Muslim Kingship and the Problem of Un-Conversion

ABSTRACT

The transcendence of divinity in Islam along with submission to God as the ultimate sovereign created a host of challenges for Muslim kings in their formal, legalistic interactions with non-monotheists, especially those communities who perceived the divine as immanent in nature and did not make a distinction between the veneration of kings and the worship of gods. While the preferred biblical mode for smoothing such engagements between the believer and non-believer was “conversion” of the latter, this approach was often neither possible nor desirable from the perspective of Muslim rulers in Asia. Thus, in many cases, Muslim kings practiced a transgressive form of boundary crossing and translation across religious divisions erected by biblical monotheism, what I call “un-conversion,” by deliberately bypassing or overriding the scriptural requirements of Islam. This essay examines the theoretical implications of such un-conversions for our understanding of sovereignty and political theology in Islam.

KEYWORDS:

• Islam
• Muslim Kingship
• rituals of sovereignty
• religious encounters‌
• religous boundary-crossing
• conversion

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Personal observation of the author. For a perceptive inquiry into the jinn in Pakistan, see Khan, “Of Children and Jinn.” Also, see Ewing, Arguing Sainthood. A summary of scriptural, classical, and contemporary treatments of the subject can be found in Chabbi, “Jinn,” 3:43–51. Also, see Doostdar, Iranian Metaphysicals, 52–57.

2 Taneja, Jinnealogy.

3 Van der Veer, Religious Nationalism.

4 Roberts, To Be Cared For, 116.

5 The Arya Samaj calls this process “bringing home” or shuddhi. Ibid., 131–133. Neither the concept of conversion nor the practice of missionizing in pre-modern Hinduism neatly map onto the biblical notions of conversion and mission. For a sophisticated treatment of the issue, see Gellner, “The Emergence of Conversion in a Hindu-Buddhist Polytropy.”

6 However, see al-Azmeh, Muslim Kingship, Moin, Millennial Sovereign, Babayan, Mystics, Monarchs, and Messiahs.

7 For an extensive discussion of the characteristic features of immanentist and transcendentalist religiosity, see Strathern, Unearthly Powers, 27–46.

8 This is why Jan Assmann descrives what I am calling immanentist religions as primary religions, and transcendentalist religions that arise in opposition to immanentism as counter-religions. Assmann, The Price of Monotheism, 1, passim.

9 “Unlike their rivals, the rabb and the rabba, the ‘lords’ and ‘ladies,’ supernatural protectors and ‘allies’ (awliya) of the tribes that God, in the fullness of his lordship, succeeds in making disappear (Qur’an 53:23, “They are but names which you have named”), the jinn survive at the heart of the new religion.” Chabi, “Jinn,” 3:43.

10 Meier, “Some Aspects of Inspiration by Demons in Islam.”

11 Chabbi, “Jinn,” 3:45.

12 The term “metaperson” is that of Marshall Sahlins. See Graeber and Sahlins, On Kings, passim

13 Taneja, Jinnealogy, 153. Assmann, Religion and Cultural memory, 31–45.

14 Taneja takes the idea of “invisible religion” from Jan Assmann who in turn draws upon the sociologist of culture Thomas Luckmann, Taneja, Jinnealogy, 153.

15 Asad, “The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam.” A comprehensive examination of Asad’s argument is beyond the scope of this article. However, for critiques and alternative models see Schielke, “Second Thoughts about the Anthropology of Islam, or How to Make Sense of Grand Schemes in Everyday Life.” Doostdar, Iranian Metaphysicals. Khan, Muslim Becoming.

16 Taneja, Jinnealogy, 6, 140, 268. Ahmed, What is Islam?

17 For an extended review of Ahmed’s book, see Moin, “Islam as Enigma.”

18 “The history of monotheism is the history of monotheistic moments that, propelled by the revolutionary potential of the Mosaic distinction, unleashed a world-changing force, which nonetheless proved unable to establish itself on a permanent basis as an irreversible and irrevocable achievement.” Assmann, The Price of Monotheism, 33–34.

19 Stroumsa, End of Sacrifice.

20 Counter and primary religions are analytical terms in Assmann, The Price of Monotheism.

21 For an up to date and extensive treatment of early Islam, see al-Azmeh, Emergence.

22 For a recent and accessible treatment of this issue, see Donner, Muhammad.

23 Jan Assmann has treated the general problem of how monotheism repressed the memory of its pagan past, most notably in the trope of “Egypt.” Assmann, Moses the Egyptian. Assmann, The Price of Monotheism.

24 Bellamy, Powerful Ephemeral.

25 Taneja, Jinnealogy, 140–146.

26 For a treatment of this argument, see Moin, “Islam as Enigma.”

27 Assmann, The Price of Monotheism. Freud, Moses and Monotheism.

28 Put differently, revealed religion can delay but it cannot avoid a return of immanence, which is required for the establishment of the felt morality of invisible religion. As Victor Turner argues in his study of the ritual process, this regression, which strips away social structure based on status and taboo, is necessary to generate what he called “a generic social bond”—a connection of all with all—which can be thought of as the basis for Luckmann and Assmann’s “invisible religion.” Turner, Ritual Process, 94–130.

29 To be sure, there was the requisite acclamation by key Muslim notables of the caliph via the hand-clasp (ba‘ya), but the caliph could not be anointed by anyone except a previous caliph. For the early rituals of the caliphate including the hand-clasp, see Marsham, Rituals of Islamic Monarchy.

30 That transcendentalist religions require kings to be righteous and immanentist traditions transform rulers into divinized beings is discussed in Moin and Strathern, “Sacred Kingship.”

31 These coins are unique in that they provide the earliest written evidence of the well-known confessional oath of Islam, the two-part shahada: Part 1) There is no god but Allah; Part 2) and Muhammad is His Messenger. Since the coins of earlier Muslim rulers had not carried this specific formulation, it is generally held that the two-part shahada was standardized and adopted under ‘Abd al-Malik, some three generation after Muhammad. Earlier forms of the shahada only had the first part, that is, the requirement to uphold monotheism. Donner, Muhammad. Foss, “The Coinage of the First Century of Islam.” Bacharach, “Signs of Sovereignty.” Treadwell, “The ‘Orans’ Drachms of Bishr ibn Marwan and the Figural Coinage of the Early Marwanid Period.” Treadwell, “Abd al-Malik's Coinage Reforms.”

32 Gorke, “Historical Tradition.” Ali, “Al-Hudaybiya,” 47.

33 This incident, which is presented here in summary form, is examined in detail in Moin, “Sulh-i Kull as an Oath of Peace.”

34 Kjaer, “‘Rahman’ before Muhammad.”

35 Al-Azmeh notes that Allahumma was not synonymous with Allahdiscusses the various possible meanings of Allahumma, one of which had an ancient Ugaritic parallel used for “discrete entities receiving sacrifice.” al-Azmeh, Emergence, 230–231.

36 See, for instance, the prestigious tafsir of al-Tabari. Abu Ja'far Muhammad bin Jarir al-Tabari, Tafsir al-Tabari, 21:320–321.

37 Abu al-Layth al-Samarqandi, Tafsir al-Samarqandi, 3:258–259.

38 Robinson, 'Abd al-Malik.

39 The literature on the Dome of the Rock is vast. An accessible summary of the arguments is in Donner, Muhammad, 199–203. The seminal work is that of Grabar, Dome. Grabar, “The Umayyad Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.” A detailed review of recent scholarship and the main lines of the debates are in Levy-Rubin, “Why was the Dome of the Rock Built?”

40 Levy-Rubin, “Dome of the Rock,” 456.

41 Elad, “Dome of the Rock,” 51.

42 This is why the eighth Shi‘i imam was named Ali al-Rida after caliph al-Ma’mun designated him as his heir. For a historical discussion, see Cooperson, Al-Ma'mun.

43 Moin, “Sovereign Violence.”

44 Bosworth, “The Titulature of the Early Ghaznavids.”

45 For instance, the widespread ritual of Friday congregational prayers offered jointly for the caliph and the sultan was never granted doctrinal approval. Most Muslim jurists simply refused to take a position on the matter, and those who opposed it faced the wrath of Muslim kings. Moin, “Sovereign Violence,” 475–478. Calder, “Friday Prayer and the Juristic Theory of Government.”

46 Flood, Objects of Translation, 61–87.

47 Thapar, Somanatha.

48 The work of the art historian Finbarr Flood is central to unearthing this repressed image of Mahmud. Flood, Objects of Translation, 61–87. Flood draws upon several medieval chronicles in Arabic but most of all upon the detailed reports in Hebraeus, Chronography, Translated from Syriac by E. A. Wallis Budge.

49 I examine this issue, which is presented here in summary form, in detail in Moin, “Sulh-i Kull as an Oath of Peace.”

50 Flood, Objects of Translation, 83–87.

51 Ibn al-Athir, Kamil, 9: 187.

52 Moin, Millennial Sovereign, 155–56

53 Flood, Objects of Translation, 5.

54 Assmann, The Price of Monotheism, 18–21.

55 Geertz, “Religion as a Cultural System,” 99.

56 Geertz called such movements, in which religion was rationalized anew, as movements of “internal conversion.” Geertz, “‘Internal Conversion’ in Contemporary Bali,” 170–192.

57 Assmann, The Price of Monotheism, 87.

Additional information

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A. Azfar Moin

A. Azfar Moin is Associate Professor and Department Chair of Religious Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on comparative approaches to kingship and sovereignty in Islamic history.