Islamic Political Thought

The book under review consists of 16 contributions, including Patricia Crone, Gudrun Krämer, and Armando Salvatore. Gerhard Bowering, the editor, added the Introduction and the chapters on “Muhammad” and “Qur’an”. Sixteen of the chapters have been adapted from articles in The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought (2013). Readers are informed that, in 2014, the Muslim world population amounted to a billion and a half, i.e. one-fifth of humanity, Islam now being the most prominent world religion, including Islamism – a fundamentalist reaction to Western ascendancy (p. 3). The author also alerts the readers to the fact that Islam neither allows for distinctions between spiritual and temporal, ecclesiastical and civil, nor allows for dualities of authority such as God and Caesar, Church and State, and clergy and laity (p. 4). The author sees Islamic political thought since the Constitution of alMadinah as having developed in five successive stages: 750–1055; 1055–1258; 1258–1500, and 1500–1800. But now Islam no longer seems capable either to conquer or to absorb opposing cultures. Indeed, where are nowadays the likes of Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibn Khaldun, Usman dan Fodio, and Muhammad Iqbal? Yet, Muslims should not be pessimistic, given the appearance, at the right time, of renewers of their faith like Said Nursi, Muhammad Iqbal and Malek Bennabi, towering them all – the medieval genius of al-Ghazali with his magnum opus Revivification of the Religious Sciences.