Islam is theocratic in principle since God alone is sovereign

Evidence

Islam is in principle, if not in practice, theocratic in another and deeper sense. Theocracy literally means the rule of God. And in this sense Islam has, in theory, always been a theocracy. In Rome, Caesar was God. In Christendom, God and Caesar coexist. In Islam, God is Caesar, in that he alone is the supreme head of state, the source of sovereignty and hence also of authority and of law. The state is God’s state, the law is God’s law. The army is God’s army—and of course the enemy is God’s enemy. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1483 (#expands, via linked claim)

This conception is not to be understood, as it has invariably been, to mean that divine-command ethics must entail theistic tyranny and the absence of individual moral autonomy. Such an understanding may accurately apply to the ways in which Christian Europe conducted itself, and against which the Reformation and the Enlightenment constituted reactions. But this was not what Islam stood for, at least not what the dominant and mainstream Ashʿari School and generally the paradigmatic duo of Shariʿa and Sufism theorized and practiced. Aside from a miniscule body of rules directly stipulated in the body of revelation, God’s justice was the-world-as-his-creation, which is to say that it was not a specific divine will but one that infused the order of being as goodness (something quite reminiscent of Scheler’s world-as-ethical-order). — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 515 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Islamic political theory fuses God and Caesar into one sovereign — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting…, 1483; Divine-command ethics did not entail theistic tyranny in Islam — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 515; Islam holds God himself to be supreme head of state (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Islamic political theory fuses God and Caesar into one sovereign #expands (0.95) — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1483
• Islam holds God himself to be supreme head of state #corroborates (0.95)
• Divine-command ethics did not entail theistic tyranny in Islam #complicates (0.85) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 515