Paradigm Shifts in Muslim International Relations Discourse

Farhang Rajaee*

The fall of the Soviet Union, the rise of new international players, and, most important, the impact of globalization are significant indicators inviting scholars to reexamine the very foundations of the still prevalent Westphalian international system and its dominant theories. Until recently it was assumed that there was little or no international theorizing outside the Westphalian paradigm. It was under the spell of this paradigm that Kal Holsti in a recent survey of the sources used in the discipline in eight countries made the bold claim that “international theory barely exists outside the anglophone countries.”[1] Considering the ontological assumptions of modernity and its polity, the modern state, this statement suggests that if a theory is not based on the concept of interest defined in terms of the atomized “self,” and, by implication, in terms of the independent, sovereign “state,” it may not be called a theory. But a careful reading of the Westphalian international theory reveals a built-in contradiction. On the one hand, the theory represents an exclusive approach because it takes into consideration only theories based on utilitarian rationality, ignoring other forms of rationality. On the other hand, it claims that modernity-based theories present eternal rules that have universal applicability.

A different premise would, however, lead to a different conclusion. Fortunately, critical theories within the Western intellectual tradition rightly question the modernist discourse, criticizing it for overreliance on a particular construction.[2] The present essay has a twofold purpose. First, it aims to show that non-Westphalian discourse, such as that of Islam, has produced sophisticated international relations theory. Second, it captures the current debate among Muslims on the same issue. The latter objective cannot be achieved without a proper appreciation of the evolution of the intellectual debates in Islamic history. Methodologically, the two aims are interconnected, and a comprehensive treatment of the state of the international Muslim discourse shows the sophisticated nature of non-Westphalian theorizing.

Muslim debate over issues related to “international” and “foreign” affairs falls into three phases, the present being the last within a broader Islamic intellectual discourse. The first phase began after the Islamic polity reached a state of maturity and sophistication in the ninth century and was centered on the question of how this polity should interact with others. A comprehensive Shari‘a-based politics was formulated that not only regulated the life of its subjects within the boundaries of the polity but also had an elaborate set of rules for foreign relations and international politics. The juridical nature of the Islamic polity made its international relations (IR) theory, too, juridical in terms of a duality between “the abode of Islam” and “the abode of war.” The polity was, however, an inclusive one in that it was based on the “general interest” of humanity. Everyone, regardless of creed, had rights and duties within the bounds of the Shari‘a, and those rights and duties were properly balanced. This phase may be termed the phase of “Muslim politics,” occurring within the framework of a polity constructed in accordance with the Islamic revealed message.

The second debate occurred as a result of the encounter of the Islamic world with modernity, particularly during the age when modernity and imperialism joined forces. Suffering a major setback in this encounter, the Islamic world lost its internal confidence. Modernity presented the centrifugal axis around which various trends emerged, ironically labeling themselves Islamic. Feeling that the totality of Islam was threatened, Muslims were mostly reactive in the general form, and even in the content, of their responses. This inaugurated the second debate, led to the flourishing of various Islamic movements, and contributed to the radicalization of Islamic international theory. The world was divided into two realms: one was the realm of Islamic revolutionaries and the other—comprising the rest of the world—of those living in a state of unbelief and decadence. Muslim politics was transformed into Islamic movement. The logic of the evolution of Muslim history not properly construed, this phenomenon was termed “Islamic fundamentalism,” “militant Islam,” “Islamic revival,” “Islamic menace,” and the “Islamic threat.”

Then came the third debate, which, though still in its formative phase, is very significant. On the one hand, it gives evidence of the restoration of confidence in an important segment of the present Muslim world. On the other hand, it shows that Islamic revival has enormous potential for the formation of a renewed Islamic IR theory. The failure of secular ideologies on the one hand and the consequences of the globalization process, which encourages multiculturalism, multiplicity of voices, and the growth of a global open and civil society, on the other hand, have given this new debate an important momentum. The three sections of this paper outline the core concepts of each phase.

I

The First Debate

Islam invites submission to a righteous way of life that is meant to regulate human beings’ life both in this world and in the hereafter. In both worlds or realms, the same objective is pursued—salvation. Indeed, throughout the Qur’an, the two worlds (ad-Dunya wa’l-Akhira) are cited together (for example, 2:130, 200, 220; 3:22, 45, 56, 145, 148). Unlike Christianity, which emphasizes orthodoxy, but like Judaism, Islam insists on orthopraxy—hence the centrality of the juridical approach to understanding the role of Islam in Muslim politics. But while Judaism is not a missionary religion, universalism constitutes one of the tenets of Islam. Islamic Law—the Shari‘a—is both comprehensive and universalistic. Any “Islamic polity” ought thus to be based on the Shari‘a. The Shari‘a consists of two main parts: acts of worship (‘Ibadat, which regulate human beings’ relation to God for the purpose of eternal salvation) and transactions (Mu‘amalat, which regulate human beings’ relations with one another, ensuring smooth conduct of worldly affairs and thus paving the way for eternal salvation). Both are devotional acts, whether one recites the Word of God or whether one makes a business transaction with another person. Herein lies the root of the overstated claim of the inseparability of religion and politics in Islam. Indeed, as Rosenthal rightly observes, “Both realms form a unity under the all-embracing authority of the Shari‘a. . . . A Muslim’s life—ideally at least—is ruled in its entirety by the Shari‘a, which lays down the precise rules and regulations governing his relations with God as well as with his fellow-Muslims and non-Muslims.”[3] Politics, society, economy, education, culture, and other societal constructions are mere tools for the implementation and enhancement of this comprehensive project. The main duty and function of the individual Muslim or an Islamic institution is to strive to observe rules and carry out commandments within a given framework. The notion of “striving,” then, is the key to one’s behavior toward the outside world. Basing their arguments on the Qur’an, the Muslim jurists summarized this major duty by means of the concept of Jihad.

Thus the original Islamic international relations theory was to be found in “the Book [Section or Chapter] of Jihad” in the works of the jurists. Jihad takes two forms. The greater Jihad involves internal striving to do “good” and avoid “evil,” while the lesser Jihad involves external striving to remove obstructions to the Path of God. It was on the basis of this distinction that the Muslim jurists divided the world into the two realms of Dar al-Islam (the Realm of Islam) and the Dar al-Harb (the Realm of War).[4] For a long time, this dualism constituted the central concept of Islamic international relations. Within this framework, Muslims made sense of their foreign relations, each Muslim polity adapting it to its peculiar needs and interests. Thus, in actual practice, other concepts were introduced, such as the notion of Maslaha (interest), which is comparable to the notion of the reason of state. It is no surprise that during the ‘Abbasid Period (750–1258), when the Muslim world created its first empires, and later during the Ottoman Period (1281–1923), when the Islamic world restored its civilization, this ideal paradigm was modified to incorporate many ambiguous issues and vague areas of relationships between Muslims and non-Muslims. The dualistic theory was thus expanded to include a “Realm of Treaties” (Dar al-‘Ahd) representing the many ambiguous areas where the Islamic polity concluded treaties with others. As in the Western theory of international relations, the two concepts of war and peace in Islam became the main realms of international relations theory, and soldier and diplomat served as its main protagonists.

From the eighth to the eleventh centuries, there were four big powers on the world scene. The rivalry between the ‘Abbasid and Byzantine (324–1453) Empires replaced that between the Romans and the Persians. In Europe there were the Frankish Empire of France and the Umayyad Dynasty of Spain. It is interesting to observe that, contrary to the ideal paradigm, the ‘Abbasids were more at odds with their fellow religionists of Spain than with the non-Muslim Franks.[5] Many diplomatic missions were conducted between the Frankish Emperor Charlemagne (768–814) and the ‘Abbasid Caliph Harun ar-Rashid (786–809). “For the ‘Abbasids the Frankish ruler became a potentially useful counterweight both to Byzantium and to the rival Umayyad dynasty in Spain.”[6] This interesting balancing of power is one aspect of what I mean by “Muslim politics.”

This paradigmatic duality, along with its sophisticated political practice, endured until modern times. Indeed, after the Mongol forces had destroyed the universal authority of Baghdad (1258), the seat of the Islamic Caliphate, the Muslim world restored itself in the form of powerful empires of the Ottomans, the Safavids (1501–1732), and the Mughals (1526–1858), giving new vitality to Islamic civilization and Muslim politics. Then came the challenge of the modern world. This challenge proved too difficult for the traditional Islamic paradigm to survive. Not only did modernity prove to be a more powerful rival, but it also presented a different frame of mind altogether. The old cosmological outlook gave way to a secular worldview in which power replaced righteousness as the ultimate end of politics. The new international order was to be based on “non-sectarian territorial demarcations, the equality of all political units, and international peace as the permanent norm.”[7] How was the Islamic world to react? The political breakdown aside, the intellectual homogeneity of the Islamic outlook was also destroyed, and so the stage was set for the second debate. The cosmological outlook, which assumed the orderly nature of human existence, was shaken. Many voices with completely different ontological views emerged, advocating responses ranging from complete acceptance of modernity to a radical rejection of it. Here I am concerned with those voices which formulated their responses within the overall framework of familiar Islamic paradigms, concepts, and vocabularies.

II

The Second Debate

Whatever their specific features, the overriding character of these responses was their reactive nature, caused by the Islamic world’s loss of its internal confidence in the face of an emergent powerful West. By the end of the nineteenth century, the bandwagon of the industrial mode of production ushered in “the age of the empire.”[8] Soon the greatest power of the modern age, the Ottoman, became the sick man of Europe. The heartland of the Islamic world, the Middle East, became, in L. Carl Brown’s words “the most penetrated international relations subsystem in today’s world.”[9]

Toynbee’s now classic designation of the extreme positions of the Zealots and the Herodians helps to explain the Muslim responses. The two positions grew out of the Jewish reaction to the Hellenism of the first half of the second century bce. The Zealots rejected Greek civilization while the Herodians, who supported the Idumaean King Herod the Great, regarded as their own every single accomplishment of the Greeks. The Zealots, on the contrary, felt the need to integrate more and more into the world of their indigenous customs instead of accepting the differentiation presented to them by the new civilization.[10] In the Muslim world, one group advocated, like the Zealots, absolute rejection of the modern ways, thus refusing to take part in the unfolding saga of the encounter of modernity and Islam. The second advocated complete integration into the modernization project, ruling out all possibility of Islamic participation within the emerging new rules of the game. These two positions were not true opposites but the two sides of the same coin. As Toynbee writes: “Both are in practice desperately defensive attempts to ignore or forestall a new situation produced by the introduction of a novel dynamic element into the life of a society.”[11] Both overwhelming approval and stubborn refusal would lead to radical reactions: the first demands absolute conformity and the second absolute rejection. As a result, both preclude any attempt at evolving an indigenous response. A third group, however, attempted what has been termed a “reconstruction of Islamic teaching in the modern world.” It strove for some degree of accommodation with modernity and called for a revival of religious teaching in light of modernity.[12] Prominent Muslim thinkers such as Sayyid Jamal ad-Din al-Asadabadi, known as al-Afghani (1839–1897), and his student and colleague, Muhammad Abduh (1849–1905), tried to revive positions that would avoid the excesses of both the Herodians and the Zealots. If they were not successful in presenting an actual, well-defined position, they at least succeeded in presenting a model for their followers to emulate. For one thing, they revived independent reasoning (Ijtihad) that had hitherto been declared unacceptable. This last response is more relevant to understanding the present debate among Muslims over international theories because, while the two extremist positions had marginalized Islam, distancing it from the real social life of Muslims, this one tried to revive it as much as the circumstances allowed. The more the Western powers of Britain, Russia, and France dominated the world scene, the more they turned the Muslim world into a theater of their “great game.” As a corollary, those Muslims who advocated modernization in both the intellectual and social spheres came to occupy high status and seats of power. And the more complete the assimilation of Muslims to the Western ways became, the stronger was the impetus for the Islamic movements to mobilize their forces. In the process, multiple voices and trends emerged. They ranged from Islamic modernism to puritanical revivalism.

Thus, the advocates of Islamic modernism and those of revivalism together represented the main positions taken in the second debate during the first half of the twentieth century. The second half of the century presented a different scene, however. First, during this period, the cold war dominated international politics. Second, liberation movements in the former colonial regions of Africa and Asia restored much of the confidence lost during the movement of the return to the self. Third, a revival of religious sentiment in the West itself, as symbolized by Vatican II, paved the way for the resurgence of religion in social and political life. Fourth, nonreligious ideologies such as liberal nationalism, pan-Arabism, and Ba‘thism, which had become dominant ideologies in various Muslim countries, failed to improve the lot of the masses who had gradually become an important force in politics. Thus, those who refused to respond to the challenge of modernity and the West now saw their opportune moment and formulated new theories. Like their classical counterparts, they concentrated on the notion of Jihad, or striving, as the key concept for formulating any theory of international relations, but, unlike them, the new Muslim protagonists dispensed with the notion of Maslaha or interest. Some replaced the latter with the notion of Hijra (migration), thus replacing the two notions of struggle (Jihad) and interest (Maslaha)—held in a complex balancing relationship in classical theory—with the exclusionary notions of confrontation (their understanding of Jihad) or migration (Hijra).[13]

Islamism may be said to be the defining feature of this phase, for Islamic movements and Islamic ideologies now replace Muslim politics. The protagonists of this new phase considered it their main duty to turn their “creed” into an ideology with a rigid binary opposition. Muhammad Baqir Sadr (executed in 1980), Rouhollah Khomeini (d. 1989), Abu’l A‘la Mawdudi (d. 1979), Murtaza Mutahhari (assassinated in 1979), Sayyid Qutb (executed in 1966), and Ali Shari‘ati (died mysteriously in 1977) are prominent examples of this group. These thinkers tried to prove that Islam could compete with other ideologies and was even superior to them. Their primary objective was to replace modernity with an Islamic ideology. Although this new phase indicates the presence of a degree of confidence among Muslims, it nevertheless constitutes a reaction to modernity and to the Western world and cannot be called proactive. For the purposes of our discussion, we will examine Khomeini’s IR theory.

Khomeini’s theory resembles the traditional Islamic dualistic IR theory, but he introduces a change both in concept and in content. He presents his view of the duality in terms of the oppressed (mustad‘afun) and the oppressors (mustakbirun) rather than in terms of the Realm of Islam and the Realm of War. The two terms used by him are derivatives of Arabic verbs meaning, respectively, to weaken and to enhance. Taken from the Qur’an, they are meant to convey the duality of the oppressed (as in 2:59 and 27:5) and the oppressor (as in 16:22, 23). Khomeini takes this duality to its extreme in that he views all things in terms of binary opposition. Human beings, freedom, worldview, politics, political party, political organization, country, foreign policy, economic policy, and virtually everything else can be either oppressive or godly and just. Note, for example, the following statement by him: “Since the beginning of the world, there have always been two parties, one the party of God, and the other one un-Godly and Satanic.”[14] At present, according to Khomeini, the logic of the oppressors is operative, and the only way to avoid the un-Godly world is to submit to the message of Islam as embodied in its law. The totality of this law makes Islamic society self-sufficient with no need for borrowing or intercivilizational fertilization:

The law of the Shari‘a embraces a diverse body of rules and regulations, which amounts to a complete social system. In this system of laws, all the needs of man have been met. . . . Islam provides laws and instructions for all of these matters, aiming as it does to produce integrated and virtuous human beings who are walking embodiments of the law.[15]

He then reminds his audience that God has promised the earth to the oppressed, as stated in the Qur’an: “And we desire to show favor unto those who were oppressed in the earth, and to make them examples, and to make them inheritors” (28:5).

The peak in the second debate in Islamic IR theory is reached with the Islamic Revolution of Iran when the Islamic panacea was turned into a constitution for the creation of an Islamic state and was expected to perform miracles. The first decade of the revolution was a time of euphoria for all Muslims throughout the world. Soon, however, it was realized that, like other “isms” such as Ba‘thism, nationalism, and Pan-Arabism, the “Islamic solution,” too, was utopian in character. Furthermore, the enormous changes of the 1980s, bringing the cold war to an end and ushering in the globalized world, started a new debate within the Islamic world. The new paradigm is both promising and accommodating. The generation of the 1960s still has a strong voice, particularly where Muslims are active as a movement and excluded from the political process; Algeria and Palestine are cases in point. But, wherever new generations of Muslims are in a position of power, the new debate is less exclusivist.

III

The Third Debate

While the Islamic Revolution in Iran showed that the problems facing the Muslim world are too deep to be eliminated by a successful revolution and its Islamic pronouncements, it has left behind an important legacy: it has restored a very high degree of confidence among Muslims. The most important consequence of this restoration of confidence is that Muslims are relinquishing their reactive mode and reaffirming Islam, in a realistic way, as the foundation of their social and political lives. An interesting paradox has been created for Muslims. As long as the dominant intellectual paradigm projected the idea that Islamic heritage had little relevance for modern life, the modus operandi of Muslims was rather simple. They more or less followed a double life. A Muslim would follow the existing rules of the game dictated by the international system. He would even wear the modern Western dress during the day but—ostensibly following Islamic norms at home—put on the Islamic garb at night! Indeed, separation between religion and politics (rather than between church and state) was very much the accepted rule. The story of the robbers who would rob a caravan but then line up for prayer aptly reflects the state of mind of the majority of Muslims during a long period of time. Once, when one of the victims objected to this blatant hypocrisy, the chief of the bandits calmly replied: “It is simple: this is my religion and that is my profession.”

Making Islam relevant again, however, proved as difficult as putting the proverbial genie back into the bottle. The lack of any central political or intellectual authority has given rise to as many Islams as there are Muslim states.[16] Going further, one can even argue that there are as many Islams as Muslims care to proclaim. For example, any search on the World Wide Web would produce many home pages maintained by the self-appointed spokespersons of Islam. Thus, it may be more accurate and logical to talk about Muslim theories of international relations than a single Muslim theory. What this signifies is that the Pan-Islamic ideological approach of the Islamists has turned out to be no less inadequate than the secular ideologies of the first half of the twentieth century. Indeed, one can argue that the first two quarters of the twentieth century were the era of “modernizing Islam,” the third quarter was that of “replacing modernity,” and the last quarter seems to have ushered in the era of “Islamizing modernity.”

Muslims seem to have become realistic enough to recognize their limitations, but they have also gained sufficient confidence to try to formulate a contemporary theoretical framework of their own. The new generation of Muslims has realized what Fernand Braudel observed decades ago: “Today, the liberation of Islam is very nearly complete. But, it is one thing to secure independence, and quite another to keep pace with the rest of the world and look clearly toward the future. That is much more difficult.”[17] The new generation emphasizes model building and seems to be returning to a combination of struggle (Jihad) and interest (Maslaha)—just as was the case during the classical age of Islam—but within a modern context.

The most important traits of this new generation or world of Muslims are as follows: First, more than two centuries of modernization and Westernization have made a lasting impact on the Muslim world, the least part of which is the implanting of many institutions of the modern national state. For example, the Islamic world now includes more than fifty countries with Muslim majorities. The result, as one analyst put it, is that “Islam has become nationalized, producing as many Islams as there are countries with Muslim majorities.”[18] Ever since the fall of what Marshall Hodgson calls the three “gunpowder empires,”[19] the Muslim world has lost its erstwhile cosmological outlook and can only dream of its glorious past.

Second, no longer is the Muslim world capable of supporting universalism and transnationalism to the extent that its ideology demands and dictates. As the Iraq-Kuwait crisis or the Gulf War demonstrated, the reality is that many countries of the Islamic world are not even capable of defending their own boundaries. Most Muslim countries fall in the categories of developing or underdeveloped states. In fact, many argue that what has enabled the countries of the Islamic world to survive and muddle through is petrodollars and the royalties they receive from selling their natural wealth. This has given rise to the theory of the Rentier State, according to which the oil-producing countries live on the rent they receive from leasing their natural resources.[20] The demographic situation is not very promising either. The Muslim countries have a young population with a high degree of illiteracy, and the population’s lack of skill and expertise further exacerbates the unevenness of development, a common feature of many developing countries.

Third, while one can see the emergence of a transnational class of Islamic Yuppies (young upward-mobile professional Islamic entrepreneurs), whose general outlook on the Islamic order might converge, the practical measures they take to uphold Islam and ensure its application to specific realities do not seem to be leading to the emergence of a Pactum Islamicum. While Muslims still cling to the legacy of Islamic civilization, their lives are shaped by the provisions and practices of the states under which they live. As Fouad Ajami correctly observes:

Civilizations do not control states, states control civilizations. States avert their gaze from blood ties when they need to; they see brotherhood and faith and kin when it is in their interest to do so. We remain in the world of self-help. The solitude of states continues; the disorder in the contemporary world has rendered that solitude more pronounced.[21]

This does not mean that Muslims should or are giving up their religious principles. On the contrary, they insist on being both modern and Muslim. This is the paradox and the interesting feature of the third debate. Muslims seem to follow a two-faced foreign policy in their international relations. They have to follow the reason of state in order to survive but the reason of Islam in order to maintain their legitimacy. The actual fate of the new debate within the present international system depends on how successful they are in implementing this two-faced policy. Consider the case of Iran. Its actual behavior in Central Asia, in the Persian Gulf, in the Iraq-Kuwait crisis, in the Azerbaijan-Armenia dispute, toward the Middle East peace talks, and at international organizations has been basically motivated by the reason of state, whereas its stance on the Salman Rushdie issue, its rhetorical position on the Middle East peace talks, and its denunciation of “Western cultural onslaught” have been dictated by the reason of Islam and that of the revolution. An Iranian official summed up the matter for me in Tehran in the following words:

Iran is a solar state by the fact of Islam, and the revolution and its glorious history. She thus has to project its Islamic, revolutionary, and universalistic ideals. Owing to the mere fact of her actual position in the international system, however, she has to become conservative and reactive to the broad strategies presented to her at the international scene. (July 1996)

The most difficult task is that of balancing the two approaches. Here again the case of Iran is interesting and instructive. In May 1998 one of the protagonists of the new debate in the Muslim world won the presidential election. He promised an “Islamic civil society” and the rule of law in domestic politics, and détente and dialogue of civilizations at the international level. Thus, the main objective of the new Islamic international theory is to assert the Islamic identity and secure the interests of the Muslim world. This resembles the two classical concepts of Jihad and Maslaha, though within a globalized context. Such views were reaffirmed in the recent meeting of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) in Tehran. For example, the new chair of the OIC defined the post–Cold War world as follows:

A new order based on pluralism is taking shape in the world that, God willing, will not be the monopoly of any single power. What is imperative for us—Muslim countries—is that while valiantly resisting all kinds of expansionism, we should strive to secure our proper position and stature in contributing to the shaping of the new world political order and new international relations.

He added that “cultivation of confidence is the first and most appropriate strategic approach to ensuring security” (9 December 1998). An interesting article in a recent issue of one of Tehran’s leading current affairs journals captures well the debate in the present phase. The author argues that confrontational attitudes would eventually lead to servitude, whereas independent policies generated by self-confidence will lead to the restoration of identity. In his words:

The political independence achieved after the Islamic Revolution did not move on the track to true independence, leading to the establishment of a logical and strong relationship with the world. The cycle between confrontational and servile relations with the West (especially the United States of America in recent years) could have been converted into logical relations with the preservation of identity and adherence to mutual interests. After their revolutions, China, India, and some other countries witnessed the rise of successful movements for political independence, but the Middle East and the North African nations have until now continued to repeat the cycle of confrontation, dependence, war and surrender, and slavery.[22]

For the future, the author advocates a new international relation theory in which mutual respect and struggle for peace are coupled with national interest.

It seems that the third debate of international relations in the Muslim world is resolving into the conversion of the Islamic movement into a new phase of Muslim politics. It was argued that, in the second phase, Muslims lost heart in the face of modernity and, consequently, turned inward, becoming extremist or radical. Having now regained their confidence, they have regained their heart. Just as the traditional “Muslim politics” was composed of an Islamic heart and a mind that was the product of the Islamic but also of other civilizations, so the newly emerging politics is composed of an Islamic heart and a mind that partakes of both Islam and modernity. Reza Davari, a prominent Muslim professor of philosophy and activist, describes the new Homo Islamicus as an individual “with the heart of a believer and the mind of an infidel . . . not a person with a believer’s mind and an infidel’s heart.”[23] In the same way, just as the traditional Islamic IR theory borrowed from other civilizations without ever losing its own Islamic heart, the new one also seeks to combine the Islamic worldview with modern achievements. It concentrates on state building through a revitalization of the basic tenets of the Islamic ontological framework, which involves submitting to the will of God while at the same time preserving human integrity.[24] This has to be accomplished not through imitation of the West but through institution of a new Islamic civilizational process within the context of the new globalized world in which every Muslim community has to balance the three forces of local heritage, modern demands, and Islamic commandments. The second of these three aims at formulating an international relations theory that is inclusive and works for mutual respect and a dialogue of civilizations.[25]

---

* Farhang Rajaee taught in Iran from 1985 to 1996, and currently is a Scholar-in-Residence in the College of the Humanities at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. A draft of this paper was presented at the International Studies Association annual meeting of 1998 in Seattle, Washington.

[1] K. J. Holsti, The Dividing Discipline: Hegemony and Diversity in International Theory (Boston: Allen, 1985), p. 127.

[2] In revisiting the prevalent Westphalian international relations theories, Jim George brings out these basic presuppositions. See his Discourse of Global Politics: A Critical (Re)Introduction of International Relations (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1994).

[3] Erwin Rosenthal, Political Thought in Medieval Islam: An Introductory Outline (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1958), p. 8.

[4] This classical approach has been ably presented in English by Majid Khadduri, War and Peace in the Law of Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1955).

[5] Ibid., pp. 239–249.

[6] Roger Collins, Charlemagne (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), p 152.

[7] James Piscatori, “Islam in the International Order,” in Hedley Bull and Adam Watson, eds., The Expansion of International Society (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984), p. 319.

[8] E. J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire 1875–1914 (London: Weidenfeld, 1987).

[9] Leon Carl Brown, International Politics and the Middle East: Old Rules, Dangerous Game (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 7.

[10] Arnold Joseph Toynbee and Jane Caplan, A Study of History, new revised and abridged edition (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), pp. 436–440.

[11] Ibid., p. 442.

[12] Muhammad Iqbal, Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (Lahore: Muhammad Ashraf, 1962).

[13] The idea is well documented and argued by Gilles Kepel in The Prophet and Pharaoh: Muslim Extremism in Egypt (London: Al Saqi Books, 1985).

[14] Speech delivered on 27 December 1982. See Keyhan (28 December 1982), p. 18.

[15] Rouhollah Khomeini, Imam and His Revolution, trans. Hamid Algar (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1982), pp. 43–44.

[16] Aziz Al-Azmeh, Islams and Modernities (London: Verso, 1993).

[17] Fernand Braudel, A History of Civilizations, tr. Richard Mayne (New York: Penguin. 1994), p. 93

[18] Piscatori, “Islam in the International Order,” p. 313.

[19] Marshall G. S. Hodgson, Venture of Islam (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1974), Vol. 3.

[20] Giacomo Luciani and Hazem Beblawi, The Rentier State. (London: Croom Helm, 1987).

[21] Fouad Ajami, “The Summoning: But They Said, We will not Hearken,” Foreign Affairs 72:4 (September- October 1993), p. 9.

[22] Taqi Rahmani, “Diplomacy of Confrontation, Dependence, or Identity and Interests?” (in Persian) Iran-i Farda (October-December 1997), pp. 53–56.

[23] Reza Davari, Falsafa dar Buhran [Philosophy in Crisis] (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1373/1995), p. 382.

[24] Farhang Rajaee, “The Paradox of Arab State Building in the Post-Bipolar World,” The Iranian Journal of International Affairs 8 (1996), 2:301–319.

[25] Abdulhamid A. Abu Sulayman, Towards an Islamic Theory of International Relations: New Directions for Methodology and Thought, 2nd ed. (Herndon, Virginia: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1993).
 
 

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