ملخص الجهاز:
In contemporary literature it is presented (either humbly) as a rejection of ecclesiastical authority, a model for pluralism, a theory of society, a doctrine of governance or (augustly) as a philosophy of history, a creed of atheism, an epistemology of humanism, or (even more grandiosely) as a metaphysics of immanentism that corresponds to the ultimate scheme of things.
Prior to His "demise," notes Harrington, the societal God of Judaeo-Christlanity possessed -certain political attributes that included: The legitimization of established power and sometimes a revolt against it; The transcendent symbol of common consciousness of an existing community; The foundation of all other values; The organizing principle of a system of the authoritative allocation of social rules (God of feudalism) or the motivating and ethical principle of individual mobility (God of capitalism); The guarantor of personal, ethnic, and national identity; and A philosopher for the non-philosophers, including the illiterate.
Although the Muslim state, as an institution, was all-pervasive and never had to contend with a challenge of the nonexistent church, in terms of ideology it was a different matter altogether: The state, despite its absolute power, never succeeded in establishing its autonomy and legitimacy and thus remained merely the coercive forearm of a political society that could have no pretense to any redemptive functions.
Indeed, it is not even between a Muslim will-to-power and a secular world order that solicits a cultural and political pluralism, but rather between faith in a transcendent being and the totalitarian project for an immanent social utopia conceived as the end (al akhirahi.