Writer Chua Lee Hoong reviews the arguments that Roger Scruton has made in The West And The Rest about the totalitarian nature of Islam.

The other chilling point from Prof Scruton is that unlike Western individualist secularism, Islam is in a very fundamental sense a totalitarian doctrine: It seeks to embrace and subordinate to its dictates the totality of life. The ulama ('those with knowledge') have their authority directly from God. The syariah, the revealed will of God, is the only sanction for law.

The point is affirmed by Iraq-born Islamic scholar Majid Khadduri, who wrote in The Islamic Conception Of Justice that Muslims took for granted that political justice was 'an expression of God's will as interpreted and put into practice by the Prophet', and, after the Prophet's death, by his legitimate successors.