Islamic Political Thought: An Introduction

Gerhard Bowering

The Qur’an, the holy book of Islam, is the most recent of the major sacred scriptures to have appeared in human history. It includes the prophetic proclamations of Muhammad (570–632) in Arabic, collected after his death in definitive written form and meticulously transmitted through the centuries. More than a billion Muslims around the globe consider the Qur’an to be the eternal word of God, who “sent down” the scripture as his final divine revelation and commissioned Muhammad to be the last prophet to proclaim his divine will for all of humanity to follow.

Muslims believe that as the most perfect and ultimate form of divine revelation, the Qur’an represents the final stage in a process through which divine speech is translated as scripture. In essence there is only one timeless revelation reiterated by the prophets, God’s messengers throughout the ages, without any contribution of their own. From Adam, through Abraham, Moses, David, and Jesus, to Muhammad, the messengers are considered human beings as well as divinely chosen mouthpieces of revelation. God is the speaker of the Qur’an and Muhammad its recipient; the Qur’an itself is considered the verbatim word of God, revealed in clear Arabic to Muhammad.

Clearly understood, faithfully proclaimed, and accurately recited by Muhammad in historical time, the Qur’an, according to the normative Muslim view, was memorized with exact precision and also collected in book form by Muhammad’s followers after his death. Then it was recited and copied with painstaking care in continuous transmission from generation to generation. Today, as in the past, the Qur’an is copied and recited in Arabic; it is pronounced only in Arabic in Muslim ritual worship by Arabs and non-Arabs alike. It cannot be rendered adequately into any other tongue, and, in the Muslim view, all translations are crutches, at best helpful explanations of its original intention and at worst doubtful makeshifts, obscuring its true meaning. Inasmuch as Muslims believe that the Qur’an has been preserved unchanged over time in its pristine Arabic, they also believe that it is superior to all other scriptures solely because of the faulty form in which other scriptures have been transmitted and preserved by their respective communities.

The Qur’an exhibits a significant relationship to the biblical tradition and echoes themes found in the epigraphical writings of Judaism and Christianity. No single collection of normative, midrashic, or apocryphal biblical writings, however, has been identified as the major source on which the Qur’an might directly depend. There is no evidence that this tradition had been translated into Arabic by the time of Muhammad, either as a whole corpus or in the form of single books. It is the widely shared view among historians of religion that Muhammad’s knowledge of the biblical tradition came principally, if not exclusively, from oral sources. This oral lore, enriched by extrabiblical additions and commentary, was communicated to Muhammad in his mother tongue. However, it ultimately originated in traditions recorded mainly in Syriac, Ethiopian, and Hebrew, as evidenced by the vocabulary of foreign origin to be found in the Arabic Qur’an. Mainly, this foreign vocabulary had already been assimilated into the Arabic religious discourse of Muhammad’s native environment.

The Qur’an is the first book-length production of Arabic literature and as such stands at the crossroads of the pre-Islamic oral, highly narrative, and poetical traditions of the Arabic language and the written, increasingly scholarly prose tradition of the subsequently evolving civilization of Islam. The beginnings of this transition in the Arabic language from the oral to the written tradition can be tied to the time and person of Muhammad and are clearly reflected in the rhymed prose style of the Qur’an. This rhymed prose (saj‘), the mode of speech of the oracles uttered by the pre-Islamic soothsayer (kāhin), is a characteristic of the Qur’an, the first Arabic document of any length to exhibit this form of speech in written form. The roots of the Qur’an as the first Arabic book may also be detected in its content. In its verses, the Qur’an captures many topics that had formed an important part of the worship and cult of the nonscriptural tribal religion practiced in pre-Islamic Arabia. There is no doubt that the religious practice of Mecca exerted the most influence on the vision of Arab tribal religion that Muhammad acquired in his early life.

The Qur’an exerts a powerful spell on its listeners. It has a presence in everyday Muslim life, with its verses visible on the walls of mosques or inscribed in the hearts of men and women. For centuries, it has been copied in precious manuscripts and printed in definitive editions published all over the Islamic world. The Qur’an accompanies the Muslim believer from birth to death, and a copy of the book is kept in a special place in Muslim households. Words of the Qur’an are whispered into the ears of newborn children, daily prayers are taken from its verses, and particular words of its praise of God are exclaimed at set points in the daily routine of Muslims. All Muslims learn to recite essential passages of the Qur’an by heart from an early age and turn to them throughout their adult life. Some scholars commit its entire text to memory, and blind men often make it their profession to recite the Qur’an by heart at funerals and other special occasions.

Historical Origin and Development of the Qur’an

The most common translation of the Arabic word qur’ān is “recital,” connoting that Muhammad heard the words from God and recited them without specific reference to a written text. If understood as rooted in a Syriac loanword, qur’ān would mean “a reading,” such as a reading aloud of scripture in a liturgical context. In the actual text of the Qur’an, the word qur’ān refers to separate revelations made piecemeal to Muhammad or, more generally, to the revelation (tanzīl) that was sent down by God (specifically in the month of Ramadan). When it is understood to mean a book, the word kitāb (scripture) is used synonymously with “the Arabic Qur’an” that was revealed or, generally, as the manifest scripture that includes the wondrous “signs” (āya) sent down to manifest and expound God’s power. The Qur’an calls itself a dhikr (admonition) and ḥikma (wisdom) as well as a furqān (salvation, discrimination) and even sūra (“section,” i.e., a piece of revelation). Originally referring to component parts of the revelation, the terms sūra and āya eventually were chosen to denote “chapter” and “verse” of the Qur’an, respectively.

According to Qur’anic evidence, Muhammad understood his revelations as coming from a heavenly archetype, called “the mother of the scripture” (umm al-kitāb), that is described in the Qur’an as a well-guarded tablet, to be touched only by the pure angels—lofty leaves in the hands of noble scribes, unrolled sheets of parchment inscribed by the reed pen, a holy writ comprising all happenings in the universe. This heavenly scripture contains not only what is revealed through the Qur’an but also what previously has been revealed through the law (Tawrat) of Moses and gospel (Injil) of Jesus. Jews and Christians—“the people of the Scripture”—altered their own holy books, effecting serious discrepancies between their scriptures and the authentic Qur’an. Muhammad did not read this heavenly book but rather received words of revelation from it that no one may alter. They were brought down by the “spirit of holiness” (identified with the angel Gabriel) and induced trance-like moments of meditation or ecstatic states in which the shaken Muhammad had to be wrapped in a mantle. The words that he received were predominantly auditions rather than visions, some traces of visions in a few suras notwithstanding. The promptings came piecemeal and were couched in verses of rhymed prose. Some of these verses were clear and obvious, others obscure and ambiguous, but all of them were clearly distinct from Muhammad’s ordinary words.

It is widely assumed that Muhammad proclaimed the Qur’an in the dialect of the people of Mecca and that the language of the Qur’an and its style originated from one particular person, Muhammad, rather than from a group of disparate individuals. Because Muhammad would add new revelations to the earlier ones throughout his career, when he died, there was not yet a collection of revelations in final form. Muslim tradition records the names of Ubayy b. Ka‘b (d. between 640 and 656) and Zayd b. Thabit (d. between 662 and 675) as two followers who served Muhammad as scribes in Medina. In addition, Muhammad’s wives Hafsa and Umm Kulthum could write, while his wives Umm Salama and ‘A’isha could read but not write. Tradition also mentions that ‘Abdallah b. Abi Sarh, foster brother of the third caliph ‘Uthman b. ‘Affan, claimed to have served Muhammad as a scribe and induced him on occasion to change the wording.

The actual collection of the Qur’an in book form was principally the work of Zayd b. Thabit, who knew Syriac and arithmetic. He was an expert on the division of inheritances during the time of Muhammad. He collected ransoms and calculated taxes during the caliphate of Abu Bakr, prepared written orders for the distribution of supplies during the caliphate of ‘Umar b. al-Khattab, and oversaw the treasury during ‘Uthman’s caliphate. He was given the task of collecting the material that existed on various primitive writing materials and in the memoirs of men and wrote it down on “sheets” of uniform size (ṣuḥuf). Though there is some conflict in the traditions on this point, this collection seems to have been a process that may have begun during the caliphate of Abu Bakr and was furthered by the caliph ‘Umar, whose daughter Hafsa (d. 665), a widow of Muhammad, is portrayed as the guardian of the ṣuḥuf. This process of collection came to a head during the caliphate of ‘Uthman, who entrusted a commission, headed by Zayd b. Thabit, with the standard collection of the Qur’an in its rudimentary book form, considered the original copy of the Qur’an. It is known as the ‘Uthmanic codex (muṣḥaf) and was established about 15 to 20 years after the Prophet’s death.

Next to this standard codex established in Medina, tradition also attributes particular collections of the Qur’an to Companions of Muhammad that showed a somewhat different order of suras. Ubayy b. Ka‘b’s collection had two additional suras and ‘Abdallah b. Mas‘ud’s (d. 652) lacked the last two suras of the ‘Uthmanic codex. For a short time, these private collections enjoyed a measure of authority in the Syrian towns of Damascus and Homs and in the Iraqi towns of Kufa and Basra. They disappeared, however, after the ‘Uthmanic codex had imposed uniformity as the authoritative standard, a standard in which Zayd’s commission seems to have made the final order of the suras, many of which existed in a set order since the time of the Prophet while others show marks of having been put together in the final redaction. The order of the suras, 114 in number, was based on the principle of roughly decreasing length, which had the longest chapters in the beginning of the book and the shortest at its end. The short first sura, al-Fatiha (“the Opening”), numbering seven verses, was placed at the head of this authoritative standard, on which all Qur’ans are based.

Each of the individual chapters of the Qur’an is introduced by the formula, “In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate” (except for the ninth sura, which might originally have formed a unit with the preceding chapter). The formula is also found once in the body of the Qur’an, at the head of Solomon’s letter to the queen of Sheba. Immediately following this formula at the head of 29 suras, there are mysterious letters that are disconnected and convey no obvious meaning. Some of them occur only once and others are put together in patterns of two to five letters. Scholars have suggested a great variety of explanations about the meaning of these letters, but none of them has been accepted as probable, although they belong to the earliest stage of the Qur’anic redaction and cannot be explained as additions by later hands. The Qur’an does not refer to its suras by numbers; rather, each chapter has a particular name (or in some cases is known under a few different names). These names are clearly later additions to the Qur’an and were derived from catchwords that figure in the first few verses of a sura or are derived from a characteristic or odd word in the body of a sura. The division of the chapters into numbered verses, mainly based on rhyme, is likewise a later phenomenon that was not yet in use in the early centuries of the transmission of the Qur’an. The numbered verses, just like the numbers of the suras, have become standard, however, in the Qur’an copies in print today, although Muslims prefer to quote the suras by their names rather than their numbers.

The Analysis of the Qur’an in Scholarship

The ‘Uthmanic codex established by the commission headed by Zayd b. Thabit was written in a rudimentary form, a “scriptio defectiva” constituting merely a consonantal skeleton lacking diacritical marks that distinguish certain Arabic consonants from one another. Oral recitation was needed to ascertain the intended pronunciation of the text by the addition of short vowels for its vocalization. As the Qur’anic orthography developed incrementally over more than two centuries and as the linkage between the consonantal skeleton and the oral recitation became increasingly robust, the deficiencies of the Arabic script were gradually overcome. The variants of recitation, the vast majority being of a minor nature, were either reconciled or accommodated, and the written text became increasingly independent of its linkage to oral pronunciation. This process culminated with the scriptio plena, the fully vocalized and pointed text of the Qur’an. This text may be considered a textus recepetus, ne varietur with the proviso that no single clearly identifiable textual specimen of the Qur’an was ever established or accepted with absolute unanimity.

The final, fully vocalized and pointed text of the Qur’an, accepted as normative and canonical, may best be understood as a construct underlying the work of Abu Bakr b. Mujahid (d. 936), who restricted the recitation of the Qur’an to seven correct readings, termed aḥruf (literally, “letters”) on the basis of a popular tradition. Ibn Mujahid accepted the reading (qirā’a) of seven prominent Qur’an scholars of the eighth century and declared them all to be based on divine authority. In 934 the Abbasid establishment promulgated the doctrine that these seven versions were the only acceptable forms of the text and all others forbidden. Nevertheless, “three after the seven” and “four after the ten” ways of reading were added somewhat later to form, respectively, 10 or 14 variant readings. Finally, each of the ten ways of reading was eventually accepted in two slightly varying versions (riwāya), all of which, at least theoretically, belong within the spectrum of the textus receptus, ne varietur. For all practical purposes, only two versions are in general use today—that of Hafs (d. 805) from ‘Asim (d. 744), that is, Hafs’s version based on ‘Asims’s way of reading, which received official sanction when it was adopted by the Egyptian standard edition of the Qur’an printed in 1924, and that of Warsh (d. 822) from Nafi‘ (d. 785), that is, Warsh’s version based on Nafi‘’s way of reading, which is followed in North Africa with the exception of Egypt.

From the mid-19th century, Western scholars began to engage in serious literary research on the Qur’an, linking the scholarly findings of traditional Muslim scholarship with the philological and text-critical methods that biblical scholarship was developing in Europe. An intensive scholarly attempt was made to arrive at a chronological order of Qur’anic chapters and passages that could be correlated with the development and varying circumstances of Muhammad’s career. This Western chronological approach to the Qur’an achieved its climax in the highly acclaimed Geschichte des Qorans (History of the Qur’an) by Theodor Nöldeke (1860), which was later revised and expanded by F. Schwally (1909 and 1919) and again by G. Bergsträsser (1938). The chronological sequencing of the suras elaborated by Western Qur’anic scholarship largely adopted the distinction of traditional Muslim scholarship between Meccan and Medinan suras already worked out in the Itqan fi ‘Ulum al-Qur’an (Securing Qur’anic exegesis) by Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti (d. 1505), the major Muslim reference work on the Qur’anic sciences. However, it further subdivided the Meccan phase of Muhammad’s proclamation of the Qur’an into three distinct periods. R. Bell, in his The Qur’ān and, posthumously, A Commentary on the Qur’an, took a radically different approach. He abandoned the chronological division into Meccan and Medinan periods and designed a disjointed dating system for individual verses in the Qur’an taken as a whole.

The overriding goal of the chronological framework of the Qur’an as elaborated in Western scholarship was to divide the Qur’anic proclamation into four distinct periods—Mecca I, Mecca II, Mecca III, and Medina. It linked these periods with a vision of the gradual inner development of Muhammad’s prophetic consciousness and political career that Western scholarship had determined through biographical research on the life of Muhammad in conjunction with its research on the Qur’an. In general, the fourfold division of periods of the Qur’anic proclamation proceeded on the basis of two major principles. It related Qur’anic passages source-critically to historical events known from extra-Qur’anic literature, and it systematically analyzed the philological and stylistic nature of the Arabic text of the Qur’an passage by passage. It also placed clear markers between the Meccan periods at the time of the emigration to Abyssinia (about 615) and Muhammad’s disillusioned return from Ta’if (about 620), and it retained the emigration in 622 as the divide between Meccan and Medinan suras.

The group of 48 short suras classified as belonging to the first or early Meccan period were identified by a similarity of style that gives expression to Muhammad’s initial enthusiasm in a language that is rich in images, impassioned in tone, uttered in short and rhythmic verses, marked by a strong poetic coloring, and containing about 30 oaths or adjurations that introduce individual suras or passages. They are driven by a heightened awareness of the apocalyptic end of this world and God’s final judgment of humanity. They include Muhammad’s vehement attacks against his Meccan opponents for adhering to the old Arab tribal religion and his vigorous rebuttals to their damaging accusations against his claim of divine inspiration when they dismissively characterized him as a soothsayer (kāhin), sorcerer (sāḥir), poet (shā‘ir), and a man possessed (majnūn).

The suras of the second or middle Meccan period, 21 in number, have longer units of revelation, which are more prosaic and do not exhibit a clearly distinct common character. They mark the transition from the excitement of the first phase to a Muhammad of greater calm who aims to influence his audience by parenetic proofs selected from descriptions of natural phenomena, illustrations from human life, and vivid depictions of paradise and hellfire. The stories of earlier prophets and elements from the story of Moses in particular are cited as admonitions for his enemies and as encouragement for the small group of his followers. The place of the oath is taken by introductory titles such “This is the revelation of God!” and by the frequently recurring “Say!” (qul), the divine command for Muhammad to proclaim a certain Qur’anic passage. The name al-Raḥmān (the Merciful), a name for God in use prior to Islam in southern and central Arabia, although rejected by the pre-Islamic Meccans, is frequently employed yet dies out in the third period.

The suras of the third or late Meccan period, also 21 in number, cannot be seen as standing in any kind of inner chronological order. They exhibit a broad prosaic style with rhyme patterns that become more and more stereotyped, frequently ending in -ūn and -īn. In addressing his followers as a group, Muhammad frequently employs the formula, “O you people” (yā ayyuhā al-nās). Muhammad’s imagination seems to be subdued; the revelations take on the form of sermons or speeches and the prophetic stories repeat earlier ideas. Overall, this group of suras could be understood to reflect Muhammad’s exasperation at the stubborn resistance to his message on the part of his fellow Meccan tribesmen.

The suras of the Medinan period, 24 in number, follow one another in a relatively certain chronological order and reflect Muhammad’s growing political power and his shaping of the social framework of the Muslim community. As the acknowledged leader in spiritual and social affairs of the Medinan community that had been torn by internal strife prior to his arrival, Muhammad’s Qur’anic proclamation becomes preoccupied with criminal legislation; civil matters such as laws of marriage, divorce, and inheritance; and with the summons to warfare against opponents. Various groups of people are addressed separately by different epithets. The believers, the Meccan emigrants (muhājirūn) and their Medinan helpers (anṣār), are addressed as “you who believe,” while the Medinans who distrusted Muhammad and hesitated in converting to Islam are called “hypocrites” (munāfiqūn). The members of the Jewish tribes of the Qurayza, Nadir, and Qaynuqa‘ are collectively called Jews (yahūd), and the Christians are referred to by the group name of Nazarenes (naṣārā). More than 30 times—and only in Medinan verses—the peoples who have been given a scripture in previous eras are identified collectively by the set phrase “the People of the Book” (ahl al-kitāb). They are distinguished from the ummiyyūn (gentiles) who have not been given a book previously but from among whom God selected Muhammad, called al-nabī al-ummī (the “gentile” prophet) in a late Meccan passage, as his messenger. A significant group of Qur’anic passages from Medinan suras refers to Muhammad’s break with the Jewish tribes and his subsequent interpretation of the figure of Abraham, supported by Ishmael, as the founder of the Meccan sanctuary. Abraham is henceforth depicted as the prototypical Muslim (ḥanīf) who represents the original pure religion designated “the religion of Abraham” (millat Ibrāhīm), now reinstated by Muhammad.

The most radical chronological rearrangement of the suras and verses of the Qur’an, undertaken by R. Bell, concluded its elaborate hypothesis with many provisos. Bell suggested that the composition of the Qur’an followed three main phases: a “sign” phase, a “Qur’an” phase, and a “book” phase. The earliest phase of sign passages (āyāt) represents the major portion of Muhammad’s preaching at Mecca, of which only an incomplete and partially fragmentary amount survives. The Qur’an phase included the later stages of Muhammad’s Meccan career and about the first two years of his activity at Medina, a phase during which Muhammad was faced with the task of producing a collection of liturgical recitals (qur’ān). The book phase belonged to his activity at Medina and began at the end of the second year after the emigration, from which time Muhammad set out to produce a written scripture (kitāb). In the present Qur’an each of these three phases, however, cannot be separated precisely, because sign passages came to be incorporated into the liturgical collection and earlier oral recitals were later revised to form part of the written book. Regarding the redaction of the Qur’an during Muhammad’s lifetime, the starting point for the Qur’an as sacred scripture, in Bell’s view, had to be related to the time of the Battle of Badr in 624. For Bell, this was the watershed event, while the emigration did not constitute a great divide for the periodization of the suras.

None of the systems of chronological sequencing of Qur’anic chapters and verses has been accepted universally by contemporary scholarship. Nöldeke’s sequencing and its refinements have established a rule of thumb for the approximate order of the suras in their chronological sequence. Bell’s hypothesis has established that the final redaction of the Qur’an was a complex process of successive revisions of earlier material, whether oral or already available in rudimentary written form. In many ways, Western Qur’anic scholarship reconfirmed the two pillars on which the traditional Muslim views of Qur’anic chronology were based. First, the Qur’an was revealed piecemeal, and, second, it was collected into book form on the basis of both written documents prepared by scribes on Muhammad’s dictation and Qur’anic passages preserved in the collective memory of his circle of Companions. All methods of chronological analysis, whether traditional Muslim or modern Western, agree that the order of the suras in Muhammad’s proclamation was different from the order found in the written text we have today, where, in general, the suras are arranged according to decreasing length.

Political Elements in the Qur’an

As can be seen from his prophetical career, Muhammad’s political actions were directed by an instinct for pragmatism. The Prophet did not act on the basis of preset principles of political theory but rather demonstrated a flexible and adaptable political practice. Examples of Muhammad’s political documents are the Constitution of Medina, the treaty of Hudaybiyya, and the documents of alliances with Arab tribes. The Qur’an, however, is foremost a religious message rather than a document of political theory. The Qur’an is an expression of Islamic beliefs, doctrines, rituals, laws, and practices; it is not a textbook of political theory, nor does it provide a system for political thought. Rather, it offers certain themes that constitute scattered building blocks for the eventual historical development of political thought in Islam. These elements do not represent a complete foundation or an articulated framework for the emergence of a systematic political vision in Islam, although some of them became cornerstones in the eventual political theories developed by Muslim thinkers over the centuries. The number of such elements is small, and, compared to the weight they carry in contemporary Islamic political thought, they appear to be at best stepping stones for political theories.

The core of the Islamic creed, the twofold Muslim profession of faith (shahāda)—“There is no god but God, and Muhammad is God’s messenger” (lā ilāha illā Allāh wa-Muḥammad rasūl Allāh)—is intensified by the Qur’anic command, “Obey God and obey the messenger” (Q. 4:59) that is also embedded in the most articulate passage of the Qur’an on obedience and authority (Q. 24:47–56). The Shi‘is augment this profession of faith by adding “and ‘Ali is God’s guardian” (walīy Allāh) and interpret the Qur’anic phrase “and those in authority among you” (Q. 4:59) as validating the authority of their imams as rulers of the community after the Prophet. The categorical command of obedience implies two basic dimensions for Islamic political thought. It defines the vertical axis of authority that intrinsically links obedience to God with obedience to the Prophet, intertwines the power of divine rule with human governance, and requires unquestioning submission to God combined with absolute allegiance to the Prophet. Furthermore, it marks the horizontal axis of an inextricable interrelation of religion and politics in Islam, the immutable religion (al-dīn al-qayyim, Q. 12:40) that the Prophet perfected (Q. 5:3) and proclaimed as the religion of submission to God, Islam.

The crux of the creed is Muhammad’s self-perception as a prophet that developed from his early preaching in Mecca, where he presented himself as the reformer of the pre-Islamic tribal religion. He believed himself a “messenger” (rasūl) called by God for an Arab monotheistic and revealed religion that confirmed the revelations other peoples had received in their languages. In proclaiming his message, he drew inspiration from the example of earlier messengers (rusul), prophets (nabiyyūn), and biblical patriarchs, as well as leaders known from old Arab lore. Established in Medina after the hijra (emigration), he applied the term “prophet” (nabī) consciously to himself. Henceforth he had himself addressed as “O Prophet!” (yā ayyuhā al-nabī, Q. 33:45), and he understood himself as al-nabī al-ummī (Q. 7:157–58), the final prophet, and “the seal of the prophets” (khātam al-nabiyyīn, Q. 33:40). The authority of the earlier biblical prophets, who founded a community, was rooted in the covenant (mīthāq, ‘ahd) God had made with them. Yet only one passage, based on the small phrase “and with you” (wa-minka, Q. 33:7), refers to a covenant relationship with God on the part of Muhammad. Post-Qur’anic traditions recognized the tenuousness of this basis and tried to bolster it through legends such as the angelic cleansing of Muhammad’s chest and his miraculous ascension to heaven (mi‘rāj), symbols of a divine covenant with Muhammad.

The biblical background of the covenant is evident in Qur’anic references to God’s covenant with pivotal prophetical figures of the Qur’an. On the day of the primordial covenant (Q. 7:172), humanity professed monotheism as its pledge in response to God’s self-disclosure as their Lord at the dawn of creation. Since the dawn of creation, according to the Qur’an, God has made a covenant with humanity that is reinstituted from prophet to prophet throughout religious history. Although they are recipients of a covenant for their people, in the Qur’an the prophets are not immune to sin. Adam, “the father of the human race,” carries in his loins the symbol of God’s covenant, his progeny, the human race, as “the children of Adam,” until the Day of Resurrection (Q. 7:172). Yet Adam broke the covenant together with Eve by eating from the tree of paradise (Q. 20:115)—an act, however, for which he repented. The symbol of Noah’s covenant is the ark in which he is rescued together with his people (Q. 33:7). Abraham, the prototype of the true Muslim (ḥanīf, Q. 3:65–70), abandons the worship of astral deities (Q. 6:76–79), breaks the idols (Q. 21:58–67), builds the Ka‘ba, and institutes the pilgrimage as the symbol of his covenant but violates the covenant through three lies: feigning illness (Q. 37:89), denying culpability (Q. 21:63), and passing his wife off as his sister (according to tradition). Joseph, whose mark of the covenant is his inspired ability to interpret dreams, showed his readiness to commit sin with the wife of the Egyptian (Q. 12:24) but was divinely protected from acting on it. Moses, in his encounter with God on Mount Sinai, receives the tablets as the symbol of his covenant (4:142–45), and in his desire to see God, he falls to the ground as if struck by lightning as the mountain is crumbled to dust (4:142–45). But he breaks the covenant by slaying another human being without any right to blood revenge, while his followers, “the Children of Israel,” break the covenant made at Sinai through their idolatry of the calf (Q. 2:63).

David, who represents the covenant in his receiving the psalms (Zabur), slaying of Goliath, and appointment as God’s viceroy (khalīfa) to dispense justice, asks for God’s forgiveness (Q. 38:24). Solomon, heir to David’s throne, receives as a symbol of his covenant immense knowledge and wisdom, giving him power over humans and demons (jinn) and the capacity to understand the speech of birds and command the wind. Solomon had to repent for idolatry (Q. 38:34). Jesus, the son of Mary, the Messiah and the recipient of the Gospel (Injil), is spirit from God (rūḥun minhu) and his word (kalimatuhu, Q. 4:171) as well as God’s servant (‘abd Allāh). He has his symbol in the power to give life by raising the dead and breathing life into figures of clay (Q. 3:47; 5:110). The Qur’an rejects the crucifixion of Jesus but accepts the ascension in an earthly body: “They did not kill him nor crucify him, but it was made to seem so to them” (shubbiha lahum, Q. 4:157). His death on the cross as a sign of defeat is therefore denied in the Qur’an, but his being raised to life directly from the cross is granted (Q. 4:158). It is God Himself who says in the Qur’an, “O Jesus, I am going to take you and raise you to Me” (mutawaffīka wa-rāfi‘uka, Q. 3:55). This position resembles the Gnostic Christian belief that only a counterfeit (simulacrum) of Jesus was crucified.

In the Qur’an, Muhammad stands in the line of the prophets, who are human beings with all their foibles and flaws and their sins and acts of disobedience before God. In the Qur’an Muhammad expressly states, “I am only a mortal like you” (Q. 18:110), who receives forgiveness for all the sins of his life, “may God forgive you your past sin and your sin that is to come” (Q. 48:2). Tradition explains that Muhammad was “erring” (Q. 93:7) when he toyed with a compromise of his monotheism by accepting three Meccan female deities as divine intercessors next to God, sacrificed to a heathen goddess before his call, and married Zayd’s wife. The Qur’an portrays Muhammad as a human being as well as the carrier of a revelation and leader of his community. In post-Qur’anic literature, he was put on a pedestal; ranked above all other prophets before him; and attributed the power of intercession on the Last Day, sitting next to God on the divine throne. In his ascension to heaven, he passes beyond the other prophets who each rule one of the seven spheres. His colloquy with God, associated with his ascension to heaven and linked with his encounter of God’s presence at the Lote Tree of the boundary (Q. 53:13–18), becomes the symbol of his covenant through the divine institution of the five daily prayers. Through association with the famous light verse (Q. 24:35), Muhammad is perceived created as “light from light” and taking the place of Adam—the last prophet taking the place of the first—as he swears his oath of fealty to God on behalf of all of humanity. His message, reconfirming the religion of Abraham, surpasses it by reflecting most perfectly the light of the innate primal religion (fiṭra, Q. 30:30), enshrined in all human beings since the dawn of creation.

There is hardly any emphasis in the Qur’an on Muhammad as a political leader or lawgiver. The Qur’an, however, juxtaposes the background of the history of the prophets and their covenants with the oath of allegiance, a ceremony rooted in a pre-Islamic tribal institution. Obedience to God is linked with obedience to the Prophet, and obedience to the Prophet is made manifest through entrance into the community by an oath of allegiance. The formal gesture of the oath of allegiance (bay‘a) was the ceremonial handclasp. Exchanged with the Prophet, it implied a pledge of fealty to God (Q. 48:10). The bay‘a guaranteed the gift of God’s protection and reward, mediated by the Prophet, in exchange for the loyalty of the person who joined Muhammad’s community and surrendered to God. It possessed the character of a contractual agreement rooted in the ceremonial of pre-Islamic commercial transactions. In this sense, submission to God became symbolized by “grasping the firmest handle” (al-‘urwa al-wuthqā, 2:256), an act that meant abandoning idolatry and doing good works. “Whoever surrenders his face to God and does good, has grasped the firmest handle” (Q. 31:22).

New converts to Islam enter into the community by swearing allegiance to the Prophet, who represents the covenant humanity made with God at the dawn of creation and the fashioning of Adam as father of the human race. Sworn by an individual entering the fold of Islam, this oath manifests two aims. It recognizes the authority of the person to whom it is given and expresses the adherence to the message of the person who represents and proclaims it. On the power of this oath, the Qur’an prescribes fighting to Muhammad’s followers in Medina and demands that military commands be obeyed (Q. 22:39–40). When decisive action had to be taken during crucial moments of his cause, formal oaths of allegiance were made to Muhammad (Q. 48:10). Such vows of obedience became the norm when Muhammad’s polity in Medina grew in numbers (Q. 9:11–12), although the Qur’an indicates that Muhammad did not always find it easy to enforce compliance (Q. 9:38–57; 9:81–106). A particular case is the oath of allegiance to the Prophet sworn by women, traditionally linked with the treaty of Hudaybiyya that includes as its conditions the core commands of the Decalogue (Q. 60:12). The treaty made between Muslims and pagans at the sacred mosque of Mecca, however, is a pact (‘ahd) and hence does not imply an oath of allegiance (Q. 9:7).

Three particular terms in the Qur’an, umma, khalīfa, and jihad, have become highly valued fulcrums of Islamic political thought in Islamic history, although they do not appear in a prominent position in the Qur’an itself. The term umma (community), appearing about 60 times in the Qur’an, is a loanword from Hebrew and Aramaic that refers to groups of people who are included in the divine plan of salvation. In the view of the Qur’an, humanity consists of a plurality of communities, each to whom God sends messengers to guide and test them (Q. 6:42), but the messengers are usually attacked and accused of lying. When each umma is brought to judgment on the Last Day, God will call upon their respective messengers to give witness against those who did not follow their message (Q. 4:41). The Qur’an explains the plurality of the communities from the divine will. Originally, God created one umma (Q. 10:19), but humanity became disunited because of their malice and rancor. In the Meccan suras, the Qur’an envisages the Arabs of Mecca as forming an umma; in the Medinan suras a new “community surrendering to God” (umma muslima, Q 2:213) is founded on a religious basis that bids to honor and forbids dishonor (Q. 3:104, 110). The famous statement of the Prophet, “My community (umma) will never agree upon an error,” is a post-Qur’anic tradition. Only twice does the Qur’an mention the related term, “the party of God” (ḥizb Allāh, 5:56; 48:22), and the term jamā‘a, later so prominent and used to denote the whole body of the believers as a unified “community,” does not appear in the Qur’an at all. The Qur’anic term, milla (religious community), an Aramaic or Hebrew loanword, appears 15 times in the Qur’an and 8 times as “Abraham’s religion,” in which sense it is applied to Muhammad’s community. As such, however, it means “religion” and does not imply the aspect of solidarity and unity that is so predominant in Islamic political thought.

Another Qur’anic term that has only tenuous Qur’anic moorings with regard to political authority is the notion of khalīfa, which appears only twice in the singular in the Qur’an and seven times in the plural. With reference to Adam, the Qur’an says, “I am setting a viceroy in the Earth” (Q. 2:30), and with reference to David, the Qur’an says, “We have appointed you a viceroy in the Earth” (Q. 38:26). The Qur’anic reference to Adam represents a divine address to the angels who are being told by God that Adam, and with him the human race, will be their “successor” (khalīfa) inhabiting the Earth. The passage about David as “successor” has a political and juridical meaning in that David is commissioned by God to judge justly between people. The notion itself does not imply the idea of the caliph, conceived as representative of God’s messenger or even as shadow of God on Earth, although in later political theories the term took on a politically charged meaning and, in Sunni interpretation, became the key term for the caliph as head of the Muslim polity, called somewhat ineptly the “vicar of God’s messenger” (khalīfat rasūl Allāh). For their idea of supreme leadership, the Shi‘is have erected impressive theological theories around the term “imam” (leader), which appears in the Qur’an seven times in the singular and five times in the plural. It refers to Abraham as “a leader for the people” (Q. 2:124); to the Book of Moses as “a model” (Q. 11:17; 46:12); to the prophets raised from the progeny of Adam, who will give witness about the conduct of their communities on the Day of Judgment (Q. 17:71); to pious Muslims as leaders in faith; and to both righteous and unjust leaders. Both Sunnism and Shi‘ism employed the term imāma (leadership, imamate) for their theological discourse on leadership and authority.

Similarly, in the Qur’an, jihad, a highly prominent slogan of Islamic political thought, means “struggle” or “striving,” which, coupled with the notion of fighting “in the path of God” (fī sabīl Allāh, Q. 2:190; cf. 9:24; 60:1), gained its predominantly political meaning of “warfare” through post-Qur’anic interpretation. As used in the Qur’an (the verbal noun, jihād, occurs but four times in the Qur’an: 9:24; 22:78; 25:52; 60:1), only a small portion of the term’s semantic range can be linked with warfare. On the contrary, the majority of the relevant passages point to an origin in the pre-Islamic tribal perception that one must demonstrate oneself deserving of the deity’s reward through hardship, pilgrimage, poverty, and perseverance in trials and tribulations. Rather, the Qur’an expresses warfare mainly by employing a semantic field that expresses the order to fight and slay the infidels (qitāl), as exemplified in Qur’an 9:1–14. There is no doubt that the Prophet encouraged his followers to fight and proclaimed fighting as a divine command, and Qur’an 22:40 may be the first Medinan verse that deals with fighting the unbelievers. Many other verses exhort the believers to fight “with their possessions and their selves.” Those who “are slain or die in the path of God” (Q. 3:157–58) are promised eternal reward—they will be “living with their Lord” and rejoicing “in the bounty that God has given them” (Q. 3:169–70), while those who are not willing to fight are threatened with hellfire (Q. 9:81). Exhortations to fight and participate in warfare can be found many times in the Qur’an (e.g., Q. 4:84; 8:65), but it was not the term “jihad” that was their standard Qur’anic expression.

There is no one coherent doctrine of warfare in the Qur’an, and exegetes found it difficult to reconcile ambiguous and contradictory verses given both the inconsistent Qur’anic terminology on warfare and Muhammad’s increasingly hostile relations with the Meccans that developed into open warfare after his emigration to Medina. Muslim exegesis tried to resolve these ambiguities and contradictions through the use of certain methodological techniques, particularly theories of abrogation and specification that regarded Qur’an 9:5 and 9:29 as ultimately superseding earlier verses. The basis for these theories may be found in the Qur’an itself in a passage (Q. 4:76–77) that implies an inner-Qur’anic evolution with regard to warfare. When relevant Qur’anic verses are read chronologically, one may construct four stages in the evolution of Qur’anic exhortations to warfare. Before his emigration to Medina, Muhammad was instructed by God to pardon the unbelievers and to desist from engagement in warfare. After the hijra, however, his followers were given permission to retaliate for injustices they had suffered from the Meccans (Q. 22:39–40). As the altercations with the Meccans increased, they were exhorted to fight against unbelievers as long as they observed certain conditions. Then they were given the divine command to rescind all treatises with the unbelievers and fight them unconditionally (Q. 9:1–4). Finally, God’s ultimate and unconditional command to engage in warfare was given expression in the “sword verse” (Q. 9:5) with regard to the unbelievers and the “poll tax verse” (Q. 9:29) with regard to “the People of the Book.” A group of Qur’anic verses (Q. 2:216; 4:71; 9:38–41; 9:120–22) provide the basis for the legal definition of jihad as a collective duty (farḍ kifāya) and not an individual obligation (farḍ ‘ayn) that became the normative principle elaborated by the scholars of Islamic law.

The Qur’an not only exhorts to warfare but also stipulates a series of specific conditions that served as the basis for later Islamic thought on the purpose of warfare and the definition of a just war. A good number of Qur’anic verses counsel patience and forbearance with respect to the unbelievers, warn Muslims to avoid fighting, recommend forgiveness and generosity, and advise arguing with opponents in a peaceful manner, while other verses warn unbelievers of God’s vengeance (Q. 3:19). Warfare against idolaters who are to be converted to Islam is differentiated from fighting against the People of the Book—whether they are Jews, Sabians (i.e., Manicheans or Mandeans), or Christians (Q. 2:62; 5:69, 82)—who are identified as enjoying a measure of tolerance. The famous and oft-quoted verse, “There is no compulsion in religion” (lā ikrāha fī al-dīn, Q. 2:256), however, does not proclaim the principle of tolerance as the Qur’anic ideal—it simply states that compelling acceptance of religion must prove a futile exercise in the face of obstinacy. As purposes for warfare other than subjection and nominal conversion, the Qur’an mentions revenge for violation of treaties and retaliation for attacks of adversaries as well as self-defense and the defense of weak members of the community. Exemption from warfare is granted to the physically handicapped (Q. 4:17). Other verses deal with the treatment of prisoners and safe conduct. Qur’an 8:67 exhorts the Prophet not to take prisoners—a norm judged to be abrogated by Qur’an 47:4, which accepts ransom for prisoners or offers outright pardon. Other very specific stipulations would be added in Islamic tradition, such as the interdiction against killing enemy noncombatants (women, children, and the elderly); mutilating bodies; harming infrastructure such as buildings and fruit trees; and embezzling spoils. The idea of “holy war,” however, is not present in the Qur’an at all, although warfare may be considered sacred to a certain extent because it is commanded and rewarded by God under certain conditions.

The Legacy of the Qur’an

Throughout its entire text, the Qur’an intertwines two basic traditions, the pre-Islamic tribal and the Judeo-Christian, through loanwords drawn from Aramaic, Syriac, or Hebrew and assimilated by the Arabic of the Qur’an. This power of association has been noted earlier in the typological history of messengers and prophets that include central biblical figures next to leaders and heroes of pre-Islamic Arabian lore. Similarly, the celestial messengers among the angels show an association with the spirits and demons (jinn) of tribal Arabia, as can be seen in the figure of the devil that merges Shaytan with Iblis (i.e., diabolos), the fallen angel. The intertwining of these traditions can also be seen in some of the central rituals of the Qur’an, the “pillars of religion,” as for instance the daily ritual prayer, the obligation of almsgiving, the month of fasting, and the yearly pilgrimage. Ritual prayer (salat) combines recitation of scripture and liturgical worship at precise times of the day with gestures of submission offered in the direction of the sanctuary of the Ka‘ba. The twin institution of almsgiving (zakat) links the practice of benevolence and charitable righteousness toward the poor and needy with taxes levied on property, crops, and merchandise, and it is collected for the necessities of warfare and from the dues paid by tribes adopting Islam. The ritual obligation of fasting (ṣawm) assimilates aspects of monastic asceticism and abstinence with the Arab month of Ramadan, established in the tradition of sacred months during which bloodshed was prohibited in pre-Islamic tribal Arabia. The Muslim pilgrimage (hajj) merges tribal festival traditions at the Meccan sanctuary and on the hill of ‘Arafat with the story of Abraham and his sacrifice.

At the death of Muhammad, Abu Bakr (d. 634), the first caliph and Muhammad’s direct successor, is said to have coined the slogan “Whosoever has worshiped Muhammad—Muhammad is dead. Whosoever has worshiped God—God lives and will not die.” His message was that although Muhammad had died, God’s word would endure. No new prophet was required to come and renew his message.

What counted throughout history was the membership in the community based on the Qur’an and the memory of the Prophet’s sayings and actions, as demonstrated by two early monuments of Islam. The construction of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem in 692 was established as a sign of triumph over the power of the Byzantine Empire, facing the ruins of the Christian landmark, the Church of the Sepulchre, on the opposite hill of the city. Inscribed on the Dome’s walls were words taken from sura 112, the Qur’anic manifesto aiming at Christianity: “Say, He is God, One. God, the Impenetrable, who has not begotten, and has not been begotten, and equal to Him is not any one.” The Umayyad Mosque of Damascus, standing in the place of the destroyed church of John the Baptist, would bear the inscription of the year 706, “Our Lord is God alone, our religion is Islam and our Prophet is Muhammad,” where the person of the Prophet seems to overshadow his message, the Qur’an. Although the Prophet proclaimed the Qur’an, Islam became supremely a religion of the book. The word of the Qur’an has a much greater weight in Islam than the New Testament does in Christianity, for in Islam the dogma of incarnatio, the Word become flesh, is transformed into the belief of inlibratino, the Word become book. Jesus did not manifest the urge to compose a book; Mani (216–76), the founder of Manicheanism, had done so, and Muhammad would proclaim the final holy book. The Qur’an was not “good news” proclaimed by a group of narrators but instead God’s own speech, warning and reminding humanity of God’s presence in his word.

The Qur’an came into being at a time of a paradigm shift in human history when myth was overtaken by history, and when, in Arabia, a book of parchment overpowered graffiti on the rocks. Breaking into the bright light of history from the dark ages of the Arab past, the Arabic language of the Qur’an became the idiom of a newly arrived “third world,” pushing a wedge between the Greco-Roman and Indo-Persian culture zones. When the Qur’an entered the scene of world history, Judaism and Christianity read their respective Bibles in translations, rather than in the original idioms of Moses or Jesus. The Arabic Qur’an, however, has remained steady and fixed until the present in the idiom of its messenger and the language of the listeners to whom it had been addressed. Although the Qur’an was not a wholly coherent book, with its evidence of abrogation, and had weaknesses of repetition, it became understood as eternal by virtue of being the divine speech. It came to be regarded as the normative scripture of Islam, possessing inimitability (i‘jāz) and rhetorical superiority even if linguistic elegance was granted to Arabic poetry.

As scripture the Qur’an was identical with the word of God recorded since eternity and, in the view of some, known in its entirety by Muhammad even before he was called to come forth as a prophet. By reproducing the word of God in this world, prophecy separated it from God as his revelation. As text it recorded the trace (rasm) that divine speech left in this world through its letters and consonants, distinguished by diacritical marks and carrying vowel signs. As divine speech it was considered the actual inner speech of God, eternal in nature and revealed from on high as sounds that were God’s own voice (ṣawt) and his own pronunciation (lafẓ). God’s speech, which had been heard in different historical epochs by other prophets, now was spoken forth by Muhammad, either directly as God’s mouthpiece in the ecstatic utterances of the early Meccan period or mediated by Gabriel, the angel of revelation who “brought it down upon your heart” (Q. 2:97), in the extended passages of the Medinan period of its proclamation. The stage was thus set for the “Trial” (miḥna, 833–48), the great theopolitical struggle about the nature of the Qur’an defined by the antagonists as centering on the issue of the “created” versus “uncreated” nature of the word of God, a divisive contention Muhammad himself had neither anticipated nor offered guidance on in either direction.