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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...