THE PRINCIPLE OF STATE AND GOVERNMENT IN ISLAM

Although the Muslims are for the most part imbued with enthusiasm for the idea of a truly Islamic state — that is, a state based not on the concepts of nationality and race but solely on the ideology of the Qur’an and Sunnah, they had as yet no concrete vision of the methods of government and of the institutions which would give the state a distinctly Islamic character and would, at the same time, fully correspond to the exigencies of the present age. The very fact that the Muslim countries have so far not achieved a form of government that could be termed genuinely Islamic, makes a discussion of the principles which ought to underlie the constitution of Islamic state imperative. This book is an attempt to keep that discussion alive.

AUTHOR: Muhammad Asad

Muhammad Asad, born Leopold Weiss in the Polish city of Lvov in 1900, was the grandson of an orthodox Rabbi. By his early twenties he could write and read German, French and Polish languages. He took to journalism and travelled the Middle East as the correspondent of Frankfurter Zeitung of Germany. After his conversion to Islam, he again travelled and worked throughout the Muslim world, including Arabia, Iran, Jordan, North Africa and Pakistan. In 1953, he was appointed as Pakistan’s plenipotentiary to the United Nations. He later settled in Spain where he died on February 20, 1992. He is buried in the Muslim cemetery in Granada, Spain. Apart from his magnum opus, The Message of the Qur’an, his other works include Islam at the Crossroads, The Road to Mecca, The Unromantic Orient, This Law of Ours and Sahih al-Bukhari: The Early Years of Islam. 9 789670 526058 TRUST, KUALA LUMPUR books.com