Monarchs, Mullas, and Marshals: Islamic Regimes?

This article examines three regime types that assert that they represent “Islam in power.†They are the conservative dynastic regime of Saudi Arabia, the populist clerical regime of Iran, and the authoritarian military regimes of the Sudan and Pakistan. These regimes articulate different interpretations of Islam that reflect the interests and ideology of those who control the state machinery, the influence of society's historical legacy, and specific characteristics of the immediate situational setting. The Islamic legitimization of all three types has been contested on religiopolitical grounds by domestic rivals for power and external rivals for leadership in the Muslim world. The most effective challenges to regime legitimacy have been manifested in the Islamized military regimes. The predicament of “the Islam of the marshals†is due to several factors: their lack of the political capital available in the Saudi type of “the Islam of wealth,†or the legitimacy generated by revolutionary change under charismatic leadership known in the Iranian type of “the Islam of revolution,†and their antipolitical character, manifested in their distrust of political movements that supported their Islamization programs and whose leaders aspired to play the roles of its theoreticians and organizers.