ABSTRACT
In recent years, scholarly analyses of Islam certainly have broadened their methodological perspective. ere has especially been a signifi cant move towards an approach which attempts to take into account the literary character of the historical sources. is eff ort has resulted in a recognition of the ideological aspects of the literary texts involved. Central has been the critical appreciation of the attempts made in those texts to defi ne and legitimize an understanding of Islam in which the religion functions as a normative system acting, in a convenient, stabilizing, and “commonsense” manner, to justify the right to rule of a certain group of people. Islam is, of course, a “religion” in the common meaning of the word; the character that the system has adopted in its tenets and practices as conveyed in the textual sources that are available to us, however, can be seen in many instances to refl ect an ideological signifi cance for its society. is insight is as true of the formative period as it is of the modern period.
