Abstract
‘Institutions’ examines three institutions — the mosque, jihad, and the caliphate ℄ that have been common to all Muslim societies, while being different in practice in the various regions and periods of Islamic history. The building of a mosque, a place of worship, was a way of asserting Islam's victory over other religions, but Islam and its monuments were defined in direct relation to those of local religious traditions. The definition of jihad has long been contentious. Islamists believe that jihad must be waged by the community as a whole, to expand the borders of an Islamic state — a caliphate — led by a ‘caliph’.
