Violence as an element in the historical relationships both among Muslims and between Muslims and non-Muslims has been the object of some scholarly work in the past, as in the case of jihād, the law of rebellion (aḥkām al-bughāt), or penal law. However, the role of violence in the political economy of Muslim societies, especially inasmuch as it was used as a strategy to take possession of the public sphere, has only recently begun to receive the scholarly attention the topic deserves. Few if any attempts have been made to offer a comprehensive picture of the political uses of violence by Muslim states past and present, or of the historical struggle of Muslims to defend the integrity of their bodies, property and honour against violent intrusions by the powers that be. The present volume is conceived as a step in this direction.

No study of public violence in the formation of Islamic societies can take as its point of departure a simple definition of the relationship between Islam and violence; what we are dealing with is, rather, a spectrum of agendas and attitudes which often took centuries to develop. As the essays in this collection demonstrate, state violence in Islam's early centuries made use of a different register of punishments than in later centuries, and reactions to state violence likewise differed according to temporal and geographical setting.

It would be rash, therefore, to claim that the general Sunnī and Shīcī attitude toward state violence has been one of political quietism, the view that it is better to live with occasional acts of violence and cruelty by the ruler than to risk the break-up of Muslim society.