No Muslims Need Apply

So now Ben Carson is in trouble, for saying he could not “advocate” a Muslim as president of the US.

His critics are right that there is no legal bar: there can be no religious test for office, according to the US Constitution. But that is not what Carson was saying. Carson was saying he would not vote for a Muslim, nor campaign for one, for the Presidency. That is a different matter, and well within anyone's right. There is a difference between “can” and “should.”

His critics are wrong, I think, to say that this is just prejudice on Carson's part, comparable to prejudices against Catholics holding office in the US, or Jews, or Mormons. It sounds like prejudice, but Carson seems actually to be quite knowledgeable on the subject, probably better informed than his critics. Prejudice is passing judgment in the absence of complete information. Carson has informed himself on the matter.

In fact, there really is something special about Islam in this regard. Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism, and Hinduism, all presume in one way or another the separation of church and state. Islam does not: Mohammed was both a civil ruler and a religious prophet. For Islam, theocracy is the prescribed norm, and anything else is failure. The religious authority is supposed to be the civil government, and vice versa.

This makes it difficult for a Muslim to separate his religious views from his politics, in a way that it is not for Jews, Catholics, or Hindus. The thought of doing so is fundamentally against Islam.

The Emir of Dubai is one example of a secular Muslim ruler. Within his realm, he has boasted, everyone has their choice. They can go to the mosque, or they can go to the tavern. It is their own concern.

But the Emir is not popularly elected.

A Muslim colleague of mine, by no means a “fundamentalist,” indeed quite Westernized, and nominally in favour of liberal democracy for the Muslim world, commented spontaneously on the depravity of this. “Then what,” he asked, purely rhetorically, “is government for?”

You give the average Muslim the franchise, and, as we have seen again and again, he is not going to vote for a secular government. He cannot, in good conscience.

There is a Catch-22 here. Any Muslim who does strictly separate his religious views from his politics, is being, in the terms of his own religion, immoral. This is not the sort of Muslim one would want in power and in command--one with no principles. Yet any Muslim who is properly observant will feel obliged to try to make sharia law, for example, the law of his adopted land, and cannot accept other faiths as having equal rights. This is not the sort of Muslim we probably want in command either.

A Muslim government can be democratic, no problem. It can believe in human equality, no problem. But you cannot really reconcile Islam with the “social contract” theory of government on which the US and the US constitution is based. Government, for Islam, is not a social contract among equals: it is properly imposed by God. And must follow His rules.

Ben Carson may be wrong. Turkey and Malaysia, for example, are trying to forge a secular course, if that is desirable. They may even succeed in the end—the jury is out. But he has his reasons.