While this was the reality of the relationship between religion and politics, leading theologians went out of their way to demonstrate the opposite as a way to uphold their credibility. They have consistently done so through history, thereby creating the impression that religion and politics were more closely intertwined than they actually were. Not surprisingly, Orientalists—whose view of the world is driven by texts—fall easily into the trap of not separating religious claims from actual reality. That said, there are examples of more practically minded theologians, such as al-Ghazali (1058–111), who openly advocated a division of labor between the caliph and the sultan.

XREF: Connects to Orientalist critique in Said's Orientalism — the textual bias that conflates religious claims with reality.

Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politi…, loc. 294