94 Law and Morality Abroad (to ca. ad 1550)Th e Islamic World
Th e Islamic world presented a number of interesting contrasts to its Chris-
tian counterpart. Christian society was fragmented into a successor empire
to Rome in the east (the Byzantine Empire) and a welter of states in the west,
ranging in size from the Holy Roman Empire to the various Italian com-
munes and free cities of transalpine Eu rope. Th e Islamic world, at least for
an impressive period of time, was a unity (if only a somewhat loose one)
comparable to the empire of ancient Rome. Th ere were also some similari-
ties between the two societies. Both religious faiths were strongly universal-
ist in outlook, each seeking ultimately to bring the entire world within its
fold. And in both cases, it was abundantly clear that this ambition was very
far from actual achievement. However impressive the Islamic conquests of
the seventh and eighth Centuries, they fell far short of encompassing the
entire world.
It has been observed that, in the case of Christian Eu rope, an alternative
universalist vision was off ered by natural- law doctrine. On this point, the
Islamic world off ered a very striking contrast. Natural law was one notable
element of the Greek and Roman classical heritage that did not have a great
impact on Muslim thought. Where the natural- law tradition insisted on an
ultimate and fundamental unity of the entire human race, the Islamic faith
held there to be a deep moral chasm between believers and infi dels. In order to
be truly moral, in Muslim eyes, it was necessary to be a Muslim and, by exten-
sion, to know and live by the Muslim law, the sharia. It is true that the Mus-
lim faith did not countenance active mistreatment of infi dels merely on the
basis of nonbelief. On the contrary, “people of the Book” (meaning Jews and
Christians plus, in practice, Zoroastrians) were to be tolerated. But this was a
toleration liberally fl avored by condescension. Infi dels were regarded as moral
inferiors and were subject to various disabilities, such as special taxation.
Houses of War and Peace
Th e Islamic ideal was that the Muslim world should comprise a single com-
munity of believers, united in a single polity and governed by sharia, the
Islamic religious law. Within that world, there could be, in principle, no
such thing as international law. Relations with the infi del world were, how-