
5POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ISLAM: STATE, RELIGION AND GOVERNMENT
Asghar Ali Engineer (born 1940) is a renowned Muslim scholar from the “Progressive
Dawoodi Bohra Movement” in India. He is the Director of the Institute of Islamic Studies
and the Centre for the Study of Society and Secularism in Bombay.
Islam was not founded simply as a religion based on a text. It also functioned as
a powerful political movement. In this respect the interpretation of religious
writings has often been seen more as a political activity than as a spiritual one.
Looking at the situation from this political perspective, numerous scholars divided
the early period of Islam under the Prophet Mohammed into the Mecca phase
and the Medina phase. The Muslims were an oppressed minority in Mecca and in
Medina Muslims ruled as the majority. Various messages to adherents of Islam can
be ascribed to these two phases, as they represent different contexts. At the heart
of Islam, however, we fi nd above all certain values, for only values refer to a trans-
cendental and thus religious dimension. In particular, values are not determined
by a particular context, but apply universally. In this context many interpreters
of a holy text – be they Christian, Hindu or Muslim – fail to grasp that a signifi cant
distinction must be made. They do not distinguish between statements which
were revealed in a particular context and yet are to be viewed as transcendent.
Many scholars concentrate only on the wording of their own holy text, such as
for example the Koran, without taking the context into account.
Because of its specifi c claim to truth, this point of view gives rise to numerous
problems with other religious communities. Yet if we are genuinely religious
people, full-blown confl icts with other religions are inconceivable. Disputes do
however become unavoidable if we refer instead to an understanding of religion
that makes political claims – in the role of a majority, a minority, as a ruling power.
The Prophet Mohammed took a pioneering decision in Medina. He established
what is known as the Medina constitution (mithaq al-madina/sahifat al-madina),
which was revolutionary in its approach to how people from different religions
can live together. Mohammed legitimated the existing pluralistic religious situa-
tion in an alliance between Muslims, Jews and polytheists. Together they formed
1st lecture
Politics, state and
religion seen from
the perspective
of the Koran and
the Sunna