The study and research on constitutional theory and law, which led to this book, were carried out under a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, to which I am grateful. The book attempts to relate the findings of my study visits to some Muslim countries to the human situation of our time in general, and in particular in the countries visited during 1960/61 and 1962: Pakistan, India, Malaya, Iran, and Turkey for eight months; and Tunisia and Morocco for three months.

It soon became clear, in the rapidly changing situation, that my personal impressions, received in interviews and discussions on formal and many more informal occasions, would have to be set against each country's historical background and the currents of thought and events leading to its achievement of separate nationhood and independence. To avoid subjective and transitory deductions, fundamental issues had to be clarified. This required time and concentration, both difficult to find in the midst of heavy teaching and administrative duties. An immense and growing literature on the Middle East and South-East Asia had to be studied, and consequently the writing of this book proceeded slowly, with many interruptions. What is offered here is necessarily tentative, for personal as well as objective reasons that must be briefly stated.

Without sympathy and determination to understand the complexities of the situation, of which intellectual uncertainty and uneasy groping for a solution are the most important elements, the Western student of Islam cannot hope to survey and assess the contemporary scene in Muslim or predominantly Muslim modern national states.