Islamic Discourse and Modern Political Methods

Abstract

On 17 November 1952, Taqi al Din al Nabhani submitted an application to the Jordanian Interior Ministry for permission to establish a new political party: Hizb al Tahrir.' 'Ihis was in accordance with the new constitution, which permitted party organization provided that every party submitted to an official investigation. Soon after its promulgation, several ideologically-based opposition parties sought official permission to organize openly. Al Nabhhi's application was rejected on the grounds that the party's platform was incompatible with the constitution. This launched the new party on a collision cotuse, which continues even until this day, with the Jordanian authorities. The new party has, as its final goal, the reestablishment of the Islamic caliphate in one of the Arab countries. In its ideological formulations, program, and stmctmc, it conformed to the pattems of similarity discernible among Jordan's new parties? Like the other parties, it reflected characteristics of the btoader trend of modern revolutionary-cum-ideological parties that developed throughout the Arab Middle East from the 1930s onwards. Broadly speaking, these parties were vehicles through which the new secular ideologies of nationalism and socialism, radiating from Europe and Sweeping the region, were articulated. These ideologies were of growing appeal to an emerging interwar generation that was disillusioned with the old order of liberal democratic regimes. By participating in the new political fields that had developed under these regimes in relation to the newly established nation-states, this new generation sought to gain control of the state through a revolutionary program that had the creation of a utopian social and political order as its ultimate goal ...