ABSTRACT
Society in the West is based on a territorial principle that is the heritage of the Roman Empire. The millet system of the Ottoman Empire may be conceived of as a part of the religious law of Islam. Religious life, in the Islamic as well as the pre-Islamic period, conforms to the social pattern of the religion. Islam did not invent the pattern in which religion and nationality are inseparably intertwined, but it has drawn upon the pattern of the region and intensified it. Social stratification along economic lines cannot rise to prevalence so long as the conditions of tribal law prevail. In a number of cases religion is a protective cloak for nationality; in others ethnicity is born of sectarian separation. The state of Israel retains the 'millet' concept of separate ecclesiastical jurisdiction for religious communities, as far as matters of personal status are concerned; as a consequence, a territorially conceived Israeli nationality is as yet but faintly indicated.
