 If Muhammad was to attract tribesmen to join his movement, he had to provide them with an affiliation no less powerful than the tribe they had left behind".The scriptural basis of the Islamist principle that God – in the form of Sharia law – must govern, comes, at least in part, from the Quranic phrase that "`Hukm is God's alone,`" according to one of the founders of Islamist thought, Abul Ala Maududi.However, journalist and author Abdelwahab Meddeb questions this idea on the grounds that the definition of the Arabic word "hukm" is broader then simply "to govern", and that the ayah Maududi quoted is not about governing or government.