Chapter 7 is devoted to undercutting or problematizing claims that this book has made in the Introduction about the nature of sectarianism, as well as those which are implied in the structure of the work. This is done because the narrative-identity approach demands an appreciation of complexity. It aims to show that sectarian identifications are not clean, exclusive, or as permanent as the neat divisions of the preceding chapters seem to imply, neither is the definition of “sect,” “school,” or firqa stable or fixed. The chapter asks a few key questions: What does it mean for the study of Muslim sects and schools, then, when sect identification is not primary, or obvious? What was the nature of relations between sectarian and communal groups in the early period, and what can this tell us about the idea of “sectarianism”? Where does the definition of sectarianism itself break down and become unhelpful? This chapter explores these questions and ambiguities as a means toward understanding how sectarian identifications existed in relation to each other.

Chapter 5 examines the writings of the highly influential Sunnī scholar Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328), and those of some of his detractors, who accused him of advocating anti-ʿAlid doctrines. Ibn Taymiyya discussed his views of ʿAlī and anti-ʿAlids in his multivolume anti-Shīʿī work Minhāj al-sunna al-nabawiyya. He provides comprehensive arguments and many proofs in favor of anti-ʿAlid doctrines while claiming to be a Muslim who respected ʿAlī. His anti-ʿAlid and anti-Shīʿī claims illuminate the tension that some Sunnīs (and their predecessors such as al-Jāḥiẓ) faced in opposing Shīʿism while simultaneously rejecting anti-ʿAlid sentiments.

This chapter offers an intellectual genealogy of Muslim critiques of Christianity’s accounts of law and politics. It traces developments in Muslim critiques of Christian views of law from their initial focus on the corruption of scripture to contemporary arguments that connect the lack of a Christian sharī‘a with the rise of secularism. Ibn Taymiyya proves to be pivotal, combining early critiques of taḥrīf and the negative influences of Paul with a legal-political critique of Christian power. In response to colonialism, this legal-political reading of Christianity is expanded by a range of Muslim intellectuals into a critique of Christian response to secularism, Marxism, and societal injustice. The geneology argues that Muslim critiques of the secular are part of a longer discursive practice of distinguishing Islam from Christianity by way of taḥrīf and sharī‘a. Finally, the chapter considers what concrete challenges the Muslim thinkers present to a contemporary Christian political theology.

In contrast to the dearth of discussions about visual images in the first centuries of Islam, discussions of music abounded, often incorporating discourses inherited from Greek antiquity. Chapter 2 considers how juridical discussions of music reflected antique traditions of inward mimesis. Inheriting aspect of Eastern Roman music theory, discussions generally distinguished between theory and performance, affectivity and entertainment. Inheriting the Pythagorean–Platonic tradition, theorists emphasized the capacity of music to engage with the harmonies between the universe and the body that enabled its therapeutic and curative capacities. Music and instruments could be characterized through an iconography of sound. Music needed to be treated with caution due to its association with forbidden practices such as drinking and licentiousness. Yet it was also recognized as facilitating transcendence by opening the heart to the workings of the divine. Both aspects became central to literary gatherings devoted to the ritualized recitation of poetry with music, wine, food, and real or imaginary gardens. The centrality of music in the Islamic intellectual corpus undermines the oculocentrism of art history, offering instead a field of multimedial perceptual culture.

Between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, Muslims experienced multiple crises. The Crusaders and the Mongols destroyed the urban infrastructure and the public order across a vast Muslim geography. On the one hand, the fall of most Muslim states, except the Ayyubids and then Mamluks in Egypt, and Berber dynasties in Morocco/Andalus, weakened the ulema–state alliance. On the other hand, the perils of the Crusades and the Mongol invasions led many Muslims to seek safety from the ulema–state alliance. In general, both the Crusader and the Mongol invasions led to a deterioration of mercantile and scholarly activities in many Muslim cities. Muslim countries still produced such remarkable scholars as Ibn Rushd and Ibn Khaldun. Another scholar, Ibn Taymiyya, wrote on the theory of the ulema–state alliance. Meanwhile Western Europe was protected from destructive invasions after the halt of the Mongol invasion in Eastern Europe. In this context, Western Europe witnessed socioeconomic and political transformations. This chapter first analyzes the Muslim world and then explores these Western European transformations.

This chapter begins by examining Muslims’ military, commercial, and intellectual achievements between the seventh and eleventh centuries. At that time, most of Islamic scholars (ulema) were funded by commerce, while only a few of them served the state. The merchants flourished as an influential class. The chapter goes on to analyze the beginning of the intellectual and economic stagnation in Muslim lands in the eleventh century. It explains how, gradually, the ulema became a state-servant class and the military state came to dominate the economy. The alliance between the ulema and the military state diminished the influence of philosophers and merchants. This changing distribution of authority led to the long-term stagnation, if not the decline, of Muslim intellectual and economic life. This gradual process began in the eleventh century and continued for centuries, as subsequent chapters elaborate.