The Caliphate of Man: Popular Sovereignty in Modern Islamic Thought

by Andrew F. March

Overview

A political theorist teases out the century-old ideological transformation at the heart of contemporary discourse in Muslim nations undergoing political change.

The Arab Spring precipitated a crisis in political Islam. In Egypt Islamists have been crushed. In Turkey they have descended into authoritarianism. In Tunisia they govern but without the label of “political Islam.” Andrew March explores how, before this crisis, Islamists developed a unique theory of popular sovereignty, one that promised to determine the future of democracy in the Middle East.

This began with the claim of divine sovereignty, the demand to restore the sharīʿa in modern societies. But prominent theorists of political Islam also advanced another principle, the Quranic notion that God’s authority on earth rests not with sultans or with scholars’ interpretation of written law but with the entirety of the Muslim people, the umma. Drawing on this argument, utopian theorists such as Abū’l-Aʿlā Mawdūdī and Sayyid Quṭb released into the intellectual bloodstream the doctrine of the caliphate of man: while God is sovereign, He has appointed the multitude of believers as His vicegerent. The Caliphate of Man argues that the doctrine of the universal human caliphate underpins a specific democratic theory, a kind of Islamic republic of virtue in which the people have authority over the government and religious leaders. But is this an ideal regime destined to survive only as theory?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674987838
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	09/17/2019
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Andrew F. March is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. March’s first book, Islam and Liberal Citizenship, won the Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion from the American Academy of Religion.

Table of Contents

Preface: "The People Wills…" ix

1 The Idea of Islamic Democracy 1

2 The Question of Sovereignty in Classical Islamic Political Thought 16

3 The Crisis of the Caliphate and the End of Classical Islamic Political Theory 38

4 The Sovereignty of God and the Caliphate of Man 75

5 The Law We Would Give Ourselves 114

6 A Sovereign Umma and a Living Shari'a 150

7 After Islamic Democracy, after Sovereignty 201

Notes 231

Acknowledgments 283

Index 287

Editorial Reviews

March sheds important light on Islamic theories of governance…He relies on an impressive array of political thinkers, both Muslim and non-Muslim, to show the richness and the complexity of Islamist theories of state…This is a very important study.

Journal of the American Academy of Religion - Aaron W. Hughes

In this highly readable book based on deep research, Andrew March gives an accessible story of Islamic political theology and the value it holds for millions around the world today. Muslim political thought is often dismissed by Western politicians and the media, but we ignore it at our peril. This is indispensable reading.

Ebrahim Moosa

March’s exposition of the evolution of the high ideological politics of twentieth-century Islamism is remarkably erudite, well researched, and deftly written.

Journal of Law and Religion - A. Azfar Moin

In exploring the relationship between divine and popular sovereignty in the writings of some major Muslim intellectuals, this highly original book sheds new light on the fraught and much talked about question of democracy in Muslim societies. Andrew March has produced the most comprehensive, historically informed, and sophisticated study yet of the idea of sovereignty in modern Islamic thought.

Muhammad Qasim Zaman

This cutting-edge work of comparative political philosophy squarely places modern Islamic political thought in the wider context of modern democratic thought and articulates for the first time a uniquely Islamic theory of democratic governance. Eschewing both apology and exoticization, March successfully draws on a range of political thinkers—Muslim and non-Muslim—and sheds light on points of convergence and divergence among various Islamist theories of state.

Mohammad Fadel

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…A valuable book that explores the idea of Caliphate as a democratic notion within Islamist thought while critiquing materialistic notions of democracy.

Middle East Monitor - Usman Butt