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The Chapter explains how the State evolved from being merely a type of political enterprise to the institution it is today. In its origins, the State is nothing more than a coalition of powerful men controlling a territory via the use of violence if necessary. Property rights in the modern sense hardly exist at this stage of institutional development. Accessorily, violent coalitions of political entrepreneurs provide a service to the population: order. The political enterprise will extend this service, enlarging its jurisdiction and effective control over competing forces and will facilitate and benefit from the progressive development of market exchange. The modern State is intrinsically linked to modern taxes, payable in money and not in kind. Via a very long process, the resources needed by States to be in a position to provide services to their local population will be extracted via taxation and not mere compulsion in the context of the development of a monetary economy developed in part thanks to State action. States developed an inherent interest in protecting property and facilitating market exchange as a means to access to more resources via the taxation of a monetary economy.

This chapter discusses the first phase of modern state building in the Gulf, which lasted from the 1950s to the 1970s. The chapter first examines Gulf rulers’ state building efforts in the pre-oil period, which were limited in scope and depth. The chapter then details Gulf rulers’ state building efforts in the oil period, focusing on two fields historically occupied by religious scholars, justice and education. This chapter aims to show that the Gulf states had not undergone any forceful state secularization: on the contrary, they relied on religion and religious figures in building their educational and judicial systems as much as possible. The chapter also shows that Saudi Arabia had been more religious than others in pursuing the same aim.

This chapter discusses the main objective of the book and summarizes its main finding: that is, state religiosity has little impact on whether Islamism generates opposition in a country or not. The chapter revisits the broader literature on Islamism and places this finding within that literature by elaborating on Islamism’s oppositional character. Islamism, the chapter claims, sets forth a perpetually-ongoing and ever-changing task for the modern state to be religious, a task that is impossible to complete. Hence, Islamism is inherently oppositional no matter how religious a state aspires or manages to be. The chapter finally discusses the research methodology adopted and the main sources consulted in the book.

This conclusion summarizes the problems of democratic governance that were confronted by the French in the mid-19th century. The chapter notes that the French understood democracy to be as social as it was political, that people are the constituents of political power and the authors of their own laws, and that in economic terms, democracy was driven by an ambition to preserve the general welfare through provision, utility, anti-pauperism, and regulation. Thus, the economy could become a tool for democratic progress, instead of an autonomous, naturalized limit on democracy. A demos assembled comprehensively engaged its social, political, and economic capacities.

This chapter discusses how the experience of five Gulf States exemplifies the changes that take place in state-religion relations over the course of what scholars call modern state building. This chapter elaborates how Islamism is also linked to, in fact, intimately so, to modern state building in the Middle East. The chapter argues that Islamism was born as an attempt to reclaim the state that seemed to be lost its direction under the impact of Westernization/Secularization, yet put before reformers in the Middle East an almost impossible task.