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the case of the Muslims, this reality has somehow got obscured
perhaps partly because Muslim commentators have been keen to
contrast their community with the Hindus and establish some kind of
parity with the West just as they have been anxious to do the same
on the issue of the people of the book in disregard of
other explicit statements in the Koran itself and the entire Sufi
tradition which is without question rooted in the Koran. The source
of the confusion, of course, lies in Western scholarship which has
sought to locate Islam in history and thus deny it its
transcendental aspect which surely is the heart of Islam as it is of
every religion. These questions are, however, too large to be
discussed here.
To return to the question of the
distinction between theocentrism and theocracy, it should hardly be
necessary to define theocentrism. But it has become necessary to do
so in view of the confusion that prevails. So it needs to be
emphasized that for the Muslims, all sovereignty vests in God and
that, indeed, nothing whatever exists or can exist outside of Him.
It follows that God is the sole legislator; to quote Gai Eaton
again, the Koranic insistence that there is no god but God
can be interpreted to mean that there is no legislator but the
Legislator. That is precisely why for the Muslims their laws
have to be derived from the Koran and the Sunnah of the Prophet. And
they have been so derived in the past 14 centuries. And that is what
has given the ummah the unity it has possessed despite all the
political turmoils it has passed through. That would also explain
why jurisprudence and not theology has been the main preoccupation
of Islamic scholarship.
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