The Problem of Empiricism in Comparative Political Research by Muslims

Abstract

The Islamic critique of the dominant Euro-American paradigm in thestudy of politics has so far focused on the subfields of political philosophy,as in the articles of Abul-Fadl, of public administration, and of internationalrelation. Little attention has been paid by Muslim social scientists tocompamtive politics, by which is meant the investigation of the internal politicalinstitutions and processes of countries. As the name of the subfield implies,it is also intended to promote the comparison of political systems and processesacross national and cultural boundaries in search of some useful generalizationsabout which structural arrangements are the most likely to promote whatevervalues, including Islamic ideals, the analyst may employ as hisher criteriafor evaluation. True, there have been various books like Ahmad’s whichexplicate the Islamic political ideal as exemplified in the practice of the Prophetand the four rightly-guided caliphs. as well as books translating the Arabicterminology of Islam into its modern equivalents, such as M . Ahmed‘s IslamicPolitical System in the Modem Age, but these give little guidance to a politicalscientist wishing to conduct research into the empirical reality of present-dayMuslim-ruled polities other than to condemn their deviation from the idealQur’anic model. For instance, must a contemporary Muslim political scientistreflexively castigate Pakistan for holding “free and fair elections” to its legislativebodies and praise the late president Zia ul-Haq for instituting an appointivemajlis al shura to perform legislative functions simply because Westernobservers tend to disapprove of this on the gmunds that an appointive legislaturedoes not meet the modern conception of democratic representation?It shall be the endeavor of this paper to undertake a critique of the conceptsand value assumptions of the existing literature in the academic field ofcomparative politics in the hope of revealing the built-in European (”Judeo-Christian” or “secular-humanist”) biases and then to suggest an agenda ofissues on which Muslim and non-Muslim scholars might agree. Among theunarticulated biases of Western comparative politics are: 1) secularism; 2)materialism; 3) analysis which distinguishes subcategories but often fails tointegrate them in a “holistic” manner; 4) unilinear development accordingto a European historical model; 5) liberal individualism which values freedomand democracy over order and community; 6) quantification instead ofqualitative methods; 7) egalitarianism; 8) empiricism; and 9) pragmatism.Among the few sympathetic American studies of existing Muslim politicalpractices which avoid these biases have been Clark’s on the zakah systemin Pakistan,’ Vogel’s dissertation on the Saudi judicial system, Kennedy’sstudy of the hudud ordinances in Pakistan, Sutcliffe's study on the compatibilityof Islamic values with economic development in Jordan, and Wright’s analysisof the Shahbano Begum case which dealt with the maintenance of Muslimdivorcees in India. Two Arab doctoral students have written such doctoral ...