PASSIVITY + ANARCHY IS A LOUSY RECIPE:

Interrogating the works of Rashid Rida, Sayyid Qutb, Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, Abul A'la Maududi, Ayatollah Ali Khomeini and others, March captures the diversity and tensions of modern political Islamist thought. He puts forward the interesting argument that Islamist thinkers generally view the people -- the Muslim Ummah -- as being the living embodiment of the Shari'ah and God's Will. Unlike secular political thinkers, who tend to see the people as the sole embodiment of sovereignty, law and political rights, 20th century Islamist thinkers tended to argue for the notion of dual sovereignty, where law is both divinely decreed and exercised through the will of the people at the same time.

The tensions between the religious and secular occupy an important area of Islamic political thinking, according to March, as Islamists try to harmonise the two ideas of sovereignty. "A core thesis of my analysis is that the divine and popular elements in Islamic democratic theory are often derived from the same commitments and materials," he writes. "Divine command is not just a constraint on human freedom, and human freedom is not just the absence of divine command. Rather, the foundation of Islamic democratic theory is the same as the foundations of Islamic theocratic theory... The political theology of popular sovereignty in Islam is that the Umma [sic] has been entrusted by God with the realisation of His law on Earth. God is the principle agent and actor, and the first response of the people-as-deputy is a passive and receptive one. But the force of God dignified mankind as His caliph is that He has deputised no one else between God and man -- no kings, no priests, no scholars."

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