Political aspects of Islam

Political aspects of the religion of Islam are derived from its religious scripture (the Quran holy book, ḥadīth literature of accounts of the sayings and living habits attributed to the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and sunnah), as well as elements of political movements and tendencies followed by Muslims or Islamic states throughout its history. Shortly after its founding, Islam's prophet Muhammad became a ruler of a state, and the intertwining of religion and state in Islam (and the idea that "politics is central" to Islam), is in contrast to the doctrine of rendering "unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God", of Christianity, its related and neighboring religion.

Traditional political concepts in Islam which form an idealized model for Islamic rule, are based on the rule of Muhammad in Mecca (629–632 CE) and his elected or selected successors, known as rāshidūn ("rightly-guided") caliphs in Sunnī Islam, and the Imams in Shīʿa Islam. Concepts include obedience to the Islamic law (sharīʿa); pledging of obedience by the ruled to rulers (al-Bayʿah), with a corresponding duty of rulers to rule justly and seek consultation (shūrā) before making decisions; and the importance of rebuking unjust rulers, and the supremacy of unity, solidarity and community, over individual rights and diversity. Classical Islamic political thought focuses on advice on how to govern well, rather than reflecting "on the nature of politics".

A sea change in the political history of the Muslim world was the rise of the West and the eventual defeat and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire (1908–1922). In the modern era (19th–20th centuries), common Islamic political themes have been resistance to Western imperialism and enforcement of sharīʿa law through democratic or militant struggle. Increasing the appeal of Islamic movements such as Islamism, Islamic democracy, Islamic fundamentalism, and Islamic revivalism, especially in the context of the global sectarian divide and conflict between Sunnīs and Shīʿītes, have been a number of events; the defeat of Arab armies in the Six-Day War and the subsequent Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank (1967), the Islamic Revolution in Iran (1979), the collapse of the Soviet Union (1992) bringing an end to the Cold War and to communism as a viable alternative political system, and especially popular dissatisfaction with secularist ruling regimes in the Muslim world.