Political Loyalty in Reformist Islamic Ethics Resources and Limits
Main Article Content
Keywords
Political Loyalty, Sunni Reformism, Ethics
Abstract
This article critically examines three authoritative Islamic discourses on political loyalty produced by prominent figures of Sunni reformist Islam: The Egyptian-Qatari Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī (1926-2022), the Mauritanian ʿAbdallāh b. Bayyah (b. 1935), and the Iraqi-Qatari ʿAlī al-Qaradāghī (b. 1949). First, I analyze the key arguments presented in each discourse: al-Qaradāghī advocates that allegiance is determined by fairness, whereas al-Qaraḍāwī retains a realist perspective on loyalty in context, while ʿAbdallāh b. Bayyah argues for a complementary relationship between loyalty to religion and to the homeland. Second, I discuss the three discourses in terms of the foundations, manifestations, and implications for political loyalty. Finally, I point out some of the limitations of the reformist notion of political loyalty toward non-Muslims, particularly in pluralist societies.
References
Endnotes
1 Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and
Religion (New York: Pantheon Books, 2012), 171.
2 John Kleinig, “Loyalty,” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward
N. Zalta (2022 Online Edition), accessed August 30, 2024, https://plato.stanford.edu/
archives/sum2022/entries/loyalty/
3 Ovamir Anjum, “Salafis and Democracy: Doctrine and Context,” The Muslim World,
106, No. 3 (2016): 448-473.
4 Joas Wagemakers, “Framing the ‘Threat to Islam’: Al-Wala’ wa-l-Bara’ in Salafi
Discourse,” Arab Studies Quarterly, 30, no. 4 (2008):1–22; Adis Duderija, Constructing
a Religiously Ideal, ‘Believer,’ and, ‘Woman’, in Islam ( New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2011); Said Hassan, “Law-Abiding Citizen: Recent Fatwas on Muslim Minorities’
Loyalty to Western Nations,” The Muslim World, 105, no. 4 (2015): 516–539; Uriya
Shavit, Shari‘a and Muslim Minorities: The wasati and salafi Approaches to fiqh
al-aqalliyyat al-Muslima (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
5 Uriya Shavit, “The Polemic on al-wala’ wal-bara’ (Loyalty and Disavowal):
Crystallization and Refutation of an Islamic Concept,” Journal of South Asian and
Middle Eastern Studies, 36, no. 1 (2013): 24-49; Uriya Shavit, “Can Muslims befriend
non-Muslims? Debating Al-Wala’ wa-l-Bara’ (loyalty and disavowal) in Theory and
Practice,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, 25, no. 1 (2014): 67–88.
6 Andrew F. March, Islam and Liberal Citizenship: The Search for an Overlapping
Consensus (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
7 Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, edited and translated by Kurt H. Wolff
(New York: Free Press, 1964), 379-380.
8 Helena Flam, “Emotions’ Map: A Research Agenda,” In Emotions and Social
Movements, edited by Helena Flam and Debra King (New York: Routledge, 2005),
19–40.
9 Haidt, The Righteous Mind, 171.
10 Roger Scruton, A Dictionary of Political Thought (London: Macmillan Press, 1982),
277.
11 Brigitte Maréchal, Les Frères musulmans en Europe: Racines et discours (Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 2009); Bettina Gräf and Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen
(eds.), Global Mufti: The Phenomenon of Yusuf Al-Qaradawi (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2009); Lena Larsen, How Muftis Think. Manufacturing Fatwas for
Muslim Women in Western Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2018); Ron Shaham, Rethinking
Islamic Legal Modernism: The Teaching of Yusuf al-Qaradawi (Leiden and Boston:
Brill, 2018); David H. Warren, Rivals in the Gulf: Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Abdullah Bin
Bayyah, and the Qatar-UAE Contest over the Arab Spring and the Gulf Crisis (London:
BELHAJ : Poli tical Loyalt y in Reformist Islami c Ethics: Resou rces and Limits 31
Routledge, 2021); Usaama al-Azami, Islam and the Arab Revolutions: The Ulama
Between Democracy and Autocracy (London: Hurst & Company, 2023).
12 Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī, al-Waṭan wa-l-muwāṭana fī ḍaw’ al-uṣūl al-‘aqadiyya wa-l-maqāṣid
al-shar‘ iyya (Cairo: Dār al-Shurūq, 2010), 24.
13 al-Qaraḍāwī, al-Waṭan wa-l-muwāṭana, 24.
14 al-Qaraḍāwī, al-Waṭan wa-l-muwāṭana, 34.
15 al-Qaraḍāwī, al-Waṭan wa-l-muwāṭana, 34.
16 al-Qaraḍāwī, al-Waṭan wa-l-muwāṭana, 36.
17 al-Qaraḍāwī, al-Waṭan wa-l-muwāṭana, 25.
18 Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī, Fiqh of Muslim Minorities (English translation of Fī fiqh al-aqalliyyāt
al-muslima) (Cairo: Al-Falah Foundation, 2003), 141.
19 al-Qaraḍāwī, Fiqh of Muslim Minorities, 143.
20 Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī, Ghayr al-muslimīn fī al-mujtam‘ al-Islāmī (Cairo: Maktabat
Wahba, 1992), 44.
21 A thorough study of Bin Bayyah’s scholarly profile, discourse and activities can
be read in: Warren, Rivals in the Gulf, 1-15. See also, al-Azami, Islam and the Arab
Revolutions, 135-151; Rezart Beka, “The Reconceptualization of the Umma and
Ummatic action in Abdullah Bin Bayyah’s Discourse,” American Journal of Islam
and Society, 41, no. 2 (2024): 6-45; Haidar Masyhur Fadhil, “Reshaping Minority Fiqh
The Ideas of ‘Abd Allah Ibn Bayyah,” Australian Journal of Islamic Studies 9, No. 2
(2024): 37-65.
22 Verse 55 of Chapter 5 (the Feast) as translated by Muhammad A. S. Abdel Haleem,
The Qur’an, A New Translation by Muhammad A. S. Abdel Haleem (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2004), 73.
23 Verse 6 of Chapter 33 (The Joint Forces) as translated by Muhammad A. S. Abdel
Haleem, The Qur’an, 266.
24 Verse 5 of Chapter 19 (Mary) as translated by Muhammad A. S. Abdel Haleem, The
Qur’an, 191.
25 Verse 4 of Chapter 33 (The Joint Forces) as translated by Muhammad A. S. Abdel
Haleem, The Qur’an, 266.
26 ʿAbdallāh b. Bayyah, “al-Walā’ bayna al-dīn wa-l-muwāṭana”, accessed May 27,
2024, www.ecfr.org/blog/2014/01/ /ةنطاوملا-نيبو-نيدلا-نيب-ءالولا/ 31
27 Marina Rustow, “Loyalty,” In The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought,
edited by Gerhard Böwering et al. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 318.
28 Bin Bayyah, “al-Walā’ bayna al-dīn wa-l-muwāṭana”.
29 Verse 83 of Chapter 2 (The Cow) as translated by Muhammad A. S. Abdel Haleem,
The Qur’an, 11.
30 Abū ‘Īsā al-Tirmidhī, al-Jāmi‘ al-kabīr, edited by Bashshār ‘Awwād Ma‘rūf (Beirut:
Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1996), 1987.
31 Bin Bayyah, “al-Walā’ bayna al-dīn wa-l-muwāṭana”.
32 George P. Fletcher, Loyalty: An Essay on the Morality of Relationships (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1993), 6.
33 Fletcher, Loyalty, 7.
34 ʿAlī al-Qaradāghī, “al-Sīra al-dhātiyya w-l-ʿilmiyya w-l-ʿamaliyya,”, Accessed August
20, 2024, https://alqaradaghi.com/about-personal.
35 ʿAlī al-Qaradāghī, “al-Khulāṣa fī l-walāʾ wa-l-barāʾ,” Accessed August 20, 2024,
www.iumsonline.org/ar/ContentDetails.aspx?ID=12219
36 ʿal-Qaradāghī, “al-Khulāṣa fī l-walāʾ wa-l-barāʾ”.
37 ʿal-Qaradāghī, “al-Khulāṣa fī l-walāʾ wa-l-barāʾ”.
38 ʿal-Qaradāghī, “al-Khulāṣa fī l-walāʾ wa-l-barāʾ”.
39 ʿal-Qaradāghī, “al-Khulāṣa fī l-walāʾ wa-l-barāʾ”.
40 ʿal-Qaradāghī, “al-Khulāṣa fī l-walāʾ wa-l-barāʾ”.
41 ʿal-Qaradāghī, “al-Khulāṣa fī l-walāʾ wa-l-barāʾ”.
42 ʿal-Qaradāghī, “al-Khulāṣa fī l-walāʾ wa-l-barāʾ”.
43 ʿal-Qaradāghī, “al-Khulāṣa fī l-walāʾ wa-l-barāʾ”.
44 Verses 8-9 of Chapter 60 (Women Tested) as translated by Muhammad A. S. Abdel
Haleem, The Qur’an, 369.
45 ʿal-Qaradāghī, “al-Khulāṣa fī l-walāʾ wa-l-barāʾ”.
46 ʿal-Qaradāghī, “al-Khulāṣa fī l-walāʾ wa-l-barāʾ”.
47 ʿal-Qaradāghī, “al-Khulāṣa fī l-walāʾ wa-l-barāʾ”.
48 ʿal-Qaradāghī, “al-Khulāṣa fī l-walāʾ wa-l-barāʾ”.
49 ʿAlī al-Qaradāghī, Fiqh al-mīzān ( Istanbul: Dār al-Nidā’, 2018).
50 Scruton, A Dictionary of Political Thought, 277.
51 Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1996), 26.
52 Kleinig, “Loyalty”.
53 Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, 29.
54 Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, 28.
55 Sarah Albrecht, Dār al-Islām Revisited: Territoriality in Contemporary Islamic Legal
Discourse on Muslims in the West (Leiden: Brill, 2018),165-312.
56 Kleinig, “Loyalty”.
57 Basheer M. Nafi, “Fatwā and War: On the Allegiance of the American Muslim
Soldiers in the Aftermath of September 11,” Islamic Law and Society, 11, No. 1
(2004):78-116.
58 Kamel Daoud, “Les musulmans de France sont-ils les idiots utiles des Insoumis?”,
Accessed August 20, 2024, https://www.lepoint.fr/editos-du-point/les-musulmansde-
france-sont-ils-les-idiots-utiles-des-insoumis-14-06-2024-2562915_32.php#11
59 Imène Ajala, European Muslims and their Foreign Policy Interests: Identities and
Loyalties ( Berlin: Gerlach Press, 2018), 79.
60 Ajala, European Muslims, 43.
61 Edwy Plenel, Pour les musulmans (Paris: La Découverte, 2014), 34.
62 Vincent Geisser, “Intellectual and Ideological Debates on Islamophobia: A ‘French
Specificity’ in Europe?,” Human Architecture, VIII, no. 2 (2010): 39– 46.
63 Abdessamad Belhaj, “ Loyalty and Identity Formation: Muslim Perceptions of
Loyalty in France,” Religions, 13, no. 11 (2022): 1-12.
1 Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and
Religion (New York: Pantheon Books, 2012), 171.
2 John Kleinig, “Loyalty,” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward
N. Zalta (2022 Online Edition), accessed August 30, 2024, https://plato.stanford.edu/
archives/sum2022/entries/loyalty/
3 Ovamir Anjum, “Salafis and Democracy: Doctrine and Context,” The Muslim World,
106, No. 3 (2016): 448-473.
4 Joas Wagemakers, “Framing the ‘Threat to Islam’: Al-Wala’ wa-l-Bara’ in Salafi
Discourse,” Arab Studies Quarterly, 30, no. 4 (2008):1–22; Adis Duderija, Constructing
a Religiously Ideal, ‘Believer,’ and, ‘Woman’, in Islam ( New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2011); Said Hassan, “Law-Abiding Citizen: Recent Fatwas on Muslim Minorities’
Loyalty to Western Nations,” The Muslim World, 105, no. 4 (2015): 516–539; Uriya
Shavit, Shari‘a and Muslim Minorities: The wasati and salafi Approaches to fiqh
al-aqalliyyat al-Muslima (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
5 Uriya Shavit, “The Polemic on al-wala’ wal-bara’ (Loyalty and Disavowal):
Crystallization and Refutation of an Islamic Concept,” Journal of South Asian and
Middle Eastern Studies, 36, no. 1 (2013): 24-49; Uriya Shavit, “Can Muslims befriend
non-Muslims? Debating Al-Wala’ wa-l-Bara’ (loyalty and disavowal) in Theory and
Practice,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, 25, no. 1 (2014): 67–88.
6 Andrew F. March, Islam and Liberal Citizenship: The Search for an Overlapping
Consensus (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
7 Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, edited and translated by Kurt H. Wolff
(New York: Free Press, 1964), 379-380.
8 Helena Flam, “Emotions’ Map: A Research Agenda,” In Emotions and Social
Movements, edited by Helena Flam and Debra King (New York: Routledge, 2005),
19–40.
9 Haidt, The Righteous Mind, 171.
10 Roger Scruton, A Dictionary of Political Thought (London: Macmillan Press, 1982),
277.
11 Brigitte Maréchal, Les Frères musulmans en Europe: Racines et discours (Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 2009); Bettina Gräf and Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen
(eds.), Global Mufti: The Phenomenon of Yusuf Al-Qaradawi (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2009); Lena Larsen, How Muftis Think. Manufacturing Fatwas for
Muslim Women in Western Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2018); Ron Shaham, Rethinking
Islamic Legal Modernism: The Teaching of Yusuf al-Qaradawi (Leiden and Boston:
Brill, 2018); David H. Warren, Rivals in the Gulf: Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Abdullah Bin
Bayyah, and the Qatar-UAE Contest over the Arab Spring and the Gulf Crisis (London:
BELHAJ : Poli tical Loyalt y in Reformist Islami c Ethics: Resou rces and Limits 31
Routledge, 2021); Usaama al-Azami, Islam and the Arab Revolutions: The Ulama
Between Democracy and Autocracy (London: Hurst & Company, 2023).
12 Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī, al-Waṭan wa-l-muwāṭana fī ḍaw’ al-uṣūl al-‘aqadiyya wa-l-maqāṣid
al-shar‘ iyya (Cairo: Dār al-Shurūq, 2010), 24.
13 al-Qaraḍāwī, al-Waṭan wa-l-muwāṭana, 24.
14 al-Qaraḍāwī, al-Waṭan wa-l-muwāṭana, 34.
15 al-Qaraḍāwī, al-Waṭan wa-l-muwāṭana, 34.
16 al-Qaraḍāwī, al-Waṭan wa-l-muwāṭana, 36.
17 al-Qaraḍāwī, al-Waṭan wa-l-muwāṭana, 25.
18 Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī, Fiqh of Muslim Minorities (English translation of Fī fiqh al-aqalliyyāt
al-muslima) (Cairo: Al-Falah Foundation, 2003), 141.
19 al-Qaraḍāwī, Fiqh of Muslim Minorities, 143.
20 Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī, Ghayr al-muslimīn fī al-mujtam‘ al-Islāmī (Cairo: Maktabat
Wahba, 1992), 44.
21 A thorough study of Bin Bayyah’s scholarly profile, discourse and activities can
be read in: Warren, Rivals in the Gulf, 1-15. See also, al-Azami, Islam and the Arab
Revolutions, 135-151; Rezart Beka, “The Reconceptualization of the Umma and
Ummatic action in Abdullah Bin Bayyah’s Discourse,” American Journal of Islam
and Society, 41, no. 2 (2024): 6-45; Haidar Masyhur Fadhil, “Reshaping Minority Fiqh
The Ideas of ‘Abd Allah Ibn Bayyah,” Australian Journal of Islamic Studies 9, No. 2
(2024): 37-65.
22 Verse 55 of Chapter 5 (the Feast) as translated by Muhammad A. S. Abdel Haleem,
The Qur’an, A New Translation by Muhammad A. S. Abdel Haleem (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2004), 73.
23 Verse 6 of Chapter 33 (The Joint Forces) as translated by Muhammad A. S. Abdel
Haleem, The Qur’an, 266.
24 Verse 5 of Chapter 19 (Mary) as translated by Muhammad A. S. Abdel Haleem, The
Qur’an, 191.
25 Verse 4 of Chapter 33 (The Joint Forces) as translated by Muhammad A. S. Abdel
Haleem, The Qur’an, 266.
26 ʿAbdallāh b. Bayyah, “al-Walā’ bayna al-dīn wa-l-muwāṭana”, accessed May 27,
2024, www.ecfr.org/blog/2014/01/ /ةنطاوملا-نيبو-نيدلا-نيب-ءالولا/ 31
27 Marina Rustow, “Loyalty,” In The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought,
edited by Gerhard Böwering et al. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 318.
28 Bin Bayyah, “al-Walā’ bayna al-dīn wa-l-muwāṭana”.
29 Verse 83 of Chapter 2 (The Cow) as translated by Muhammad A. S. Abdel Haleem,
The Qur’an, 11.
30 Abū ‘Īsā al-Tirmidhī, al-Jāmi‘ al-kabīr, edited by Bashshār ‘Awwād Ma‘rūf (Beirut:
Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1996), 1987.
31 Bin Bayyah, “al-Walā’ bayna al-dīn wa-l-muwāṭana”.
32 George P. Fletcher, Loyalty: An Essay on the Morality of Relationships (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1993), 6.
33 Fletcher, Loyalty, 7.
34 ʿAlī al-Qaradāghī, “al-Sīra al-dhātiyya w-l-ʿilmiyya w-l-ʿamaliyya,”, Accessed August
20, 2024, https://alqaradaghi.com/about-personal.
35 ʿAlī al-Qaradāghī, “al-Khulāṣa fī l-walāʾ wa-l-barāʾ,” Accessed August 20, 2024,
www.iumsonline.org/ar/ContentDetails.aspx?ID=12219
36 ʿal-Qaradāghī, “al-Khulāṣa fī l-walāʾ wa-l-barāʾ”.
37 ʿal-Qaradāghī, “al-Khulāṣa fī l-walāʾ wa-l-barāʾ”.
38 ʿal-Qaradāghī, “al-Khulāṣa fī l-walāʾ wa-l-barāʾ”.
39 ʿal-Qaradāghī, “al-Khulāṣa fī l-walāʾ wa-l-barāʾ”.
40 ʿal-Qaradāghī, “al-Khulāṣa fī l-walāʾ wa-l-barāʾ”.
41 ʿal-Qaradāghī, “al-Khulāṣa fī l-walāʾ wa-l-barāʾ”.
42 ʿal-Qaradāghī, “al-Khulāṣa fī l-walāʾ wa-l-barāʾ”.
43 ʿal-Qaradāghī, “al-Khulāṣa fī l-walāʾ wa-l-barāʾ”.
44 Verses 8-9 of Chapter 60 (Women Tested) as translated by Muhammad A. S. Abdel
Haleem, The Qur’an, 369.
45 ʿal-Qaradāghī, “al-Khulāṣa fī l-walāʾ wa-l-barāʾ”.
46 ʿal-Qaradāghī, “al-Khulāṣa fī l-walāʾ wa-l-barāʾ”.
47 ʿal-Qaradāghī, “al-Khulāṣa fī l-walāʾ wa-l-barāʾ”.
48 ʿal-Qaradāghī, “al-Khulāṣa fī l-walāʾ wa-l-barāʾ”.
49 ʿAlī al-Qaradāghī, Fiqh al-mīzān ( Istanbul: Dār al-Nidā’, 2018).
50 Scruton, A Dictionary of Political Thought, 277.
51 Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1996), 26.
52 Kleinig, “Loyalty”.
53 Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, 29.
54 Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, 28.
55 Sarah Albrecht, Dār al-Islām Revisited: Territoriality in Contemporary Islamic Legal
Discourse on Muslims in the West (Leiden: Brill, 2018),165-312.
56 Kleinig, “Loyalty”.
57 Basheer M. Nafi, “Fatwā and War: On the Allegiance of the American Muslim
Soldiers in the Aftermath of September 11,” Islamic Law and Society, 11, No. 1
(2004):78-116.
58 Kamel Daoud, “Les musulmans de France sont-ils les idiots utiles des Insoumis?”,
Accessed August 20, 2024, https://www.lepoint.fr/editos-du-point/les-musulmansde-
france-sont-ils-les-idiots-utiles-des-insoumis-14-06-2024-2562915_32.php#11
59 Imène Ajala, European Muslims and their Foreign Policy Interests: Identities and
Loyalties ( Berlin: Gerlach Press, 2018), 79.
60 Ajala, European Muslims, 43.
61 Edwy Plenel, Pour les musulmans (Paris: La Découverte, 2014), 34.
62 Vincent Geisser, “Intellectual and Ideological Debates on Islamophobia: A ‘French
Specificity’ in Europe?,” Human Architecture, VIII, no. 2 (2010): 39– 46.
63 Abdessamad Belhaj, “ Loyalty and Identity Formation: Muslim Perceptions of
Loyalty in France,” Religions, 13, no. 11 (2022): 1-12.
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Dec 23, 2024
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Belhaj, A. (2024). Political Loyalty in Reformist Islamic Ethics: Resources and Limits. American Journal of Islam and Society, 41(3-4), 6–33. https://doi.org/10.35632/ajis.v41i3-4.3525
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