Introduction: Understanding Religious Totalitarianism and the Islamic State in the Modern Age
Although the term totalitarianism was coined in the first half of the twentieth century to analyze Nazism, fascism, and communism, scholars in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries began to recognize structural parallels between modern ideological regimes and religious states. When religion transcends its ethical and spiritual sphere and becomes a tool of political legitimacy and social control, mechanisms similar to totalitarian regimes emerge. These include the monopoly of truth, censorship, repression, ideological surveillance over behavior and dress, and attempts to shape the conscience and thought of citizens.
However, it is essential to distinguish between religious states in the traditional era and religious states in the modern age. In premodern societies, power was decentralized, local, and based on personal relationships. There were no advanced surveillance systems, no unified bureaucracy, and no notion of the nation or citizen. Thus, even if a government was religious, it could not truly be considered totalitarian.
In contrast, the emergence of the modern state centralized power, bureaucratized life, and brought society under administrative and media control. As a result, when religion merges with the modern state, it activates a totalitarian logic.
The core question of this article is therefore:
Why does every attempt to construct an Islamic state in the modern era inevitably lead toward forms of religious totalitarianism?
Is the problem rooted in religious doctrine itself, or in the modern state structure that transforms every holistic worldview into total domination?
To answer these questions, this study first defines the concept and history of totalitarianism, then identifies its key characteristics across various regimes, and finally demonstrates that religious totalitarianism and the Islamic State in the modern age represent a specific manifestation of the crisis of modernity—a crisis born from humanity’s modern desire to absolutize truth and exert total control.
- Defining and Developing the Concept of Totalitarianism
The concept of totalitarianism emerged from the political upheavals of the twentieth century, as a reaction to the radical experiments of that era. It first appeared in 1920s Italy, when opponents of fascism used the term to describe a system that sought to control every sphere of individual and collective life. Later, Mussolini embraced the expression, declaring that the fascist state “embraces everything, rules everything, and leaves nothing outside itself.” From this notion, one of the most influential concepts in modern political science was born: a regime that seeks not only to dominate human bodies and behavior but also to control the mind and conscience.
1.1. Totalitarianism vs. Despotism and Authoritarianism
Religious Totalitarianism and the Islamic State in the Modern Age must first be understood through the broader distinction between totalitarianism, despotism, and authoritarianism. Totalitarianism differs fundamentally from traditional dictatorships. In despotic systems, rulers hold absolute power, but an unwritten rule often exists: as long as people avoid political interference, they retain a degree of personal and spiritual freedom.
However, totalitarianism seeks to occupy all of life — not just political obedience but also intellectual and moral conformity. In such regimes, the boundary between state and society disappears. Every institution—from family and school to religion and art—becomes part of the state’s ideological apparatus.
Hannah Arendt, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, emphasizes this key distinction: totalitarianism aims not merely to maintain power but to eradicate human spontaneity. Therefore, it turns citizens into instruments of ideology rather than independent moral agents.
1.2. The Core Elements of Totalitarianism
Political theorists such as Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski have identified five fundamental elements that define all totalitarian regimes:
- An absolute and universal ideology claiming exclusive access to truth.
- A single ruling party dominating all political and social structures.
- A political police force and security apparatus designed to control thought and behavior.
- A monopoly over the media and communication tools to shape public opinion.
- A state-controlled economy that renders citizens materially dependent on political power.
Within this structure, the individual ceases to be a citizen and becomes instead an “instrument of ideology.” Every stage of life—from childhood to death—is placed under surveillance and given meaning by the state. Consequently, freedom and individuality vanish, and society is transformed into a uniform, obedient mass.
1.3. From Fascism to Communism: The Historical Experience
Throughout the twentieth century, three major regimes embodied the full reality of totalitarianism:
- Fascist Italy, which served as the first laboratory for the concept.
- Nazi Germany, which achieved the purest form of totalitarian domination through its racial ideology.
- Stalinist Soviet Union, which subordinated the individual to class ideology and the historical mission of the Party.
In all these systems, religion was either replaced—becoming a political religion—or subordinated to ideology. Arendt insightfully observes that “totalitarianism transforms religious faith into faith in ideology.” Thus, even in secular regimes, the structure of totalitarian thinking is essentially religious—but without God: it represents an absolute belief in a redemptive and obligatory truth.
This parallel reveals the hidden link between secular and religious totalitarianism: both seek to create a new human being who cannot think or live outside the framework of ideological faith. Consequently, Religious Totalitarianism and the Islamic State in the Modern Age should be studied as part of this wider historical continuum.
1.4. From Secular Ideology to Religious Totalitarianism
In the second half of the twentieth century, scholars such as Raymond Aron and Emilio Gentile expanded the discussion by describing totalitarianism as a secular religion—a worldly form of absolute faith. However, this relationship can also work in reverse: when religion itself is transformed from a matter of voluntary belief into a political project, it reproduces the same totalitarian mechanisms.
Indeed, religious totalitarianism in the modern age emerges precisely at this point—where the state, in the name of God, monopolizes the interpretation of truth and seeks to impose a uniform religious ideology on society. Therefore, religious totalitarianism is not a return to tradition but a modern response to the crisis of legitimacy: a hybrid of modern political technology and absolute religious conviction.
1.5. The Relationship Between Totalitarianism and the Islamic State in the Modern Age
When religion becomes institutionalized within the framework of the modern state, its bureaucratic and media-driven structures transform individual faith into an instrument of collective surveillance. In this process, the Islamic State in the modern age tends inherently toward totalitarianism. Modernity provides the technological and administrative tools that allow the state, in the name of religion, to control not only behavior but also thought.
This is precisely where religious totalitarianism becomes one of the most dangerous forms of domination—a fusion of absolute faith and absolute power. Consequently, totalitarianism should not be understood merely as a form of government but as an ideological logic that seeks total control over humanity, whether in secular regimes or within the Islamic State in the modern age.
In the next section, this article will present a comparative analysis of historical totalitarian regimes to illuminate the deep connection between ideology, religion, and power.
- A Comparative History of Totalitarian Regimes
To gain a deeper understanding of totalitarianism—and, by extension, Religious Totalitarianism and the Islamic State in the Modern Age—it is essential to examine it within the historical experiences of the twentieth century. This was the century in which modern humanity, in its quest for justice, equality, and a new sense of meaning, became entrapped in systems that, in the name of salvation, destroyed freedom and dignity.
Among these systems, Italian Fascism, German Nazism, and Stalinist Communism represent the three classical faces of totalitarian regimes. A comparative analysis of these systems reveals that totalitarianism was not a historical accident but rather the logical outcome of modern ideologies that sought the “totality of truth” and the “uniformity of society.”
2.1. Italian Fascism: The Birthplace of Totalitarianism
Fascism was the first regime to openly define itself as totalitarian. In the 1920s, Mussolini proclaimed that the fascist state must encompass every aspect of human life—from education and family to economy and culture. His aim was to create a “new man” out of the crisis of modernity—an individual whose identity derived not from individuality but from belonging to the nation and the party.
Within this system, the party functioned like a church: it had its rituals, its leader served as a national prophet, and its followers were expected to participate in the worship of the state. The media, education, and arts all worked to cultivate the “fascist spirit.” For the first time, a political ideology replaced religion as the main source of meaning and salvation.
Consequently, fascism can be seen as the first form of religious totalitarianism—not in the sense of dependence on traditional faith, but as the transformation of politics itself into a new religion. This phenomenon foreshadows the logic that later manifests in Religious Totalitarianism and the Islamic State in the Modern Age.
2.2. German Nazism: Racial Totalitarianism and Faith in the Nation
After World War I, Germany’s crisis of identity and national humiliation paved the way for the rise of Nazism. Under the charismatic leadership of Adolf Hitler, the Nazi Party combined racial ideology with bureaucratic precision, producing one of the purest forms of totalitarianism.
In this system, the ideology of the Aryan race replaced religious faith. Although the Nazi regime coexisted superficially with the Christian Church, in practice it sought to establish a political religion centered on the worship of the nation, the race, and the leader. As Italian scholar Emilio Gentile argues, both fascism and Nazism exemplify “politics as religion.”
The Nazi state controlled not only people’s behavior but also their beliefs and emotions. Ceremonies, symbols, anthems, and mass rituals replaced traditional religious practices. The Nazi Party became the new church of the nation. Thus, through absolute faith and collective emotion, the regime created a secular form of religious totalitarianism grounded in racism and political worship.
2.3. Stalinist Communism: Ideological Totalitarianism
In the Soviet Union, totalitarianism took on yet another form. God was eliminated, but the Party took His place. While Marxism, in theory, promised liberation from class oppression, in practice—under Joseph Stalin—it became a new religion. Its prophets were Marx and Lenin, and its sacred texts were the writings of the Party.
Like religious institutions, the Soviet system had its own rituals of repentance, confession, and purification. Dissidents were treated as heretics, and history was imagined as the final battle between good (the proletariat) and evil (the bourgeoisie). In this sense, Stalinist totalitarianism embodied the complete transformation of ideology into faith.
What all these regimes shared was the monopoly of truth and the annihilation of individuality—features that also define religious totalitarianism, except that in the latter, the source of truth is divine law rather than the Party or the race.
2.4. Structural Parallels Between Secular and Religious Regimes
A comparative perspective reveals that both secular and religious totalitarian regimes share a common structural foundation: each is based on absolute faith in a singular truth.
In fascism and communism, political ideology replaces religion; in religious totalitarianism, religion itself is transformed into political ideology. In both cases, the individual becomes an obedient subject whose freedom exists only through loyalty to an absolute truth.
This same logic reappears in Religious Totalitarianism and the Islamic State in the Modern Age, where the state presents itself as the embodiment of divine will and uses modern administrative and technological tools to enforce conformity.
2.5. From Secular Regimes to Contemporary Religious States
Although fascism and communism collapsed in the twentieth century, the totalitarian mindset survived. In the twenty-first century, this structure has reemerged in certain religious and ideological regimes—from the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Islamic Republic of Iran to Saudi Arabia and other Salafist movements.
The common thread among these systems is their drive to homogenize society according to a specific interpretation of religion. In such regimes, religion ceases to be a spiritual domain and instead becomes a tool of governance. Security institutions, media networks, and educational systems are all harnessed in the service of political faith.
Consequently, the Islamic State in the modern age reproduces—through modern technologies of surveillance and control—the same functions once performed by secular totalitarian regimes: monitoring thought, regulating behavior, and eliminating difference.
Comparative study shows that religious totalitarianism represents the logical continuation of the modern project that began in the twentieth century: the project of constructing a uniform society based on absolute belief and the negation of individuality.
Secular totalitarian regimes demonstrated that ideology, when claiming absolute truth, becomes a political religion. Conversely, modern religious regimes reveal that when faith is institutionalized within the framework of the modern state, it inevitably slides toward totalitarianism.
From this perspective, Religious Totalitarianism and the Islamic State in the Modern Age can be regarded as the ultimate heir to the totalitarian logic that extends from fascism and communism to the present day—a logic seeking total domination over humanity, whether in the name of nation, class, or God.
In the next section, the article will explore how religious faith, once reorganized as political ideology, opens the path toward totalitarianism, and what essential differences distinguish genuine faith from ideological belief.
- From Religious Faith to Political Ideology
One of the most fundamental transformations of the modern world is the conversion of religious faith into political ideology. In traditional religions, faith is an inner and personal experience—an invitation to believe, not an obligation to obey. Yet in the modern era, when religion becomes institutionalized within the framework of the state and ideology, its very nature changes: it shifts from a spiritual experience to a governmental program, from free faith to a totalitarian system.
This transformation marks the very point where Religious Totalitarianism and the Islamic State in the Modern Age begin to emerge.
3.1. The Fundamental Distinction Between Faith and Ideology
Religious faith is founded upon a voluntary relationship between the individual and the sacred. A believer stands before God in freedom, and faith possesses value precisely because it arises from that freedom.
Political ideology, however—even when it bears the name of religion—is built upon obedience and coercion.
Ideology declares that truth is singular and that beyond it lies only error; faith, by contrast, asserts that truth exists and that the human being must seek it freely.
This subtle distinction delineates the boundary between religion and totalitarianism. When the state demands belief instead of inviting faith, religion becomes hollowed out from within and reduced to an instrument of power.
At that moment, God is displaced from the center of faith, replaced by the ruler or the political system—precisely the dynamic that has given rise to distinctive forms of religious totalitarianism in modern history.
3.2. Ideology as Secular Religion and Religion as Ideology
Scholars such as Hannah Arendt, Raymond Aron, and Emilio Gentile have all emphasized that modern ideologies—from Nazism to Communism—are in fact secularized forms of religious faith.
They promise salvation, define enemies, and call upon followers to sacrifice themselves. Gentile described fascism as a “political religion” complete with its own rituals and sacred convictions.
In the contemporary world, however, this process has reversed: it is now religion itself that often becomes politicized and transformed into ideology.
In such cases, religious teachings are detached from their ethical and spiritual dimensions and redefined in political terms:
faith becomes obedience to the leader, worship becomes compliance with law, and jihad becomes an instrument of social control.
Thus, the Islamic State in the modern age is not a return to traditional theocracy but rather a novel form of totalitarian ideology that uses the language of religion to administer power.
3.3. From Collective Faith to Collective Surveillance
In traditional religions, the faith community is structured around shared moral and spiritual values. But once religion becomes an organ of the state, that community transforms into a mechanism of supervision and control.
Political authority draws legitimacy from the people’s faith while simultaneously turning that faith into something measurable and monitorable:
Who attends the mosque? Who fasts? Who remains loyal to official values?
In such systems, faith ceases to be a relationship between human and God; it becomes a political index of loyalty. This mechanism forms the essence of religious totalitarianism—a regime in which not only bodies but also consciences are subject to surveillance and political judgment.
3.4. From the Freedom of Faith to the Compulsion of Belief
Throughout religious history, genuine faith has always been linked to freedom. Prophets invited rather than coerced.
But in ideological religious states, faith is no longer an invitation—it is a command.
When the modern state speaks in the name of God, it possesses forms of power that no premodern authority ever did: public education, mass media, police, bureaucracy, and technology.
These instruments enable the transformation of faith into duty and religion into a system of surveillance.
Consequently, the Islamic State in the modern age, through its bureaucratic and technological apparatus, realizes precisely what Hannah Arendt described in her analysis of totalitarian regimes:
“a society of obedient men who mistake loyalty for freedom.”
3.5. The Place of Ethics in Relation to Religious Ideology
A crucial difference between authentic religion and religious ideology lies in the role of ethics.
In genuine faith, morality precedes power: a true believer can stand against a religious ruler because divine justice transcends all human authority.
In religious ideology, however, ethics becomes subordinate to power. Any act that serves the interests of the “system” is deemed sacred, even if it is unjust.
This inversion of moral values is the defining symptom of religious totalitarianism—a system in which God is no longer the measure of justice but the instrument for justifying power.
In other words, within the modern religious state, God becomes a symbol of legitimacy rather than a source of critique.
Thus, criticizing the ruler is branded as blasphemy, and questioning authority is equated with hostility to faith.
This mechanism perpetuates totalitarianism—whether in secular or religious form.
The transformation of faith into political ideology marks the birth of totalitarianism.
In the modern world, whenever religion has been fused with state power, free faith has yielded to enforced obedience.
From fascism to communism, and from the Islamic Republic of Iran to the Taliban, the same pattern emerges: the conversion of faith into an instrument of control.
In this sense, religious totalitarianism is not a premodern phenomenon but a distinctly modern one—one that produces not the faithful believer but the obedient citizen.
Therefore, the Islamic State in the modern age should not be understood as a return to early Islam but rather as a modern construct whose underlying logic mirrors that of the totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century—only expressed in sacred language and religious form.
In the next section, the article will examine this intersection of religion and power at the structural level: how modern religious regimes, especially Islamic states, are institutionally drawn toward totalitarianism, and how they differ from premodern religious polities.
- Religious Regimes and the Drift Toward Totalitarianism
The central question is this: why do religious regimes in the modern world tend toward religious totalitarianism?
Why is it that, although premodern caliphates and sultanates claimed divine legitimacy, they were not totalitarian, while in the modern age every Islamic state, sooner or later, gravitates toward total social and moral control?
The answer lies in the structural connection between the modern state and ideological religion—a fusion that transforms faith into governance and belief into bureaucracy.
This section explores how this synthesis has shaped Religious Totalitarianism and the Islamic State in the Modern Age.
4.1. Structural Difference Between the Premodern and Modern State
In the premodern world, governments were limited and fragmented. They lacked the administrative systems, communication networks, public education, and surveillance technologies necessary to control people’s minds and daily lives.
A caliph or sultan—even if claiming divine legitimacy—could not penetrate the private household or the inner conscience of individuals.
Religion itself was diffused across society: scholars, Sufi orders, jurists, and local traditions functioned as mediating authorities between power and the people.
The modern state, however, is entirely different. It possesses a centralized bureaucracy, mass education, media, policing systems, and technologies of surveillance.
When such a state serves religion, religion ceases to be faith and becomes a mechanism of social control.
Consequently, the Islamic State in the Modern Age can extend religion into the most private dimensions of citizens’ lives—an exact manifestation of religious totalitarianism in its classical definition.
4.2. Concentration of Power and the Elimination of Intermediary Institutions
In modern religious regimes, power tends to eliminate all mediating bodies.
In traditional Islamic jurisprudence, a hierarchy of independent institutions existed between God and society: scholars, guilds, families, and local customs.
In the modern religious state, however, all of these are absorbed by the apparatus of government.
For example, the clergy cease to act as a check on power and instead become a part of it; religious judges are subordinated to the state judiciary; seminaries are funded by the state; and the official interpretation of scripture is monopolized by governmental authority.
Thus, the former intra-religious pluralism disappears, replaced by a single, state-sanctioned orthodoxy.
This ideological centralization constitutes the essence of religious totalitarianism—the control of truth and the monopoly of interpretation.
4.3. Religion as the Exclusive Source of Legitimacy
In modern religious states, political legitimacy derives not from the people’s will or secular law but from divine authority.
At first glance, this may appear sacred; yet politically, it is perilous. When power claims to speak in the name of God, it admits no criticism.
In such a system, political opposition becomes sin, and theological questioning becomes apostasy.
The modern religious state regards itself not merely as the representative of the people but as the representative of God—thereby extinguishing the very possibility of dialogue, dissent, or reform.
This logic compels the regime toward religious totalitarianism, for in order to preserve divine legitimacy, it must constantly monitor belief and suppress deviation.
4.4. The Alliance of Religion, Technology, and Modern Bureaucracy
The modern world has produced unprecedented tools of collective control: mass media, data systems, digital networks, public education, and extensive security agencies.
When a religious ideology commands these instruments, the result is an Islamic State in the Modern Age that uses religion to regulate emotions, behavior, and even thought.
For instance, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, notions such as enjoining the good and forbidding the evil have been elevated from personal ethics to state policy; while in Saudi Arabia, the “Committee for the Promotion of Virtue” became an official moral police force.
In both cases, religion is displaced from the domain of conscience into the realm of public control—replicating the same totalitarian structure that Hannah Arendt described in secular regimes.
4.5. The Erasure of Individuality and the Creation of the Obedient Subject
Totalitarianism, whether secular or religious, is inherently hostile to individuality.
In modern religious systems, the believer is defined not as an autonomous moral agent but as a subject of the official Sharia.
Freedom is reinterpreted not as choice but as obedience. Even faith itself becomes hollowed out: what matters is not belief but conformity to prescribed external behavior.
This mechanism turns the human being into a manageable subject—one who can be directed, disciplined, or rewarded.
Thus, religious totalitarianism arises from the interplay between power and faith—not from the weakness of religion, but from its institutionalization within the framework of the modern state.
4.6. Why the Islamic State in the Modern Age Is Inherently Totalitarian
The premodern Islamic state could not be totalitarian simply because it lacked the tools, structures, and capacities for total control.
By contrast, the Islamic State in the Modern Age, equipped with bureaucratic networks, education systems, media, policing, and surveillance technology, both can and must encompass every sphere of society—because without such control, it collapses.
The modern state is built upon the logic of unity and discipline. When religion is grafted onto this structure, that logic extends into the realm of faith, transforming belief into political doctrine.
Consequently, the survival of the modern religious state depends on total control—and total control, by definition, is totalitarian.
Therefore, totalitarianism in modern religious states is not the result of corruption or deviation; it is the natural consequence of merging religion with the architecture of the modern state.
When divine authority is embedded within bureaucratic governance, faith becomes ideology and conscience becomes an instrument of rule.
This is why religious totalitarianism is a modern, not a traditional, phenomenon.
Premodern states were despotic but not totalitarian; modern religious regimes, however, aspire not only to govern society but also to monopolize truth itself.
- Analytical and Philosophical Conclusion — The Possibility of Non-Totalitarian Faith in the Modern Age
At the end of this study, we arrive at a point where analysis alone is not enough; we must ask a deeper question:
If Religious Totalitarianism is the result of merging religion and state in the modern era, is it possible to sustain a form of faith that resists this totalizing tendency?
And can an Islamic State in the Modern Age exist legitimately and humanely without sliding into total control over society?
The answers depend on rethinking the very nature of religion, state, and freedom.
5.1. The Final Boundary Between Faith and Power
Throughout history, religious faith has manifested in two faces:
one prophetic and ethical, calling humanity to freedom and justice; the other institutional and power-oriented, turning faith into an instrument of order and control.
Religious Totalitarianism emerges when the second face overcomes the first—when religion shifts from the horizon of conscience to the machinery of power.
In contrast, non-totalitarian faith takes shape only when religion returns to the realm of choice, reflection, and moral conscience—where the believer can defend ethics against power, not submit ethics to power.
In other words, to save faith from politics, one must liberate it from coercion and return it to freedom.
5.2. The Modern State and the Question of Critical Secularism
One of the achievements of modern philosophy is the idea of critical secularism—a secularism that is not the enemy of faith but the guardian of the boundary between faith and power.
Such secularism insists that the state must remain separate from religion so that religion can remain moral.
Within this framework, faith transforms from an instrument of control into a source of moral critique.
If the Islamic State in the Modern Age seeks to avoid the slide into Religious Totalitarianism, it must become self-aware of its boundaries.
It must acknowledge that religion cannot serve as the exclusive law for governing a plural society, and that a clear distinction must be made between the sacred and the political.
This separation is not the negation of religion—it is the restoration of its ethical dignity.
5.3. Faith as Personal Experience, Not Political System
Non-totalitarian faith is not a government—it is an inspiration.
It enlightens rather than controls.
In such faith, God exists not as an external command of the state but as the living conscience within the human being.
Religion, in this sense, becomes a liberating force that frees the individual from the domination of any absolute power—religious or secular.
Free faith is precisely what totalitarian powers fear most, because a person who is inwardly free cannot be easily subdued.
As Albert Camus observed, resistance to totalitarianism begins not in law but in moral conscience.
From this perspective, liberation from Religious Totalitarianism is possible only through a return to free, self-reflective, and critical faith.
5.4. Returning to Critical Spirituality
One of the recurring mistakes of modern Islamic thought has been the belief that the path to liberation from Western domination lies in the restoration of a religious state.
Yet the experience of the twentieth century revealed the opposite: such a return often reproduces Religious Totalitarianism instead of defeating it.
For religion to remain alive in the modern world, it must reconstruct spirituality, not state power.
This spirituality stands against the state, not in service to it.
Here, God manifests not in the structure of government but in the honesty and freedom of human conscience.
Such an approach offers a path beyond the endless cycle of “religious despotism” and “anti-religious reaction,” creating a fragile but real balance between faith and freedom.
5.5. The Possibility of Religion in a Post-Totalitarian World
Today’s world is moving beyond the century of ideologies—a century in which humanity repeatedly fell into the trap of political salvation.
The experiences of fascism, communism, and modern religious states have all demonstrated one truth: salvation cannot be achieved through coercion.
Out of this awareness, a post-totalitarian religion may emerge—a religion that no longer seeks to conquer society but to illuminate the human soul from within.
Such faith coexists with political freedom rather than opposing it.
Within this horizon, Islam, like any other faith, can regain meaning in the modern age only by stepping outside the framework of the state and returning to the sphere of lived experience—where God is not power but freedom.
Summary and Final Reflections
Our analysis has shown that:
- Religious Totalitarianism is a product of the fusion between religion and the modern state, not a remnant of the past;
- The Islamic State in the Modern Age, due to its bureaucratic structure and its need to maintain divine legitimacy, is inherently drawn toward totalization;
- Faith can be liberating only when it remains independent from political power;
- And the true path beyond totalitarianism lies not in constructing a new religious state, but in reclaiming personal, ethical, and critical faith.
Therefore, if humanity is to build a more humane future, we must reestablish the boundary between the sacred and the political—not to erase religion, but to save it from the corruption of power.
Religion, in its essence, can serve as a force against totalitarianism—but only when it refuses to become the state itself.
Religious Totalitarianism and the Islamic State in the Modern Age represents the final mask of modernity’s desire to solidify faith into power.
Yet if modern humanity wishes to preserve its faith, it must reclaim it from the state and return it to the domain of conscience.
Only then can religion once again embody liberation and freedom—not as a tool of obedience, but as a force of awakening.
