the unity of religion, community and everyday life. This seamless web of
Islamic faith, law and commerce, had little room for rational law or philo-
sophy that were safely sequestered in centers of learning. And in the Muslim
world, fundamentalism has become a major determinant of social life. While
Rodinson (1966) has argued contra Weber, Islamic commerce was rational,
and Muslim merchants were as motivated, avaricious, and as willing to exploit
workers as their Protestant counterparts. But he added, the capitalist trading
sector of merchants never fostered a full scale capitalist social formation.
Rodinson suggested that Weber ’s analysis of the Protestant disdain of magic
and Islamic prohibitions upon usury that were typically circumvented, failed
to explain why Protestantism fostered capitalism and Islam was not con-
ducive to the expansion of its capitalist sector. (He argues that the European
colonizers restricted potential competition.) As I will argue, the crucial indige-
nous factors were not magic or usury prohibitions, but Islamic commercial
law and the Protestant “this worldly, asceticism”. Together, these enabled the
emergence of an autonomous, secular, commercial realm as well and the
“inner determination” of individuals to pursue worldly success without crea-
tural indulgences. Asceticism for Weber was a necessary and sufficient basis
for early capitalism; but there must also be “the physical means of produc-
tion by the entrepreneur, freedom of the market, rational technology, ratio-
nal law, free labour and finally the commercialization of economic life” (cited
in Turner 1974:12).
Shariah-based commercial law did not enable the growth of large scale trad-
ing enterprises as did European (Italian) law based on secular Roman com-
mercial law. Thus asceticism, a crucial aspect of the “inner determinism” of
the Protestant merchant that fostered investment in long-term, large-scale,
private economic enterprises, was absent in most other societies, including
Islam. Finally, the patrimonial forms of governancethwarted the path to ratio-
nal capitalism. Thus, contra Rodinson, I will argue that there were inherent
aspects of Islam that prevented capitalism from emerging. On the other hand,
I would agree with Rodinson, that the classical imperialism and colonization of
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, also served to thwart efforts at mod-
ernization. Following WWII, between the Cold War and quests for oil, various pro-
gressive movements from Nasser’s Pan-Arab socialism to Mossadeq’s democratic
socialism were systematically undermined by the United States and Britain. Finally,
contemporary neo-colonialization by global capital, has sought resources and mar-
kets, but has been little concerned with supporting actual democratic and or mod-
ernizing movements.
From the Caliphate to the Shaheedim• 295