[MUSIC] Islam in politics is offering another model, which is quite different from Christianism. And that's why it's probably so difficult to take into account Islam when we're observing it from the Western culture, and from Western countries. It's another model, because when Islam was created at the 7th century by Prophet Mohammed, it was first of all based on community. The famous Ummah, the community of those who were sharing the same faith. Islam was created in a very special historical context, which was a context of a strong and very harmful, painful tribe fragmentation. This fragmentation that we could observe at this time, on the Arabic peninsula, was creating and was perpetuating a kind of anarchy which was very harmful for all the people and trades made on the peninsula. So, Prophet Mohammed tried to define a new order of social and political integration. This integration was a priority in the context of fragmentation of this period. And Islam must be considered, approached, understood as a way of overcoming it. That's why when Christianism is stressing delegation and representation, Islam is stressing, emphasizing unity and solidarity, integration. All the main features and the main creations in this religion were focused on this need of integration. When Prophet Muhammad decided to leave the city of Mecca for creating another city, he was then creating a new integrated system in which religion, social structure, political structure, law, were strongly connected. And this is the starting point of this vision, not only of integration, but also of politics and religion strongly merging together. The new city, which was created, was not a sacral city, was not a religious city. It was a city in which all the human functions were connected, strongly connected, and merged. That's why in the Muslim tradition, the concept of Ummah is so important. That's to say the real basis of Islam is no more church or centralized church, but is a community of individuals, is the solidarity of individuals creating a new body, which is the Muslim body, the Muslim community of faithful. And that's why, after Ummah, the most important concept is Tawhid, that's to say unity, as the main issue which was at stake, was a dangerous fragmentation. The new invention was totally organized around this concept of unity of Tawhid. That's why God is God, is unity, is unique, and is no more considered through three persons, as it was the case with Christianism. Unity of God, unity and unicity of legitimacy in this vision, only one legitimacy is to be considered, is the legitimacy coming from God. No legitimacy is supposed to come from individuals and human beings. The only possible formula of legitimacy has to be found in the God willing. And that's why the famous Christian opposition between the temporal secular and the spiritual religious legitimacy, this creates a sense of two legitimacy, is totally meaningless in Islam. And this unicity of legitimacy is given by your unique source, which is law of God, that's to say the Sharia. After Ummah and Tawhid, Sharia is playing a very structuring role in the global vision, not only religious, but global vision of Islam. If there is one God, one community, one legitimacy, one law, so allegiance of individuals to this community, to this law, and of course to God, must be a strong, a total allegiance. Which is much more demanding than the citizen's allegiance, which takes place in the Western tradition. Allegiance, submission to Ummah, to truth, that's to say, to Sharia, to God. And so, these main elements are organizing the new politics in which the solidarity around God and his willing is the cornerstone. That implies some important considerations. First of all, in the Muslim tradition, in the Muslim culture, legitimacy of power, of political power, is low. If the only source of legitimacy is coming from God, the legitimacy of the human prince is always a very low and poor formula. That's why this is a second consequence, the legitimacy of protest is much more important and much more structuring than the legitimacy of the human power. That's why in this vision, protest is much more legitimate than running the power, than ruling the city. This kind of inversion, if we compare with Christianism, is very, very central, very crucial as the Western culture is bringing a model which is organizing the legitimacy of the state, which is providing legitimacy to the state. Islam is much more inclined to provide legitimacy to protest. And the last consequence is to be found in love. Love is much more important than power and this is a little bit similar to the Reformed Christianism. That's to say, in the Reformed Christianism, as I mentioned, love is much more important than power as itself. We can find a similar vision in this conception of political order, which is deriving from the Muslim history. There is a kind of contradiction, because if Islam was created for containing the risk of fragmentation, the new political formula is much more oriented to protest and to support power. And in fighting against fragmentation, Islam is probably weakening human power, which isn't able to find its own legitimacy. This is probably one of the sources of the political instability of all the political system which were conceived and constrictive in the world, through this organization of Muslim culture. Of course ladies and gentlemen, you have to take into account the plurality of Islam. I tried to give the main axis of Islam in a global perspective. But we have to take into account several positions. The first one would be between Sunnism and Shiism. As you know, Shiism is a vision of Islam coming from those who were stressing the importance of inheritance in the legitimacy of the caliph. The caliph was considered as descending from the prophets and Shiism was supporting a vision of politics which was exercised by those we were descending from the prophet. And so from this vision, we can find a kind of valuing the role of hierarchy. Valuing the role of hierarchy is giving a new model to Islam, and Islam in politics. When Sunnism doesn't consider that the caliph must be chosen among the descendants of prophets, and so is more decentralized, and giving more importance to the role of preachers and preacher networks. We have also to discriminate inside Sunnism. Sunnism is also constituted by several visions. Wahhabism, which is coming from Saudi Arabia, is tracing the role of the real and the fundamental beliefs of Islam. When reformed Islam, which took place in several times, then, to adapt the Islam to modernity. We have also to discriminate between societies, among societies, as Clifford Geertz made the point, Islam in Morocco and Islam in Indonesia is not the same. That's why when we take into account Islam in politics, we have to consider the special, the specific history of Islam in each country. [MUSIC]
