State, Religion, and Minority Status. A Review Article

Abstract

Islam, Judaism, and Christianity may be commonly defined as monotheistic, prophetic, messianic, and literate religions, but their political forms are historically and normatively very different. Islam emerged from the collapse of two empires and rapidly assumed political dominance as an imperial state. Judaism was a confederacy of tribes under a contractual relationship with Yahwe, but was dispersed by colonial aggression. Christianity emerged initially as the religion of an underclass in opposition to worldly politics, but became a state religion. These different politics of origin have shaped religious orientations to the problem of political violence in relation to the ethic of brotherly love. It can be argued that to be a genuine Muslim presupposes an Islamic state for the performance of Muslim practice (The Five Pillars). Minority status for Muslim communities within a host society is highly ambiguous from a religious point of view. Judaism, by contrast, has until recent times been a faith of the Diaspora, organised around the quest for identity against assimilation and liquidation. Jews became a petit bourgeois class under various systems of patronage and exclusion within the shtetl; their religious motif has been one of messianic restoration, which modem Israel