ABSTRACT
Islam emerged in the interstices of the Byzantine and Sassanian empires and was institutionalized as a theocracy which came to have dominant power within its immediate geographical location. Christianity by contrast was precluded from political control by the hegemonic position of the Roman Empire at Jerusalem, Alexandria and Rome itself. Christianity was born into a social world that was already politically so organized so that:
Christianity for a time served in significant measure as the faith of the proletariat of the Roman Empire; whereas nascent Islam was the faith, and indeed the raison d’être of an entrepreneurial class (Smith 1975:37).
