Gazing though my window across the Saad Zaghloul Square of Alexandria
into the Mediterranean, I can hear chants of the Egyptian revolutionaries
who now want to secure the gains of their proud and peaceful revolution
of January 25, 2011. In this wildi re of revolutionary fervor that has
spread through the Middle East and has caught the region by surprise,
Islam is deeply relevant. This is not an “Islamic” revolution like that of
Iran, as everyone across the board is insisting, yet, with the passing of
days and weeks, questions surrounding of the role of Islam in the future
of the Egyptian and the new Arab states generally seem to loom ever
larger. The subject matter of this monograph – the relationship between
politics, law, and reason in Islamic thought – even though it pertains to
the medieval world, is brought to life for me continually as I meet with
Egyptians of various stripes in the midst of the revolutionary fervor and
see their unprecedented openness toward expression of political views.
The classical Muslim i gures whose thought is examined here are alive
and well today in the sermons and writings of the ulama, preachers, and
Islamists. Given the nature of the subject matter, it is only appropriate to
attempt to bring it into conversation with the contemporary problems in
Islamic political thought. In the following pages, I do so by raising the set
of questions that I address in this monograph.