The Islamic Declaration () is an essay written by Alija Izetbegović (1925–2003), republished in 1990 in Sarajevo, SR Bosnia and Herzegovina, SFR Yugoslavia. It presents his views on Islam and modernization. The treatise attempts to reconcile Western-style progress with Islamic tradition and issues a call for "Islamic renewal". The work was later used against Izetbegović and other pan-Islamists in a 1983 trial in Sarajevo, which resulted in him being sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment. He was released after two years.
The declaration remains a source of controversy. Primarily, the Serbs, but overall, the Serbian and Croatian leaderships during the breakup of Yugoslavia, accused Izetbegović and his Party of Democratic Action (SDA) of Islamic fundamentalism and seeking to establish an Islamic state.
Overview
The essay Islamic Declaration is described by John V. A. Fine as a 'theoretical' work on the question on whether Islam and an Islamic state could exist in a modern world, and by Kjell Magnusson as "in terms of genre ... a religious and moral-political essay ... discusses the predicament of Islam and Muslims in the contemporary world". Banac describes it as trying to conciliate Western-style progress with Islamic tradition.
Standpoints
No modernization without roots in the Qur'an
The main idea is that the Qur'an allows modernization, but that it sets limits. To this end Izetbegović cited Atatürk's Turkey as a negative example of loss of Islamic roots, ending in economic stagnation, and Japan as a positive example, in which retaining most of its own culture proved compatible with modernization and economic growth.
Clerics and modernists
The theses considers the "Islamic renewal" to be blocked by two forces, the "clerics" and the "modernists". Ulama, the class of learned scholars represent a degenerate Islam, which has turned religion into form without content, while modernist intellectuals try to popularise Westernised culture which is foreign to Islam and the intimate feelings of the broad masses. The Muslim masses therefore, lack the leaders and ideas which would awaken them from their lethargy, and there is a tragic distinction between the intelligentsia and ordinary people. It sees the need for a new brand of Muslim intellectuals, reborn in their own tradition.
The Islamic order
Alija describes his envisioned Islamic order thus:
To the question, "What is a Muslim society?" our answer is a community made up of Muslims, and we consider that this answer says it all, or nearly so. The meaning of this definition is that there is no institutional, social or legal system that can exist separately from people who are its actors, of which we could say, "This is an Islamic system." No system is Islamic or Islamic per se. It is only so based on the people who make it.
He views the Islamic movement as moral rather than political, and defines it is an ideological avant-garde:
Only individuals who have been tested and trained, gathered together in a sound, homogeneous organization, can win the struggle for the Islamic order and the complete reconstruction of Islamic society. This organization bears no resemblance to a political party from the arsenal of a Western democracy; it is a movement founded on Islamic ideology, with clear criteria of moral and ideological belonging.
Islamic government
Izetbegović wrote that an Islamic government is not possible except in the context of an Islamic society, which can exist only when the absolute majority of the population is constituted by sincere and practicing Muslims. On this basis, it is impossible to theorize an Islamic government in Bosnia where Muslims, even only by name, are a minority.The Islamic order can be realized only in the nations in which Muslims represent the majority of the population. Without this social premise, the Islamic order fall to be mere power (for the lack of the second element, the Islamic society) and can revert to tyranny.
One of the passages cited by critics J. Millard Burr and Robert O. Collins against Alija is the passage "Islamic movement must and start taking power as soon as it is morally and numerically strong enough to do so". Clinton Bennett however states that they do not the quote the passage on the same page that says "Islamic rebirth is first a revolution in education and only then in politics" or the passage on page 49 "the Islamic order can only be established in countries where Muslims represent the majority of the population" since "history does not relate any true revolution which came from power...all begin in education and meant in essence a moral summons" (page 53).