these conversations at times intersect and overlap with, at other times radic-
ally diverge from, those in Western political theory. Neither the existence of
such ‘‘great conversations’’ across cultures nor these moments of common-
ality serve as evidence of universal, or ‘‘perennial,’’ questions that arise
everywhere by virtue of being human. On the contrary, the extent to which
peoples across culture do or do not share certain dilemmas of coexistence
must remain a permanently open area of investigation if theorists are to avoid
universalizing Western preoccupations without warrant. What they do sug-
gest, however, is that a more capacious understanding of political theory is in
order, one deWned less in terms of a parochial mapping of Western answers to
Wxed questions posed by a pantheon of philosophers than a free-ranging
inquiry into the conditions of living together on which no time or culture has
a monopoly.
Much like Western political theory, the tradition of Islamic political
thought is complex and variegated, riven with disagreements, reversals,
contradictions, and discontinuities that resist easy summary. As the ‘‘mod-
ern’’ period for the Islamicumma 2 (community) is largely framed by the rise
and spread of European power, however, what perhaps most distinguishes the
work of eighteenth- to twenty-Wrst-century Muslim thinkers from previous
generations is the extent to which they are explicitly or implicitly engaged in
two dialogues, one across history, another across culture. 3 First and foremost,
Muslim political theorists were and are engaged in a series of debates within
Islamic tradition about, for example, the nature of political authority, the
relationship between reason and revealed knowledge, and the proper way to
be a Muslim (among others). Both during and after the confrontation with
European empire, however, these thinkers have also had to engage with the
West’s claim to embody a ‘‘modernity’’ that is, in essence, an expression of the
ways in which Europe has ordered its past in relation to its present.
up the world in ways that obscure their mutual historical indebtedness and cross-pollination. All
subsequent references should be read as problematic, although I will omit the quotation marks.
2 The Islamicummaoriginally described Muhammad’s community, but its meaning is so varied in
the Qur’an that, at a minimum, it ‘‘always refers to ethnic, linguistic or religious bodies of people who
are the objects of the divine plan of salvation’’ (Paret 1987 ). It is a supranational term, in that the
boundaries of such a community are meant to be determined primarily by belief and not by geography
or political identiWcations.
3 If unqualiWed, the language of ‘‘dialogue’’ tends to obscure the radical inequalities of power that
often plague such cross-cultural encounters in a postcolonial world. It is worth noting that Muslim
thinkers have been engaged with non-Muslim traditions of thought for a very long time, although the
sense of cultural encroachment and threat from the rise of Western power makes the nature of the
‘‘modern’’ encounter somewhat distinctive.
298 roxanne l. euben