Kuyper and Islam

Abraham Kuyper is remembered as a titan of Dutch politics, a preeminent Reformed political theologian, and someone many consider the ideological father of the Protestant strain of Christian democracy. In Kuyper’s vast output, comprising over 200 books and 20,000 articles, outstanding is his Om de Oude Wereldzee, “On the Old World-Sea,” an impressive travelogue of Kuyper’s tours of the civilizations along the Mediterranean, from Crimea to Spain. In this journalistic endeavor, Kuyper explores his thoughts on Islam and Islamic civilization in a manner only obliquely indicated in his other works, notably the Stone Lectures, where “Islamism” is briefly considered as an alternative worldview to Christianity, in the same vein as modernism. Om de Oude Wereldzee, translated into English as On Islam, offers a historical perspective on Kuyper’s relation to the Islamic world but also places Kuyper as of particular value to contemporary Islamic political thought.