Millions of people, both Muslims and non-Muslims, even scores of academics, believe that in Islam, there is no separation of church and state. They point out to Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) being a prophet as well as the head of the state. The period of the first four righteous caliphs, the Rashidun (632-661), is also presented as evidence. The presence of close links between Muslim kings and ulema (scholars of Islam) and the implementation of Sharia by Muslim sovereigns strengthens the case and finally, views of noted Islamists and examples of governments of Iran and Saudi Arabia are used to close the argument.
Several assumptions are made in these arguments that have no basis in history. These assumptions are based on applying a normative framework based on European experience on Islam. Understanding Islamic religion and history using European and Christian experience as the model will, unsurprisingly, lead to distorted and/or sub-optimal results. Following is an example of Muslims and Islam being considered copies of Christians and Christianity and Christian history of Europe being considered a model for Muslims to adopt:
Consider the most famous waves of Christian violence, in the 16th and 17th centuries. Wars of religion devastated Europe, killing huge percentages of national populations. States disintegrated and acts of terror were commonplace. The main impetus for these wars was the question of which Christian sect - Protestantism or Catholicism - would rule each state. Clergy had great amounts of political power, dispensing law and owning huge tracts of land. Nationalism was, as yet, weak. The question of which religion would dominate in which area was also the question of who would rule.Eventually Europe’s religious wars calmed down, and a solution was reached. In the Peace of Westphalia, it was agreed that governments - not clergy - would get to decide which religion would prevail in their territories...Nowadays, the Middle East is embroiled in a set of conflicts that look a bit reminiscent of the European Wars of Religion. A few powerful, cohesive states - Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey - are fueling proxy wars in anarchic areas like Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, and Yemen...Just as the European Wars of Religion featured Christians mostly killing Christians, the Islamic Wars of Religion feature mostly Muslims killing other Muslims...The obvious solution, it would seem, is for Islam to come to the same collective realization that Christianity came to after 1648 - that church and state make for a volatile mix, and should be separated. (Source: Noah Smith: Islam Needs To Separate Church and State)
The antagonistic relationship that Christianity had with the state for its initial three hundred years has no parallel in Islam, whose relationship with the state was without serious disagreements. Furthermore, and more importantly, there has never been a church in the form of the Catholic Church in Islamic history. One can search far and wide and will not find it. There has never been a pope, with his bishops, in Islamic history that could speak for God. In medieval Europe, there was one Pope (except for a few decades) and many rulers, making the Pope's opinion and approval important. In almost all Muslim realms, in contrast, there was one king and scores of Muslim scholars to choose from. There were many kings who may have been excommunicated by Muslim clerics but since there was no central religious authority so there were few repercussions for the king (excommunicating clerics, however, suffered imprisonment, exile, and even execution for their transgression). Kings and emperors always had many more clerics to endorse them than those who reject them.
Graham E. Fuller, in his book A World Without Islam (2012) brilliantly unpacks the differences between sway and power of the Catholic Church and the lack of anything similar in the Islamic history (as given in Separation of “church and state” in Islamic history):
Islam actually had no parallel to the intimate links between church and state in the West, where the church itself wielded great political and economic power. While Islamists today — those speaking for forms of political Islam — constantly emphasize the indissoluble unity of religion and state in Islam (din wa dawla), in fact, this perception is largely a modern ideological construct: state power in Islam was virtually always distinct from the clerics. Religious officials in Islamic states never appointed leadership or controlled the state. (Clerical domination of the state in today’s Iran is a glaring exception, a modern Shi‘ite innovation.) Even in Saudi Arabia the monarchy in most contexts is far more powerful than are clerical institutions.
To be sure, the legitimacy of Muslim rulers historically depended upon their implementation of Shari‘a law, at least in theory, but a great deal of the time rulers did not seriously implement its spirit, and they rarely could be overthrown for such religious lapses. In fact, some medieval Muslim clerics inadvertently dispensed virtual carte blanche authority to misrule by secular powers by declaring that anarchy (fitna) was worse even than oppressive rule (dhulm). Indeed, no sultan or Muslim ruler in Islamic history ever kneeled to ask forgiveness before a grand mufti in the way that Henry IV was forced to do before the pope in 1077 in Canossa for challenging papal authority on some key secular matters. Henry VIII of England had to break with Rome entirely simply to secure the divorce he sought from his wife. Thus, intimate linkage between religious and state power marked most of Christian history in a way that has had no parallel in Islam. (122-123)
And this lack of a Church, with a capital C, in Islam is not a historical development. It is what flows from the Quran and the Sunnah (of the Prophet), two basic sources of Islam. Nowhere in the Quran is there mention of the establishment of a Church. Similarly, the Prophet, in his life, did not establish a Church. Islam propagates a direct relationship between an individual and her God, enjoins Muslims to study the Quran and seek guidance from it. Clearly, this set-up does not favor the establishment of a powerful church and a priesthood that can rival kings.
Historically, after the Prophet, the religious authority of the leader was withdrawn. The Rashidun, whose period is considered to be a model, to be emulated by all future leaders, by the Sunnis, did not have religious authority. They did introduce some new things or promoted some actions but their decisions regarding religion were always contested and remain contested today. They did not have the religious authority of a prophet, not even a pope. There were many companions of the Prophet who were considered equally or more well-versed in Islamic precepts and edicts than the four caliphs. It is nor without reason that the four righteous caliphs never claimed to be in communication with God or receiving any direct instructions (like the Prophet did). The Prophet also clearly told in his lifetime that after him, there would no revelation. The door of revelation, the direct communication with God, was permanently closed for all times to come after him. There is also no claim for a superior esoteric knowledge that the leader will have had over and above others. None of the caliphs claimed it. Although Shiites do believe Ali, the last of the Rashidun, had superior esoteric knowledge of divine rules, he ruled for only four years and what to say of his religious authority, his temporal authority was contested like none of the other three previous caliphs. During his whole tenure, he fought to end a rebellion and he was martyred before the rebellion ended.
If Rashidun could not (or did not) claim religious authority, the caliphs that came afterward had no choice but to leave religious authority in the hands of clerics. The caliphs after Rashidun were not very different from Christian or Hindu kings. They had attained power not because of their close association with Islam or the Prophet, but due to their superior military might and political acumen. They knew it and most of the Muslims under than knew it so there were not many attempts to enforce something different. Of course, there were few dynasties that did claim divine right to rule, such as the Fatimids, but their religious authority was never completely accepted in their own realm, what to say in the whole Muslim world.
The relationship between Muslim kings and emperors on one hand and the chief judge (Qazi ul-quzat) and chief law interpreter (Shiekh ul-Islam) -- two powerful positions generally reserved for clerics -- was mostly similar to the relationship between the king and the (grand) vizir. Vizirs had authority but they served at the pleasure of the king. The king could appoint any of the scholars of Islam to the above-mentioned posts and usually, the selection was based on scholar's acceptance of the sovereign's authority.
The king had to publically follow Islam and enforce Sharia. But here again, kings had options. They could suspend or ignore rules they did not like. They could also publicly flaunt their non-acceptance of some parts of Sharia and get away with it. Most of the Muslim kings murdered their rivals (including their brothers, nephews, etc.) and fought wars against other Muslim kings, leading to the deaths of thousands of Muslims. Many of them drank alcohol and had harams full of women.
Unsurprisingly, there is also an Islamic tradition of God-fearing, learned, and illustrious clerics avoiding and refusing any relationship with the rulers. All founders of the five major schools of thought of Islam (Imam Abu Hanifa, Imam Shafa'i, Imam Malik, Imam Hanbal, and Shiite Imam Jaafar) had an antagonistic relationship with their state authorities. A few of them, such Imam Abu Hanifa, were offered the posts of chief faqih (interpreter of law) and/or chief judge but they refused. There are also some hadiths (sayings of the Prophet) that discourage people from accepting powerful appointments or having a close relationship with rulers:
Whoever goes to the gates of the ruler will endure trail/temptation. A person does not move closer to the ruler except that he moves further away from Allah. (Source: Musnad Ahmad 8619)
He who has been appointed a judge among the people has been killed without a knife. (Source: Sunan Abu Dawud 3571)
The rule of ulema or theocracy is a concept alien to Islam. Medieval Islamic texts, many written by clerics themselves, almost never present clerics as an alternative to a bad or unislamic ruler. The concept of Walayet-e-Faqih or guardian jurist (developed by Imam Khomeini and later enshrined in the Iranian Constitution) is a new concept even in the long Shiite tradition. Even now, many of the Shiite clerics both inside and outside Iran reject this concept.
The above discussion also invalidates the last argument. The Islamists and the governments of Iran and Saudi Arabia might claim that there is no separation of church and state in Islam but it is clearly not the case. Therefore, they can keep justifying their desires or their actions by pointing to something imaginary but their proclamations do not make it real. Some rudimentary knowledge of the Quran, the Sunnah, and Islamic history settles the question that the church and state are separate in Islam.
