In the thirteenth century, when the non-Muslim Mongols had taken possession of Baghdad, their ruler Hulegu Khan is said to have assembled the religious scholars in the city and posed a loaded question to them: according to their law, which alternative is preferable, the disbelieving ruler who is just or the Muslim ruler who is unjust? After moments of anguished reflection, one well known scholar took the lead by signing his name to the response, "the disbelieving ruler who is just." Others are said to have followed suit in endorsing this answer.
Just and accountable government has long been considered essential in Islamic political and religious thought. The Qur'an states that the righteous "inherit the earth," righteous in this case referring to the morally upright rather than the members of any privileged confessional community. A righteous and just leader ruling by at least the tacit consent of the people and liable to being deposed for unrighteous conduct remained the ideal for most Muslims through much of the Middle Ages, even though dynastic rule replaced limited elective rule only about thirty years after the Prophet Muhammad's death in 632 CE. That thirty year period of non-dynastic rule became hallowed, however, in the collective Muslim memory as the golden era of just and legitimate leadership.
The consequences of this memory could have potentially far-reaching repercussions for the reshaping of the Islamic world today. The Qur'anic concept of shura refers to
