As the process of globalization forces the great civilizations inexorably to interact with each other, it become newly urgent to understand their foundations and their mutual compatibility. It is now generally recognized that each civilization is founded in a great religion and conversely that each great religion generates its own civilization. Nowhere is this more consciously and devotedly the case than for Islam.

In contrast, political liberalism begins by removing religious and other cosmic or integrating visions behind “a veil of ignorance” as a condition for the development of the political order. Some even consider the aspirations of the freedom and autonomy of the human person to be challenged by the recognition of any transcendent order.

The seeming collision of these two visions—religious and secular—generates tremors which shake the world. It is most urgent therefore to examine both in depth and in detail the proper relation of religion to the political order, both within the Islamic world and in the broader pattern of global interchange.

This urgency has deep roots. In the past both thought and political order have moved especially from the top downward. For Plato, at the apex were the ideas of either “The Good” or “the One” from which all else descended as image and participation. This served both Christianity and Islam in appreciating and interpreting their revelations and applying them to political life. In Christianity once this meant that the Pope not only blessed, but endowed the Emperor with power and could also retract it. In Buddhism and Christianity the life of the founder of the faith is archetypical and this has been true as well for the public community in Islam.

It is then the greatest moment when the entire horizon revolves and governments come to be seen to be—in Lincoln’s words—as “of the people, by the people and for the people,” when for its source theology adds to scripture and tradition the life of the people, and when interrelations in terms of cultures and civilizations become the major determinants of peace in these newly global times.

The work begins with a prologue by S.H. Nasr entitled “Diverse Currents of Islamic Political Thought and the Significance of Islamic Political Philosophy Today” which brings to the endeavor the sure hand of one of the most experienced and insightful of Iranian Islamic scholars. His guidance sets all on a proper course.

In this delicate yet crucial investigation it is best to begin by listening to those most involved as they begin to chart out the field as only they can see it. Thus Part I “The Islamic Context” has three chapters: “Ethical and Political Challenges for Religions in Building a Healthy Society” by Ayatollah Mohmoud Mohammadi Araghi; “History of Politics in the World of Islam” by Reza Davari Ardahani; and “The Islamic Revolution and International Law” by Medhi Sanaie.

Part II focuses on the crucial question: “If God is Lord of All, Is There Room for Man?” The greatest of all challenges is how the one God who is Lord of all can create not only a physical world, but free creatures: persons and societies. This problem is stated in three ways in the three chapters: “Political Legitimacy and Human Freedom in Islam” by Ayatollah Amid Zanjani; “The Quran as Negative Theological Texts: The Evidence of Sara II” by Aryeh Botwinic; and “Divine Will and Human Needs” by Hossein Nur Mohammad Sadeghi.

Part III “Implications of the Religious Foundations of the Person” begins a positive response to this question by understanding human freedom not as opportunity to rebel against God, but as the creative capacities of a humankind made by God to be his vice gerents in ruling the world. This is investigated in four chapters: “The Person in a Religious Horizon” by Kenneth L. Schmitz; “Ethics and Politics within the Context of Religion” by Ghalamreza Aavani; “Western Democracy from the Viewpoint of Islamic Studies” by S.M. Mohaghegh Damad; and “Islam and Human Rights” by Ali Asganyazdi.

Part IV “Distinction, Relation, Separation? The Proper Interface of religion and the Political Order” comes to the heart of the issue. How can these vice gerents of God not only live together in a passive coexistence but work together in that every gerency which is the political order. Above, some spoke of the religious and the political order as being simply separate, others have seen religion as inseparable from politics. If they are inseparable but distinct how indeed can they relate? What is the proper interface between religion and the political order?

Two leading political theoreticians grapple with this issue in the following papers: “The Idea of Political Pluralism, “Religious Violence or Religious Pluralism,” and “Religion and Political Authority” by Willam A. Galston, and “Religion, Ethics and Liberal Democracy: A Possible Symbiosis” and “Religious Democracy: Some Proposals” by Fred R. Dallmayr.

The Epilogue looks to the task ahead. If we are really entering upon a new post modern age then the past pattern of political theory and practice can be expected to be inadequate. Yet the proper road ahead is not yet visible. In this circumstance we can conclude the works by identifying some of the crucial elements that can enable us to move ahead in faith, namely, that religions and cultures were originally one, that the thrust toward objective or scientific clarity may have excessively separate them, and that the new awareness of human subjectivity may be opening new and deeper ways of relating the religions and the political order both between themselves and across cultures and civilizations for global times.