Islamic Discourse and Modern Political Methods An Analysis of al Nabhani's Reading of the Canonical Textual Sources of Islam

Abstract

On 17 November 1952, Taqi al Din al Nabhani submitted an application
to the Jordanian Interior Ministry for permission to establish a new
political party: Hizb al Tahrir.' 'Ihis was in accordance with the new
constitution, which permitted party organization provided that every party
submitted to an official investigation. Soon after its promulgation, several
ideologically-based opposition parties sought official permission to
organize openly. Al Nabhhi's application was rejected on the grounds
that the party's platform was incompatible with the constitution. This
launched the new party on a collision cotuse, which continues even until
this day, with the Jordanian authorities.
The new party has, as its final goal, the reestablishment of the Islamic
caliphate in one of the Arab countries. In its ideological formulations,
program, and stmctmc, it conformed to the pattems of similarity discernible
among Jordan's new parties? Like the other parties, it reflected
characteristics of the btoader trend of modern revolutionary-cum-ideological
parties that developed throughout the Arab Middle East from
the 1930s onwards.
Broadly speaking, these parties were vehicles through which the new
secular ideologies of nationalism and socialism, radiating from Europe
and Sweeping the region, were articulated. These ideologies were of
growing appeal to an emerging interwar generation that was disillusioned
with the old order of liberal democratic regimes. By participating in the
new political fields that had developed under these regimes in relation to
the newly established nation-states, this new generation sought to gain
control of the state through a revolutionary program that had the creation
of a utopian social and political order as its ultimate goal ...