ABSTRACT
The previous chapter of our inquiry closed not in a dismissive note about the meaningfulness, or meaninglessness, of Islam in foreign policy, but rather in a question about the norms (and forms) of the Islamic ingredient in the making/shaping of policy. To be sure, the praxeological approach to foreign policy has displayed neither “Islamic” rationale nor any extra-logical (e.g. theo-logical) determinant of preference pursuit. Indeed, a grand rejection is inviting, for as Fayez Sayegh (1964) has so brusquely stated, within the sphere of international affairs, “the reasoning of the contemporary generation of Muslim leaders is indistinguishable from that of non-Muslims.”1
Yet to revert to a traditional realist paradigm, in which neither ideology nor theology remains more than fanciful, and often ex post facto, representations of power-games, would amount to nothing short of analytical regression.2 The temporal factor, too, is important, for, writing in 1964, Sayegh was unaware of the revivalist backlash, “la revanche de Dieu,” soon to unfold.
