# Islamic state

An Islamic state is a state organized so that Islam supplies its defining legal and political principles, whether through a constitution that names Islam as the state religion and source of legislation, or through the more ambitious claim that divine sovereignty, not popular will, grounds political authority. As a modern political concept it is contested both among Muslims and among scholars, and it spans constitutional clauses, full legal systems, and revolutionary projects such as the Islamic Republic of Iran and the self-declared caliphate of the Islamic State.

| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Core claim | The Islamic state is based on ruling the Islamic *ummah* (أمة, the Muslim community), and, as a modern phenomenon, expresses a utopian political program for post-colonial Muslim societies<sup>[1](https://www.ibidem.eu/out/media/vlb_9783838278827_2.pdf)</sup> |
| Constitutional forms | Many constitutions in the Muslim world contain clauses that recognize the Islamic character of the state, a phenomenon measured by the Islamic Constitutions Index<sup>[2](https://repository.uclawsf.edu/hastings_international_comparative_law_review/vol38/iss1/1/)</sup> |
| Existing examples | Some Islamic law states, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, adopt Islamic law, however interpreted, as the supreme law of the country, embedding Islam-based legal concepts throughout the constitution and legal system<sup>[3](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/global-constitutionalism/article/taliban-afghan-constitutionalism-and-modern-islamic-law-states-renegotiating-the-balance-of-religious-and-secular-law/49FE15C2479538509C83E72FA2A5BA99)</sup> |
| Durable modern founding | The 1979 revolution in Iran is described as the most durable modern attempt to enthrone Islamic leadership; the head of the first Taliban movement was given the title *amīr al-muʾminīn* ("Head of the Believers")<sup>[1](https://www.ibidem.eu/out/media/vlb_9783838278827_2.pdf)</sup> |
| Caliphate visions | Survey research identifies three visions of the caliphate in Islamic political thought: an autocratic view, a democratic view, and an instrumentalist or "good governance" view<sup>[4](https://mail.ajis.org/index.php/ajiss/article/view/3283)</sup> |
| End of the caliphate | The Ottoman Empire collapsed in World War I, its remaining lands were divided into nation-states, and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk sent the last caliph, Abdulmecid Efendi, into exile<sup>[5](https://time.com/2942239/what-is-the-caliphate/)</sup> |

## Concept and vocabulary

The term **Islamic state** does not map neatly onto classical usage. Louay M. Safi, a scholar of Islamic political thought, argued in a 1991 study that the concept must be broken into its basic elements: the purpose of the state, the source of political legitimacy, and the scope of state power, with a clear distinction between the roles of the state and those of the *ummah*.<sup>[6](https://www.ajis.org/index.php/ajiss/article/view/2622)</sup> He noted that the Arabic word *dawlah* (state) appears only once in the Qur'an, in verse 59:7, concerning the distribution of property, and that almost six centuries elapsed before Muslim scholars gave it a technical definition; earlier literature referred instead to territories as *al-amsar* or *dar al-Islam* and to political bodies by their organs, such as *al-khilafah*.<sup>[6](https://www.ajis.org/index.php/ajiss/article/view/2622)</sup>

A reference work for the tradition is the historian Antony Black's *The History of Islamic Political Thought: From the Prophet to the Present*, which covers Islamic political thought from early Islam (c. 622–661) to the present, treating it as a coherent, ongoing tradition with a logic of its own, encompassing the Qur'an, the early caliphate, classical [Islamic philosophy](https://www.edgepedia.org/islamic-philosophy), and the political culture of the Ottoman and other empires.<sup>[7](https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1g0b63h)</sup>

## Historical background

The [Ottoman dynasty](https://www.edgepedia.org/ottoman-dynasty) (c. 1290–1922) was, in Black's account, unprecedented and unequalled in the Islamic world for its size and duration, and imperial political culture drew both on Islamic jurisprudence and on Iranian-inflected courtly traditions.<sup>[7](https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1g0b63h)</sup> One structural change came with the Safavids, who reunited Iran for the first time since the first Muslim conquest as an independent great power and established, in Black's account, the first, and for a long time the only, nation-state in Islamdom, sharpening the match between territory and religious identity.<sup>[7](https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1g0b63h)</sup>

The caliphate as a living institution ended with World War I. The Ottoman Empire collapsed, its remaining land was divided up into the form preferred by the European victors, nation-states, and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who viewed Islam as a rival to the power of the secular state, sent the last caliph, Abdulmecid Efendi, into exile.<sup>[5](https://time.com/2942239/what-is-the-caliphate/)</sup> Twentieth-century thinkers then built the modern Islamic-state idea on foundations laid by Rashid Rida, whose *al-Islam wa Usul al-Hukm* (1925) shaped how the concept is perceived, and later ideologues.<sup>[8](https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-file/2461977)</sup>

An academic critique, linked to Wael Hallaq, maintains that today's Islamist movements bear the structural imprint of colonial modernity, and that the present-day Islamic state is a hybrid construct grounded in Western political epistemologies rather than a continuation of governance in classical Islam.<sup>[9](https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/afkaruna/article/view/29424)</sup> In Pakistan, [Muhammad](https://www.edgepedia.org/muhammad) Asad developed a comprehensive theoretical framework for Islamic governance drawn from the fundamental principles and doctrine of the shariah and its moral norms deriving from explicit Qur'anic and *sunnah* text, while also advocating democratic ideals and principles compatible with the modern nation-state.<sup>[10](https://ejournal.uinsaid.ac.id/ajipp/article/view/8826)</sup>

## Contemporary implementations

Existing Islamic law states differ widely in structure. In the view of political scientist and Concurrent Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame Emilia Justyna Powell, together with Joshua Paldino, certain Islamic law states, among them Iran and Saudi Arabia, treat Islamic law, whatever its interpretation, as the highest law of the land, spreading legal ideas and vocabulary rooted in Islam across both the constitution and the legal system below it. While many such states oppose Western influence in governance, unlike today's Taliban-led Afghanistan they have been able to integrate into the broader international community; the Taliban's supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, retains a tight grip on all decision-making.<sup>[3](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/global-constitutionalism/article/taliban-afghan-constitutionalism-and-modern-islamic-law-states-renegotiating-the-balance-of-religious-and-secular-law/49FE15C2479538509C83E72FA2A5BA99)</sup> The Islamic Republic of Iran concentrates ultimate authority in the office of the Supreme Leader while distributing coercive power across overlapping institutions such as the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps](https://www.edgepedia.org/islamic-revolutionary-guard-corps) and the internal security apparatus, a design intended to let the state endure during moments of crisis and uncertainty.<sup>[11](https://time.com/7381954/iran-ayatollah-khamenei-trump-israel/)</sup>

The [Islamic State of Iraq](https://www.edgepedia.org/islamic-state-of-iraq) and the Levant represented a revolutionary, violent version of the idea. A [Brookings Institution](https://www.edgepedia.org/brookings-institution) paper by Charles Lister sets forth the main lines of the group's ideology and places its fundamental religious and political beliefs in the broader context of Islamic political thought.<sup>[12](https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/The-ideology-of-the-Islamic-State.pdf)</sup> Work published in *International Political Sociology* characterizes it as a revolutionary, post-colonial regime whose violence creates fresh collective identities, tied to a national culture that seeks authenticity in the [Sunni Islam](https://www.edgepedia.org/sunni-islam) of the precolonial era, and pushes back against depictions of the group as without precedent.<sup>[13](https://academic.oup.com/ips/article-abstract/12/2/139/5001835)</sup> A historical-sociological account links its emergence in Iraq to the 2003 US-led destruction of the Iraqi state and its reconstruction on a majoritarian basis favoring the Shi'as, which transformed sectarian tension into sectarian conflict culminating in the Islamic State.<sup>[14](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/johs.12188)</sup>

Turkey offers a contrasting trajectory. Constitutionally the republic remains secular, but, according to Sebnem Gumuscu, a professor of political science at [Middlebury College](https://www.edgepedia.org/middlebury-college) who studies political Islam, the authorities have used the state's authority and resources to build a more Islamic society, prioritizing Muslims in political and social life, so that the façade of secularism has become, in her phrase, an empty shell.<sup>[15](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/03/31/sebnem-gumuscu-expert-in-political-islam-turkish-secularism-is-nothing-but-an-empty-shell_6666904_4.html)</sup>

## Public opinion

Survey evidence complicates a simple Islamic-state-versus-democracy framing. Academic work has identified only a weak or negligible link between indicators of backing for political Islam and indicators of backing for democracy, and polling in the early 2000s showed that professed support for democracy in the [Middle East and North Africa](https://www.edgepedia.org/middle-east-and-north-africa) ranked among the highest of any region worldwide.<sup>[16](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/politics-and-religion/article/comparative-sharia-measuring-support-for-islamism-crossnationally/BD789B986D5BFD8FDCAC89999EFA3AB8)</sup> Research on caliphate support outlines the autocratic, democratic, and instrumentalist visions and analyzes how the caliphate is conceptualized today by its supporters using existing and original surveys conducted in several Islamic countries, showing that the institution is not attached to one political model.<sup>[4](https://mail.ajis.org/index.php/ajiss/article/view/3283)</sup> In domestic politics, research by Lisa Blaydes, a Stanford political science assistant professor, and coauthors, drawing on case studies and a multilevel statistical analysis of public opinion data from almost 13,000 Muslim respondents across 21 countries, concluded that Muslim hostility toward America is chiefly a homegrown phenomenon driven by elites and grows stronger as rivalry between Islamist and secular-nationalist political factions increases within a country.<sup>[17](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/abs/elite-competition-religiosity-and-anti-americanism-in-the-islamic-world/B51B3B740F267EC28E3218CE3ECD1972)</sup>

## References

1. [Encyclopedia Tyrannica: A Research Guide to Authoritarianism, Ibidem Press](https://www.ibidem.eu/out/media/vlb_9783838278827_2.pdf)
2. [Dawood I. Ahmed and Moamen Gouda, "Measuring Constitutional Islamization: The Islamic Constitutions Index," Hastings International and Comparative Law Review 38(1)](https://repository.uclawsf.edu/hastings_international_comparative_law_review/vol38/iss1/1/)
3. [Emilia Justyna Powell and Joshua Paldino, "The Taliban, Afghan constitutionalism and modern Islamic law states," Global Constitutionalism (2025)](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/global-constitutionalism/article/taliban-afghan-constitutionalism-and-modern-islamic-law-states-renegotiating-the-balance-of-religious-and-secular-law/49FE15C2479538509C83E72FA2A5BA99)
4. ["The Other Legitimate Game in Town? Understanding Public Support for the Caliphate in the Islamic World," American Journal of Islam and Society](https://mail.ajis.org/index.php/ajiss/article/view/3283)
5. ["What is the Caliphate?", Time (2014)](https://time.com/2942239/what-is-the-caliphate/)
6. [Louay M. Safi, "The Islamic State: A Conceptual Framework," American Journal of Islam and Society 8(2): 221-234 (1991)](https://www.ajis.org/index.php/ajiss/article/view/2622)
7. [Antony Black, The History of Islamic Political Thought: From the Prophet to the Present, 2nd ed., Edinburgh University Press](https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1g0b63h)
8. ["The Concept of an 'Islamic State' and Its Applicability in the 21st Century," DergiPark](https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-file/2461977)
9. ["Does The Legacy of Colonialism Define Islamism? Analyzing Hallaq's Critique of Islamic Political Modernity," Afkaruna](https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/afkaruna/article/view/29424)
10. ["Muhammad Asad's Design of an Islamic State in Post-Colonial Pakistan," Academic Journal of Islamic Principles and Philosophy](https://ejournal.uinsaid.ac.id/ajipp/article/view/8826)
11. ["After Khamenei: What Iran, and the World, Face Next," Time](https://time.com/7381954/iran-ayatollah-khamenei-trump-israel/)
12. [Charles Lister et al., "From Paper State to Caliphate: The Ideology of the Islamic State," Brookings Institution](https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/The-ideology-of-the-Islamic-State.pdf)
13. ["Islamic State: Violence and Ideology in a Post-colonial Revolutionary Regime," International Political Sociology 12(2): 139-155 (2018)](https://academic.oup.com/ips/article-abstract/12/2/139/5001835)
14. [Kamran Matin, "Lineages of the Islamic State," Journal of Historical Sociology (2018)](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/johs.12188)
15. ["Sebnem Gumuscu, expert in political Islam," Le Monde (2024)](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/03/31/sebnem-gumuscu-expert-in-political-islam-turkish-secularism-is-nothing-but-an-empty-shell_6666904_4.html)
16. ["Comparative Shari'a: measuring support for Islamism cross-nationally," Politics and Religion](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/politics-and-religion/article/comparative-sharia-measuring-support-for-islamism-crossnationally/BD789B986D5BFD8FDCAC89999EFA3AB8)
17. [Lisa Blaydes et al., "Elite Competition, Religiosity, and Anti-Americanism in the Islamic World," American Political Science Review](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/abs/elite-competition-religiosity-and-anti-americanism-in-the-islamic-world/B51B3B740F267EC28E3218CE3ECD1972)

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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Society and history › Politics and government › Political systems and ideas › Political ideologies › Ideology theory and comparison › History and spread of ideologies › Political religion and religiously derived ideologies*

*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 17, 2026; Sep 18, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Sep 18, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*

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