Islam, Politics, and Revolt: Some Unorthodox Considerations

Abstract

It is widely stated and believed by both Muslims and non-Muslims that Islam and politics are inevitably closely intertwined if not inseparable in virtually all spheres; and that this has been true from the rise of Islam until the present, with recent more secular rulers like Ataturk, the Shah of Iran, Bourguiba, and Nasser a brief contemporary exception. A 1988 statement of this widespread view, and its supposed radical contrast with Christendom, is found in Bernard Lewis’s book, The Political Language of Islam, where he says:

In classical Islam there was no distinction between Church and state. In Christendom the existence of two authorities goes back to the founder, who enjoined his followers to render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s and to God the things which are God’s. … each with its own laws and jurisdictions, its own structure and hierarchy. In pre-westernized Islam, there were not two powers but one … in classical Arabic, as well as in other languages which derive their intellectual and political vocabulary from classical Arabic, there was no pairs of words corresponding to spiritual and temporal, lay and ecclesiastical, religious and secular.¹