Rise and Growth of Islam

Introduction

Well, good morning and thank you for being here. And I want to also join in welcoming visitors. The response last night was just so encouraging. I appreciate it so much, and that your presence today also says that you’re interested and you’re open. And that is such an encouragement to me as well as those who have put this together and planned it, and we appreciate your turnout so much. It’s it’s a beautiful day, and coming out of winter, living in the DC area, I so appreciate the weather. And uh this morning, I walked over here from Bob and Arlene’s house, and I just I want to say, first of all, that I did it because the weather was nice and I just wanted to get outdoors, but the real reason I did it is because Bob’s father, J.D.

Harkryder, who’s 99 years old, has been walking over here to the church building for the services, and I was not about to let him show me up. So I’ll walk this morning. Uh, and if he can do it, I can do it. So uh so glad that you’re here also. You know, this is really the first time after thinking about a little bit that I’ve spent time in Orlando in a neighborhood. I I’ve passed through Orlando, I’ve come to a couple of amusement parks, and and years ago even spent a night in a motel over here uh near Disney World, and I’m trying to cover for last night about that. Um you know it’s different when you’re just a tourist or you’re passing through. Uh it’s very different than when you come and you stay at somebody’s house and you uh go through the neighborhood and you meet local people.

That’s a completely different experience. And I really feel already after just only about 36 hours uh living among people of Orlando that I understand Orlando a lot more.

Unfortunately, a lot of people, when it comes to the religion of Islam, only have a drive-by perspective. They get it through the television or an occasional newspaper or internet article. And it’s just a cursory look at Islam and even the Arab Islamic culture. And you really can’t have the proper response to Islam unless you get to know it better. And that’s the purpose for this series this weekend is to take a closer look and understand things so that we can have the right response. Last night we studied about the beginning of Islam, how that Mohammed was born in 570 AD, and that according to Muslim tradition, in 610, at the age of 40, he began to receive revelations from God, which were eventually formed into what is known after his death as the Quran.

And the main message that Muhammad had, according to Muslim teaching, is that there was only one God, and he attempted to turn those of the Arabian culture to the belief that there was only one God and turn away from the idolatry and polytheism that people were involved in. We saw also last night how that Mohammed led the rise of an Islamic community first in Medina, and then it spread to other parts of Arabia, including Mecca, and how that they built their whole society and their whole civil order around his teachings, his religious teachings, and it became an inclusive system, and he became the leader of the Islamic community. And this morning, in the first session, we’re going to look at a phenomenal historical development, and that is the rise and the growth of Islam.

When you look at this map right here, you can see that there are some shaded gray areas. In about a hundred years after the death of Mohammed in 732, after about a hundred years following his death, the Arab Islamic culture had moved out of Arabia and spread across, as you can see here on this map, North Africa all the way to Spain and even eastward to the very threshold of India. That was remarkable. How did this happen? Why did this happen? And it’s an important part of Arab Islamic history. That’s what we’re going to talk about, first of all. And actually, this morning, in addition to looking at that, we’re going to examine very quickly an overview of the four periods of the Arab Islamic civilization.

This first period can be called expansion that lasted in the 7th and 8th centuries after the time of Christ. And then they entered into what is commonly called the Golden Age, which is in sort of the high Middle Ages that we talk about from a European perspective, and that it was a flourishing civilization. But then, beginning around the 11th century, leading up to close to our age, was a decline that the Arab Islamic civilization experienced. And then, and this is what we’re most accustomed to and aware of, sometimes even in a painful way, the reawakening of the Arab Islamic culture and all the ramifications of that, positive, negative, and neutral, and so forth. And why does this happen? Well, we start, though, with this expansion. As we do so, it’s important at this juncture to make a distinction in terminology.

1. Arab Is Ethnic, Muslim Is Religious

Whenever a person uses the expression Arab, let us understand that this is an ethnic distinction. It’s like referring to somebody who is Asian or somebody who’s Anglo-Saxon that Arab is an ethnic distinction and it describes somebody who is from the Arabian Peninsula, whether it be Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen, any of those countries. Or it can be somebody who speaks Arabic, who may not even live in the Arabian Peninsula. People who live in Egypt. People who live in Iraq speak Arabic, but they don’t live properly in the Arabian Peninsula. And so oftentimes one of the most dominant characteristics of a of a person’s ethnicity is the language that they use. And so Arab is an ethnic expression for somebody who either lives on the Arabian peninsula and if they do they speak Arabic.

Or they live in some other part of the world usually the Middle East and they speak Arab and thus it’s an ethnic category. But the expression Muslim is a religious distinction. It has nothing to do inherently with the person’s race or ethnicity. It has to do with their religious belief system and their practice. And we saw the beginning of Islam last night and it’s the one who follows the teachings of Muhammad and if you’re a Muslim you may be an Arab but you may not be an Arab. It is true that most Arabs are Muslim. However, in the world, most Muslims are not Arab. There are more Arabs who do not live in the Arabian, I’m sorry, there are more Muslims who do not live in the Arabian Peninsula, and more Muslims who do not speak Arab than those who do.

And we’ll talk about this at the very end of the second session today. You’ll understand that, because there are many Muslims that live in India, China, Indonesia, and other places. And really, one of the best ways to understand this distinction is to look at some Americans who are not Arab by descent, who have embraced Islam. And really, just because sports, you know, is such a big thing in our society, there are two people that come to mind. One is Muhammad Ali, and the other one is Karim Abdul Jabbar. Both men who were Americans, whose ethnicity is African American, but at some point in their life they embraced the teaching of Islam, and as a result of that, they changed their names. And so both of those gentlemen are not Arabs, but they are Muslims.

2. A Leadership Crisis: Shia and Sunni

And you know that there are some Arabs who are not Muslim. They actually are of some other religious persuasion, even some who claim to be Christian. And so as we go from this point on, let us understand there’s a distinction there. One is an ethnic distinction, one’s a religious distinction. However, because Islam starts in Arabia, because it is the dominant belief system among Arab people. We talk about this civilization as the Arab Islamic civilization, especially historically. What happens regarding the expansion? After Muhammad’s death, there was a leadership crisis. Muhammad had never left instructions regarding who should take over his leadership of the Islamic community that now really encompassed much of Western Arabia. Many of these Bedouin tribes. And so there was somewhat of a controversy. And so the elders of the Arab Islamic society got together and sort of hammered out a solution.

The first leader of the Arab Islamic civilization after Mohammed was a man by the name of Abu Bakar, who was one of the first converts of Muhammad’s teachings. But there were some who did not like the idea that Abu Bakar had been selected. There was an element among the Muslims that said that the leadership of our community should be passed on through Muhammad’s family. They believed that there was something special about Muhammad’s family. Well, Muhammad, though he had several children, did not have any male children who survived childhood. He only had grown daughters. And so they turned to his first cousin who had married one of his daughters. His name was Ali, and they believed that Ali should be the first leader after Mohammed. But the majority said no.

They wanted somebody older, they wanted somebody that had been one of the first converts, and so they chose Abu Bakar. This leader became known as the caliph. Caliph just technically means lieutenant. In other words, the person who stepped up in Mohammed’s place, who had been one of his assistants to lead the people of the Arab Islamic civilization. And so what happens is this tension in the Islamic community from the very beginning. And it has to do with the idea that those who believed Ali should be the leader, they were suspicious of those who were the caliphs. And the first three caliphs, Abu Bakar and the two who followed him, were seen as really impostors. They were seen as illegitimate leaders of the Arab Islamic community. And this had incredible ramifications.

Because think about what we talked about at the end last night. In the Islamic community, the civil and the religious leadership was all one. So it’s very important, not just from a civil standpoint, but religious standpoint, who the caliph was. And it’s because of this controversy that the third caliph was assassinated. Finally, Ali is selected to be the caliph. He is the fourth caliph. However, the controversy was not put to rest. There was bad blood that had been spilled in this situation. Finally, Ali is assassinated by those who oppose him. A civil war breaks out. And then Ali’s son, who became the next caliph, Hussein, now you begin to see the importance of these names in Islamic history. His son Hussein has to abdicate his position as of caliph, and in a battle is killed.

And this has happened unfortunately all through history, hasn’t it? Is that you’ve got two groups of people here who clash. And then they reach a point where blood is spilled. And when blood is filled, then it goes from being a controversy, and it goes to being, well, an all-out war. It’s like a vendetta. Because then people just can’t get over that. And so the hostility just really becomes very intense between those who had supported Ali and those who had not supported Ali. And thus a schism is produced in Islam. One that occurs within just a few years after Muhammad’s death and that still exists today. Those who had supported Ali were known as the party of Ali, or commonly the Shia. And so from the very beginning, there is this division between the Shia Muslims and everybody else.

There is a name for everybody else, but eventually those who were not Shia Muslim were known as Sunni Muslims. Sunni means tradition. And so everybody that’s not a supporter of the party of Ali became known as the traditional ones. And so Sunni Islam is the expression for mainstream Islam. And Shia Islam are those who are descendants of those who supported Ali. The initial difference was, as you can see here, at first political. Who should be the civil leader? But as we saw last night, you can’t separate that, can you? There are some variations in the beliefs and practices of Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims. From one perspective, they are not major. There are some different practices and habits regarding praying, some different habits regarding almsgiving, and also some holy days that are celebrated by the Shia that’s not celebrated by Sunni Muslims.

But this bad blood develops between the two groups because there is this violent power struggle. And this is not a new chapter in history. Whether you’re talking about people of the Middle East or people of Africa or people of Europe or people of the Americas, this is just the same story over and over in human experience, isn’t it? People struggling for power and as a result making enemies and shedding and then hostility developing, and this happens early on in Islam. And since government is seen as the protector of religious faithfulness, those who were of the party of Ali said that those who were leading Islam were leading it in the wrong direction. That the only way to stay right with Allah is to stick with Muhammad’s family leading us.

And so, as they were led by others, they believed that that was an apostasy, that that was a departure from the true way. And so that’s why there is a religious zeal behind this. Because how can you know that the community is headed in the right direction without the proper leadership? Remember what we saw last night that’s reinforced by this quote by Abu Azaz in his book, Islam and Arab Nationalism. Islam in its precise sense, it’s a social order, a philosophy of life, a system of economic principles, a rule of government. A little bit more about the Shia. They believe that the family of Mohammed had an inner light. This is probably the major difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims from a, I guess you could say a theological standpoint, that Sunni Muslims believe in the sole authority of the holy writings.

While Shia Muslims believed that in addition to the holy writings, there is an inner guidance that the family of Muhammad had, and that you can continue to get guidance from Allah through Muhammad’s family. Now, of course, after a while, that family, you know, just became, you know, multiplied and became less and less of an influence within Islam, and so that that lost its its influence, lost its significance. In most places where Islam spreads, there are is some representation of Shia Muslims. But in most places, the Shias are in the minority. Today, 85% of Muslims are Sunni Muslims. And at some point it’s been even less than that. There are some exceptions. Shia Muslims have been the majority in Iran, that we call Iran today, for uh really a long, long, long time.

It was really ancient Persia, and it’s significant to note something. Um it really helps us to understand some current events. First of all, Iran is dominated by Shia Islam, not Sunni Islam. And so religiously, Iran is sort of on the outs with the rest of the Middle East. Second of all, Iran ethnically is made up of people who are not Arabs. Iran is made up of people of Persian descent. Remember your studies of the Old Testament and the how you learn about the empire of Persia and how important they were and the closing chapters of the Old Testament. It’s that ancient people that makes up, you know, the you know the background, the ancestors of modern Iran. Iran, in Iran, the language is not Arabic, it’s farsi.

And so Iran, people of Iran, don’t by nature speak Arabic. They are not Sunni Muslims. They do not have an Arabic culture and background. They’re Persian and they’re Shia Muslim. And so that’s why Iran is just a little bit, just sort of on a different scale or a different level or a different track than the rest of the Middle East. And sometimes you see that reflected in political events. But it’s interesting, there is one place where there has been for a long, long, long time, a Shia majority. But the Shia have not been the ruling class. They have been, in a way, for centuries, off and on, been ruled by Sunni authorities. And so here you have a Sunni government, and you have a large Shia population.

And the place I’m talking about is Iraq. Until recently. Because of the overthrowing of Saddam Hussein’s regime, because democratic practices were implemented in Iraq in the last decade, and because they’ve had open elections, the government is mostly run now by Shia Muslims. While for many, many years, Sunni Muslims, including the regime of Saddam Hussein, although believe you me, Saddam Hussein was not a very good Sunni Muslim. And most Muslims would tell you that. But at least the regime was categorized as a Sunni Muslim regime. But now that’s been turned upside down, and that’s why, really, in the mid part of the decade, the last decade, the problems in Iraq after the initial overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime, the initial, the real problem in Iraq there for about two to three years was a civil war between Shia and Sunni.

3. The Expansion

Unfortunately, Americans found themselves right in the middle of that civil war. Because here’s a here’s a minority they’ve been used to ruling, and now they’re pressed down, and they’re going to have to be a non-ruling minority. And the Sunnis really resented that. There were periods where Sunnis were lobbying, you know, uh grenades into Shia neighborhoods. And so this difference goes all the way back to the time just a few years after the death of Muhammad. And so it has both a political and a religious overtone to it. Well, what about the expansion? As they’re going through this struggle, and there is a minority that sides with Ali and his followers, it does not impede the progress of the spread of the civilization. The Bedouin people, as we noted last night, had been practicing rage for plunder for some time.

Now it changes. Now they continue these raids, but they have an emerging unified civilization. Now they are unified politically. Now they are unified by their religious beliefs, they’re unified by their leaders, and now they’re not just raiding to raid for plunder, they have a cause that they want to spread. And that’s what we see after the death of Muhammad. The Arab Islamic civilization, with the spear point being the military, begins to spread. In 636, they make their way up into what we call Palestine today. By this point, uh, this area was ruled by the Eastern Roman Empire. The Jewish nation had been destroyed. The Jews had been dispersed. By 637, they reach into what we call Iraq today, which is ancient Persia. By 641, 637, where they reach up into Iraq, by 641, excuse me, they reach into what we call Iran today, which is ancient Persia.

By 646, they’ve reached the North African coastline, pushing into Egypt. By 699, they’ve reached all the way across North Africa. By 711 AD, they cross the Strait of Gibraltar and they invade Southwestern Europe. And they rule over for many, many decades most of Spain. They were called the Spanish Moors, and you can still see if you ever travel in Spain, you know, in the architecture and some other things, the evidence that there were Muslims who ruled, the Arabs ruled there at one time. By 712, they reached the border of India. And so from India and Persia in the east, all the way across Africa, even into Spain, the Arab civilizations, you can see here with religion, the teachings of Muhammad at their core, they reached that far in about a hundred years after Mohammed’s death.

It’s very, very impressive. Very impressive. How’d they do this? Tomorrow we’re going to talk about evidences. Both Islamic and Christian evidences. I’d like to insert now this point. One of the evidences that Muslim people give for the truthfulness of their religion is this historical development. That this was God blessing them, and this was proof that the teachings of Mohammed were true. That’s one of their evidences. Now I would just say at this point, what about Alexander the Great? His conquests were about as great and even quicker. Was God blessing his teachings? Alexander was a polytheist who worshipped idols. And wherever he went, he promoted Greek culture. Wherever he went, he promoted Greek literature, Greek architecture, and Greek gods. He built temples. And so we’ve seen throughout history a lot of empires rise and fall, and some be very victorious.

Does that mean that since they are victorious that God blesses their teachings? And certainly that was the dilemma that Israelites had regarding the success of Babylon in the Old Testament. I know Brother Harkwriters probably taught you that. That they were troubled the fact that Babylon, which was this terribly ungodly, you know, nation, you know, was having these victories and conquering people. And so I would counter that with the idea that if that’s your proof, then what about Alexander? You know, what about the Roman conquest, etc.? And these were people teaching that there are multiple gods, not one true God. But it’s quite impressive. How did they do this from a historical standpoint? And this is a question I had early on when I began to study this.

Well, understand that this is a political and military operation, not just a religious movement. This is a lot like the conquest of Alexander the Great. Because not only does he win these military battles, he believes in the superiority of Greek culture, and so he’s trying to spread Greek culture wherever he goes. And he does it quite successfully. That’s why you have in Egypt a city named Alexandria Egypt. And there are all kinds of Alexandrias all throughout the conquest of Alexander. This is not unlike what the British did in the 18th and 19th centuries, where the British Empire, with their military and then their economic and industrial prowess, and then with their educators and their religious ministers, spread British ways throughout Africa, throughout Asia, even earlier on in the Americas.

And this culture is a product of that. And so this is very similar to those kinds of movements. That you’ve got a people with a culture and with a religion, and they conquer and they spread it. It’s very similar. One of the things that Islamic leaders do is that they seize the property of leaders, but they respected personal property of those that they conquered, and as a result, that won them some favor. They also brought a very efficient government to task.

And as they spread, generally speaking, the Arab Islamic conquerors allowed Jews and Christians to live in peace. Now, I say there generally. That does not mean you will not read of the occasional Muslim commander getting very forceful and even ordering the slaughtering of a lot of people wholesale on certain occasions. But generally, the general policy and practice in these early years, these years of expansion, they allow Jews and Christians to live in peace. And this has been from early time, this has been really in recent times, a question. You know, how do Muslims view Jews and Christians? And there’s there’s there’s two different schools of thought. One is, and there are many statements in the Quran that reflect this, that Jews and Christians are not polytheists.

They believe in one God, and they are people of the book, Old and New Testaments, and as a result, we have a camaraderie with them, and they’re not an enemy, and we have to show them respect. And you have a lot of statements in the Quran like that, and you see a lot of examples of that in early Islamic history. It is, though, alive today that some Muslim scholars and some Muslim people believe that, especially Christians, because Christians believe in the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, that Christians are accused of not being monotheistic, but polytheistic, and that Jews and Christians, period, are not really people like us. And so that’s a controversy. There are some Muslims who stand in one position on that, some who stand in another.

But I will tell you early on in Islamic history, Jews and Christians were not destroyed just because they were Jews and Christians. I have read in Jewish history sources of Jewish villages being protected from attack by Muslim commanders. You know, history is not just simple. It’s complex in many ways. And you’ve got to dig a little deep to get the full picture. It is important to understand that though they did not force conversion with the sword in these early years. Please understand this is the historical perspective. You can say, well, I read this website last week where this guy said this. Well, that’s somebody living hundreds of years later, and that’s one person hovering over a keyboard in his mom and dad’s basement, I suppose. And so people will say and believe, you know, there’s different things that people say and believe and claim to be Muslim.

But regarding its history and its origin, they did not just in a wholesale way force people to convert or die. This is what they did do. You could convert to Islam and pay the alms that we’ll talk about later this morning. You cannot convert to Islam and pay a tax, pay tribute, which was a higher rate than if you were a Muslim. You got a tax break if you were a Muslim. If you refuse to convert, or if you refuse to pay the tribute, the tax, then they would kill you. They were implementing a civil society. Either cooperate by paying the tax, converting and joining us and paying a lesser tax. Still have the tax, a tribute. Or, yes, if you rebel against this, we will kill you.

This is a quote by a Muslim commander, Khalid, as he was leading an invasion of Persia, which we call Iran today in 634. He says, Accept Islam and thou art safe. Else pay tribute. People is already upon thee, loving death, even as thou loveth life. And so those are the options. And you know, think about it. Any civil authority gives everybody that choice. Either pay up and obey the laws or face the punishment. And that punishment is pretty severe, but that’s that was that those are the options there. We’ve already noted the Persian and Byzantine empires had weakened and a lot of the local people had been oppressed. What do empires do as they crumble? They become more oppressive to the citizens and they tax more heavily.

Because they’re running out of money. And they’re squeezing people in every way. And so when the Muslims came along, actually, the tribute money they required of non-Muslims, it was less than some of them were paying to the Byzantine Empire and less than they were paying to the Persians. And so they were willing to work with that. Also, the form of Christianity, which is hundreds of years after the close of the New Testament, the form of Christianity that you see in places like Egypt and Syria and up in Palestine, it was a very weak form. It was very formalized. A lot of rituals and traditions, and many people who claimed to be Christians didn’t understand anything hardly about Jesus Christ. They weren’t readers of the scriptures, and they had it, they had just jumped on the bandwagon because Christianity had gotten popular and they were not true converts.

4. The Golden Age

And so these were not people rooted and grounded in the truth of Jesus Christ and the faith of Jesus Christ. And so as this new civilization came in, they were they were prey to it. And the Arab Islamic leaders created very efficient communities, and most people, you know, converted in time. Just slowly after time, they were absorbed into this culture and adopted it. And thus we enter from the 8th to the 12th century, the golden age of the Arab Islamic civilization. If you visited planet Earth between the 8th and 12th centuries, this is in the Middle Ages, and you asked somebody, show me the most advanced civilizations on earth, they would take you two places China and Arabia. Their economies, their education systems, their civil governments, their art, their literature.

In China and Arabia, they were the most advanced on earth. It was not in Europe, believe you me.

Americas were sparsely populated at that point. And so this is a this is a golden age. Arab language replaces most local ones, and that’s why today, in this area that I showed you on the map, through a lot of that area, Arabic is the common language today. They had very effective political and economic organizations. Their economic organization was sophisticated. Their banking system was so sophisticated and so interconnected across the Arab Islamic world that you could draw a check in Baghdad in Iraq. You could draw a check in Baghdad, travel all the way through the Middle East across North Africa to Morocco and cash that check. You could find somebody that would take that check, that paper, and give you hard currency for it. That’s how advanced their banking system was.

And they didn’t have electronic communication back then, but they had communication, they had advanced transportation. It was quite impressive. And they also absorb from the Greeks and from the Persians, especially, Greeks and Persians. They absorb literature and philosophy and engineering and all kinds of scientific ideas, and they build upon those. And that’s why you have this era in human civilization where, you know, the Greeks had elevated civilization and developed some things, and the Romans came along and they developed some things. Just like earlier, the Egyptians had developed things, and we all stand technologically upon the shoulders of all these people. The Arabs have their turn, and the Arab Islamic civilization makes advances. First of all, in algebra.

But that’s who’s responsible there, at least in part, the Egyptians and then the Arabs for the advancements in algebra. And those of you who are technically minded, unlike me, you know. That’s just the building blocks of science right there. It really is. It’s so important. A lot of advancements in geometry, medicine, art, and also legal system. This is this is a flourishing, flowering civilization. Architecture is another, very unique. And here’s the point. Western civilizations, civilization generally hasn’t appreciated the accomplishments in the past of the Arab Islamic civilization and the impact that they had even on us through technology and things such as that. And there was this expectation among Muslims that the Arab Islamic civilization would just continue to improve and grow until it really dominated the world.

And that’s not unique. The Greeks thought the same. The Spanish thought the same. The Brits thought the same. Don’t we? Understand that though people of the West know little about this golden age and this advanced civilization, Arabs do. And most Muslims do, are very aware of this glorious past, and they’re very proud of it, and understandably so. That you know, in Western society, and in America in particular, there are a lot of people who think regarding this culture that it’s a group of people who just are savage, ignorant, and backward. When the truth was, you run the clock back a few centuries, it was our ancestors who were savage and backward. And the truth is, even today, this is not a backward savage civilization, generally speaking, and has a very impressive past, and that has to be respected and understood that at the heart of that past was the faith of Islam.

5. A Period of Decline

But what happened to it? Because I’ve made some references to European or Western society. But what shifted? Well, there is a period of decline to the era of Islamic civilization beginning in around the 12th century. Part of it was internal. And I’ve heard a lot of really good Middle Eastern scholars talk about this. That there was a there was an intellectual slumber that hit the Arab Islamic civilization. You sort of hear that talk about America today, you know, about how test scores are down and Americans aren’t, you know, American young people don’t want to learn and all that, which I don’t believe. I think they do. But you just hear this memoaning of the fact that there’s this intellectual laziness that’s going on. And that’s true.

The Arab Islamic civilization had advanced, and like any civilization, it gets very comfortable and it sort of goes to sleep. There was also religious orthodoxy, that there was this hammering out of everything that you were to believe as a Muslim, and it was just handed to people, and there was not a lot of dynamic questioning and scholarship. And so internally, this the civilization sort of you know gets soft, like societies do after they’ve been very successful. And then there were some external pressures too. First of all, from Asia, from Eastern Asia, there is a huge invasion of the Mongols in the 13th century. And they descended just like a tidal wave upon the Middle East, and especially in areas like Iran and Iraq, they were tens of thousands, but it’s thought to be probably hundreds of thousands of people killed by the Mongols, just slaughtered wholesale.

It was just one of the most vicious things that’s ever happened in human history. Greatly weakened their civilization. And then from Central Asia, migrate a group of people who were eventually known as the Ottomans or the Ottoman Turks, which have their base of operation in a land that today we call Turkey, which in New Testament times was called Asia Minor, where Paul the Apostle traveled and preached the gospel. But it’s interesting enough who these people were. They were Asians by ethnicity. But as they migrated southward toward the Middle East, they embraced Islam. And so they are Muslims, but they’re not Arabs. They are not of Arab descent. They are not of the Arab language initially, though they embrace it. And so they are non-Arab Muslims. And so there develops early on a tension between Arabs and Turks, even though they share the religion of Islam.

And they begin to rule the Middle East by 1700. They even push up as conquerors into Austria and almost push deep into Europe before they’re repulsed. And so the Ottoman Turkish Empire then becomes the face of Islam for the world. And they rule across the Middle East by 1700 and will have that rule for really a couple of hundred years almost. This is weakening the era of Islamic civilization. And then the thing that really weakened it was the rise of Europe. Beginning with the age of Columbus and what he did in 1492. And with the rise of nations like Portugal and Italy and Spain and the Dutch and Britain, or England and then Britain, and the French, obviously. European nations, especially Western European nations, began to develop technologies that the world had never seen in transportation and production and weaponry, and uh their their wealth and their military power just surpass everybody else in the world.

And so from 1500 all the way up to 1900, Europe just keeps climbing and getting more powerful and more wealthy and more advanced, and they leave the Arab Islamic civilization far behind. And so Europe begins to practice imperialism in places like the Middle East and in Africa. And as a result, they creep in with their power and their advancements, and the Arab Islamic civilization just really can’t stand up to it. But then, Europe does. What empires do, they shoot themselves in the foot. Europe participates in the early part of the 20th century in two world wars, where the European powers just almost destroy themselves. And America is dragged into both of those wars. And after the Second World War, the traditional European powers of Italy and the Dutch and especially the French and the and the British, they’re just nothing like they used to be.

6. The Reawakening of Islam

And there’s an opportunity for lands where they had been powerful before, for those people to rise up and exercise independence. And this helps to usher in this last period, the reawakening of Islam and the Arab nationalism that we’ve seen, especially in the 20th century. Jeffrey Perinder, an English uh historian, says in his book, World Religions these manifold reversals of fortune, the things we just looked at regarding the decline of Islam. These reversals of fortune create a crisis of thought and faith among Muslims. They shook their civilization to its very roots. The result has been a renewed grasp of the Islamic heritage that has both the political and religious side. And so, as the traditional powers in the Middle East, the Turks and then the Europeans, as they fade in the 20th century, Arab Islamic people see that as their opportunity to exercise not only their independence, but somehow try to restore themselves to former glory and power.

And so we have a reawakening. Several factors. They’re political independence movements after the Second World War, even before the Second World War, but also after the Second World War, those European powers can’t control what they used to control. They’re too weak. And so these many of these areas in the Middle East get independence. However, it’s important to note there is one group of people in the Middle East that never could muster up its independence. What we call the Palestinians. Egypt gets independence, Saudi Arabia gets independence, Iraq, Syria, Jordan. But a group of people living in what we call Palestine today, the Palestinians, they just couldn’t, they were just not organized. They just couldn’t get their act together to establish an independent, viable political state. They become vulnerable.

More on that in the morning. We look at the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Oil. You know that how important oil becomes in the 20th century. And so this gives the Arab nations that have oil, not all do, but the ones that have oil, this gives them not only prosperity, but also increased leverage in the world. This revival has a religious motivation behind it. Religious revival is also part of it. In the last half of the 20th century, especially, Islam has come alive. If you go back and look at statistics, in the mid-20th century, there are a lot of people who live in the Middle East who just didn’t say they practice their faith of Islam. But that has really resurged in the last 50 years. And it’s oftentimes been connected to political unrest.

And so anytime a group of people wants to change a regime, a group of people wants to they want to start a revolution, they will pick up the flag of Islam and wave it and say, this is the thing we need to do on the behalf of Allah, and this is what Allah wants us to do, and this is what we’ve got to do as Muslims. There’s also been this thing called pan Arabism, because, you know, even if you have differences, if there’s an outsider picking on you, what do you do? You band together, right? And so, especially the stronger Arab nations have, you know, taken up the side of their weaker Arab brethren. There’s been a renewed sense of their heritage and there’s an awareness of a brotherhood among Arabs.

And so there is this protectiveness they have of each other from nation to nation and people to people. And this is a growing political activism. And sometimes it is seen as, you know, us against the world, so to speak. And when you look at their history and what happened with the Turks and what happened with the Europeans, you can understand why they have that bonding mentality. It’s completely understandable. And then this brings it down to our age and to us. Since the Second World War, in the generations that are represented in this room. The Middle East has increasingly been a focal point of conflict and a focal point of change. Part of it is because during the Cold War, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, they were looking for allies.

They were looking for people to side with them. And the Middle East became an area where they were, you know, vying for influence and to get nations on their side. And also in the 20th century, there is a there is also a reawakening coinciding with the Arab Islamic reawakening of another ancient people connected to the Middle East, the modern state of Israel, which we will go back and look at how it started and what the conflict, what conflict resulted from the emergence of the modern state of Israel in the Middle East. And so this created more conflict in the Middle East. And because of Western nations being involved in influence in the Middle East and the economic activities and military activities, and especially the Western nations and the United States in particular being a bacon of Israel.

Many people in the Arab world became more and more resentful of the West. And a minority, and I want to emphasize a minority, an extreme minority, began to act out violently toward the West and toward the United States. And then by the end of the Cold War, with the United States being the lone superpower, the United States, as the most powerful nation of the world, economically and politically and militarily, became in a way the main target of those in the Middle East who were trying to reassert themselves as Arabs and as Muslims, and they saw enemies, the United States became, for whatever reason, understandably or not understandably, the United States became the target. Well, this is not just a current event review. Christians need to view these things.

Conclusion

These people who have been through so much in these events that have taken place from a spiritual and biblical perspective. I suppose that’s one of the hardest things to do as a human being is to walk in another person’s shoes, isn’t it? But there is a characteristic that you see among New Testament Christians. You see it with Jesus, and you see it with his followers. An attempt to walk in somebody else’s shoes to understand, to build a bridge, to open a door, because God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. The first Christians were told to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. That we need to look at these things that have happened and respond from a Christian perspective, primarily non-American one.

I wouldn’t want to trade our government, any administration, for any other government in the world. Very grateful to be in this society. But we have to first think like a Christian, non-American.

Because I want you to jar your memory a little bit. It wasn’t that long ago that in our society that people had a lot of hostility toward people of Japan. It wasn’t that long ago that people in our culture had great resentment of and trouble with people of Vietnam. And for many decades, as recent as just a couple decades ago, there was in our culture a great mistrust of and a great suspicion of and great trouble with Russians. What happens with time? Things change. And after the Second World War, the American culture began to interact with the Japanese culture, to where the American society and Japanese society, you know, just mesh together and politically and economically. And then interactions with Vietnam and now with Russia, people traveling to Russia and Russia being open.

And so when you think about Vietnam and Japan and Soviet Union and how that these cultures have clashed with American culture, we have to take the high road and we have to take the big picture and think like a Christian should think and realize that as cultures interact, there will sometimes be conflict. But we got to see the big picture. And more importantly, we’ve got to see beyond cultures conflicting. We have to see people. People of every race and ethnicity and nationality and background and any even a religious background. Remember Paul standing in Athens, talking to those idolaters, those Greek philosophers. And we have to see people as people. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians, the fifth chapter, for the love of Christ compels us, because we judge us, that if one died for all, then all died.

And he died for all. That those who lived should live no longer for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again. Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet we know him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away, but all things have become new. As a Christian. We’re different now because we’re in Christ. We’re unique. And we’ve got to look at people and respond to them the way Christ would have us to do, regardless of the great differences, of the hard feelings, of emotions, of bloodshed, even.

Bob?