Institutional Configurations and Trust in Religious Institutions in Muslim Societies

Abstract

The relationship between politics and religion in Muslim societies is a focus of intense debate among scholars of Islam. A commonly stated view of many Western and Muslim scholars of Islam is that Islam is not only a religion but also a blueprint for social order and therefore encompasses all domains of life, including law and the state. It is further argued that this characterisation sets Islamic societies apart from Western societies, which are based upon the separation of state and religious institutions. Notwithstanding several examples of state control of religion in Western societies, these differences are commonly used to account for the different developmental trajectories of Western and Islamic societies. Western societies, with their separation of church and state, of civil and religious law, are said to have promoted an autonomous domain for secular culture and civil society, which together form the bases of modernity. In Islamic societies, the lack of differentiation between the secular and the sacred has inhibited such development1.