The question of political and religious despotism is here examined by considering the most important manifestations of the overlapping critique of two prominent modern Arab thinkers (al-Kawakibi and Abdel-Raziq). The aim is to reveal their shared critical features in a number of aspects despite the differences between them, since the goal of the critique of despotism in both its forms is the critique of politics from the inside using its tools. It is also a real effort to sow the seeds of enlightened thinking in the aim of breaking the essentialist and interest-based links between the political and religious domains in the prospect of refounding the relationship between them according to a modern, rational understanding.