The Principle of Shura and the Role of the Umma in Islam

Muslims, or at least the vast majority of them, have been very vocalabout the necessity of establishingan Islamic state in the world, or, if it isnot possible, to set up a unitary Islamic state, at least, several Islamicstates. The idea of an Islamic state has many implications touching boththe form and the substance of the state and raising questions like unityand multiplicity of such states, the nature of legislation and source ofpower and whether or not it ought to be a democracy. In this paper, Ishall discuss only this last question which immediately concerns only theform of the state but which has obvious far-reaching consequences forsubstantive issues as well-for example, the source of power and thenature of legislation.But, although Muslims have been very anxiously expressing the needfor an Islamic state, there is little consensus on any of the basic mattersmentioned above, the least on the issue to be discussed in this paper, viz.,the form of an Islamic state. Yet, the absolutely fundamental importanceof the issue cannot be denied since it centrally involves the question of theMuslim Umma and the nature of its role in an Islamic state. We will firsttry to delineate the bearing that the teaching of the Qur’an has on thesubject, then briefly characterize both the views of the classical Muslimjurists and the practice of the historic community. Then, we will give theessentials of the current positions and, finally, indicate our conclusion.The Qur’an formally announced the establishment of the Muslimcommunity in Madina in connection with three events: the declaration ofthe incumbency of the Hajiof the Ka’ba upon Muslims, the declaration ofthe duty of Jihad and the change of the Qibla from Jerusalem to theKa‘ba. We will not go here into the question of the timing of these eventsbecause it has no direct bearing on our present problem. It is sutficient topoint out that the pilgrimage was the first to be announced, thenprobably came Jihad and then the change in the Qibla. Be that as it may,the Haji and Jihad are treated in close approximity to each other in Sura22 (al-Haji), while the Haji and the Qibla change appear close to eachother in Sura 2 (al-Baqara), the two Suras being contemporary or closely ...