Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Fuad Jabali, The Companions of the 

Prophet: A Study of Geographical Distribution and Politi-

cal Alignments (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2003); Muslim ibn 

al-Hajjaj, Sahih Muslim, trans. Abdul Hamid Siddiqi, 4 

vols. (Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1975).

consensus

  See 

ijmaa

.

Constantinople

  See i

stanbul

.

constitutionalism

Minimally, constitutionalism means government 

can and should be legally limited in its powers 

and that 

aUthority

 is derived from and depends 

upon those limitations. Such constitutionalism, 

in principle, even if not in practice, has become 

part and parcel of Islamic history. Indeed, the 

Charter (or Constitution) of m

edina

, m

Uhammad

’s 

compact with the Muslim and Jewish community 

(umma) that constituted the first Islamic polity 

after the h

iJra

 in 622, has been regarded as an 

early foundation for constitutionalism in modern 

Muslim-majority countries.

Sociologically speaking, a constitution is a 

“coordinating convention” that establishes “self-

regulating” institutions that both “enable” and 

“constrain” democratic behavior. Social contract 

theories are misleading inasmuch as “agreement” 

or “tacit consent” is not a condition for accept-

ing the constitutional order; mere acquiescence 

suffices. This renders the Western conception of 

“popular sovereignty” a rhetorical contrivance or 

metaphor, which, in turn, has important conse-

quences for Islamic political theory. One oft-cited 

reason for Muslim hostility to liberal constitution-

alism is the notion of popular sovereignty, which 

is seen as infringing upon or contradicting the 

sovereignty that properly belongs to God. Never-

theless, the idea of sovereignty may have still have 

a role to play in constitutionalism if God’s confer-

ral of “vice-regency” (or deputation of author-

ity) to humans implies some sort of individual 

sovereignty. Here, sovereignty (in a distributive 

or shared sense) entails according human beings 

theological and metaphysical freedom, which is 

logically prior to any notion of rights and liber-

ties found in a constitution. The citizen-sovereign 

would thus make the laws, be bound by those 

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