Who Needs an Islamic State? We Do!

A Critical Review of the book by Abdelwahab El-Affendi: 'Who needs an Islamic State?'With Appendix: The ruling of the leading scholars on the book Islam and governance (Al-Islam wa Usool al-Hukm)"Who needs an Islamic State?" is not a new book. It was largely ignored when it was first published. However, recently when a new intellectual front in the attack against Islam has opened in Britain, its author -whose view coincides with western policy makers - is enjoying a new found...
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A Critical Review of the book by Abdelwahab El-Affendi: 'Who needs an Islamic State?'With Appendix: The ruling of the leading scholars on the book Islam and governance (Al-Islam wa Usool al-Hukm)"Who needs an Islamic State?" is not a new book. It was largely ignored when it was first published. However, recently when a new intellectual front in the attack against Islam has opened in Britain, its author -whose view coincides with western policy makers - is enjoying a new found popularity as an 'expert' on the matter. His central argument is: Islam really has no defined political system, thus making democracy the most suitable system for Muslims in the modern world.Although the author implies on page one that he is opening up a new debate, one is immediately struck by the orientalist tone of the work, coming across as yet another follower of Ali Abdul Raziq and the orientalists who wrote on the matter around 1924, when the destruction of the Islamic State in Istanbul was a prime British foreign policy objective. The few new points made in this book do not make it read any less like a supplement to 'Al-Islam wa Ususl al-Hukm', Ali Abdul Raziq's book published in 1925, but written a number of years earlier.