The Islamic State’s Theoretical Challenge in a Globalized World

Abstract

Not surprisingly, globalization produced resistance and conflicts. In the Arab-Muslim world, the globalization process appears at odds with the ideological roots of Islamic universalism and cosmopolitanism. In the last decades, in front of challenges like the transformation of societies and radicalism, Islamic political thought sought for new paths of reform, trying to revise modern concepts like democracy through classical concepts like consultation (shūrā) and more updated paradigms like that of “civil state” (dawla madaniyya). In the broader context of the present international Western-shaped global system, these endeavors are potentially discovering the pristine universal dimension of the believers’ charismatic Umma.