Analysis
Bernard Lewis claims that the Constitution was not a treaty in the modern sense, but a unilateral proclamation by Muhammad. One of the constitution's more interesting aspects was the inclusion of the Jewish tribes in the Ummah because although the Jewish tribes were "one community with the believers," they also "have their religion and the Muslims have theirs."
Legal Scholar L. Ali Khan says the Constitution of Medina was a social contract derived from a treaty and not from any fictional state of nature or from behind the Rawlsian veil of ignorance. The contract was built upon the concept of one community of diverse tribes living under the sovereignty of one God.
The first ever "Constitutional Analysis" of the Constitution of Medina was done by Islamic Scholar Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri. He analysed the Constitution of Medina and formed 63 articles; he argues that it is the first written constitution. He has published a e-book of the 63 constitutional articles.
The Medina Constitution also instituted peaceful methods of dispute resolution among diverse groups living as one people but without assimilating into one religion, language, or culture. Welch in Encyclopedia of Islam states: "The constitution reveals his Muhammad's great diplomatic skills, for it allows the ideal that he cherished of an ummah (community) based clearly on a religious outlook to sink temporarily into the background and is shaped essentially by practical considerations."
Read more about this topic: Constitution Of Medina
Famous quotes containing the word analysis:
“... the big courageous acts of life are those one never hears of and only suspects from having been through like experience. It takes real courage to do battle in the unspectacular task. We always listen for the applause of our co-workers. He is courageous who plods on, unlettered and unknown.... In the last analysis it is this courage, developing between man and his limitations, that brings success.”
—Alice Foote MacDougall (1867–1945)
“Whatever else American thinkers do, they psychologize, often brilliantly. The trouble is that psychology only takes us so far. The new interest in families has its merits, but it will have done us all a disservice if it turns us away from public issues to private matters. A vision of things that has no room for the inner life is bankrupt, but a psychology without social analysis or politics is both powerless and very lonely.”
—Joseph Featherstone (20th century)