As far back as textual evidence can take us in Islamic civilization, the ulama understood Vico’s point well. As Ibn Rushd and Aristotle before him insisted, rhetoric was the tool that the elect employed to move the masses toward what benefited them and away from what harmed them. To dissuade the vulgus from a sin like usury, what could shame them into cringing reconsideration more than the Prophet of God himself equating the least collection of interest with mounting one’s own mother? By positive contrast, a tired mosque imam, perhaps not as eloquent as he had once hoped, might find great
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