Minorities in contemporary Islamist discourse

Contemporary Islamists (al-Islamiyyun)' deal very little with Islam's attitude toward minorities and even less with the status that minorities can anticipate in the state the Islamists long for.2 Scrutiny of Islamist discourse reveals that the issue of the relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in the past or in the longed-for Islamic state receives less attention than other social and political issues; as a matter of fact, it appears to be fairly neglected. Fewer papers are written on the minorities issue than on other subjects. Whereas thought, struggle, and efforts at renewal are devoted to the issues on which Islamists prefer to focus, such as the arena of political struggle, the da 'wa (Islamic indoctrination), Islamic social justice, and ways to shape the ideal Muslim, for some reason attention to their attitude toward minorities puts them on the defensive, where they resort to apologetics to try to defend the good name of Islam. Except for a few preliminary attempts, there have been no perceptible efforts to construct a new concept that deals with the challenges posed by contemporary reality and with the difficult questions involved in applying the classical model of relations with non-Muslim 'protected people' in the modern Islamic state to be established in our days. However, the harsh attacks by Islamists on minorities in Islamic countries today, and the call to frustrate their 'plots' against Islam, reveal that they certainly do not dismiss the issue. As is their wont, the Islamists ground their concept of the attitude toward minorities, and their efforts to refute the 'lies', 'doubts', and 'misgivings' about this question spread by the 'enemies of Islam' on large doses of prooftexts taken from the scriptures (the Qur'an and Hadith, or traditions of the Prophet), on an 'objective and authentic' study of history, and on Western scholars whose research findings support their version of history. The present discussion of the Islamists' world view and their attitude towards minorities under Islamic rule is based on a sampling of their comments; its boundaries are largely influenced by the availability and nature of these remarks. Some of the leading scholars from the middle of twentieth century are represented, including Maududi of Pakistan, Sayyid Qutb of Egypt, and the Iranian Shi'i