On December 08, 2024, the regime of Bashar al-Assad quite surprisingly fell, almost theatrically; good, but what’s next? Who is going to rule? What form of government? Secularism or Islam?
These are legitimate questions that the Syrian people, I am sure, are going to raise these days anxiously. The country that has been destroyed by the US Government is looking forward to rebuilding it, but there are challenges, especially given the fact that the world is ruled by the totalitarian secularism.
In this regard, the political situation of Syria triggered me to think about the position of Islam on the form of governance and the appropriate political system.
Apparently, one would think that the Qur’an must instruct us how to choose the right leader because this is a very important political matter, which affects the well-being and the future of the society. After all, the Qur’an has mentioned details which we would not deem as important, especially compared to the form of governance, so definitely it has not avoided to mention this matter: how to choose the political leader.
Shockingly, I noticed a core difference between Islam and Secularism.
In the modern political system of the West, i.e., the British Empire, the name of the leader is given way too much importance. The society is politically programmed to be obsessed with the form of governance, with the leader, the name of the leader, the change of the leader, and the grotesque participation in the election process of the leader.
From what I observed, the name of the leader in Islam has no importance, nor does the form of governance have any political weight. The Qur’an deems this an unnecessary detail to even mention it. In fact, even the Prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him) did not choose any specific person to rule after his death.
The Qur’an holds a fundamentally different approach to political power. It gives the true comprehensive political model to guarantee justice, stability, and prosperity.
In the West, the Government is a totalitarian political entity: it can change laws, can pass new laws, can change the economic system, controls the economy and the natural resources, and it has virtually unlimited political power.
In Islam, the political power of the leader is very limited. The Government cannot pass laws because that’s exclusive to God – the legislative power has been removed from the Government. Judges have to rule only according to the divine law, so they have no discretionary power and they cannot be used politically by the government while people have a very appropriate access to the fundamentals of the divine law. Also, the economic control of the Government is limited while people have intrinsic power on their finances and property.
In Islam, the leader is an administrator with limited power while in the West the Government is a totalitarian political entity which enjoys unlimited judicial power.
December 2024
