Khilāfah: The Islamic Political Order

Abstract

The integral relationship of religion to politics, law, and society in Islam is reflected in its emphasis on the vocation of a Muslim, as khalīfah of Allah (SWT), to shape the world according to the divine pattern through establishing and spreading an Islamic order. Islam and the political order are certainly not equivalents, yet the political order has been regarded as the agent of religion.1 It is an instrument for the divinely-ordained Islamic principles that are to govern all aspects of a believer’s life. The fuqahā’ were, therefore, compelled, contrary to Rosenthal’s assertion, ‘to ask whether and why there must be a state’.2 They argued the case for the construction of an Islamic political order by referring to explicit Qur’ānic instructions and numerous prophetic traditions in respect to the needs of the Ummah, and to Islamic universalism. The advent of European colonialism and consequent political and economic domination of the Muslim land had somewhat restricted the juristic, political and philosophical discourse pertaining to the political order. The anti-colonial independence movements, in which Islam served as a unifying force, and the emergence of various Muslim states raised the question of the Islamic political order. A significant body of literature has emerged since then which analyses and ponders the Islamic state, yet there remains considerable vagueness as to its precise nature and form, confusing it at times with the Western notion of a nation-state.