The State in Contemporary Islamic Thought

In any debate on ‘Islam’ and ‘Modernity’, the notion of the state looms large. Abdelillah Belkeziz here charts the development of the concept of ‘the state’ (al-Dawlah) in Islamic discourse over the last two centuries. The result is a tour de force survey of the most influential Muslim thinkers of the modern era, which encompasses three successive waves: the Modernist trends of the early and later reformers such as Sayyed Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Muhammad ‘Abduh and Rashid Rida; the transition and break with the Reformist trend associated with Hasan al-Banna; and the political rhetoric of Revivalists such as Sayyid Qutb and Ayatollah Khomeini. Belkeziz also examines key, formative concepts in the history of intellectual development in Islamic thought concerning the state and power, including long-standing issues such as the debates surrounding the implementation of the Shari‘ah or the meaning of al-Shura, as well as more recent evolutions in Islamic political thought, such as Khomeini’s Wilayat al-Faqih.

Through this analysis, Belkeziz argues that modern Islamic political thought has ultimately failed to produce a unified theory of state. Covering topics such as democracy, theocracy, constitutionalism and law, this work is an essential encyclopaedic resource for all scholars and researchers of Political Islam.

Abdelillah Belkeziz is Professor of Philosophy at Hasan II University in Casablanca, Morocco. He is the author of several books, including The Formation of Political Islam: The Prophetic and Politics (2005) and Arabs and Modernity: A Study in the Discourse of Modernists (2007).