The First International Islamic Governance Symposium

The ‘state’ is one of the oldest forms of human socio-political organisation, assumed in many guises. But behind the numerous political cultural veils reveal a prosaic conceptual face: control of a specified physical space, a sense of belonging to that demarcated area often defined by certain criteria for membership, with some form of socio-political organisation ordering its activities, and the ability of society to sustain the functions of the ‘state’ via economic means, legitimate or otherwise.

These conceptual traits are all familiar contours on the faces of the earliest depictions of the ‘state’; among the Greek polities, in the Mohenjo-Daro of the Indus Valley, the Roman empire, the celestial Chinese kingdoms, the Madīnian Polity, as well as, the more recent Westphalian ‘state’. Despite the familiarities, these different manifestations of the ‘state’, derived from the common principal elements constructing them, has been changing ever since.

The principal elements have persisted, but the ‘state’, in terms of its lived expressions, has often transformed parallel to the complexities of the society it seeks to organise and in response to the changing, and often rising, societal expectations. The same can be observed of the Muslim ‘state’, as it evolved from the nascent Prophetic Madīnian Polity to the vast empire it once was, stretching from India to the shores of the African Atlantic, to its eventual collapse in 1924, and splintering Muslim communities around the world into numerous independent states.

Meeting Expectations

The changing and rising expectations of the public have placed much pressure on Muslim governments to meet those societal demands.

Meeting those rising expectations, however, also demand more sophisticated solutions and services, which in turn require an increasingly higher level of organisational skills.

Governments have had to reconfigure themselves in terms of training, continuous re-training to enhance skillsets, while maintaining positive attitudes and integrity.

Additional pressures are placed on leadership expectations, organisational restructuring, requiring better management of organisational change.

State Actors

As the activities of the State become increasingly complex, the number of actors correspondingly increases. This increase causes the space for socio-political and organisational participation to expand.

Society’s rising expectations are also reflected in the participation of numerous ‘non-traditional’ actors thus changing, and in some ways challenging, the nature of organisational and societal roles and relations.

The domain of governance is no longer exclusive to the functions of government, but now increasingly so to include the private sector, non-governmental organisations, the youth, and even the international community.