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One nation under God? Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s changing Fiqh of citizenship in

the light of the Islamic legal tradition

Article in Contemporary Islam · September 2013

DOI: 10.1007/s11562-013-0277-4

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Cont Islam
DOI 10.1007/s11562-013-0277-4

One nation under God? Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s

changing Fiqh of citizenship in the light of the Islamic
legal tradition

David H. Warren & Christine Gilmore

# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013

Abstract In the wake of the Arab Revolutions of 2011, countries in the Middle East are
grappling with how Islamists might be included within a regime of democratic political
pluralism and how their aspirations for an “Islamic state” could affect the citizenship
status of non-Muslims. While Islamic jurisprudence on this issue has traditionally
classified non-Muslims in Islamic society as protected peoples or dhimma, endowed
with what the authors term “minority citizenship”, this article will examine how the
transnational intellectual Wasatiyya or Centrist movement, of which Sheikh Yusuf al-
˙
Qaradawi is the figurehead, have sought to develop a new fiqh of citizenship in which
Muslims and non-Muslims have equal civil and political rights. This article will focus on
Yusuf al-Qaradawi on the basis that his very recent shift in 2010 on the issue is yet to be
studied in depth, as well as in view of the fact that the dilemma faced by reformist
Islamic scholars—how to integrate modern concepts into a legal tradition while simul-
taneously arguing for that tradition’s continuing relevance and authority—is for him
rendered particularly acute, given that this tradition is itself the very source of his own
authority and relevance. It will therefore be argued that the legacy of the Islamic legal
tradition structures his discourse in a very specific way, thereby having the potential to
render it more persuasive to his audience, and worthy of a more detailed examination.

Keywords Qaradawi . Islamic law . Non-Muslim minorities . Citizenship

Introduction

In the wake of the Arab Revolutions of 2011, countries across the Middle East are
grappling with how Islamists might be included within a regime of democratic

D. H. Warren (*)
University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
e-mail: david.warren@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk

C. Gilmore
University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
e-mail: encag@leeds.ac.uk
 Cont Islam

political pluralism in a context of significant regional support for their political goals,
as demonstrated by the electoral success of Egypt’s Freedom and Justice Party and
Tunisia’s El-Nahda Party. In a context in which many are calling for the (re)creation
of the Islamic state, questions arise in relation to the future citizenship status of non-
Muslims within the more nuanced “civil state with an Islamic reference” (al-dawla
al-madaniyya bi-marja‘iyya islāmiyya), particularly whether Islamist parties would
seek the re-implementation of the dhimma system codified in classical Islamic
jurisprudence that emphasises communal autonomy or “minority citizenship” for
non-Muslims within a Sharia regime.
Although scholars like Zeidan (1999: 9) have argued previously that “a radical
re-interpretation of the Sharia “dhimmi” concept in favour of non-Muslim equality
is at present unlikely”, important steps have been taken by thinkers such as Yusuf
al-Qaradawi, Rashid al-Ghannushi, Tariq al-Bishri, Muhammad Salim al-‘Awwa
and Fahmi Huwaydi to develop a fiqh of citizenship for non-Muslims in the
Islamic state. Al-Qaradawi’s importance in the development of an Islamic con-
ception of equal citizenship for Muslims and non-Muslims in the Islamic Civil
State is derived from his intellectual and spiritual leadership of the broad trans-
national intellectual school popularly known as “al-madrasa al-wasatiyya” (“The
School of the Middle Way”, or simply the “Wasatiyya Movement”),˙ which has
influenced the policies and outlook of “moderate” Islamist parties, notably Hizb
al-Wasat in Egypt, whose platforms advocate equal citizenship rights for non-
Muslims and reject the dhimma contract of differential citizenship rights as a
suitable basis for the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims in an
Islamic civil state (Mady 2004).
Wasatiyya thinkers maintain that the most important product of recent ijtihād is
˙
“that all Egyptians are equal citizens” (al-Qaradawi 1996: 59), based first and
foremost on a concept that al-Qaradawi (2010a: 42, 24) terms “al-ukhūwa al-
wataniyya” (patriotic brotherhood) and “al-jiwār” (neighbourliness), whereby Mus-
lims˙ and non-Muslims have equal civil and political rights. While acknowledging the
contribution of thinkers such as al-‘Awwa and Huwaydi to developing this new fiqh
of citizenship this article will argue that al-Qaradawi’s changing perspective about the
citizenship status of non-Muslims in the Islamic state deserves greater critical con-
sideration because of the symbolic power he wields both as the figure head of the
wasatiyya movement in Egypt and as a leading figure of the global pan-Islamic
Reform˙ movement among both the ‘ulamā’ and the wider Arab public.
Though it has been argued that in previous periods of Islamic history from the
Ottoman Empire to Muslim Spain and indeed the earlier Caliphates that the “dhimma
contract (‘aqd al-dhimma)” provided the basis for social tolerance, scholars such as
Tariq Ramadan (2010: 48, 168–9) and Khaled Abou El Fadl have highlighted that
tolerance is not the same as equality, nor is it a suitable basis on which to ground
political relationships in the nation state as it exists today. They argue that the very
idea of “minority citizenship” based on relations of tolerance “legitimizes de facto
discrimination” and does not provide a suitable framework for relations between free
human beings whom, as the Qur’an indicates, are equal in dignity and worth. As
such, although the dhimma system is not “entirely dismissive of the rights of non-
Muslims […] it asserts a hierarchy of importance, and the commitment to toleration is
corresponding fragile and contingent” (El Fadl 2002: 13).
Cont Islam

Similarly, former head of the Syrian National Council (SNC) Burhan Ghalyun
(2004: 24) highlights that foremost among the issues is that, “[Muslims] today still
use concepts of the “state,” the “Umma” […] with their traditional meanings” that
brings to mind a “medieval concept of the state.” What was most important for him
then was “that “Umma” should be granted a modern meaning […] regardless of
doctrines” and without any sectarian connotations.
With these points in mind, Raymond Baker (2003), Sagi Polka (2003) and most
recently Rachel Scott (2010) have detailed some of the significant steps taken by a
variety of Muslim intellectuals in Egypt, many of whom were either associated with
the Muslim Brotherhood, the “wasatiyya” movement, or both. Although the broader
issue of the development of a fiqh of ˙ equal citizenship among wasatiyya thinkers is
noted by these scholars, no detailed studies on the development of˙ al-Qaradawi’s
thought since his Non Muslims in The Islamic Society (Ghayr Muslimīn
fi’l-Mujtama‘al-Islāmī, published in 1985) have been written, representing a gap in
the critical literature that this article seeks to fill through a close reading of his later
texts Religious Minorities and the Islamic Solution (al-Aqalliyyāt al-Dīniyya wa’l-Hal
al-Islāmī, 1996) and his most recent The Homeland and Citizenship in the Light˙ of
Foundational Principles and the Higher Purposes of the Law (al-Watan
wa’l-Muwātana fī Daw’ al-Usūl al-‘Aqdiyya wa’l-Maqāsid al-Sharī‘iyya, 2010a). The ˙
˙ ˙
purpose of this article therefore˙ is to contribute to discussions
˙ of citizenship in Islamic
law with a detailed focus on the changing thought of al-Qaradawi, not only because his
thought shifted notably in 2010, but also to examine in detail how this one scholar’s
thought on citizenship has changed over time and his own efforts to integrate the concept
of modern citizenship into the classical Islamic legal tradition.

Introducing Yusuf al-Qaradawi and the “School of the Middle Way”

By way of historical introduction, al-Qaradawi was part of a generation of Azhari

scholars who, impressed by the teachings of Hassan al-Banna, joined the Muslim
Brotherhood. During the regular clampdowns on the Brotherhood’s activities during
the 1950s, al-Qaradawi was among those imprisoned repeatedly before taking his
family into exile in 1961. 1 At this time al-Qaradawi’s first major work of jurispru-
dence, The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam (al-Halāl wa’l-Harām fi’l-Islām) had
just been published, marking him out as a rising star˙ for the future.
˙ This work was
reportedly enjoyed by Shaykh Ahmad Bin ‘Ali Al Thani (al-Qaradawi 2006: 272),
the new Emir of Qatar for it was in Doha, unlike many of his colleagues who travelled
to Saudi Arabia as part of the then King Faisal’s “Islamic solidarity” initiative, where
al-Qaradawi resides to this day. As time passed, al-Qaradawi (2002, 2004a, 2006,
2011: 277, 381) quickly became established through the defence of his encyclopaedic
doctoral thesis entitled The Jurisprudence of Alms-Giving (Fiqh al-Zakāt) in 1973,
leading to him being offered the post of General Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood
1
In total al-Qaradawi was imprisoned five times by various Egyptian regimes, the first in 1948 in Hykestep
prison where he wrote A Scholar and A Tyrant (‘Ālim wa-Taghiyya), a highly political play that was first
performed in prison. It was during his second period of imprisonment under torture that was the most
formative, however, and was the inspiration for his famous poem My Cell (Zinzānatī), which Husam
Tamaam (2008: 9) refers to as among “the most important poem[s] of the Islamist movements”.
 Cont Islam

1976 (and again in 2004, he refused both times), going on to become Dean of the
Sharia Faculty at Qatar University in 1977.
Al-Qaradawi might have remained simply a respected scholar of Islamic jurispru-
dence, had it not been for a small satellite channel called al-Jazeera founded in 1996,
whose weekly religious programme Sharia and Life (al-Sharī‘a wa’l-Hayāt) hosted
Yusuf al-Qaradawi as its primary religious authority.2 Al-Qaradawi seemed ˙ a natural
choice as the scholarly authority on the show, especially in the light of the recent
passing of possible alternatives such as Muhammad al-Ghazali and Muhammad
al-Sha‘rawi, and he quickly warmed to his role as, at the height of its popularity,
al-Jazeera was estimated to be reaching over 60 million regular viewers. It was
similarly during this time that the tiny Emirate of Qatar began developing its vast
energy reserves, propelling it to the position of nearly unrivalled wealth and subse-
quent geopolitical influence that it enjoys today.
Even before the Arab Spring then, al-Qaradawi had come to be associated with titles
such as the “Global Mufti” and the Muslim Brotherhood’s “Spiritual Guide”, with Gilles
Kepel (2003: 60) suggesting that his regular Friday sermons at the ‘Umar Ibn al-Khattab
mosque in Doha set “the tone for Arabic language Sunni sermons across the world.” His
widely publicised return to Egypt and deliverance of his famous Tahrir Square sermon
on Friday 18 February 2011 led to him being described as the “Egyptian Khomeini”, or
even the “Muslim Pope”. However, it should also be noted that al-Qaradawi’s popular
influence has waned along with the decline in popularity of al-Jazeera, due to increased
competition for viewers and also, more crucially, its perceived decline in neutrality due
to al-Jazeera’s associations with the foreign policy goals of the Qatari state and close
support of the Muslim Brotherhood since 2011 (and before), which have similarly
harmed al-Qaradawi’s standing among the wider Arab public.
During this time, the motif he adopted for himself was that of wasatiyya, which
al-Qaradawi (1990, 2007, 2010b: 37–38) has defined as the desire for˙ moderation
(i‘tidāl), balance (ta‘ādul, tawāzun) and the taking of a middle position between two
opposing views (tawwasut). Derived from the word wasat (centre, mid, moderate),
the term wasatiyya emphasises˙ the just and middle way˙ between extremism and
˙
religious neglect based on the Qur’anic statement “So we have appointed you a
nation of the middle way (wa-kadhālika ja‘alnākum ummatan wasatan)” (2:143). In
her own essay on the subject, Gräf (2008: 6–8) describes how it also ˙ refers to an
intellectual method (minhāj al-wasatiyya) based on the principles of tajdīd (renewal),
ijtihād (independent reasoning), fiqh ˙ al-wāqi‘ (a deep and true understanding of
reality), tarshīd (guidance) and ikhtilāf (pluralism).
Al-Qaradawi is both founder and figurehead then of this broad transnational
intellectual school popularly known as “al-madrasa al-wasatiyya”, “The School of
the Middle Way”, and the “Wasatiyya Movement”, with this˙ aforementioned loose
collection of intellectuals, scholars and activists coming primarily from outside the al-
Azhar tradition and associating themselves voluntarily with al-Qaradawi. In 2004, the
International Union of Muslim Scholars (al-Ittihād al-‘Ālamī li-‘Ulamā’ al-Muslimīn)
˙

2
Despite its apparent significance to outside observers, in a recent interview al-Qaradawi did not appear to
view his appointment to Sharia and Life as a matter of particular significance, though he highlighted that it
was at his suggestion that it included a question and answer segment, which was a key reason for its early
popularity (al-Qaradawi and Warren, personal communication, February 6, 2013).
Cont Islam

was founded in Doha, with al-Qaradawi as its President and, perhaps on the basis of
al-Qaradawi’s advancing years (he is now aged 86), an Association of the Students of
al-Qaradawi (Rābitat Talālmīdh al-Qaraḍāwī) was formed in 2007. This was
formalised in 2009 ˙ with the appointment of Akram Kassab as its General
Secretary and aims to convene annually, drawing between 40 and 60 scholars
to meet with al-Qaradawi and discuss his work. The establishment of The al-
Qaradawi Center for Research in Moderate Thought at the growing Qatar Faculty
of Islamic Studies is similar evidence of the growing importance of al-Qaradawi as a
symbolic figure.3
Rachel Scott’s study in particular (2010: 122–65) details how some of these latter
Islamist intellectuals—secularly trained as journalists, lawyers, or historians—have
started to develop a fiqh of citizenship for non-Muslims in the Islamic state that has
influenced the platforms of self-styled “moderate” Islamist parties such as the Hizb
al-Wasat. Hizb al-Wasat was an organisation founded in Egypt by former members of
the Muslim Brotherhood in 1996 and, though it failed to gain official party status at
that time, it was granted official recognition on 19 February 2011 following the
Egyptian Revolution. Its political platform advocates equal citizenship rights for
women and non-Muslims within a democratic context and rejects the dhimma
contract as a suitable basis for the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims
in an Islamic civil state. This position has been elaborated by Abu al-‘Ala Mady
(2004), the party’s founder, who argues that “the problem of ahl al-dhimma and jizya
represent two main obstacles in the way of securing equal rights for the citizens of
one country”, and that the ‘aqd al-dhimma on which Islamists base the legal status of
non-Muslims is not an eternal religious obligation, but a political contract which
came to an end with the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the fight against colonialism, and
the establishment of Egypt’s civil constitution which accorded equal citizenship
rights to all (Wickham 2004: 10).
While the party is committed to implementing a revised form of law based on the
Sharia, Article 3 of its manifesto unequivocally states that “Citizenship determines
the rights and duties of all Egyptians and is the basis of the relations between all
Egyptians. There should be no discrimination between citizens on the basis of
religion, gender, colour or ethnicity in terms of their rights, including the right to
hold public office” (Hizb al-Wasat 2004). This has led Baker (2003), Wickham
(2004: 3), Norton (2005), Utvik (2005) and Scott (2010) to suggest that the Hizb
al-Wasat “represents a form of political Islam that is qualitatively different from the
˙
ideological extremism of militant Islamic groups, as a well as a more subtle, but

3
The al-Qaradawi Center for Research in Moderate Thought was founded in 2009 and focuses primarily on
the dissemination of al-Qaradawi’s wasatī approach both internationally and in Qatar itself, though it is
often remarked that al-Qaradawi has had ˙little influence on local Qatari context not only does the Center
organise lectures and seminars for foreign ‘ulamā’ based in countries ranging from Azerbaijan, to Germany,
to China it also has an agreement with the Qatari Supreme Council for Education whereby it organises
teacher-training courses for teachers of Islamic studies in Qatari secondary schools. In those contexts, Dr
Muhammad Khalifa Hasan, the director of the Center, defines wasatiyya primarily in relation to counter-
extremism efforts and the promotion of inter-religious dialogue, and˙ so “of course al-Qaradawi’s [work]
comes through”. The Center is currently preparing an edition of al-Qaradawi’s complete works and its other
main research project (it has four members of research staff) is publishing a series of works on “the pioneers
of wasatiyya (ruwād al-wasatiyya)” ranging from Ibn Taymiyya to al-Qaradawi (Hasan and Warren,
personal˙communication, January ˙ 28, 2013).
 Cont Islam

nonetheless significant, departure from the religious conservatism of the Muslim

Brotherhood and other mainstream Islamic groups”, as indicated by the fact that 3
of its 72 founding members were Christians, and 19 were women (Stacher 2002: 9).
Polka (2003: 40), Norton (2005: 1) and Baker (2003) attribute this adherence to
political pluralism and equal citizenship to a more fundamental shift in ideology
brought about by reflexivity within the Islamic Reform movement, most notably the
wasatiyya school of al-Qaradawi, which did not attract a large following until the
early ˙1990s when its “manifesto” A Contemporary Islamic Vision: Declaration of
Principles (Ru’ya Islamiyya Mu‘āsira: I‘lān Mabādi’) was published by Ahmad
Kamal Abu al-Majd (1992), reflecting ˙ al-Qaradawi’s Twenty Characteristics of the
Wasatiyya Method (1990). As Baker (2003: 192–4) puts it “it is impossible to read the
Wassat˙ (sic) party program without hearing, in between the lines, the voices of the
major new Islamist figures”, particularly the concept of “Civilisational Islam”, which
“permeates” its manifesto.
Not only is there a strong conceptual overlap between the wasatiyya’s (Gräf 2008:
15) ideology and methods and the platform of the Hizb al-Wasa ˙, which emphasise
shumūliyya (integration), maqāsid (the intentions of the Sharia), huqūq al-aqalliyyāt
˙
(minority rights), tajdīd al-dīn (renewal ˙
of the religion) and fiqh jadīd (a new Islamic
jurisprudence) but Mady (2004) publicly acknowledged that “the founders of Hizb
al-Wasat tried to put life into the thoughts and ideas of those thinkers”, particularly
al-Qaradawi, al-Bishri, al-‘Awwa and Huwaydi in the formation of its position on non-
Muslims and women in the Islamic state and the Islamic basis for democracy.
Close involvement by members of the wasatiyya movement in the development of
the Hizb al-Wasat is further indicated by the fact˙ that it was al-Qaradawi who led calls
for the formation of a centrist Islamic political force to counteract both secularism and
radical Islamism, and was often invited to speak at conferences organised by the
group (Utvik 2005: 10–11). Polka (2003: 48) similarly notes, “the root of the problem
in Qaradawi’s opinion was that an all-encompassing and perfectly balanced Islam, or
in other words the Centrist perception of Islam, was absent from all aspects of
political activity” in the 1980s and 1990s, and Norton (2005: 9) notes too how
al-Qaradawi felt that the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood, of which he was a
longstanding member, “constrains the liberal thinkers among its children and closes
windows of renewal (tajdīd), interpretation (ijtihād), and stands on one side of ideas
and thought while not accepting the other point of view on those holding different
opinions about objectives or the means to accomplish them”.
While al-Qaradawi’s significance was noted in Scott’s (2010: 143) study, at that time
al-Qaradawi remained squarely among the apologists for the dhimma contract and did
not see a conceptual difference between it and that of citizenship. In al-Qaradawi’s
(2004b: 76) work Our Islamic Discourse in the Era of Globalisation (Khitābunā
˙
al-Islāmī fī ‘Asr al-‘Awlama) for example, the change appears simply as one of updating
˙
rhetoric, he tells his young Muslim brothers to be sure to refer to non-Muslims in Egypt
as citizens rather than dhimmis, primarily to avoid causing offence, rather than because
the situation has changed. It was 2010 that his The Homeland and Citizenship was
published and a shift emerged, and while some of his colleagues’ moves have clearly
influenced al-Qaradawi, his approach also has notable particularities.
Al-Qaradawi has a long-standing interest in minority issues that he first broached
in his treatise The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam. Since the 1990s he has
Cont Islam

developed an extensive body of fiqh for Muslim Minorities living in non-Muslim

majority states through his chairmanship of the European Council of Fatwa and
Research (ECFR) and formalised in his 2001 book, For a Fiqh of Muslim Minorities:
The Life of Muslims in Other Societies (Fī Fiqh al-Aqalliyyāt al-Muslima: Hayāt al-
Muslimīn Wasatal-Mujtam‘āt al-Ukhrā), which has elicited extensive scholarly ˙ at-
˙
tention, with Alexandre Caeiro and Mahmoud al-Saify (2008: 5) observing a shift
“away from a stress on minority-ness (aqalliyya) towards an emphasis on the notion
of citizenship (muwātana).
However, academic ˙ engagement with al-Qaradawi’s thought about the citizenship
status of Muslim minorities has not been matched by equivalent scrutiny of his analysis
of the citizenship status of non-Muslims in the Islamic World. Neither Religious
Minorities and the Islamic Solution (1997) or The Homeland and Citizenship (2010a)
has been translated into English, despite revealing significant developments in his
thought. This article will be base itself first then on a close-reading of Qaradawi’s
latest work on this subject, The Homeland and Citizenship, as well as interviews
conducted in Doha during two periods of fieldwork in 2012 and 2013. The article
will then track how al-Qaradawi’s ideas about the status of non-Muslims in Islamic
society have shifted and changed since over the period 1985 to 2010 in which he
moves away from a purely neo-traditionalist interpretation of the civil and political
rights of non-Muslims based on the dhimma system codified in Islamic jurisprudence
towards what might be termed a “citizenship perspective” in which “non-Muslims
have the same rights as their Muslim co-citizens”.

Authority and tradition in the emerging Fiqh of citizenship

Scott’s discussion of the wasatiyya movement emphasises the importance of the

˙
Islamic jurisprudential tradition in the process of renewing fiqh, concluding that
“contemporary Islamists are under considerable pressure to authenticate their vision
of Islam within the Islamic tradition, yet at the same time to respond to the pressures
of modernity […] There is a problem with conveying medieval Islamic concepts by
utilizing Western terms” (Scott 2010: 120). This pressure manifests in a variety of
ways, according to Scott (2010: 127), “the fact that al-‘Awwa has chosen to associate
himself with more conservative Islamic scholars [namely al-Qaradawi] indicates that
he is under some pressure to avoid being described as someone who departs from
Islamic tradition” implying it is through associating oneself with a figure like
al-Qaradawi that such “pressure” can be relieved. After the Revolution of 2011, some
of these figures associated with al-Qaradawi emerged in prominent positions of
influence, with al-Bishri being appointed by the, now defunct, Supreme Council of
the Armed Forces (SCAF) to the head of the Constitutional Reform Committee after
the Egyptian Revolution (Scott 2012: 18), while al-‘Awwa was an initially popular
candidate for the Presidential elections of 2012 before the eventual victory of
Muhammad Mursi.
In relation to the renewal of Islamic jurisprudence (tajdīd al-fiqh) this emerges
more clearly in al-Qaradawi’s emphasis on balancing the dictates of foundational
texts and a deep and true understanding of the social realities of the day (fiqh
al-wāqi‘), through a methodology that has also previously been described as
 Cont Islam

“neo-Salafi” (Warren and Gilmore 2012) on the grounds that it permits him to
circumvent the Islamic tradition in a selective and pragmatic manner. Since the term
“salafī” is attributed both to earlier reformist trends associated with Muhammad
‘Abduh and Rashid Rida (a legacy that al-Qaradawi explicitly lays claim to) and
the ultra-conservative thought of Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, we will adopt
Uriya Shavit’s (2012: 4–6) definition of salafism and wasatiyya to distinguish the two
approaches, namely that “Although proponents of both approaches˙ claim to be the
rightful followers of the first three generations of Islam […] a wasatī is understood to
be a follower of a liberal, flexible approach to religious law ˙while a salafī is
understood to be a follower of a strict, rigid interpretation”.
The difference between al-Qaradawi and his secularly trained wasatiyya col-
leagues is that al-Qaradawi is a jurist (faqīh) trained at al-Azhar whose˙ authority
therefore rests in the legal tradition itself, and is dependent on its continued vitality
and relevance to the modern day. On the one hand then, al-Qaradawi’s personal
attempt to integrate citizenship, as well as nationalism and patriotism into the Islamic
tradition is rendered far more difficult than it is for his more secularly trained
colleagues but, on the other hand, therefore has the potential to be far more convinc-
ing and far-reaching, were it to be successful.
In a point of departure advocated by Caeiro (2006), rather than resorting to various
Weberian ideal-types here to argue for al-Qaradawi’s authority, influence or other-
wise, the assertion here then is that al-Qaradawi’s authority is rooted in a discursive
manipulation of the legal tradition, whereby al-Qaradawi engages in the pursuit of a
continual coherence in dialogue with a set of texts, particularly ambitious in that it
attempts to encompass the Qur’an, Sunna and even the legacy of a figure such as
Hassan al-Banna. This assertion is based on the premise that al-Qaradawi’s discourse
will be convincing for those who share the a priori conviction that al-Qaradawi has
the right to interpret that tradition as one of the ‘ulamā’. El Fadl (2001: 31) describes
this point of departure aptly in that the authority of the ‘ulamā’, in this instance
al-Qaradawi, is “a matter of belief and conscience” or an “intellectual conviction in
the value of tradition and precedent in forming both communities of meaning and
cultures of authority.”
It is on this basis that Talal Asad (1993: 210) theorises tradition as intertwined with
authority in a “collaborative” manner, through a shared “achievement between
narrator and audience [where] the former cannot speak in total freedom: there are
conceptual and institutional conditions that must be attended to if discourses are to be
persuasive”. This emphasis on the “collaborative” element is particularly noteworthy
as al-Qaradawi’s intended audience are not Coptic Christians or other religious
minorities, but rather other Muslim scholars and readers who would accept his
discourse as authoritative to a greater or lesser degree. A key feature throughout
much of al-Qaradawi’s oeuvre has been guiding the “Islamic Awakening (Sahwa
al-islāmiyya)” and, though this concern places his discourse under particular˙ con- ˙
straints not shared by his more innovative and secularly trained Islamist intellectuals,
it also renders it more persuasive.
With this theoretical point in mind, al-Qaradawi’s approach as a scholar of Islamic
jurisprudence to nation and citizenship differs from his intellectual colleagues in that
this discourse must first and foremost be seen to be in dialogue with the Qur’an and
Sunna and continually relate back to these two sources, foundational as they are to the
Cont Islam

Islamic legal tradition’s system of jurisprudence (usūl al-fiqh). In contrast to the

original introduction of the concept of homeland and ˙ citizenship into the region’s
discourse on behalf of Egyptian scholar Rifa‘a Rafi‘ al-Tahtawi (1801–73) whereby a
term simply “was needed and was found” (Lewis 1988: 63) al-Qaradawi’s first move
then must be to integrate the terms watan (homeland) and muwātana (citizenship)
˙
into the conceptual universe of the Qur’an. ˙

Nation and citizenship in the Sharia

Al-Qaradawi’s (2010a: 13) introduction to Nation and Citizenship thereby begins

with an etymological discussion, emphasising that the verbal noun muwātana has no
˙
corresponding verb in the third form (wātana) from which it might be derived, and
˙
must therefore be derived from the noun watan in apparently the same manner that
the word for patriotism (qawmiyya) is derived˙ from the noun qawm, meaning people,
or the concept humanity (insāniyya) is derived from insān, meaning mankind.
Al-Qaradawi (2010a: 18) then argues that the Qur’an speaks to the concept of a
homeland in its portrayal of the “leaving or being evicted from [one’s country] as a
great crime, a terrible ordeal, which is equivalent to killing someone, since leaving
one’s home is like the soul leaving the body”. Al-Qaradawi says the Qur’anic
expresses this concept through the word diyār (sing., dār) occurring in verse 4:66,
“If We had ordered them to sacrifice their lives or to leave their homes (diyār), very
few of them would have done it: but if they had done what they were (actually) told, it
would have been best for them, and would have gone farthest to strengthen their
(faith).”4
Another distinctive key motif in al-Qaradawi’s (2010a: 14–16) discourse that
emerges here is the Qur’an’s concordance with human nature (fitra) and reality.
Having established the presence of homeland conceptually in the ˙Qur’an, he then
highlights that a bond to between humans and a certain area is natural. After Adam
and Eve’s expulsion from heaven, the whole world was like a homeland to them and
their descendants, while in later human history an attachment to a particular place was
formed through settlement in villages and towns, showing al-Qaradawi that it is an
integral part of human nature. Attachment to a homeland is therefore a human need
(hājat al-insān), with al-Qaradawi’s (2010a: 14–19) citations of pre-Islamic poetry, a
˙
similarly common facet of his rhetorical style, emphasising the apparent unnatural-
ness of the pre-Islamic Bedouin’s nomadism, evidenced by their mourning of their
state of rootlessness, and in more recent Arab history by the ordeal of the Algerians
under French colonialism or the displacement of the Palestinians.
Even at this point however, hints of coming inconsistencies start to emerge.
Having affirmed humans’ essential need to be attached to a specific homeland, and
that just as one cannot choose their family they cannot choose their homeland
(“whoever is born in Egypt and brought into being there becomes Egyptian, and
Egypt becomes their homeland”), it is also apparently clear to al-Qaradawi (2010a:
19–20) that someone can change their homeland, since “this is the reality for many

4
The translation is from Yusuf Ali.
 Cont Islam

people either by choice or by force, moving from one homeland to another, exchang-
ing one people for another, and one brotherhood for another”.
Not only that, al-Qaradawi’s response to the phenomena of migration, specifically
Muslim migration to the West, necessitates his acceptance of the multiplicity of one’s
homelands (ta‘addud al-watan) too. Here the concept starts to become blurred with
that of jinsiyya, conceptually˙ closer to “nationality” in that it refers to certain specific
citizenship rights such as the rights to a passport and abode and, in this instance he is
in fact speaking first from his own experience as an Egyptian exile in Qatar, where by
Qatari law one is only allowed to hold the citizenship of one country, and so
al-Qaradawi states that this adoption of the passport of another state does not negate
one’s (or perhaps his) link to their previous homeland. The “closest example”
however to this human experience is the Prophetic Sunna, which in al-Qaradawi’s
methodology must speak to both situations, and it does so on the basis that, just as the
migration (Hijra) of Muhammad and his companions from Mecca to Medina did not
entail their renouncement of Mecca, or their longing to return there, nor did it either
detract from their loyalty or bond of citizenship with their new compatriots in the
polity of Medina. Here then it is the treaty enacted by Muhammad between the new
Muslim arrivals and the Jewish and polytheistic residents of what was then Yathrib,
popularly known as the Constitution (dustūr) or Compact of Medina (sahīfat
al-madīna) that becomes integral to the unfolding discussion. ˙ ˙
As it was for al-‘Awwa (1980: 15), it is in the Compact of Medina that for al-
Qaradawi (2010a: 25) that this relationship is first formalised and expressed politi-
cally. To contextualise the Compact as it is recalled in the Islamic tradition, in the year
622 CE the city of Medina was on the verge of anarchy due to infighting among the
local Jewish and polytheistic tribes, with an invitation known as the “Second Pledge
of al-‘Aqaba” (Hamidullah 1985: 47–8) being extended by a group of Muslim
converts already in Medina to Muhammad who, along with his followers, had been
suffering from ever-increasing persecution in Mecca, to travel to Medina to mediate
and reconcile the various groups. This they did, with the Compact of Medina seen as
the declaration of non-aggression between the warring tribes and management of
what was veritably a city-state, with the agreed upon procedures including mutual
aid, defence of the city, prescribed actions to be taken against those who commit
crimes and so on (Yildrim 2009: 2–3).
Though a more detailed discussion of the historicity of the document is beyond the
bounds of this particular study, it is worth highlighting that in orientalist scholarship the
historical integrity of such an early text has been the subject of much scrutiny even since
the nineteenth century, with Julius Wellhausen in 1889 suggesting that it was written in
the first year of the Hijra before the Battle of Badr (Yildrim 2009: 9 fn 3), while
Montgomery Watt (1956) argued that it was amended afterwards. By contrast, Serjeant
(1964: 4) suggested that in actual fact the Compact was an amalgamation of eight
separate agreements with varying tribes, all of them occurring soon after the completion
of the Hijra.
It is on this basis that more recently scholars such as Anver Emon (2001–2002: 1)
assert that indeed “there is no original document or archaeological evidence testifying to
[the Compact]”, but here it is the version compiled by the Indian scholar Muhammad
Hamidullah (1908–2002) that is the source for al-Qaradawi (2010: 25). It was during his
doctoral study at the Sorbonne in 1935 that Hamidullah (1985: 26) first published his
Cont Islam

compilation of over 50 documents and treaties from the time of Muhammad and his
Companions. In particular it is the Arabic translation of this work first published in
Egypt in 1941 under the title Majmū‘ al-Wathā’iq al-Siyāsiyya li’l-‘Ahad al-Nabawī
wa’l-Khilāfa al-Rāshida (A Collection of Political Documents from the Time of the
Prophet and Rightly-Guided Caliphate) that al-Qaradawi and his fellow Islamists such
as al-‘Awwa (1980: 15 fn 3), Ali Bulaç (1998: 3 fn 6) and Hayreddin Karaman (Guida
2010: 13 fn 38) credit with turning their attention to the potential of the Compact as a
political source. While the academic debates surrounding the integrity of the Compact
are undoubtedly significant, Hamidullah (1994) argues that the document became an
object of historical study by Muslim historians Ibn Ishaq, Abu ‘Ubayd and Ibn Abi
Khaythama approximately 100 years after Muhammad’s death and it was they who
preserved it “word for word”. The Compact’s significance here therefore is related less
to its debated historicity but rather its accepted place for al-Qaradawi and his fellow
Islamists, as well as Muslims more broadly, as an integral part of the Prophetic tradition.
Al-Qaradawi’s version of the document (2010a: 26–30) lists 47 clauses and, in his
reading what is most significant is how term “Umma” occurs with four meanings.
The first accords to how the term is popularly understood, as a communal bond that is
shared between believing Muslims, as seen in clause 15 (“the believers are friends to
one another to the exclusion of all men”). The second refers to Umma’s political
meaning, perhaps the most significant given that is also argued for by Huwaydi
(1990: 124) and al-‘Awwa (1980: 20). By this al-Qaradawi understands that the
separate Muslim and Jewish communities (ummatān) also share joint membership
of a single political Umma, identities that do not clash but rather exist in parallel. For
al-Qaradawi the sharing in the political Umma is exemplified by the clauses he
numbers 25–35 that list the various Jewish tribes of Medina and describe them as
an “umma ma‘ al-mu’minīn (one community with the believers)”, which he describes
as markedly different from an “umma min al-mu’minīn (one community from the
believers)” along with the prescription that “the Jews have their religion, and the
Muslims have theirs.” The third meaning of Umma is geographical, and al-Qaradawi
states “geography is the basis of political identity and citizenship in the modern age”.
This point is derived from the first clause, stating that the Compact governs relations
“between the believers and Muslims of the Quraysh, the people of Yathrib, and
(emphasised by al-Qaradawi in bold type) those who followed them, joined with
them, and struggled alongside them” as well as the second clause, which states that
the inhabitants of Medina “are one Umma apart from the other people” that is to say,
those residing outside the geographical polity of Medina, be they Muslim or non-
Muslim. The fourth and final meaning then refers to the bond of social solidarity and
kinship, for al-Qaradawi argues that their joint ratification of the Compact meant that
the Jewish, Muslim and Polytheistic inhabitants of Medina shared in bonds of kinship
“like the members of one tribe” (al-Qaradawi 2010a: 30–33).
In the following section entitled “important observations”, what is appears to be
most significant for al-Qaradawi (2010a: 32–33) is that the state established by the
Compact “is not synonymous with a state for Muslims, but rather is an “Islamic
State” in its majority and its terms of reference (taghlīban wa-marja‘iyyatan).”
Similarly important is the “geographical bias” of the citizenship that the Compact
establishes, and therefore the bond of citizenship is foremost linked to the Medinans’
shared ties to the city, and other Muslims who did not migrate to Medina at the time
 Cont Islam

of the Hijra were therefore “not citizens, but brothers in doctrine”. The point that will
be most useful in al-Qaradawi’s argument as it develops is his suggestion that the
Compact “accepts the multiplicity of human identity (ta‘addud al-hūwiyya
al-insāniyya) and types of brotherhood [that exist] between people.”
This shift on behalf of al-Qaradawi comes primarily through dialogue with one of
the founding members of his Rābitat al-Talāmīdh, the Mauritanian scholar Muham-
mad al-Moctar al-Shingiti, based in ˙ Doha alongside al-Qaradawi at the al-Qaradawi
Center for Research in Moderate Thought at the Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies.
Al-Shingiti was the reviewer of al-Qaradawi’s original manuscript and describes how
during the reviewing process and in discussions with al-Qaradawi at his home that,
I did some corrections, of grammatical mistakes and things like that, and I also
inserted [pages thirty through thirty three, relating to the multiple meanings of
Umma and the recognition of citizens’ multiple identities in the Compact] in red
and wrote that I suggested he add this […] I told him that even in the time of the
prophet people were not only defined by their faith, but also politically and
socially (al-Shingiti and Warren, personal communication, January 24, 2013).
One of the most notable and contentious issues relating to the dhimma contract is
the paying of the jizya (poll tax), levied on non-Muslims and derived primarily from
the Qur’anic verse 9:29. The meaning emphasised by al-Qaradawi previously, as well
as al-Bishri, Huwaydi and al-‘Awwa was that the jizya was a tax extended over non-
Muslims in lieu of their exemption from military service in defence of Muslim lands
(Scott 2010: 130–131). While the more recent response of al-Bishri, Huwaydi and
al-‘Awwa has been to argue that the dhimma contract is an “historical institution”
that, along with the jizya, can now be discarded in the view of the reality of non-
Muslim conscription into the Egyptian army, al-Qaradawi’s (2010a: 33–34) approach
is somewhat different in that he contrasts the model of citizenship relations
established under the Compact of Medina with that of the Treaty concluded by
Muhammad with the Christians of Najran. Though historical sources conflict, it is
traditionally accepted that in 630–1 CE, a delegation was sent to the region of Najran
(in southwestern Saudi Arabia, near the modern border with Yemen) and that,
ultimately, the area was conquered. While it is similarly accepted in the tradition that
no one was forced to convert, those who did not were required to pay a tribute to
Medina or rather, the jizya (Scott 2010: 19).
Al-Qaradawi’s (2010a: 33–34) key distinction between the status of non-Muslims
in the Medinan city state and under the original dhimma compact is therefore the
conditions under which these citizenship models were established. While the Com-
pact of Medina was ratified in a political environment where Muslims and non-
Muslims lived side by side in a shared homeland, and stressing equal participation in
government, social welfare and national defence, the dhimma contract refers specif-
ically to a peace agreement concluded with a foreign nation beyond the state’s
borders, the Treaty with the Christians of Najran focuses on protecting the lives,
money, property, livestock, and religious liberty of a conquered people. Here then, in
an effort to maintain the integrity of the Islamic jurisprudential tradition while also
integrating the citizenship model of the nation-state into it, al-Qaradawi has clearly not
historicised the dhimma contract and jizya tax in the same manner as his colleagues, but
instead emphasises, in al-Shingiti’s (personal communication, January 24, 2013) words,
Cont Islam

that both the Muslims and Jews of Medina were “founders of the State” and minor
Jewish tribes remaining in Medina who were not dhimmis when the Najran Treaty was
enacted. This latter point is an attempt to counter the argument of some jurists that the
Compact of Medina was abrogated by the Treaty of Najran, which occurred afterwards.
There is a clear conceptual tension arising with al-Qaradawi’s attempted integra-
tion of citizenship into the tradition, while preserving the moral valence of the
dhimma contract, and this is seen similarly in al-Qaradawi’s attempted inclusion of
Arab nation-state nationalism without discarding or historicising Muslims’ traditional
belonging to a greater “Land of Islam (dār al-islām)”. While one’s belonging to a
homeland is cast as divinely ordained and pre-determined (qadrī wa-jabarī) but also
local (mahalī), Muslims’ belonging to the dār al-islām is greater, deeper, and by
˙
choice. Here then, alongside al-Qaradawi’s discussion of nation states, he also
includes the statement that dār al-islām is the “homeland” of every Muslim, high-
lighting the apparent difficulty he has in attempting to incorporate new concepts
while simultaneously emphasising the continuing relevance of those in the tradition.
Al-Qaradawi (2010b: 39) maintains a clear affection for the greater dār al-islām of
traditional Islamic jurisprudence and the historical Caliphate, and the “catastrophe” of
its replacement with “statelets (dawliyyāt) here and there” and Muslims putting their
country before their religion.
Indeed this affection is so much so that al-Qaradawi (2010a: 40) also emphasises
that non-Muslims belong to this greater dār al-islām and writes that, while the jurists
of the various legal schools designated the non-Muslims dhimmis, they actually
considered them to be among the people of dār al-islām. As far as al-Qaradawi is
concerned this represents the “key to the problem” for it means that the classical
jurists did not consider non-Muslims to be aliens or foreigners, but members of the
nation, and they are now therefore citizens just like their fellow Muslims. While Scott
(2010: 143) noted the clear inconsistency on behalf of al-Qaradawi, in this instance
the argument here is a constraint on his discourse is that al-Qaradawi (2010a: 37)
must continue assert the relevance to his audience of the “splendid examples of
Islamic jurisprudence” and the classical jurists’ whose legacy he lays claim to, for
they are the source of his authority and own continuing relevance.
Therefore al-Qaradawi has to assert that, “the problem [of citizenship] has been
solved from within Islamic jurisprudence, without having to import the concept of
citizenship from the Western market place of ideas”, inappropriate for Muslims in al-
Qaradawi’s view because it requires their separation from their religious belonging
through secularism. While al-Qaradawi (2010a: 41) writes that he recognises the fear
of non-Muslims that they might be discriminated against, he argues that the concept
of citizenship requires equality between all citizens and therefore “it is necessary that
we delete historical words and concepts from the dictionary of contemporary [com-
munal] relations, like the word “dhimma” and “ahl al-dhimma” that are no longer
acceptable to non-Muslims”.
For al-Qaradawi (2010a: 43–44) the reason that citizenship requires equality is
because of “patriotic brotherhood (al-ukhūwa al-wataniyya)” whereby each citizen is
the brother of the other. The next passage shows that ˙ al-Qaradawi’s audience are not
Copts, but rather Muslim extremists and literalists over whom he sees himself as a
guide. He includes a clearly pedagogic dialogue with an unnamed “literalist”, who the
reader is told objected to al-Qaradawi’s use of the term “our Coptic brothers” on the
 Cont Islam

basis that there could be no brotherhood outside the religious framework. Al-
Qaradawi responds by saying that such a position is absurd, and that all kinds of
brotherliness can exist alongside the religious (“patriotic, nationalistic, professional,
human etc.”), though the brotherhood of Muslims is deepest of all. When asked to
present his legal proof for this position, al-Qaradawi says the proof is found not only
in human reality but also in the text itself and tells his opponent, and the reader, to
read four Qur’anic passages from sūrat al-shu‘arā’ with him (26:105–106, 123–124,
141–142, 160–161). Each passage describes four tribes’ rejection of the prophets sent
to them but, most significantly for al-Qaradawi is that despite this rejection the
Qur’an still describes the bond between these early prophets and the tribes who
rejected them as one of “brotherliness”.
In attempting to navigate these various loyalties and belongings al-Qaradawi
(2010a: 45–47) emphasises that they do not conflict, though ultimately as was seen
he did emphasise that loyalty to religion trumped all the others. In emphasising this
patriotic brotherliness found in the “geographical bias” of the Compact of Medina
and noting that nationalism and patriotism are commonly associated with secularism,
and many of the twentieth-century liberation movements, in Algeria for example,
contained “secularists, liberals and Marxists”, al-Qaradawi argues instead that na-
tionalism and patriotism in fact “do not carry any ideology or religion […] it is never
a necessity that patriotism or nationalism be secular”. The difficulty of maintaining
the importance of Muslims’ traditional Islamic belonging to dār al-islām while
stripping Arab-nationalism of its popular secularist connotations is again apparent
in al-Qaradawi’s resortion to ambiguous or even somewhat muddled phrases such as
saying that nationalism, “is not non-religious (secular), but rather it is neutral”. The
discourse is confused further by al-Qaradawi’s occasional use the of term al-
wataniyya interchangeably with al-qawmiyya so, while an Arabic dictionary would
˙
translate the former as “nationalism” and the latter as “patriotism”, it is clear that al-
Qaradawi sees both concepts as existing in both terms, and the major point his
argument is to promote the patriotic meaning of the terms, and attenuate their more
divisive, nationalistic aspects.
Al-Qaradawi’s affection (2010a: 51) for dār al-islām rests in no small part on the
legacy of the early reformers; while Muhammad ‘Abduh supported the Egyptian
independence movement against the British occupation he, along with al-Afghani and
their peers “as a group believed in a greater homeland: dār al-islām”. The overriding
concern of these scholars was the potential ethnic or racial flavour of nationalism, as
well as its links with secularism. Given that al-Qaradawi does not confine the
concepts of nationalism and patriotism to individual terms, he instead distinguishes
between an acceptable and unacceptable patriotism (al-wataniyya al-maqbūla wa’l-
wataniyya al-mardūda), and any possible ethnic or sectarian˙ connotations are rejected
by ˙al-Qaradawi (2010a: 57) via the Qur’an’s (28:4) description of formenting sectar-
ianism as one of the crimes of the Pharaoh during the time of Moses.
A similarly significant issue for al-Qaradawi (2010a: 52–53) here, as for many
Islamists close to the Muslim Brotherhood, is navigating the legacy of Hassan al-
Banna (Scott 2010: 120). Al-Banna was particularly critical not only of nationalism,
but also rejected multi-party democracy itself in favour of ideological unity. For al-
Banna (1965: 166), secularism and nationalism were closely interlinked and had such
potential to “divide the Umma” that he said “we are at war with this perspective as a
Cont Islam

practical program, which wants to stain Egypt with [nationalism].” Al-Qaradawi’s

(2010a: 54) response to the clearly problematic legacy of al-Banna in relation to
nationalism and citizenship is to emphasise that elsewhere al-Banna also wrote “how
can we not work in Egypt’s best interest? How can we not defend Egypt as much as
we can? […] truly we are proud of our loyalty to our dear country”. Indeed, he argues
that what al-Banna was in fact promoting was a very particular kind of national pride, a
“patriotism (wataniyya) of freedom, of the society and service to it […] while rejecting a
˙
partisan and divisive nationalism (wataniyya)”. This explains why al-Qaradawi is
˙
expending so much effort moral and patriotic valence of the term wataniyya, rather
than promoting an alternative term in its place, because it is the term ˙ used by his
forebears of the tradition. This however is a significant reconstruction of al-Banna’s
(1965: 166) thought, for he also said that in his devotion to Egypt “nothing is suitable for
it except Islam, it will not be healed by anything other than this remedy” and clearly
defined Egyptian identity on Islamic terms and saw no reason to divert from the dhimma
model of classical jurisprudence (Scott 2010: 41, 94–95).
As well as the Qur’an’s emphasis in verse 4:32 on the importance of “neighbourliness
(jiwār)” between inhabitants of a certain locale, al-Qaradawi (2010a: 24) also argues for
the relevance of early jurists’ example in their legislation that zakāt should be distributed
solely among the needy of the local area, which al-Qaradawi (1999: 451–452) stated in
The Jurisprudence of Alms-Giving also included non-Muslims. The principle of
neighbourliness and his slanted interpretation of al-Banna is much more reminiscent then
of al-Tahtawi, who first emphasised that the watan was far more just a place of residence,
and that there was a very significant moral ˙valence to the term. Kutelia (2011: 5)
describes how for al-Tahtawi “tireless work for the interests of the homeland, making
one’s contribution to its building was the primary duty of a citizen” emphasising in
particular that in the bond of national brotherhood “there exist certain rights and duties
with respect to one another”, which al-Qaradawi’s perspective is much closer to in this
instance than that of ‘Abduh and al-Afghani, though he ultimately retains the super-
erogatory nature of the religious bond unlike al-Tahtawi.

Beyond Dhimma: citizenship and identity in the Islamic civil state

To examine now how al-Qaradawi’s thought has developed and changed in dialogue
with the tradition, in Non Muslims in The Islamic Society al-Qaradawi advocated a
neo-traditional understanding of the citizenship status of non-Muslims in Islamic
society based on the dhimma system, advocating toleration towards non-Muslims on
the basis of a high degree of communal autonomy. In Non Muslims in the Islamic
Society al-Qaradawi (1985: 7) maintained that the dhimma contract was “everlasting”
and the “security” granted to dhimmīs was like the “citizenship granted by a govern-
ment to an alien who abides by the constitution, thereby earning all the rights of a
natural citizen.” At that time al-Qaradawi argued that an Islamic State would be better
suited to the religious beliefs and duties of minorities in contrast to a “Godless”
secular order. Moreover, he insisted that the dhimma contract was not merely an
historical system but a divinely mandated citizenship model which the Islamic state
has a duty to implement in order to guarantee the safety, protection, and religious
freedom of non-Muslims within its borders.
 Cont Islam

According to al-Qaradawi (1985: 7) the dhimma contract considered non-Muslims

“citizens of the Islamic state as described by Muslim jurists or bearers of Islamic
nationality as described by contemporary writers” with the same rights and respon-
sibilities as Muslims, except those required by religious differences (al-Qaradawi
1985: 47–49), based on the hadith “they have the same rights that Muslims have, and
the same obligations that Muslims have”. These “citizenship rights” would therefore
include complete freedom of religion; access to social welfare; protection of their
honour, lives and private property and from external aggression and internal oppres-
sion; and the right to “serve in any government position which does not have a direct
bearing on the religious life of the Muslims” such as head of state or the army or
judges in Sharia courts, which are positions invested with both religious and secular
authority (al-Qaradawi 1985: 14–16).
Al-Qaradawi (1985: 48) justified all departures from the overarching principle of
equal citizenship on the basis that non-Muslims are considered equal citizens only “in
matters which do not contradict their religion”. Since it is not reasonable to ask a non-
Muslim to implement Islamic rules, he argues, allowing them to serve in capacities
with a religious function would compromise their religious freedom, with which the
Islamic constitution does not interfere. Moreover, al-Qaradawi (1985: 43) argues that,
since “they are not required to fulfil any Islamic religious duties [… or] to abstain
from anything which is lawful in their religion but which may be unlawful in Islam”.
In his later Religious Minorities and the Islamic Solution (1996: 16) he elaborates on
this position that non-Muslims are granted substantial autonomy from Sharia law in
communal matters to concede that they may establish their own courts, places of
worship, schools, hospitals, and institutions to help them preserve and transmit their
distinctive values. This, al-Qaradawi maintained, is more conducive to true religious
liberty than a system that treats all citizens alike with no regard for their distinctive
values and religious affiliations.
Instead of attempting to subsume the distinctive identities of religious minorities
into a unitary model of citizenship, in Religious Minorities and the Islamic Solution
al-Qaradawi (1996: 18) maintained that the dhimma system exhibited an “exemplary
tolerance” towards religious minorities. While al-Qaradawi admitted that non-
Muslims have understandable concerns that “Islamic rule may be contrary to their
religion; infringe their liberty and human rights and violate the principle of non-
coercion [to which …] the only response is secular governance based on equal
citizenship for all regardless of religion” he attempts to prove that the Islamic system
actually accords them greater protection and religious liberty than the secular model
and is indeed “not only the most tolerant of the religions but of any ideology”
(al-Qaradawi 1985: 48). As he moves forward from Non Muslims in the Islamic
Society to Religious Minorities and the Islamic Solution al-Qaradawi (1996: 32)
invoked what he terms the “Islamic civilizational” concept, the basis of which was
that both Christians and Muslims had participated in the achievements of their shared
civilisation in equal measure. With this in mind al-Qaradawi wrote that Arab Chris-
tians “drink from the well of Islamic culture and share its civilizational heritage [and
are] therefore Muslims by culture and civilisation even as they are different by belief
and ritual”. This was a sentiment apparently shared by a wide range of Arab-Christian
intellectuals, with Edward Said defining himself as “a Christian wrapped in a Muslim
culture” (Ramadan 2012: 260 fn 35), to Markram Ebeid, a prominent Coptic member
Cont Islam

of the Wafd party in the 1920s, who stated he was a “Muslim by country and a
Christian by religion” (Mahmood 2012: 18).
In making religious tolerance the cornerstone of his citizenship model, al-
Qaradawi grounded his demand that non-Muslims accept Islamic governance firmly
on the basis of reciprocity. While religions like Christianity might accept the separa-
tion of religion and state based on the commandment in Mark 12:17 to “Render unto
Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s”, al-
Qaradawi (1985: 88) argued that prohibiting Muslims from living under Sharia,
which constitutes “an act of worship and a means of becoming closer to Allah”, is
inherently intolerant and equivalent to “a dictatorship of minorities over the majority,
unacceptable either by the standards of democracy or Islamic law”. Thus, in return for
tolerating their practices and permitting full religious freedom, non-Muslims should
not prevent Muslims from exercising their faith, citing the Qur’anic prescription that
“those who do not live by God’s revelations are unbelievers”, among the “unjust” and
“evil doers” (al-Qaradawi 1996: 11).
A major criticism and concern on behalf of minorities that can be directed towards
al-Qaradawi’s (1996: 11) justification of the dhimma system is that, despite repeated
insistence that “Islamic governance would give freedom to non-Muslims to live
according to the laws of their own religions”, it actively restricts religious freedom.
In fact it places limits on toleration that excludes certain religious groups, notably
members of “non-revealed religions”, from its regime of accommodation and fails to
take account of Islamic pluralism and prohibits non-Muslims from proselytising that
many religions regard as an obligation of faith. Since al-Qaradawi contends that non-
Muslims should accept Sharia rule with exemptions for minorities on the basis of
reciprocal tolerance, his argument ultimately breaks down on the basis that it restricts
religious freedom, and can thus not be affirmed by all non-Muslims.
Despite maintaining that Islam grants complete religious freedom to non-Muslims
on the grounds of Qur’anic verse 2:256 “lā ikrāha fi’l-dīn (there is no compulsion in
religion)” al-Qaradawi (1996: 28) does differentiate between non-Muslims depending
on whether they are followers of revealed religions, like Jews and Christians, who are
classified as ahl al-kitāb (people of the book), or heathens, such as polytheists,
Zoroastrians, and Manichaeans, who do not believe in God and the prophets. While
accepting that Muslims should behave well with everyone, even infidels, and give
alms to the oppressed, even if they are unbelievers, it is not clear whether he would
extend religious tolerance would to those faiths not considered divine in origin in the
Islamic legal tradition (al-Qaradawi 1996: 44).
Both Non-Muslims in Islamic Society and his later Religious Minorities and the
Islamic Solution are ambiguous on this point as in them al-Qaradawi (1996: 27)
defines protected minorities as “those who have a temporary contract of safety
(al-musta’mīn, notably non-Muslim citizens of other states like travellers and mer-
chants) and those who have an eternal contract of protection (dhimma)”. Elaborating
on this point somewhat, al-Qaradawi (1985: 6) states that when ahl al-kitāb, “live as
non-Muslim citizens, they enjoy a special status and are known along with other
minorities as ahl al-dhimma” although who these are is never made clear. It is unlikely
it refers to ethnic minorities such as the Berbers since al-Qaradawi (1996: 19) claims
that, by reclassifying individuals into Muslims and non-Muslims, the dhimma system
solves the problem of minorities better than secular ideologies like Arab nationalism,
 Cont Islam

since “the number of racial minorities in the Arab world is bigger than the number of
religious minorities”.
Johanna Pink (2003: 9–12) points out that this is of particular relevance to
followers of post-Qur’anic faiths like the Baha’i whose beliefs have been branded
zandaqa wa-kufr (atheism and blasphemy) and thus do not fall under the traditional
definition of dhimma, interpreted by scholars of Shafi‘i and Hanbali legal schools as
solely relating to the ahl al-kitāb, but expanded by the Hanafis and Malikis to include
followers of “traditional religions” such as Hindus (Friedman 2003: 11). The fact that
al-Qaradawi draws the boundaries of religious toleration wider than “the People of
the Book” implies that his view on the Baha’i is less restrictive than that of the
Egyptian judiciary whom Pink accuses of avoiding since:
a thorough discussion of the relationship between Sharia law and constitutional
guarantees to religious freedom with respect to new religious communities, by
summarily equating state-approved religions with religions recognised by clas-
sical Islamic law in the core lands of the Muslim world like Judaism and
Christianity (Pink 2003: 23).
However, in a fatwa dating 1973 (Pink 2003: 9), al-Qaradawi classifies the Baha’i
as polytheists and apostates because not only are their sacred scriptures not of
heavenly origin or recognised as valid by the Qur’an; but they actively reject the
message of Islam. Since it follows that to accord the Baha’i communal autonomy
would entail recognising their legitimacy it must be concluded that al-Qaradawi
accords certain religious groups greater religious freedom than others, thus violating
the principles of equal treatment and reciprocal toleration on which he grounds his
defence of dhimma (Friedman 2003: 77).
Similarly, in advocating a citizenship model that mandates Sharia rule for all
Muslims al-Qaradawi glosses over the problem of pluralism within Islam and the
impact that a single form of Sharia would pose to sects such as the Shi‘a, Druze and
Alawites who differ from Sunni Islam in both doctrine and practice. As Ayubi (1992:
12) has observed, Sunnism developed in close alliance with the central state, describ-
ing itself as “the religion (al-dīn) and its doctrine as being that of the entire group”
whereas sects of Islam “developed as ideologies of groups opposed to the central state
with their own cultural and social group autonomy and were often condemned by
Sunni Islam as deviant (khawārij), extremist (ghulāt) or rejectionist (bughāt,
rawāfid)” (Friedmann: 2003: 80). Since the task of codifying Sharia has historically
been accorded to the Sunni ‘ulamā’, Ayubi (1992: 12) argues, conventional Islamic
jurisprudence includes no provision for other Muslim sects.
However, while al-Qaradawi (2010a: 34) maintains a clear affection for the
dhimma model, he does not “blindly embrace” it in the manner that al-‘Awwa
(2004: 277) had been so critical of, and defends its enaction in the Treaty of Najran
primarily on the basis of the communal autonomy granted to the Christians to
regulate their own affairs, choose their own bishops and so on. His 2010 text did
not therefore break with the dhimma contract by historicising or criticising it, but
rather on the basis of his own methodology by changing its status from being among
the “fixed matters (thawābit)” of the legal tradition to one of the “changing
(mutaghayyirāt)”, and anchoring it to the particular set of circumstances of a treaty
enacted with conquered foreigners. This was then contrasted with the model of equal
Cont Islam

citizenship rights shared by those with ties to the same homeland, grounded in turn in
his reading of the Compact of Medina, stressing equality, brotherhood, mutual
support and peaceful co-existence founded on overlapping consensus between Mus-
lims and non-Muslims on matters of common national concern.

Conclusion

It is these points therefore that form the basis of the concept of citizenship as it has
been developing and advancing in the work of al-Qaradawi and his colleagues. As
Scott (2010: 125) argued, this represents a clear attempt to move beyond an
apologetic stress on the tolerant and compassionate nature of the dhimma contract
as implying “a duty of care”, or the suggestion that the paying of the additional
jizya tax by non-Muslims was a substitute for military service and, as has been
seen, the alternative is found in the Compact of Medina. In describing al-
Qaradawi’s particular understanding of muwātana as citizenship, therefore, we do
not define the term in its normative sense of ˙ unitary or difference-blind liberal
citizenship that treats individuals as abstract, de-historicised persons with, as James
Scott (1998: 346) puts it, “no gender, no tastes, no history, no values, no opinions
or original ideas, no traditions, and no distinctive personalities […] none of the
particular, situated, and contextual attributes that one would expect of any popula-
tion”, but as the basic contractual relationship between individuals and the state
which constitutes political communities and erects boundaries to inclusion
(Butenschon 2000: 3–7).
This distinction potentially allows for a de-centring of the dominant Western
model of common citizenship rules and the emergence of more plural and particu-
laristic notions of citizenship that respond to local needs. In the case of members of
the wasatiyya movement like al-Qaradawi, a fiqh of equal citizenship rights for
Muslims ˙and non-Muslims can be justified not from an appeal to political liberalism
or secular neutrality but the Islamic texts themselves and its own legal tradition, the
concept of muwātana may yet prove more applicable, and indeed durable, in a
regional context in˙ which secularism (‘almāniyya), discredited by damaging associ-
ations with colonialism and dictatorship, has apparently been rejected by voters in
favour of parties advocating the civil state with an Islamic reference in elections
following the revolutions of 2011 in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya.
In drawing to a conclusion then, this more abstract work of al-Qaradawi does not
articulate the explicit political or procedural ramifications beyond any of his previous
elaborations in works such On the Jurisprudence of the State in Islam (Min Fiqh
al-Dawla fi’l-Islam) advocating free elections contested by a plurality of parties
though (1997: 137–139, 147–153), in the case of a non-Muslim President, there is
nothing to suggest that he might currently be more progressive than his colleagues
such as al-‘Awwa who argue that a non-Muslim might be Prime minister or President
as long as they had no specifically religious duties, or Huwaydi who says it would be
illogical to have a President who did not believe in the Sharia (Scott 2010: 151). Al-
Qaradawi (1997: 195) therefore is more likely to maintains his earlier position that it
is perfectly reasonable for non-Muslims to occupy positions in parliament, so long as
the majority are Muslim.
 Cont Islam

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