A Comparison of the Mutual Relationship between the People...

A Comparison of the Mutual Relationship between the People and the Government in Islam and the West a Descriptive Approach Meanwhile, the other method in examining the government-people relationship is the analytical one; that is, to examine what the intellectual and theoretical foundations of Islam or the intellectual and theoretical foundations of the West require.

Of course, we have to bear in mind that in the West there have been no fixed intellectual foundations for the past fourteen centuries. Many developments have happened in the history of the Western thought, while we regard the Islamic thought as fixed. Differences of opinion on some secondary matters have come up but the principles and foundations have not changed.

Today, the Islamic thought about politics and government is the same that existed during the time of the Holy Prophet (S), and what we know as Islam is that which comes from the Qur’an, the Sunnah and the life conduct [ sirah ] of the Prophet (S). If we want to compare the theory of Islam with that of the West, it must be specified with which part of the Western thought we want to compare.

Do we want to compare with Christianity which has been expelled for centuries from the page of social life in the West, from the political scene in particular? Should we compare the ideas during the Renaissance and after it, i.e. the period of modernity and postmodernism with Islam? What is most asked is the latter part; that is, if we want to compare Islam with the West, we have to do so with the present West and not with the West thousands of years or many centuries ago.

That discussion does not have much use for us. Today, the dominant idea in the Western political and social circles is the liberalist thought. Therefore, it is better for us to compare these two thoughts, viz. Islam and liberalism. The liberalist thought is dealt with in the form of democracy in the political and administrative scene.

The origin of liberalist thought is an extensive one that covers the different economic, political, moral, legal, and other domains, but in the political domain, it is portrayed more in the form of democracy. The intellectual foundations of democracy are not identical with that of liberalism, but nowadays these two have practically become synonyms? Wherever the government is democratic, it is based on the liberalist ideas, and vice versa.