er the delineation of their respective spheres of authority. Church and state did cooperate by closing ranks in organizing Crusades against the Muslim conquerors of Jerusalem. However, the Crusades did not permanently restore Christian rule to the Holy Land, and they did not unify the West either ecclesiastically or politically. Islam's major struggle was with their expansion to other cultures and geographic areas, which were already occupied by Christianity and Judaism. During the first centuries of Islam its law and theology, the basic orthodox Islamic disciplines, were developed. The 700s and 800s saw the emergence of the first major Islamic theological school, called the Mutazilites, who stressed reason and rigorous logical rationalists, they maintained that human reason is competent to distinguish between good and evil. By the 900s a reaction had set in, led by philosophers who maintained that moral truths are established by God and can be known only through revelation. In the 11th century, attacks on philosophy by orthodox Islamic thinkers, notably the theologian al Ghazali, had much to do with the eventual decline of rationalist philosophical speculation in the Islamic community. The Shiites are the only surviving major sectarian movement in Islam. They emerged out of a dispute over political succession to Muhammad. The Shiites believe in a series of 12 Imams, beginning with Ali. The 12th and last imam disappeared in 880, and the Shiites await his return, at which time they believe the world will be filled with justice.Judaism also experienced some major struggles of it's own too indifferent than that of Islam and Christianity. The Maccabean revolt of 165 to 142 BC brought about Jewish political independence from Syria. The earliest apocalyptic writings were composed during this period. This genre of cryptic revelations interpreted the wars of the time as part of a cosmic conflict between the forces of good and evil that would en...
