By concept we mean the way we understand or know a thing. As we said in the beginning of a previous chapter, the State has always been a controversial subject, for the attitudes towards and understandings of the State have varied from age to age, even from country and country and people to people.
As the social, political, cultural, intellectual and religious environment of the people changed, their experience and therefore their concept of the State have also varied. We shall now study three different concepts of the State, viz, the traditional, the modem and the Islamic.