A compelling examination of the rise of Islam as a global historical actor

Until the nineteenth century, Islam was understood as a set of beliefs and practices. But after Muslims began to see their faith as an historical actor on the world stage, they needed to narrate Islam's birth anew as well as to imagine its possible death. Faisal Devji argues that this change, sparked by the crisis of Muslim sovereignty in the age of European empire, provided a way of thinking about agency in a global context, with an Islam liberated from the authority of kings and clerics having the potential to represent the human race itself as a newly empirical reality.

Ordinary Muslims, now recognized as the privileged representatives of Islam, were freed from traditional forms of Islamic authority. However, their conception of Islam as an impersonal actor in history meant that it could not be defined in either religious or political terms, and that its existence as a civilizational and later ideological subject deprived figures like God or the Prophet of their theological subjectivities while robbing the Muslim community of its political agency. Devji illuminates this history and explores its ramifications for the modern Muslim world.