Muhammad's statecraft

The Prophet in Medina

When Abū Bakr became the first caliph after the death of Muhammad, he inherited an Islamic state that had developed some strong distinctive features during the rule of the Prophet. In Der Islam (2004), Hans Küng describes the governmental form under the Prophet as a federation of tribes and clans with the Islamic umma (community) of Medina as its core. During his lifetime, it expanded first to Mecca and then over large parts of the Arabian peninsula.

Muhammad's state was unquestionably based on the Prophet's new religion. "Without Islam as an ideological basis," writes Küng, "this political integration would have been completely unthinkable." It was a large part of Muhammad's achievement to build on the foundation of the traditional tribes and clans but also to provide the leadership and ideology - Islam - that enabled a state to function as a higher power than the tribal relationships.

Küng argues that Muhammad's state had three distinct characteristics that heavily influenced future developments: exclusivity, theocracy and militancy.

Though during Muhammad's time we see religious persecution, e.g., of Jewish tribes in Medina, in other parts of Arabia the Muslim state tolerated Jews and Christians. But under ‛Umar, the second caliph (ruled 634-644), they were driven out, making Arabia exclusively Muslim. Thus, the exclusivity of which Küng speaks.

On the issue of theocracy, Küng makes an important observation about the stat and religion in Europe. Although the European rulers in Abū Bakr's time certainly used religion and were willing to force it on their subjects, the Church was a separate institution from the state (i.e., the royal houses). And the separate institutions of Church and state were to come into conflict and opposition many times. "The Islamic polity [of the early Muslim period] is both at the same time: religious community and political government, a 'divine state'," he writes.

As for militancy, Küng observes that, starting with Muhammad, Islamic society was a "fighting community." He says, "War as an instrument of politics is not only affirmed in a basic sense [in the early Muslim community] but nevertheless, when it is necessary, practiced with great restraint." Küng pointedly distances himself from the modern-day notion among many in Western countries that Islam is inherently warlike. "The readiness to fight stands side by side with a Muslim openness for peace," he says with reference to the early Muslim times.

Tags: hans küng, hans küng's der islam, islam, muhammad