Sam’s Reviews > The Impossible State: Islam, Politics, and Modernity's Moral Predicament > Status Update

“The pillars [...] are anchored in a simple message: understand your place in the world; understand your own transience; understand that you are created as part of a community and of a family that together feed your soul, just as plants and grains feed your body; understand that all this is a gift that comes with a responsibility toward everything around you; understand that you have duties toward the world [...].”

“The corporation and all it represents as a virtual capitalist enterprise is not only amoral and often immoral; it is also the epitome of anti-Shar‘ism. [...] Economists have for long understood that any modern national economy will inevitably experience serious difficulties in maintaining economic growth if at the same time it tried to implement a policy guaranteeing a decent measure of social and economic justice.”

“Ghazālī argues, God created the earth and all that is on it for the enjoyment of humankind, but all this bounty must be put to meaningful use. The human body is a vessel and a means by which one must reach a destination. Human beings therefore are no more than travelers [...]. Each day is yet another traversed mile toward the end of the journey, and earthly desires represent nothing less than highway robbers.”

“To make itself relevant, as it must, academia—which educates the nation and its elite—exercises upon itself a particular discipline that seeks, among other things, to develop expertise in fields relevant to the interests of the state, although the porosity of state and society often clothes these interests in the grab of social and societal concerns.”

“What were the powers and functions of executive sultanism? First, the sultan possessed no real sovereignty. Although mainly controlling the tools of violence, he represented no popular will beyond the legitimacy that the jurists [...] bestowed on him on behalf of the populace. He was not the source of law and thus had no significant legal will. He served the “Noble Sharī'a,” whether he liked or not.”

“Bureaucracy is the tool & instrument of administration, and administration [...] is the organization of control, governing, governmentality & violence. State bureaucracy therefore has a wide range of influence exceeding that of any other political organization. [...] In other words, bureaucracy not only intrudes on the private sphere & civil society, but it also [...] orders and sets the standards for the community”