Secular fascism isn’t ‘liberalism’

The question “Can You Force People to Be Free?” is irrelevant to liberalism. If anything, liberalism “forces” oppressors — even if they may be elected — not to infringe on people's freedom.

This is part 4 in a 6-part correspondence series between myself and Brookings Institute senior fellow Shadi Hamid. He will be writing letters 1, 3, and 5 on his Substack, and I will be writing letters 2, 4, and 6 here.

Dear Shadi,

Thank you for your second letter. I liked it a lot, in part because it will help me elucidate some of my points. So, allow me to get to it one by one.

First, you say, “liberalism is only neutral to those who are already liberals.” That is just factually and objectively not true. Classical liberalism, that I advocate, indeed does offer a medium of freedom for people of different convictions, including people who are decidedly anti-liberal. In the U.S. for example, someone can advocate communism, fascism, “woke-ism,” or a kind political of Islamism which champions a global caliphate that enforces the Sharia — all thanks to the freedom of speech, which applies neutrally. But there is simply no such freedom of speech in regimes that are communist, fascist, or Islamist. (And hardcore “woke-ists,” on campuses that they dominate, show at least a milder version of the same illiberal tendency.)

Liberalism, also, does not impose a vision of good life: So, in liberalism, one can freely live as an ultra-conservative religious believer, or as an atheist or publicly gay person. And if there is any lack of pure “neutrality” in all this, it is certainly much less than with any illiberal regime.

I also don’t agree with your repeated definition of liberalism as “primacy of the individual over the collective and of reason over revelation.” This vague language can mislead your readers to think that liberalism does not allow communal life, while it certainly does — just remember the Amish communities, ultra-Orthodox Jews, or even traditional Muslims who have their own “Sharia courts” in the UK. Liberalism might protect individuals from such communities only if he/she is oppressed within them against his/her will — and justifiably so.

Your much-reiterated term “reason over revelation” is also quite vague and possibly misleading. It may sound as if liberalism demands from individuals or communities to value “reason over revelation” in their very lives. That is not the case at all, as religious individuals and communities can freely uphold “revelation over reason” — just not by violating other people’s rights to choose their own ways.

Meanwhile, a call for “reason over revelation” does exist in liberalism — but only in the political and legal sphere. Because, otherwise, you can have groups attacking each other, claiming, “according to my revelation, you are infidels, apostates, or heretics; and here are your punishments.” Averting the endless conflicts arising from such sectarian claims, by using the common language of reason, was the very impetus that gave rise to liberalism in late 17th century Europe. And it is quite relevant to Islam today. (Meanwhile, Islamic liberals see a similar spirit in the Prophet Muhammad’s Pact of Medina, which created neither an Islamic nor a Jewish state, but a reasonable state accommodating both religions, based on custom and consensus.)  

Are there regimes that want to impose a worldview of “reason over revelation” to the communities and individuals as well? You bet… But they are not liberal. The best examples are communist regimes of the past century that aimed at “saving” people from “superstition” — including today’s still-communist China which is committing genocide against its Uyghur minority, mainly to “save” them from Islam. (In the West, French secularism applies a lighter version of such anti-religious bias; but that is why I have repeatedly criticized it as illiberal.)

So, your question “Can You Force People to Be Free?” is irrelevant to liberalism. If anything, liberalism “forces” oppressors — even if they may be elected — not to infringe on people’s freedom.

Then let me come to your take on Islam.

You say let’s not look at what “Islam should be,” but “Islam as it has been.” Fine, let's play that game. But then, Shadi, I have news for you: For some thirteen centuries, “Islam as it has been” has not valued your favorite political system either: democracy. As you would know, medieval Islamic political doctrine never advocated free elections, political parties, and elected leaders or parliaments. Such ideas appeared in the Islamic civilization only in the 19th century, thanks to thinkers such as the New Ottomans, who are actually called “Islamic liberals,” as they advocated not just political representation, but all the key features of political and economic liberalism as well. (I myself am an admirer of such pioneers, such as Namık Kemal or Khayr al-Din al Tunisi, as I highlighted them in my book, “Why, as a Muslim, I Defend Liberty.”)

So, if we simply praised “Islam as it has been,” and were to never advocate any new ideas, democracy would not even occur to us. Similarly, “Islam as it has been” included slavery until the 19th or even 20th century — when it was abolished thanks to international human rights campaigns from outside, as well as efforts of Islamic or secular liberals from within.

Finally, there is your discussion of Egypt that you have kept mentioning in the last series of our exchanges, which made me further convinced that your definition of liberalism is clouded by what has happened there in the past ten years.

Why? Because you show Egypt as your evidence of how “liberals” can be in favor of authoritarianism. And you have a point, because Egypt’s self-styled “liberals” indeed supported the Sisi regime and many of its brutalities — because in the Arab context, the term “liberal” unfortunately came to mean “secularist” or “anti-Islamist.”

But I am not the right person to bring this argument to, Shadi. Let me quote a piece that I wrote in 2013, soon after the infamous Rabaa Massacre, where I condemned “Egypt’s fascist ‘liberals’,” adding:

 As someone who also calls himself a liberal (along with being a Muslim), I have recently had a hard time understanding these Egyptian “liberals,” who not only cheered for a military coup against an elected president, but also supported the mass murder of hundreds of peaceful protestors. The more I looked at these activists and their vile rhetoric about how to remove “the cancer” in Egyptian society, which is the Muslim Brotherhood, the more I became convinced that they could be better defined by a different “–ism,” which is fascism. (Anybody who defines a part of society as “cancer,” whether that segment be Jews, leftists, or Islamists, deserves the F term.)

As I also wrote, with references, the underlying problem was that “the Egyptian bourgeoisie, normally the milieu for liberalism, has never been an independent force from the state and thus has never opposed the tyranny of the state.” Consequently, the so-called “liberals” were just one of the competing groups “who try to use the tyrannical state for their own purposes.”

Now, does this mean that Egypt will be saved when another group, such as the Islamists, use elections to grab the tyrannical state for their own purposes?

I don’t think so. I have seen that in Turkey, even in a milder form, and it still proved to be horrible. (Hence “democratic” Turkey is almost unfree as overtly autocratic Egypt, if you check Freedom House ratings.)

That is why I advocate liberal democracies in the region, as everywhere in the world. And, as I argued in a Cato Institute report on “Freedom in the Muslim World,” while illiberal democracy is a major risk in the Middle East:

This problem does not justify political repression or the support of secular autocracies against popular Islamist parties—a policy often adopted by Western powers and one that has often achieved counterproductive results. But it does call for a strategy for nurturing liberal democracy in Muslim-majority societies, in which both secular and Islamic forces can coexist without either of them becoming hegemonic and intolerant of the other

And I hope all this can help bring some nuances to your discourses against liberalism. Hope to chat next time over tea.

Sincerely,

Mustafa