Mohammed Ayoob is a professor of International Relations from Michigan State University and the author of one of the most interesting and worthwhile book about the Islamic world The Many Faces of Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Muslim World. The author touches upon such important issues like politics, changes within life principles, and relations between Islamic and Christian worlds.
The first chapter of the book is all about defining numerous concepts, which exist in Islamic culture, and analyses of the myths in order to discover the true nature of Islamic people. Many writers underline one simple fact that Islamic culture is all about values and ideological concepts, but not science or technology (Kirabaev & Pochta 2002 p. 2).
Ayoob even remembers about the Prophet Muhammad, his considerable influence to Islamic religion and politics, and his ability to talk truth (Cornell 2007, p. 7). He admits that the spheres of religion and politics were divided only after the Prophet’s death, however, before that tragedy, it was impossible to divide these two spheres.
Some people still believe that Islamic religion and politics are closely connected to each other (Lane & Redissi 2004, p. 151). The passage under analysis tells about one myth about the absence of separation between religion and politics.
“This is a myth to which Islamist rhetoric has contributed in considerable measure, especially by making constant reference to the sharia and the concept of the “Islamic state” (Ayoob 2007, p. 10). So, the author represents several quite interesting arguments about Islamic culture and the rules, which mean a lot for Islamic people and people of other nations:
- Sharia plays an important role for each Muslim;
- The death of the Prophet served as one of the major reasons for separation of religious and political spheres of life;
- Relationship of religion and politics has lots in common with many other Abrahamic traditions.
Each of these arguments is quite reasonable and true. First of all, sharia is the major body of religious law in Islamic culture. This body of teachings, as Coogan (2003, p. 110) names it, helps to choose one common way to make decisions and analyze the events from one and the same perspective.
Without any doubts, the Prophet’s death brought lots of changes to Islamic culture and the life of each Muslim in particular. From that very period of time, it was hard to unite politics and religion. This death became a crucial point for any tradition of Muslims. Civil war served as one more reason of changes for Islamic life. Temporary authorities could control everything, this is why some people wanted to try whether they can add something more in accordance with personal desire or not.
The Many Faces of Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Muslim World is a brilliant work by Ayoob that tells how exactly politics and religion differ from each other in Islamic culture and what caused all those differences long time ago and what causes these differences nowadays.
Reference List
Ayoob, M 2007, The Many Faces of Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Muslim World, University of Michigan Press.
Coogan, MD 2003, The Illustrated Guide to World Religions, Oxford University Press, US.
Cornell, VJ 2007, Voices of Islam: Voices of Tradition, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007.
Kirabaev, NS & Pochta, IM Values in Islamic Culture and the Experience of History, CRVP, 2002.
Lane, JE & Redissi, H 2004. Religion and Politics: Islam and Muslim Civilisation. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.