Middle Nation Podcast: Episode 26 -- Islamic Realpolitik

This is Shahid Bolson. Welcome to the Middle Nation. This is episode number 26. Now it's been a long time since I did a podcast, but there has been a lot of requests for a new episode, and I'm gonna try to do them more regularly, inshallah. It should be fairly obvious by now to anyone who watches my channel regularly that I approach politics and global affairs from a realpolitik perspective, which is to say a practical, realistic, objective reading of what's going on and how Muslims should navigate these real world circumstances without ideological blinders.

Now realpolitik has gotten a bit of a bad name because it is understood to be an amoral approach to politics, removed from ideology or ethics. Basically, an ends justifies the means mentality. This is more or less the official definition of realpolitik, and it is the way that most practitioners do it. But of course, anytime you want to achieve a particular goal, that goal is based on an ideologically determined system for prioritization. Meaning, you cannot remove a belief system or an ideology from what determines what you want to achieve.

Specific outcomes are sought because your belief system views those outcomes as good. So for example, when realpolitik practitioners prioritize say control over markets, security, economic growth, or whatever, it's because those practitioners ideology regards those things as being of the greatest importance. So it's not really true that there is no ideology involved here. We have just tended to see amoral ideologies engaging in realpolitik. In my opinion, you can utilize the realpolitik approach for pursuing moral outcomes.

In fact, I think if you are serious about achieving moral outcomes, you must take a realpolitic approach to strategy. And I do not believe that this conflicts with Islam whatsoever, quite the contrary. From the earliest period, the Muslims balanced ideals against pragmatism, seeking ideal outcomes through pragmatic means. I believe that the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah was an example of taking a realpolitik approach, while the emotional reaction of to the treaty was purely idealistic. Now, we're not aware that the prophet received any revelation about the treaty until after he had signed it, meaning his decision to agree to it was not a matter ordered by Allah but it was subsequently heralded by Allah through Wahi as a victory, which means that Rasulullah evaluated the situation rationally, engaged the potential benefits of entering the treaty, and made his decision on that basis believing that the was the most practical strategy for pursuing the moral goal of spreading Islam further and easing the difficulties of the Muslims.

When the were besieging Medina at Khandaq, Rasulullah suggested offering a deal to some of the tribes, including granting them a share of the Muslims crops in exchange for them severing their alliance with the Quraysh. That was a pragmatic realpolitik strategy aimed at relieving the Muslims of the peril that they were facing. When the Sahaba asked him whether or not this resolution was given to him by Allah or whether it was his own idea, and he said it was his own idea, they expressed their dislike for that compromise. Ultimately, of course, a different realpolitik strategy was employed to dismantle the siege, basically using what we would now characterize as espionage or a SIOP against the tribes in order to cause them to disband the Ahazab. You can also look at the very careful investigations that made around the caravan of the Quraysh before embarking on the battle of Badr.

This also was him taking a realpolitik approach to decision making. He wanted to have as much objective information as possible about the caravan before deciding to engage. And again, the correctness of his decision was only later confirmed by Wahi. You can even look at his handling of to see the real politic approach he took in the absence of revelation. This is even more interesting because had been ordered through Wahi to deal with them, but he had not been instructed specifically on how to deal with them.

And his appointment of Saad bin Mu'ad to decide their fate was a remarkable stroke of political savvy, reconciling both Bano Quraydah and the Aus tribe with the ultimate judgment of Sa'd. Now it's also claimed, of course, that Sa'd's judgment was derived from the Torah, which there's no real reason to suppose it was, but it certainly aligned with it even according to modern rabbinical scholars. And so since it did in fact align with the Torah, with their scripture, this left with even less grounds to object to the judgment. This whole episode demonstrates the brilliance of Rasulullah tactical political acumen. In all three of the instances I mentioned, we see Rasulullah accepting or offering to accept a temporary concession or compromise or even what might appear to be the surrendering of an authoritative principle.

With the treaty of Hudaybiyyah, allowed the document to not refer to him as Rasulullah, but simply as Muhammad bin Abdullah. He allowed for the return of Muslims back to Makkah who had fled to Medina and so on. At Khandaq, he basically offered to sacrifice Muslim crops as a payoff to the Hazab. And Ibn al Quraydah, he allowed someone else to render the judgment when every Muslim knows that all judgments are to be referred to Allah in his messenger. But these apparent concessions, these apparent compromises were pragmatic realpolitic maneuvers in which ideology, for lack of a better term, directed what outcomes were sought but not the strategy on how to achieve them.

The strategy for achieving a moral or ideological outcome was left to be determined through a political, military, or economic assessment of what was the most effective given the prevailing circumstances. And I think you can certainly look at the story of Al Khudr in the Quran and see the theory of realpolitik at work. Al Khudr did many things which upon first appraisal were highly questionable, if not immoral, but his actions were decisive measures to address issues about which Allah had made him aware. Now an uncharitable interpretation of the story of Al Khidr would see it as approving the idea of the ends justifies the means, But I would argue that it simply represents taking a realistic and unidealistic approach to solving problems, confronting dangers, and supporting the common good through objective evaluation and decisive action. Now there's an old moral teaching about a man passing by a river and suddenly seeing a baby floating past about to drown in the water.

He runs into the river to save the baby, but then he sees another and another and another, an endless number of babies floating down the river all about to drown. Now another man appears on the shore and the man in the river cries out to him for help. The man on the shore pauses for a moment and then starts to walk away. The man in the river shouts at him, where are you going? You have to help me save these babies.

The man replies, that's what I'm doing. I'm gonna find out where the babies are being placed in the river and stop it. So who is right? The man in the river will certainly be able to save a few babies, but will just as certainly fail to save many. The man on the shore will certainly be able to save many babies, but will just as certainly fail to save a few, but he will bring the problem to a conclusive end.

The man in the river represents the moral idealist or ideological approach, while the man on the shore represents the realpolitik approach of achieving moral ends through objective and unemotional strategy. But of course the man on the shore is also guilty of literally walking away from drowning babies whom he could save at that moment if he tried. There's no getting around that fact, but in my opinion his approach is still superior. I think that we can frame this approach as the moral decision making equivalent of the decision making approach of delayed gratification. It's similar to how you choose to sacrifice some form of immediate gratification today for a greater gratification in the future.

For example, it's more pleasant to just sit on your couch rather than go to the gym, and going to the gym of course won't provide you immediate results anyway. But if you go to the gym instead of sitting on your couch, eventually the outcome is going to be far better for you than the immediate enjoyment of lazy indulgence. This is delayed gratification. Realpolitik is something like this. You may have to do things that are distasteful to you in the immediate term, things that even contradict your values perhaps, but they are necessary if you want to achieve long term moral outcomes.

This is a very hard pill for most people to swallow and it's not for everyone. Just like the example of the two men and the babies in the river, pursuing immediate moral outcomes still involves immoral repercussions and so does pursuing long term moral outcomes. But the question is, which is more important in the grand scheme of things? My personal opinion is that the long term takes precedence and I believe that Islam validates this view. Look, the Dunya is a very rough neighborhood, and it is comprised of rough people all battling for their interests.

If your own life and circumstances are safe and secure and comfortable and easy, that was made possible for you by people who were willing and ruthless and realistic enough to carve it out of impossibility. Idealism can only rightly be a motivating engine for action, but it cannot be used to steer it. Seeking instant moral gratification can too easily become futile self righteousness that achieves no worldly good except your own sense of being good. Because solving problems and achieving moral outcomes requires patience, sacrifice, compromise, vision, endurance, realism, and yes, ruthless focus and determination. We can think about Abu Dar al Dafari, Radia Lohan.

He was one of the most pious and most fearless men from among the Sahaba, but also one of the most problematic, difficult, and divisive. Abu Dhar never held his tongue when he felt something was wrong. Whatever he felt or thought he said, regardless of the situation or to whom he was speaking. He was a man who had no attachment to the dunya and was outstandingly courageous. You know, he announced his conversion to Islam publicly before anyone was doing that, and he did it right outside the Kaaba.

He was beaten for it, but he went back the next day and did it again, and then he went back again and did it again, and the same thing happened. And every time, he was mercilessly beaten. Yet this brave man with all his strength of character and fearlessness, when he asked Rasulullah to appoint him to a position of leadership, the prophet refused and told him that he was weak. Now weakness is not a word that anyone would use to describe someone like Abu Dhar, but the very same qualities that made him great outside of leadership would be weaknesses in leadership because leaders cannot be morally impulsive with no ability to bear what their consciences dislike for the sake of a greater good. Leaders must have the ability to hold their tongue, to be tactful, to be strategic, to consider all contingencies, do what is necessary for the larger goals that it is their job to achieve.

Abu Dhar was a man who needed instant moral gratification. He was not a man who knew how to choose his battles. He would battle anyone instantly at the slightest perception of wrong, but a leader must have the wisdom to weigh the magnitude of wrongs to identify which are greater and most dangerous because the complicated reality of the world is that sometimes tolerating one wrong can prevent a worse one from happening. Moral idealists cannot understand or accept this reality, but again, they have the privilege of being spared from having to understand that because of the hard decisions made by men who do understand it. And here it's important to remind ourselves that good deeds cancel bad deeds.

Bad deeds do not cancel good ones. You will meet Allah with every good deed you have ever done, but only with those bad deeds which your good deeds have not been sufficient to negate. Now leaders of states operate on a scale far beyond most people in terms of both their good and bad deeds and it would be naive to think that the good they achieve for their people did not come at a cost and did not cause the suffering of some or even many. They will have wronged and they will have hurt more people by their decisions and their policies than most of us interact with in our lifetimes. But if they also achieve long term good and benefit to their people, it will also be far beyond anything we can do in a lifetime of good deeds, and Allah will count it all.

The dua of all of those that they may have wronged will be heard, but the safety, the prosperity, and the betterment of the lives they improved will also be seen. And if the wrongs that they committed or tolerated as a necessary evil on the path to a greater long term good, it seems likely to me that they may be forgiven. I do not know, however, if an idealistic leader who fails to face the realities of the world and who imagines that his moral purity should be sufficient to defeat his nation's enemies and that his personal goodness is enough as a political strategy for victory. And because of this, his nation is inevitably subjugated by those practicing realpolitik. I don't know if this delusional and negligent approach can be forgiven.