ABSTRACT
This chapter deconstructs what the ‘foundational’ in Islamic political culture is. To clarify, that includes, first, the Qur’an, with a focus on the Makkan verses; second, the ‘Hadeeth’ – primarily the Bukhari collection; and third, the ‘Rashidun Era’ – the first three decades of Muslim governorship. Collectively, these embody an ideal that is communicated to the reader, guiding an adherent’s whole life by providing a yardstick to measure the desirability or undesirability of actions. 1 Of course, scholars have assembled those components in a multiplicity of ways, and have even added other sources, to put forward their postulates on directives. Nevertheless, the orthodox Sunni majority subscribes to these components, which provide broad-based values that infer a political philosophy. Variation, in other words, falls within an expansive spectrum of agreeability. This, then, is what this chapter aims to do – extract political values and reassemble them to put forth a coherent political philosophy that represents the high classicalism by which every successive era may be judged.
