"Political Islam" and Western Society

Abstract

The term "political Islam" sounds strange to people who are not familiar with Muhammad's teaching: how can a religion be political? To a Muslim—for whom religion is inseparable from politics, the state, and from all spheres of a person's life—this formula seems equally strange, but for a different reason entirely. After all, in Islam there is no division into secular power and spiritual power; in fact, the Church as an institution does not even exist. The Christian formula "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's" [Matthew 22:21] is unacceptable to Islam; and the Muslim rulers, beginning with the caliphs, have embodied both spiritual and secular power at the same time. From a Muslim standpoint, Islam's political influence is a natural phenomenon.