CAIRO — Three years ago on April 11, the late Egyptian thinker, economist, public servant and activist Dr. Said el-Naggar passed away after a long and productive life. I remembered him this week, on a visit to Cairo and discussions with Egyptian colleagues on the challenges and problems facing the Arab world, for which few solutions seem to emanate from Egypt any more — as they did in the past. However, Naggar’s ideas about modernization in Arab and Islamic societies still represent an enduring beacon of enlightened Arab thought.
Many of our colleagues around the world who ask in bewilderment about how the Arab world will ever get modern should consider for a moment this man’s ideas, which are widely if quietly shared by so many in the Arab world, though not always articulated in public.
Naggar, professor emeritus of economics at Cairo University, spent the last years of his life running the New Civic Forum in Cairo, a movement dedicated to the promotion of democracy, human rights, and secularism in Arab-Muslim societies. He saw the Forum as continuing the great tradition of reform and modernity that long defined Islamic society and thought. His immense knowledge and sense of justice also saw him continuing his public service as the elected representative of the Middle East on the appellate body of the World Trade Organization.
His activism was guided by the conviction that “secularization is the right path to progress, and it is perfectly compatible with the spirit and principles of true Islam.”
One of Naggar’s presentations — to a conference in Berlin in 2001 — was recently published by the New Civic Forum, before that body ceased to exist, falling victim, as so many others have done, to the prevailing malaise of state-dominated domestic Egyptian politics.
In his talk, entitled “A Social Science Approach to Modernization in Contemporary Muslim Societies,” he succinctly listed seven points that he saw as forming the basis for modernization. They are worth recalling today, given the continuing quest for a path of Arab-Islamic modernity.
The first point is the principle of social change — rather than static truth — in all institutions, including religious, social, technological and economic. The second point is recognition of the findings of the social sciences as the principal basis of social organization, and not to accept only the results of research in the physical sciences, as some Islamists do. This is imperative, as he notes, if Arab-Islamic societies hope ever to overcome poverty, underdevelopment and dependency on the West.
The third point is that Islam should never be interpreted in a way that makes it inconsistent with basic human rights as embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other such conventions. These human rights documents are universal precisely because they are the result of contributions by Western, Middle Eastern, Oriental and other civilizations, and not the private realm or any one of them.
Fourth, Naggar states, in a modern national state, citizenship rather than religious affiliation should be the source of all rights and obligations. This requires shedding inherited Ottoman traditions, which differentiate between civil and commercial matters that are governed by a single law for all, and personal status matters that are governed by different religious laws for different communities.
The fifth point is that a distinction should be drawn between a constitutional principle which is applicable to all citizens, and a program of a political party which expresses the views and preferences of a certain group. Provisions in Arab constitutions that draw on Islam as the main or only source of legislation, for example, should be reconsidered if they place certain non-Muslim citizens at a disadvantage.
His sixth point is that a majority that has the right to govern and legislate in a democracy cannot be based on religion, race or color. The seventh point is that Western civilization is not a geographical expression, but rather a state of mind entailing a rational approach to the solution of social problems, based on the findings of social science research.
“If Western culture is defined as a rational approach to problems, then it is not alien to Islamic culture,” he says, noting that the role of reason is placed on an elevated pedestal in the Koran.
Naggar makes a powerful and systematic case for modernity in Islamic societies, based on his seeing no contradiction between secularism and Islam. Three years after his death, his thoughts are more relevant than ever today, when some Arab-Islamic societies are caught in the grip of an increasingly tense face-off between so-called modern Western and traditional Arab-Islamic values. Naggar continues to stimulate and challenge us with his intellectual commitment to a brand of Arab-Islamic modernity that rejects such simplistic divisions, and instead seeks out those vast, endearing spaces where Western and Arab-Islamic societies not only coexist naturally, but enrich each other as well.
Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.
Copyright ©2007 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
—————-
Released: 16 April 2007
Word Count: 804
—————-
For rights and permissions, contact:
rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757