is situation of inequality of capital and power existed before the emergence of Islam in the Arab community, and during that emergence and through the civil war and afterward. The New Segment was able to gain some measure of power briefly in that time, but the great inequality favored the Traditional Segment throughout the entire period in question.
Mahmood makes clear that the question of economic power can not be viewed in isolation from other forms of power in society, particularly political power. The most wealthy determine the political process, and that truth held in the struggle between the New Segment and the Traditional Segment.
The coming of Islam to the Arab world, and then the victories of Muslim armies over their foes, presented great opportunities to Arabs economically. This was a deliberate process which was instituted in order to establish greater Muslim control over conquered areas:
The expansion, accomplished through jihad, was a movement for the purpose of gaining political control of the surrounding surplus-producing regions for the advantage of the merchants, who were the most visible components of the state, its leaders, organizers, administrators and commanders (125).
In other words, from the beginning of its expansion to other lands, then, Islam tied together the religious, the economic, and the political, and the Traditional Segment's merchants were themselves "warriors" in terms of the stronghold they gave Muslims in the conquered territories. The granting of economic opportunities to what became the New Segment was part of the Muslim strategy of dominating other lands and peoples.
At the same time that opportunities for wealth were opening to more and more Muslims--the New Segment--those opportunities were more limited than they appeared, because of the pre-existing conditions which favored the Traditional Segment which already had capital and knew how to exercise it to their benefit in rel...