INTERNATIONAL KHILAFAH CONFERENCE 2007            12^th. August 2007

“The Role of Hizbu-t-Tahrir in Promoting Islamic Civilization”

Professor Dr. Hassan Ko Nakata,

School of Theology, Doshisha University, Japan

Introduction

The purpose of my presentation is to show that the pivotal message of Hizbu-t-Tahrir is quite understandable even to non-Muslims in the West, if it is presented in adequate manner with knowledge of how to deliver it to them.

Because I’m now living in a non-Muslim country and my duty is to deliver the Islamic message to people unfamiliar with Islam it has become clear to me that the way of speaking about Islam to non-Muslims should be different from the one among Muslims as the Prophet (SS) said; “Talk to people in a way that they can understand.” (خاطبوا الناس على قدر عقولهم)

1.    The Position of Hizbu-t-Tahrir among Ummah Muslimah

Hizbu-t-Tahrir is a political movement of Islahi-Salafi-Sunni-Islami groups. Hizbu-t-Tahrir’s teaching has its layers, of which the lowest is shared with all Muslims and the highest is unique to it.

As a Sunni movement, it believes that political leadership is not based on the divine nomination(nass) of an Imam Ma‛sum(infallible) but on the election of the Ummah.

As a Sunni Salafi movement, it sticks to literal meanings of texts of Qur’an and hadith without following the established schools (madhahib) of Sunni jurisprudence (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi‘i, and Hanbali).  

As a Sunni Salafi Islahi movement, it rejects any socio-political ideas foreign to the original Islam of Salaf Salih (Pious Predecessors), whether traditional deviations of the pre-modern Muslim world or modern Western thoughts, as the ideological base of reform.

Its Sunni aspects are shared with all Sunni Muslims but not with Shiite Muslims. Its Salafi aspects are shared with all Salafi Muslims but not with madhhabi or ‘traditional’ Muslims. Its Salafi Islahi aspects are shared with all Salafi Islahi movements but not with apolitical or quietist Salafi Muslims.

Above these 4 layers (Islami, Sunni, Salafi, and Islahi), there are teachings unique to Hizbu-t-Tahrir, which constitute the highest layer　(Tahriri), whose nucleus is its doctrine of Khilafah.  Each layer is based on the lower one, i.e.,  being Sunni requires being Islami, being Salafi requires being Sunni, being Islahi requires being Salafi, and being Tahriri requires being Islahi. So it is impossible for a Shiite Muslim to accept Hizbu-t-Tahrir’s ideology as a whole or to be a member without leaving his or her Shiite creed. He or she must first accept the Sunni creed, then Salafi, then Islahi, and finally Tahriri. However, the nucleus of Hizbu-t-Tahrir’s teachings which is unique to it, namely, its Khilafah doctrine, is not necessarily exclusive to Islahi.

2. Hizbu-t-Tahrir’s Khilafah Doctrine

Here I summarize Hizbu-t-Tahrir’s Khilafah (Prophetic Successor State), doctrine as follows:

(1) Khilafah is the sole legitimate political system of Islam.

(2) Khilafah is governance by Shari‘ah through the supreme ruler elected by the Ummah. 

(3) There should be only one Khilafah upon the earth.

(4) Establishing Khilafah is obligatory on all the Ummah.

(5) The way to establish Khilafah is by instilling those in power with its doctrine and prevailing on them to assume its office and implement the Shari’ah, in the time when all of the Muslim World is being transformed into Dar al-Harb and any traces of Khilafah have vanished.

In my opinion, it can be shared even with Sunni ‘traditional’ Muslims[1], because it does not contradict the teaching of Khilafah in ‘traditional’ Sunni jurisprudence, as in ‘traditional’ Sunni jurisprudence there is no teaching that contradicts any of above mentioned precepts of Hizbu-t-Tahrir’s Khilafah doctrine, even though they were not explicitly mentioned but only connoted implicitly in it.

3. The Universality of HT’s Khilafah Doctrine

I mentioned previously that Hizbu-t-Tahrir’s teaching has 5 layers, namely, (1) Islami, (2)Sunni, (3)Salafi, (4)Islahi, and (5)Tahriri, but in fact, it has another layer, which we can call ‘Abrahamic’ and ‘Noahic’. ‘Abrahamic’ means what is shared by Jews, Christians and Muslims, and ‘Noahic’ means what is shared by all the human beings who believe in justice, humanity, liberty and truth.

Recently, Hizbu-t-Tahrir has become notorious in the West because of its claim of Khilafah, due to anti-Islamic propaganda which depicts Hizbu-t-Tahrir’s struggle for Khilafah as a form ‘global terrorism’ most dangerous to the West, so it seems that the hostility and adversarial relationship between Hizbu-t-Tahrir and the West is inevitable. 

However in my opinion, the nucleus of Hizbu-t-Tahrir’s teachings, i.e, Khilafah doctrine has Abrahamic and Noahic dimensions, and as such can be acceptable not only to Muslims but also to Christians and even secular peoples, as long as it is presented properly in the language which they can understand. Here, Hizbu-t-Tahrir’s Khilafah doctrine’s being “acceptable” does not imply full commitment to it or agreeing with Hizbu-t-Tahrir’s Syar‘i  (based on Qur’an and Hadith) arguments on the obligation to struggle for Khilafah, because Syar‘i arguments are only valid for Muslims, not for Non-Muslims, and they are not persuasive even for Shiite Muslims who have other Hadiths and Usul-l-Fiqh. Hizbu-t-Tahrir’s Syar‘i arguments on the struggle for Khilafah are to be delivered only to Sunni Muslims.

So, my claim “Hizbu-t-Tahrir’s Khilafah doctrine is acceptable even for secular people” means that governance by Khilafah is quiet reasonable, and thus it is imaginable and acceptable even for secular people to live under its rule with little difficulty, even though they might live passively without any commitment to its cause.

4. The Mundane Nature of Khilafah

In the following section, I will try to depict the governance of Khilafah not in terms of the traditional Islamic science of Shari‘ah but with the language of Western political science.

Firstly, Khilafah is a ‘mundane’ ‘rule of law’, not a theocratic ‘rule of the divine’, contrary to the Shiite notion of Imamah which is the theocratic rule of the divine, Imam Ma‘sum (infallible). Imam Ma‘sum rules according to ‘the Divine’ guidance of Allah, which only he can understand and other Muslims can neither understand nor thus protest, just as the Prophet Muhammad ruled during his life. Thus Sunni Khilafah is a ‘mundane’ institution, not a ‘divine’ one, because it is an institutionalization of the rule of law and there is no room for mystical or irrational decision making by a divinely inspired leader.

It is misleading, if not false, to characterize the ‘Rule of Islamic law’ as divine rule. Islamic law is a legal system after all, in the same way that English common law is a legal system, and neither of them are mysterious but rather they are completely rational, in the sense that administering both of them has nothing to do with divine inspiration and what is required is to understand not by faith but with the professional training of legal reasoning.

As for the origin of the law, the fact that the origin of Islamic law is divine revelation does not mean that its politico-legal system is divine; rather the origin of all laws is related to the myth of the founding of the nation and therefore categorically sacred and ‘irrational’, whether its legal system is so-called religious or so-called secular[2].

5. Islamic Governance

Islamic law is dualistic, being divided into public law which every citizen should obey and communal law, and at the same time pluralistic, because it permits the autonomy of each religion-based community according to its own communal law. Thus, Khilafah appears to be　‘mundane’ governance which guarantees security for all the citizens according Islamic public law and leaves each religion-based community its autonomy in the religious field which includes not only religious rituals but also family laws and dress code etc.

In fact, Khilafah is ‘mundane’ due to the characteristic of the Islamic mission itself. The Islamic mission is double-fold in (1) spreading Islamic governance, i.e., Khilafah, compulsorily and (2) Islamic faith optionally, because the Islamic mission is implemented by force only when the observance of Islamic public law with payment of jizyah tax[3] is rejected, not at the time of rejection of Islamic faith.

As Allah says clearly in the Holy Quran: Fight those who do not believe in God, nor in the Last Day --- until they pay the tax (jizyah), readily being subdued. (Qur’an 9:29)

{قاتلوا الذين لا يؤمنون بالله ولا باليوم الآخر ...  إلى قوله ... حتى يعطوا الجزية عن يد وهم صاغرون}

In addition, al-Mughirah related that he said to the Persian Army on the day of the Battle of Nihavand, “Our prophet Muhammad (SS) ordered us to fight you until you worship only Allah or pay the tax (jizyah)”

: "أمرنا نبينا صلى الله عليه وسلم أن نقاتلكم حتى تعبدوا الله وحده أو تؤدوا الجزية"

It clearly follows that the Islamic mission is to enforce Islamic governance, not the Islamic faith, all over the world.

6. Political Responsibility Under Khilafah

A corollary of this characteristic of the Islamic mission is that political responsibility for the maintenance of order, security and peace under Khilafah is not born by all citizens under the false fiction of representation of the nation, as in the case of the so-called ‘democratic’ nation state system, but is in the hands of Ummah Muslimah (Muslim community) under the leadership of the Khalifah at its head according to the ability of each one of them.

In other words, under Khilafah, non-Muslims are not required to make any political commitment to the Islamic cause in which they have no faith and are only required to perform the outward observance of Islamic public law by paying taxes as ‘passive’ citizens, while all the Muslims should participate in the Khilafah’s polity as ‘active’ citizens according to their capacity because of their faith in the Islamic cause.

Now we can define Khilafah as an “Islamic political system in which the co-existence of religion-based communities with their autonomy in socio-religious fields is realized under the hegemony of the Ummah Muslima with the Khalifah’s leadership implementing Islamic public law to guarantee order, security and peace within this pluralistic society”.

7. Dar-l-Islam

We call the territory in which Khilafah is established ‘Dar-l-Islam (the Abode of Islam)’, so the Islamic mission is to spread this Dar-l-Islam all over the world by all means available, overthrowing all forms of rule by man which enslave other human beings. The purpose of the Islamic mission is not forcing the Islamic faith on people but enforcing Islamic governance over them, which allows human beings freedom to live in various autonomous communities. Namely, it is not religious but ‘mundane’.

That is why it is acceptable not only to Muslims but also to all the human beings who yearn for justice, humanity, and liberation, as actually happened in the Islamic conquest in the 7th century, when oppressed people in the southern part of the Byzantine Empire and the Persian Empire received the conquering Muslim army with little resistance.

Dar-l-Islam is open to everybody, whoever wants to live in it, even to non-Muslims, regardless of their race, birth place, ethnicity, and so on, as long as they observe Islamic public law, and once they have accepted to live in it, everybody is free to travel anywhere in Dar-l-Islam and to go in and out without any tariff or toll[4].

Allah says: And if anyone of the idolaters seeks your protection (O Muhammad), then protect him so that he may hear the Word of Allah, and afterward convey him to his place of safety. That is because they are a folk who know not. (Qur’an 9:6)

{وإن أحد من المشركين استجارك فأجره حتى يسمع كلم الله ثم أبلغه مأمنه ذلك بأنهم قوم لا يعلمون}

Allah is the Creator of the universe, therefore all of the earth belongs to Him and He permits human beings to move freely all over the world. Nobody or no institution has the right to enclose the earth or to imprison some people and shut out others. In the Western nation-state system, every territorial-nation-state is a like a huge prison and the border is its wall which imprisons its people inside and shuts out other nations .

8. Khilafah is Opposed to the Nation-State System

Now it becomes clear that Khilafah is not a group of ‘nation states’ but a sole universal governance which opposes this nation-state system so as to liberate all the nations from its imprisonment. In fact, the Western nation-state system clearly contradicts not only Islamic teaching but also the basic premise of Abrahamic religions which advocate that God is the Lord of all the earth, and moreover it contradicts Noahic ethics of humanity, equality, justice and liberty. However, Western Judeo-Christian establishments, to whom this nation-state system gives an advantageous position from which to exploit poorer nations, in spite of claiming to defend equality, justice, liberation and humanity, are turning their eyes away from this obvious inconsistency. On the contrary, to make matters worse, they deviously accuse anyone who tries to liberate human beings from their prison of the nation-state system a ‘global-terrorist’.

Thus today Islam remains as the only major universal religion claiming true humanity which rejects the territorial-nation-state system as being against humanity. Namely, Islam promotes real globalization by liberating human beings from the jail of the territorial-nation-state system, contrary to the so-called false ‘globalization’ which prohibits the free transportation of human beings across borders and forces the transfer of capital to exploit the oppressed nations to the advantage of the powerful Western states.

9. The Uniqueness of HT among Contemporary Muslim Movements

Unfortunately, except for Hizbu-t-Tahrir, even among Muslims there is now no true international movement which rejects the nation-state system clearly and advocates the duty of establishing Khilafah as the sole legitimate Islamic polity, and not only ordinary Muslims but also even activists of so-called Islamic movements are ignoring the duty of re-establishing Khilafah and its vital importance in liberating human beings. They are compromising with the Western nation-state system, either because they are influenced by false Western political thoughts and have been misled, or because they are afraid of oppression by the despots of their own countries, who are keeping office by paying homage to the Western system’s guardians, i.e., the Western power states. They are thinking that they can get sympathy from Western people by doing so, or be accepted by them at least but this is just an illusion. The fact is that they will only lose the moral support of true believers in the Abrahamic Religions and the intellectuals of Noahic ethics who have recognized the oppressive, exploitative, and anti-humanistic character of the territorial-nation-state. In this way, without realizing it, they are not only betraying the Islamic cause of Khilafah but also losing support for its universal appeal among people of real faith and conscience.

Therefore, in my opinion, in the contemporary Muslim world, only Hizbu-t-Tahrir is worthy to be called an ‘Islamic political movement’ which is struggling for the realization of the Islamic mission of Khilafah which has universal appeal beyond the Ummah Muslimah. Consequently, Hizbu-t-Tahrir’s success concerns not only the future of the Ummah Muslimah but also the future of all human beings. Therefore the role of Hizbu-t-Tahrir is twofold, i.e;

(1) Enlightening the Ummah Muslimah (Ahl al-Sunnah) with awareness of its duty to re-establishing Khilafah according to the Shari‘ah and

(2) Explaining the Islamic universal mission of Khilafah to the West in terms of Western social sciences.

10. Role of HT Indonesia

As freedom of expression and political activity is not guaranteed in any Muslim country except Indonesia, Hizbu-t-Tahrir Indonesia is in the best position to realize this mission,. In fact, thanks to this freedom, Hizbu-t-Tahrir Indonesia has already materialized most fruitful intellectual products, not only translations of Hizbu-t-Tahrir’s Arabic texts but also various original articles on its website and in its magazines, as well as achieving the recruitment of more members through many socio-cultural activities. It seems that the most distinctive characteristic of Hizbu-t-Tahrir Indonesia’s activity is its success in the networking of Muslim organizations in Indonesia, such as the establishing of the Forum Ummat Islam, which includes 31 completely ideologically different organizations like Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), Muhammadiyah, Majelis Ulama Indonesia (MUI), Dewan Dakwah Islamiyah Indonesia (DDII), Ikatan Cendikiawan Muslim Indonesia, Front Pembela Islam (FPI), Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia (MMI), and Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (PKS), and the organizing of this International Khilafah Conference.

This networking among Muslim groups under the hegemony of Hizbu-t-Tahrir in Indonesia is something which has not been realized in other Muslim countries because of oppression from anti-Islamic governments and hideous rivalry among Muslim groups themselves. Indonesia is well qualified to be the place for re-establishing Khilafah, as it is the World’s largest Muslim country by the size of its population. It is hoped that Hizbu-t-Tahrir Indonesia will succeed in establishing Khilafah or Dar-l-Islam Malay/Indonesia Raya on the basis of a common language, culture, and history in Nusantra in addition to the common ideology of Khilafah, as the first step towards the unity of the Ummah Muslimah and the propagation of the Islamic mission all over the world.

Conclusion

              Khilafah is not only acceptable for non-Muslims but also desirable for those who believe in equality, justice, liberty, and humanity, because it is a ‘mundane’ governance which guarantees religious/communal autonomy in a pluralistic society, as well as being a liberating force to abolish the exploitative nation-state system which enslaves human beings in the jail of the ‘nation state’.

Hizbu-t-Tahrir is the sole Islamic movement which advocates Khilafah doctrine and rejects the contemporary nation-state system explicitly, so it has  a double fold obligation, i.e, (1) enlightening the Ummah Muslimah (Ahl al-Sunnah) with awareness of duty of re-establishing Khilafah according to the Shar‘iah and (2) explaining to the West in terms of Western social sciences the universal role of Khilafah in promoting true globalization and its liberating role in abolishing the imprisonment of a nation’s subjects within the borders of a territorial-nation-state  .

Finally, Indonesia is the best platform for this blessed Islamic mission thanks to the freedom it allows to political activities which we cannot find in other Muslim countries.