Should the caliph be the most pious Muslim (as the Kharajites believed), a direct descendant of the Prophet (as the Shiis contended), or should the faithful accept the Umayyads, with all their failings, in the interests of peace and unity? Had Ali or Muawiyyah been right during the first jitnah? And how Islamic was the Umayyad state? Could rulers who lived in such luxury and condoned the poverty of the vast majority of the people be true Muslims? And what about the position of nonArab converts to Islam, who had to become "clients" (mawali) of one of the Arab tribes? Did this not suggest a chauvinism and inequity that was quite incompatible with the Quran?
It was from these political discussions that the religion and piety of Islam, as we know it, began to emerge. Quran reciters and other concerned people asked what it really meant to be a Muslim. They wanted their society to be Islamic first and Arab second. The Quran spoke of the unification (tawhid) of the whole of human life, which meant that all the actions of the individual and all the institutions of the state should express a fundamental submission to God's will.
At an equally formative stage of their history, Christians had held frequently vituperative discussions about the nature and person of Jesus, which helped them to evolve their distinctive view of God, salvation and the human condition. These intense Muslim debates about the political leadership of the u m m a h after the civil wars played a role in Islam that was similar to the great Christological debates of the fourth and fifth centuries in Christianity.
The prototype and supreme exemplar of this new Muslim piety was Hasan al-Basri (d. 728), who had been brought up in Medina in circles close to the Prophet's family, and lived through the death of Uthman. Later he moved to Basrah, where he developed a spirituality based on contempt for worldly goods, which harked back to the Prophet's ascetic lifestyle. But Hasan became the most famous preacher in Basrah, and his frugal way of life became an eloquent and potentially subversive criticism of the luxury of the court.
Hasan initiated a religious reform in Basrah, teaching his followers to meditate deeply on the Quran, and that reflection, self-examination and a total surrender to God's will were the source of true happiness, since they resolved the tensions between human desires and what God desired for men and women. Hasan supported the Umayyads, but made it clear that he reserved the right to criticize them if they deserved it. He had opted for a theology known as the Qadariyyah, because it studied the decrees (qadar) of God.
Human beings had free will and were responsible for their actions; they were not predestined to act in a certain way, since God was just and would not command them to live virtuously if it was not in their power. Therefore, the caliphs must be accountable for their deeds, and must be taken to task if they disobeyed God's clear teaching. When Caliph Abd al-Malik heard that Hasan had been spreading this potentially rebellious doctrine, he summoned him to court, but Hasan was so popular that the caliph dared not punish him. Hasan had begun the strong Muslim tradition of combining a disciplined interior life with political opposition to the government.
The Unity of Islamic Empire
