Charles Amjad-Ali on Islam and the modern nation state

Charles Amjad-Ali suggests that much of the difficulty faced by Muslim thinking today is because “Islamic political theory developed during the heyday of such an Islamic state with multi-cultural, social, national, and tribal affiliations, they have had difficulties with the ‘modern’ concept of nation-state for their emphasis has always been on state-nations­, i.e. a single Muslim state encompassing the entire umma with many nations in it. […] So one of the greatest difficulties Islamic theorists face is how to deal among the Muslim states themselves as this falls outside the pale of their doctrinal structures” (Amjad-Ali 9).

Amjad-Ali, Charles. 1996. ‘Setting the Agenda: Contemporary Challenges to the Development of Theology in the Context of Islam’ in Developing Christian Theology in the Context of Islam, Christine Amjad-Ali ed. Rawalpindi: Christian Study Centre, pp 1-20.