Secular Political Order as an Antithesis of Islam

This chapter surveys the Islamic scholars who reduce the very existence of the Islamic faith to the existence of an Islamic state, and they give Muslims the strongest Islamic motivations possible to reject any political order other than an Islamic one. Namely, those Muslims who do not struggle to put Islam into effect in their political, legal and economic systems commit the gravest sins of apostasy (riddah) and idolatry (shirk) and they are defined as kufrs (unbelievers). I then argue that while mainstream Islamic scholars agree on the significance of an Islamic state, they appreciate that it is not an uncompromising religious demand that defines someone’s religious status, i.e., kufr, riddah or shirk.