Концепцията за властта в исляма: формиране и доктринални аспекти
The Concept of Power in Islam: Emergence and Doctrinal Aspects

Summary/Abstract: With the emergence of Islam in Arabia in the 7th century AD a new concept of power was introduced. Muhammad combined in his person the power of the messenger chosen by God (rasūlu ’l-lāhi) and the position of an undisputed community leader; yet his successors (khulafā’) were no longer inspired by the word of God and became mundane rulers, whose main duty was to preserve the revelation and lead Muslims in accordance with the rules of sharī’a. Caliphs were by no means secular rulers. The Islamic concept of power inherited from the days of early Islam and the tradition of the whole community (’umma) subsequently developed as a conflation between the revealed law and the wordly actions to maintain it. With the advent of time, the concept of government in Islam attained a tangible sectarian flavor. All the major sects in Islam developed legitimacy theories of their own in order to corroborate their strive for power and authority over the Islamic ’umma. One of the main peculiarities of the sectarian cleavage in the ’umma was the position towards the figure of the caliph. While sunnis preferred to view him rather a mundane ruler, shia‘ Muslims tended towards the theory of the divine right. Furthermore, shia‘ went to postulate the divine nature of the Aliid ruler, whom they preferred to call imām. According to some of the radical shia‘ sects the imām has a divine nature and enjoys divine attributes as omniscience (ihāta bi-’l-‘ulūm) and infallibility (‘isma). Those radical elements, whose teachings flourished mainly in the eastern part of the Caliphate (Khurāsān), greatly influenced the political developments in this part of the Islamic empire, but by their nature were distant from the original teaching of the prophet Muhammad or even inimical to it. Some of the opposition movements during the reign of the Ummayads tried to exploit such sects and the shia‘ ideology as a whole to alleviate their strive for power in the empire. Most successful were the Abbasids, who managed to conceal their sunni concepts under the shia‘ slogan. Having emerged as a response to the opposition movement of the non-Arab population of the Eastern parts of the Caliphate, the Abbaside reign tried to substitute the Arabic loyalty with another one directed towards the Persian population in Khurāsān. Although this tactic was successful in the beginning, it heralded the ultimate decline of the Caliphate under the rule of the foreign ethnic elements, which extended from around the end of the ninth century until the conquest of Baghdad by the Mughuls in 1258 AD. During the 15th century, the Arab region became subject to another cataclysm — the Ottoman one. It is perhaps responsible for the concept of power in this part of the world remaining at its late medieval stage until present time. Current trends to modernization always collide with the animosity towards the western liberal ideology.

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