It is both an old and new question, one that used to have an answer but no longer does. Islam is distinctive in how it relates to politics—and this distinctiveness can be traced back to the religion’s founding moment in the seventh century. Islam is different. This difference has profound implications for the future of the Middle East and, by extension, for the world in which we all live, whether we happen to be American, French, British, or anything else. To say that Islam—as creed, theology, and practice—says something that other religions don’t quite say is admittedly a controversial, even troubling claim, especially in the context of rising anti-Muslim bigotry in the United States and Europe. As a Muslim-American, it’s personal for me: Donald Trump’s dangerous comments on Islam and Muslims make me fear for my country. Yet “Islamic exceptionalism” is neither good nor bad. It just is.
Because of this exceptionalism, a Middle Eastern replay of the Western model—Reformation followed by an Enlightenment in which religion is gradually pushed into the private realm—is unlikely. That Islam—a completely different religion with a completely different founding and evolution—should follow a course similar to that of Christianity is itself an odd presumption. We aren’t all the same, but, more importantly, why should we be?
That the Christian tradition seems ambivalent about law, governance, and power is no accident. Islam and Christianity are, after all, meant to do different things. Law, at least in part, is about exposing and punishing sin. Yet, when Jesus died on the cross, he in effect released man from the burdens of sin, and therefore from the burdens of the law.
Christianity’s salvation story, then, is one of progression, with humanity passing though different stages of spiritual development. Jewish or Mosaic law was provisional, meant for a particular place and time, and for a chosen people, where Christianity was universal and everlasting. As the theologian Joshua Ralstonnotes, reflecting on the writing of the early Christian theologian Justin Martyr: “Christ is the new and final law, and thus the Law of Moses is abrogated. … Justin argues that the God of Israel had promised the Israelites a new and everlasting covenant. The Mosaic Law was never intended to be either universal or eternally binding.”
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