Good Government or Islamic Government?

The concept of good government - central to the discourse of the late lamented 2010 programme of Mr. Ahsan Iqbal and Mr. Eric Jansen - has its origins in the new political economy approach of Bates, North and other neo institutionalist. The World Bank has been the official sponsor of this ideology since the mid 1980s. Some liberal Islamic scholars such as Prof. Khurshid Ahmad and Mr. Khalid Ishaque argue that there are important points of tangency between the good governance ideology and the Islamic conception of government. This paper (a) seeks to situate good governance ideology within liberal political discourse (b) contrasts orthodox Islamic political philosophy with good governance ideology and (c) sketches an Islamic strategy for over-whelming, the good governance related policy initiatives of the imperialists and their camp followers in Pakistan.

I.Good Governance Ideology

Good governance ideology is rooted in Kantian individualism a modern restatement of which is to be found in Rawls Riffat is seen as being anticedently individuated - she has the desires she has and orders them as she wills for no knowable reasons. Liberal epistemology is de-ontological precisely in the sense that it denies the possibility of self-knowledge and the knowledge of the will of Allah. As Taylor demonstrates while ethical principles can be derived from such as “original position”, the idea of a de-ontological morality/spirituality is inherently absurd.

Rawls’ de-ontological principles of justice seek to establish the prioritisation of equal liberty as a principle of social organisation and governance. For a maximisation of her (equal) freedom. Riffat needs to increase her access to Rawls’ primary goods - income, wealth, power and authority (over nature and at least in theory not over other rational individuals whose equal freedom is a precondition for the maximisation of Riffat’s liberty). Income, wealth and power are a function of capital accumulation so maximisation of equal liberty requires the maximisation of the rate of capital accumulation. Capital is the only possible universalsable concrete form of freedom.

Capital accumulation is the categorical imperative of liberal order. Riffat is forced to be free in the social specific sense that she must recognise the social prioritisation of capital accumulation - this is the essence of liberal rationality. Human rights are the resources she must possess to articulate liberal rationality. Human rights are merely the obverse of the supreme social duty to accumulate capital. They can have no separate justificatory grounds. Liberalism cannot tolerate the existence of a social order which does not prioritise the social duty of capital accumulation. There can be no coherent liberal objections to the slaughter of seven million Red Indians in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the establishment of Israel, the promotion of famine in Iraq and American state terrorist attacks in Afghanistan and Sudan. This is why Rawls can write “These are doctrines that reject freedom. This gives us the practical task of containing them like war and disease” (Political Liberalism p. 64).

Human rights are means for the promotion of the cardinal sins of avarice and covetousness. In liberal society Riffat can not rationally seek self-annihilation - (fana) for she has no consciousness expect the consciousness of being in the world. She must seek to eternalise this consciousness through capital accumulation and this requires her to compete (be covetous) and to accumulate (to be avaricious). Imam Muhammad. Marmaduke Pickthall characterises this conjuncture of vices as “takathur”.

The non consequentionalist claims of de-ontological liberalism are invalid in practice. It is a distortion and a dishonouring of the teachings and the person of Christ. Liberalism creates a society in which Riffat worships herself. Her interests dominate her loves. She losses all consciousness of being with God.

II.The purpose of Islamic government

Islam’s rejection of the theory and practice of good governance is not pragmatic. It is grounded in Islamic ontology and epistemology. Islam recognises good governance as a means for establishing accelerated capital accumulation as the organising principle of Pakistani society. Good governance practise will enhance right oreintedness, eliminate God consciousness and promote lust, lewdness, avarice, covetousness and selfishness.

Islam straggles against these vices because it seeks Riffat’s salvation. Islam rejects the possibility of eternalisation of being in the world. It seeks to create in Riffat the consciousness of being with God. The purpose of Islamic political and social organisation is to enable Riffat to live a life which pleases her Beloved so that her journey to Him is joyous and blissful.

Islamic political practice rejects self determination and autonomy. It creates an order focused on fulfilling the will of God. It assigns value to acts in accordance with their contribution to the promotion of virtue. Islam’s cardinal virtues are sabr, ihsan and jihad - virtues which make self annihilation (fana) possible and transforms the heart of the believer into the House of the Lord - “My heaven and My earth have no room for Me but there is room for Me in the heart of My believing slave” (Hadith Qudsi). Islam’s organising principle - like that of Christianity - is not freedom but love. In liberal society Riffat is an end in herself. In Islamic society she is part of my being and we find our selves in the presence of Allah.


III. Islamic Response To The Agenda Of Good Governance


Good governance is an imperialist project. Its purpose is to subordinate Pakistani society and state to the process of global capital accumulation. This is to be achieved by forcing Riffat to be free. She is to be de-feminised by the commodifcation of her labour. Her soul is to be corrupted through indoctrination - the propagation of the belief in the eternity of being in the world. Riffat is to become a self worshiper over-whelmed by the discourse of rights and incapable of sacrifice and love.

Imperialism seeks Riffat’s subordination through the creation of a rights oriented contract based society and polity. A large net work of non governmental and community based organisations are being financed to enable Riffat to struggle for her rights. These NGOs struggle to legitimise the pursuit of lust, avarice and covetousness. They de-legitimise self-sacrifice, tradition, love and jihad. They strike at the roots of religious society, family life and Islamic culture.

They also seek to weaken the state through devolution and decentralisation. Imperialism regards a nuclear armed Pakistan as a serious threat to its global hegemony. The de-composition of the federal state structure in Pakistan is thus an important imperialist objective. This is to be achieved by:

(a)Reducing the share of the provinces in the national divisible revenue pool to increase the dependence of provincial and local government on imperialist finance

(b) Popularise human rights thorough propaganda and the building up of pro-imperialist cult figures such Aung Sun Suki, Anwar Ibrahim and Asma Jahangir,

(c) Demilitarising Pakistan through multilateral agency conditionalities and the sponsorship of racialist parties which preach race hatred and seek the disintegration of the State.

The Islamic government project on the other hand seeks the establishment of a strong militarised state - a jihadi state - sustained by a mass mobilisation of a populace committed to self-sacrifice and self-annihilation (fana). Such a state has been created in Iran, Sudan and Afghanistan through the mosque based mobilisation of the people under the revolutionary leadership of the Ulema. Establishment of Islamic government in Pakistan must involve an elimination of human rights and good government discourses and a dispersion and dispossession of the imperialist client elite which sponsors it.




** An earlier version was presented at a seminar on good governance sponsored by the Area Study Centre for Europe University of Karachi in October 1998.