Classic Islamic order rested on tribal trust plus urban fear plus shared revelation
Evidence
The system was once based on trust between members of tribal groups; on fear of authority on the part of urban populations; and on a shared reverence for a Revelation, which restrains the arbitrariness of the urban state firstly by specifying limits to what it may do, and secondly by providing the means for activating opposition. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2059
Categorization
Category: Definitional Content
- DEFINE: Precisely triangulates the three pillars of the traditional Islamic social order: tribal trust, urban fear, shared reverence for revelation.
- XREF: Directly maps onto Hardin’s observable-constraints thesis: revelation functions as the ‘observable’ limit on both state arbitrariness and individual conduct.
Related
- Islamic governance once rested on tribal-group trust. (similarity 0.91)
- Islamic central power tolerated urban untrusting populations but opposed coherent rural groups (similarity 0.81)
- Urban high religion teaches rule-following rather than group loyalty (similarity 0.78)