Religious Thinking on Politics

Political thoughts are mainly categorized into two groups of realistic and idealistic. Both groups can be found in Sunnah of Islamic thought. As an example, Shiite-philosophical thoughts mainly possess stronger idealistic aspects and more epistles of political realism. In this paper, it will be shown that political thoughts of Sunnis are realistic and based on two essential elements. Firstly, they lack a priori aspects meaning they do not result from historical experiences, and appears after the existing reality for explanation and legitimization. Second, it accepts Taghlib, or illegitimate power and coercion, as legitimatization principles. Interestingly, we have observed that over the history, as Shariah legitimatization and idealistic features of caliphate theory fades away, the emphasis on coercion and violence increases. As such, the caliphate theory changes occurred during medieval Islam can be studied based on historical changes. Analyzing the thoughts of prominent Sunni Fuqaha and speakers from various schools (particularly from Mawardi, Al-Ghazali, Ibn Taymiyyah, and Khonji), the paper shows that justifying illegitimate power and coercion in caliphate theories is directly related to the fall of foundations of legitimatization of caliphate character.