Is Islamic Cybernetics Possible

Inevitable Cybernetic Governance

Towards the end of my expansion on the Hallaqian Problem and Iqballian Cypherpunk EthicsI was began to privately wonder whether there was a possibility for an authentically grounded framework of cybernetic governance within an Islamic ethic. Not just within the bounds of Islamicate Sovereignty or Cybernetics By Muslims but a cybernetic philosophy fused with the ethos of Quranic Revelation and Prophetic example?

Cybernetic governance within certain Muslim-majority countries is already unfolding and is a practical reality, there is little now that can be done to avert that course. Gulf Futurism with GCC city-states are already moving towards this with rapid digitalization of State infrastructure and bureaucracy. The Saudis are embarking on a renewed period of State formation under MBS that consciously rejects what came before it and in many ways embraces a certain type of accelerationist ethic that has sadly put it on a collision course with voices of religious and scholarly conscience in the country. More and more countries within the Islamicate are moving towards (albeit rudimentary) forms of centralised digital citizenship. Centralised digital banking currencies are all but assured with little by the way of Islamically conscious opposition to such instruments. This is unsurprising given how both the Islamic Secular and the fiqh minded ulema largely accepted the fiat standard, central banking infrastructure and other financial orthodoxies in a Pax Americana world^[1]

Fiqh and Privacy

When reviewing the contemporary scholarship and fiqh output it is not clear whether from fiqhi point of view there is open and unambiguous support for the cypherpunk ethic. The relative lack and dearth of scholarly commentary and literature on the issue of data sovereignty, privacy laws in general and the relationship of technological infrastructure vis a vis the State suggests that this is a topic that has little concern for the ulema. In the English language for instance, there is just one paper I found that explicitly tackles the problem with some degree of depth^[2]. There is also however an interesting paper trying to chart how early Sunni jurists tried to delineate a distinct private sphere for the individual which is a more archaeological exercise rather than a polemical one.

Even then the paper makes several contentious assumptions namely that Sharia priorities align nicely with Rawlsian democratic ones and that Muslim jurists should find it self-evident that democratic constitutional norms align smoothly with those of traditional jurists and their methodologies. The flaw with this particular type of methodology is couching the rationale of privacy in an alien political framework rather than trying to establish whether there can be a fiqhi case for it?

I remain unconvinced as of now that fiqh alone can provide the foundations for such a priority.

At present it is obvious that the surveillance architecture of the American Deep State is an anathema to Muslims, particularly those who dissent from liberal and progressive orthodoxies. Yet, the crux of this question is whether opposition to such an arrangement stems from the fact that our adversaries wield it? Would Muslims be more blasé if a competent Muslim political elite with legitimacy and demonstrable competency would create a parallel version of a CIA Deep State or a Cybernetic State with Chinese characteristics?

With legitimate Islamic authority (whatever that looks like, difficult to say at present) would believers happily part with their data and sensitive information if it was for the good of a larger Islamic political project? I think most Muslims would happily make that trade and I'm not sure it is the right one. The urgency of such a scenario would stem from the argument that Muslims have largely failed to respond to the challenge of high modernist state formation of the 20th century with its emphasis on war and industrialization. It follows, that in the 21st century where data is the new oil and he who has the most data at his disposal is the true Sovereign that the formation of a cybernetic state to compete with emerging technonationalist blocs (American Empire, China etc) assumes a sort of religious duty. At least that is how I would frame the foundations of such an argument.

Closing Thoughts

My own sympathies lie with the encryption maximalists - The Cypherpunks - but I wonder if such foundations could sustain the creation of a transnational imperial civilizational alternative to American Empire and the Chinese Cybernetic State. Perhaps like most developments in Islamic political history, men will act out of necessity and as usual ulema will provide ad/post-hoc justifications to grant legitimacy to a project that they will recognize is essential to the longevity and survival of an Islamic polity. Increasingly I'm coming to the view that the fuqaha provided after-the-fact rationalisations and religious legitimization to political projects and movements that began with Islamic impulses (see Jackson's Islamic Secular) but required fiqh to provide the guardrails, the limits and feedback mechanism. In such a scheme, fiqh is not the site of genesis - it is not the arena where new political technologies are generated but rather acts as the "brakes" to the kinetic energy of the Islamic Secular.

This leads to a wider discussion about fiqh maximalism v minimalism and larger questions about the role it has towards generating new political forms. I'm open to changing my mind about this, but I think the reason Islamic modernism failed to generate sustainable political forms was because it was unduly obsessed with chasing fiqh legitimacy, not understanding that political ideals come from the Islamic Secular and are granted fiqh legitimacy once there is a pragmatic, testable measure of success.

Is Islamic Cybernetics Possible

Inevitable Cybernetic Governance

Fiqh and Privacy

Closing Thoughts

Footnotes

Further Reading: