This is an edited excerpt of H.R.H. Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad’s speech given at Clarence House on 17th December in the presence of HRH Prince Charles. Prinze Ghazi bin Muhammad is Chief Advisor for Religious and Cultural Affairs and Personal Envoy of H.M. The King Abdullah II of Jordan, The occasion was attended by religious leaders from the Muslim and Christian faiths.
It is a great honour for me to be here with His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales and all of you on behalf of His Majesty King Abdullah II. I have been an ardent admirer of His Royal Highness ever since I was a boy here attending prep school and public school, and I always regarded His Royal Highness as a role model in terms of his desire to do good in the world. I say this not merely to point out that, though he is a lot a fitter than I, but also because I know how easy it would be for someone in his position to ‘play it safe’ and not take any personal initiatives and thus risks, and so I am in constant wonder at how His Royal Highness has managed to set up and run the largest private charity in Europe – amongst his numerous other good works.
Today His Royal Highness takes up the cause of the plight of Christians in the Middle East. This is an issue close to our hearts as well. His Royal Highness has often spoken out for Muslims here in Britain when no one else would, and so has an unquestionable credibility to take highlight to the issue, and we are honoured to take it up with him. God says in the Qur’an:
Truth is from your Lord, so do not be of those who waver.
(Al-Baqarah, 2:147)
Christians were present in the Arab world six hundred years before Mus- lims. Indeed, Arabs were perhaps the first non-Hebrew Christians in the world, and became Christians during Jesus Christ’s own lifetime. In fact, Jordan’s largest Church is the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem which, in addition to being the Church of the Holy Land (where it owns about two thirds of the land in the Old City of Jerusalem), is one of the five apostolic churches. Moreover, it is the oldest church in the world – its first bishop being St James (the Greater) during Jesus’s own lifetime.
Thus for two thousand years Christians have been an essential part of the Middle East. Furthermore, Christians were always loyal to their countries, even when these states had Muslim majorities and were at war with Chris- tian-majority countries, during the Crusades and during the Colonial age.
In Jordan there is a highly respected ancient Christian Tribe called Al- Uzayzat (meaning ‘the auxiliaries’) because it is the Tribe that reinforced the Prophet’s own army in the first battle with the Byzantine occupation. And during the twentieth century, Christians had a leading role in establish- ing post-colonial states and managing their administrations.
Their continued strong presence is not only of paramount importance for themselves and their countries but also for Muslims, because religious ir- redentism simply does not work. It only leads to stagnation and to pettier and more savage internecine conflicts, either based on doctrine, as before the Enlightenment in the West, or based on racial or tribal identity, which can be seen in many places in the world today.
It is no accident that Somalia which is the most homogenous state in the world, religiously, racially and tribally, was the weakest state in the world over the last century, and that the USA, which is the most heterogenous and diverse state in the world was the strongest throughout the twentieth century. Moreover, in the Prophet Muhammad’s own state, Medina, the basis of citizenship was precisely citizenship and a social contract of loyalty, and not religious identity, as the Constitution of Medina clearly shows. Indeed, nations and states rise and fall based on good governance, and the root of good governance is justice, which in turn depends on tolerance and social harmony. I need hardly say, that since Muslims can generally live in dignity in Christian-majority countries they must stand for the dignity of Christians in Muslim-majority countries.
Howbeit, over the last ten years Christians have come under a new kind of threat. In the period since the end of the 2003 Iraq war, everyone in Iraq has suffered terribly, but Iraqi Christians suffered because they were some- how identified with the Western invasion and occupation by certain takfiri fundamentalist groups such as Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Today in Syria, Christians are similarly threatened and persecuted by many of the same takfiri groups fighting the Assad government, and indeed we have already seen a targeting of Christian clergy and Churches. In Egypt, despite the initial euphoria of the so-called Arab Spring, we saw a number of serious incidents of targeting Christians, right up until the tamarrud movement and army took control of the country last June. And everywhere else in the Middle East Christians are wondering what the rise of these movements – and of politicized Islam in general – means for their future.
We do not have time here to examine the cause and details of this issue, but I do want to leave you with you one simple idea for the future – one intellectual distinguo – that if properly understood, I believe could not only protect Christian presence in the Middle East, but also provide solutions to the Pandora’s box that was opened by the Jacobin fever of the Arab Spring. The idea is this: in traditional Islamic political theory, states and rulers are established not by majority – or indeed voting plurality – decision, but by unanimous consensus. Shura (consultation) and bay’ah (allegiance) – the two pillars of legitimate Islamic government – depend on consensus. I find it bitterly ironic that although this represents the one area in which traditional Islamic political theory and Western democratic thought are in perfect accord, not one major Western newspaper or political figure has, to our knowledge, ever mentioned it.
In a seminal international Islamic conference we held this summer in Jor- dan, we established that Islamic government required the consent of a pro-portion of at least five out of six and preferably eight out of nine (that is, approximately ninety per cent) of the stakeholders. In all Western democra- cies there is an underlying and unspoken agreement between at least ninety per cent of all people that their form of government is the only kind they will accept. The 1787 US Constitution was adopted and ratified more or less unanimously (only three out of forty-two delegates did not sign, and all the states eventually ratified it.)
Only after a consensus is established on the basic constitution and on the parameters of the state, then can individual governments be changed by majority or plurality vote – according to the political system that best suits each country.
Yet in the Middle East since 2003, new constitutions were called for, and formed, without even the suggestion of unanimous consensus, including the Iraqi Constitution of 2005 and the Egyptian Constitution of 2012. This led to power grabs via the ballot box and large portions of societies being alienated. The ongoing Sunni insurgency in Iraq which continues to claim at least ten thousand lives a year, has its roots in feeling that the 2005 con- stitution was (and is) stacked against Sunnis and was ratified without Arab Sunni approval. The 2012 Egyptian constitution was ratified with sixty- four per cent of those who voted who were themselves less than half the voting populace – and thus with only thirty-two per cent of the country. This was arguably always bound to lead to a civil war, a coup or a counter- revolution. It has its roots in an oveprsimplification in the Western media that naively pre-supposes that free and fair elections are enough to establish a viable democracy. In practice, however, this does not work in deeply divided societies without established democratic culture and can only lead to a ‘tyranny by the majority’ or even a ‘tyranny by the plurality’. Such tyr- anny is bound to squeeze out the minorities, and bound to trample inalien- able rights under the pressure of populist moods or national emergencies. Furthermore, this is not a new issue at all: Plato discusses it two thousand five hundred years ago in the eighth book of The Republic.
Thus, what I humbly suggest is that changes of constitution in the Middle East be held to a much higher bar than changes of government – if not to the bar of unanimity. If for example ninety per cent of people have to agree before new constitutions are formed, everyone will feel that they are stakeholders, and thus remain attached to; loyal to; safe in and empow- ered in, their own countries. This applies not only to old communities like the Christians, but to new constituents like the fundamentalists themselves who, if they have no right to impose their views, have every right to be heard, just like anyone else.
It seems to me this idea is the only way to ensure stability in the Middle East. And it may take a bit longer to establish – the new South African con- stitution took some six years on and off to establish in its final form – but what is wrong with that? The process of getting together, and airing out differences and compromising, will itself help teach the political maturity that we need in this coming age. I hope that leaders in Britain will consider the idea seriously, because in many ways Britain still provides – and I trust will continue to provide – the ideas that the rest of the world follows. Thank you. Wal-Salaamu Aleikum.