Muslim Kingship and the Problem of Un-Conversion

Abstract

ABSTRACT The transcendence of divinity in Islam along with submission to God as the ultimate sovereign created a host of challenges for Muslim kings in their formal, legalistic interactions with non-monotheists, especially those communities who perceived the divine as immanent in nature and did not make a distinction between the veneration of kings and the worship of gods. While the preferred biblical mode for smoothing such engagements between the believer and non-believer was “conversion” of the latter, this approach was often neither possible nor desirable from the perspective of Muslim rulers in Asia. Thus, in many cases, Muslim kings practiced a transgressive form of boundary crossing and translation across religious divisions erected by biblical monotheism, what I call “un-conversion,” by deliberately bypassing or overriding the scriptural requirements of Islam. This essay examines the theoretical implications of such un-conversions for our understanding of sovereignty and political theology in Islam.