User blog comment:Hippie Rat/Beetlejuice vs Bloody Mary/@comment-7464192-20151106190441

This is for a class of mine, please ignore.

Religion plays a major role in law and government since the first government until this day. For example, the Byzantine Empire had a government system based off of Christianity after the collapse of the Roman Empire. Also, the Caliphates was an empire that was completely based off of Islam. Despite the two empires govern with religion, there are a few contrasts to how they work.

The presence of religion in government depends on the two empires. The leaders in the empires were both religious figures. In Byzantine, the emperor was a spiritual leader in Christianity, and, in some periods, the Pope. The caliphs themselves are labeled as political and religious successors to Muhammad, starting with Abu Bakr. One difference, though, was the tolerance of other religions in the two empires. In the Byzantine Empire, Theodosius I outlawed other religions in the 350s, namely paganism. This even led to the banning of the Olympics until 1896. In the Ten Commandments, it is strictly explained that "there is only one God" and they shouldn't worship any other God. Meanwhile, the Caliphates were much more tolerant of other religions, to a point of studying works from people of outside religions and allowing peoples of differing beliefs to prosper in the Muslim world.

Another correlation can be found in how the religion effects the lives of the citizens. Both empires used religion in legal systems. In the Byzantine Empire, depending on the severity of the crime, the criminal can be forgiven because of the concept of forgiveness in Christianity. Otherwise, the Islamic legal system is based on Sharia Law, a system derived from the Holy Book of Islam, The Qur'an. However, their religious beliefs had different impacts on intellectual studies. In the Byzantine Empire, philosophy was encouraged to be replaced with theological studies, slowing the development of science and mathematics. Islam, though, was a religion that encourages the study of math, science, and technology, expanding the academics of the Caliphates.

These example the fact that the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic Caliphates used the religions Christianity and Islam, respectively, to govern.