The History of Islam

Introduction

Eastweek magazine, March 11, 2002, containing the opening of a story. It said, after a suicide attack by a Palestinian woman injured three Israeli soldiers, Israel’s tanks and helicopters moved into two densely populated refugee camps on the West Bank. It was the worst escalation yet in fighting that has raged for 17 months. Among the 20 Palestinian dead was a nine-year-old Palestinian girl. A second suicide bomber struck Saturday night in Jerusalem, killing at least nine people, including a one-year-old. That kind of quote could be ripped out of a news magazine or a newspaper really scores and scores of times over the last couple of years. Violent uprisings, military action, homes destroyed, people wounded, people killed, and even innocent children and babies kill. Why? It’s a very emotional matter, it’s a very complex matter.

And that is in part why we’ve gathered in these series of lessons to consider some things that have a connection to the Palestinian conflict. Why is there such a bitter conflict between Jews and Palestinians? Who are the Palestinians and what is their connection to Islam? How did the religion of Islam come to be so dominant in the Middle East? And what, if anything, does religion have to do with this conflict in Palestine between the Israelis and the Palestinian people, as well as the total Middle East conflict. What is the religious connection? Well, these are some of the questions we’ll address tonight as we continue this series of talking about Muslims, Jews, and Christians searching for answers in the face of conflict. We’re trying to accomplish two things in this series, and we’re ending tonight much of the first goal, and that is to examine the background and the history, the roots of these three faiths.

It’s important to understand something about the past, something about the history of Judaism and Islam to understand what’s going on today and the various conflicts. It’s also important for us not just to consider this information from merely an academic standpoint, but to use this information to make our own investigation, which will lead to our own conclusions. Why do you believe in the Bible if you believe it’s from God? Why do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God if you so do that? Why, if a person believes in Mohammed as the seal of the prophets, that he does that? Why does a person believe that the Quran is authoritative and from God? We must have a reason for that which we believe. And if we’re going to have a reasonable belief, we have to make a reasonable investigation.

I trust that the material that we’ve been looking at will fill in some gaps. We are oftentimes media dependent for our opinions and our beliefs, and that’s not always good. Because when it comes to religious issues, and sometimes they’re sensitive and they’re complex, the media glosses over those because people in the media aren’t really well versed in those things. It’s sort of like a kindergarten student talking about trigonometry. Well, there’s some numbers and there’s some letters, and that’s about all they can observe about trigonometry or algebra. And so it is when media talk, uh, media people talk about religious matters. They’re just not well versed in it. And there are some important gaps, some things that are missing in the current discussion about Islam and Judaism and its intersection with Christianity.

And hopefully, we’re providing some answers to fill in those gaps so that we can all make intelligent choices, we can all make decisions based upon reasonable things to believe in. I appreciate your interest so far. And hopefully we’ll continue to accomplish that. And our reaction to world and even national events with these religious overtones should not just be some kind of emotional reaction, but they should make us think about these problems to the point that it challenges our own beliefs about things, and it makes us to think, makes us cause us causes us to think about our own spiritual destiny and whether we believe the right things and where we’re headed. Tonight we’re going to continue looking at the history of Islam. We’ll complete the study of it, looking at how it expanded and grew and what’s happened even up to present day with the Islamic civilization.

1. The Origins of Islam in Arabia

But we need to review a little bit first, where last night we began to talk about the origins of Islam that has to do with a particular place in the world. Islam is a religion that actually has a geographic home here in the Middle East. Last night we began to talk about the life in these years in the seventh century in the Arabian Peninsula that was dominated by Bedouin tribesmen, people who are nomadic, who are organized into tribes, who were warring, who were fragmatic, fragmented, and it was this world, this culture into which Mohammed was born. It was a polytheistic world. They believed in many gods. They worshiped many gods of nature, and Mohammad came along teaching something that was completely different. Mohammed was born in 570.

And at the age of 40, according to Muslim tradition, he began to receive a series of revelations that Muslims teach came from God through the angel Gabriel. These revelations he recorded in bits and pieces, not in one writing, but just on occasion. He would write on a piece of stone, a piece of animal skin, a bone or a rock. These were collected after his death by his followers and formed into one book, which we know today as the Quran. And in these messages, the main thing that Muhammad taught was that, opposed to what most people in the Arabian Peninsula believed, there was not many gods, but there was only one God. Allah. He was rejected first in Mecca, his basically his home. What he was saying went against the grain of their economy, because people brought their gods once a year in a pilgrimage to Mecca.

It cut against their whole way of living because they were organized into tribes and had a hierarchy of chiefs, and he taught an equality, a brotherhood for the people. And so he was not well received early on. He had to leave finally Mecca, and he and his small band of followers went to live in Medina. Because there he was invited because they needed someone to come and pull them together. They had been divided and they had been warring among themselves, and they’d heard about this man, and they want him to come and help them. And so he came to Medina, where he not only grew in his influence religiously, but also politically and socially. We read in the book People and Cultures of the Middle East by Daniel Bates and Amal Rasam, and I want you to know that many of the references I quote involve Arabic writers because I try to be just as fair as I can be to get a fair, unbiased, objective opinion about these things.

And it’s interesting what these even these Arab historians have to say. They’re right, where is a Mecca, Muhammad and his followers had given rise to a new religious sect. In Medina, they forged a state. From this point on, to be a Muslim meant at once to adhere to a faith or a religion, and to be a member of a political community. The dual nature of Islam was thus established early and remains throughout. We’ve made this point before, and we’ll continue to look at it because it’s a major point in understanding Islam and in comparing it to Christianity. And that is to be a Muslim from early on all through today to modern times. It means not only just to have a personal faith, but also to have a way of life that, if given an opportunity, will dominate a culture.

That Islam is something that affects not just people’s religious beliefs, but also their economics and their politics. And in a situation where Islam is allowed to completely flourish, Islam dominates the culture. A place like Saudi Arabia is a good example of that. This dual nature of Islam. We’ll keep coming back to this. Muhammad grew in his influence, not just in Medina, but also among the other tribesmen throughout Arabia. It was as if they were waiting for someone to pull them together, and they begin to accept his message and his teaching, and they’re beginning to rally around him, and he grew in his influence, and eventually he began to have conflict with the Meccans, even military conflicts with them, but eventually he overcame their forces and they marched in in 630 and 6.30 into Mecca and they capitulated and basically with just a very small fight, they was able to take over the city.

2. The Period of Expansion

And because Muhammad was lenient with the Meccans, they began to open up to his teaching, and eventually they were converted and they accepted Islam. He died in 632, two years later. That’s where we left last night with the birth of Islam. But that’s just the beginning of Islam. And what happens after Mohammed dies is that they enter into a four-part series, a four-part period in their history that begins with an incredible expansion that we ended with last night that took place in really just about a hundred years. After Muhammad died, there was some controversy about who was to take his place as leader. Everyone knew that there needed to be one cohesive leader to pull the new Muslims together, but Muhammad had not left any instructions as to who should take his place or how they should arrange this.

And so there was some controversy about this early on. But eventually a man by the name of Abu Kubar, who was a very close associate, early convert of Muhammad, became the leader or the caliph of the Muslim organization. And this brought in the period of expansion. As we noted last night, the Bedouin people were accustomed to making rage for plunder. They would go up into Persia. They would go up into Syria near Palestine. Because their land was so barren and they were in need of resources. At times they would move into other countries, raid them, and bring back belongings to sustain themselves with. And this did not change when people began to convert to Islam under Muhammad’s teaching. This continued. Matter of fact, it accelerated. Because not only were they trying to rave for plunder, they were also spreading their new civilization, their new organization under the teachings of Muhammad.

And their new faith, there was one God, and that God was Allah. They faced a situation where these territories were ripe for the pickings. The Eastern Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire was weakening during these years, politically and militarily. The Persian Empire was weakening in these years. And thus they were right pickings, the territories that they control. And so the Muslims began to expand out of the Arabian Peninsula and push into these territories. As we noted last week, sorry, last night, that it was around the Medina and Mecca area in which they were followers of Muhammad in these years in which he was living upon the earth. But soon after his death, they began to push out of this area up into other territories. And I want you to note how rapid the Islamic civilization moved.

In 636, they pushed into Syria, which included Palestine then. And they began to plunder and invade and also to settle there. And this is the beginning of the Palestinian population that we see today. After the uh Jews were dispersed out of Israel, dispersed out of Judea and Galilee during the days of the first century after the close of the New Testament. Only a few Jews remained in Palestine. The ones who were left were people like the Samaritans that you read about in the New Testament, who were a mixed breed of people. And so there was really no strong race or group of people who were living in Palestine until the Muslims from Arabia pushed up into this territory. And they assimilated these peoples that were living in Palestine, and they became the dominant people.

And that’s why today the people who live in Palestine, who are not Israelis, are Palestinians, but culturally they are Arabs and they are Muslims generally in their religion. And their religion reflects this because they began to push up from Arabia. And this answers, and we addressed this, I think, last night or night before, why Jerusalem is a holy city to the Muslims. Why is this an important part? Well, because during his lifetime, tradition of the Islamic people teaches that Muhammad was transported there. He met Moses and Jesus, and he had a vision of the seven heavens. And so along with Mecca and Medina, Jerusalem is the third holy site to the Muslim people. In 637, they pushed into what we know as Iraq today, which was part of Persia then, in 641 into the rest of Persia, in 646, they pushed into Egypt, and they began their very effective march across North Africa, taking the rest of North Africa by 699.

And then in 711 they crossed over into the Iberian Peninsula, to what we know as Spain today, and they conquered Spain, and they held Spain for years and years and years. They were turned back at the mountain range that separates the Iberian Peninsula from the rest of Europe. And if they had not been turned back by some early leaders in what we know today as France, they they probably would have pushed on in to Europe because things were ripe for the Pikings there too, politically and religiously. And we also know that by 712 they had pushed into India. And that’s why today there are Muslim people in India, and that’s why back early in the 20th century they formed Pakistan as a separate nation from India, because there were so many Muslims and they were always fighting with the Hindus, and so they organized Pakistan so there would be peace among these people, and the Muslims could have Pakistan and the Hindus have India, but it didn’t solve the problem, did it?

3. How Did Islam Spread? A Political Military Operation

It’s impressive, no doubt. That in about a hundred years they conquered this territory and they brought in their civilization and their religion. How did they do this? This is a period in their history that is quite controversial. And there are a lot of misunderstandings about it. How they conquered these lands and spread their civilization. But the answers are there, how they did this. How did Islam spread? We understand that this is basically a political military operation. Just like the uh conquering forces of Alexander the Great for the Greeks. Just like the campaigns of the Romans. Just like the campaigns of the Babylonians and the Assyrians, you read about in the Old Testament. Just like the campaigns that have taken place through history with certain groups of people.

They become strong, they become powerful, they become motivated, and they push into weaker peoples and they seize territories. It’s a political military operation. One thing that helped them was that they did some things that was smart. And that is, they would seize property by the leaders of these territories, but they respected personal property. And for many of the masses of people, they treated them in such a way that they got their support. They were hard on the leaders, but kind of the people on many occasions. They brought an efficient government with them. The Persian government and the Byzantine government had just waned.

Probably in part because of Muhammad’s influence. He taught them how to run an efficient community. And they spread this. And, and this might surprise some people, they generally allow Jews and Christians to live among them in peace. Even Jewish historians will note this. Some people have the idea because of watching so many stones being thrown and rockets being launched into Palestine that Jews and Muslims have always fought like that. No. They haven’t.

But it is not accurate to say that Muslims and Jews have always fought one another and never gotten along. Now there were some conditions to this, serious conditions. And that is that these non-Muslims were taxed. Now, all Muslims had to pay a tax, but the non-Muslims had to pay a higher tax. It was a lower tax than what they were paying to the Byzantine and Persian empires. But they had to pay a tax. And if they would pay that tax, they would be protected by the Muslim forces. As a matter of fact, Jews and Christians living in their communities who paid the tax. If they were invaded by somebody else, the Muslims would protect them. But that’s your option. You could convert to Islam. Or you could pay the higher tax.

But if you didn’t do either one of those, well, that was it. This is a statement by one military leader of the Muslims as they were pushing up into six, uh, up into uh uh Persia. Remember, they took Persia about this time. Uh Khalid, the Muslim commander, said to a Persian governor in 634, this is quoted by uh Will Durant, accept Islam, he told this governor, and thou art safe, else pay tribute. The people is already upon thee, loving death, even as thou loveth life. They were a vicious military force when they pulled the swords out. But they gave the people an opportunity to live among them under their control. And if they did that, they would protect them. But if they resisted them, the Muslims could, of course, be quite brutal.

4. A Form of Christianity Weak and Formalized

Which is exactly what the Babylonians did and the Assyrians did, and the Romans did, and the Greeks did, and nations have done every since the beginning of time. Also, something took was taking place. This was after the Roman Empire had embraced Christianity, and basically, after they had uh infiltrated Christianity, and Christianity had infiltrated the Roman Empire, and as a result of this coming together, it weakened Christianity. And many people jumped on the bandwagon, and though they really didn’t know what they believed, they just became a Christian because it was the thing to do in Rome now. And so what happened in North Africa and up and through Palestine, there were people who were claiming to be Christians, but their form of Christianity was weak and it was formalized.

They were going through the motions. They really didn’t know the word of God. They really didn’t know what they believed and why they believed it. They merely submitted to the to the Roman hierarchy of the Roman church that was growing at this time. And they were religiously easy pickings for the teachings of Mohammed. And they created in these places they went, Islamic communities that were a well-organized, well-ran, peaceful communities. And eventually, the people who lived in these areas converted. And it’s impressive the permanence of the spread of Islam from the early 600s to the early 700s in a hundred years. Because as you look at this map today, and you consider this territory, excluding Spain, which is not controlled by Muslim people today, but when you look at this territory, even today, Islam is the dominant religion across North Africa in the Middle East to the doors of India.

5. The Golden Age of Islamic Civilization

Even today, all these many years later, 13, 1,400 years later, it stayed the dominant influence. And this ushered in the second period of Islamic era of Islamic civilization. That is, its golden age, which is dated from about the 8th century to the 11th century. There were a series of dynasties that began to exercise control over the Islamic Empire.