The State in Contemporary Islamic Thought ― A Historical Survey of the Major Muslim Political Thinkers of the Modern Era

The debates on 'Islam and Modernity' clearly include in their analysis notions of the State. Abdelillah Belkeziz here charts the development of the concept of 'the state' (al-dawlah) in Islamic discourse over the last two centuries. The result is a tour de force survey of the most influential Muslim thinkers of the modern era, which encompasses three successive waves: the modernist trends of the early and later reformers like Sayyed Jamal Eddin Al-Afghani; the dogmatism of ideologues like Hasan Al-Bana; and the rhetoric of revivalists like the Ayatollah Khomeini. Through this analysis, Belkeziz argues that modern Islamic political thought succeeded in producing ideologies, but ultimately failed to produce a unified theory of state. This work is an essential encyclopedic resource for all scholars and researchers of Political Islam and will become a standard work in the field.

Abdelillah Belkeziz is Professor of Philosophy at Hasan II University in Morocco. He is the author of several books, including The Formation of Political Islam: The Prophetic and Politics (2005) and Arabs and Modernity: A Study in the Discourse of Modernists (2007).