(MENAFN- Alghad Newspaper)
The important fatwa announced by Zaki Bani Irsheid to the CNN Arabic first, then elaborated in an extended article at Aljazeera.net, that the Civil State does not contradict with Islam, but rather opposes the totalitarian police state, has landed a pivot point in the ongoing debate on Secularism, Islam, Liberalism, and the unprecedented domestic state of social-political polarisation. The 'Civil State Fatwa” is important on several levels; first, the debate within the Islamist movement, for there has been a worrying declaring for the public opinion and intellectuals, by the movement and their allies, against the Civil State, which nearly occupied the totality of debate, and centred all internal political dialogue. Bani Irsheid";s redress, however, has changed the rules of the game, given his influence within the movement itself, as well as the fact that it directly builds for the Islamists return to the electoral scene, via the establishment of the National Reformation current, which landed 15 MP seats. So, who victors within the Islamist movement itself?! This question keeps the political elite restless over whether or not Bani Irsheid";s stance on the civil state will prevail among the Islamist, as opposed to the contrary position, especially since Zaki";s statements go against those of the former general Muslim Brotherhood monitor, Dr Hammam Said, who explicitly said that the civil state has no place in Sharia. Accordingly, Bani Irsheid";s influence seems to be stronger within the movement, finding much favour within youth members and leaders; Zaki stands today as the real architect of the new current, the new directions, working hand in hand with other organisation leaders, who together conducted a thorough review and revaluation of the movement";s progress, slips, and flounders, all the way to arrive at this particular outcome. In spite of all that was accomplished, Bani Irsheid admits to their being a need to collaborate massive efforts within the movement to convey and disseminate this view to the bases of the movement, to instil the concept of national coalition, which, according to Bani Irsheid, may be the golden key to redefining the role and instruments of the Islamic Action Front in the Jordanian scene. To reinforce this new inclination, Bani Irsheid dedicated a considerable part of his article to deliberate the multitude of views on the Civil State within the house of Islamist thought, leaning closely to rooting the Moroccan expertise and theorisation by Dr Sadeldin Othmani, in this regard, who happens to be one of the most prominent Islamist thinkers, and a leading member of the Moroccan Justice and Development Party, which is deeply involved in the localisation of the concepts of civility and democracy in Islamic dialect. In accordance, the Islamists recent stances would suggest they had moved past the previous phase, both intellectually and politically, down a new track that is influenced by the Tunisian and Moroccan experiment, out of the tunnel of darkness imposed by the Muslim Brotherhood";s predicament in Egypt, following the coup. This phase features a larger extent of political pragmatism, advanced by several complicated steps, made by a movement that has spent the last several years in confrontation with the Regime, as well as immersed in internal intellectual, even personal, struggles. Notably, these are smart bold moves by which Islamists in Jordan had taken a sharp turn out of the bottleneck, down to the streets, and onto the House of Representatives. Everybody is on the lookout for the Islamists behaviour in the next phase; albeit within the halls of decision making, or in regards to interaction with other political powers, ahead of which are the liberalists and the civil state advocates, particularly because of the growing polarisation following recent unfortunate events. On the other side of Bani Irsheid";s article, Dr Marwan Muasher, in his lecture alongside Dr Omar Razzaz, on the side-lines of the Book Fair, reaffirmed as well that the Civil State is not contrary to religion, but to authoritarianism. This, all this, are efforts directed to cool off the more heated debate frontiers, more or less, and require deeper deliberation, in order to reconstruct the social contract.
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