From the Islamic State to the Messiah's Global Government: Structures of the Final World Order According to Contemporary Sunni and Shiíte Discourses

Abstract

This dissertation exposes a genre of Islamic thought that has remained unstudied in academic scholarship: Islamic conceptions of “final world order.” At the intersection of political and apocalyptic thought, “final world order” refers to the theories that Islamic movements posit regarding the future global government to be established during the final chapter of history. The theories of four movements (ISIS, the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Iraqi Ṣadrists, and the Egyptian ‘Awaited-Mahdī Party’) are compared across the following domains: (Chapter I) the final political structure, especially political form, geography, and administration; (Chapter II) the final legal system, including law, policy, and jurisprudence; (Chapter III) the final economic system, including science, technology, and transactions, and (Chapter IV) the final social order, including individuals, groups, and the collective. Overall, it is argued that apparently similar movements can have starkly differing theories of final order, and that two debates therein have especially high existential stakes: first is whether the structures of the final order will be regressive or progressive, and second is whether the final order (and humanity) will survive for merely a few years prior to apocalyptic destruction, or will endure for longer horizon. It is argued that Islamic movements approach these debates according to four patterns (reversionism, progressivism, revanchism, and idealism) which correlate primarily to each movement’s ideological orientation rather than its current political or socio-economic status.