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Islamic IR Theories
In contrast to Western IR theories, Islamic IR theories have developed out of a different set of
historical contexts and cultural perspectives. Islam emerged in the seventh century Arabian
Peninsula with the claim of a universal religion. Its emergence was marked by two distinct
developments of the time – an environment of religious pluralism, and open hostilities to Prophet
Muhammad by various Arab tribes. Traditionally, the Meccan pagans, Christians and Jews
coexisted until Prophet Muhammad’s preaching of Islam jolted the whole environment. As the
message of Islam continued to spread after 610 A.D., the year the Prophet started receiving
revelations from God, the pagan tribes resorted to war and violence to throttle the new religion.
Impelled by their new religious spirit and the vision of a new world order, the followers of the
Prophet gathered strength and, in the next hundred years after his death in 632 A.D., conquered
territories after territories in the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, the Atlantic coast of Africa, and
went up to Spain and France in Europe. In the East, Islam gradually went down to India and
Southeast Asia, parts of western China and Central Asia. From the fifteenth to the eighteenth
centuries, the Ottoman Empire further expanded the territorial expanse of Islam in Europe, up to
the door of Vienna.
Behind the fast expansion of Islam across the three continents of Asia, Europe and Africa was
the impulse of an Islamic universal moral order that, according to the Qur’an, applies to all
humans, irrespective of their racial, cultural and ethnic differences. The Qur’an (verse 30:30)
instructs all humans to connect to and engage in a universal morality. More specifically, verses
(91: 8-10) state: “He (God) has inspired in [human beings] the good or evil (nature) of an act;
whoever has purified it (the soul) has succeeded; one who corrupts it has surely failed”. God thus
emphasizes human conscience to follow the moral path. The genesis and unity of humans are
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also underscored by the Qur’an. Verse (4:1) clearly says: “Humankind, be aware of your duties
to your Lord, who created you from a single soul, and from it created its mate, and from the pair
of them scattered abroad many men and women”. Recognition of the differences between and
among humans is a must but all humans, according to the Qur’an, are required to accept and
promote its universally binding moral standard. The shared moral values (such as the principles
of truthfulness, justice, fairness, equality, human dignity etc.) can facilitate human interactions
leading to the development of a universal moral order. All humans are created by God and they
must be united under God (verse 2: 213). The Qur’anic worldview thus highly accentuates to
bring the whole world under God’s command and to create a moral order based on justice,
fairness, equality and respect.
Clearly, the sources of Islamic foreign relations, in contrasting differences from secular traditions
in Western IR, originate from the Qur’anic teachings and laws, known as Sharia, and the
Hadiths. Many original ideas and practices related to foreign policy originated from the
Prophet’s life and his dealings with the non-Muslims. Prophet Muhammad, as the first leader and
ruler of the Islamic state he established in Medina, created the rules and practices regarding
issues of war and peace, commanded his army and enforced laws – which constitute parts and
parcels of Islamic foreign relations. The Qur’an and the Hadiths are the original sources of laws
of Islamic foreign relations but historically the Muslim jurists have maintained differing
positions on how to interpret Sharia with regard to defining the organizing principles of Islamic
foreign relations and how to spread God’s moral order on the planet earth. As mentioned above,
three distinct ways developed in the process – traditionalism, modernism, and the contemporary
violent jihadist perspective. All three approaches and perspective, heavily influenced by the
obtaining historical developments specific to the patterns of interactions between Islam and the
non-Islam, squarely base their interpretations of the interactions with the ‘other’ on the Qur’an
and the Hadiths – the ontological foundations but greatly differ on their understandings and
explications of how the interactions should proceed – the epistemological differences.
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