Thursday, December 18, 2014

Compare the constitution of medina with the U.S. Constitution. Similarities and differences

Most people in the US are familiar with the Constitution of the United States, but only those with some knowledge of Islamic history likely know about the Constitution of Medina.

The two documents were written at very different times. The Constitution of Medina was written in 622 AD, which it established as the first year of the Hijra Islamic calendar. The US Constitution was written in 1787, over a millennium later. Fitting its more recent origin, the US Constitution we have in original as well as a number of draft versions. It was also written in English, so we know exactly what it says and there are no translation difficulties (though there can still be questions of interpretation of course). By contrast, the original documents of the Constitution of Medina were lost, and a number of variants were later recovered and translated. The Arabic language has changed enough since then that even native speakers of modern Arabic have some difficulty understanding the Arabic of the untranslated versions.

The reasons for writing them were also quite different.

Muhammad wrote the Constitution of Medina in, of course, Medina, after being invited there from Mecca to resolve a number of disputes, particularly ongoing violence between factions representing Judaism, local pagan beliefs, and the newly-established religion of Islam. His primary goal was to establish peace in Medina. Ultimately, he failed; just a few years later it was the violation of the Constitution of Medina itself that spurred the Invasion of Banu Qaynuqa and a war between Muslims and Jews.

The Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution of the United States with the express intent to establish a new and better system of government, replacing monarchy with a democratic republic inspired by democracy in Classical Greece and based (at that time) extremely cutting-edge social science such as Adam Smith and Thomas Paine. Their ambition was grand---the establishment of a new global superpower with a fundamentally superior system of government---and yet, in many respects that ambition was successful.

The legal codes they established were also quite different, fitting their Medieval versus Enlightenment origins. The Constitution of Medina contains a number of passages about blood money and retribution, which were a common means of settling disputes between factions at the time. The US Constitution established a formal legal system of modern police and courts that have been largely unchanged for the last two centuries.
Despite all these differences, there are substantial similarities between the two constitutions.

Both documents established freedom of religion, a concept that was almost unheard of in the 7th century AD and still controversial by the 18th. Under both systems, Jews, Christians, and Muslims are all free to practice their faiths undisturbed. There is one important difference between the two documents however: The Constitution of Medina does not establish freedom for atheists or those of Eastern religions (both classed as "un-Believers"), while the US Constitution establishes an absolute right of freedom of religion for everyone.

Both documents also established a system of taxation to provide for the funding of the state and a judicial system to resolve disputes, as well as rules for how wars are to be fought and alliances are to be formed. Both documents were revolutionary in their expansion of the rights of citizens. Both constitutions are widely considered major steps forward in the establishment of democracy as we know it.

In one respect the Constitution of Medina was actually more progressive than the original form of the US Constitution: Slavery. While neither document eliminated slavery, the Constitution of Medina regulated it and required that free persons could not be made into slaves. The US Constitution did not regulate slavery, in fact barely mentions slavery except to declare that it is legal, establish the right of slaveowners to pursue slaves across state lines, and declare that slaves count as 3/5 of a person for purposes of determining representation in Congress. The amendment to the US Constitution that ended slavery would not be added until almost a century later.

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