As important as it is to understand the heart and soul of Mohammed, when we view his life we only observe the seed that produced today’s Muslim world. Whether the tree would produce fruit representative of the seed beneath it would be the responsibility of the leaders to follow.
The first pillar of Islam is known as the shahada, the Muslim profession of faith: “There is no god but God, and Mohammed is the messenger of God.” This declaration provides entrance into the Islamic faith. It was the second part of the shahada that would complicate the matter of producing a replacement.
Would this replacement also be the messenger of God? If not, would his role become that of answering the question, “What would Mohammed do?” How was the leader of Islam to be selected, and how would his authority be defined? Not unlike the disciples of Christ after the crucifixion, Islam’s first adherents were completely unprepared for the death of their prophet and leader. Just as no one stepped forward as a replacement for a miracle-working Jesus, none of Mohammed’s followers claimed to have a direct connection with Allah. Who would be chosen?
In a moment of incalculable historical impact, the small group of Muslim leaders met secretly to choose a successor. It boiled down to two of the Prophet’s earliest followers: Ali and Abu Bakr. Ali was Mohammed’s cousin and first devotee. Abu Bakr was Mohammed’s third follower and his exuberant colleague in the merchant world. Ali embodied the idealistic, mystical heart of Mohammed but was young at thirty years of age. Abu Bakr was seasoned, a great warrior, and a leader who commanded respect.
The recently-pardoned Quraysh leaders backed Abu Bakr as one of their own. But the bulk of Mohammed’s original companions favored Ali, claiming that Mohammed had named him to be his successor on his last pilgrimage. Cloaked in secrecy, the committee convened in Mecca without any representation from Medina—not even Ali. They named Abu Bakr as caliph, a word that simply means “successor to the Prophet,” and the Islamic caliphate was born.
The Medinan clans were outraged and rejected the decision. Ali responded with patience befitting the Prophet and recognized Abu Bakr. But it would take six months for his fellow Medinans to go along. There was talk of a violent overthrow.
Abu Bakr inherited a role that had not been defined to lead a movement that itself had no idea what it was or what it would become. At this moment in history, what did it really mean to be a Muslim?
In Medina, the community had developed a cadence of spiritual practice under the leadership of Mohammed. But what about in Mecca, where the Prophet’s message had only recently been accepted, or in the oasis villages far away from both Mecca and Medina? It would not be until twenty years later that the prophetic utterances would be enshrined in the Quran. For the two years following Mohammed’s takeover of Mecca, the annual three-month religious festival had continued. This allowed the tribes inhabiting the Arabian Peninsula to be exposed to Islam. The majority accepted the teaching of the oneness of God and the equality of all people and, along with it, payment of an annual tax known as zakat. Under Mohammed’s brief two-year tenure as leader, the Arabian Peninsula experienced a soft unification. However, except for the payment of the zakat tax and ridding the Kaaba of idols, life was not much different for most Arabs. This would change when Abu Bakr took the reins.
Map 1 — the Inheritance of Abu Bakr ˜ two Major Empires Poised to Envelope Arabia
When Mohammed died, as was customary upon the death of a sheikh, many of the tribes located far from Mecca stopped paying the zakat tax. Also, Mohammed’s teaching on social justice had apparently struck a chord and several other prophets and mystics had emerged throughout the Arabian Peninsula and garnered significant followings.
The ancient city of Sanaa, located near the southwestern elbow of the Arabian Peninsula, and today the capital of Yemen, had been the Mecca for Arab Christians. The coastal city of Aden, just south of Sanaa, was a key port city connecting the Arabian Peninsula with both Africa and India. Arabs from these cities were among the first to cut their ties.
Almost one and a half millennia later, I interviewed one of their ancestors. Mahmoud’s family has been in Aden for uncounted generations. Perhaps his progenitors were Christians. When I heard his cheerful voice, I liked him instantly. Pleasant and gentle, and very upbeat, he was easy to talk to. We were meant to meet in the capital of Kazakhstan for the World Expo in 2017, but circumstances prevented our rendezvous, so we had a long telephone conversation instead. His story captured me. Mahmoud’s father died of a heart attack when he was just a small boy. His mother, whose first husband had also died, was left on her own to care for her five children. Sound familiar? Mahmoud was the youngest. Needless to say, they were barely getting by. When Mahmoud spoke of his mother, it was with great pride. “She is my mother, and my father, and my friend,” he said to me. And that explains why Mahmoud scrapes by on only a portion of the living stipend included in his scholarship to study in Prague, and sends as much as possible home to Yemen for his family.
Even though his mother was uneducated herself, she was very persistent about making sure that little Mahmoud got a good education. It got off to a rough start. By the time he was in fourth grade, he was struggling with basic literacy, hardly able to read or write in his own language of Arabic. His mother got involved. She found a way to hire a tutor and began to meet frequently with Mahmoud’s teachers to make sure he was progressing. Her energy paid off. By the end of seventh grade, Mahmoud was the second-highest student in his class.
In 2010, for his senior year of high school, after qualifying in the top fifteen out of seven hundred applicants in English language ability, he was accepted into an exchange program to study in the United States. He tells of two experiences that remain embedded in his memory. First, one of his fellow students called him a terrorist to his face. When he asked one of his teachers what he should do about it, the teacher immediately wanted to know the name of the person who had made this accusation. Mahmoud decided to keep this to himself and responded by creating a presentation about the misunderstandings between the Middle East and America, which he presented to his class.
Mahmoud’s second memorable experience was getting involved with volunteerism. During his year in the United States, he volunteered more than one hundred hours and was recognized for this by receiving the President’s Volunteer Service Award. The volunteer spirit continued on in Mahmoud when he returned to Yemen in 2012, when he got involved with visiting orphanages, children with cancer in hospitals, and donating food and clothing to the poor.
Things would take a turn for the worse a couple of years later when, three semesters into a four-semester engineering program involving maintenance of oil equipment, Houthi rebels took over the city of Aden in the ongoing civil war in Yemen. In the attacks on Aden, Mahmoud’s aunt was killed by mortar fire.
Lacking the gravitational attraction
of Mohammed’s character, Abu Bakr
instinctively reverted to force as the means of
keeping the super-tribe together.
Mahmoud subsequently applied for and was one of the five students from the entire country of Yemen accepted into a scholarship program at the prestigious Charles University in Prague, the Czech Republic. Mahmoud is in a three-year Czech language study program, after which he intends to study medicine, with the ultimate desire of becoming a surgeon. He also sees himself involved in leadership of interfaith dialogs and cultural exchange between the Middle East and the West.
It was among Arabs like Mahmoud’s ancestors that Abu Bakr was about to set a dangerous precedent. In direct violation of Mohammed’s teaching, he launched a military campaign to eliminate the rival prophets and force all tribes to pay the zakat tax, making no distinction between either group. Lacking the gravitational attraction of Mohammed’s character, Abu Bakr instinctively reverted to force as the means of keeping the super-tribe together. In so doing, he set off the big bang that would produce a new universe.
The effect of the conquest of Arabia under Abu Bakr was to mobilize a growing Islamic military force that found itself bumping up against the margins of the two neighboring empires. What happened next would boggle the minds of historians and students of military strategy alike.
Map 2 — the Formation of the Islamic Empire under Abu Bakr
Abu Bakr had a very brief stint as the head of the budding empire. After only two years as caliph, he died of an illness. Before his death, he again snubbed Ali and publicly named Umar, another mighty Qurayshi warrior, as his successor. The choice—and the process—did nothing to resolve the seething resentment of Ali and the contingent from Medina. But for the next ten years under Caliph Umar, Ali and his proponents would be occupied with other matters.
Call it a perfect storm. In the time of Mohammed, both the Christian Byzantine Empire of Europe and the Zoroastrian Sassanid Empire of Persia were expanding into the Arabian Peninsula and had claimed large portions of it. So when Abu Bakr conquered all of Arabia, he had already started to encroach into both kingdoms. Secondly, both empires had been engaged in a protracted war with one another and their military strength had been severely weakened. Nowhere was this more the case than at the farthest reaches of their empires, precisely where Muslim commanders were surging into the edges of the Arab world. Why stop at this village when there was another one just like it a little further on?
Before Umar’s campaigns were complete, the Byzantine Empire had given up almost the entire Middle East and had retreated to the confines of modern-day Turkey. The Sassanid Empire was completely defeated in the East, and a front had been opened in North Africa extending all the way to Tripoli.
Could this be the same ragtag assembly of believers that had been chased out of Mecca a few years earlier and barely escaped with their lives?
Before becoming too critical of Islam as a religion of warfare, let’s consider four critical points. First, both the Byzantine and Sassanid empires carried the religious banners of Christianity and Zoroastrianism respectively. David Nicolle, in his book The Great Islamic Conquests, wrote about the strategy of Heraclius, one of the most powerful Byzantine emperors. The emperor utilized propagandists to help him portray Byzantine wars in a very religious light, “using the most potent of Christian relics, the Wood of the Holy Cross, to inspire the fighting fervor of his troops.”1
Nicolle goes on to point out that:
… the conversion of the peoples of what are now the heartlands of the Islamic world was a largely peaceful process and was separate from the Arabs’ military conquest of these same areas . Indeed, the conversion largely resulted from the example set by the early Muslim Arabs themselves and the activities of preachers, missionaries and merchants . A desire for material, cultural and political advantage under the new regime also played a part.2
Secondly, just as the conquest of Arabia was contrary to the teaching of Mohammed, so the expansion of the Islamic Empire had nothing to do with the social reform Mohammed had begun and everything to do with Qurayshi tribal power. I am convinced that had Mohammed still been alive, or had Ali been selected as his successor, the wars and conquests would not have taken place. Mohammed had risen above the culture and created something new. Abu Bakr and Umar, without their own direct spiritual connection or Mohammed to regulate them, reverted to the ancient tribal ways.
Thirdly, Islam had hardly begun to define itself before it found itself covering all of the Middle East. By the time the Quran was formally transcribed, duplicated, distributed, and taught, the territory conquered by the armies of Islam had nearly reached its maximum extent. It’s a tough sell to claim the teaching of the Quran drove the Islamic conquest since the takeover was virtually complete before the Quran was available. The theological underpinnings of the Islamic faith were lagging behind the tidal wave of imperial expansion.
Finally, those peoples on the edges of the great kingdoms were generally not wholehearted subjects of the kingdom in power, nor genuine believers in the religions these kingdoms brought with them. When conquered, terms of subjugation were imposed involving some aspect of the incoming religion, payment of taxes to the conquering kingdom, and conscription into their fighting forces. These were merely incredibly invested spectators in the realm of war in the cosmos.
During my study of Islam while training for my missionary service in the Muslim world, I was taught by Christian teachers that the spread of Islam took place by conquest and by threat of death: “Convert or die.” When I told my Algerian friend Mustafa about this, I saw his face fall. I could see that this had affected him deeply. More than incredulous, he was genuinely hurt. If there is a single message that I hope every reader takes away from this book, it is that 1.5 billion mainstream Muslims are people of peace. They have no interest in your forceful conversion to Islam.
Would Islam find a way to reinterpret the message of God to justify its imperial conquest? Theological interpretations primarily explained the rapid expansion as the blessing of God and proof of the truth of Islam. But from a purely strategic perspective, when Mohammed declared a general amnesty of the Quraysh after his takeover of Mecca, he set the table for them to reestablish their preeminence after his death. The result was an eminently powerful Quraysh tribe—infused with the teachings of Mohammed.
In a time when there were no national boundaries, tribal (and imperial) growth was a viral phenomenon. A tribe was driven to expand territorially to consume as many clans as it was capable of. The super-tribe created by Mohammed and hijacked by the Quraysh was simply following the natural order of things. Islam as a religious ideology was just going along for the ride.
The teaching of Mohammed had a profound effect on how peoples would be governed. Umar ruled not with the iron fist of a conqueror, but with kindness and fairness. Umar made it a special focus to make no distinction between Arab and other ethnic groups; all were welcomed into the Muslim community with full privileges. He also gave orders not to change existing governmental systems or impact local customs and practices.
Map 3 — the Islamic Empire under Umar
The mighty Umar was stabbed by a disgruntled Persian slave in Medina, ironically, nowhere near the ever-distant battlefronts. With his death, the empire of Islam was about to take another leap away from the heavenly ideals of the Prophet. The caliphs were being drawn into a descending orbit by the black hole of wealth and power.
When Umar realized he was about to die, he convened a group of six candidates and charged them with selecting the next caliph from among themselves—and he gave them three days to do it. It was a halfhearted attempt to satisfy protocol and keep Ali in the mix. Five of the six were wealthy members of clans from the Quraysh tribe, and the sixth was Ali. The five had risen to wealth as a result of the massive influx of taxation revenue pouring into Medina from the ever-growing list of subjugated peoples. Ali was excluded from this abundance and made ends meet as a gardener.
The next three days played out like the final episode of Survivor. On the last day, Ali and the other finalist were presented with a trick question: “If selected, will you lead according to the examples of the first two caliphs?” Ali never wavered: “I will follow God and the example of the Prophet.” For his truthfulness, the role of caliph was, for the third time, transferred to another Qurayshi, a septuagenarian by the name of Uthman, a member of the powerful Umayyad clan.
Abu Bakr and Umar had been highly respected leaders from among Mohammed’s companions, so Ali and his proponents tolerated the obvious snub. But the selection of Uthman was now seen for what it was—a dynastic takeover and return to preeminence of the Quraysh elite.
Uthman wasted no time. He replaced nearly all of the governors of conquered provinces with members of his immediate family. The governors, known as amirs, had originally been appointed by Abu Bakr and Umar. They had been deliberately selected from leaders outside of their own clans to avoid any appearance of favoritism.
Next, if there was still any doubt as to his intentions, Uthman began raiding the reservoir of zakat tax revenues and making lavish distributions to family members. At the same time, Uthman ridiculously named himself Caliphat Allah— The Successor to God. He sought to reinforce this proclamation by canonizing the Quran. He accumulated the extant written renderings of Mohammed’s revelations and compiled them into a complete manuscript. He burned any variants that didn’t make it into his final cut.
His new title notwithstanding, it was obvious to all what was happening. The list of his detractors kept growing: replaced amirs, Mohammed’s companions, rival clans in Medina, Ali’s supporters, even the committee chairman who had selected him. After ten years of corruption, the seething rebellion boiled over. A delegation from Egypt traveled all the way to Medina to present their grievances and things got out of hand. The Successor to God was murdered.
The empire was now in a state of crisis.
After waiting patiently for two decades, Ali now found himself in the unenviable position of being the leading candidate for caliph. Unenviable because, although he had nothing to do with Uthman’s assassination, it would be impossible to disassociate himself from it. Acceptance of Ali’s caliphate was far from unanimous. The Umayyad clan had grown wealthy as the recipients of Uthman’s unbridled nepotism, and they were not about to take his assassination lying down.
Having grown up under the tutelage of the Prophet, Ali did his best to smooth things over with minimal violence and liberal forgiveness. But he was unable to avoid a multi-faction civil war. Ali’s brief tenure played out like a Greek tragedy. One of his own allies ultimately murdered him, angry that he had accepted truce terms rather than finishing off the rebel forces.
With Ali out of the way, there was nothing left to impede the powerful Umayyad clan. Their hijack of Mohammed’s social reform movement was complete. They ruled in dynastic fashion for almost a century.
But just when it looked like Mohammed’s only legacy would be a fractured empire, the spirit of Islam began to stir and come to life anew.
By the time the dust had settled, in 730 CE Islam’s political empire extended all the way to India in the East and Spain in the West. A large swath cut across North Africa and it included territories as far north as Kazakhstan and the Caucasus. After over 100 years of potent military conquest, the empire finally reached its limits.
Leaders throughout the empire started to focus more on sustaining rather than expanding their domain. It became clear that spiritual direction was not going to come from the Umayyad monarchs, who were lost in the excesses of absolute power. Who would take the mantle of spiritual leadership? Now a hundred years after the death of its Prophet, could Islam in its original form be rediscovered and deployed throughout a multicultural empire?
Map 4 — the Islamic Empire at Its Maximum Size
The Ulama — The Scholars of Islam
The spiritual hunger to remain connected to the messenger of God was a powerful driving force. Over a hundred years later, how could Mohammed’s followers reproduce the beloved community of Medina? And how could they deploy this socio-religious pattern throughout the empire? First, they must precisely define it. And this gave birth to a new societal class—the Islamic scholar. These eighth century researchers explored the intricacies of Arabic linguistics, pored over the Quran, and attempted to concretize the traditions of the early community, preserved in a collection of writings known as the hadith. As groups of these scholars began to find one another throughout the empire, momentum for the formulation of an Islamic theology began to build. Schools for religious study were opened, attracting the brightest Muslim devotees.
By the close of the Umayyad dynasty, the beginnings of religious authority had emerged. At the highest level was a council known as the ulama, literally meaning “scholars or learned ones.” Although they had no secular authority, they were the final word when it came to Islamic theology—and its practice in the community ( Sharia). Multiple ulama councils existed throughout the empire, each with their own flavor of Islam, often affected by local customs.
The next step was deployment throughout the hundreds of villages and cities now governed by the Islamic Caliphate. The motivation was not to enforce the personal practice of Islam, but to infuse local governments with Islamic precepts regarding social justice. Appointed local judges who had previously relied on personal judgment, Arab or local customs, and the Quran now had access to a codified Sharia Law in day-to-day civic matters such as business disputes or disagreements about family inheritances.
Christians and Jews
What happened when the armies of Islam conquered the Christian cities of Byzantium? Even after Damascus was named the capital of the Islamic Empire, the vast majority of the Syrian population remained Christian. According to David Nicolle, there, and in other conquered territories, “Jews and Christians were allowed to worship in public, to maintain their own religious buildings and to have their own religious organizations.”3 Christians and Jews were given the official title of “Protected Peoples.” Jews, and Christians who deviated from the Byzantine brand of Christianity, enjoyed considerably better treatment under the Muslim rulers than under the Christian kings.
Sufism
Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu
Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion
or cultural system. I am not from the East
or the West, not out of the ocean or up
from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not
composed of elements at all. I do not exist,
am not an entity in this world or in the next,
did not descend from Adam and Eve or any
origin story. My place is placeless, a trace
of the traceless. Neither body or soul.
I belong to the beloved, have seen the two
worlds as one and that one call to and know,
first, last, outer, inner, only that
breathing human being. (Jalal ad-Din Mohammed Rumi)
(Essential Rumi)4
At the same time the ulama were studying the Quran to find their way back to Mohammed, others with a deeper hunger pursued a different path. While the ulama sought to define what it meant to be a Muslim by creating laws delineating its practice, the passionate Sufis were not satisfied with mere external observance. They wanted to feel. Though deeply Muslim, they didn’t crave the imitation of Mohammed’s practice, but the intimacy of his connection. These were Islam’s mystics. Had I been alive in the Middle East during this time, I am quite certain I would have found myself among them.
The earliest of these mystics were itinerant wanderers, floating about in search of richer, deeper experiences—and other seekers. Eventually, several consistent rendezvous points emerged as the Sufis began to organize themselves. Sufism would ultimately develop into several different orders, such as the order founded by Rumi, famous for their whirling dervishes. After the period of military conquests ended, Sufism would grow and spread throughout the Muslim world, playing a key role in the spread of Islam.
Like the Byzantine and Sassanid empires before them, the Islamic Empire under the Umayyad dynasty began to crumble on the edges and implode from within. But Islam as a religion had found its footing. The first political empire fell. An anemic second empire arose in its place, with the perfunctory bloodletting. The political capitol moved eastward, from Damascus to Baghdad. But as the empire faded, the spirit of Islam burst forth as a supernova.
The spiritual awakening associated with the teachings of Islam, combined with the cultural diversity of the peoples now absorbed by it, spilled over into the realms of science and reason. The Muslim conquerors were intolerant of internal power threats, but were lenient towards the people they conquered. This would prove beneficial in their hunger for knowledge. Long before Europe was even thinking about a Renaissance, the Muslim world was producing great thinkers, mathematicians, scientists, and artists, often rolled up into one person, the original “Renaissance men.” Here are a few of my favorites:
Al-Razi was a renowned alchemist and philosopher, considered perhaps the best physician in the Muslim world .
Al-Farabi, possibly of turkic origins from Central Asia, was known as “the second master” (second to Aristotle, himself ) because of his high level of expertise in philosophy and logic . His other main contribution was a massive treatise on music, with less prominent contributions in the fields of mathematics, physics, and metaphysics .
Avicenna (Abu Ali Sina) produced a fascinating integrated treatise linking logic, physics, mathematics and metaphysics, showing an interaction between these categories, including multiple subcategories, to produce the individual effects.
Averroes (Ahmad ibn Rushd) was renowned for his extensive commentaries on the writings of Aristotle, breaking down complex meanings in a clear and understandable way.
Al-Biruni was a brilliant anthropologist and astronomer, producing some 146 titles in his lifetime . He assembled two extensive encyclopedic works including “Verifying All that the Indians Recount, the Reasonable and unreasonable,” which was a detailed description of the science, religion, literature and customs of India . He also amassed a detailed encyclopedia of virtually everything that was known in the field of astronomy .
Alhazan discovered that light travels in a straight line, contributing to the discovery of reflection and refraction, long before these concepts were fully developed by Isaac newton .
Important contributions in the use of the sundial and the pendulum for timekeeping came from the minds of Muslim astronomers. Algebra was invented and combined with key advances in trigonometry to provide innovative calculations in the field of astronomy. Muslim chemists discovered alcohol, sulfuric and nitric acids, potassium, and more. They developed the techniques of sublimation, crystallization, and distillation, still in use today as methods of chemical analysis.
Muslim thinkers from this “Golden Age” of Islam endowed the world with scores of original contributions in the areas of mathematics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, medicine, social sciences, logic, and philosophy. Their discoveries are recognized as the stepping-stones for the discoveries of the European Renaissance centuries later. These men and their achievements deserve the same honor we bestow on men such as Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo.
Islamic Law Is Complete
Meanwhile, Islam’s scholars went deeper into the definition of Islam as a religion and faced divergent ways of thinking. Rationalist thinkers were drawn to the fundamental principles of Islam and how to apply them relativistically in a culturally diverse world. Their thinking often involved philosophy, logic, and higher levels of reasoning—areas of the mind not yet even awakened in the Bedouins and sedentary tribes of seventh-century Arabia.
Traditionalists, on the other hand, favored literal interpretation of the Quran and rigorous imitation of the traditions of the Prophet and his companions. Much like Christian fundamentalists and the Bible, Islamic traditionalists believe that Mohammed represented divine perfection, both in the words of the Quran and in his living example. The only way to live a life that is pleasing to God is to live exactly as Mohammed and his companions had. This gave rise to the formal study of not just the Quran, but also the Sunna, or the traditions of the Prophet. But now a couple of hundred years removed, agreement on what those traditions were did not come easily.
By the end of the tenth century, the general
consensus was that the study of Islamic law
was complete.
Several schools of thought emerged, each vying for exclusive validation from whoever happened to be the current monarch. Theological distinctions were often subtle, but nonetheless, taken very seriously. This is well illustrated by a question often asked of scholars in the presence of the monarch and his favored ulama council: “Is the Quran created by God, or is it uncreated and co-eternal with God?” It was a truly mind-bending question. The persecuted heretic’s answer determined whether he was to be set free or returned to the dungeons. Christian inquisitors would obsess on an oddly similar question many centuries later: “Do the bread and the cup merely symbolize the body and blood of our Lord, or upon consumption do they become the body and blood?” The wrong answer could result in a very unpleasant stint in a medieval torture chamber for an unwary theologian.
By the end of the tenth century, the general consensus was that the study of Islamic law was complete. Although there were many differences between the schools, efforts to produce new discoveries were discouraged. This was right up the alley of the traditionalists, who created a new criminal charge—the crime of “innovation,” which was viewed in the same light as the Christian crime of heresy.
The Crusades — Christian Jihad
For the first 400 years of Islam’s existence, Christians enjoyed a protected status wherever they were within the empire. However, political developments toward the end of the second Muslim dynasty would upset this friendly balance and bring about a different sort of relationship, one not quite so chummy.
According to John Esposito, “Two myths pervade Western perceptions of the Crusades: first, that the Crusades were simply motivated by a religious desire to liberate Jerusalem, and second, that Christendom ultimately triumphed.”5
The Crusades were the result of an unholy alliance between the Byzantine emperor, Alexius I, who sought divine legitimacy for his political and territorial ambitions, and Pope Urban II, who desired greater power and influence in the secular realm for the church. Ironically, together they created the pilgrimage, or crusade, to free Jerusalem from the Muslim infidels. Who the true infidels were may be judged by the words of Jesus himself, who taught, “by their fruit you shall know them,” likening peoples’ deeds to the fruit of a tree.
The invasion of Palestine was successful. The Crusaders established Christian sovereignty in the Holy Land when they overran Jerusalem in 1099. In the city of Acre, about 120 miles to the north, Richard the Lionhearted negotiated terms of surrender that included the safety of the city’s inhabitants. He then proceeded to massacre the whole city, including women and children.
Almost ninety years later, the Muslims recaptured Jerusalem. I first learned of the fame of the victorious Muslim commander, Saladin, from my Algerian friend Sayid. Saladin never wavered in his commitment to the Islamic principles of warfare. He has been remembered throughout history for his compassion and fairness in dealing with his defeated Christian enemies. When treaties were negotiated, he was true to his word. Noncombatants were spared. He even left Christian churches and shrines untouched.
Sayid went on to tell me a curious story about another distinguished Muslim commander, this one from his home country. With excitement he told me of Elkader, a small town in America’s heartland of Iowa, which was named after an Algerian Sufi named Abd el-Kader. El-Kader achieved hero status in Algeria for his long-standing and courageous resistance of French colonial invaders in the mid-1800s. He was widely known and admired for his unwavering stand on the observance of human rights toward his Christian adversaries. Eventually defeated and exiled to Syria, his final heroic act was to selflessly intervene on behalf of the Christian community in Syria, rescuing them from certain massacre by rioters. Sending his own sons into the streets to offer refuge, he sheltered large numbers of Christians, including several prominent leaders, in his own home. For his heroism he received international recognition, and the founders of the town in Iowa chose him as their town’s namesake.
“By their fruit you shall know them.”
It defies logic to ignore what happened during the Crusades, then scratch our heads and wonder where Muslim animosity toward Christians came from. This is not to say the Crusades play a key role in today’s religio-political complexities, but the cornerstone remains embedded in the foundation. Where possible, wrongs should be acknowledged without excuse.
With increasing levels of irony, the end result of the Crusades for the Palestinian Christians was a loss in their status as protected ones. Many ultimately became Muslims. For Jews, in the kingdom representing Christendom, they were forcibly converted, exiled, or killed. Sadakat Kadri, author of Heaven on Earth, mentions a rabbi who recorded a travelogue of his journeys throughout the Middle East and North Africa during the Crusades. In Jerusalem, which had been occupied by the Crusaders since 1099, he had found only four Jews. In regions that were under Muslim rule, he estimated a count of 300,000.6
From Mighty empire to Fractured nations
In 1258 Mongol hordes commanded by the grandson of Genghis Khan overran the empire and captured Baghdad. The city was burned to the ground, the last caliph and his family were executed, and the Muslim inhabitants of Baghdad massacred. The days of Islam as a unified empire were forever over. According to Rory Stewart, author of THE PLACES IN BETWEEN, a book about his travel on foot across Afghanistan, the savagery of the Mongols dealt Islamic history a devastating blow: “he… obliterated the… great cities of the eastern Islamic world—massacring their scholars and artisans, turning the irrigated lands of central Asia into a waterless wilderness.”
The Mongol empire lasted less than fifty years and the Islamic Empire reconstructed itself—this time as three rival sultanates. Islam became a kingdom divided against itself, establishing the footprint for the main divisions in today’s world of Islam.
But the winds of war in Europe would soon blow southward, forever changing the shape of the Muslim world. After thirteen centuries of war and empire building, World War I was about to catapult the Muslim world into a new universe. The era of empires and emperors was coming to a close, and the era of nation-states was about to begin.
After thirteen centuries of war and empire
building, World War I was about to catapult
the Muslim world into a new universe.
After being defeated in World War I, the Ottoman Empire was broken up into many pieces. Some regions took control of their own destiny and declared independence. Others had their fate assigned to them by various European post-war treaties and councils. As if the multiplying factions of Islam itself were not enough to keep the region immersed in conflict, now political boundaries were imposed by outside entities. Inevitably, these boundaries broke up contiguous ethnic and religious groups, and completely left others out, and would throw the entire region into a state of chaos.
No one even noticed the oncoming freight train. The Industrial Revolution was building steam in Europe, and colonialism was on board.
In the same manner that negative childhood experiences often define decades of adult life in the absence of effective psychotherapy, the Muslim world is still responding to abuses that took place during the era of European colonialism. At one point, the British Empire was so expansive that, as the old saying goes, the sun quite literally never set on it. At its largest point, it covered nearly one quarter of the Earth’s total land area and encompassed almost the same fraction of its population.
The British Empire was the largest in history, occupying lands in most of the continents including, famously, Africa from “Cape to Cairo.” Rooted in economic exploitation, the empire was heavily dependent on the steady flow of slaves from Africa. When required, the Europeans didn’t hesitate to use military force to retain their advantage.
Once proud and powerful members of the Empire of Islam now found themselves British subjects. Of particular relevance for the future of Islam are the events that took place on the Indian subcontinent and in Egypt.
In India, it was the abundance of black tea that caught the eye of British magnates. Colonial businessman had learned that the potentates of Asia and Africa were often easily enticed by offers of cash to support their luxurious lifestyles. They would simply dangle money in front of the sultan or the khan who gladly accepted it in exchange for control of various commodities within the kingdom. The downside of the deal was that the subjects of the monarch were then forced to work as virtual slaves to make good on the deal. The inevitable result was rebellion on the part of the masses.
In India, after several decades of economic oppression by the British East India Company, civil unrest was on the rise. Complicated by several crop failures and a cholera pandemic, India’s masses rebelled and the British government stepped in with their military, declaring the entire region a British colony in the mid-1800s.
In the ensuing rebellion by both Muslim and Hindu civilians and armed forces, Britain spared no one. Their brutal savagery conjures images of the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan. According to a 2007 article in The Guardian, millions of civilians were slaughtered.7 The soldiers of the crown hung resistors in trees, massacred a battalion of POWs, and plundered, pillaged, and razed the cities and villages of India. Britain ruled the entire subcontinent until 1947.
With all of India reeling from their crushing defeat beneath the fist of British power, they would be further subjugated by British arrogance. As Reza Aslan aptly put it, “In return for the pillaging of their lands, the suppression of their independence, and the destruction of their local economies, the colonized peoples were to be given the gift of ‘civilization.’”8
Substitute the word “democracy” for “civilization” and this has a very familiar ring to it.
The British wore tight, uncomfortable clothing and sat in chairs at a table, daintily drinking tea out of an exquisite porcelain cup with a graceful loop as a handle, which they held in just a certain way. The Muslims wore flowing robes with graceful head pieces, sat on the floor on comfortable pads at a table only as high as a coffee table, reclining on thick pillows and drinking tea from cups that looked like small bowls—without the little handle—held in the palm of their hand, and slurped loudly. It’s hard to imagine the British and the Indians doing almost anything similarly. Relations between men and women, how women dressed, how children were disciplined—the British way was the “civilized” way.
In the shadow of colonization, brutal and oppressive though it was, and its mission of civilization, the solemn duty of Christianization follows close behind. Plenty of good was done on the subcontinent by Christian missionaries, primarily in the areas of education and healthcare. Mission boards founded thousands of schools and hospitals throughout the region, leaving behind a legacy of educational opportunities and better health for millions. But however distinct these efforts may have been from those of the British government and the East India Company, it was impossible to keep them separate in the minds of the proud Muslims who saw only Western powers bringing Western military might, Western customs, and the now Western religion.
Bewildered and humiliated, Islamic leaders turned inward. What sin had they committed? They had ruled the subcontinent for centuries. How did they now find themselves subjugated to this Western power? Traditionalist ulama blamed the Sufi masses whose practices had become more and more syncretistic in their pursuit of spiritual ecstasy. The Sufi mystics blamed the traditionalists for their blind devotion to ancient practices.
A more modern version of Islam was struggling to be born.
For centuries Muslims had basked in the glory of a faith and practice that was at the same time a mighty empire. Now beneath the crushing humiliation of colonialists, what would Islam become?
The response of both the traditionalists and the Sufis was self-examination. Each underwent a revival, seeking to re-create their former greatness, but without addressing present realities. Their attempts to recapture the seventh-century magic did not produce a vibrant version of Islam for the nineteenth century.
Not all were looking backward.
Bold, modernist thinkers were emerging, moving past the “us versus them” mentality and digging deep to consider adapting to the West. Powerful ulama leaders were issuing fatwas declaring India to be a place of war inhabited by the enemies of Islam and requiring Muslims to emigrate or to engage in jihad. In contrast, the new modernists rose above the fixation on retribution that has plagued Islam and opened their minds to intellectual and spiritual expansion.
The first of these forward-thinking modernists was Sayyid Ahmed Khan (1817–1898). Ahmed Khan was a purist and freethinker, a man I would have loved to meet. He was utterly devoted to the Quran but insisted on reading and understanding it for himself, rather than relying on the ulama to interpret it. Vehemently opposed to the approach of striving for a completely literal application of seventh-century scriptures in nineteenth-century India, his goal was to understand and apply the principles taught by Mohammed. I share the same way of thinking when it comes to the Bible and the teachings of Jesus. Ahmed Khan produced a multi-volume commentary from his studies of the Quran and openly criticized the ulama for creating a religion of their own, which was not in accordance with the teachings of the Prophet.
He promoted his teachings in books and journals, and at the educational institution he founded. Even though the majority of Muslims in India at that time continued to subscribe to the teachings and rulings of the ulama, Ahmed Khan’s modernist approach received vast exposure and was considered a viable alternative by a significant minority. His influence was limited by the fact that he was a fairly high-ranking employee of the East India Company and was even knighted by the British crown, a fact that the ulama constantly used to discredit him.
While Ahmed Khan’s days were waning, another great Muslim thinker was obtaining advanced degrees in Cambridge and Munich. Like Ahmed Khan, Mohammed Iqbal (1875–1938) was not one to let the ulama do his thinking for him. Although he had more traditionalist leanings than Ahmed Khan, he had a knack for applying traditionalist ideology to the modern world. The key to bridging the chasm involved making a distinction between essential truth and what might be considered optional or subject to the cultural norms of the time and place.
Iqbal’s Western education gave him a unique perspective for articulating the Islamic mindset. He stood against such Western ideals as the separation of church and state, at the same time rejecting the meaningless traditions of the ulama. Even though he sought Sharia law as essential to the Islamic community, he saw a modern version that combined the spiritual principles taught by Mohammed with the issues faced by nineteenth-century Indians.
In the end, he would conclude that this ideal was impossible to achieve as a minority religion surrounded by Hindus. He became a major proponent for the establishment of the first Islamic state in the era of nation-states, Pakistan. Accompanied by the largest mass migration in history and mutual genocide numbering in the millions between Muslims and Hindus/Sikhs, Pakistan would emerge as a modernist Islamic state. They eventually held democratic elections and utilized a modern form of Sharia law.
Pakistan has had ups and downs since its creation but it remains a crown jewel representing the labors of these two great Muslim minds.
At the same time British troops were massacring millions of Indians, another crew of Brits was hard at work oppressing the Egyptians. The fine quality of Egyptian cotton was exactly what the doctor ordered for England’s dwindling textile supplies. In addition, the Egyptian government utilized British industry in ambitious infrastructure projects, but soon found themselves on the bad side of inadequate financial management skills. Britain stepped in and effectively bought out the entire country, even Egypt’s shares in the strategic Suez Canal.
Egypt was flooded with European workers and British businessmen. The financial burden of the government’s ineptitude was passed down to rank-and-file Egyptians in the form of oppressive taxation. As surely as Britain had taken control of the Indian subcontinent with military might, they took over Egypt using economic power. Civil unrest among the Muslim populace simmered as they found themselves working harder and harder for less and less. And they were surrounded by arrogant foreigners profiting from their national assets and disrespecting cultural and religious norms. According to Aslan, “Cairo had become a virtual apartheid state where small pockets of tremendously wealthy Europeans and westernized Egyptians ruled over millions of impoverished peasants who labored on their lands and cared for their estates.”9
Egypt produced their own modernist thinker—the father of the Middle Eastern Islamic awakening, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838–1897). While still a teenager, al-Afghani had been sent to India to be educated in the sciences. One year later he witnessed the butchery of the British Army and it affected him deeply. Constantly hearing about the lofty Western ideals of freedom and democracy, he was disgusted by the unadulterated hypocrisy he witnessed in the repression of India’s own bid for freedom.
An avid world traveler, al-Afghani was a brilliant thinker cut from the same cloth as the thinkers of the Islamic Renaissance. They thought of the universe as an integrated whole and developed unified models for describing it. Educated in Western democratic principles, of which Europe claimed to be the originators, al-Afghani had no trouble seeing the true source as the egalitarian community led by Mohammed in Medina twelve centuries earlier.
Each facet of the emerging modernist Islamic thinking had a unifying constant: the rejection of the ulama as of the divine keepers of the definition and practice of Islam. Furthermore, according to Aslan, al-Afghani felt that,
the ulama bore the responsibility for the decline of Islamic civilization. In their self-appointed role as the guardians of Islam, the ulama had so stifled independent thought and scientific progress that even as Europe awakened to the Enlightenment, the Muslim world was still floundering in the Middle Ages. By forbidding a rational dialogue about the limits of law and the meaning of Scripture, the ulama… had become the true enemies of Islam.10
Al-Afghani was educated in the sciences, so he had a particular disdain for the ulama whose education was limited to historical studies of Islam’s origins and traditions. He thought of Islam as not only congruous with the world of science but as the driving force behind it. He was a strong proponent for broad scientific study in the Muslim world, seeing it as the only way to compete with colonial Europe. Esposito quotes from a collection of al-Afghani’s writings assembled by Nikki Keddie in her book, An Islamic Response to Imperialism:
The Europeans have now everywhere put their hands on every part of the world. The English have reached Afghanistan; the French have seized Tunisia. In reality this usurpation, aggression, and conquests have not come from the French or the English. Rather it is science that everywhere manifests its greatness and power…. Science is continually changing capitals. Sometimes it has moved from the East to the West, and other times from the West to the East… All wealth and riches are the result of science. In sum, the whole world of humanity is an industrial world, meaning that the world is a world of science.… The first Muslims had no science, but, thanks to the Islamic religion, a philosophical spirit arose among them… this was why they acquired in a short time all the sciences… those who forbid science and knowledge in the belief that they are safeguarding the Islamic religion are really the enemies of that religion. The Islamic religion is the closest of religions to science and knowledge, and there is no incompatibility between science and knowledge in the foundation of the Islamic faith.11,12
Al-Afghani ultimately took his concepts to the most prominent center of Islamic education, al-Azhar University, which happened to be located in Cairo, where he would continue to see firsthand the impotence of Islam against the power of British colonialism. As the center for Islamic thought even today, al-Azhar was the ideal place for al-Afghani to proliferate his lofty modernist ideals, both in written publications and in the classroom. His torch would be passed on to two gifted disciples, but ultimately be extinguished by Islam’s overpowering reactions to European colonialism—reactions that would draw Islam back into a descending orbit of traditionalism.
Al-Afghani’s flame flickered back to life a few decades later in the form of Physics Nobel Laureate, Dr. Abdus Salam (1926–1996). I first heard about him from his grandson, a good friend of mine who serves as the imam of a small mosque in San Diego. Salam was a brilliant scientist and passionate social activist. He was the first Muslim and first Pakistani to win a Nobel prize in the sciences, awarded for his contribution to theoretical physics. Similar to the breakthrough that proved that electricity and magnetism are interconnected and part of a unified theory of electromagnetism, Dr. Salam postulated, and successfully proved mathematically, that what are known as “weak nuclear forces” are actually not different than electromagnetic forces. This pivotal contribution, unifying two of the four known fundamental interactions of nature, was subsequently validated experimentally by other scientists.
Throughout his distinguished career as a scientist, Dr. Salam worked tirelessly to promote opportunities for education in the sciences for students in the developing world. Salam was convinced that the key factor in imprisoning the majority of the world in misery and suffering was the lack of scientific development. At the age of 34, Dr.
Salam proposed the founding of an international theoretical physics institute at a conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which reports to the United Nations. Although he was originally ridiculed for this suggestion, The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics became a reality in 1963, and Dr. Salam became its first director. Earning a reputation as a scientific diplomat, Dr. Salam lobbied to bring about educational and research opportunities to other aspiring students in the developing world.
But, except for the rare shining star like Dr. Salam, the world of Islam has taken a step backwards in the decades following the departure of the colonialists. To understand this, we must recognize that it was the grandparents of today’s working age Muslims who experienced the nightmare of European colonialism. Entire races and ethnic groups suffered deep, collective trauma. In the same way a boy who has been beaten by an abusive father might live out his entire life angrily proving to himself and to the world that he is worthy of respect, so the Muslim world is still living out their reaction to the violence and disrespect they experienced under colonialism. The expression of Islam that emerged does not reflect the essence of Islam in paradise, but rather a response to Western Christian oppression.
The reaction that would set the stage for the
next century would be the angry rejection of
all things Western.
Modern-day prophets and gifted thinkers such as Sayyid Ahmed Khan of India and Jamal al-Din al-Afghani of the Middle East were invalidated by Islam as a whole on the sole basis of their Western educational exposure. The ancient instinct for retribution was too powerful. Even though the modernists were unwavering in their deep commitments to the teachings and traditions of The Prophet, the traditionalist ulama prevailed. The wound to the soul of Islam was too deep. The reaction that would set the stage for the next century would be the angry rejection of all things Western.
The torches of these great modernist minds attempting to create a definition for Islam in a modern world would be reduced to flickering candles. The colonial era came to an end and the next several decades would see the births of multiple new nations and mad scrambles for power. The dream of a unified faith throughout the Muslim world would give way to Islamic nationalism and a kind of “every faction for itself” tribal mentality, which continues to this day.
It’s not an overstatement to say that the influence of Mohammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703–1792) was demonic. No person has done more to bring the dark blight of terror to the Middle East.
He was a villager of modest means from a small oasis in the heart of the deserts of Arabia, at that time under the authority of the Ottoman Empire. Receiving his religious education in nearby Arab cities including Medina, he developed a special affinity for the teachings of a fringe Islamic scholar by the name of Ahmad ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328). Taymiyya’s doctrines were so out of sync with Muslim orthodoxy and practice that he had multiple stints in prison for heresy, eventually dying there.
Taymiyya conceived of God as distant and unknowable, with an unrelenting compulsion to punish. Though gifted in the areas of reason and debate, he was considered a heretic for applying modifications to the time-honored legal standard of the ulama—the four sources of knowledge: the Quran, the traditions (hadith), analogy, and consensus. Taymiyya’s legal theory placed primary emphasis on one element of the science of evaluating the traditions: Salafism, or imitating the practices of the first three generations of Muslims. Of course, now five to six hundred years after all of these were dead and gone, this method was open to subjective interpretation. Taymiyya was famous for declaring his own harsh interpretation, vigorously arguing for it legally, then proclaiming anyone who disagreed with him an infidel and unilaterally carrying out the judgment of execution. His views were not taken seriously as they were considered outrageously punitive.
Four hundred years later, his views were taken seriously by al-Wahhab.
Al-Wahhab returned to his village as a hyper-radical and violent zealot. He had adopted Taymiyya’s hard-core monotheistic view that denounced any form of ancestor veneration and mediation between man and God by a religious leader such as an imam. Both were quite common among Muslims. According to al-Wahhab, Muslims were called not only to practice Islam in this way but were divinely called to wage war against any who strayed from these principles. He also espoused Taymiyya’s strict form of Sharia law that included harsh punishment for infractions.
Apparently seeing himself as a second coming of The Prophet, al-Wahhab gathered a small following. He was promptly chased out of town by horrified villagers after he and his crew took their extreme concepts from theory to practice and publicly stoned a young woman who had confessed to sexual immorality. Al-Wahhab was just a violent fanatic living in obscurity, but at the next oasis he would meet a small-time sheikh by the name of Mohammed ibn Saud (1726–1765). From this union, the seed of almost everything that is feared today in Islam would germinate.
Saud was a frustrated sheikh wanting to expand the sheikhdom but with limited financial resources. Possibly by promising Saud to enforce payment of the zakat tax for the poor, al-Wahhab persuaded him to provide refuge for him and his violent band. Al-Wahhab insisted on assuming the role of religious leader and requested an oath of allegiance from Saud to perform jihad against locals he considered unbelievers.
This seemingly insignificant meeting of the minds between Saud and al-Wahhab in the obscure deserts of Arabia, initially affecting only seventy households, would upset the delicate balance of power among tribes and become a tipping point with effects still being felt today. Jihad would indeed be waged, oasis by oasis, against fellow Muslims, as al-Wahhab’s strict and violent version of Sharia law was imposed. Acceptance of the belief system of this fanatical sect took place out of fear of slaughter, and with each oasis settlement taken, the conscripted mujahedeen army grew in numbers and strength. Wahhabi-ism would eventually cover almost the entire Arabian desert, including the major cities, within fifty years of the sealing of the pact between Saud and al-Wahhab.
With Arabia in their control, the army of fanatics would push northward, setting their sights on Arab Sufis and Shiites. In 1802, in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, they massacred four thousand Shiite Muslims as they celebrated a holy day. A modern-day equivalent might look like a rogue fanatical Christian group sneaking into Joel Osteen’s mega-church in Houston during their Christmas Eve service and annihilating the congregation with automatic weapons. The Ottoman Empire finally took notice.
The military strength of the Saud-Wahhab coalition proved ill equipped against the armies of the Ottoman Empire. The fanatics were crushed and sent back to the deserts of Arabia and the cities of Medina and Mecca returned to Ottoman control. The evil genie was back in the lamp, where he would remain for over a century. The Saud family would continue to fight, both against the Ottomans and internally amongst themselves, for control of the Arabian Peninsula for the next hundred years.
Fast-forward to the colonial era, the early 1900s. Reminding ourselves of the al-Afghani quote about the British having their hands in every part of the Muslim world, the British saw it as advantageous to weaken the Ottomans and control the Arabian Peninsula. To accomplish this, they provided military and financial support to the Saud family. It was World War I that brought down the Ottoman Empire, but, in the subsequent power vacuum, the Saud family wasted no time using their newfound military might to retake Medina and Mecca, publicly executing forty thousand men in the process. They declared their family monarchy over the “Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” in 1932.
The genie’s lamp was uncorked, and the Saudi monarch summoned him forth. This violent expression of Islam was now legitimized and enforced throughout the entire Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Executions by beheading, amputations, and repression of women are ongoing issues even today. To make matters worse, not long after the Saud family seized power, oil was discovered there. Saudi Arabia became a powerful force in the Middle East and a magnet for Muslim laborers from all over, all of whom were indoctrinated in Wahhabi-ism. And the Kaaba remains the centerpiece of the pilgrimage to Mecca, drawing three million Muslims annually.
With evangelistic fervor funded by millions of oil dollars, Wahhabi teaching spread throughout the Muslim world. Reza Aslan describes the pervasiveness of the Saudis’ efforts:
In 1962, their missionary efforts gained momentum with the creation of the Muslim World League, whose primary goal was the spread of Wahhabi ideology to the rest of the world… Since the creation of the Muslim World League the simplicity, certainty, and unconditional morality of Wahhabi-ism have infiltrated every corner of the Muslim world. Thanks to Saudi evangelism, Wahhabi doctrine has dramatically affected the religio-political ideologies of the Muslim Brothers, Mawdudi’s Islamic Association, the Palestinian Hamas, and Islamic Jihad, to name only a few groups.13
With many Muslims still bearing scars from the chains of colonialism, for some, the command to wage “jihad” against foreign infidels would strike a chord. And the Brits were far from finished inflicting wounds in the Middle East and Persia. The United States would get in on the act also, as we will discover in chapter four. It was these very wounds that produced the angry radicals who filled the ranks of both Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. With the Saudis’ help, they trace their origins in fatwas all the way back to Taymiyya, whose teaching would become the convenient theology of nearly all of today’s Islamic terror groups.
The Wahhabi version of Sharia law is equally deviant, focusing almost exclusively on punishment, and taking special joy in imposing inhumane physical penalties. It was difficult to find any small area of everyday life that was not under the oppressive purview of Wahhabi-ism. In Hamid Algar’s powerful essay on Wahhabism, he states that “… Smoking was … prohibited, men were punished for not wearing beards of sufficient length, music was outlawed, and flowerpots deemed to offend public decency with their bright colors were smashed.”14 The rights of women were drastically curtailed.
Although secular power and religious dogma make excellent bedfellows initially, as soon as a measure of dominion is secured, idealistic principles become an impediment. With the now untold wealth of the king and thousands of princes who constitute the Saudi monarchy, Western alliances are needed in order to keep their wealth secure. US military presence in Saudi Arabia has resulted in a rift between Wahhabi religious leaders and the government. The United States, as the originator of the “war on terror,” finds itself in the incongruous position of being staunch military allies with the nation that is the source of the ideology behind both Al Qaeda and the Islamic State groups.
Wahhabi-ism is hated and soundly rejected by Shiites, Sufis, and most Sunnis as an invalid expression of the Islamic faith. As such, it is excluded from any further discussion related to Islam in this book.
After being brutalized by colonialism, the Muslim world was broken into pieces. The evil jinn of the seventh century awakened. Tyrants and warlords would emerge. Genocides and ethnic cleansing would take place, the rest of the world hardly knowing.
The empire was shattered, but what of the people? One-fourth of the world population still claims Islam as their faith. In spite of cruel colonialism and Saudi evangelism, the vast majority reject violence as a solution.
But have we heard their voices?
CHAPTER 2 NOTES
1. David Nicolle, The Great Islamic Conquests AD 632–750: Essential Histories (oxford: osprey, 2009), 49 .
2. Nicolle, 7.
3. Nicolle, 84.
4. Jalal al-din Rumi, Love’s Ripening: Rumi on the Heart’s Journey, translated by Kabir Helminski and Ahamad Reswani (Boston: Shambhala Publications, Inc., 2008) .
5. Esposito, 59.
6. Kadri, 43.
7. Randeep Ramesh, “India’s Secret History: ‘A Holocaust, one Where Millions disappeared…,’” The Guardian (August 24, 2007), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/aug/24/india.randeepramesh.
8. Aslan, 228.
9. Aslan, 240.
10. Aslan, 235.
11. Esposito, 127.
12. Nikki R. Keddie, An Islamic Response to Imperialism (Berkeley: university of California Press, 1983), 17–19.
13. Aslan, 250.
14. Hamid Algar, Wahhabiism: A Critical Essay (Oneonta, NY: Islamic Publications International, 2002), 44.