Islam: general notes, P I

(Note: this is augment the reading and highlight main points.  In class we will focus on discussion)

If you are Muslim, you believe the Koran (about 6000 verses, shorter than the New Testament) is the true word of God, revealed to Muhammad over time from 610-632.   If you are not Muslim, you have to admit (though most of us will never truly experience this) that he must have been the greatest Arabic poet in history.  It is common throughout history to hear the beauty of the poetry of the Koran praised, there are numerous stories of converts being won over by its beauty.  If you don’t agree that Muhammad is the Messenger of God, then at the very least he was a brilliant statesman, poet, military strategist, and law maker. 

What we know about Muhammad comes from the Koran, various biographies of the Prophet, and the Hadith (the writings on the tradition of Islam).

Muhammad came from Mecca, which was ruled by a tribe known as the Quraysh (of which Muhammad was a part).  Mecca was “off the beaten path,” but the Quraysh had found a way to make it at least a minor commercial center.  Arabia was polytheistic, with over 360 different deities.  There was a supreme God called Allah, but he was more an impersonal creator/sustainer alongside the other gods. 

We’ll be reading in the book about Muhammad’s life, and the development of Islam over the centuries.  Each class we’ll have a few discussion questions, and we’ll spend some time going over the important aspects of each chapter.

The Quraysh bought up statues of all the deities, had them put in a large cube or Kabba, and Arabs made pilgrimages to Mecca to worship the various deities.  This brought money to the tribe, and made Mecca an important city.  Muhammad was orphaned when young, and his uncle Abu Talib raised.  Talib was powerful and protected Muhammad early on after his religious teachings started to anger the Quraysh authorities.

Muhammad would often head into the desert and find a hill or quiet place to reflect.  During one such outing in 610 he heard a voice commanding him “Recite!”  He ultimately started either reciting or writing what he heard, and this would continue until his death.  The Koran is the total of these recitations. 

Muhammad’s message was dangerous to the authorities:

His monotheism wasn’t new, but the growing popularity of his movement of submission – Islam means submission – created threats to the Quraysh method of making money off polytheism, especially when he would preach to pilgrims.   By 622, with his protector dead and his confrontational style angering more and more people, it was too dangerous to remain; he left, with about 200 followers to Medina (250 miles from Mecca.)  That is the first year in the Muslim calendar (though their years are based on lunar months, so they have had more years than we have since then).

Here Muhammad built a community based on his religious teachings, and worked to create law, and a teaching of ethics.  One goal for all Muslims was Jihad which meant for Muhammad first and foremost to fight the good fight of faith and not give in to the ways of the world.  Stay moral, virtuous and in God’s path – that is your battle.  There was also “lower jihad” which was a kind of just war theory.  Muhammad was explicit: never make war when your enemies want to make peace, never be an aggressor in a war, never try to force people to become Muslims. 

Muhammad also recognized the Jews and Christians as sister religions, “people of the book.”  He claimed that Allah was the same god as those worshiped by Jews and Christians, but the Jews were wrong in not recognizing Christ’s role as a prophet, and both were wrong in not accepting that Muhammad was the messenger of god.  He demanded tolerance of all religions.   For the most part, this meant that the Islamic world was rather cosmopolitan (unlike the persecutions in the Christian world).

But what about claims the Koran demands to kill the infidels, or stories of brutal executions of Jewish tribes?

In the early years of Islam, the Quraysh wanted to crush this new community.  They made war on Muhammad in Medina, and due to political factors (e.g., Jewish tribes in Medina betraying Muhammad and siding with the Quraysh) there were things today are clearly atrocities.  However, Muhammad allowed many tribes – Jewish and Arab – to simply leave when Arab custom would have demanded enslaving them and executing large numbers.  He was criticized as being too lenient.  This was not about religion, but politics.  Also, most of the verses in the Koran that seem to suggest it is OK to kill non-Muslims are, when read in context, tempered by either a specific issue (e.g., talking about a war with the Quraysh) or later verses that essentially say that this should stop if the enemy is willing to make peace.  There is nothing inherently more violent about Islamic teachings than of Christian or Jewish teachings, and Muhammad was far less violent than Arab traditions at the time.  The Koran is insistent on pluralism and tolerance, and indeed Muhammad early on co-existed with people of other faiths.

Ultimately, the Muslims would do the miraculous and defeat the Quraysh and gain control of Mecca.  Despite Arab custom which would have meant death and slavery to the Quraysh, Muhammad allowed them to convert, and many became ardent Muslims.  The Kabba was emptied of the idols and images and became a site where only Allah was honored.  Pilgrimages continued, but they became Muslim pilgrimages, and indeed, as we’ll see later, one of the pillars of Islam.

After Muhammad:  After Muhammad Islam, like most religions, veered from its original course and was manipulated by various political figures who wanted to use it to justify their rule or their conquests (leading to interpretations of Jihad that seemed to allow for aggression).  Early on Muhammad’s rather radical attempt to liberate women was put aside by successors who, while not going so far as to embrace Arabic customs that treated women as property (Muhammad actually expanded rights of inheritance, divorce, etc. for women), did put them in a lower class.  This is not from Islam, but from how it was twisted within Arabic culture at the time.  Over time various theological divisions arose, leading to the equivalent of inquisitions, reformist movements, and sects like the Sufis which practice a mystical form of Islam.

Generally: In the decisions that took place after Muhammad’s death, the leader was political, separated from the religious authority of Muhammad (though a few tried to reclaim such authority).  The idea was that Muhammad was God’s messenger, those who would run the community would be charged with enforcing Koran and the teachings of Muhammad, not making their own newly inspired laws.  This lead to the Caliphates, or rulers of the Islamic world which was one large empire, but often decentralized and full of rivalries (we won’t get into detail here – though some detail will arise later as we talk about Mideast politics).

The Golden Age of Islam is recognized as the Abbasid Caliphate from 750-1258, which made the Islamic world a rival of China’s in terms of science, civilization, and wealth.  It was prosperous, made scientific and philosophic advances, generally cosmopolitan and tolerant, and could have, if history had been otherwise, lead the way for the Islamic world to modernize first.  But a series of crusades from Christian Europe (which was relatively barbaric) and the Mongols from the East soon led to the rise of a militarist mentality to defend the Islamic world, and ultimately the Ottoman Empire, essentially a conservative military dictatorship that fought against modernism and used Islam to secure its claim to rule took over.  Note: in thinking about the future of Islam, there is in the past a tradition of tolerance and openness to secular ideas which can be built upon, and which is more true to the teachings of the Prophet than the extremist views you see from terrorist organizations.

Succession controversy:  Another major problem was that Muhammad’s death in 632 was unexpected.  Most expected one of his first converts, Ali, to be made Caliph.  But Abu Bakr was chosen instead (Ali was not even invited to the decision making session), and Abu Bakr made strict rules to prevent familial succession (Ali was related to Muhammad).  This lead to a division as the “Party of Ali” (Shia) refused to recognize the legitimacy of Abu Bakr.  Those who supported Bakr became the Sunni, while supporters of Ali, who developed a variety of different traditions we’ll talk about later, became the Shi’ite.  Ali did become Caliph late in his life, but was assassinated, as the divisions remained (Abu Bakr’s followers, as well as one of Muhammad’s wives, Aisha, opposed Ali).  Ali’s son and some of his followers were butchered in a battle at Karbala, and every year you’ll see this re-enacted in Karbala, Iraq, as often the faithful will cut themselves and bleed to honor those who fell.  We’ll talk more about the differences between Sunni and Shi’a later one.  In general, due to the movements of the leaders, the Shi’a became prominent in Iraq (Najaf, the areas south of Baghdad), and among the non-Arab populations in Persia (which would become Iran).