Hegel classified Islam’s universalism as a crude, spiritless drive toward world dominion.

Evidence

Under this figure, Hegel explains, Christianity’s purpose is “a universal condition of the world, world dominion, universal monarchy.” So, too, in Islam, “world dominion is the purpose,” even if this dominion is of an “abstract,” “spiritual nature” (5oo/G398-99). Hegel does note that this abstraction, the ground oflslam’s “fanaticism,” is “at the present stage” not so abstract: “the purpose is still an external, empirical purpose, an all-encompassing purpose but on the plane of empirical reality-i.e., the purpose is a world dominion” (ibid.). Here again, the problem is one of association, of unity and unification. Objects remain as if strangers to each other, because the kind of “absolute unification of universal power” implied is, “so to speak, a raw unification, one that is devoid of spirit.” Having been shown to be too universal, if not too spiritual, too crude, in its politics of world dominion, Islam can then be brought back to, incompared with, Judaism. — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 646

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the running Kant/Montesquieu lineage of subjugation the book traces; also to orientalism scholarship on Hegel’s Islam. — connects to: Hegel scripted Islam as a superseded phase in world history.
• DEFINE: Sharpens what Hegel meant by calling Islam ‘fanaticism’ — an abstract, spiritless universalism of world dominion.