Classical Islam recognized one religious-political power rather than a church-state division

Evidence

It is by now a truism that in Islam there is no distinction between church and state. In Christendom the existence of two authorities goes back to the founder of Christianity, who enjoined his followers to render to Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God that which is God’s. There are two powers: God and Caesar. They may be associated, they may be separated; they may be in harmony, they may be in conflict; one or the other may dominate; one may interfere, the other may protest, as we have recently been reminded. But always there are two; God and Caesar, Church and state. In classical Islam, that is to say in pre- Westernized Islam, there is no such distinction. There were not two powers but one, and the question of separation did not therefore arise. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1474

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the Said-adjacent question of how the West frames Islam — the two-powers genealogy of this truism is contested in scholarship (e.g., Marshall Hodgson). — connects to: Religious institutions were instruments of imperial political consolidation, not faith — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 117; Early Islamic empire required separating clerical from political authority — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 322; Political and religious authority separated de facto within the early Muslim empires — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 318 (+3 more)
• QUESTION: Worth checking how Lewis handles the Christian origins narrative here versus critics who note pre-Constantinian Christianity had no clear church-state division either; also the classical Islamic case is more varied than ‘one power’ suggests.