Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

Understanding the Gap between Traditional Islam and Modern(ist) Islamism. Much used and abused statement that Islam doesn’t separate sacred and profane, religious and political often hides more insidious, confounding of modern institution of State and traditional universe of shariah/Islamic Governance.       Given widespread confounding of Islam with Islamism/Political Islam (al-Islam al-siyasi– terms now widely used by Muslim Ulama, historians and political theorists), few points  to be noted for broad characterization of it, reviewing the debate and explaining why the latter fails to convince the best of traditional and modern scholarship: Islamism is that modern(ist) development that assumes key role for Islamic State (as distinguished from what Hallaq calls Islamic Governance) and imposing its interpretation of Islamic law on others though it may use democratic means to get power, rejects/suspects or severely limits role of philosophy, art and my...

The world of Islam is bleeding. Neocolonialist interventions don’t explain the whole story. Does the Muslim world need to introspect? Is political Islam part of a problem or a solution? Let us ask great Muslim political thinker Al-Farabi whom all revivalist ideologues have ignored. Political Islam as a reaction to onslaught of colonization and aggressive secularization sought to fight a political battle in the name of Islam. How far is this project intellectually sustainable and integrally orthodox or rooted in the Islamic tradition? It’s rather depressing record so far at either political or other cultural fronts in achieving the objective of establishing the ideal or Islamic state with all its cultural vibrancy and widespread apprehensions within the Islamic intellectual elite or Muslim communities as such call for questioning both the construction of the project of political Islam and its reading of Islamic tradition. One way of clarifying the issue is considering how great thin...