ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of how the pre-19th-century tradition of Sunni theology and law attempted to reconcile the claims of divine sovereignty to temporal sovereignty, and how its solution to the problem points the way to a normative theory of democratic self-government for Muslim peoples. It deals with a brief account of the distinctive political theology of Sunnism. The chapter provides to Shihab al-Din al-Qarafi’s understanding of the institutional architecture of Islamic law, and its relationship to the state and individual Muslims. It argues that Sunni jurists adopted the fiduciary principles found in the private law of agency to solve the basic problem of political ordering that Sunni political theology introduced: how to make governance among equals legitimate. The Khawarij therefore believed that the community after the Prophet’s death could maintain its integrity only if it submitted to its most virtuous member, and expelled from its midst all those who were unwilling to abide strictly by Islamic norms.
