ABSTRACT
Under the modernity project, religion has been perceived as a dogma that is against ‘rational’ or ‘universal’ (liberal) values that is not welcomed in the public sphere, or more precisely in the political-economical fields. Such precepts are to be understood from the historical perspective of the failure of church-state domination over the people. Initially, since the decline of religious domination on Western soil, the constant struggle to eliminate religion as a whole from the public sphere became a norm in the major discourse of philosophers, scholars and most Western thinkers. Despite the initial goal of those who waged this struggle to constrain and deprive the hegemony of religion in secular arts and sciences, and other ‘worldly’ realms, Kant brought this struggle to a new dimension with a compromising formulation. Through his transcendental idealism, ‘religion’ was acknowledged as the only means to engage lofty metaphysical issues, but inappropriate for all other matters. For everything save meta-physics, reason is both necessary and sufficient, and it is with this division of intellectual labour that Western modernity was founded. With this position taken by Kant, restricting religion to an important set of metaphysical concerns protects its privileges against state intrusion, but restricts its activity and influence to this specialized sphere (Lincoln, 2003). The Kantian approach nevertheless is far from useful in explaining the current global trend of the return of religion in many ‘secular’ territories, and in setting up the foundation, which needs to be applied in this research. In reality, the contemporary return of religion goes beyond the ‘transcendental’ border and encroaches the area in which faiths were once totally banned. It is in conjunction with this phenomenon that the main thesis of this research is to be constructed. In determining a presupposition to present the focal idea of this
research, which is to introduce Islamic values as part of the contemporary governance discourse, the ground for such debate must initially be prepared. Through the employment of Taylor’s multiple modernities approach, the following argument deals with such concerns. However, a philosophical introduction to how religion constructs an alternative solution for governance is essential. Religion from the consequential and functional perspectives will lead society to appreciate the innate precariousness of the nomos (meaningful order) (Tipton, 1984: 282-4). Equally, from a phenomenological perspective, religion gives the human race a ‘sacred canopy’ against the threat of the meaninglessness (anomie) of the world (Berger, 1967: 28). However, the modern positivistic approach to the discourse of development and governance which devalues religion and other normative elements to stress the quantifiable aspects of human experience rather than the meaning will never be an efficient tool for the functionalist view of religion. The only choice is to shift towards more interpretative and consequentialist approaches, which seek to interpret human action and focus on understanding the meanings people give to their own actions and the consequence of those actions to the topic of study, which in this research is development and good governance. The emphasis hence is moved from mere observation and description (what is) to understanding (why and how) hence challenging the conventional value-free proposition of positivism (Thompson and Woodward, 2000: 52-3). With regard to the ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions posed earlier, philosophy of ethics represents a useful tool to understand the significant nature of religion. For instance, the philosophy of ethics raises the question of goodness. This question results in many ethical theories which lead to different conclusions or answers to the question of ‘What should one do?’ or ‘How should one live?’ (i.e. Kantian ethics, Aristotelian ethics, Mill’s utilitarianism, etc.). In the same line, it also examines moral claims, which underpin a society’s core values and social norms. Akin to other ethical and moral theories, religion as another source of ethics and established doctrines provides substantial answers to those questions. By applying the typology of ‘tradition’ (according to the definition by Alasdair MacIntyre, 2007 [1981])1), religion is to be understood as a conception of ‘what good living is about’, which is then expressed through social practices performed by believers. Within such concepts, we could conceptualise an early assumption of how religion (as a set of ethical propositions along with its theoretical structure) would fit into the discourse of development and governance. Similar to the ‘tradition’ typology of religion, Lincoln’s (2003: 5-7) deconstruction of religion brings another holistic view in explaining the nature of religion. In defining the concept, Lincoln attributes four domains of what he called polythetic and flexible, as the characteristics of religion:
i It entails a transcendental discourse (from its claims to authority and truth); ii It imposes a set of practices with the goal of producing a proper world
according to the religious discourses to which the practices are connected;
iii It requires a community whose members construct their identity with reference to the religious discourse and its practices;
iv It depends on institutions that regulate religious discourse, practices and community, reproducing them over time and modifying them as necessary, while asserting their eternal validity and transcendental value. Lincoln also implicitly constructed religion with a beyond-transcendental and more comprehensive framework. Such a definition also implies a maximalist type of religion unlike the Kantian (and other) minimalists.
