��144 No god but God
court. By the reign of the Caliph al-Qadir (d. 1031), the vast majority
of the Traditionalist Ulama, especially the influential Hanbalites, were
united under a single doctrine.
Unshackled by the state, the Ulama were now free to ascend to a
position of unquestioned religious authority in the Ummah, which
they used not only to institutionalize their legal and theological opin-
ions into distinct schools of thought but also to formulate a binding,
comprehensive code of conduct called the Shariah, forever transform-
ing Islam from a religion into an all-embracing way of life: one that
the Ulama claimed sole authority to define. As the ninth-century legal
scholar Malik ibn Anas, founder of the Maliki school of law, once
quipped, “This religion is a science, so pay close attention to those
from whom you learn it.”
RELIGIONS BECOME INSTITUTIONS when the myths and ritu-
als that once shaped their sacred histories are transformed into
authoritative models of orthodoxy (the correct interpretation of myths)
and orthopraxy (the correct interpretation of rituals), though one is
often emphasized over the other. Christianity may be the supreme
example of an “orthodoxic” religion; it is principally one’s beliefs—
expressed through creed—that make one a faithful Christian. On the
opposite end of the spectrum is Judaism, a quintessentially “ortho-
praxic” religion, where it is principally one’s actions—expressed
through the Law—that make one an observant Jew. It is not that
beliefs are irrelevant in Judaism, or actions unimportant in Christian-
ity. Rather, it is that of the two religions, Judaism places far greater
emphasis on orthopraxic behavior than does Christianity.
Like Judaism, Islam is primarily an orthopraxic religion, so much
so that Wilfred Cantwell Smith has suggested translating the word
Sunni as “orthoprax” rather than “orthodox.” However, because the
Ulama have tended to regard Islamic practice as informing Islamic
theology, orthopraxy and orthodoxy are intimately bound together in
Islam, meaning questions of theology, or kalam, are impossible to sep-
arate from questions of law, or fiqh.
For this reason, the Ulama often dismissed the practice of pure
speculative theology as insignificant babble (kalam means “talking” or