Divine legislation structurally separated law-making from enforcement in Islamic states

Evidence

In the past, the high religion had also played a very important part in urban life. It provided a revered and permanent political constitution, and it limited political prerogatives. It supplied the law for all Muslim states. It imposed a fascinating example of the separation of powers: legislation was separated from the executive, being pre-empted by the deity. The content of divine legislation was in the keeping of the scholars. No overt legislative innovation was possible, except by analogy and interpretation of the existing legal corpus. If the deity pre-empts legislation, the executive cannot usurp it. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2052

Categorization

• DEFINE: This explains how the principle of ‘legislation pre-empted by the deity’ functioned as a concrete institutional separation of powers in Islamic polities.
• XREF: Connects directly to the reading’s Luhmann/Hardin frame: divine pre-emption of legislation acts as an external constraint on the executive, analogous to how observability constrains opportunistic behavior. — connects to: Religion functions as the enabling power behind a preferential legal system — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 1014