Rethinking Global Politics: Meta-Theoretical Foundations from Islamic Mysticism
International Relations (IR) theory has long operated on an unexamined default setting: a secular, materialist, and Eurocentric worldview. While dominant paradigms like realism, liberalism, and constructivism argue overstates, rational actors, and material capabilities, they fundamentally agree on a baseline of cosmic anarchy.
Islamic mysticism (tasawwuf or irfan), however, disrupts this narrative entirely. Rather than viewing global politics as a permanent struggle for survival in a godless vacuum, this rich intellectual tradition offers a meta-theoretical framework that completely re-centers our assumptions about reality, human purpose, and global order.
1. Mystical Ontology: From Anarchy to Divine Unity
Mainstream IR theory begins downstream, assuming an anarchic system of self-interested states. A mystical approach moves upstream, centering reality on the concept of Tawhid (absolute divine unity) and the unity of being (wahdat al-wujud).
The Impetus of Love: Drawing on the Hadith Qudsi (“I was a hidden treasure, and I loved to be known…”), classical mystics argue that creation itself is driven by a “movement of love” (harakah al-hubbi). This operates on the metaphysical principle that loving an essence naturally necessitates loving its effects; thus, the cosmos was brought forth as an expression of divine self-love, allowing the Absolute to witness His own perfections reflected in the mirror of existence.
A Unified Universe: The universe is not a collection of fragmented, colliding states; it is an interconnected cosmos suffused with divine meaning.
The Philosophical Shift: As thinkers like Ibn Arabi and Mulla Sadra assert, God is both the active cause and the ultimate goal (ghayat al-ghayat) of existence.
Within this ontology, international relations cannot be reduced to a zero-sum game of material capabilities. Instead, global politics is recontextualized as an arena of deep, metaphysical interconnectedness.
2. Mystical Anthropology: Human Agency as a Divine Trust
To change how we theorize international systems, we must change how we theorize the human subject. Where secular IR views individuals and states as utility-maximizing rational actors, Islamic mystical anthropology views the human being as a microcosmic reflection of the divine.
This alternative framework rests on three foundational Quranic pillars:
The Eternal Covenant Verse (al-’ahd): Establishes an everlasting spiritual bond between humanity and the Divine.
The Trust Verse (al-amana): Highlights the unique gift of human free will, accepted out of love rather than raw rationality. Hafez beautifully captured this burden when he wrote that the heavens couldn’t bear the weight of this trust, so it fell to humanity.
Vicegerency Verse (khalifat-Allah): Dictates that the ultimate purpose of human existence is to actualize spiritual perfection and act as God’s deputy on earth.
Human dignity (karamah) is not a social contract or a political concession—it is an inherent ontological reality. Human identity is structurally bound to a trajectory that is “from Him” and “to Him”.
3. Reconceptualizing Power, Peace, and Political Engagement
A common critique is that mysticism demands a quietist withdrawal from worldly affairs. However, Islamic intellectual history proves otherwise, demonstrating a vibrant legacy of socially and politically engaged mystics—from historical resistance movements to figures like Omar Mukhtar, Abd al-Qadir al-Jazairi, and Imam Khomeini.
When irfan meets global politics, it fundamentally transforms the definitions of key IR concepts:
Power as a Trust
In a secular framework, power is the ability to dominate. In a mystical framework, absolute human sovereignty is an illusion; political power is a conditional trust. A state’s legitimacy is strictly contingent upon the cultivation of global justice, compassion, and human flourishing.
Peace Bound to Justice
Mystical peace is not merely the absence of war, nor is it a pragmatic arrangement of power balancing. Echoing the divine reality that “My mercy precedes my wrath,” peace is the default normative setting. Crucially, an oppressive or humiliating peace is rejected because peace without justice is a form of spiritual regression.
Transnational Solidarity
The rigid borders of the Westphalian state system fade when viewed through the lens of spiritual interconnectedness, shifting the focus from state-centric divisions to a metaphysically grounded global community. The Persian mystic Abul-Hasan Kharaqani famously captured this boundary-transcending empathy, declaring that if a foot is hurt by a stone in Turkistan or a finger is pricked by a thorn in the Levant, the sorrow and loss are felt universally. Within the mystical framework, this solidarity is not a mere emotional sentiment; it is a direct recognition of metaphysical reality—the literal oneness of human existence. This perspective closely intersects with post-Western IR scholarship on the Ummah (community of believers), reimagining global order through “overlapping sovereignties” and “concentric circles of obligations” rather than hard geopolitical lines. Ultimately, anchoring global solidarity in this deep, shared consciousness provides a far more sustainable ethical basis for international cooperation than the fragile, shifting logic of power balancing.
Conclusion
This mystical intervention provides essential philosophical resources for the ongoing project of decolonizing International Relations theory. By tracing a coherent architecture from ontology and anthropology to global engagement, it moves beyond token inclusion or merely adding religious variables to secular models; instead, it fundamentally challenges how the discipline defines reality, agency, and power. By grounding international ethics in an ongoing divine self-disclosure and metaphysical interconnectedness rather than fragile, pragmatic social contracts, Islamic mysticism invites us to think otherwise. It impels us to imagine a global order built upon our highest spiritual possibilities and shared human dignity, rather than one permanently constrained by our deepest material fears.
Source Material Note
This article is based on and adapted from the study: “International relations from the perspective of Islamic mysticism” by Jalaleddin Fanaei Eshkevari (Published in Social Sciences & Humanities Open, 2025).
Access the full article here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssaho.2025.102157
