the weapons which the intellectual community forged in order to carry out its
struggles over the turf of theology. By a further twist of organizational devel-
opment, the more abstract topics could become a focus in themselves. This
was not without dangers from the political arm of the church. Philosophical
insiders pursuing the logic of debate on questions such as free will or the
attributes of God could find themselves entangled in heresy disputes with
theologians. Such accusations and condemnations ring right through medieval
Christian and Muslim philosophy. From one angle they certainly represent the
chilling hand of power upon intellectual autonomy. But condemnations in
themselves do not distinguish between periods of creativity or stagnation;
creative philosophers were just as likely to accuse their own opponents of
heresy. The distinctive philosophies of the West are those which were wrung
out through these channels of conflict; the danger was a cost of the creativity.The Muslim World: An Intellectual Community
Anchored by a Politicized Religion
Islam begins as a theocracy. Here theological factions are always in the first
instance political factions; to claim theological orthodoxy is the same as claim-
ing political rulership of the Islamic state. After Arabian military conquests
swept the Middle East in the generation after Muhammad (taking Syria, Egypt,
Iraq, and Persia between 634 and 654), Islamic warriors fractionated along
lines of charismatic succession to the rulership. The line divided supporters of
the winners and of the losers in the civil wars of the succession: roughly, the
position eventually known as Sunnites, who accepted the political status quo
and the victorious lineage, and the ShiÀites, intransigents who held out loyally
for the family line of the losing faction. On each side in turn there was further
fractionation. The victorious majority developed a pragmatic group who of-
fered compromise with the losers, in effect declaring its willingness not to
pursue the old issues of legitimacy and illegitimacy of various claims. On the
ShiÀite side, the more vehement rebels were eventually displaced by a faction
which held that the Imam, the true successor to the Prophet was in hiding.
This gave a somewhat otherworldly tone to the expectation that in some
future generation the correct theocratic lineage would reappear, and it allowed
Imamites to operate as a spiritual sect within the Islamic state without neces-
sarily rebelling against it politically. Other ShiÀite factions remained more
militant, sometimes winning political power in particular states.
Islamic factions became a reflex of geopolitics and revolutionary success.
The initial wave of conquests, uniting the tribes of Arabia, swept into the
power vacuum created by the stalemate between the Byzantine and Sassanian
Persian empires. The ÀAbbasid caliphate consolidated power after three civil
392 •^ Intellectual Communities: Western Paths