They did this by wresting absolute authority from the In the face of a scriptural —and hence, widely accessible —message like caliphate and placing it in the Community. this, one can only imagine the enormous difficulty that any ruler or Over time, this meant that the caliphate was religious institution would face in monopolizing authority. reduced to a mere symbol. Furthermore, real political authority rested with military rulers while religious authority belonged to the ‘

Spring-2008 On page 37 Sunday, December 15, 2013 @ 5:18am