Through a new, simpler and more complete system, the Center for the Study of Political Islam offers these sacred texts to the general reader. The Advanced Certificate in Religious Studies was launched in 2007 by the Center for Religious Studies (formerly the Religious Studies Program). If you got together a big room of religious studies scholars and asked each of them to offer their own definition of religion, you’d likely get as many different answers as there were people in the room. In this way, religion requires people to be obedient with their beliefs, keeping them fixed to scriptures or what is taught to them by religious leaders. Government statistics of the religion in Vietnam are counts of members of religious organization recognized by the government. The struggles in adversity that preceded his exile, like the ultimate triumph that ended his career, are all part of the Islamic tradition, of the holy life of the Prophet. I found numerous Christian missionaries in that part of the world, but I failed to see any organized Muslim missions.

The militants involved were in part angered by what they considered to be the corruption and un-Islamic nature of the Saudi government, proclaimed the return of the Mahdi. He led an opposition against the pagan oligarchy of Mecca and at a certain point went into exile and formed what in modern language might be called a “government in exile,” with which finally he was able to return in triumph to his birthplace and establish the Islamic state in Mecca. The Prophet as rebel has provided a sort of paradigm of revolution-opposition and rejection, withdrawal and departure, exile and return. But before the Prophet became a head of state, he was a rebel. As the Ayatollah Khomeini has reminded us, Muhammad exercised the normal functions of a head of state-he dispensed justice, he raised taxes, he promulgated laws, he made war, he made peace. And these men of religion, the theologians and the jurists (the two in Islam are intimately associated), represent God and God’s law for most practical purposes, and therefore in a very real sense exercise authority, though not the ultimate political authority, which until the present regime in Iran has never been exercised by the professional men of religion.

The opposing argument takes theocracy in a rather different sense. Consequently, they argue, since theocracy means government by the church, rule by the priests, and since Islam has neither church nor priests, it follows that Islam is not, indeed cannot be, a theocracy. And since the state undoubtedly can have enemies, it follows that the enemies of the state are the enemies of God. Different observers have answered both yes and no. Some Western observers, particularly of late, have described Islam as a theocratic system. Power seeks legitimacy, and attains it more effectively, among Muslims, from Islam rather than from national or patriotic or even dynastic claims, still less from the Western notion of national or popular sovereignty. And finally, a practical matter, but one of considerable significance; Islam, as recent events have demonstrated again and again, provides the most effective system of symbols-one might say of slogans, though no derogatory sense is meant-for mobilizing public opinion, for arousing the people in defense of a regime that is perceived as possessing the necessary legitimacy, or against a regime that is perceived as lacking that legitimacy, in other words, as not being Islamic. Islam is in principle, if not in practice, theocratic in another and deeper sense.

There are many different strands in the rich and varied traditional culture of Islam. In the terms in which they argue, both sides are right, depending on what is meant by theocracy. Does all this mean that Islam is a theocracy? There is, as they rightly point out, no church in Islam. From the point of view of Muslim scholars, historians, theologians, and others, who reject the idea of Islam’s being a theocracy, the meaning of the word is very clear. The Prophet’s departure from Mecca-the hijra-marks the starting point of the Muslim era. Most Muslim writers reject this with indignation. It was and is in Islamic terms that those who overthrew the Shah, murdered Anwar Sadat, seized the Great Mosque in Mecca, and now threaten the existing order in many Muslim countries justified their actions and appealed for popular support. The Future of the Muslim Population – United States Pew Forum. In fact, 70 percent of the United States’ food pantries are run by faith-based nonprofits, as are 27 percent of emergency shelters and halfway houses. Those who exercise authority do so on behalf of God, in the same way and perhaps to the same extent as the prime minister of England exercises authority on behalf of the Queen and the president of the United States on behalf of the people.