Political Authority in Islamic Thought

Sammanfattning

This thesis examines how key political concepts within Islamic political thought—legitimacy, consultation (shura), and community (ummah)—have been formulated and reinterpreted across classical and modern contexts. Rather than evaluating Islamic political ideas through external normative frameworks such as liberal democracy, the study aims to analyze how political authority and governance have been theorized from within the Islamic intellectual tradition itself. The analysis focuses on three classical thinkers—al-Farabi, al-Mawardi, and Ibn Khaldun—and three modern authors—Sayyid Qutb, Abdolkarim Soroush, and Khaled Abou El Fadl. Methodologically, the thesis employs Quentin Skinner’s contextual approach, emphasizing the importance of historical, political, and linguistic contexts in shaping political ideas. This allows each thinker’s arguments to be understood as interventions responding to specific conditions rather than as abstract doctrines. The study demonstrates that classical Islamic political thought contains diverse conceptions of legitimacy, consultation, and community, ranging from philosophical and juridical models to sociological explanations of power. Modern thinkers reinterpret these concepts in response to colonialism, authoritarianism, and modern state structures, resulting in both continuity and transformation. The thesis concludes that Islamic political thought is best understood as a dynamic and internally plural tradition whose concepts evolve in dialogue with changing historical circumstances.