In exploring the relationship between divine and popular sovereignty in the writings of some major Muslim intellectuals, this highly original book sheds new light on the fraught and much talked about question of democracy in Muslim societies. Andrew March has produced the most comprehensive, historically informed, and sophisticated study yet of the idea of sovereignty in modern Islamic thought.

In this highly readable book based on deep research, Andrew March gives an accessible story of Islamic political theology and the value it holds for millions around the world today. Muslim political thought is often dismissed by Western politicians and the media, but we ignore it at our peril. This is indispensable reading.

This cutting-edge work of comparative political philosophy squarely places modern Islamic political thought in the wider context of modern democratic thought and articulates for the first time a uniquely Islamic theory of democratic governance. Eschewing both apology and exoticization, March successfully draws on a range of political thinkers—Muslim and non-Muslim—and sheds light on points of convergence and divergence among various Islamist theories of state.

Interrogating the works of Rashid Rida, Sayyid Qutb, Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, Abul A’la Maududi, Ayatollah Ali Khomeini and others, March captures the diversity and tensions of modern political Islamist thought…A valuable book that explores the idea of Caliphate as a democratic notion within Islamist thought while critiquing materialistic notions of democracy.

March sheds important light on Islamic theories of governance…He relies on an impressive array of political thinkers, both Muslim and non-Muslim, to show the richness and the complexity of Islamist theories of state…This is a very important study.

March’s exposition of the evolution of the high ideological politics of twentieth-century Islamism is remarkably erudite, well researched, and deftly written.