Deconstructing the Political Umma: Mohamed Talbi on Discursive Shift and Political Islam.

Mohamed Talbi was a Tunisian academic whose historical and religious writing has both influenced and reflected important developments in the debate on the nature of Tunisian identity and society. Instead, the Muslim - the member of the I umma i - in Talbi's words "in prayer and in work, is always the same man." Talbi defines the mission of the I umma i as including a vertical and a horizontal dimension. In contrast to his own reading of the term, Talbi notes that writers have consciously or unconsciously attributed to the I umma i a political dimension, a component which Talbi argues has absolutely - he states this in very strong language - no root in the Qur'an. [Extracted from the article]

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