State and religion in Islamic societies

Past & Present, May, 1996 by Ira M. Lapidus

III

ISLAM AND THE DIFFERENTIATION OF STATE AND RELIGION

The Arab Muslim conquests of the Middle East in the seventh and eighth centuries introduced new premisses about the relation of state and religion, but Arab Muslim practices and concepts gradually evolved into substantial conformity with Byzantine and Sassanian precedents.

Islam was first introduced into an Arabian society that was profoundly different from those of the imperial Middle East. While the Middle East was already a highly developed axial age society built upon agriculture and-urban settlement, organized religious associations and imperial regimes, Arabia was a politically fragmented region, largely pastoral, primarily pagan in religion, and without either an organized state or a region-wide church. It was predominantly a lineage society. To this society the prophet Muhammad (c.570-632) brought a revelation of the existence of things unseen that conferred upon him authority over all things visible. He organized a Muslim community to fulfil God's command in matters of belief, ethics, family, commerce, politics and war. Islam became a rallying-point for a coalition of lineage groups and created a new superordinate organization. In the early phases of Islam, religious identity did not supersede, but was rather superimposed upon, clan, lineage and tribal units. Also there was no differentiation between Muhammad's prophetic leaching, his authority in moral and spiritual matters, and his role as a tribal mediator, arbitrator and organizer. No distinction was made-between the realm of religion and that of the state.(6)

With the Arab-Islamic conquests, Islam introduced into the Middle East an alternative, undifferentiated concept of the relations of secular and religious authority. Between 632 and 751 the Arabs conquered the Middle East and adjacent parts of North Africa, Spain and Inner Asia as far as the border of present-day China. The caliphs, the successors of the Prophet and the new emperors, established a regime that would last until 945. Though the doors of revelation were closed, the caliphs inherited the Prophet's executive authority. Their authority to implement and defend the truth was as great as his authority to announce it. The caliphs' authority applied to everything from individual piety to ritual, family, business, political and military matters. It was a seamless authority inherited by the men who stood in the Prophet's place.

On the basis of this authority, the caliphs claimed to be khalifat allah, not only successors to the Prophet, but vice-regents of God. They assumed the protection and endowment of Muslim worship, the organization of mosques and the defence of the pilgrimage. They claimed authority in legal and doctrinal matters and the right to defend the Muslim community against heresy.(7)

The subsequent evolution of the caliphate, however, led to a breakdown of the initial concept and the progressive separation of religious and political authority. To sustain their authority, the caliphs adopted the trappings of Byzantine and Sassanian imperial power alongside their Islamic identity. The Umayyad dynasty incorporated Byzantine artistic, architectural and ceremonial motifs into the caliphal court and into the palaces and mosques constructed by the dynasty. The `Abbasid dynasty, in its turn, patronized Hellenistic philosophy and science, Pahlavi literature, and other aspects of the Middle Eastern imperial cultural tradition that defined the caliphate in universalist terms. Coupled with these forms of non-Islamic Middle Eastern political culture were institutional developments which centralized political power, concentrating military and bureaucratic resources under the authority of the caliphate. Thus the caliphs, who began as the deputies and successors to the Prophet, attempted to combine their religious authority with the routine forms of Middle Eastern imperial, cultural and institutional authority. Though the religious claims of the caliphate did not lapse, the institution increasingly resembled the former Middle Eastern empires.