It seems to me that one of the most counter-productive, indeed, self-sabotaging elements of modern Islamist thinking is the emphasis on the establishment of an “Islamic state”, or the restoration of the “Khilafah”.
First of all, it wrongly assumes that there is such a thing as an Islamic political system; there isn’t. There is no mandatory system; there are mandatory rules, and there is the command to make decisions through the process of consultation; that’s all. The model of government is not defined. The word “Khilafah” was only ever used originally to denote whoever, and whatever form of governance, took over the affairs of the Muslims, one after the other. It is not a political model. All four of the Khulafah Rashideen were markedly different from one another; in how they came to power, in their administrative structure, and in their policies. And, of course, each successive government differed from these four, and from each other.
If you succeed in “establishing an Islamic government”, what that will mean in practical terms is this: a government that claims to be Islamic, and that declares the Shari’ah to be the primary source of legislation, with an authoritarian ruler who holds his position until he dies. In other words, it will be essentially what you already have and are dissatisfied with now.
If we look at both ends of the Islamist spectrum, with the Muslim Brotherhood on one hand, and Da’esh on the other (who are basically Islamized Baathists), we are talking about organizational structures that are remarkably opaque, rigidly hierarchical, undemocratic, and fanatically intolerant of dissenting opinion. Any government they would form would have these same characteristics; and I guarantee you that no one would be satisfied with this, nor should they be.
What we should focus on is not “establishing Islamic government”, but rather on making the governments we have more Islamic. We do not have to tear down what exists and build a new state from the ground up, while the end result of that exercise will leave us more or less in exactly the situation we are already in. What we have to do is focus on policy demands for changes in regulations and institutional behavior. And, at the end of the day, whether you know it or not, what that means is that you want democratization. You want to have a say in how government governs; that’s called “the consent of the governed”