God's Caliph: Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam is a book co-authored by Middle East Scholars and historiographers of early Islam Patricia Crone and Martin Hinds.

It argues the case that, as in Shi`ism, religious authority was concentrated in the head of state, rather than dispersed among learned laymen as in Sunnism.

[1] To Crone and Hinds, the Sunni pattern represents the outcome of a conflict between the caliphs and early scholars who, as spokesmen of the community, assumed religious leadership for themselves.

In contrast, this book argues that it is an archaism preserving the concept of religious authority with which all Muslims began.

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