The Golden Age: The Political Concepts of Islam

The present role of Islam in Middle Eastern politics is not a continuation but a reconstruction of the historical paradigms. In the premodern era, there were two Islamic paradigms. One was of an integral state and society unified under the political and moral leadership of a charismatic religious teacher; the other, of a society divided between state and religious institutions and differentiated political and religious elites, the latter being the custodians of the true Islam. The second tradition made room for purely secular monarchical concepts and a secular political culture. In the modern era, the historical Islamic paradigms have little influence on state formation. Even the avowedly Islamic states do not really hark back to the past but represent, for the most part, contemporary national states appealing to a new concept of national-state Islam.