Islam is one of the basic ‘bricks’ in Ernest Gellner's political thought, along with segmentation, psychoanalysis, nationalism, Marxism and the transition to the Enlightenment. The Islamic ‘brick’, like the others, emerges as a ‘neat, crisp model’. In Gellner's words: ‘Any structure, any theory will do – not because it's true but because it makes you notice that evidence goes against it or for it.’ Islam held a particular fascination for Gellner. He regarded ‘Muslim society’ as the exception to the pervasive trend towards a shared culture of nationalism, with its ensuing fruit of modernity – commonly educated, mutually substitutable, atomised individuals with the potential for participating in a Civil Society – Gellner's capitals – which, among other features, precludes an ‘ideological monopoly’. This chapter argues that Gellner's Islamic brick made readers notice evidence which went for and against it more than it described historical or contemporary developments and that Muslim politics and society, far from being an exception to worldwide trends, exemplify them.

The Islamic ‘brick’

Gellner's depiction of Islam in Conditions of Liberty, the last book published during his lifetime, reiterates his long-standing convictions about ‘Muslim society’. He preferred the single, society, to the plural, societies, in writing about Islam because he regarded Islam as a faith as imposing ‘essential’ constraints on the conduct and thought of those committed to it. For Gellner, Islam was a ‘closed system’ of thought for which he had a ‘horrified fascination’.