Comparing the Islamic State with the Secular and Liberal Governments of the West: A Civilizational Perspective

The question of how and why the Islamic States are in the lap of Islamic civilization is the subject of this study. The purpose is to compare the Islamic state with secular and liberal governments, i.e., modern Western governments, to determine the Islamic state's characteristics. This comparison is based on the assumption that the state is one of the outputs of any civilization. The research method is documentary, and the related materials have been collected, compared, and analyzed. Through comparing the Islamic state with the characteristic of the Ummah-Imamate with the modern Western state with the secularist and liberal face, it was found that the Islamic state can be characterized by features such as religious interest versus modern interest, happiness of religion ending, the world and the hereafter life against the material ending, the tool of knowing the power against power for power, Sovereignty and domination of the school of Islam against non-commitment to the holy school, guardianship of the Imam and his successor against lack of guardianship, presence as a nation and citizen against presence as a mere citizen, and religious rationality versus human self-founded rationality. The findings also show that the state's capacity in the Islamic model is so large that it cannot fall within the scope of the definition of the model of the nation-state theory, which is the basis of secular and liberal governments in Western civilization. It can be concluded that the Islamic state, with its ummah-Imamate feature, has provided a great potential for the presence of Islamic civilization in the political future of the world, which can play its role in this direction by resisting its principles and points of difference with secular and Western governments.