The Becoming-god: Iltizāmī Political Theology and the Ontological Deficit of Modern Political Authority

Schmitt's diagnosis of modern political authority was confined to formal inheritance of hollowed-out theological concepts without the substantial contents-therefore, it foregrounded a century-long aporia: how can an evacuated god in the modern state constitute the preceding theological authority? This paper argues that the aporia is not accidental but structural and civilisational: the post-Schmittian tradition lacks the methodological resources required to move from authority-form to authority-architecture. Drawing on Mawdūdī's redefinition of ilāh and the jurisprudential distinction between dalālat al-muṭābaqah and dalālat al-iltizām, the paper introduces Iltizāmī Political Theology as a methodological subdiscipline capable of diagnosing the operational content of political authority across civilisational boundaries. Its central finding is the being/becoming distinction: whereas in a genuinely theological order political authority flows from divine being as ontological necessity, the modern secular state attempts to reoccupy ilāh-position through institutional becoming-constructing the functional equivalents of omnipotence, omniscience, eternity, and unity without the divine being. The modern state is thus not secular but a Becoming-god: an iltizāmī theological entity whose secularity is the concealment of an ontological aspiration it cannot fulfill. The framework completes Schmitt, restoring political authority as a philosophically diagnosable object for the first time.