Did Islam influence the federalist system of government established by the US Constitution?
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The Muslims' Illusions of Grandeur


Email forwards are more thought-provoking than I am usually willing to admit. Here's one I got recently:

One thing that was interesting was attendance for a lecture given by a Lebanese woman who is a professor of law in the US. She is a specialist in WS constitutional law. She has done some original research and found out that one of the founders of the US constitution (Thomas Jefferson) owned a copy of the Slate translated Qur’an that was two parts. Slate's first part was about the Prophet (SWS) and his life, etc and the second was the Qur’an, as we know it. She discovered that by reviewing Jefferson's library that was donated to the library of congress. She says that the form of federalism that was adopted in the US constitution was not known in Europe or anywhere else. She thinks it came from the (Meethaq al Madina) that the Prophet wrote, giving Jewish and Moslem tribes each their own religion, etc but all one community. Jefferson replaced the tribes with the states and here you have the federalist system. Also, the election (Al bai'ah) and how the Prophet only became the ruler after the people elected him, a system not known elsewhere 15 centuries ago. Also,al Shurah (al Ijtihaad, etc. all things of democracy). It is too bad that the Ommayad's (Ibn Abe Sufian) made it into an inheritance and from then on it became dynasties following each other, without shura or bai'ah, when the Prophet (SWS) himself, did not name a successor....but left it to the people to choose. You know, we all know all these things, but not in the context of the US constitution. put together, it is a very powerful force for democracy in Islamic countries, which we have not known since al khulafa al rashedeen. Maybe only in the time of the Califah Omar, who was the third and then Califah Abdel Aziz, whose nickname was el Adl, because he was so just. She also spoke of Moslem women's rights, and how they have a separate zimah maleyah, etc. also not known in Europe except many centuries later. As you can imagine, the audience of Muslims and Americans, the Americans were in shock. It appears that we Muslims have been unable to organize properly and get our message to the larger community. One last observation, she noted that Moslem immigrants, many of them engineers and doctors, etc but not many are lawyers (Code Napoleon in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon) is not applicable to the Anglo laws of US and UK. Lawyers are mostly the ones who are dealing with constitutional issues, Public information, etc. that is partly a reason for Moslems not getting their case articulated well.

Excuse the slightly irate nature of my response:

The Islamic form of government is not democracy, it is a meritocratic theocracy. There is no provision for everyone to vote, and the ruler is not picked by all state citizens, only Muslims. If I am not wrong, the guidance is to "pick the best amongst you" where the "you" refers to the group of learned Muslims, the elders of society, so as to speak. Finally, in a democracy the final word is that of the majority. In a theocracy, as in Islamic government, there are certain inalienable rulesi.e.,e. the Quran. The US Constitution is not the same, because it can be ammeded by a popular vote. Hence, its tenents are ultimately due to the people's willingness to codify those tenents.

As for Jefferson, I am sure he, together with many other learned people, did study the Islamic tradition, if for no other reason than that the West did not have the same cultural ascendancy over Islam back then. However, the concepts that the founding fathers espoused in the Constitution are a more direct outgrowth of the Magna Carta movement and individualism, plus the Church of England's oppression of certain religous sections and European conflict between the religious establishments and government, and finally the failure of the confederation model (tried for a few decades before the US Consitution was drawn up) are the most direct forming factors for the US federalist system.

We Muslims suffer from the same self-centerism that Americans do, that all good things must somehow come from us. We have a proud history of achievement and our influence is wide-spread, but unsubstantiated claims such as this only hurt us, not help us. We don't need illusions of grandeur. What we need are practical solutions.