Session 6: Religious Regimes

Where Heywood does a remarkable job - in the sense that it seemed fairly unbiased - at describing different political systems, I was slightly confused by the distinction he created between the terms regime and government. He describes regime as “’a system of rule’ that endures despite the fact that governments come and go” but I always understood regime to be different from the state and more perfunctory than perpetual, like a government.

However, I find his classification of Islamic regimes as a new regime of the modern world even more problematic. Western thinkers have for a very long time looked at Islam as ‘the other’ which seems to have factored into this discussion about the regimes of the modern world. He looks at an Islamic regime as different and distinct from any other religious regime which I find thoroughly disorienting. Where there will be differences between different religions and the way they manage their states, there should be a distinction made between a religious regime and a irreligious regime and not between Islam and everything else, as has been the case often. This is important, because where Islamic regimes may be more prominent for whatever reasons, other religious regimes such as the Vatican, the Tibetan Lammas still exist. Furthermore, there are many countries, including the U.S. where there is no religious regime but religion affords an important bearing on the political system. Thus it’s unfair to single out Islam as the only modern religious regime.