occurs afterwards, so he must not overburden himself for them.41 Sayyid Qutb (1906‒1966) in his In The Shades of the Quran, uses mas’uliyyah twice. One of these comes when reflecting on the verse “O you who believe! Enter into Islam [whole-heartedly, all of you] (Qur’ān 2:208)” and in the context of describing the community that Islam gives rise to: Finally, it is that community that provides for each person work and sustenance, for each disabled person the guarantee of dignified life, and for anyone seeking chastity and protection a suitable wife. It is that community that considers each member mas’ul [with a] criminal mas’uliyyah if a fellow member dies of hunger; to the extent that some jurists see that they must pay blood money.42 The three examples cited are products of Shīʻah, traditional Sunni, and Sunni revivalist schools, respectively. Once again, the term is used by a va- riety of schools and traditions. Furthermore, mas’uliyyah is a multidimen- sional term that encompasses notions of worldly accountability by oneself and others, as well as accountability in the hereafter. It remains to be seen if the usage of mas’uliyyah in Qur’ānic exegesis will shift the domain of accountability to one dimension versus the other. The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 29:350 Mas’uliyyah in Hadith Literature In the field of Hadith criticism,43 the term’s first incorporation may be at the hands of Muhammad Nasiruddin al-Albani (1914‒1999) in his famous critique of the story of the Satanic Verses,44 entitled “Hoisting of Catapults for the Destruction of the Story of the Cranes” (published in 1952). In analyzing al-Suyuti’s failure to mention the defects in the story’s chain of narration, he wonders “I do not know if this was an abridgment by him or by others.”45 He then includes in a footnote, I later found that al-Suyuti mentions [the story] in his book Asbaab al- Nuzool (The Reasons for Revelation) while expressing doubt about its [chain of narration]. He did well, and it is therefore clear that there is no mas’uliyyah about this narration [on him] or others.46 The purpose of this particular citation is to further demonstrate the employment of mas’uliyyah in a variety of Islamic disciplines. A more de- tailed analysis of modern terminology in the traditional discipline of Had- ith criticism will be presented elsewhere. Mas’uliyyah in Poetry Finally, it seems fitting that a potential first usage of mas’uliyyah in Arabic poetry is at the junction between intellectual nahDah and popular revolu- tion against despotism.47 In his “Speech of Death,”48 Yemini revolutionary/ poet Muhammad Mahmoud al-Zubairi (d. 1965) defames Yemen’s ruler Imam Ahmad bin Yehya Hamidadin (1869‒1948) saying: He cries: Allah’s Shari’ah! And Allah is innocent of debauchery If his heart saw God he would collapse Forsaking all mas’uliyyah And hand his crown to the people For them to build a national government With their own hands The Utility of the Term in Postcolonial Arabia It was important to go at lengths and trace the appearance of mas’uliyyah in a variety of fields and intellectual currents in order to emphasize that the once foreign term has been assimilated into the Arabic and Islamic discourse. It is also important to emphasize that the concept of responsi- bility is by no means new to the Muslim context and is traditionally ex- Elewa: Articulating “Responsibility” as a Prerequisite for the Arab Spring 51 pressed through a myriad of terms such as tabi`ah (consequence), wajib (obligation), hisaab (accountability), shahādah (witness), `ahd (covenant), amanah (trust), imāmah (leadership), and khilāfah (vicegerency). These terms have limited technical definitions as well as elaborated moral con- notations. For example, khilāfah not only refers to the highest office of authority following the death of Prophet Muḥammad (ṢAAS), but also to an Ummatic imperative to be agents of God on earth (see Qur’ān 2:30 and Qur’ān 10:14). Similarly, shahādah refers to witnessing in the legal sense, but also to bearing the responsibility of receiving revelation and being a witness unto humanity (see Qur’ān 2:143). Thus, the concept of responsi- bility is central to Islam by virtue of the hereafter’s centrality to its message and the moral consequence of receiving divine revelation. However, the political climate in the post-colonial Arab world was not conducive of a culture that regulates the actions of governments by appeal- ing to the hereafter or the covenant made between believers and Allah, or the moral imperative that follows from being vicegerents on earth. Instead, these themes were rejuvenated and cultivated as part of a grassroots effort for change in response to the pangs of encountering Western modernity, while seldom used seriously and forcefully as part of the political apparatus or among the intelligentsia that informed actual political decision making. The emergence of responsibility as a fundamentally a Western term fills in this terminological gap. The term is vague enough to be used with- out necessarily defining who one is responsible to. An elected official may be responsible to his constituency, but that constituency may be informed by their belief in a day of reckoning when choosing who to elect and hold- ing them accountable afterwards. The governed may remind the governor that he is responsible while leaving undetermined whether they are remind- ing him that they would hold him accountable ‒ or if they are appealing to his moral conscience which he must respond to, or perhaps reminding him of a day when he would stand before God. Furthermore, the utility of responsibility appears in raising political awareness and pressing for reform without being censored as a dissonant religious message in a supposedly secular political culture. In fact, it fits perfectly in secular discourse. Through this compatibility, the Arab and Muslim citizen is able to express a need that arises from a perceived pain- ful gap between a historical identity informed by a religious worldview and a present enforced by a Western dominance adamant on thwarting any Islamic Renaissance. The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 29:352 Responsibility-based Fiqh The establishment of responsibility as political and revolutionary currency coincides with Islam-inspired political parties dominating the legislative branches newly elected in the Arab Spring (Tunisa’s Ennahda Movement and Egypt’s Freedom and Justice Party and al-Noor Party). If this new leg- islative culture persists and extends to local (municipal) forms of adminis- tration, one could expect an approach to legislation and politics in general that seeks to derive its legitimacy from both religious appropriateness and pragmatic success. Within this attempt to combine piety with realpolitik lies an opportunity for a “new kinda fiqh” to develop. The main features of this jurisprudence are an Islamically authentic focus on responsibility, a religiously justified interest in prosperity, and an openness to public par- ticipation ‒ thus allowing for a form of pop-ijtihad (or vulgar ijtihad) to be practiced by the common citizen. The hallmark of this fiqh is the tension between responsibility and material prosperity. More on this to follow. Spheres of Responsibility The theoretical framework for such a responsibility-based fiqh could be found in Hadith: Certainly! Everyone of you is a warder (a shepherd) and is mas’ul (to be questioned about; responsible) for his ward (flock). The leader of the people is a warder is to be questioned about his ward. A man is the warder of his household and is to be questioned about his ward. A woman is the warder of her husband’s household and of his children and is to be questioned about them. The slave of a man is a warder of his master’s property and is to be questioned about it. Surely, everyone of you is a warder and is to be questioned about his ward.49 The importance of this hadith is that it establishes several overlapping spheres of responsibility, allowing one to extrapolate and consider each individual a shepherd responsible for one or more relevant flocks. Signifi- cantly, the hadith is phrased in a manner that preserves the vagueness of re- sponsibility. One may argue that the meaning intended is that, in the here- after, everyone will be questioned by God about what they were entrusted to guard during their lifetime. This interpretation is consistent with the Qur’ānic verse cited by al-Bustani above when defining mas’ul. In mod- ern practice, however, the hadith is used with additional dimensions. We have already seen how Sheikh Jad al-Haq cited the hadith in the context of responding to a question about President Anwar Sadat’s peace deal with Israel. To cite this hadith and then state that “the Egyptian president acted Elewa: Articulating “Responsibility” as a Prerequisite for the Arab Spring 53 towards [his] people sincerely with mas’uliyyah, to preserve his people as he preserves himself” is to refer to responsibility as a “sense” that informs a person’s fulfillment of duties. In his Epistles, Hassan el-Banna stresses the two dimensions of responsibility when he writes in his letter on govern- ment and under the subtitle, “The Mas’uliyyah of the Ruler”: The ruler is to be questioned by Allah and by the people, and he is hired by them and a worker for them, and the Messenger of Allah (SAAS) says, “Certainly! Everyone of you is a warder and is to be questioned about his ward.”50 Importantly, all treatment of responsibility in the rest of the letter focus- es on the single dimension between the ruler and the people. In this sense, the hadith above provides an authentic Islamic grounding for mas’uliyyah per se and could be used effectively while shifting its center of gravity back and forth between the hereafter and this worldly life. The Companions as a Source of Responsibility-based Fiqh and expanding Siyasah Shar`iyyah Additional theoretical foundation for a responsibility-based fiqh could be found in the opinions and decisions of the Companions, as Caliphs or advi- sors, after the death of Prophet Muḥammad and before the emergence of Madhahib and legal methodologies. The decision of Abu Bakr as-Siddiq to compile the loose parchments of Qur’ānic text into one single manuscript (c. 633) and Uthman ibn Affan’s order to prepare standard authorized copies (c. 653) 51 were two monumen- tal decisions that could be interpreted in light of a sense of responsibility in a vacuum of a revealed ruling or prophetic example. Similarly, Umar ibn Al-Khattab’s decision to ban marriages of Muslims to Christian or Jewish women (despite the Qur’ānic approval), to render triple pronouncements of divorce literal and not a metaphoric exaggeration, and his decision to de- part from the Prophet’s example and not distribute conquered lands among the army, could all be interpreted as informed by his responsibility toward unmarried, married Muslim women and the commonwealth of future gen- erations, respectively. These examples are usually cited in the field of siyasah shar`iyyah (Sharīʻah-inspired public policy, or Sharīʻah-compliant politics). However, the scope of siyasah shar`iyyah is likely to expand in emerging democratic societies. If lawmakers are elected and monitored by the public then leg- islation is a thoroughly public affair. The expansion of siyasah shar`iyyah coupled with the multiple spheres of responsibility lends itself to the idea The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 29:354 that a citizen is a civil mujtahid (one who exerts an effort to derive a legal ruling) in the capacity that allows the individual to fulfill his or her respon- sibilities. Closing Remarks on How Responsibility Augments Maqasid-based Fiqh Of the intrusions of an invasive modernity, imported Western legal systems were the most threatening projectile. With a gaping wound that Islamic jurisprudence has been slowly and painfully healing around, Western legal philosophy has become a de facto graft in the Muslim tradition. Via retro- spective justification posed as pre-description, modern Islamic legal meth- odology originating from the nahDah of Muhammad Abdu and Rashid Rida (1865‒1935) has developed today into what has been described as a dominantly utilitarian methodology.52 By rendering legal reasoning to a practice increasingly sensitive to social needs and necessities, at the ex- pense of a traditional commitment to literal dictates of revelation, the Ab- du-Rida synthesis has developed to a current divine-intent/human-needs (maqasid/maslahah) based-fiqh freed from the restrictions of medieval tra- dition and caught in a commitment to natural law.”53 Responsibility enters with the potential to augment and correct this effectively utilitarian fiqh and correct its path. Left to its current state of development, the Abdu-Rida synthesis remains deficient in that it lacks any objective criteria by which the validity of a human need or neces- sity is to be judged. Responsibility does not provide such criteria. Rather, it competes forcefully in the domain of subjectivity. By appealing to the material and spiritual welfare of future generations and the necessity of a sustainable fiqh ‒ and, more importantly, the fear and trembling that comes with a personal commitment to God, responsibility acts to keep a check on a benefits-based fiqh. The Arab Spring coincides with Islamic political parties coming closer to bringing an Islamic society into light and meeting the dictates of Is- lam. At the same time, the methodological vehicle adopted (and by which they became compatible with the political zeitgeist) is committed to suc- cessfully meeting the needs of society. At this junction, Soren Kierkegaard (1813‒1855) comes to mind with his philosophy of responsibility. I share with him an analogous fear that religious utilitarianism will make being Muslim easy, “with the danger that easiness would become so great, that it would become all too easy.”54 Out of love for humankind, one hopes that responsibility would make difficulties everywhere! Elewa: Articulating “Responsibility” as a Prerequisite for the Arab Spring 55 Notes 1. “Asmaa Mahfouz & the You Tube Video that Helped Spark the Egyptian Uprising,” http://www.democracynow.org/2011/2/8/ asmaa_mahfouz_the_youtube_video_that. 2. “Meet Asmaa Mahfouz and the vlog that Helped Spark the Revolution,” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgjIgMdsEuk. translated by Iyad El-Baghdadi, subtitled by Ammara Alavi. The quotation cited is between two minutes and fifty seconds and three minutes and thirty-five seconds. 3. “Egypt after Mubarak: A clean start,” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ world-middle-east-12441506. 4. Ibid. 5. Richard McKeon, “The Development and Significance of the Concept of Responsibility,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie 2 (1957): 5. 6. Ibid., 8. McKeon cites the Oxford English Dictionary’s reference to the Federalists Papers. However, he writes that it refers to Paper 64 by Alexander Hamilton, when in fact, it is written by John Jay. 7. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers. (New York: Penguin Group Signet Classic, 2003), 414‒15. 8. McKeon, “The Development and Significance of the Concept of Responsibility,” 20, referencing John Stuart Mill, An Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy (New York, 1884), col. 2, 288‒89. 9. John Stuart Mill, An Examination of William Hamilton’s Philosophy (Longman Green and Co, London, 1865), 507. 10. Ibid., 508. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid., 506. 13. McKeon. “The Development and Significance of the Concept of Responsibility,” 22. 14. Paul Ricoeur, “The Concept of Responsibility: An Essay in Semantic Analysis,” in The Just, trans. David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 12. 15. Ibid. 16. I conducted the digital search in June 2011 using online text repositories and libraries by querying with various spellings of mas’uliyyah. Details of the search will be mentioned below. 17. The works of these authors were queried after recognizing the absence of the term in classical and medieval Arabic literature. The The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 29:356 hypothesis that mas’uliyyah is the Arabization of the modern term responsibility and therefore would be introduced and/or used by nahDa writers was confirmed. The individual writings (or complete works) of mentioned authors were downloaded in searchable text format or queried using Digital Assets Repository (DAR), http://dar. bibalex.org. The Arabic works of Jamal el-Din el-Afghani were not accessible in digital form and therefore were not included in this survey. 18. Abdullah Laroui, The Crisis of the Arab Intellectual: Traditionalism or Historicism? (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1976), 180. 19. A. L. Tibawi, Arabic and Islamic Themes: Historical, Educational and Literary Studies (London: Headkey Brothers, 1974), 228. 20. I queried the following dictionaries, using the website http://www. baheth.info/: al-Ubab al-Zakhir by al-Hasan bin Muhammad al- Saghani (1181‒1252), Al-Qamus Al-Muhit by El-Fairuzabadi (1329‒1414), al-Sihah fi al-Lughah by Ismail al-Jawhari (d. 1002, 1008 or 1010), Maqayees al-Lughah by Abul-Hussien Ahmed ibn Faris (d. 1004,) and Lisan al-Arab by Muhammad ibn Manzur (1233‒1312). 21. “On the final page of his Kitab Miftah al-Misbah (Bierut, 1862), p. 144.” A. L. Tibawi, Arabic and Islamic Themes, 242n6. 22. Ibid., 243n3. 23. B. Al-Bustani, Muhit al-Muhit (Beirut, Lebanon: Maktabit Libnan, 1987), 390. 24. R. El-Tahtawi Manahij Al-Albab Al- Misriyah fi Mabahij Al-Adab Al-’Asriyah (Cairo, Egypt: Maktbat sharikat alragha’ib, 1912), 5. 25. John D. Donohue and John L. Esposito, Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives (Oxford: University Press, 1982), 11. 26. Ibid. Endnote 1: “The concepts of fatherland (watan) and patriotism (wataniyyah) were new to Muslim thought. Tahtawi appears to have been the first to introduce them into Arabic. 27. El-Tahtawi, Manahij Al-Albab Al- Misriyah fi Mabahij Al-Adab Al- ’Asriyah, 353‒54. 28. Ibid. 29. A. Al-Kawakbi, Taba’i` al-istibdad wa masari’ el-isti`bad (Beirut, Lebanon: Dar el-Nafa`is, 2006), 54‒55. 30. Y. Haddad and Muhammad Abduh, “Pioneer of Islamic Reform,” in Pioneers of Islamic Revival, ed. Ali Rahnema (London: Zed Books, 1994), 32. http://www.baheth.info/ http://www.baheth.info/ Elewa: Articulating “Responsibility” as a Prerequisite for the Arab Spring 57 31. M. Emara, Al-A`maal al-Kamila lil’imam Muhammad Abdu (Beirut, Lebanon: al-Mu’assasa al-`Arabiyya, 1979), vol. 3, 37. This article titled “al-ma`arif”” was first published in 12/23/1880 in al-Waqa’i` al-Masriyyah. Ibid. 32. Al-Mawsu`ah al-Shamila is the leading online repository of Islamic literature including a wealth of classical, medieval, and modern references in the four Sunni madhahib and comparative fiqh, the writings of Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn al-Qayyim and the fatwā of Dar al-Ifta’ al-Masriyyah and numerous renowned scholars. Two pre-nineteenth century occurrences were found using this method. The first was in al-Nawawi’s (1234‒1278) Majmoo’. Abu-Said al-Usturkhi (d. 939) said: “He is liable, because this prohibition contradicts with the mas’uliyyah of the trustee.” The second appears in a subtitle “the mas’uliyyah of the man” in Ibn al-Jawzi’s (1114‒1200) Akhbar al-Nisaa’. However, it is unclear if this was included by the author or is modern addition by the publisher. 33. Al-mawsu`ah Al-fiqhiyyah Al-kuwaytiyyah, vol. 35, 61, http://islam. gov.kw/site/books_lib/list.php?cat=1. 34. S. Saabiq, Fiqh al-Sunnah (Cairo, Egypt: Dar al-Fikr), vol. 2, 486. 1971. 35. The website al-Mawsu`ah al-Shamila (www.islamport.com) includes the published fatwā of Dar al-Ifta’ al-Masriyyah, dating back to 1895. However it does not state if the collection is definitive or representative. 36. http://www.islamport.com/b/2/alfeqh/fatawa/%C7%E1%D D%CA%C7%E6%EC/%DD%CA%C7%E6%EC%20%C7 %E1%C3%D2%E5%D1/%DD%CA%C7%E6%EC%20 %C7%E1%C3%D2%E5%D1%20049.html. 37. A. BinBaz “Al-harakaat al-islamiyyah wa dawr Al-shabab fiha,” in Majallat Al-buhuth Al-islamiyyah, vol. 7, 7. (1403 AH), www.alifta. com. 38. Transcribed from a question-and-answer session, www. ibnothaimeen.com/all/noor/article_6403.shtml. 39, I conducted a literature search by querying www.altafsir.com, (Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought), which includes the texts of over seventy tafsīrs ‒ including classical, medieval, and modern. Importantly, the website does not include Rashid Rida’s Tafsir al-Manar, which I could not obtain in a searchable format but is a contender for the first usage of the term in tafsīr. 40. M. H. Al-Tabtabi, Tafsir Al-mizan fe tafseer Al-quran lil-Tabtababi (Beirut, Lebanon: Muassasat Al-a`alami lil-matboo`at, 1997), vol. 20, 270. http://islam.gov.kw/site/books_lib/list.php?cat=1 http://islam.gov.kw/site/books_lib/list.php?cat=1 http://www.islamport.com/ http://www.altafsir.com The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 29:358 41. M.A. al-Shinqiti, Adwaa’ Al-Bayaan fi ieedah aay Al-Quran bi- lQuran (Beirut Lebanon: Dar alKutub alilmiyyah, 2003), 1901. 42. S. Qutb, Fi Dhilal Al-Quran (Cairo, Egypt: Dar al-Shuruq, 2004), vol. 1, 210. 43. I conducted a search using the website al-Mawsu`ah al-Shamila (www.islamport.com). 44. A reference to phrase “they are the exalted birds and their intercession is to be hoped for” supposedly included by mistake in Surat al-Najm before being removed. Farid Esack comments on the term in The Quran: A Short Introduction (Oxford: One world, 2002): “This is the title of the famous novel by Salman Rushdi (London 1988) wherein he latches onto this incident to highlight the porous borders or absence thereof between truth and falsehood, and light and darkness,”44n18. 45. N. Al-Albani, Nasb al-maganiq linasf qissat al-gharaniq, 7 www. saaid.net/book/open.php?cat=2&book=767. 46. Ibid, 8n5. 47. The website www.adab.com was queried. On February 11, 2012 when the search was last conducted, the website included 58,432 Arabic poems by 648 Arab poets from Pre-Islamic to the present. 48. Although I was unable to verify the date of this poem, the fact that it was written during the lifetime of its subject localizes it to before 1948. 49. M. Al-Bukhari, Al-jami` al-musnad al-sahih al-mukhtasar min umur rasul Allah salla Allahu `alayhi wa sallam, no.7138 (Beirut, Lebanon, Dar Tuq al-Najahm, 1422 H), vol. 9, 61. 50. Rasa’il al-Imam Hasan el-Banna (Cairo, Egypt: Mawqi` Hasan elBanna net), vol. 2, 127, www.hassanalbanna.org/pages/Books/3a. pdf. 51. A. Von Denffer, ‘Ulum al-Quran: An Introduction to the Sciences of the Quran (London: The Islamic Foundation,1983), 44‒55. 52. W. Hallaq, The History of Islamic Legal Theories: An Introduction to Sunni Usul Al-Fiqh (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 224. 53. Ibid., 223 54. Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, ed. and trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1922), vol. 6, 187. http://www.islamport.com/ http://www.adab.com