The Impossible State

Wael Hallaq

Paperback

9780231162579

This book was one of the titles selected for the Wardah Books Islamic Civilisation Book Club 2023.

Islam, Politics, and Modernity's Moral Predicament

Wael Hallaq argues that the "Islamic state" is both impossible and inherently self-contradictory. Comparing the legal, political, moral and constitutional histories of premodern Islam and Euro-America, he finds the adoption and the practices of the modern state to be highly problematic for modern Muslims. By Islamic standards, the state's technologies of the self are severely lacking in moral substance, and today's Islamic state has done little to advance an acceptable form of genuine Shari'a governance. The Islamist constitutional battles in Egypt and Pakistan, the legal and political failures of the Iranian Revolution, and other similar disappointments underscore this fact.

Contents:

1. Premises

2. The Modern State

3. Separation of Powers: Rule of Law or Rule of the State?

4. The Legal, the Political and the Moral

5. The Political Subject and Moral Technologies of the Self

6. Beleaguering Globalization and Moral Economy

7. The Central Domain of the Moral