420 Abdessamad Belhaj
of Sharia from an individual moralistic/juristic sphere to an approach
that is concerned rather with public order. Nevertheless, their approach
strengthened the tyranny of the state in the Muslim world.^88 In the 16th-
19 th centuries, siyāsa sharʿiyya continued to figure in political as well as
in juridical books.^89 Chiefly Ḥanafī jurists showed a particular interest
in its concepts and doctrines, since they were in charge of official judi-
cial institutions and kept in close contact with political authorities.^90
Conclusion
A closer look at the “political ideas” of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-
Qayyim reveals that what seems to be the main reference point of an
“Islamic state” or “Islamic government”, a cornerstone of much of the
Islamist political discourse today, is a myth. Not only is the assumption
of the radicalism of the two authors unfounded; as was previously stat-
ed, they also reproduced a conservative schema similar to other con-
servative Sunni jurists. For them, two salient facts prevail: the first is
that there is a corrupted public order that challenges the legitimacy and
the survival of Sharia and the second is that only by conceding more
authorised coercion to the state could Sharia’s control of the society be
re-established. Ultimately, siyāsa sharʿiyya is an ethical criticism of the
community and of the state with a strong emphasis on coercive justice.
Both authors were concerned about the state of morals in the commu-
nity, which, in the orthodox Ḥanbalī view, had reached an intolerable
level of corruption (fasād). So they highlighted a normative solution
to bring the governors and the community back to the right way (iṣlāḥ
al-rāʿī wal-raʿiyya) as the title of Ibn Taymiyya’s siyāsa sharʿiyya work
88 Ibn Taymiyya himself, being a victim of the coercive order ruled by the Mamluk
state, ended by calling for the limiting of state jurisdiction. See Jackson, Sher-
man A.: Islamic Law and the State. The Constitutional Jurisprudence of Shihāb
al-Dīn al-Qarāfī, Leiden and New York 1996, pp. 205–206.
89 For an overview of siyāsa sharʿiyya see Masud, The Doctrine of Siyāsa, pp. 1–29.
90 Examples of later siyāsa sharʿiyya books include: Dadah Khalīfa Afandī,
Ibrāhīm (d. 973/1565, Ḥanafīte school): al-Siyāsa al-sharʿiyya, ed. by Fuʾād
ʿAbd al-Munʿim Aḥmad, Alexandria 1411/1991. Ṭūghān Shaykh Muḥammadī
(d. 878/1473, Ḥanafīte school): al-Muqaddima al-sulṭāniyya fī al-siyāsa
al-sharʿiyya, ed. by ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh, Cairo 1997. Bayram,
Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn (d. 1214/1800, Ḥanafī school): Risāla fī al-Siyāsa
al-sharʿiyya, ed. by Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAsalī, Dubai 2002.
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