The Conceptual Cleavage
Why Neo-Hallaqian Idealism Fails the Revolution
The comparison between the perspectives of Allama Khalid Jamai and Ali Muhammad Rizvi reveals an internal debate within the wider circle of the late Dr. Javed Akbar Ansari. While both agree on the importance of developing a critique of the modern state, they diverge on its historical continuity, terminological legitimacy, and its relation to Islamic political thought.
1. The Nature of the Term “State” (Riyasat)
Allama Khalid Jamai is of the opinion that the “state” is a strictly modern construct emerging around the 17th or 18th century. He cites a conversation with Dr. Ansari to the effect that terms like Khilafat, Imarat, and Badshahat are not coextensive with the concept of the ‘state’. For Allama Khalid Jamai, the state is a specific theological-political invention of the West (Hallaq’s point) that must be rejected alongside capitalism and human rights.
On the other hand, Ali Muhammad argues that while the term “Riyasat” might be used in modern contexts, the concept of a central political authority is not a Western import. He references classical literature like Ahkam al-Sultania and Shah Waliullah’s use of the term Riyasat-e-Aamma to demonstrate that Islamic political thought contains its own indigenous vocabulary for organised sovereignty. He therefore rejects the call to abandon the term “Riyasat” and suggests that Islamic history possesses its own specific framework for political authority that predates the modern European episteme.
2. Foucauldian Entrapments vs Conceptual differentiation
Allama Khalid Jamai’s approach emphasises a historical rupture. By tracing the state to specific intellectual developments in Europe, he presents it as a unique formation bound to the logic of capital and the project of modernity in both ethos and structure. In this framework, the state is not a “neutral” category but a distinct species of organisation. To describe the Khilafat as a “state” is, in his view, a category mistake that obscures its Islamic foundations.
Ali Muhammad, on the other hand, advocates conceptual differentiation. He treats the “state” as a genus (a broad category defined by centralised authority) within which multiple species exist. This allows for a framework that preserves historical continuity while acknowledging qualitative differences. It reframes the task of the Islamic movement: not the abolition of the state as such, but the overthrow of non-Islamic states and the reconstitution of political authority under divine sovereignty. For him, the state is a concept that can be populated with different values; it is not inherently secular, provided it is subordinated to the Sovereignty of Allah.
3. State vs. Government
Allama Khalid Jamai distinguishes between government (temporary) and the state (permanent and structural). For him, the state - the military, judiciary, and bureaucracy - is the enduring engine that sustains the hegemony of capital, regardless of which “administration” is in power.
Ali Muhammad, on the other hand, refines this by identifying two distinct senses of government: temporary administrations and government as a permanent feature of organised social life. While particular regimes come and go, the necessity of governance remains constant. To manage this, he introduces a crucial analytical layer into the concept of the state itself:
The permanent apparatuses of power: The institutional tools and structures required for social order.
The political rationality of governance: The underlying logic, values, and objectives that direct those tools.
This distinction is the pivot for a revolutionary theory. Revolution cannot be reduced to seizing institutions; it must transform the rationality - the logic of Abdiyat vs. autonomy - that governs them. Without this transformation, the permanent apparatus simply reproduces the same secular logic, even if the “temporary” administration has changed its banner.
4. Hallaq vs. The Islamic Revolution
Wael Hallaq’s The Impossible State argues that the modern state is incompatible with Sharia because it claims absolute sovereignty - a claim that belongs exclusively to Allah. Allama Khalid’s position aligns with this: the state is a fundamentally hostile entity that cannot be Islamised.
Ali Muhammad, on the other hand, drawing on a line of critique developed with Dr. Ansari, challenges this conclusion. The “impossibility” thesis is treated not as an ontological finality but as a historically contingent problem. From this perspective, an Islamic revolution must reclaim and redirect the functions of political authority. By subordinating the administrative apparatuses to divine sovereignty, the state is transformed from an instrument of capital into an instrument of the Deen. The issue is whether the underlying rationality of the state can be fundamentally reconstituted.
5. Methodology & Influences
Allama Khalid Jamai’s method is largely genealogical in a Foucauldian sense, seeking to expose the state as part of a broader system linking capital and modern governance to delegitimise its claims to universality.
Ali Muhammad, on the other hand, employs a Ghazalian deconstructive method. His emphasis lies on dissecting terms into their constituent layers - terminological, institutional, and rational - in order to recover their functional and ethical core. This allows for a more constructive project: the development of an indigenous Islamic political theory capable of explaining how to transcend a capitalist state and replace it with an Islamic one.
To sum up : Allama Khalid Jamai views the state as an intrinsically hostile structure that defines modernity and serves the logic of capital. Ali Muhammad, by contrast, treats it as a layered philosophical and administrative concept - one that must be critically reclaimed, redefined, and subordinated to divine sovereignty.
The disagreement is therefore not merely terminological; it concerns the very possibility of an Islamic revolutionary politics in the modern world.