Quoting from an article titled Why Muslim Fundamentalists Should Embrace Voluntaryist Anarchy by Davi Barker:
"I want to be clear from the outset what I mean by “fundamentalists.” I’m not talking about muslims engaged in suicide bombing, plane hijacking, church burning, cartoonist murdering or teddy bear rioting. Those people have departed from any semblance of what I can call islam. So, for the sake of distinction making let’s call them “extremists.” I’m talking about a rigorously literal and conservative interpretation of islam which includes movements to establish a new Caliphate and an emphasis on end times prophecies. These are the type of fundamentalists that join islamic political parties, or separatist movements. And despite what the fear mongers pretend, very few of these fundamentalists have any interest in imposing islamic law on America. They’re far more concerned with countries like Saudi Arabia, which they don’t view as legitimate in any sense. At most they’d like America to stop thwarting their efforts in their own lands.
Putting all that aside, to explain why muslim fundamentalists should embrace voluntaryist anarchy we’ve got to start with some basic review of these two areas of islamic scholarship, the Caliphate and end times prophecies. This argument is primarily written for the fundamentalists themselves, but I’ll try to explain it in terms accessible to a general audience.
Islam attributes sovereignty to God and God alone, and places mankind as vicegerents of God’s sovereignty on Earth. The secular State attributes sovereignty to itself, and makes all other law subservient to its law. Islamic fundamentalists compare this to the idolatry of Pharaoh in the time of Moses, and they argue that so long as they must acquiesce to the sovereignty of the State they cannot be free to worship God as the lone sovereign. In order to be a proper servant of God they must be free from all political slavery. And so, they argue, they must establish an Islamic State built on three basic foundations: The ruler is a vicegerent of God, a Khalifahin Arabic; the law of the land is divine law, Shariah in Arabic and; sovereignty belongs to God alone, and not to the State.
While I am in agreement with the position that the sovereignty of the State is a kind of idolatry and political slavery, I do not believe that draping islamic paraphernalia over the existing model of political slavery magically solves the problem of political slavery. Most Islamic movements aim to achieve this ideal Caliphate by forming political parties and working within the existing political systems in their countries. But this strategy requires acquiescing to the sovereignty of the existing State, which they regard as idolatry. They also presume that because prophet Muhammad and the Caliphs of the past occupied positions of leadership that they constituted an “Islamic State” while I would argue that the foundations on which Muhammad built the social order in Medina did not constitute a “State” by modern definitions, and misunderstanding this distinction is a huge contributing factor to the failure of these movements.
Western civilization saw the need for pluralism after suffering the predation of a medieval Church with a monopoly on law. So, taking the monopoly away from the Church and giving it to the State was fair seeming. Nationalism replaced faith as the unifying principle of secular society, but now we see Western civilization suffering the predation of secular States with regional monopolies on law.
The problem is monopoly. Anywhere you find a monopoly you find power used to oppress the powerless. You cannot protect pluralism by creating a State, because the very definition of a “State” is a regional monopoly on coercive violence.
In Medina under the leadership of the prophet Muhammad pluralism was accomplished differently. The social order accommodated a wide diversity of tribes, many of which were non muslims, that were afforded complete self determination. So, the muslims were under the leadership of prophet Muhammad, but the Jewish and pagan tribes of Medina were respected as independent units of society. They were free to choose their own leaders, to practice their own religion, to form their own judiciaries, and to live by their own law, not islamic law. In this way no institution claimed sovereignty over others, and no theological monopoly existed either.
During his life all Muhammad’s followers consented to his leadership voluntarily and individually, face to face. He never claimed the authority to legislate over people who did not consent. Most muslims will say that Muhammad’s authority as a leader came from God, which is a fine answer for a muslim, but not for the Jews and Pagans of Medina. In Medina’s social order authority was derived from an oath, Bayah in Arabic. This oath was an explicit voluntary arrangement, not a coercive one. It was an agreement between individuals outlining mutual rights and responsibilities, not arbitrary authority to enforce sociopolitical preferences through violence.
This is why I say no State existed in Medina. The independent tribes negotiated a covenant, Mithaq in Arabic, which was the first written constitution in history. Prophet Muhammad never claimed that the Quran was their constitution, as modern islamic States do. The Mithaq outlined a mutual protection pact to defend one another from outside attacks, a non aggression pact to prohibit attacks from within, and a system of arbitration, to impartially settle disputes between tribes. In this way every community was free to regard God as sovereign without any intermediary, and free to live according to their conception of Law without imposing it on others. But none of these provisions constituted a violent monopoly, and therefore the Mithaq did not constitute a State."
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