Religion and the State

The relationship between religion and the state in the lands that came under Islamic control during the spread of the Muslim faith charted a somewhat different, although not entirely unfamiliar, path. Following the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632, his successors (caliphs) took up the mantle both of the pure word of God contained in the Koran and of the creation of a common Arab civilization. Although the actual power of the caliphs declined during the eighth and ninth centuries, the ideal of a single imperial office maintaining the unity of religion and civilization remained strong throughout the Middle Ages.

The caliphate was not precisely a religious office in the sense of having a priestly status; although the caliph was understood to be a "shadow of Allah on earth," his ordained function was primarily a military one: he was to protect the faithful and spread the words recorded by the Prophet by means of conquest and conversion. Moreover, once shari'a (Islamic law) was compiled in the ninth and tenth centuries, the caliph and other Muslim rulers were deemed to be subject to it, just like any other member of the faithful community (umma). Strictly speaking, neither the Koran nor shari'a dictated or legitimated any political system whatsoever. If every Muslim were to follow the teachings of the Koran and the dictates of religious law, then no political authority would be necessary. Indeed, some medieval Islamic authors promoted a doctrine that modern scholars have labeled anarchism.

Muslim government was also relatively mild in its treatment of those who subscribed to the other Abrahamic religions. In the Muslim-dominated Iberian Peninsula and in parts of the Middle East where Christian and Jewish communities existed, the caliphs and their successors extended the status of protected persons to believers. Protection came at a cost: special taxes were due to Muslim rulers, and adherents to other confessions did not enjoy equal legal rights. But recognition that Jews and Christians prayed to the same God as Muslims, even if their doctrines were misguided, yielded a climate of relative tolerance. This was to remain the case through the long period of the Ottoman Empire.