Medieval pluralism meant separate religious legal systems, not religious equality
Evidence
One was born into a religious community, and one’s community determined one’s legal status: Jews, Christians, and Muslims had separate, segregated legal and judicial systems, whether they lived in Baghdad or Barcelona. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 49 (
#corroborates, via linked claim)
Islam was rarely related to the errors of the ancients. Paris remarked on its ‘laxity’ in the words in eo Epicurus; Marti, classifying Islam with the other Laws explicitly distinguished it from the ‘lawless’ Epicureans, Naturals and Philosophers (/awless: i.e. without revelation); this is more representative; mediaevals certainly always thought of Islam with the revelations. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 2287 (
#complicates, via linked claim)
The decrees of Nablus were ecclesiastical canons passed at a Church council presided over by the highest religious authority in the Crusader States, the patriarch of Jerusalem. … What exactly was meant by the term ‘Saracenus’ (Muslim) and what did the framers and users of law in the Crusader States understand by it? Was it intended to define a religious or an ethnic/racial category? Indeed, did twelfthand thirteenth-century Europeans in the Crusader States distinguish between these categories and, if not, what are the implications for our understanding of their attitudes towards their subject peoples? The evidence that might enable us to determine the question is limited. One important clue is provided by the presence of a Muslim who had converted to Christianity, Walter Mahomet, as one of the prominent landowners in the kingdom of Jerusalem around the time of the Council. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 197 (
#complicates, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Medieval religious pluralism was impossible because one God implied one true religion — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 49; Medieval polemic condemned the Qur’an’s religious pluralism as mere evasion of disputation — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 345; Medieval Castilian law grounded Muslim subordination in religious inferiority — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 977 (+15 more)
Broader Connections
- Medieval dhimmi and Christian societies legally segregated faith communities
#corroborates(0.95) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 49 - Medieval thinkers classified Islam among revealed laws rather than philosophy
#complicates(0.85) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 2287 - Medieval polemic condemned the Qur’an’s religious pluralism as mere evasion of disputation
#complicates(0.80) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 345 - Medieval Latin legal terms for Muslims mixed religious and ethnic categories.
#complicates(0.80) — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 197 - Secularism collapsed the medieval Christian cosmos into an ontological duality
#complicates(0.78) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 945 - Medieval terms for non-Christians were used loosely and interchangeably
#complicates(0.75) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 2281 - Normative pluralism in Islamic law rests on distinguishing divine from fallible human knowledge
#complicates(0.75) - Rejecting literal readings of scripture did not entail rejecting religion in medieval thought
#complicates(0.75) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1157 - Medieval theologians classified Islam in multiple overlapping religious frameworks
#complicates(0.75) - Secularism is a legal-moral arrangement, not the liberating opposite of religious tyranny
#complicates(0.75) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 1230 - Medieval sacraments did not graft supernatural authority onto natural functions
#complicates(0.70) - Secular law and religious ritual do not share an underlying structure
#complicates(0.70) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 470 - Classical Islam recognized one religious-political power rather than a church-state division
#complicates(0.70) — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1474