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Some argue that Shari'a can function as a constitution in Islamic states, promoting good and forbidding evil, ensuring, when embodied institutionally, that legislation is in accord with Muslim precepts. Such a view runs counter to post-Enlightenment legal positivism, where constitutional provisions are reduced to procedures, and where parliaments, perhaps representing the people, may pass any law that is justified procedurally. I argue that the positivist position is misguided, that valid laws must be both procedurally justified and legitimated in light of constitutional values, where the procedures themselves are legitimate. While this contention suggests that the standard argument against an "Islamic constitution" is faulty, it raises a different, structural question, whether Shari'a articulates values that are recognizably constitutional. The answer, I argue, is no. Shari'a is rooted in the logic of religious commitment in Islam; as such, it is constituted as precepts, not principles; it is therefore too concrete to function constitutionally. Its precepts must be generalized before it can function successfully as a component of a constitutional civil religion more abstract than any denominational doctrine. Further, the newly generalized principles must be reformulated. Constitutional values must be bottom up in orientation, vesting power in the people, not top down, derivative from sacred scripture that is inviolable. Constitutions must constitute mechanisms allowing for reasoned legislation and adjudication, where the constitutional principles might be revised. Simply, constitutions must legitimate the capacity to create new laws in a manner akin to the positivist portrait of legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper characterizes the nature of value commitments dominant within Islam and Christianity and the nature of social action that these commitments induce. I contrast Christian soteriology, grounded in original sin, with Islamic eschatology, grounded in fitra, the constitution of women and men that leads them naturally to God. No Christian, on her own, has the capacity to be saved. God sacrificed his Son to enable salvation; people are saved, or not, through God’s grace. Among ascetic Protestants, the uncertainty of salvation lead to a rationalization of everyday life, an inner-worldly asceticism, not as a vehicle to salvation, but as a manifestation that one has been chosen for salvation. In contrast, Muslims believe themselves, with the guidance of God’s revelation, the Qur’an, and the Sunna, the Prophet’s words and exemplary actions as set down in the codified Hadith, capable of acting in ways meriting salvation. In Islam, the orthoprax requirement to act in accordance with God’s decrees, possible but nonetheless difficult to fulfill, thus attaining salvation, may be short-circuited when fulfilling the religious obligation of jihad, the duty to create and expand the social world where Shari’a is implemented. In jihad, one either accomplishes good works (as decreed by God) or dies a martyr; if the former, one enhances one’s chances of being sent to heaven at the Last Judgment; if the latter, one goes directly to heaven. The source of motivation for and capacity to legitimate actions undertaken by Islamists are embedded in an authentic Islamic tradition, leading some Muslims into violent actions in the name of jihad, and many more into understanding of, or sympathy with, those actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been argued recently that sociological theories can shed no light on current events in Iran, no light on the Iranian Revolution, and, more generally, no light on Islamist Movements. The only way to defeat these contentions is to construct a theory capable of illuminating such movements (and in other papers, the Iranian Revolution). This paper begins this process. I present a theory explaining briefly each of four types of Islamist Movement, contending that criticisms of various theoretical arguments about such movements misapply the relevant sociological arguments to aspects of the movements to which they do not apply, thus generating pessimistic conclusions about their efficacy. If we can move towards the specification of the necessary and sufficient conditions for various types of movement (and, in other work, differentiate these from explanations of cognate types of revolution), and if one or more of the conditions for a revolution is absent in contemporary Iran, we can explain why there has been no revolution since the June elections. Here we ask about the possibility of integrating Islamist Movements successfully into democratic states. In other work, we assess the probability that the missing conditions for the development of a revolution out of social movement will develop in Iran, thus making meaningful contentions about the likelihood of the current crisis in Iran developing into a revolutionary situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]