State and Religion in Islamic Societies

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State and Religion in Islamic SocietiesAuthor(s): Ira M. LapidusSource: Past & Present, No. 151 (May, 1996), pp. 3-27Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society

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STATEAND RELIGIONIN ISLAMICSOCIETIES

INTRODUCTION

The relations between states and religious institutionsand com-

munities have for more than a century been a central concern inthe study of Middle Eastern and other Islamic societies. Thestudy of the life of the prophet Muhammadand the caliphate,and of Muslimjuristic,political, iteraryand philosophical heory,have all reinforcedthe notion that Islam does not have a churchinstitution, that Islam encompassesall domains ncluding aw andthe state, that the state and religious communityare one and thesame, and that state and religious authorityare embodied in thesame person. This is still the common view of many western andMuslim scholarsof Islam.1

In consequence,Islamic societies are said to be fundamentallydifferentfrom westernsocieties. The Europeansocieties are pre-sumed to be built upon a profound separationof state and reli-gious institutions. This view ignores the variety and complexityof the Europeancases. It ignores the numerousexamples of statecontrolof religion, the phenomenonof establishedchurches suchas the Anglican church in England), and the concordats n Italy.

It ignores the integralconnection between religious and politicalnationalism n such countriesas Irelandor Poland. It ignores theclose identity between religious affiliation and nationality inHolland and Spain. Finally, it ignores the connection betweenreligion and activistpolitical movements, such as the liberationchurches in LatinAmerica.

None the less, this presumed difference has commonly beenused to account or thedifferinghistoricaldevelopmentof western

and Islamic societies. Western societies, with their inherent sep-arationof secularandsacred, churchand state, civil and religiouslaw, are said to havepromoted an autonomousdomainof secularculture and civil society which are the bases of modernity.

1B. Lewis, Islamandthe WestOxford,1993),p. 4.



4 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 151

Conversely, Islamic societies, lacking a differentiationof secularand sacred, have been tied to binding religious norms, inhibiting

their potential for secularization nd development.This trope of orientalist discussion has become an important

contemporary political issue in the Islamic world, where theformationof nationalstates has led to a markedsecularization fpublic life. Political identity has been defined in nationalterms.Islam has been disestablishedand Islamic religious associationsproscribed in many countries. Secular educationaland judicialinstitutionsand legal codes have replaced Islamic education and

Islamic justice. Now the neo-Islamic revivalist movements (theones commonlycalled "fundamentalist") enounce his trend andcall for a return to a state that represents and embodies Islamand enforces an Islamic way of life.

On all sides there is a great deal of confusion and misunder-standing about this subject. I would like to propose a moreaccuratehistoricalview. My goal in this paper s to survey MiddleEasternIslamic history, and to account for the emergenceof theprincipalIslamicpatternsof state-religionrelationsso as to knowbetter without anachronism,cultural bias or political prefer-ence what has been the history of the relations of state andreligion in Islamic countries. I believe that, contraryto receivedwisdom, there is a notable differentiationof state and religiousinstitutions n Islamicsocieties. The historicalevidence also showsthat there is no single Islamic model for states and religiousinstitutions,but ratherseveralcompetingones. Moreover, n eachof the models there are ambiguitiesconcerning the distribution

of authority, functions and relationsamong institutions. Finally,there are evident differencesbetween theory and practice.I hopethat the present articlewill advance he state of discussionamongspecialists,but more importantlywill give non-specialistreadersa good grasp of an issue that has considerablepublic importance,not only in many Muslim countries,but also for the way in whichEuropeansconceive of their relationships o these countries.

IITHE PRE-ISLAMIC PRECEDENTS

This question was, of course, not new to the Islamic era. Therewere both ancient and more immediate Roman and Sassanianprecedents or later Islamictheory and practice.Here I shall take



5TATEAND RELIGION N ISLAMIC OCIETIES

a couple of examples to set the stage for our understandingofthe evolution of the Islamicsituation.In ancient times we already

find an institutionaldifferentiationof state and temple, state andchurch, state and religion, but with unexpected ambiguitiescon-cerning he natureof royaland religiousauthorityand the divisionof secular and sacerdotal unctions.

The ancient Near East provides two very different precedentsfor the relationshipbetween state and religious institutions. Theancient Egyptian pharaohs were considered divine beings. Nodifferentiation was made between divinity and kingship, nor

between kingship and military, political, magical and religiouspowers.2 The first differentiationof religion and state, king andpriest, sacred and royal authority, became meaningful n ancientMesopotamia.The emergenceof temple communitiesand templecities in the fourth and late third millenniumsB.C.created a newand more complex structure.As the villagesand/or ineagesalliedfor the purpose of erecting the ancient Mesopotamian emples,they brought into being at one and the same time communitiesof faith, economic bodies and political units. To construct thetemples, it was necessary to mobilize the labour resources ofnumerous small communities, to transfer some of the surpluswealth of agricultural,pastoral,fishing and mining groups to thetemples, and to arrangesome mechanismfor the redistributionof resources among specialized producers. The priestly leaderswho directedthe constructionof the temples and their ceremoniescreateda system of economicredistribution o sustain he templesand the peoples committed to their construction. In the early

temples, priests served the functions of worship, of economicmanagementand of judicialand political leadership.

Between 2700 and 2400 B.C.,the temple communitiesevolvedinto more diSerentiated ocieties. The separation f political unc-tions and religious authoritybegan with the emergenceof lugals,

local war-lords, who conquered villages and temple cities andcreatedthe first territorial ity-states-progressively, city-statesand multi-city-states. The ultimate step was taken by a foreign

conqueror, Sargon of Akkad, who around 2400 B.C. conqueredthe southern Mesopotamian cities and established the first. . . .

mperlal reglme.

The emergenceof an imperialstate ruling over numerouscities

2 p. Springborg,Royal Persons: Patriarchal Monarchy and the Feminine Principle(London,1990);M. A. HoEman,Egypt before he Pharaoks(New York, 1979).



6 NUMBER 151AST AND PRESENT

and temple communitiesmarksa definingmoment in the historyof states and religions. With the emergence of kingship, the

temples were reduced to what we would call religious functions.Temple lands were turned over to the royal householdand ulti-mately to feudatoriesand privateowners. Similarly, he economicfunctions of the temples were partly vested in royal households;in later times market economies replaced the temple redistribu-tion system. Finally, the emperor Hammurabi (d. 1750 B.C.)deprived he temples of the last vestiges of their judicialauthority.The temples became specialized units for worship, while the

priests became specialists n religious ritual and religious theory.However, the redefinitionof the temple community in termsof religious functions did not mean a clear-cut separationof stateand religious institutions. The ruler also absorbed many of thesacred functions of the temples and the sacred authority of thepriests. The ancient Mesopotamian kings were not usuallyconsidered divine persons, but they claimed to be the anointedrepresentativesof the gods, capable of interpreting heir will asexpressed n signs, omens, oraclesand in the dreamsof the royalperson. The rulers were officiallythe heads of the temple clergyand were responsible for the constructionand the maintenanceof the temples. They took the lead in festivals and ceremonies,includingthe ceremonialunion of the ruler with a goddess at theNew Yearwhich signifiedthe rejuvenation f the land, the returnof fertility and the restorationof order in natureand the cosmos.The Mesopotamianrulers were at once kings and high priests,heads of state and heads of religion.3

Thus the ancient Mesopotamianprecedent gives us a partialdiSerentiationof state and religiousauthority.While the templeswere originally the bearers of economic, political and religiousroles, the separationof functions createdan ambiguoussituation.The templesremained argelysacerdotal nstitutions,but kingshipand religion were still merged. Now the king was the chosenagent of the gods; his authority stemmed from divine selection;he was the chief intermediarybetween human society and the

divine beings; and he was the high priest on specialoccasionsandthe chief authority over temples and clergy. The ancient

3R. M. Adams,The Evolution of Urban Society (Chicago,1966);H. Frankfort,Kingship and the Gods: A Study of Ancient Near Eastern Religion as the IntegrationofSociety and Nature (Chicago,1948); I. Engnell,Studies in Divine Kingship in theAncient Near East, 2nd edn (Oxford,1967).



STATEAND RELIGION N ISLAMIC OCIETIES 7

precedents, hen, created he separaterealmsof state andtemples,but an ambiguousdistributionof sacred and secular authority.

Turning from the ancient era to the late Roman and Sassanianpredecessorsof the Islamicempires,we find more highlyevolvedinstitutionsof state and religion and a more complex differenti-ation of roles. The Christianchurches,born in oppositionto theRoman state, had evolved as independent nstitutions.A churchwas a legally recognized, hierarchicallyorganized corporation.Indeed the church hierarchieswere the most highly organizedreligious bodies to be found anywhere n the world. The bishops

of the churcheswere free to determine internal administrativematters on their own. Religious doctrinecould only be promul-gated by the bishops and the church. Only the churchhad thepower to offer the sacraments hat opened the way to salvation.Yet while institutionally eparatefrom the state, the churchwasnot only a spiritual nstitution,but an administrative nd politicalauthority. At a local level, Christianchurcheshad jurisdiction nmany matters that we would now regard as secular.Matters ofthe civil law of family, property and commerce, and even somematters of criminal law, were regulated by churches. Thechurches were importanteducational nstitutions. Bishops wereoften the governorsof their dioceses.Despite the officialsepara-tion of church and state at the imperiallevel, at the local levelthe church was a civil-political nstitution ecclesia).4

With the adoptionof Christianityby the Roman emperorsandthe consecrationof Christianity as the official religion of theempire, the relationship between church and state became

exceedingly close. The emperor becamethe institutionalhead ofthe church. He was responsible for the appointmentof bishopsand for the convening of church conferences.He took a largerole in seeing that these conferences produced theologicaldecisions that were consistent with imperial interests. Theemperors also assumed responsibility for the persecution ofheresy, a task which was closely allied to the subordinationofperipheralRoman provinces, especially in the Middle East and

North Africa.Theologicalpolicy waslinked to politicalobjectives.The masses were expected to adhereto the religion of the ruler.In the Sassanian mpire, the relationsof churchesand the state

were different. The Sassanian shah officially adhered to the

4 H. Lietzmann,A History of the Early Church,trans.B. L. Woolf, 4 vols. (NewYork, 1950-3).



8 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER 151

Zoroastrian eligion, but he was in fact the tolerant patron, notonly of the Zoroastriantemples and mobads, ut also of the

organized Christian churches, such as the Jacobite and theNestorian. The Sassanian ulersconsideredeach of them an inter-mediary responsiblefor the civil and tax administration f theiradherents. They created the policy which would in Ottomantimes be known as the millet system. While Byzantine policycalled for a church unified under imperial authority, committedto carrying out imperial policies in the domain of religion,Sassanian olicy tolerateda multiplicityof religionsand churches,

each of which was committed to maintaining he administrativeauthorityof the shah but not to any politically nspired heologicalor religious programme.5Both these precedents would laterinfluence the organization of relations between the state andreligious communities n the early Islamic era.

IIIISLAMAND THE DIFFERENTIATION F STATEAND RELIGION

The Arab Muslim conquests of the Middle East in the seventhand eighth centuries ntroducednew premissesabout the relationof state and religion, but Arab Muslim practices and conceptsgradually volved into substantial onformitywith ByzantineandSassanianprecedents.

Islam was first introduced into an Arabian society that wasprofoundly different from those of the imperial Middle East.While the Middle East was alreadya highly developed axial age

society built upon agricultureand urban settlement, organizedreligious associationsand imperialregimes, Arabiawas a politic-ally fragmentedregion, largely pastoral,primarilypagan in reli-gion, and without either an organized state or a region-widechurch. It was predominantlya lineage society. To this societythe prophet Muhammad c.570-632) brought a revelationof theexistence of things unseen that conferred upon him authorityover all things visible. He organized a Muslim community to

fulfil God's command in matters of belief, ethics, family, com-merce, politics and war. Islam became a rallying-point for acoalitionof lineagegroupsand createda new superordinate rgan-ization. In the early phases of Islam, religious identity did not

5 A. Christensen, 'Iran sous les Sassanides,2nd edn (Copenhagen, 944);M. G.Morony, raq after the Muslim Conquest Princeton, 984),esp. pt 3.




supersede, but was rather superimposed upon, clan, lineageand tribal units. Also there was no differentiation between

Muhammad'spropheticteaching,his authority n moraland spir-itual matters, and his role as a tribal mediator, arbitratorandorganizer.No distinctionwas made between the realm of religionand that of the state.6

With the Arab-Islamic conquests, Islam introduced into theMiddle East an alternative,undifferentiated oncept of the rela-tions of secularand religious authority.Between 632 and 751 theArabs conquered the Middle East and adjacent parts of North

Africa, Spain and Inner Asia as far as the border of present-dayChina. The caliphs, the successors of the Prophet and the newemperors,establisheda regime that would last until 945. Thoughthe doors of revelation were closed, the caliphs inherited theProphet's executive authority.Their authorityto implement anddefend the truth was as great as his authority o announce t. Thecaliphs' authority applied to everything from individualpiety toritual, family, business, political and military matters. It was aseamless authority inherited by the men who stood in theProphet's place.

On the basis of this authority,the caliphsclaimedto be khalz-fatallah, not only successors to the Prophet, but vice-regents ofGod. They assumed the protection and endowment of Muslimworship, the organization of mosques and the defence of thepilgrimage.They claimedauthority n legal and doctrinalmattersand the right to defend the Muslim community againstheresy.7

The subsequent evolution of the caliphate, however, led to a

breakdownof the initial concept and the progressive separationof religiousand politicalauthority.To sustaintheir authority,thecaliphsadoptedthe trappingsof Byzantineand Sassanianmperialpower alongside their Islamic identity. The Umayyad dynastyincorporated Byzantine artistic, architectural and ceremonialmotifs into the caliphal court and into the palaces and mosquesconstructed by the dynasty. The 'Abbasid dynasty, in its turn,patronizedHellenistic philosophyand science, Pahlavi iterature,

and other aspectsof the Middle Eastern mperialcultural radition6 W. M. Watt,Muhammadat Mecca (Oxford,1953);W. M. Watt,Muhammadat

Medina (Oxford, 1956); E. R. Wolf, "The SocialOrganization f Mecca and theOriginsof Islam",Southwestern 1 Anthropology,vii (1951), pp. 329-56.

7 E. Tyan,Institutionsdu droit public musulman,2 vols. (Paris,1954-7), ; P. Croneand M. Hinds, God's Caliph: Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam

(Cambridge, 986).




that defined the caliphate in universalist terms. Coupled withthese forms of non-IslamicMiddle Easternpolitical culture were

institutionaldevelopmentswhich centralizedpoliticalpower, con-centratingmilitaryand bureaucratic esourcesunderthe authorityof the caliphate.Thus the caliphs, who began as the deputies andsuccessors to the Prophet, attempted to combine their religiousauthority with the routine forms of Middle Eastern imperial,cultural and institutionalauthority. Though the religious claimsof the caliphate did not lapse, the institution increasinglyresembledthe former Middle Easternempires.

The transformation f caliphal authority was part of a largerprocess of the differentiationof the ArabianIslamic complex ofthe tribal-religiouscommunity and state into separate compon-ents. Just as the caliphateevolved from a religiousto a monarch-ical identity, so the tribal nation in arms was displaced byprofessional forces and by a fiscal bureaucracy. At the sametime, the post-conquest Arabian Muslim population began togenerate socio-religious nstitutionsof their own. In the garrisoncities settled by the Arab-Muslimconquerors,kinship, clan and

tribal structures were transformedby new patterns of militaryorganization, economic activity and residence in the midst ofnon-Arab populations,and new groupingsemerged, some basedon neo-traditional tribal identities, others based on religion.Muslim scholarsand holy men, the companionsand descendantsof the companionsof the Prophet (without office or sacerdotalstatus), Qur'an-reciters, scholars and ascetics became in dailypractice the custodians and teachers of Islam. They came to

embody the personal, moral and devotional teachings, and thesocial and communalcounsellingand leadershiproles, that werepart of the prophetic legacy. As clan and lineage ties lost theirpractical meaning in a rapidly changing population, religiousscholarsgatheredaroundthemselvesstudents and clients seekingfellowship and guidance in the study of the Qur'an, the sayingsof the Prophet (haCth), law and theology, or in the practice ofascetic renunciationand self-purification Sufism). Such groups

had a strongly sectarianquality. Some of them were KharijisandShiis. The Shiis, who held that 'All, Muhammad's ousin and thefourth caliph, was the only legitimate successor to the Prophet,and that only his descendantsare rightful eadersof the Muslims,became he leadingpoliticalopponentsof the caliphateand deniedthe legitimacyof the establishedregime. Others remainedwithin



llTATEND RELIGIONN ISLAMIC OCIETIES

the unni camp, accepting the authorityof the caliphate,but

turnedo the studyof Qur'an,hadzth ndlaw as the trulymean-

ingfulxpressionsof Islam.By the ninthcentury,thesesmallandinformalreligiousassoci-

ationsereconsolidatedntoorganizedreligiousmovements.The

Shiiscodified their religious and theological teachings and

developed festive calendarand ceremoniesof pilgrimage.The

Sunnis onsolidatedinto schools of law, devoted to the legal

teachingshat embodiedthe moraland social impulsesof Islam.

The cholars,surroundedby students,interestedmembersof the

community, atronsand clients, and legal functionaries,such as

witnesses, rderliesandclerks,becamecommunity eaders.Thus

in he ninth and tenth centuriesthere emergeda new patternof

stateand social organization n the Islamiclands. The caliphate

hadevolved into a politicalregime, legitimatedin both Muslim

terms ndin termsof the culturalheritagederivedfromthe non-

Muslimpoliticaltraditionsof the region. At the same time, the

sectarianorm of religio-communalassociationbecamethe norm

formost of the Muslimpopulation.

The emergenceof two institutionalstructureswith differentelitesanda differentethosgeneratedan intensestrugglebetween

thecaliphateand the 'ulama'(religiousscholars).From the very

beginning,the caliphatehad claimedto be the protectorof both

the religiousand the political interestsof Muslims. To enforce

these claims, the 'Abbasidcaliphal-Ma'mun (813-33) initiated

aninquisition hatattempted o forcethe leadingMuslimreligious

scholarsto accept the doctrineof the creatednessof the Qur'an

andhis authorityto proclaimthis doctrine.Most of thereligious

leaderscapitulated.Only Ahmad ibn Hanbalrefused to accept

the caliphate'scontentions.Alreadyreputed to be the greatest

scholarof hadzthn his time, Ahmadnow emergedas the public

leaderof the religiousscholars.He denied that the Qur'anwas

created,and affirmedthe transcendentauthorityof the written

wordas opposedto its humaninterpreters.

The Hanballview made the scholars,not the caliphs, custo-

diansof thetruth. For the Hanbalites,the 'ulama-'were obliged

to uphold the teachingsof Islam, to "commandthe good and

forbidthe evil", andto enforcethoseteachings n the community

at large.In pursuitof their obligation,they couldrefuse to obey

the caliphate n matterswherethe caliphsdeparted romthe law,

but they did not claim the right to rebel againstthe regime as




such. They remained committed to the caliphs as the successorsto the Prophet. None the less, the distinction they introduced

made the religious scholarsthe true leaders of the Muslim com-munities, and the religious communities independent agencieswithin the caliphalorder.

A protracted struggle between the caliphate and the 'ulama)

eventually ended with the victory of the latter. In 848-9, thecaliph al-Mutawakkilreversed the policy of his predecessors,abandoned he thesis that the Qur'an was created, and in eSectconcededboth the point of doctrineand the claimsof the caliphate

to be the ultimate source of religious belief.This struggle was a crucial turning-point in the relationship

between the caliphs and the religious communities. Henceforth,the caliph would remainthe officialhead of the Muslim commun-ity and the symbol of Muslim unity. He would remain he admin-istratorof Muslimreligiousand communal nterests,but no longerwould he be recognizedas a sourceof religiousbelief. Henceforth,the sectarian communities under the leadership of the 'ulama)

would evolve independentlyof the state under the aegis of thertligious teachers. Thus the struggle over the creatednessof theQur'anconfirmed he institutional eparationof the caliphateandthe community, the division of authoritybetween them, and theseparateroles for each as bearers of part of what had been thelegacy of the Prophet. Henceforth, the caliphate would evolve,contrary to the Muslim ideal, as a largely military and imperialinstitution egitimated n neo-Byzantineand neo-Sassanian erms,while the religiouselites would develop a more completeauthority

over the communal, personal, religious and doctrinal aspects ofIslam.8

IVTHE POST-IMPERIAL, SALJUQ STATES AND COMMUNITIES

The separationof state and religious institutions was confirmedby the historical rends of the next two centuries. The territorial

empire of the caliphatecollapsed n 945 and the domainof Islamwas parcelled out among independent local regimes. Beginningin the eleventh century, the region was also subject to repeated

8 I. M. Lapidus,"The Separation f Stateand Religion", nternat.ffI Middle EastStudies, vi (1975), pp. 363-85; I. M. Lapidus,A History of Islamic Societies(Cambridge, 988),pp. 45-54, 120-6, 162-80,225-37.



STATEAND RELIGION N ISLAMIC OCIETIES 13

waves of nomadicinvadersfrom Central Asia whose chieftainsestablisheda successionof short-livedempires.The Saljuqs,who

reigned from c.1040 to c.1200, definedthe political institutionsof the new era. While the state was in the hands of nomadicchieftainsand war-lords of slave origin, Saljuq-ledgovernmentscultivated an Islamic identity. In principle, they recognizedthe legitimacyof the caliphate.They portrayed hemselvesas thedefenders of Islam. They enforced Islamic law, patronizedthepilgrimage,endowed colleges of learningand religiousactivity,and sometimeswagedjihad againstnon-Muslimpopulations in

Anatoliaand CentralAsia.None the less, these states were not considered inherentlyIslamic.Turkishregimeslooked backto theirtribalancestryandtheirconquestsas the basisof dynastic egitimacy.By the cultiva-tion of local languages, poetic traditions,architecturalmotifs,musical themes and cultic practices, or through universalistic,rationalistic,cosmological,philosophicaland scientificpursuits,Middle Easternstates asserted a legitimacyindependentof reli-gion, and identified themselves as cosmopolitan,imperial andpatrimonialregimes basedon non-Muslimcivilizations.

In the same period, Middle Eastern societies, disrupted bypoliticalturmoil andnomadic nvasions,reacted to the upheavalsby converting o Islamand by organizing hemselves ntocommu-nities basedon religion, ncludingShiicommunities,Sunnischoolsof lawand,later,Sufibrotherhoods. n the latetenthandeleventhcenturies, the schools of law, already well established,acquiredmadrasas r colleges, buildingswith endowedsupportservingas

residencesfor both scholarsand students and providingstipendsfor religious study.

Furthermore, n the courseof the eleventhcenturythecommonpeoplecame to be identifiedwith the schools of law. The leadingscholars had close ties to merchant, bureaucraticand officialfamilies. They had a popularfollowing among the people whosought their advice and protection.The schools of law came toserve importantadministrative,as well as religiousand educa-

tional,purposes.The scholars ook chargeof judicialadministra-tion, local police, irrigation,public works and taxation. Theyorganized education and charities. They officiated at births,marriagesand deaths. They gave healing and spiritualconsola-tion. Thus the ordinarydailyrelationships hat constitute a civilsociety marriage, family, inheritance, business dealings,




friendships, education, arbitrationand litigation of disputesall came under the purview of Islam.

Another type of religious-basedcommunity organizationwasbuilt aroundSufism. Sufismbegan as the purely individualquestfor spiritualenlightenmentand closenessto God among holy menand ascetics, but it gradually evolved into a social movement.Sufi masters acquired disciples. On the military frontiers of theIslamic world, and subsequently n the towns of the interior, theSufis acquired residences for teaching, missionary activity andcharitablework.

The group structureof Sufism was progressivelyconsolidatedin the course of the tenth and eleventh centuries.The residences,once homes to eclectic comings-together of itinerant mystics,graduallybecame the homes of organizedbrotherhoods.Formalceremonies uch as the giving of an ijaza or certificateof learning,the passing-on of the kAirqa r the patched cloak of the masterto the disciple, the conferringof a silsila or chain of authoritativetransmissiongoing back from the present master to the Prophet,turned students into disciples totally dedicated to the service ofthe master. The only route to spiritual salvation was completededication o the master.

Then in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the variousgroups of Sufi masters and their disciples were linked together.Those masters who were students of a common master in theprevious generation came to consider themselves members of abrotherhood,a tarzqa, loosely affiliated nternational ssociationof Sufis who shared the same religious practices and spiritual

tradition. Extended Sufi networks were promoted by ambitiousmasterswho sent their disciplesas khalifas r delegates o establishbranchesof the principalbrotherhood.In the course of the thir-teenth, fourteenthand fifteenthcenturies,the Kubrawlyabecameimportant n Iranand Transoxania, he Suhrawardlyan Iraq, theQadirlya n Iraq and Egypt, the Shadhillya n North Africa andthe Chistlya n India. The Sufi brotherhoodsorganizednot onlythe relationsof mastersand disciples, but brought nto their reach

lay affiliates, who looked to the Sufi orders for ritual leader-ship, healing, mediation, welfare services and political spokes-manship. As Sufism spread, the great mass of the populationbecame affiliated with one or several of the brotherhoods inadditionto their affiliation o the schools of law. By the fifteenthcentury, throughoutthe Islamic lands the common people were




ordinarilyboth the clients of schools of law and membersof oneor another Sufi brotherhood. The schools of law and the Sufi

brotherhoodshad become the backbone of Muslim communityorganization.

These religious groups commonly withdrew from politicalaffairs and turned into self-protective communities concernedwith worship, ceremonyand healingactivities, the administrationof religious law, educationand the upholding of moralityand ofthe symbols of an Islamic order. While many avoided contactwith rulers, courtsand the holdersof politicalpower, the religious

elites none the less took on a this-worldly responsibility or theupholding of community life and for the teaching of religiouslydefined ways to personal salvation. Thus they preserved a kindof purity, avoiding the potential corruption of politics, butremainedengaged n the needs of their people. The split betweenMuslim states and Muslim religious communities which cameinto the open in the ninth century was now fully institutionalizedin a structureof society which separated ocal communityorgan-izations from states.

In the Saljuq period, a new relationship was worked outbetween states and a society organized into sectarian religiousbodies. The newly dominant conquering Turkish peoples andslave war-lords, eager to calm resistance, to assure the passivityof the governedpopulationsand the steady flow of taxes, decidedto use the local religious elites and the existing communalstruc-tures as a mechanismto enforce and facilitate their rule. To dothis, they accepted the caliph as the nominal head of the Islamic

community.They agreedto enforce Islamic aw. They suppressedShiism by force and assisted in the triumph of Sunni Islamthroughoutmuch of the Middle East. They upheld at least someof the symbols of an Islamic order in the ceremonial, literaryand artistic statements of the courts. In order to secure theco-operationof the local religious elites, the Saljuqsconstructedmosques and madrasas n every major city, endowed them withfunds to train students and religious cadresand made themselves

the patrons of the people who spread Islam, administered ocalaffairs and taught obedience to the regime. Patronage allowedthem to influence the appointmentsof judges and teachers, andgave the state indirect control over a religious establishmentdependent upon it for financialsupport.

Reciprocally, the Muslim religious leaders, remainingtrue to



16 NUMBER15lAST AND PRESENT

the caliphate n principle, adapted themselves in practice to thenew realities. They accepted the existing states as the necessary

political condition of their era and claimed responsibility or theimplementationof the Prophet's tradition in the domain of thesmall community and individual lives. They were not in factcommitted to bringing about a restorationof the true caliphate,and accepted the legitimacy of the Saljuq states. While manyreligious leaders avoided the state, others served in governmentoffices, assisted in local administration nd taxation, and workedout the co-operative relationshipbetween the military elites and

the local religious elites, betweenamzrs and a<yan, which becamethe basis of the Saljuqempires.9

V

THE LATER DIFFUSION AND TRANSFORMATION OF THE

SALJUQ SYSTEM

The Saljuq system of relations between 'ulama' and the state,worked out in Baghdadand Iran, was carried westward by theSaljuq conquests to Syria and Egypt, and was later adopted bythe Ottoman Empire in Anatolia, the Balkans and the westernparts of the Fertile Crescent. A similar system was constructedby the Safavids n Iran between 1500 and 1724. The expansionof Islamthe world over by conquest, tradeand missionaryactivit-ies also introducedthese institutionsto the Indian subcontinent,the islands of South-East Asia, sub-SaharanAfrica and otherregions.

In the OttomanEmpirethe evolutionof relationsbetween stateand religious elites led to the direct control of the state over

9 Tyan, Institutionsdu droit public musulman, i; M. Hodgson, The Ventureof Islam,ed. R. W. Smith, 3 vols. (Chicago, 1974), ii, pp. 12-152; H. Laoust, "La pensee etl'action politiques d'Al-Mawardl (364-450 / 974-1058)", Revue des etudes slamiquesxxxvi (1968), pp. 11-92; H. Laoust, La politiquede Gaza-lz Paris, 1970); G. Makdisi,Ibn 'Aqil et la resurgencede l'Islam traditionalisteau XIe siecle, ve siecle de l'Hegire(Damascus, 1963). On social organization, see R. W. Bulliet, ThePatriciansof Nishapur(Cambridge, 1972); J. E. Gilbert, "Institutionalization of Muslim Scholarship andProfessionalizationof the 'ulama->n Medieval Damascus", Studia islamica, ii (1980),pp. 105-34. For the madrasa, see G. Makdisi, "Muslim Institutions of Learning inEleventh-Century Baghdad", Bull. Schoolof Orientaland African Studies, xxiv (1961),

pp. 1-56; D. Sourdel, "Reflexions sur la diffusion de la madrasa en Orient du XIe auXIIIe siecle", Revuedes etudes slamiques, liv (1976), pp. 165-84; G. Makdisi, "Ash'ariand the Ash'arites in Islamic Religious History", Studia islamica, xvii (1962),pp. 37-80, xviii (1962), pp. 19-39; J. Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam(Oxford, 1971).




religious institutions.The Ottomansbrought(ulama)udicialandeducationalactivitiesunder bureaucratic ontrol. In the course of

their expansion, they created a sequence of colleges in Anatoliaand the Balkanswhich they organized nto a teaching hierarchy.The most recentlyfounded colleges rankedhighest in the bureau-cracy. Teachers were appointed by the Ottoman state and allteachersparticipated n a graded hierarchy,advancing rom col-lege to college as part of a defined careerpath. A similarjudicialhierarchy was created in which the cities of the empire wereranked n order of historicand practical mportance.Judges were

promoted from one city to another as they climbed through thejudicialbureaucracy.At the top of this bureaucracy tood the chiefqadzsnd the qaaRsf the army, who acted as informal adminis-trators of the system. Judges were particularly mportant n theOttomansystem becausethey not only dealt with the administra-tion of religious law, but assisted in the assessmentof taxes, theadministration f army regulations,the supervisionof the urbanguilds and the regulationof the urban economy. In the Ottomansystem, an interlockedhierarchywith a defined careercourse for

both judges and teachers, supportedby state salariesand endow-ments, brought the whole of the religious establishmentunderstate control. At the same time, the Ottomans suppressed nde-pendent Sufism. Sufis were either attached to the court or dis-persed. Shiism was proscribed.By definingthe limits of religiousautonomy narrowly, the Ottomans transformed the system ofstate patronage of religious activities and informal religiousacceptanceof the state authority into a state-dominatedversion

of Islam.10The Safavid empire in Iran began, like the early Arab con-

quests, as an undifferentiated religio-political campaign. TheSafavid family were Sufi sheikhs living in north-west Iran who,

10On Ottomanpolitical nstitutions, ee H. Inalclk,The Ottoman Empire: TheClassicalAge, trans.N. Itzkowitzand C. Imber London,1973);H. A. R. GibbandH. Bowen,Islamic Society and the West, 2 vols. (Oxford,1950-7);N. Itzkowitz,The

Ottoman Empire and Islamic Tradition(Chicago,1972);C. H. Fleischer,Bureaucratand Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire: The Historian Mustafa Ali (1541-1600)

(Princeton, 986);on the Ottoman eligious nstitution, ee GibbandBowen,IslamicSociety and the West, i, pp. 19-38, ii, pp. 70-261;J. K. Birge, The Bektashi Order ofDervishes(London,1937);R. Lifchez ed.), The Dervish Lodge:Architecture,Art andSufism in Ottoman Turkey(Berkeley,1992);R. Repp, "SomeObservations n theDevelopment f the OttomanLearnedHierarchy",n N. R. Keddie ed.), Scholars,Saints and Sufis: Muslim ReligiousInstitutions n the Middle East since 1500 (Berkeley,1972),pp. 17-32.



18 NUMBER 151ASTAND PRESENT

as Muslimholy men and lateras self-proclaimeddescendantsof'All, united individuals,small bandsof warriorsand some clangroupsinto aunifiedbody that was eventuallycapableof over-throwinglocal dynastiesand establishingan empire. After the

conquests,however,the Safavidsmovedawayfromtheiroriginalcombinationof religiousand political leadershipinto the morefamiliardiSerentiationof institutions.In orderto buttresstheirrule, the Safavidswithdrewtheircharismatic laimsandbuilt upa more conventional religious establishment. Importing Shiischolars romthe GulfregionandIraqto manthe new establish-ment,the shahsappointed heleadingShii<ulama'

to thepositionsof judgesand teachersand createda supervisorybureaucracyoadminister heir activities. The shahsprovidedendowmentsforthegreatShii shrinesand otherwisebroughtthe religiousestab-lishmentunderdirectcontrol.They violentlyeliminatedall rivalforms of Islam, including the Sunni schools of law and theSufibrotherhoods.The Safavidsadoptedthe prevailingMiddleEasternpattern of differentiated state-political and religio-communalnstitutions.ll

Even so, Ottoman and Safavid state control over religiousleadersdid not obliterate the distinction between the court,militaryndbureaucraticliteson the one hand,andthe religiousteachersn the other, nor the distinctionsof function,ethosandauthorityetween them. The states focused on militarypower,public rderand taxation;the religiouscommunitiesdealt withindividual learning, pious practices, prayer and ritual,social elfareand the mediationof local disputes.In both the

Ottomanand Safavidempires state control overtheeligiouselites was an extreme variation n the spectrumofrelationsetweenstateandreligiouselitesfoundin Muslimsociet-ies.n the Mughalempire, for example, the state made its own

1lR. Savory, ran underthe Safavids (Cambridge,980);A. K. S. Lambton,"Quisustodietustodes?SomeReflections n the PersianTheoryof Government",tudiaslamica,(1956), pp. 125-48,vi (1956),pp. 125-46; .Aubin,"Lapolitiqueeligieuseesafavides",n Le shlisme imamite: Colloquede Strasbourg,6-9 mai 1968 (Paris,970),p.235-44; S. A. Arjomand,"Religion,PoliticalActionand LegitimateominationnShi'iteIran:Fourteentho EighteenthCenturies .D.", European3tlociology,x (1979),pp.59-109;S. A. Arjomand, ReligiousExtremismghuluww),ufismndSunnismn Safavidran,1501-1722", 1Asian Hist., xv (1981),pp. 1-35;.lgar,"Shi'ismandIran n the EighteenthCentury",n T. NaffandR. Oweneds.),tudiesin EighteenthCenturyIslamicHistory (Carbondale,977),pp.288-302;.A.Arjomand,The Shadowof God and the Hidden Imam: Religion,Political Orderndocietal Change n Shi'ite Iran (Chicago, 984).



STATEAND RELIGIONN ISLAMIC OCIETIES 19

claimsto religiousauthority.UnderAkbara courtcult wasestab-

lishedcentredon the ruler,integratingMuslimand Hinduthemes

in a moreuniversalisticveneration.The court,however,did littleto bring outside sectarianreligiousactivity under state control.

While it endowed madrasasand gave direct patronageto some'ulama'groups, most religious activity remainedautonomous.

Reforming movements, Sufi brotherhoodsand Muslim shrines

remainedindependent.In India, there was no single dominant

version of Islam and no all-embracingreligious establishment,

but rathernumerous ndependentandcompetingreligiousbodies.

This differentiationof state and religiousinstitutionswas not,however, entirelyclear-cut.First, the separationhas never been

recognized n ordinaryMuslimdiscourseaboutstateand religion,

andit has onlyoccasionally eceivedformalrecognition n Muslim

politicaltheory.It didwin an indirecttacitacceptance.Beginning

in the eleventh century, Muslim theoristssuch as al-Baqillanl,

al-Mawardland Ibn Taymlyaattemptedto devise a new theory

of the caliphate o preservethe historicaland religiouscontinuity

of the Muslimcommunityand to symbolizethe ideal existence

of the ummawhileat the same timeallowing orhistoricalactualit-ies. The upshot of their theorizingwas that the state was not a

direct expressionof Islam, but a secularinstitutionwhose duty

it was to uphold Islam;the real communityof Muslimswas the

communityof scholarsand holy men who carriedon the legacy

of the Prophetin daily life.l2Secondly,Muslimempireshavecultivateda religiousauraapart

fromIslam.While theiractivitieswere basedon siyasa,the exer-

cise of powerjustified n its own terms,a form of raisond'etatorpolitical rationality, Muslim rulers borrowed the pre-IslamicPersian monarchicalvision of the ruler as a divinely selected

person,God'svice-regenton earthfor the maintenanceof orderand the shepherdingand protectionof the commonpeople. ThePerso-Islamicpolitical traditionalso saw the ruler as an ideal

humanbeing, the equivalentof the Hellenisticphilosopher-king,

12 E. I. J. Rosenthal, olitical Thoughtn Medieval Islam(Cambridge,958);W. M.

Watt, Islamic Political Thought(Edinburgh, 968).On juristicpolitical heory,seeA. K. S. Lambton, tate and Governmentn Medieval Islam(Oxford,1981);Y. Ibish,The PoliticalDoctrineof al-Baqillani (Beirut,1966);al-Mawardl, es statutsgouverne-

mentauxou reglesdu droit publicet administratif, rans.E. Fagnan Algiers,1915); bnTaymlya, bn Taimiyyaon Publicand Private Law in Islam: or, PublicPolicy in Islamic

3rurisprudence,rans.O. A. FarrukhBeirut,1966);H. Laoust,Essai sur les doctrines

socialeset politiquesde Takl-d-DlnAhmadb. Taimzya, anonistehanbalite Cairo,1939).



20 NUMBER15lAST AND PRESENT

who not only ruled and enforced law and order, but whoseexample led lesser humansto justice and salvation.The ruler,apart from Islam,

was a sacred figure; the state, a divinelyappointed nstitution.Finally, there was an ambiguity n the conceptof secularand

sacred. The ordinaryfunctions of Muslim communitylife andthe daily activities of scholarsand holy men involve activitieswhichcomeunderthe purviewof Islamic aw andIslamicmoral-ity, but constitutefrom our point of view the realmof secularaffairs.Business, administrationof trusts, property issues andinheritances reonly a few examples.The domainof the

Muslimreligious community which embodies the Islamic ideal is, byvirtueof Islamitself, the realmof the mundane.

VITHE UNITARY IDEAL

Whilethe institutionalseparationof state and religion was thenormor MiddleEastern andotherIslamic)societies,the altern-

ative oncept,derivedfrom the experienceof the Prophet,of anidentityof politicaland religiousauthorityand of state and reli-gious ommunity,remained mportant n tribalsocieties,inspiredresistanceo stateauthority,andsometimes ed to the overthrowofestablishedregimesand the formationof new tribalempires.Inmany ruralareas, the local religiousteacherswere popularlyveneratedufiswho did not acceptthe stateorderand led tribalresistanceo both the dominantregimesand the urbanformsofcommunal

rganization.They developedtheirownset of religiousideas, lendingIslamicpreceptswith local non-Muslimpopularreligiousraditions,to maintainthe separatenessand independ-ence f their peoples from the city-based,state-ruleddominantsociety. hey sometimesorganized heirpeoplesfor warandforconquest.hese tribalempires,however,would alsogo throughtheame evolutionary rajectoryas the earlyArabcaliphateandeventuallyonformto the moregeneralhistoricalMiddleEasternmodesf differentiationof stateand religiousorganization.North Africa was the most fertile region for unitary move-ments.here,theArabconquestshadgenerated mall-scale tate-formationmongBerberpeoplesin southernTunisiaandAlgeria.Nown Islamic vocabularyand Arab leaders allowed for thearticulationf common interests transcendingkinship, lineage




and tribal identities. The Rustamid dynasty came to power onthe basis of Kharijism; he Idrlsids and the Fatimids were Shii

dynasties; the Almoravidsand the Almohads adopted reformistIslam; in Morocco, the Sa'dian and Filall dynasties were basedupon the Sufi qualities of the leaders of the tribal-Islamicmove-ments. These societies were based upon the integral unity oftribe, religious associationand state.

The Fatimid case, however, illustratesan ambiguousoutcome.A unified religio-political movement evolved into a full-scaleMiddle Eastern empire with only partly differentiated tate and

religious institutions. The Fatimids were at first the leaders of aBerber reformist movement, but after the conquest of NorthAfrica and Egypt in 969, they became the rulers of a MiddleEasternempire built upon slave military orces and a bureaucraticadministration nherited from previous regimes. In this case,however, the separationof state and religious nstitutionswas notas clearly marked as in the case of the 'Abbasid Empire. TheFatimid caliphs always maintained hat they were the direct des-cendants of 'All and of the Prophet, and they maintained (in

principle) an overarching eligious authority.The religious insti-tutions of the regime the judiciary and the Dar al-<Ilm, oracademyof religious earning were court institutions.Fatimid-Shii affiliationremainedthe special religion of the political elite.The mass of the Egyptian population continued its Sunni affili-ations. In this case there seems to have been only a partialdiSer-entiation of religious and political institutionson the state level,and a deep gulf between the state elites and the commonpeople.13

The Filall dynasty, which still rules Morocco, illustratesanothervariation.The movement which brought this dynasty topower was originally a coalition of southern Moroccanpastoralpeoples under the leadership of Sufi reformers. Sufism hadbecome important n Moroccoas the organizingbasisof Moroccanresistance to Spanish and Portuguese occupation of the coastal

13 On North Africa, see J. M. Abun-Nasr,A Historyof the Maghrib, nd edn(Cambridge, 975);A. Laroui, TheHistory f the Maghrib:An Interpretativessay,trans.R. Manheim Princeton, 977);C. A. Julien,History f NorthAfrica:Tunisia,

Algeria,Morocco,rom heArabConquesto 1830,trans.J. Petrie(New York, 1970).On Fatimidconceptsof authority, ee J. M. Bloom, "The Mosqueof al-Hakim nCairo",Muqarnas, (1983),pp. 15-36;C. Williams,"The Cultof 'Alid Saints n theFatimidMonuments f Cairo.Part I: The Mosqueof al-Aqmar", bid., pp. 37-52;M. Canard, Le ceremonieatimite t le ceremonie yzantin",Byzantion, xi (1951),pp. 355-420;M. Canard, La procession u nouvelan chez les Fatimides",Annalesde l'Institut 'etudes rientales, (1952), pp. 364-98.




towns. The Sufi-led tribalmovementbroughtto power sultanswho combine in themselves the personalreligiousauthorityofSufi

mastersandtheirreputation or barakatheabilityto channelGod'spowersandblessings nto the world),who leadthe countryin festival celebrationssuch as the birthdayof the ProphetandRamadan,and who enjoy the executive authorityof caliphs inpoliticaladministration.The Moroccanruler is at once head ofstate and headof religion.l4

In the eighteenthand nineteenthcenturies,reformedSufismbecame the basis of a new wave of unificationmovements. InMecca, Medina, Cairo and other centres of Muslim study,

areligiousreactionagainstthe tendenciesof state-sponsored,syn-cretic non-Islamicculture, againstShiism, and againstpopularSufi practicessuch as the venerationof saints, led to a reviveddemandto restorethe true Islam.This Islamwas understoodtobe transmitted n the sayingsof the Prophet,and in a reformedSufipracticewhich eliminated hose aspectsof Sufism nfluencedbyShiibeliefsor by the culturalpracticesof non-Muslimpopula-tions.The revivedformof Islamalsotookas its idealthe integra-tion

of religiousand politicalauthorityin a single individualinimitation f theProphet.This idealspread irst n religiouscircles,but it soon made a worldwide impact. Students coming fromdiversepartsof the Muslimworldto MeccaandMedinareturnedhome o bringthereformed eaching o theirownsocieties.Thesereformerswere particularlyeffective in organizing religiousmovementsn tribalsocieties:the Wahhablmovementin Arabia,theBarelwlmovementin northernIndia, the SanuslmovementinLibya and the Fulani movement under the

leadership of'UthmanDan Fodio in WestAfricaareall examplesof reformistmovementsn lineageor tribalsocietiesleadingto the formationofstates dedicatedto the integrationof political and religiousauthority.

14 H. Terasse,Histoiredu Maroc,2 vols. (Casablanca,950);A. Hammoudi,"Saintete,ouvoir t societe:Tamgrout uxXVIIe t XVIIIeiecles",Annales .S.C.,xxxv1980),pp.615-41;G. Drague,Esquisse'histoireeligieuseuMaroc: onfre'riesetaouias Paris,1951);P. J. Andre,Contributionl'ettudeesconfre'rieseligieusesmusulmanesAlgiers,1956);J. M. Abun-Nasr,TheTijanSyya: Sufi Ordern the

Modern orld(London, 1965); R. G. Jenkins, "The Evolutionof ReligiousBrotherhoodsn North and NorthwestAfrica,1523-1900", n J. R. Willis (ed.),Studiesn WestAfricanslamicHistory, (London,1979),pp.40-77;C. Geertz, slamObservedNewHaven,1968);V. J. Cornell,"TheLogicof Analogy ndtheRoleoftheufiShaykh n Post-MarinidMorocco",Internat. f1MiddleEast Studies,xv(1983),p.67-93;E. Gellner,SaintsoftheAtlas Chicago, 969);E. Gellner,MuslimSocietyCambridge, 981).



STATEAND RELIGIONN ISLAMIC OCIETIES 23

Reformismalso led to movementsof unificationand revivalin

peasant societiesundergoingcommercialization.They were par-

ticularly importantin Bengal in the early nineteenth century,where the Fara'i.dlorganizedpeasantproducersof cotton and

indigo in opposition to Hindu and British tax-collectors. In

Sumatra he Padrimovementtook hold amongproducers,trans-portersandmarketersof coffeeat the beginningof the nineteenth

century. Reformismdevelopedalso among SingaporeArab andMalaymerchants.At the end of the nineteenthcentury,reformist

valuesspreadamongtheplantationownersand workersof Malaya

and Sumatrawho produced rubber, coSee, tobacco, pepper,sugar,palm-oiland other productsfor the internationalmarket.

All these cases are examplesof the spread of the unifiedidea ofIslamicstate and community.l5

15 For an overviewof the reformistmovements, ee J. O. Voll, Islam: Continuity

and Change n the Modern World(Boulder,1982);N. LevtzionandJ. O. Voll (eds.),EighteenthCenturyRenezual nd Reform n Islam (Syracuse,N.Y., 1987).

On Reformismn India,see Y. Friedman, haykh Ahmad Sirhindz:An Outlineof

his Thoughtand a Study of his Image in the Eyes of Posterity(Montreal,1971), ShahWaliullah,Sufism and the Islamic Tradition: The Lamahat and Satavat of Shah

Waliullah,trans.G. N. Jalbani, d. D. B. Fry(London,1980);S. A. A. Rizvl, Shah

Wall-Alla-h nd his Times:A Study of EighteenthCenturyIsla-m,Politics and Society in

India (Canberra,980).On thenineteenth-centuryeformmovementsn Bengal, eeM. A. Khan,History of the Fara>idiMovement n Bengal, 1818-1906 (Karachi, 965);R. Ahmad,The Bengal Muslims, 1871-1906: A Questfor Identity (Delhi, 1981),S.Ahmad,The Muslim Community f Bengal, 1884-1912 (Dacca,1974).Onthe collegeof Deoband, ee B. D. Metcalf, slamicRevival in British India: Deoband,1860-1900

(Princeton,1982). Seealso F. Robinson,"The 'ulama-'of FaranglMahalland theiradab", in B. D. Metcalf(ed.), Moral Conductand Authority: The Place of adab in

SouthAsian Islam(Berkeley,

1984),pp. 152-83.On Indonesia,eeC. Geertz,The Religionofffa7JaGlencoe, ll., 1960);C. Dobbin,

Islamic Revivalism in a Changing Peasant Economy: Central Sumatra, 1784-1847

(London,1983);D. Noer, The ModernistMuslimMovement n Indonesia,1900-1942

(Singapore, 973);J. L. Peacock,Purifyingthe Faith: The MuhammadiyaMovement

in IndonesianIslam (MenloPark, 1978);J. L. Peacock,Muslim Puritans: Reformist

Psychologyin SoutheastAsian Islam (Berkeley,1978);H. M. Federspiel,Persatuan

Islam: IslamicReform n TwentiethCenturyIndonesia Ithaca,1970).On WestAfrica, ee Abun-Nasr,Tijaniyya;B. G. Martin,MuslimBrotherhoodsn

Nineteenth-CenturyAfrica (Cambridge,976);C. C. Stewart, slam and Social Order

in Mauritania (Oxford,1973);H. T. Norris,The Tuaregs: TheirIslamicLegacy and

its Diffusion n the Sahel (Warminster,975);J. R. Willis,"iha-d F sabzlAlla-h:ItsDoctrinalBasis n Islam andsome Aspectsof its Evolutionn NineteenthCenturyWestAfrica", il AfricanHist., viii (1967),pp. 395-415;M. Hiskett,"TheNineteenth-CenturyJihads n West Africa", n The CambridgeHistory of Africa, v, J. E. Flint(ed.), From c.1790 to c.1870 (Cambridge, 976),pp. 125-69;M. Last, The Sokoto

Caliphate(New York,1967);H. A. S. Johnston,The FulaniEmpireof Sokoto(London,1967);M. Hiskett,The Swordof Truth: The Life and Timesof the Shehu UsumanDan

Fodio (New York, 1973).




VIICONCLUSION: HE TWO MODELSAND THE CONTEMPORARY

SITUATION

Thus the history of the Middle East and of the wider Muslimworld reveals a variety of institutionalsituations. The supposedMuslim norm of the integrationof state and religious authority,and the identificationof state and religious community, actuallycharacterized only a small segment of Middle Eastern andother Muslim populations.Undifferentiated tate-religious itua-tions were characteristicof lineage or tribal societies, as inMuhammad'sArabia, North Africa and Morocco, early SafavidIran, and as in the reformist period of the eighteenth and nine-teenth centuries. Even in such cases the conquest of an agricul-ture-based, urbanized society would start a process ofdifferentiation hat broke down the integral connection of stateand religion.

Conversely,the historic norm for Middle Easternagro-urban-imperialsocieties has been the institutionaldifferentiation f state

and religion. Royal householdsor courts, political elites and thelanguage and cultural style of the ruling classes were differentfrom those of religious elites. In the 'Abbasid, Saljuq, Ottomanand Safavidempires the centralfact is the differentiation f stateand religious institutions, and the central problem has been todefine the relationsof the two. These relationsvary acrossa widespectrum from a high degree of state control over a centrallymanaged religious establishment, to a more independent but

co-operativerelationship as in the Saljuqcase), to full autonomyand even open opposition to state policies.

Even in cases where Muslims, at least in principle, maintainedtheir aspiration or an ideal society in which state and communitywere integrated, hey were not necessarilycommittedto bringingit about in practice. In return for state support, the 'ulama)

legitimized the reigning governments and taught the commonpeople the virtues of acceptance and submission. Despite the

common statement (and the Muslim ideal) that the institutionsof state and religion are unified, and that Islam is a total way oflife which defines political as well as social and family matters,most Muslim societies did not conform to this ideal, but werebuilt around separate nstitutionsof state and religion.

Thus we have two principalIslamic theories of the nature of




an ideal Muslim political society. One looks to a unified state andsociety under the leadershipof a caliph whose authorityextends

to all realms of personal and public concern. The second tacitlyrecognizes the institutional division between the structures ofstate and religion and looks to the religious sphere for personaland communal ulfilment.

Each of these concepts of the Muslim political order theunified and the separated state and community has had aprofound effect on the current history of Islamic societies. ThecontemporaryIslamic revival (so-called fundamentalist)move-

ments are inspiredby the vision of a propheticcommunity.Theyattempt to return to the principles of Islamic morality and to arenewal of personal commitment to the symbolic foundationsofIslam. They commonly aim to control the state and to use thepower of the state to enforce Islam. While religious reformismonce served to integrate families, clans, lineages and clientelegroups into unified political bodies, or had a powerful appeal insocieties in transition rom peasantto commercialized gricultureor from small-scale o larger-scale radingcommunities,especially

in South and South-EastAsia, today the ideal is taken up in thevery different environment of the urban petty bourgeoisie, thedepressed victims of the old-fashioned bazaar economy, pettytraders,craftspeopleand mobile and sometimesderacine tudents.

However, despite the appeal to the unity of state, religion andcivil society, there is a considerableuncertaintyabout the idealgoals of the revival movements. The union of state and societyenvisioned in the neo-Islamic rhetoric is not an institutional

arrangementor a commitment to any particular type of stateinstitution,be it monarchical, epresentative,democratic,capital-ist or socialist. The revivalist movements are not interested inconstitutions;they are concerned rather with individual moralsand ethical behaviour.To them the state is simply the force thatrequires the mass of the people to adhere to Islamic laws. Theideal state has no institutional orm; it is embodied n the leader-ship of individuals dedicated to Islam who mobilize other

individuals o realize religious values.Thus the revival movementshave ambiguouspolitical mplica-tions. While some revivalistsbelieve that the control of the stateis essential to the success of an Islamic social and moral pro-gramme, in practice it is not always clear that the revival move-ments give priority to political objectives. Many look upon states



26 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER151

as inherently corrupt and incapableof realizing Muslim values.The state is not expected to embody transcendent alues. Because

they do not see the state as a realm of moral fulfilment, they donot expect that it will serve their aspirations or empowermentand economic well-being either. As in the case of their historicalpredecessors, there is an ambiguity in their attitude towardspolitical power which leaves the way open for a renewedseparationof political and religio-communal oncerns.l6

The historicalactualityof the division of Muslim societies intoa realm of political authority and a realm of religio-communal

affairs has other contemporary reverberations. The long-establisheddifferentiationof state and religious communitieshaslegitimized political power apart from Islam. The Ottomanempire n particular chieveda de acto legitimacyas a conqueringstate and defender of Muslims, apart from religious validation.Ottoman and Iranian)rulerswere conceived, too, as vice-regentsof God direct agents of God's authorityon earth. Beyond thetheory of Islamic states lay the reality of legitimate non-Islamicmonarchies.Religious communitiesembody a corresponding ra-dition of political passivity, and a tendency to accept politicalactualitiesand state power based upon conquest and preservedby force as an inevitable reality. In this tradition the realm ofIslamic authenticity ies within the soul of the individual,and inthe behaviourof individuals n small communities.

This historicalorientationprovidesa template or the construc-tion of modern Middle Eastern states around secular culturalidentities and development goals defined in either capitalist or

socialist terms. In such states as Turkey, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria,Iraq and Jordan, Islam has been disestablishedor the Islamicreligious establishment brought under state control. Islam nolonger legitimates the state and no longer defines its moral orsocial vision. All of these states have set up secular educationaland judicial systems which actually compete with, and evenreplace, the primary unctions of Islam. Where Muslim religiouslife has in general become separated from state institutions, it

flourishes in a differentiated"civil society". The fact that themass of the population has Muslim loyalties means that statesgive special consideration o Muslim symbols and Muslim prac-tices. In recent years, with the rising importanceof mass Islamic

16 For a recent eviewof contemporaryevivalistmovements, ee C. E. Butterworthand I. W. Zartmaneds.), Political slam NewburyPark,Calif., 1992).




identifications nd strong Islamistpoliticalmovements, state eliteshave deferred to popular pressure for official recognition of the

primacy of Islam and have relaxed, or even reversed, the earlierdemand for secularism;still, this has not led to the dismantlingof secular legal or educational nstitutions.l7

In so far as the historic legacy remains an importantfactor inthe contemporaryMuslim world, its diversity is the basis of acorrespondingdiversity in the relations of states and religiouscommunities. Today, as has been true since ancient times, westill find both integralist religio-political movements, states

defined in Islamic terms, a defacto institutionaldifferentiationofstate and religion, and a great variety of relationshipsbetweenthe two. Are the Islamiccases really differentfrom the Christian,or the Middle Eastern cases from the European?Or is it time toabandonthe cliches concerningthe unity of Islam in favour of amore complex and realistic appreciationof the issues?

Universityof California,Berkeley Ira M. Lapidus

l7I. M. Lapidus,"Islamand Modernity", n S. N. Eisenstadt ed.), Patterns ofModermty, 2 vols. (London,1987), i, pp. 89-115.

Documents

State and Religion in Islamic Societies