Multiple Political Discourses in the Islamic Tradition

This chapter traces the notion of sovereignty in Islamic political thought in the classical era (tenth to eleventh centuries). I argue that there are diverse conceptions of sovereignty and multiple political discourses among pre-modern Muslim thinkers. I also argue that Islamic conceptions of sovereignty are predicated on the Muslim Community (ummah), which shares an epistemic and moral ground on which the Muslim polity is built. For pre-modern Muslim thinkers, it is the community that embraces certain ways of knowledge and values that shape their sociopolitical and legal/moral order. Therefore, I contend that Islamic conceptions of sovereignty are predicated on ways of knowing, as well as values (norms derived from those ways) of the community, which can be identified with a particular epistemic and moral tradition. Multiple political discourses had flourished within this tradition, which allows various interpretations and reasoning of Islamic sources. To demonstrate this, I pay particular attention to the political writings of three Muslim thinkers: al-Fārābī, al-Māwardī, al-Juwaynī.