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Early Christianity saw church and state as separate. Early Islam conceived a single 'umma under a single caliphate. It prescribed an all-embracing Shari'a. But after Constantine Christianity brought church and state together. In the Byzantine East, the emperor was assigned a divine mission. The Western church insisted on the clergy's independence. Some in the West tried to subordinate state to church, or vice versa; but the main trend was towards separation, and political thought became more secular. In Islam, the 'ulama became separate from the sultan but the relationship was not defined. Orthodox Jurists sought reintegration of religion and government. Separation between religion and politics in principle found little support. Christians, who had started as pacifists, adopted holy war and religious persecution; Muslims favoured limited toleration. There was thus both convergence and divergence between the two cultures: church and state.

This chapter discusses the origin and development of the term ‘ulama.’ The Arabic term ‘ulamā’ refers to Muslim scholars specializing in the Islamic religious sciences. A number of other terms are often used to characterize the particular focus of a scholar's work, among them muṭaddith (concerned with the study of the hadith reports attributed to the Prophet Muhammad), mufassir (an exegete of the Qur'an), and faqīh and mufti (a scholar of Islamic law and a jurisconsult, respectively). The term “‘ulama’” is often understood to encompass these somewhat narrower categories. The boundaries between “religious” and “secular” learning were less clearly delineated in premodern Islam than they have been in the modern world. Those recognized as ‘ulama’ sometimes made significant contributions to fields of knowledge lying well beyond the aforementioned areas.

This chapter examines the leadership of the Ibāḍī community during the state of secrecy (kitmān). It shows how ‘ilm became an essential trait of the imāmate through the early circles of quietist Khārijite scholars (such as Jābir b. Zayd, the eponymous ‘Abdullāh b. Ibāḍ and Abū ‘Ubayda Muslim b. Abī Karīma) who coalesced into the Ibāḍiyya. In particular, it demonstrates how an Imām who is not knowledgeable may still be an Imām with the help of the ‘ulamā’, and, alternatively, how the ‘ulamā’ may at times retain control of the community when the imāmate cannot be established.

This chapter examines the role of the Ibāḍī community—meaning primarily the scholars as representatives of the umma—as caretakers of the imāmate. A dynamic existed between Imām and ‘ulamā’, whereby the ‘ulamā’ selected, monitored, and if need be deposed the Imām. Additionally, they sometimes imposed conditions on “defensive” (difā‘ī) or “weak” (ḍa‘īf) Imāms. This balance of responsibilities nevertheless maintained the necessity of the imāmate, even if (as in the case of North African Ibāḍism) the imāmate was suspended and control of the community ceded completely to the scholars. Such a balance is shown to be the heritage, in part, from the pre-Islamic and early Islamic periods.

Popular preachers, known by various terms including qāṣṣ (storyteller) and wā`iẓ (admonisher), played an important role in medieval Islamic society as conveyors of religious knowledge to the common people. Their prominence, and what their critics viewed as their unreliability and corruption, provoked an effort by the `ulamā’ (religious scholars) to restrict their activities. The scholars’ campaign against the popular preachers was part of their larger struggle against what they viewed as illicit innovation (bid`a). The popular preachers, however, had their defenders, including some prominent Sufis. The preachers were able to take advantage of the persistent informality of religious authority in medieval Islam, and so remained influential figures in shaping Islam as it was experienced by the general Muslim populace.

This chapter introduces some of the key figures in the emerging networks of reformist ʿulamāʾ (the Muslim scholarly class). In particular, the chapter discusses Maḥmūd Shukrī al-Ālūsī in Baghdad and Jamāl al-Dīn al-Qāsimī in Damascus. It describes their efforts and motivations in discovering, circulating, and printing classical books. The chapter focuses on the search for and publication of writings specifically on religious thought and practice by these reformists. The reformist ʿulamāʾ were a small but active and intellectually high-powered group who diverged from the scholarly mainstream of their day by attacking esoteric Sufi beliefs and practices as superstitious, irrational, and contrary to Islamic ideals and by criticizing the Islamic legal status quo, which they saw as a fossilized doctrine unresponsive to the actual challenges Muslims were facing.

When Suharto began losing support in the military, he tried to shore up popularity by making the Indonesian hajj the largest in the world and dragging his whole family to Mecca to deflect outrage over their business scandals. His gesture put the pilgrimage in play as a legitimate subject for political debate and manipulation. After Suharto’s downfall, the hajj quickly became one of the most attractive battlegrounds for Muslim politicians competing for votes in Indonesia’s new democracy. All the major Muslim leaders have made the hajj–some of them several times–and all have written about their experiences in ways that are calculated to market their political personas. Indonesia’s current debates over the hajj and its meanings are a microcosm of power struggles in the world’s largest Islamic movements, particularly the Muhammadiyah and the Nahdlatul Ulama.

Chapter 3 shows that the gradual and at times hesitant conceptualization of Salafism mirrored the dilemmas that reformers faced between the 1930s and 1950s. It thus traces the rise of purist Salafism in conjunction with the rise of Islamic nationalism.

This book's proposal is anchored in the Islamic tradition and amplified from within it: in this sense it is both deeply classical and radically new. It begins with the Qur'an and the Sunna and the methodologies set down by the ulama throughout the history of the Islamic sciences. The book concentrates on the practical application of these reflections in Western society. Questions as essential as the spiritual life, or education in industrialized, more or less postmodern, more or less secularized societies, are studied with an attempt, whenever possible, to approach the subject from three perspectives: the principles to respect, the reality of the situation, and the reforms that seem necessary to face the challenges of life in Europe or in North America.

Morteza Motahari, assassinated in May 1979, was one of the most important ideologues of the Islamic revolution. A vociferous writer, he ardently attacked Iranian secular intellectuals and the materialism he felt he was corrupting Iranian society. While Khomeini lived in exile, Motahari acted as his representative in Iran while maintaining his own independent status as a revolutionary. This chapter presents Motahari's treatise, where he clearly places the blame for the marja 'ya's lack of leadership and influence in society, not on the clerics themselves, but on various facets of its organization. Of particular concern to Motahari is the manner in which the ulama are funded. While expressing approval that the mujtahids are not financially supported by the government, which frees them from state control, he bemoans the fact that the ulama are forced to cater to public opinion in order to collect the khums. As a result, the productivity of the ulama is hampered by the “intellectual limitations of the populace”.

Ayatollah Khomeini's objective was to eliminate any restrictions to the ulama's power, so that their authority would be equal to that of the Prophet and the Hidden Imam. This chapter examines the proofs that Khomeini advanced to substantiate his claims of the infallibility and total authority of the religious jurist. Other leading jurists, such as the late Ayatollah Abu'l Qasim Khu'i, did not share Khomeini's views on this subject. These jurists counter that Khomeini has based his arguments on traditions with weak chains of transmission and that he differs markedly from his predecessors in interpreting these traditions.

This chapter focuses on the debates of 17th-century Safavid Iran as the state which, in an effort to establish its own power, promoted the expanded authority of the clergy. The theological issue is the legality of the Friday prayer service during the occulation of the Twelfth Imam. The state desired that this service, with its customary reference to the ruler, take place so as to give him religious legitimacy in the eyes of the people. As economic crises faced the regime, the issue gained urgency. Threatened with popular discontent and political upheaval, the state increasingly needed clerical support. Likewise, the idea of the faqih as surrogate for the Imam and supporter of a government that was considered to be corrupt was increasingly challenged. Discontent led to a revival of Sufism and to antagonistic competition between the ulama and the Sufis. The Friday prayer service and its implications also triggered disputes between Akhbari and Usuli clergy. The chapter shows how this conflict during the Safavid period led to further debates over clerical rule and the rise of the marjaʿiya.

This chapter focuses on the role of the religious class, in particular of its leading proponents, the ulama, in the economy of 19th-century Persia. It begins by describing the context in which the religious class functioned as well as the estimated size of this class. In the first section, those groups that made up the religious class are identified and discussed. In the second section, the alleged financial independence of the religious class and, in the third section, their main sources of income are reviewed. In the last section, the economic role of the religious class is assessed and some conclusions are drawn.

This chapter shows how the Acehnese ulama (religious scholars) have used political power to implement shariʻa and define and shape the life of Muslim Acehnese in compliance with Islamic shariʻa. In the first years after the independence of Indonesia in 1945, it became clear that the ulama controlled the local government in Aceh. The ulama have played a major role in mobilizing the expression of Islamic identity to pursue special concessions from the central government of Indonesia, that is, to formalize the implementation of sharia in Aceh. In so doing, the Acehnese ulama have sought to re-emphasize their significant role in influencing society and in asserting the discrete identity of the Muslim Acehnese.

This chapter problematises common assumptions about East/West and Islam/West divisions relating to religion, society and the state. It examines the concrete positions and functions of religion and religious institutions in public life in the historical practices and political thinking of Byzantine, medieval and early modern European, Abbasid and Ottoman societies. It devotes a special study to the historical realities of Muslim jurisprudence. This chapter proposes to treat secularism as a complex and objective political, social and cultural dynamic allied to global processes of modernisation, rather than a checklist of stable features which can be judged exist or to be absent in any given society. It proposes that the common idea that some societies are by nature receptive to secularism while others are not, is irrelevant to the issues that arise in concrete studies of secularism, and that secularism is never complete or unalloyed.

Sayyid Ahmad argued that the tension between Islamic faith and modern values was a historical accident rather than an inherent feature of Islam. The decline of the Mughal Empire encouraged Islamic intellectual culture in numerous local centres. The Ulama tried to strengthen the bonds of unity among the believers and consolidate their loyalty to an Islamic state. This chapter explores the links between India's local elite and the colonial state that made the administration work and sections of Muslim society respond to political institutions and administrative changes. These issues are central to the contemporary debates about what constitutes the ‘Muslim response’ to the onset of colonialism. In this context, the chapter analyses the diverse views about Britain's rule and their impact on Muslim intellectuals. It also looks at India's cultural and intellectual efflorescence and the expansion of intellectual horizons that gave rise to new ideas, concepts, and ways of thinking.

This chapter reveals the “mapping of state power” as the state implements its master plans, designs parks, buildings, and communities; enforces its regulations and implements court decisions; arrests people and collects fines; demolishes buildings; shutters workshops; bulldozes markets; and forcibly “removes” residents and their noisy, polluting, or “dirty” workshops and businesses from one area to another due to the “public interest” or disasters such as fires, earthquakes, or rock slides. It also argues that globalization, cyberspace, and the new media have allowed “peripheral 'Ulama” to become central to the Egyptian public sphere. Before looking at the expansion of the new religious networks, it is useful to explain how Nasser's reforms were justified and integrated into the intertwined and ambivalent mythical tales of tradition and modernity centrality and decline, that made al-Azhar a nationally emblematic institution through its physical presence in Islamic Cairo and in the functions it represents. It also describes the enlargement of al-Azhar's territories.