Islam as a Resource in the State-Building of Nation States

In the history of Islamic civilization, statehood has acquired various forms and models of governance - from the caliphate, sultanate, khanate to the "mamluks" (kingdom), imamate, emirate, and also republics based on the national state. In all these models, Islam remained either the state-forming one, or one of the resources for national construction, since the principles of Islam and its system of values are natural material for state construction in those countries where Muslim culture is part of national identity. And any government or any authority that did not rely on the high principles of spiritual values and faith of its society was perceived by the people as initially unfair, alien. The Muslim world today is heterogeneous, and, in addition to purely Islamic identification, there is a national level of political self-determination of one or another people (Arabs of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, etc., Malaysians, Kyrgyz, Pakistanis, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, etc.) in the formation of statehood based on national identity, the culture of national sovereignty. However, Islam, based on its doctrinal foundations, denies the existence of ethnicity as a separate category of identifications based on superiority (extreme nationalism), recognizing the community of all Muslims and laying the foundations for the formation of the so-called nation of Islam - the Ummah of Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him). At the same time, Islam does not at all deny the diversity of cultures and peoples that form the Islamic community, within the framework of different models of statehood. All of them, if we look deeper, are considered natural components of the diverse Muslim world based on Islamic solidarity within the framework of different political and economic integration unions, confederations.