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This chapter concerns the basic principles of an Islamic political system. Within the context of a growing Western impact on Muslim lands, the chapter offers a blueprint based on the unity of Islam and politics. It shows that the structure of the Islamic state that developed in Medina provided all the elements necessary to any state, like a people (umma), a territory, a political authority, and a legal system. Using precise wording, Medina's constitution or charter (al-sahifa) defined the groups that constituted the state—one by one it listed the Muslims, the Jews, and the pagans—all of them forming together a political umma. The document mentions their rights and duties as citizens of the state. In effect, each person was a member of the Islamic umma in their political dimension. Together they laid the solid foundation of an Islamic civilization in which hundreds of ethnic groups and tribes from different faith traditions gathered in response to a divine call.

Sudan's twenty-five-year experiment with Islamic governance not only offers the researcher a unique site to observe Islamist interventions in practice, but also allows us to observe how these policies are consumed within the diverse publics to which they attend, which is the goal of this chapter. A study of the regime's project of epistemological enlightenment offers a way of answering questions such as: Has the Islamic project of the Inqadh been a success? To what extent has the government of Sudan accomplished its goal of instilling its Islamic program in the citizenry? Are new Muslim subjects emerging out of the era of National Salvation, or was the Inqadh period largely one of slogans that bore little fruit among the masses? The chapter attempts to get a better a sense of the impact of the Islamic state by tracing first the nature of the regime's Islamic epistemological project and then observing how it was both inhabited and contested by the Sudanese to whom it was directed. It shows both its indelible presence in Sudanese public life and its inability to be enclosed within the agenda of its makers.

This chapter examines the democratic process in Pakistan. Pakistan was established in the mid-20th century as a state representing the highest ideals of Islamic life; to its founders there was no question but that it would be a democracy. Over the years, it has adopted a number of identifiably Islamic elements, such as the incorporation of Sharia law into the legal system; prohibition of alcohol and gambling; and declaration of heterodox Muslims non-Muslim. Yet calls continue for more Islamic governance. Pakistan’s democratization can be seen as a work in progress that aspires to achieve the objectives (maqasid) of Islamic law. Achieving these objectives—preservation of life, religion, family, property, and dignity—is the ultimate challenge of Islamic governance. According to prominent scholar Wilfred Cantwell Smith, “The demand that Pakistan should be an Islamic state has been a Muslim way of saying that Pakistan should build for itself a good society.”

The focus in the fifth and final chapter is on the afterlife of Nizam al-Mulk, of his legacy as well as of his representations. By the late fifteenth century, in Timurid Iran, Nizam al-Mulk is already the stuff of legend. In one historian’s estimation, the vizier is a veritable eleventh-century avatar of the martyr par excellence of Shi’i lore Husayn b. ‘Ali (d. 680), and the progenitor of modern Iran. But the story of Nizam al-Mulk does not end with his metamorphosis into a crypto-Shi‘i and a proto-Iranian patriot. In the 2010s, it is Nizam al-Mulk who is the most regularly invoked exemplar of legitimate Islamic governance, exhorting prudence and expedience to guide the Iranian polity through the treacherous waters of nuclear negotiations with the West, and to domesticate outlier and extremist fervor. The Iranian invocation of Nizam al-Mulk differs radically from his depiction in modern Sunni—Arab or Turkish—historiography. That living legacy is the true history of the laureled vizier.

This chapter examines how pre-Islamic elites survived into the ninth century and how ancient claims to ecclesiastical authority came into conflict with the new settlements created by the Arab conquerors of the Middle East. It describes the Kufa and Basra in southern Iraq and Fustat in Egypt as the most famous settlements, which were later joined by smaller centres such as Wasit, Merv, Shiraz, and Mosul. It also mentions conquerors in the amṣār that were paid cash stipends from the revenue generated by taxes, which in turn organized Islamic justice and governance. The chapter identifies three trends in the changing geography of power in the first three centuries of Arab rule in the Middle East. It includes the shift toward a small number of significant cities, the growing centralization of government, and the movement of the centre of power.