ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to explore the dominant assumptions which Muslims of recognized religious authority, living before any major segment of the Muslim community came under the political authority or the cultural influence of non-Muslims, made about the nature and ends of political activity. For the classical Muslim jurists, social and political relationships and the authority of men over men can exist only as a consequence of a right relationship between individual men and an entity outside human society, namely, Allah. The implications of traditional Muslim attitudes for political life may now perhaps be easier to grasp. In effect the traditional Muslim conception of the nature of politics is that political activity is a species of command and of enforcement of law. The traditional Muslim theory of politics pre-supposes not only that Truth is one, but also that all who have made the Muslim affirmation, shall not differ about the nature of that One Truth.
