Failed States in the Muslim World: A Constitutional and International Relations Perspective

In the same way that it is impossible to conceive the State without its constituent elements (i.e. territory, population, government) it is equally unimaginable to consider contemporary statehood in isolation of the wishes and well-being of the governed. When the primary function of the State ceases to coincide with the welfare of its people it has in some significant manner failed to fulfil the very reason for its existence. As the reader will come to appreciate in the course of this article, international relations theorists, whether through think tanks or government departments, consider human security broadly understood as inextricably linked to the capacity of the State to function in substance. The State itself, whether of the Islamic or secular model, is defined by general international law as will be explained later on. Muslim countries fall squarely into this single paradigm despite the fact that in the beginnings of Islam the umma (essentially the one Islamic community) – which emerged from the dar al-Islam (the territory where Islam prevailed) – fought to distinguish itself from territories where Islamic law did not prevail (the dar al-Harb, otherwise the territory of war). The suggestion that the umma ultimately assimilated itself into the nonMuslim community of nations, and not into a distinct world with its own rules, is corroborated by the fact that instead of forming a unified Islamic State under a single Caliph it transformed into a pluralistic community of multiple Islamic nations. This fragmentation necessarily gave rise to a fundamental question; what makes an Islamic State distinct from its other counterparts, if at all? A simplistic solution would be to look at the religion professed by the majority of a particular population, but this would rule out countries such as Turkey or Bosnia and would moreover be problematic in nations where the adherents of Islam contract upwards or downwards in numbers, or in any event they do not constitute a significant majority. In practice, Islamic States are those whose constitution, or constitution-like instrument, declares Islam the official religion of the country and all its legislation is subject to the dictates of the Sharia. This religious nature of the State is, however, irrelevant as far as international law is concerned because Muslim nations are subject to the same corpus of international rules as their non-Muslim counterparts.