Thinking Islam
EPISODE 20 (Part I)
October 28, 2026
Politics, Authority & Religion with Prof. Mohsen Kadivar
Is there such a thing as an Islamic political ideology?
Was the Prophet appointed by God to rule Medina, or chosen by its people?
Can the state use force to make people religious?
Drawing on five decades of study, Prof. Mohsen Kadivar argues that Islam offers lasting political principles but no fixed political ideology. He also argues that every attempt at an Islamic state has ended up secularising itself.
Kadivar defines politics as the knowledge of power and its limits. He calls it secular in its essence, since a ruler in a nation-state must serve the public interest of everyone, not only believers. Islam supplies principles such as justice, consultation (shūrā), and fidelity to contracts, but no single system. Fusing religion and politics, he warns, turns faith into a tool of power. He therefore defends a secularism that separates religious institutions from the state, not religion from politics. He reads the Prophet as appointed by God as a prophet but chosen as ruler by the people of Medina, with political decisions bound to their time. On enjoining good and forbidding evil, he argues that the duty needs religious and cultural authority rather than force. In a modern state, scholars must persuade a majority under the rule of law rather than impose fatwās by use of force.
He then turns to the hardest cases. Kadivar finds no basis in the Qurʾān or Sunna for dividing the world into dār al-islām and dār al-ḥarb. Nor does he find one for the two pillars of the Islamic state: sharīʿa as state law and the jurist as ruler. He condemns al-Qaeda and ISIS as abuses of Islam, holds that jihad is defensive, and that terror is ḥarām, and distinguishes movements defending their land from terrorism. Reading Q 60:8–9, he argues that the Qurʾān permits fighting only those who wage war on Muslims, never those who simply do not believe. Part 2 turns to Shīʿī political thought.
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Rethinking the Relationship between Islam and Politics
July 20, 2026
I. The Scope and Limits of Islamic Political Thought
- Expecting political ethics from Islamic teachings is a valid and well-justified expectation.
- However, due to the inherent temporal and spatial constraints of legal rulings, political systems, mechanisms, and decisions, a religiously grounded constitutional law or political science is extremely difficult to sustain in practice.
- The generalization of early Islamic policies as permanent and fixed rules of Islamic constitutional law or Islamic political science is a fundamentally mistaken approach and runs counter to established scholarly standards.
- Denying the existence of a fixed Islamic political system, Islamic constitutional law, or Islamic political science entails the logical elimination of related concepts: Islamic politics, the Islamic political regime, the Islamic state, political jurisprudence, the political guardianship of the jurist, and juridical supervision. The sole exception is if “Islamic politics” is understood to mean the observance of “Islamic political ethics” — in which case the term is acceptable.
- Muslims, like all citizens in civil society, are politically active as bearers of their religious identity.
- Muslims committed to Islamic standards — and especially to Islamic political ethics — tend to display a stronger disposition toward resistance to injustice and faithful adherence to social obligations and contracts.
II. Four Conceptions of Political Islam
To avoid generalities, four distinct conceptions of political Islam must be carefully distinguished.
- Political Islam as jihadist or terrorist Islam — represented by groups such as al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Boko Haram. The overwhelming majority of Muslims, both Sunni and Shi’i, have explicitly rejected this interpretation.
- Political Islam as armed resistance against foreign occupation — including movements in Palestine and Lebanon. From the perspective of many Muslims, these movements are not terrorist organizations but legitimate resistance forces.
- Political Islam as the project of establishing an Islamic government in Muslim-majority lands, resting on two pillars: law grounded in Sharīʿa and jurisprudence, and governance by a jurist or religious scholar.
- Political Islam as resistance to foreign domination, neo-colonialism, and Zionism. From this perspective, political Islam in the twenty-first century signifies opposition to imperial hegemony over Muslim lands. Its opposite is an accommodationist Islam that functions as a regional satellite of Western and Zionist interests.
III. Rethinking Politics in Early Islam
- The governance of the Prophet Muḥammad (peace be upon him) in Medina was not part of his prophetic mission. He assumed political leadership at the request and with the consent of the people of Medina. His governmental decrees belong to the variable elements of Islam, not its fixed and permanent religious rulings.
- Similarly, the caliphate of Ali did not come to pass until the people willed it. Political governance is not a constitutive part of Shi’i Imamate — ‘Alī was the Imam of the Shi’ites throughout the caliphates of the three successors to the Prophet, serving as the authoritative source of religious knowledge and the model of faithful conduct, without exercising political power.
- Imam Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī became caliph by popular choice and, upon the withdrawal of public support, was compelled to hand the caliphate conditionally to Muʿāwiya.
- Imam Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī resisted a pledge of allegiance that was forcibly imposed upon him and was martyred as one wrongfully oppressed.
- The remaining Imams were likewise never political rulers. Out of 225 years of the presential Imamate of the Twelve Imams (35–260 AH), the Imams exercised political power for only 5 years, a mere 2%.
- If political governance were a necessary component of the Imamate, why is its historical realization so negligible? Why did Imams Bāqir and Ṣādiq, during the interregnum between the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties, prefer scholarly engagement over political uprising?
- No evidence can be derived from the sīra of the Prophet or the conduct of the Imams that political statecraft is a religious obligation. The political engagement of a Muslim — whether Prophet, Imam, or ordinary believer — is a human responsibility that carries no religious prohibition, but it does not arise from religion itself.
- During the revolutionary movement, Islam — and Shi’ism in particular — proved a more powerful mobilizing force than any other socio-cultural factor. Yet resistance to oppression does not imply that political science, constitutional law, or a political system can be derived from Islam.
- The serious question, therefore, is: what political expectations should — and should not — be held of Islam in the domain of politics?