Community, law, and political authority. One vision privileges the early caliphate model, which places religious as well as political authority in the realm of the Community, which is in turn represented by the caliph. The second vision concerns the medieval Sunni model, which places political authority entirely in the hands of lay rulers and restricts normative religious authority to the legal sphere. The trade-off was justified by the Islamic scholars’ interest in not letting political powers manipulate religious authority. The casualty of this trade-off, however, was that the Community, which in has been the only source of political legitimacy, becameirrelevant in theory and politically passive in practice. Consequently, the political sphere became devoid of legitimacy. In medieval Islamic history, this led to the frequent appearance of military patronage states disconnected from the ethical roots of the Muslim society. In the post-colonial Muslim nation-states, this historical problem only adds to the challenges contemporary Muslim societies face in developing a healthy political sphere. Neither of these visions, however, lends itself to despotic theocracy. The early Community-centered and representative-caliphate vision requires an active and engaged political Community, which had become increasingly hard to maintain in medieval Islam. But that vision never died as an ideal. And it is becoming a viable contender once again in the modern world as the medieval vision is no longer sustainable.

Spring-2008 On page 39 Sunday, December 15, 2013 @ 5:18am