On the Critique of Political Islam

In the wake of the "Al-Aqsa Flood" and its consequences—alongside the events that have unfolded in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Libya, the situation in Iraq over the past quarter-century, and the current state of the Iranian experiment—there is now a more urgent need than ever to re-examine the political landscape. The tumultuous transformations witnessed across the Arab and Islamic worlds in recent decades pose a fundamental question: How should we interpret the experience of political Islam, now that it has transitioned—in several countries—from the realm of theory to the arena of practice? This book is premised on the conviction that any critical review of the experiences of political Islam must begin by interrogating the intellectual framework that shaped its vision of the state, authority, Sharia, democracy, secularism, and the concept of divine sovereignty (hakimiyya)—all of which formed the foundation of its discourse and project. The author analyzes the intellectual system that governed these movements, seeking to identify the reasons behind their faltering, while also attempting to distinguish the religious from the political, and the jurisprudential from the ideological. Drawing upon the region’s historical experiences and the internal critiques that have emerged within some of these Islamic movements, the book examines the intellectual framework that gave rise to the region’s most significant experiments. In doing so, it invites a compelling discussion on a complex and thorny subject—one with many chapters that remain, to this day, left unaddressed.