The Quran and the Sunnah have been the guide of Muslim
political and moral activism throughout the centuries. The
example of how the Prophet Muhammad and his companions led
their lives and developed the first Muslim community serves as a
blueprint for an Islamically guided and socially just state and
society.
More than a prophet, the Prophet Muhammad, may the mercy
and blessings of God be upon him, was the founder of a state. In
the era of the Prophet Muhammad and his successors, all Muslims
belonged to a single community whose unity was based upon the
interconnection of religion and the state, where faith and politics
were inseparable. Islam expanded from what is now Saudi Arabia
across North Africa, through the Middle East and into Asia and
Europe. Historically, Islam has been the religious ideology for the
foundation of a variety of Muslim states, including the great
Islamic empires: Umayyad (661–750), Abbasid (750–1258),
Ottoman (1281– 1924), Safavid (1501–1722), and Mughal (1526–
1857). In each of these empires and other sultanate states, Islam

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was the basis of the state’s legal, political, educational, economic,
and social institutions.
By the 11th century the Islamic world was under attack by the
Turks and the Mongols. They were not conquered by Islam;
rather, they entered the Islamic world as conquerors and converted
to Islam over the following centuries.
Over the last two centuries the Islamic world has been under
another transformation from the West. The Europeans who came
in the 19th and 20th centuries to militarily colonize the Muslim
world did not convert like the Turks and Mongols. For the first
time, Muslims were politically subjugated by the European
empires of Russia, Holland, Britain, and France.
The 20th century was marked by two dominant themes:
European colonialism and the Muslim struggle for independence.
The legacy of colonialism remains alive today. Colonialism
altered the geographical map of the Muslim world. It drew the
boundaries and appointed leaders over the Muslim countries.
After WWII, the French were in West and North Africa, Lebanon,
and Syria; the British in Palestine, Iraq, Arabian Gulf, the Indian
Subcontinent, Malaya, and Brunei; and the Dutch in Indonesia. It
replaced the educational, legal, and economic institutions and
challenged the Muslim faith. Colonial officers and Christian
missionaries became the soldiers of European expansion and
imperialism. Christianity was seen by the colonialists as
inherently superior to Islam and its culture. This attitude can be
seen in the statement of Lord Cromer, the British counsel in Cairo
from 1883-1907, “...as a social system, Islam has been a complete
failure. Islam keeps women in a position of inferiority...it permits
slavery...its general tendency is intolerance towards other
faiths...”

European colonialism replaced Muslim self rule under Islamic
Law, which had been in existence from the time of the Prophet
Muhammad, by their European lords. The colonialists were

modern Crusaders – Christian warriors going out of their way to
uproot Islam. The French spoke of their battle of the cross against
the crescent. The only difference was that the Europeans came,
this time, not with cavalry and swords, but with an army of
Christian missionaries and missionary institutions like schools,
hospitals, and churches, many of which remain in Muslim
countries to this day. The French seized the Jami’ Masjid of
Algiers and turned it into the cathedral of Saint-Philippe with the
French flag and cross on the minaret, symbolizing Christian
domination. 1
The Muslim world’s centuries of long struggle with Western
colonial rule was followed by authoritarian regimes installed by
European powers. The absence of stable states has led many to
ask whether there is something about Islam that is antithetical to
civil society and rule of law. The answer to this question lies more
in history and politics than in religion. Modern Muslim states are
only several decades old and they were carved out by European
powers to serve Western interests.