God's Rule: Government and Islam

Abstract

von Sivers reviews God's Rule: Government and Islam by Patricia Crone.

God's Rule: Government and Islam, by Patricia Crone. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. x + 400 pages. Charts to p. 413. Bibl. to p. 446. Index and gloss, to p. 462. $39.50.

For many Muslim believers, it is an article of faith that religion and politics are fused. Patricia Crone accepts this doctrine and begins her new book by firmly grounding Islam in a Middle Eastern tradition of religious and political unity. The two examples she uses as evidence are the Sumerian city-states with their priest-rulers and "the federation of Israelites that Moses took out of Egypt for the conquest of Palestine" (p. 15). These examples are perhaps not the best choices since archaeologists have discovered military strongmen as well as priests among the earliest rulers in Sumeria. They also tell us of early popular assemblies (pukhrum), indicating that Iraq (!) and not Greece was the place displaying the earliest traces of participatory politics.1 As for the Israelites, many archaeologists are skeptical of the historicity of the Exodus and are inclined to regard the ancient Israelites as villagers of long standing in the Palestinian hills.2 In the case of Islamic origins as well, the scholarship of the past quarter century - in which Dr. Crone occupies a prominent position has cast doubts on the historicity of early 7lh-century events in Arabia as told by the 9lh-century religious scholars. While Islamic theology and law may posit a unity of religion and politics, historical research demonstrates their distinctiveness - more often in tension than in harmony.

Apart from the initial fusion argument, the book is a masterpiece on the history of the tension existing between religion and politics during the formative period of Islamic civilization (7'h to 13th centuries C.E.). It begins with a discussion of the Umayyad caliphs, governors, and judges who ruled the expanding Islamic Empire in the early 70Os by religious as well as political decree. From the start, however, these rulers had to deal with critics, such as the Kharijis, Jama'i Muslims, and Shi'is, who advocated rival models of religio-political organization under either weaker or stronger caliphs. Crone coins the felicitous term jama'i (p. 28) to describe those early "communitarian" (later Sunni) Muslims who were critical of Umayyad religious functions but did not seek to overturn Umayyad rule. While admittedly the Kharijis and Shi'is espoused religio-political fusion, the very fact of their active hostility shows the unavoidable tensions between religion and politics in the historical process.

Crone convincingly argues that Shi'ism in the mid-700s was still more generally Hashimite (family of the Prophet) than 'Alid (family of the Prophet's cousin 'AH) in orientation. Consequently, the 'Abbasid revolution of 750 appears as a victory for the Shi'i model of a strong caliphate, especially in religious matters. Not surprisingly, Jama'i Muslim criticism of the caliphate continued. A sub-group, the partisans of hadith, systematically transferred past caliphal decisions or their own legal opinions into the mouth of the Prophet. By insisting on Muhammad as the original and sole lawgiver they threw down the gauntlet to the caliphs as the legitimate religio-political legislators of the empire. After a protracted struggle the 'Abbasids eventually (in 1017) relinquished their authority over the, by now, largely fixed Prophetic law to their religious critics.

During the two centuries the Jama'i Muslims spent establishing what was to become Sunni Islam (c. 800-1000 C.E.), Persian Mirrors-of-Princes and Greek philosophy were exerting their appeal among educated Muslims. Crone's account of the thinkers who reformulated the Persian and Greek heritage for an Islamic public is most instructive to read: it is unconventional, fresh, and written from a broad comparative perspective. A comprehensive concluding part of the book (Pt. IV) is devoted to government-society relations. This part addresses such topics as the nature and forms of government; governmental functions and services; freedom as life lived in accordance with God's law; as well as property, women, slaves, non-Muslims, and holy war. With her customary deft and engaging language and richly instructive detail, Crone guides the reader through these complex issues, which provoked considerable controversy during the classical period.

In her Epilogue, Crone returns to the question of religion versus politics. She reaffirms her assumption of a historical Medina in which the two were unified, but acknowledges that from the early Umayyads to the late 'Abbasids religion and politics were either in latent opposition or institutionally separate. By c. 1250, a multiplicity of sultanates and emirates were engaged in open competition with each other, while a multiplicity of religious brotherhoods competed for the hearts of the believers. God's Rule is a timely, subtle, and magisterial study of Islamic political traditions and thought which is highly recommended to all serious scholars willing to learn more about the religio-political sophistication, complexity, and depth of classical Islamic civilization.

Footnote

1. Marc van de Mierop, The Ancient Mesopotamian City (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1997), pp. 118-41.

2. Israel Finkelstein, Living on the Fringe: The Archaeology and History of the Negev, Sinai and Neighbouring Regions in the Bronze and Iron Ages, Monographs in Mediterranean Archaeology, 6 (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995).