IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v101y2007i02p235-252_07.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Islamic Foundations for a Social Contract in non-Muslim Liberal Democracies

Author

Listed:
  • MARCH, ANDREW F.

Abstract

In this article I take up John Rawls's invitation to investigate the capacity of a given comprehensive ethical doctrine to endorse on principled grounds the liberal terms of social cooperation. In the case of Islamic political ethics, however, far more is at stake in affirming citizenship in a (non-Muslim) liberal democracy than state neutrality and individual autonomy. Islamic legal and political traditions have traditionally held that submission to non-Muslim political authority and bonds of loyalty and solidarity with non-Muslim societies are to be avoided. In this article, I examine the Islamic foundations for affirming on principled grounds residence, political obligation, and loyalty to a non-Muslim state. My research shows not only that such grounds exist even in classical Islamic legal discourses, but also that the concerns of Islamic scholars vindicate political liberalism's claim to successfully accommodate the adherents of certain nonliberal doctrines by refraining from proclaiming controversial metaphysical truthclaims.

Suggested Citation

  • March, Andrew F., 2007. "Islamic Foundations for a Social Contract in non-Muslim Liberal Democracies," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 101(2), pages 235-252, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:101:y:2007:i:02:p:235-252_07
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055407070128/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mostapha Benhenda, 2011. "Liberal democracy and political Islam: The search for common ground," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 10(1), pages 88-115, February.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:101:y:2007:i:02:p:235-252_07. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.