By the year AD 2000 it seems probable that Islam will be one of the half-dozen significant political forces in the world. The others will be Lenino-marxism, Confucio-marxism, probably Catholic Christianity, probably an amalgam of humanism and Protestant Christianity, and Buddhism, perhaps in some sort of alliance with Hinduism. To many Europeans and Americans it may seem strange to include religions among political forces, because they have been accustomed to think of religion as concerned only with personal piety. They are misled, however, by the divorce of religion and politics in the West since the European wars of religion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Throughout the vast ranges of world history it has been normal for religion to be closely linked with politics. The reason is not far to seek. When politics becomes serious and it is a question of men being ready to die for the cause they support, there has to be some deep driving force in their lives. Usually this force can be supplied only by a religion, or by an ideology that is acquiring some of the functions of religion (such as making man aware of the powers on which his life is dependent). This question of the relation of religion and politics will concern us further in the course of the study.

My aim in what follows is to show the roots or genesis of the political conceptions operative in the Islamic world today. In this region of the world it is particularly necessary to look at the past, since for Muslims as for Irishmen history is still alive. The Islamic community is still divided by events that took place in 632 and 656.