An Investigation into and Analysis of the Precedence or Posteriority of Religious Government over Religious Community

Terms such as religious government and religious community are inferred from the Quranic verses and hadiths. Some Islamic scholars believe that religious government takes precedence over religious community. The main reason for this claim is that the establishment of a religious government can facilitate the religious education of the people and as a result provide security, growth, development and the expansion of the Islamic education system. The scholars having this belief give some reasons from the Quranic verses and narrations. In contrast, there is a group of scholars who consider the establishment of a religious government as the result of the formation and complete identity of a religious community. These scholars, too, argue for the precedence of religious community over religious government relying on another category of verses and narrations. The present study examines these two perspectives, and the results reveal that the precedence of religious government over religious community or vice versa is a matter of dispute and controversy between the two parties, and neither has absolute priority over the other, but rather each of them is relatively defensible compared to the other one according to Quranic and narrative reasons.