Religion and the State in Islam: From Medieval Caliphate to the Muslim Brotherhood

Richard Bulliet, Professor of History at Columbia University, examines the relationship between religion and the state in the “Muslim South”—that half of the Muslim world located south of Medina, whose peoples came to Islam centuries after those of the “Muslim North”—and how understanding the different means of legitimating governance in the Muslim South sheds light on the crisis of legitimacy in Muslim-majority states like Egypt today.