Wael Hallaq's The Impossible State: An Informal Review

I read so many books that I enjoy that sometimes I wonder, or worry, whether I just accept whatever I read. Thankfully, I’ve had critical reactions to certain books for which I thought I would have at-least-sort-of positive reactions (Debt: The First 5,000 Years, The Conquest of Bread, Transgender Warriors) and positive reactions to books for which I thought I would have a negative reaction (Quotations from Mao Zedong). So, at least even if my little gray cells are lacking, they at least don’t go out of their way to confirm what biases they have! That’s good. I hope.

I’ve been interested lately (for a while?) in the interactions between political movements and religious self-narration, for lack of a better word. It seems like the emergence of new politics always accompanies the mass embrace of a new religion. Though, it’s the other way around, isn’t it? The new religion serves as the ideological form of material interests underlining the political movement and—like how such a new society is “in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society” (Gotha Critique)—that new religion derives much of its form and content from its predecessor and its own social circumstances. We see Catholicism with the rise of feudal Europe, Protestantism with the rise of early capitalism, Black Christianity with the civil rights movement, Islamism in the Middle East and North Africa. You would probably also be right to interpret “the immortal science” as having a religious-ideological function for the Russian and Chinese revolutions, as much as Marxism (besides being a framework of historical materialist analysis) provides the paradigmatic shift necessary to dictate a new vision of society that rejects the old. We can identify this function with Lacan’s formula for analysis, which he also identifies with gospel and revolution—very Benjaminian.

I tend to read books in bursts, so Wael Hallaq’s The Impossible State: Islam, Politics, and Modernity’s Moral Predicament has been at the top of my desk stack for a couple months. I was excited to pick it up because Islamism is the predominant ideology of anti-imperialism in MENA, and it is far from being a monolith. It seems like there’s a right wing of theocratic fascists who strive for a standard nation-state formation (many such cases; that's just the M.O. of nation-states), and a left wing that we might as well characterize as Maoism with Islamic characteristics. You’d think the book is about the latter, seeing the extent to which Hallaq cites Marx and Benjamin and Foucault, and even says things like the below passage that sounds like a restatement of Mao’s “On Contradiction” (Chapter 1):

If a domain becomes central, [quoting Carl Schmitt] “then the problems of other domains are solved in terms of the central domain—they are considered secondary problems, whose solution follows as a matter of course only if the problems of the central domain are solved.” […] While it is true that the problems in the central domain acquire priority and subordinate the other domains to these priorities, all these domains function within a system of knowledge that shapes the very priorities within the peripheral domains themselves.

The book, however, is actually about the structural incompatibility between Sharia (or Islamic governance) and the modern state form, contrary to many Islamists who purport to take Sharia as their basis for their own state formation. This is a contradiction of terms, Hallaq says, because the state is a highly alienated, bureaucratic organization that refers to its own territorial sovereignty to justify its executive functions and the social relations they maintain (which are themselves highly abstract and alienated). In contrast, Sharia is non-territorial, defers to the sovereignty of God, and relies upon a highly personal social matrix whose members directly relate and empathize with each other—and those social and material conditions do not exist in modernity because we exist in a globalized world where (abstract) capitalist relations are generalized. Like Marx and Engels say, “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned”—

Sharia & History

—but what about the last part of that quote? “[…] and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.” Hallaq would seem to implicitly disagree with Marx on this point. I noticed in the first chapter when he outlined the conditions of modernity that make Sharia impossible, he says: “The second, more secure counterclaim, is of the modern fragmentation—within a system of state capitalism—of what were once organic and familial social structures. There is no denying that the collapse of the traditional family and community has in part created the disenchanted, fragmented, and narcissistic individual, the subject of commentary by so many a modern thinker, sociologist, psychoanalyst, and philosopher alike. This collapse is integral to the modern project and is one that defines it in fundamental ways.” Woah!!! That was the point at which I told myself to treat that as a caveat of the text and keep an open mind, as you can tell from the above, it’s still worth reading!

However, this vantage informs Hallaq’s perspective on Sharia in general. He’s correct that to accuse him of being nostalgic is to elevate modernity and its implications to the proper culmination of a progressive historical narrative. Following Marx, we should instead strive for “ruthless criticism of all that exists, ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives at and in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be.” Modernity in this context should be the primary target of such critique, but we shouldn’t let alternative paradigms go off the hook by virtue of not being modern. Hallaq says that no society is perfect and each one has its particular, incidental maladies. Shouldn’t we take the stronger Hegelian position that each civilization contains the seed of its own destruction? Marx advances past Hegel for performing an immanent critique of modernity (read: capitalism) which Hegel, like Hallaq says, had only really applied to prior and other civilizations. Maybe the question shouldn’t be what was lost from the transition between to modernity from premodernity (as exemplified through Sharia), and whether it was good or bad, but why such a transition took place at all.

Hallaq’s utopian, if not nostalgic, view of Sharia permeates the book. He says: “If God prefers one member over another, it would not be by virtue of belonging to a more powerful class or having a particular skin color but rather by the virtue of the quality of his or her belief.” Doesn’t that make a lot of assumptions about whether the ideology of Islamic society truly reflects, or constitutes, its reality? Don’t sex, race, and class all inform one’s position in the social matrix even if before God they are equal (which, in the case of sex, is false by any of the Abrahamic canons—albeit not often considered because women have been historically excluded from formal society in general)? Although I would say that it compares the gritty reality of the modern state versus the ideal form of Islamic governance, even the former is superficial, focusing on certain content-forms and contradictions intrinsic to the state’s structure but not their creation or context (except to the extent that the state is self-serving). Plus, if what distinguishes premodern governance from the modern state is its deference to God rather than reference to itself, what good is that distinction when God is the reflection of its own social matrix?

Hallaq continues: “[…] the Community, the common social world, organically [emphasize his] produced its own legal functions that, in totality, made up the Islamic legal system.” Sharia is the organic product of a so-called common society? Is such a society, presumably defined by its constituent relations, also organic? This poses more questions than it answers, by taking for granted the presuppositions of Sharia as being the will of God who “is the sovereign because he literally owns everything. Human ownership of any kind, including the absolutely unencumbered ownership of property, is merely metaphorical and unreal”—what does “unreal” even mean, practically?! Even under capitalism we are all consciously aware that property is a legal fiction, but property resides specifically in the “metaphorical”, “unreal”, or symbolic dimension in which all relations exist. Is modernism the historically necessary ideology of a sufficiently complex society too alienated for its divine britches? Isn’t it notable that Adam Smith’s invisible hand was lifted directly from Islamic economic theory, sharing the same sentiment that concrete relations emanate from abstract forces beyond an individual’s control yet intrinsic to their nature (as Sharia is for God, so is Liberalism for Economy)?

For me, Hallaq seemed to prove the opposite thesis he argues: rather than there being a strict paradigmatic shift between modernity and premodernity, especially in the Islamic world, there is actually historical, social, and political continuity. “The Muslim judiciary therefore was not in the service of applying a law determined by the dominant powers of a state or a peremptory ruler but rather of safeguarding a Sharia law whose primary concern was the regulation, on moral grounds, of social and economic relations.” My first thought reading this was of Michael Heinrich’s reconstruction of Marx’s theory of the state, in which the state is not biased towards capitalists per se but towards the preservation of national economy. Which is all to say: how does this distinguish Sharia at all? Moreover, is Sharia’s regulation of society on moral grounds, or was Islamic morality the justification for the relations regulated by Sharia? And what of those relations?!

This isn’t to say I don’t there’s no inspiration to draw from Islamic governance during its heyday. Hallaq makes a great case for its pluralistic and pro-social structures, and that Sharia was only possible in its particular social context and thus is impossible in modernity (which especially renders direct relations with people obsolete, while Sharia needs direct and empathetic relations to ‘work’). However, there’s a certain approach worth flipping on its head. Hallaq points out that the modern state structure is one that can support all kinds of content, but cannot the same content also occupy various kinds of forms? This is true for modern social relations, capitalism and colonialism, which incubated in premodern societies before the emergence of liberalism as the ruling ideology. Bordiga interprets the American Revolution not as a bourgeois revolution at all, but as an inter-bourgeois factional war. Wallerstein goes further and argues that capitalism in itself was embraced by the ruling families of Europe while feudal economic-political structures were collapsing, such that—despite a drastic paradigmatic shift in relations, from the emancipation of serfs to the closure of the commons to the generalization of wage labor—the same families retained political power during and after the transition. There were similar trends in European colonization, like when the British Empire appropriated (or even revived) the Hindi caste system to more effectively rule over them. The meta-relationships between government, class, sex, race, and other social relations seem too multi-various and polymorphic to reduce one (or many) to the mere content of another as its structure.

Politics & Class

This section is short and inconsequential. There's something that annoying western chauvinists do when talking about Athens or some other bastion of western civilization (I think only particularly brave ones identify Rome in this way). Let's see if you can guess what. The formal structure of the Athenian polis is made up of male citizens, descended from other Athenian citizens, whose suffrage is granted by military training. Given that they're male, you might guess that the percent of Athenian denizens who could vote is about 50% or slightly less. If you guessed this, however, you'd be wrong. Less than 20% of denizens were fully-fledged citizens in this way, because about half of the total population was enslaved (either due to being in debt, having been captured in war, or having been imported from the Black Sea). Without slavery, the polis could not support its supposedly egalitarian society of cash-crop farmers. That's not even to mention the very real patriarchal relations imposed on Athenian women, who were not just excluded from society but subject to the kyrios (including being made to perform both domestic and cottage labor). Maybe 20% is not a bad ratio of ruling class members to total population, and I think we have a similar makeup on a global scale right now, but that's not exactly aspirational—unless you're a fucking RETVRN freak.

I bring this up because I don't want to criticize Hallaq for having similar tendencies when western chauvinists are more prominent and consequential in our "world" ... but he does have similar tendencies. Even ignoring the classical sexism which we take for granted from premodern societies (where women are subject to property relations and household production of goods for use and exchange by men), the egalitarian fraternity of the classical Ummah relies upon—Hallaq says—slave soldiers who settled political disputes on Muslims' behalf. This passage is interesting, so I'll quote it at length (Chapter 4):

Executive sultanism, effectively the military branch, depended on slave-soldiers whose lives and careers were consecrated to the business of war and violence. These soldiers were purchased or snatched from their families; trained according to individual capability as foot soldiers, cavalry, military scribes, or commanders; and spent their lives in the service of the sultan as paid employees (through stipends, land allocation, etc.). [Marcia: This is typical of slavery in the Mediterranean.] They also generally lived apart from the civil population, leading a different lifestyle, and many did not even speak the local language. On the other hand, the ordinary Muslim normally did not engage in war, and the only venue by which he [!] was permitted by the Sharia to do so was through jihad.

The Sharia juristic works, long and short, always insisted on the distinction between two types of jihad (commonly translated as “holy war”): mandatory and optional. […] However, in the conception of the Sharia, not every war or battle was one of jihad. Since Muslim sultans and kings warred on each other more often than they did on non-Muslims, many wars and battles never qualified as jihad, and they remained the business of these sultans, kings, and their slave-soldiers. […] But when the war was launched on non-Muslims as an offensive act, those who could and wanted to join might do so, bringing with them their own weapons. The option to withdraw from the jihad campaign remained valid until the moment the call for battle was announced—but not after, for once preparation for battle was initiated, the jihadist was bound to stay and fight.

However, if jihad is defensive—defined as a situation in which non-Muslim armies conquer or attempt to conquer Muslim populations (not just vacant land)—then it becomes an individual duty. The duty does not extend to all Muslims (who must be male and of age) within the dynastic area but only to those living close by the threatened area. Underlying this conception of jihad—especially after the eighth century—is always the tacit assumption that the mainstay and core military forces are not the civilians who join the jihad effort but the ranks of the slave-soldiers in the paid service of executive sultanism. […]

Moreover, if Muslims were to fight every power who transgressed against them and every enemy who has remitted Muslims into bondage, then “we [Muslims] will be preoccupied by fighting all of our lives, and will inevitably neglect our worldly affairs. This is why there is consensus among Muslims throughout [the centuries] that such [an endeavor] will not be pursued … and consensus is the most evincive of legal proofs.”

Two final proofs must be made: First, jihad is not a state law but a morally anchored set of prescriptions whose violation is a matter of conscience, and second, even when jihad is deemed obligatory on every adult male Muslim, the obligation remains a moral one, and thus there is no prescribed earthly punishment for refusal to join the war effort, except for the threat of losing credit in the Hereafter. This is a far cry from the modern state’s punitive measures intended for those who refuse conscription, not to mention deserters.

Hallaq spent much of the chapter before this talking about how the modern state demands sacrifice from its citizens by reference to its own sovereignty, and that this is clearly unfair and coercive. However, like he says, the conscientious nature of jihad (and war in general) for Muslims depended upon a steady supply of non-Muslim slave-soldiers for whom participation in war was neither moral nor optional. This was great for classical Muslims! But not so great for the others. It bothered me that Hallaq glossed over the relationship between Sharia and slavery throughout this passage, praising the moral superiority of Sharia for Muslims but not what implications this had for those forcibly exempt.

Zooming out from this book in particular, I think this general tendency to depoliticize a (subset of) society comes out of the higher classes' desire to neutralize or even disavow their own material power over others. I think it's similar to how some Republican guys will identify themselves as politically moderate on dating apps because, with women being more sex-conscious lately, they know they're not getting any ass otherwise. Or, more generally, how hegemonic politics are discursively neutral while non-hegemonic politics are 'political' or even 'radical' (I think people like to cite Mark Fisher on this and, rest in peace, but he's just okay I think). In this particular case, Hallaq constantly praises the non-political orientation of Sharia, in contrast to modern politics which creates an in-group distinction and selectively applies laws on the basis of one's citizenship. I appreciate the concept of the Church or the Ummah for being theoretically universal but, historically, those communities were also exclusive, political, and oppressive. These communities differ from the specific form of the nation-state for being selective by identity (or "religion") rather than by territory necessarily, but it's hard not to also understand them as organs of domination by one class over other classes (for a broad definition of class, inclusive of aggregate relations on a societal scale). I just fully disagree with Hallaq here, but less with him specifically than with this line of thinking in general.

Society & Nature

I’m not upset to have read The Impossible State compared to the other books I mentioned earlier. It’s a good survey of Islamic governance and a fine comparison of Sharia with modern state ideology. I just think it lacks perspective that no one puts better than our very first Madame President-to-be Kamala Harris: “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.” Did you know that both of her parents are Marxists? They’re also divorced. Queen of family abolition! Anyway. There’s a dangerous line you tread when you start identifying relations as natural or organic, like the family. Humans are both non-natural and natural (dialectics!). On one hand, relations aren't ex nihilo and are the product of historical developments resulting from material conditions. On the other hand, those developments per se are natural because humans are no more exceptional than any other living or non-living thing, and they don’t have conscious control over their circumstances or development. We have all seen capitalism been naturalized as a fact of human society, and I don’t think the right response is to naturalize an alternative social paradigm (which even some communists do by reference to the “primitive communism” of hunter-gatherers).

This same criticism can be levied towards Paul, exposing a contradiction central to the Christian canon and emblematic of Abrahamic monotheism in general. I say this while often dickriding Paul, so we can treat this as a struggle session of sorts. Hallaq endorses what one might call a strong moral naturalism, that morality not only mirrors nature, but nature rewards the moral subject with blessings in turn:

The laws of nature are designed to serve the promotion of good in, as well as the elimination of evil from, this world: good-doers are blessed with God’s bounties, which range from abundantly productive land—naturally irrigated—to pleasant living and healthy and happy families and children. […] The fire of Hell is the perfected equivalent of storms and earthquakes that destroyed hopeless ‘nations’, while Paradise represents the actualized supreme ideal of good earthly living. The laws of nature are thus everywhere, operative both in this life and in the hereafter […] But whatever the laws of nature may be, they are ultimately God’s laws that He designed and installed with a view towards accomplishing a moral purpose in the world.

Paul endorses, in contrast, a weak moral naturalism. The natural world, a distinct domain from the social world, reveals to those who observe it the real qualities of God and a natural lifestyle (Romans 1):

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Paul defers to natural law to rationalize a morality that, admittedly, was counter-cultural relative to Hellenistic and Jewish norms at the time. This includes reprimanding homosexuality as a rejection of "natural relations" (not quite), and taking women's long hair as evidence that they—and not men—should wear veils while praying (because, obviously, men's hair doesn't grow past their ears). Reality aside, although Paul is often labeled as a Stoic, I read a bit of Epicurean thought here: a society's difference from (supposed) nature is a heuristic for its proclivity for immortality and resulting self-destruction. However, an individual who seeks harmony with nature is punished by their immoral society which demands immorality from its members in order to function (2 Corinthians 4):

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you. […] Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

This is where Paul diverges significantly from Hallaq. Although nature reflects God's intention for humanity (debatable!), there is no extrinsic reward for morality from society or even nature because both are corrupted by the "god of this age" and work specifically to punish moral living; the most one can hope for is an inward sense of peace and an eternal afterlife of relief from suffering (also very Epicurean despite the whole afterlife thing!). One could imagine how this has strange implications for the institutional Church that appropriated Paul's work, but let's stay on topic. The difference between Paul's moral theory and that of the Torah or Sharia is that the latter are concerned with the reproduction and regulation of social relations—as per Hallaq—whereas Paul, like the prophets of the later Tanakh, executes a critique of his society. Social reproduction and social critique are structurally opposed discourses, and this informs how each discourse frames and perceives its object. The moment that the Church transformed into a social institution was the moment at which its concerns entirely shifted, resulting in authors like pseudo-Paul who are suddenly very interested in anti-female sexual politics and family structures. From what I understand, the Quran undergoes a similar shift when Muhammad (PBUH) is forced from Mecca to Medina, but I don't want to speak out my ass.

The problem is that Paul doesn't go far enough. Moralism aside, his deference to nature as an expression of God denies something both readily apparent and also attested by other canonical scripture: nature does not reflect God's law, either because it is corrupted by the omnipresence of sin (do gay penguins go to hell?) or because it simply doesn't care (yippee!). The deservedly disgraced philosopher Slavoj Žižek characterizes the Book of Job, canonical to Jews and Christians, as an almost modernist work that criticizes God for his complicity in suffering—although it is usually received by Christians, and was summarized by the Quran, as a moral parable of patience in suffering and faithfulness in God. The Book of Job is a story within a story: the frame narrative begins with the Adversary (Satan) challenging God in Heaven's court (Job 1):

Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before YHVH, and Satan also came among them. YHVH said to Satan, “From where have you come?” Satan answered YHVH and said, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.” And YHVH said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?” Then Satan answered YHVH and said, “Does Job fear God for no reason? Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.” And YHVH said to Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand.” So Satan went out from the presence of YHVH.

Satan afflicts Job (with God's permission) with sores... but only after God destroys Job's home and kills all his children. Teamwork makes the dream work! Job craves death and wishes he was stillborn, and his wife tries to convince him to curse God so he can finally die. Meanwhile, three of Job's friends attempt to convince him that his suffering is the result of some wrongdoing on his part, since God being righteous would never punish the righteous. Why doesn't Job just repent? The frame narrative is insistent about Job not cursing God, but the core text (which predates the frame narrative) tells a more interesting tale: Job insists upon his righteousness, blames God alone for his undeserved suffering, and demands from God a reason for his oppression (Job 9–10):

God will not turn back his anger;
beneath him bowed the helpers of Rahab.
How then can I answer him,
choosing my words with him?
Though I am in the right, I cannot answer him;
I must appeal for mercy to my accuser.
If I summoned him and he answered me,
I would not believe that he was listening to my voice.
For he crushes me with a tempest
and multiplies my wounds without cause;
he will not let me get my breath,
but fills me with bitterness.
If it is a contest of strength, behold, he is mighty!
If it is a matter of justice, who can summon him?
Though I am in the right, my own mouth would condemn me;
though I am blameless, he would prove me perverse.
I am blameless; I regard not myself;
I loathe my life.
It is all one; therefore I say,
‘He destroys both the blameless and the wicked.’
When disaster brings sudden death,
he mocks at the calamity of the innocent.
The earth is given into the hand of the wicked;
[...]
I loathe my life;
I will give free utterance to my complaint;
I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.
I will say to God, Do not condemn me;
let me know why you contend against me.
Does it seem good to you to oppress,
to despise the work of your hands
and favor the designs of the wicked?
Have you eyes of flesh?
Do you see as man sees?
Are your days as the days of man,
or your years as a man's years,
that you seek out my iniquity
and search for my sin,
although you know that I am not guilty,
and there is none to deliver out of your hand?
Your hands fashioned and made me,
and now you have destroyed me altogether.
Remember that you have made me like clay;
and will you return me to the dust?
Did you not pour me out like milk
and curdle me like cheese?
You clothed me with skin and flesh,
and knit me together with bones and sinews.
You have granted me life and steadfast love,
and your care has preserved my spirit.
Yet these things you hid in your heart;
I know that this was your purpose.
If I sin, you watch me
and do not acquit me of my iniquity.
If I am guilty, woe to me!
If I am in the right, I cannot lift up my head,
for I am filled with disgrace
and look on my affliction.
And were my head lifted up, you would hunt me like a lion
and again work wonders against me.
You renew your witnesses against me
and increase your vexation toward me;
you bring fresh troops against me.
he covers the faces of its judges—if it is not he, who then is it?

Job argues with his ex-friends ("theologians", as Žižek refers to them) for many, many chapters and the discourse escalates. The theologians continue to insist upon Job's wickedness, that he must deserve even worse than what God has levied so far. Job however is firm that he deserves none of his suffering, and not only does God allow the righteous to suffer, but he also allows the wicked to prosper. All of the theologians' justifications for suffering are wrong by any observation of the real world, and (Job says) God needs to answer for his treatment of Job or at least show mercy by letting him die. He refuses to repent because he refuses to speak falsehood, and all he has left is his own integrity. The frame story interrupts with a fifth speaker who rebukes the theologians and encourages Job to have faith in God's righteousness (because God would do no wrong), but the actual story continues when God finally answers Job from the whirlwind:

Dress for action like a man;
I will question you, and you make it known to me.
Will you even put me in the wrong?
Will you condemn me that you may be in the right?
Have you an arm like God,
and can you thunder with a voice like his?
Adorn yourself with majesty and dignity;
clothe yourself with glory and splendor.
Pour out the overflowings of your anger,
and look on everyone who is proud and abase him.
Look on everyone who is proud and bring him low
and tread down the wicked where they stand.
Hide them all in the dust together;
bind their faces in the world below.
Then will I also acknowledge to you
that your own right hand can save you.

There's three chapters of God telling Job how totally fucked the cosmos is, and that Job has no right to demand an answer for the suffering he faces as an individual. This is the only answer with which Job is satisfied in the end:

I know that you can do all things,
and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’
Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.
‘Hear, and I will speak;
I will question you, and you make it known to me.’
I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,
but now my eye sees you;
therefore I despise myself,
and repent in dust and ashes.

Was that fucked up or what? The frame story concludes with God punishing the bad friends and returning Job's fortune, but that's a deeply dishonest (and obviously tacked-on) ending to a story about the arbitrary nature of suffering and God's unwillingness to tilt fate for either the righteous or the wicked. The Gospel of Luke from the New Testament, as much as I'm a hater of Luke–Acts for its pro-Romanism, offers a more succinct description of this perspective (Luke 13):

There were some present at that very time who told [Jesus] about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

This, to me, is a more effective ethical framework than Paul or Hallaq's. We should not expect nature to reflect God's will because the cosmos is amoral and God himself will not interfere with nature, or even human matters, to fulfill moral ends. The impetus is on believers to repent and bring about the Kingdom of Heaven, because (frankly) God is not going to do it for them and the whole universe is set against them.

Conclusion

Sounds familiar, huh? Although Marxism is purportedly a "scientific" framework for historical analysis, it falls short of its supposed aim of empowering workers to construct communism (how about those material conditions?), leading Lenin and Mao and others to veer into polisci about aligning individual desires with collective interests. The questions are age-old now. Is the "situation" not ripe yet, or does the proletariat (etc.) just not want it badly enough? As per Mao and the passage from Hallaq at the beginning of this post, it seems like the economic dimension of capitalism per se is a derivative domain of imperialism (and, if we take Wallerstein's word, it always has been). There are people whose situation is ripe, who want it badly enough. God (so to speak) moves with them right now, and history culminates with them.

"Is this bitch just a full-on Third Worldist now?" "Left-Hegelian alert!" What is it that us queers say? "I don't like labels." Many of the most active and productive groups around the world identify as Maoist. However, I think it would be sort of dishonest to credit Maoism per se for their organization or progress. Maoism is just the thought-paradigm (dare I say... ideology?) which these organizations have found most applicable to articulate their circumstances and guide their actions. I think the same can be said for Left Islamism. Hallaq is totally correct that the modern world has rendered classical Sharia impossible because modern society is too alienated from itself and hostile towards direct (traditional) relationships. Good! The plus side is that I think modernity—i.e., the capitalist world system—generates the conditions necessary for a truly egalitarian and sustainable society, by upheaving traditional relations and putting us face to face with the violent force of classed history hitherto. It'll be this time. Surely!

Maybe we'll get the libertaté, egalitaté, fraternitaté promised by the French Revolution (no love for sororité, apparently), like Marx suggested. Or maybe we'll get the Ummah... Two!!! Either way, one can hope that the ideological rationales for various historical societies might one day be fully and actually realized. One... can... hope...

Anyway. I wrote this whole damn thing because of that book! I think definitely worth the read and reflection.