The purpose of this study is to analyse the modern trends among the Muslims
concerning the problem of sovereignty. The question of sovereignty, which basically
deals with political power, has become a matter of great concern to the Muslims since
the nineteenth century especially those who are interested in the real principles of
Islamic statehood as opposed to the western political concepts. There have been
remarkable attempts by modern Muslim scholars to reconstruct early Islamic theories
of rulership in cirumstances which have been entirely different to those in which the
theories were born, chiefly due to the encounter between Islam and the West. These
scholars have attempted to express these theories in modern terms amongst which the
word sovereignty is in common use. Owing to the great impact of the Western notions
of sovereignty, we shall also consider to what extent they have influenced the
emergence of the new Muslim attitudes. It is advisable, therefore, to start the study with an examination of the origins of
the Western theories in order to understand the Islamic concept of sovereignty as
conceived by the modern Muslims. In Europe, sovereignty emerged as an important
political concept after the religious wars of the sixteenth century and as a result of the
creation of the territorial nation state. Though, it is generally an accepted working
assumption up to the present time, yet it is an ambiguous term and lends itself to
different interpretaions. In fact, it has been given a variety of forms in a number of
theories which are all surrounded with much controversy. Nonetheless, all states of the
modern world, including the Muslim countries, have been founded on the basis of
these Western theories.
After the Western sources the study looks into the early Islamic ideas of
rulership from which the Muslims derive their inspirations. The survey of the modem
Muslim views that follows covers the political thought of the Ottomans, the Arabs and
the Muslims of the Indian sub-continent since the ninteenth century
