Islam and the Need for a Secular State?

If you were to dive into the debate over secularism and Islam, you would come across a plethora of names spanning all corners of the globe –Esposito, Ramadan, Asad, Elmessiri, Al-Gannouchi, Tamimi, Sachedina, Armstrong and of course Dawkins. Perhaps one of the most controversial names remains Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im. I recently had the pleasure of attending a lecture by the Professor- at the House of Commons, a lecture which challenged my own assumptions and opinions about secularism.
 

Where lies the controversy you ask? As a scholar of classical Islamic law –the Professor at Emory University School of Law does not support states that enforce shari’a. The concept of a Muslim state argues An’naim has no theological basis and is rather a post-colonial historical construct.

To summarize the crux of his argument – Religion and one’s faith is an exercise of free will. There can be no compulsion in matters of faith-we cannot force people to be Muslim and by extension follow shari'a.  We must also keep in mind the rights of those minorities who choose not to be Muslim and live in Muslim-majority states.Therefore it follows from these premises that creating a state based on shari’a where force can be used to ensure its implimentation is not only unethical but by nature un-Islamic. 
 

Yet oddly the argument raised by An’naim is not that religion should be kept from the public sphere- far from it. Religion can in fact inspire politics –much as the Christian right does in the United States-however what cannot happen is the creation of state institutions and apparatus that are holy. Thus, the law of God must be left in the hands of men and protected from the coercive apparatus of the state.
 

Although I agreed with what much of what Professor An’naim had to say – for I firmly support an individual's right to choose and I believe that religion is a personal relationship between man and a higher being-I felt as though he negated a larger issue.

This being  that many in the Muslim world do in fact democratically vote for and support parties that want shari’a and on some levelt want shari’a to inspire the legal system of their country.  These findings were confirmed by surveys and data collected by  the recent Gallup Project on the Muslim World.

We in the West can not ignore such facts. If we do we only run the risk of hindering dialogue and co-operation between the Muslim World and the West. The Professor responded to my comment by stating-“Remember democracies are not majoritarian rule. It’s the rule of the majority with the protection of the minority.” An Interesting point I concede,  yet I still have questions.
 

If Muslims living in Muslim majority societies chose to overwhelmingly vote for parties that endorse the implementation of shari’a is it fair to say that the state system that follows is undemocratic and un- Islamic when a conseunsus was in fact reached? 

More importantly, just as there should be no compulsion in matters of faith- is it up to us in the West to protect Muslims from governments they support that use shari’a? To paraphrase an argument raised by Rousseau in 1762 should we and more importantly can we “force Muslims to be free”?