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Islamic constitutionalism and rule of law: a constitutional economics perspective

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Abstract

This study investigates the relationship between Islamic constitutionalism and rule of law. Al Azhar, one of the most respected Sunni religious institutions in the world, developed a model of an Islamic constitution. This study uses Al-Azhar’s constitution as a model of Islamic constitutionalism and examines its stance in regard to the rule of law. We find the Al-Azhar’s constitution to be incompatible with essential concepts of rule of law. For example, the powers vested in the head of the Islamic state are enormous, making the executive branch of government far superior to the legislative and judicial branches. Women and non-Muslims are explicitly discriminated against throughout the constitution. Moreover, laws stemming from this constitution are not stable since many differences exist among schools of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh). Consequently, we show that state-of-the-art Islamic constitutionalism lacks essential components needed in any constitution based on rule of law.

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Notes

  1. Note that constitutionalism can exist without a constitution and a constitution does not necessarily result in constitutionalism. For the former notion, Gordon (1999, p. 5) asserts that if constitutionalism is defined in terms of written constitutions embodying specific constraints and provisions such as the Bill of Rights in the US constitution, countries with no written constitution such as Israel, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom are automatically excluded. Nevertheless, these countries are not less “constitutional” than the United States. For the notion of a state with a constitution but with no constitutionalism, Sartori (1962, p. 861) argues that constitutions without constitutionalism are “façade constitutions” in the sense that such constitutions can declare inspiring principles and adopt specific power structures for government; but these provisions and principles are ineffective and potentially delegitimized because they are not actually followed. Zhang (2010, p. 950) presents China as an example of a constitutional state without constitutionalism. Zhang (2010, p. 951) states that “China’s Constitution lacks any meaningful mechanism of implementation, and is left unguarded against official violations; it declares a long list of good ideals without the capacity to fulfill any; one can easily find unfulfilled promises and positive violations of constitutional norms in daily life.”

  2. See Acemoglu et al. (2001, 2002, 2005a, b), Easterly and Levine (2003), Rodrik et al. (2004).

  3. The causal relation between constitutionalism and rule of law is still a matter of dispute in the literature. For example, Chahil and Singh (2003, p. 18) state that rule of law is a “device used to achieve constitutionalism.” This direction of causality contradicts that found by Rodriguez et al. (2010, p. 1475), who view constitutionalism as a “key rule of law institution.” Nevertheless, generally, definitions of rule of law largely correspond with the concept of constitutionalism. In fact, it can be argued that the concepts of rule of law and constitutionalism are so closely related that they can almost be used interchangeably (Voigt 1998, p. 196; Chen 1999–2000, p. 149).

  4. Schulze (1995) tells what happened after the Islamic constitution was introduced: “the [IRA]-proposal was not discussed openly. The [IRA]-session of 1979 could not be held, as most participants from the duwal ar-rafd, i.e., from those states, which rejected the Egyptian Israeli peace treaty of 1978, were not allowed to travel to Cairo. Again, divergent political views prevented the jurists from defining a legal conception of the Muslim nation (Umma). The main problem, of course, was to what extent an Islamic constitution should be the legal framework of the Umma; mostly it was postulated that an Islamic constitution should be the model of nation-state constitutions. It should prescribe an Islamic form of government and jurisdiction without questioning the sovereignty of the nation-states” Schulze (1995, pp. 180–181).

  5. Elias Saba and Thomas Levi Thompson provide an English translation on the Tahrir Documents website, but there are some problems with and omissions from their version. Therefore, I re-translated Al-Azhar constitution from the Arabic source. The original Arabic source along with a complete English translation can be found at: https://sites.google.com/site/moamengoudaecon/al-azhar-s-islamic-constitution.

  6. See Arjomand (2007), Abou El Fadl (2004), Moussalli (2003), Grote and Röder (2011), Hashemi (2012).

  7. By the Medina stage, An-Na’im means the stage ushered in by the Prophet’s migration from Mecca to Medina in 622 CE. In Medina, the Muslims ceased to be a purely religious community; they became a political community as well. Unlike qur’anic verses revealed during the Meccan period, Medinese verses tend to be rich in legislation with regard to marriage and inheritance, among other things.

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Acknowledgments

The author thanks Matthias Dauner, Thomas Demmelhuber, Nora El-Bialy, Ahmed Ghoneim, Shubha Ghosh, Jerg Gutmann, Bernd Hayo, Helmut Leipold, Peter Lewisch, Kareem Madkour, Ulrike Schillinger, Elisabeth Schulte, Stefan Voigt, an anonymous referee, and the participants at the “Constitutional Choice in the Middle East” conference in Hamburg (July 2012), as well as the Hagemann-Foundation conference “Arab Spring: Challenges and Prospective” in Marburg (November 2012) for their valuable comments and suggestions. Special thanks to Marianne Wagdy for meticulously revising the English translation of the Al-Azhar constitution. Shima’a Hanafy was a major source of encouragement and support. The financial support by the Yousef Jameel Foundation is gratefully appreciated. The usual disclaimer applies.

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  1. Department of Institutional Economics, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Barfüßertor 2, 35037, Marburg, Germany

    Moamen Gouda

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Gouda, M. Islamic constitutionalism and rule of law: a constitutional economics perspective. Const Polit Econ 24, 57–85 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10602-012-9132-5

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