On the occasion of the Czech translation of Gellner's Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and its Enemies the article compares it with Badies Les deux Etats. Pouvoir et societe en Occident et en terre d'Islam. Both books are concerned with the relationship between modernity and Islam, and especially with the question whether the Islamic civilization will be able to combine modern economic and administrative institutions with Islamic politics and culture. Gellner announces the plausibility of this possibility without giving compelling reasons. Badie is more skeptical, particularly with regard to an inability of Muslim societies to develop a stabilized and homogenized political space which would correspond to the European Nation-State.