IN ABOUT 570 CE a boy was born to Aminah, newly widowed from Abdullah ibn Abd-al-Muttalib, a small-time merchant-trader, and she named her infant Muhammad. The birth occurred in the town of Mecca, located forty-five miles from the Red Sea and situated in a narrow, rocky valley along the western part of the Arabian Peninsula. Mecca had long been regarded as a holy city by Arab tribes in the surrounding area as it contained a sacred building, the Ka’bah, which was a sanctuary and the object of annual pilgrimages. Thus, Mecca was a very appropriate birthplace for a Prophet who would radically change world history.
Most biographies of Muhammad focus nearly exclusively on him as a religious founder, paying little attention to his role in creating an Arab State and as a military leader.1 A few biographies give almost no attention to religion and focus on Muhammad’s “worldly” achievements in politics and war.2 But as Fred McGraw Donner demonstrated in a brilliant study, the two facets of Muhammad’s life are inseparable.3 Without the political and military achievements, Muhammad might have remained such an obscure religious figure as to have escaped historical notice. Without the religion, there probably would have been no state-building or victories.
To put Muhammad fully in perspective it is necessary to comprehend the isolated, disorganized, and tribal world into which he was born—pagan Arabia. With the stage thus set, the chapter turns to a concise biography of Muhammad. Then, to more fully explore his religious contributions, comes an assessment of the primary features of Islam, of the Qur’an (Koran), and of the Muslim conception of Allah. To appreciate Muhammad’s political and military gifts, the chapter traces how he successfully forged an Arab State, using military campaigns not only to impose his rule, but especially to attract allies. Next, the chapter sketches the spread of Islam throughout the Middle East, then across North Africa, and east into India, drawing a careful distinction between conquest and conversion. However, not even an authoritarian state could prevent the repeated fracturing of Islam into numerous sects. The chapter concludes with a brief assessment of Islamic sectarianism to demonstrate the fact that Islam incorporates as much diversity as do Judaism and Christianity.
ARABIA
Most of the Arabian Peninsula is a desert, often designated on maps as the “Empty Quarter.” Only the southwestern corner, now Yemen, has sufficient rainfall to support farming without irrigation. In the sixth and seventh centuries, most of the Peninsula was very thinly occupied by nomadic and semi-nomadic Bedouin tribes. However, there was a strip along the Red Sea, about two hundred miles across at its widest point, known as the Hijaz, where a few small communities managed to exist, even though this, too, was a barren landscape.
The nomads and semi-nomads lived primarily by herding and force of arms. Even though they were very greatly outnumbered by residents of the towns and villages, the desert Arabs so excelled in fighting that they supplemented their income by raids on the settlements—some tribes being able to impose regular “protection” fees on a community or two. For the desert tribes, military adventures not only were essential to their economies, but as Donner so aptly put it, fighting was also “a form of entertainment, a challenging and exciting game…that reduced the monotony of desert life.”4
The desert herds mainly consisted of sheep or goats, but a few tribes specialized in raising camels. The nomads kept on the move all year, following a traditional route from one small watered area to another, staying only until the grazing had been exhausted. Usually their bands were very small “tenting groups” including only several dozen people—the tribe only assembled periodically. The semi-nomads occupied settled communities where they practiced some agriculture (using water from springs or wells) and then went out during the grassy season to graze their flocks.
Map 8–1: Ancient Arabia.
In addition to robbery and protection fees, both nomads and semi-nomads depended on trade with the settled communities for many necessities—trading leather, cloth woven from wool and from goat and camel hair, and livestock in exchange for additional foodstuffs and metal items such as weapons. The towns and villages were sustained by springs, by local gardens and date palms, and supported by commerce: some of it with the desert tribes, some of it involving caravans. To the extent that Arabia had any contact with the outside world, it was via long-distance caravans that crossed the desert because it was the most direct route linking Asia and the Mediterranean. Townspeople profited from these caravans by resupplying them as they passed through and by participating directly in some of these commercial ventures, especially in those having a more local scope. The desert tribes profited by selling camels to the caravans, by hiring on as drivers, by selling safe passage and their services as guards, and by robbing a caravan from time to time.
As is obvious, Arabia in this era was a stateless region. Power relations among the desert tribes were constantly shifting, and no central authority existed. Consequently, relations among the tribes and between desert tribes and settled communities depended in part on the recognition of a degree of mutual self-interest. This involved an additional aspect of Arabian life that empowered the settled communities vis-à-vis the desert-dwellers: religion.
There were substantial communities of Arabs who had converted to Judaism and others who embraced various kinds of Christianity, but most Arabs were pagans who believed in a large number of Gods, both great and small. Apparently, many acknowledged Allah as the Creator God, but as in many early religions, he was a withdrawn “High God” and not worshipped.5 As would be expected, Nature Gods predominated among those who were worshipped. Of special importance were local Gods associated with a specific shrine sited by a spring, an outcrop of rock, or even an unusual tree. Each shrine was controlled by a “devout” family, made up of descendants of the person who first established the religious character of the site, and some sites took on major importance when they were established as a haram. A haram was a sacred place where overt conflict was forbidden—especially murder. It thus served as a sanctuary, providing neutral ground where feuding tribes could negotiate in safety. In addition, a haram often provided the site for trade fairs, because merchants and desert Arabs could go there without fear. Indeed, what no existing political power could provide, the Gods furnished since everyone believed that violation of a haram’s sanctuary would bring divine punishment.6 As a result, the family in charge of a haram acquired substantial power, especially as the head of the family (the mansib) often served as a mediator for tribal disputes. A mansib not only could invoke divine threats, but could deny a given tribe or faction access to the haram or its trade fairs.7 However, the families controlling shrines were not the most influential religious figures in Arabia. These were the Kahins, “shamanistic seers who [it was believed] could enter a trance state and through visionary means locate lost relatives, camels, or other objects.”8 Moreover, because poetry was the primary art form in Arabia, to such an extent that poets gathered to hold competitions, the Kahins presented their sacred formulas in rhymes.9
MECCA
Tradition has it that because of “its admirable situation,”10 Mecca was the center of an extensive commercial empire,11 a place where many caravan routes crossed as part of a long-distance trading network linking the sea routes to India and China with the Mediterranean.12 It also has been accepted that Meccan traders specialized in light, easily transported luxury goods, especially incense, spices, and silk, as well as slaves, and thereby Mecca became a city of considerable wealth. According to the prominent Scottish Arabist W. Montgomery Watt (1909–2006), “the great merchants of Mecca had obtained a monopoly control of this trade. Mecca was thus prosperous, but most of the wealth was in a few hands.”13 This inequality, in turn, is said to have undercut tribal solidarity and led to the neglect of “traditional duties to the unfortunate.”14 Hence, according to Watt and many other historians of Islam, sudden new wealth created social tensions and a general malaise in Mecca that set the stage for the sudden rise of Islam, which was able to restore a sense of community and of mutual obligations.
Or perhaps not, for what has just been sketched is an application of the standard social-scientific explanation for all social movements, which holds that whenever people organize to do something new, it must be in reaction to strains created by material stresses, although sometimes one must dig very deep to find them. At most, this is a very partial truth. No doubt when people form movements aimed at changing things, they do believe that “something is wrong in their social environment” that needs fixing. It follows that “some form of strain must be present if an episode of collective behavior is to occur.”15 What is not true is the nearly universal assumption that these must be material strains.16 No convincing evidence of material strains, of conflict caused by sudden wealth and extremes of inequality, can be unearthed to explain the origins of Islam. Rather, Muhammad and his earliest followers seem to have experienced an acute sense of cultural and spiritual inferiority, as will be seen.
As for “material strains,” Mecca was not situated at a major crossroads,17 nor was it a harbor. This makes the traditional assumption that Mecca grew rich as a center for international trade in precious commodities seem unlikely. True enough, some caravans did originate in Mecca and go somewhere with some kinds of goods. What modern historiography reveals is that these were not long-distance caravans, and they did not carry light, precious cargos.18 Instead, Mecca dealt in modest products and transported them over relatively short distances. Leather goods seem to have been the city’s major export. In addition, its caravans dealt in “clothing, animals, [and] miscellaneous foodstuffs.”19 Such trade was unlikely to have created sudden large fortunes or to have unsettled traditional social life. Nor was it a recent development. When Muhammad began to pursue a career with the commercial caravans, he was simply doing what his father and grandfather had done before him—as their ancestors probably had also done for generations. Continuity does not typically result in a crisis.
Although it was not a major hub of caravans, Mecca was prominent because of its religious significance as a haram. Inside its boundaries was the Ka’bah (literally “the cube”), an ancient temple said to have housed some 360 idols,20 including all the Gods of all the tribes21 and “perhaps including crudely painted images of Jesus and his virgin mother,” and an odd black stone that might be a meteorite.22 The stone was associated with the God Hubal—possibly a War God. Three “Daughters of Allah” were central to worship at the Ka’bah: the Goddesses Al-Lat, al-‘Uzzah, and Manat, the latter may have been the Goddess of Love. The Ka’bah also played a central role in Arabian poetry contests, it being the highest honor to have one’s verses inscribed and placed inside.23
Because Mecca was a haram sanctuary, it benefited from trade fairs to which members of the feuding nomadic tribes could come without risk. Moreover, some Arabs had long made an annual pilgrimage to Mecca to worship at the Ka’bah, doing so at a time of year they referred to as Ramadan. There was nothing sudden about any of this, things had been this way for as long as anyone could remember, without prompting social “strains.”
So what did unsettle Meccan life? Why were the “times” ripe for Muhammad?
Pagan Arabs were not the only occupants of their region. Many kinds of Christians and large numbers of Jews lived among them, both as enclaves within Arab settlements and in communities of their own. Contact was close and constant, and significant numbers of Arabs had converted to each of these faiths—some entire nomadic groups had turned Christian24 and other tribes were Jewish converts.25 This caused some Arabs to feel “an acute sense of inferiority: it seemed as though God had left the Arabs out of His divine plan.”26 Indeed, not only the desert but even the Hijaz was a stateless region that counted for little in comparison with the neighboring societies—the Eastern Roman Empire and Persia. Some of the more sophisticated among the Arabs wondered whether God had overlooked them because they lacked culture. Although the Arabs were probably not the simple polytheistic idolaters depicted in the Qur’an, the fact remains that theirs was the only area in the Near East that was not dominated by monotheism, whether by several varieties of Christianity, by Judaism, or, indeed, by Zoroastrianism.
This situation led some to predict the coming of an Arabian prophet. Among those making such predictions was Waraqa ibn Naufal, a cousin of Muhammad’s wife Khadijah. Waraqa was an educated man and a member of a small group of Arabs known as hanifs (“pious ones”) who “accepted the ethical monotheism of Judaism and Christianity but did not join either of these two religious communities”27 while seeking a deeper spiritual experience than Arab paganism could provide.28 Waraqa seems to have known Muhammad from childhood,29 and some scholars believe that by his mid-thirties, Muhammad had become a hanif.30 It was within this social and religious context that Muhammad began to have visions.
THE PROPHET
Unlike the other religious founders discussed in previous chapters, Muhammad’s life seems to have been recorded in detail—even an extensive physical description and quite candid accounts of his personal style and mannerisms have come down to us. Thus we possess a rich tapestry of details compared with all other founders, if the sources are trustworthy. Unfortunately, as Muslim scholars candidly admit, Muhammad is not nearly so well attested as might be supposed from the rather uncritical biographies, many of them by Western authors, currently in circulation.31 The oldest surviving biographies (sira) were written “at least 125 years after Muhammad’s death.”32 These sira probably utilized older sources—we know the names of a number of persons credited with having written very early biographies of Muhammad, but none of their work survived.33 In any event, medieval Muslim scholars34 detected that some fabrications and rearrangements of events had been introduced in the surviving sira, done to further the cause of various Muslim factions—Islam always has been riddled with disputatious and ambitious sects. Consequently, as with Jesus, there has been a long search for the “historical” Muhammad, albeit most of these searchers have been rather more responsible.35 The consensus is that the main outlines of the traditional biography are accurate enough. It may well be that the extensive descriptions of Muhammad’s appearance and demeanor are, too, but I shall not include them.
I must emphasize that I have followed the traditional biography of Muhammad, the one that is presented in Muslim schools and accepted by the faithful. As will be seen, this traditional biography includes incidents that many Western apologists for Islam find so embarrassing that they ignore or try to minimize them. But these incidents are taken for granted in the Muslim world and are regarded as central to the life of the prophet.
Because his father had died before he was born, Muhammad came under the guardianship of his grandfather. Soon after his birth, he was sent to be wet-nursed by Bedouins in the desert. Then, having returned to his mother’s care sometime after his first birthday, Muhammad was orphaned when she died five years later. Two years after that, his guardian grandfather died, and Muhammad became a charge of his uncle, who succeeded to the headship of the Hashim clan.
When he was old enough, Muhammad began to participate in trading caravans as did his male relatives. Because he had no capital of his own, however, he was limited to the role of hired helper. This way of life continued until he met and married Khadijah, a somewhat older woman of property who had been commissioning caravans on her own behalf. It seems to have been an unusually strong marriage. She bore him two sons (who died very young) and four daughters, and so long as she lived, Muhammad took no other wives. Khadijah also played a major role in Muhammad’s religious development. But before his religious activities began, Muhammad led the life of a successful merchant and father.
First Visions
When he was about forty, consistent with his participation among the hanifs, Muhammad began to engage in annual periods of solitary religious contemplation. Each year, during the month of Ramadan, he secluded himself in a cave on Mount Hira. There “Muhammad spent his days and nights in contemplation and worship.”36 Eventually he began to have vivid dreams involving angels and to experience mysterious phenomena such as lights and sounds having no source.37 These upset him, and he feared he was losing his sanity or that he had been possessed by an evil spirit. So he confided in his wife, Khadijah. She gave him immediate reassurance. She also hurried to consult her cousin Waraqa, who accepted these as signs that greater revelations would be forthcoming.38 Subsequently, when Khadijah brought Muhammad to consult him, Waraqa cried out, “If you have spoken the truth to me, O Khadijah…he is the prophet of his people.”39 Later, when he encountered Muhammad in the marketplace, Waraqa kissed him on the forehead as a mark of his mission as the “new prophet of the one God.”40 Indeed, Waraqa served “as a kind of John the Baptist in the accounts of Muhammad’s early revelations.”41 Thus reassured, Muhammad now accepted his mission and expected to receive major new revelations—and soon did so.
Of these, by far the most dramatic and important is known as Muhammad’s “Night Journey.”42 It occurred in 620 CE, about ten years after his first visions. While sleeping at the home of his cousin in Mecca, he was awakened by the Angel Gabriel who led him by the hand to a winged horse, whereupon the two were quickly transported to Jerusalem. There he was introduced to Adam, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, after which he was taken through each of the seven heavens, and then beyond where he was allowed to see Allah who appeared as divine light. On his way back down through the seven heavens, Muhammad had a series of interactions with Moses concerning the number of times Muslims would be required to pray each day, the number gradually being reduced from fifty to five times. By morning, Muhammad was safely back in bed. The Dome of the Rock eventually was built to mark the place in Jerusalem from which it is believed Muhammad rose into the heavens on his Night Journey.
It is nearly impossible to accurately date most of the various revelations as they appear in the Qur’an, although it is generally believed that some of the earliest ones appear toward the end of the volume. Even so, the same primary themes dominate throughout. First, that Muhammad has been sent to institute true monotheism: “Allah! There is no God save Him, the Alive, the Eternal” (II: 255). Muhammad also vigorously denied his own divinity, claiming instead to be the last of 124,000 prophets sent by God, first to the Jews, then to Christians, and now to Arabs and all the rest of humanity.
The second major theme is that as “People of Scripture” it is time for unity among the three faiths based on their common tradition. “[I]n the beginning of his career Muhammad expected to be warmly received by [these] two previous scriptural communities.”43 To this end, his revelations retell many accounts from both the Old and New Testaments, all of them meant to demonstrate that Islam was the final fulfillment of Jewish and Christian scripture. Thus, for example, an entire revelation is devoted to Mary, to her virginal conception and to the birth of Jesus—the latter occurs at an oasis, beneath a date palm tree, and within moments of his birth, Jesus is able to speak and informs his mother’s relatives that Allah “hath given me the Scripture and hath appointed me a prophet” (XIX:30). In addition to these revelations, in pursuit of unity Muhammad initially instructed that his followers should face Jerusalem when they prayed and that they should fast at the Day of Atonement.44 But Jews and Christians persisted in rejecting Muhammad’s new teachings and criticized the Qur’an’s retelling of their scriptures. In response, Muhammad established that one should face Mecca when one prays, and he replaced the Jewish fast with a fast during the month of Ramadan.
The third consistent theme of Muhammad’s revelations is that everyone will be bodily resurrected at Judgment Day, whereupon believers will enter Paradise and all others will suffer eternity in Hell. Although this view was shared with the Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians in the region, it was new among the Arabs, who were fatalists and did not believe in an afterlife.45 Consequently, of course, the Arabs also lacked notions of sin and this, in turn, encouraged hedonism.46 By promising an extremely attractive Paradise awaiting believers, and a merciless Hell for unbelievers, Muhammad was able to link morality to divine will. Although Muhammad allowed that women, too, would enter Paradise, all descriptions of it involve very masculine joys—sitting in a cool, upland oasis; drinking a wine that neither muddles nor leaves a hangover; and served hand and foot by beautiful virgins.
The fourth primary theme is concerned with leading the moral life and obeying divine authority, predicated, of course, on the doctrine of divine judgment and the afterlife. The importance of obedience to God proved invaluable when Muhammad sought to create an Arab State. Long before such matters could arise, however, came the challenge to convince others that he was truly hearing the voice of the Angel Gabriel—that Allah had chosen to have his actual words spoken to a small-time Meccan merchant.
The Holy Family
As with the other major religious founders, Muhammad’s first followers were his family members and close associates. His wife, Khadijah, was his first and probably his most important convert. Next, of course, came Waraqa. Because both of their sons had died in infancy, Muhammad and Khadijah had adopted two young boys: one of them Muhammad’s cousin Ali and the other Zayd ibn-Harithah, whom they had originally purchased as a slave. Both became converts, as did Muhammad and Khadijah’s four daughters: Fatimah, Zaynab, Ruqayya, and Um Kulthum. Next came three male cousins of Muhammad and one of their wives. Muhammad’s aunt also was an early convert, as was his freed slave, Umm Ayman, a woman who had cared for him in infancy. In addition to relatives, Muhammad’s oldest and closest friend (and eventual successor), Abu-Bakr soon converted. He, in turn, converted “a group of five men who became the mainstay of the young [movement].”47 These five were close friends, and all of them were successful young merchant traders. One of them was Abu-Bakr’s cousin and another was a cousin of Khadijah. In addition, two servants of Abu-Bakr whom he had freed from slavery also converted, including Bilal, who gained lasting fame as the first muezzin (or crier) to call the faithful to prayer. So, there we have Muhammad’s first twenty-two converts. In fact, the “names of 70 [of the earliest] followers are known…. Most were young men under 30 when they joined Muhammad. They included sons and brothers of the richest men in Mecca.”48
To Medina
The new faith soon began to arouse antagonism in Mecca, for it not only claimed to possess new truths, it condemned the traditional religious institutions and practices. Worse yet, when Muhammad attacked paganism and called for “the end of idolatry in Mecca,” the community leaders saw this “as a real threat to their livelihoods.”49 If the idols were destroyed, the Ka’bah would become merely an empty building, and there no longer would be any basis for Mecca as a haram. No haram, no trade fairs. So opposition grew. But Muhammad and his followers were protected by his clan, the Hashim, even though his uncle heading the clan was not a convert—it was enough that Muhammad was a fellow clansman. However, when this uncle died and was replaced by another uncle as head of the clan, amid growing opposition to Muhammad, clan support became undependable. It was at this time, too, that Khadijah died.
Meanwhile, in the summer of 621, twelve men from Medina (then known as Yathrib) had come on a pilgrimage to the Ka’bah. They accepted instruction from Muhammad and then returned to Medina very deeply impressed by him as well as his message. The next year a party of seventy-five persons came from Medina, ostensibly on a pilgrimage, but actually to consult Muhammad. Although the Medinans seem to have found Muhammad’s monotheism of considerable interest, their primary concern was to recruit him to arbitrate the bloody feuds that had beset Medina for a number of years—involving the dozen Arab clans resident in Medina as well as several quite powerful Jewish clans. In pursuit of this aim, the group from Medina took an oath “to defend Muhammad as they would their own kin,”50 thereby providing a substitute for the wavering support of Muhammad’s own clan. Consequently, in the face of growing opposition in Mecca, Muhammad encouraged his followers to withdraw to Medina, a few at a time. Eventually about seventy Meccans did so,51 journeying about 250 miles north. As this took place there was a plot to murder Muhammad, but he and Abu-Bakr escaped their Meccan enemies and made their way safely to Medina. The emigration to Medina is famous in Muslim history as the hijirah (also hegira).
Once in Medina, Muhammad did agree to arbitrate all disputes among the clans, and eventually this role evolved into the first approximation of an Arab State. Muhammad also quickly settled in and had a house built in Medina, where he lived for the rest of his days. It had adjacent small houses for his new wives—how many he eventually married is uncertain, but he left at least nine widows.52 Meanwhile, his fellow emigrants from Mecca had a more difficult time gaining a livelihood in their new home, so Muhammad organized them to rob caravans.
To Arms
Traditional Islamic biographies of Muhammad give considerable coverage to the raids he directed against Meccan caravans, but many recent historians go to great lengths to justify or evade these matters. Karen Armstrong described raids on caravans as “a sort of national sport in Arabia and an accepted way of making ends meet when times were hard…a rough and ready way of securing a fair circulation of wealth.”53 Reza Aslan echoed Armstrong, claiming that these were not robberies, because in Arabia at this time, “caravan raiding was a legitimate means for small clans to benefit from the wealth of larger ones. It was in no way considered stealing.”54 M. A. Salahi would not even share these visions of Arab Robin Hoods, refusing to acknowledge these as raids on caravans, carefully describing them instead as “expeditions” to “learn about their enemies” and as training “manoeuvres [that] enhanced the Muslims’ fighting ability and enriched their knowledge of the surrounding area.”55 All this, despite the fact that traditional Muslim sources take considerable pride in listing all the booty.
In any event, the early efforts by Muslim raiders from Medina to ambush caravans surely did not involve stealing—as they were utter failures! The first attempt involved thirty men on camels who set out to capture a caravan returning to Mecca from Syria. It isn’t clear why they did not attack, but the best surmise is that the caravan was too well-guarded.56 Soon after that, a force of sixty Muslims shot some arrows at another caravan, but also failed to capture it. Next, Muhammad led several groups of raiders, but they, too, were unsuccessful. Apparently, Muhammad’s opponents in Medina were warning the Meccan merchants.57 Perhaps that’s why the first successful raid involved such a small caravan and so few raiders that the informants probably failed to notice anything. This caravan originated in Mecca and was escorted by only four merchants. Muhammad sent a raiding party of fewer than a dozen men led by AbdAllāh ibn Jahsh to set up an ambush south of Mecca. The raiders captured the caravan intact as well as taking two of the four merchants prisoner, another merchant was killed, and the fourth escaped. No raider was hurt. The booty and prisoners were taken back to Medina, where Muhammad set his share of the profits at 20 percent, including the large ransoms paid by the two prisoners’ families. Even so small a caravan made the Meccans in Medina quite affluent. But the raid aroused bitter demands for revenge in Mecca.58
Several months later a very large caravan set out for Mecca from Gaza, accompanied by seventy merchants. Upon learning of this enterprise, Muhammad called for volunteers to participate in a raid. Approximately three hundred men responded, and Muhammad led them forth to lie in wait near the wells at Badr. Meanwhile, the leader of the caravan seems either to have been warned or to have guessed that an attack was planned, and he sent word to his partners in Mecca to come and defend their merchandise—nearly every family in Mecca had some stake in this huge caravan. An army of nearly a thousand men came out from Mecca.59 In the interests of speed the caravan did not turn aside to water at Badr, but pushed on toward Mecca and soon was far out of danger, whereupon many Meccans returned home. But those who had suffered from the first raid agitated for an attack against Muhammad’s forces, who still lay in wait for the convoy, not knowing it had sped past them. So a substantial force of Meccans pushed on. Muhammad learned of their approach at the last minute and drew up his forces on favorable ground. Muhammad’s army was badly outnumbered, but his followers displayed far superior discipline and tactics as well as ardor, and by noon the Battle of Badr was over. About seventy-five Meccans lay dead, and the winners went back to Medina in triumph loaded with booty stripped from the corpses (especially armor) and herding several hundred prisoners—most of whom brought substantial ransoms.60
Far more than wealth was gained at Badr. As the French scholar Maxime Rodinson (1915–2004) explained, “The effects of the victory were especially noticeable on Muhammad himself. He had suffered and struggled, a butt for mockery and disbelief. He may even have doubted himself. And now Allah was giving him a clear sign of his support. An army bigger than his own had been overcome. The hand of Allah was clearly at work.”61
Now there were scores to settle in Medina, and Muhammad’s revenge began with assassinations. The first to die was a woman, “Asima” bint Marwan, who had written scurrilous verses attacking the Prophet, such as:
Fucked men of Malik and of Nabit
And of ‘Awf, fucked men of Khazraj:62
You obey a stranger who does not belong among you,
Who is not of Murad, nor of Madh’hij.
Do you, when your own chiefs have been murdered, put your hope in him
Like men greedy for meal soup when it is cooking?
Is there no man of honour who will take advantage of an unguarded moment
And cut off the gulls’ hopes.63
Having returned to Medina, and learning that “Asima” had written new verses in opposition to him, the Prophet said, “Will no one rid me of this daughter of Marwan?” That night one of Muhammad’s supporters came upon her asleep with a babe in her arms and drove his sword through her. In the morning he reported his accomplishment to Muhammad, who praised him as having done a service to Allah.64 A month later an aged poet who also had written critical verses was murdered in his sleep, in response to an appeal by the Prophet that someone should avenge him “on this scoundrel.”65 A third poet who wrote against Muhammad now made the mistake of moving from Mecca to Medina. Although the poet was protected by the most powerful of the Jewish clans in Medina, once again the Prophet suggested assassination, and once again his followers complied. Luring the poet from his safe quarters, they killed him, and took his head back to Muhammad.66
At this point, Muhammad began to express increased hostility toward Jews and Christians in response to the frustration of his early expectations that the other people of the book would embrace the new faith. Thus, the Qur’an:
O People of Scripture! Why confound ye truth with falsehood and knowingly conceal the truth? (III.71).
O People of the Scripture! Do not exaggerate your religion or utter aught concerning Allah save the truth. The Messiah,67 Jesus son of Mary, was only a messenger of Allah (IV.171).
O People of Scripture! Now hath our messenger come unto you, expounding unto you much of that which ye used to hide in Scripture, and forgiving much (V.15).
The Jews and Christians say: We are sons of Allah and His loved ones. Say: Why then doth He chastise you for your sins? (V.18).
The only rewards of those who make war upon Allah and his messenger and strive after corruption of the land will be that they will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternative sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land. Such will be their degradation in the world, and in the Hereafter theirs will be an awful doom (V.33).
O Prophet! Strive against the disbelievers and the hypocrites! Be harsh with them. Their ultimate abode is hell, a hapless journey’s-end (IX:73).
However, due to their far greater proximity and opposition, it was the Jews who became the primary targets of Muhammad’s wrath. There were three powerful Jewish clans in Medina. They probably were not the descendents of settlers from Palestine, but of Arabs who had been converted to Judaism.68 These Jewish clans had been the earliest settlers of Medina, owned the most fertile land, and specialized in the most valuable crop: dates. They also dominated skilled crafts, especially as jewelers and goldsmiths.69 Moreover, the Jews in Medina were a literate group, able to sustain some local religious scholars, and it was they who stirred Muhammad’s wrath because they not only criticized his interpretations of the Old Testament (revealing many conflicts), but mocked his claims to divine access.70 Even before the Battle of Badr, Muhammad had responded to Jewish criticisms by ending the practice of praying toward Jerusalem. When no Jews had joined his expedition that eventuated in the battle, Muhammad’s attitude toward them grew increasingly bitter. So, during the same month when the “scoundrel” poet was murdered, Muhammad decided to attack the Qaynuqa, weakest of the Jewish clans in Medina. The Qaynuqa withdrew into their fortified tower, and Muhammad’s troops took it under siege. After fifteen days the Jews surrendered. Muhammad wanted them all killed, but gave in to pressure from his allies and agreed to spare the Qaynuqa if they abandoned all their property in Medina and left within three days. “The spoils were enormous and Muhammad kept a fifth.”71
Meanwhile, the Meccans tried to secretly send a caravan to Mesopotamia. But word leaked out, and Muhammad sent a force of a hundred men to waylay it. The raid was a success, and more riches were added to Muhammad’s treasury. In celebration, Muhammad took a third wife.72
By now the Meccans realized that Muhammad was far more than a nuisance. He must be destroyed. They assembled an army including many fighters from desert tribes, a total of about 3,000 well-armed men.73 The Medinans responded by withdrawing into their strong fortifications. From there they looked on helplessly while the Meccans destroyed their ripening crops. This caused some younger men to demand battle.74 Reluctantly, Muhammad and other leaders agreed. A force of about a thousand men was assembled, virtually none of them from the Jewish clans. Looking over the ranks, Muhammad ordered a number of young boys to go back to Medina, and so an army of about seven hundred camped that night on a rocky hillside. The next morning the far larger Meccan force overwhelmed Muhammad’s troops. Many Medinans were killed, many others were wounded (including Muhammad), and after dark the survivors made their way back to the shelter of the Medinan fortress. Foolishly, the Meccans wasted their opportunity for a more complete victory by turning away to mutilate the corpses on the battlefield, while their surviving enemies escaped.75 In the morning the Medinans were securely holed up in their fortifications, where they should have stayed in the first place. Faced with these dim prospects, the Meccan forces headed for home. So, who won? The Meccans won the tactical encounter, but they utterly failed to achieve their strategic goals: Medina was still under Muhammad’s rule.76
With the immediate Meccan threat ended, the Prophet now took his revenge upon the second major Jewish clan in Medina, the Banu n-Nadir. Again there was a short siege and again the Jews were ordered to leave, taking only what they could load on their camels. The extensive Jewish lands were divided among Medinans and the emigrants who had followed Muhammad from Mecca. Muhammad took some of the best fields for himself and found time to marry two more wives.77
Knowing that they must do something final about Muhammad, the leaders in Mecca began to enlist the support of the various desert tribes. Muhammad responded, and a bidding war ensued, in addition to which Muhammad had several desert chieftains assassinated to prevent them from supporting Mecca. But the Meccans persisted and assembled a large army of perhaps 10,000 men and marched on Medina.
Because of natural barriers, the only feasible place to attack Medina was from the north. Muhammad strengthened the northern defensive system by having a deep ditch dug—everyone, including the remaining Jewish clan, took part in the digging. The ditch prevented cavalry charges, and the excavated earth formed a strong palisade on the Medinan side of the ditch. What followed was a lengthy period of remarkably pointless posturing. Weeks were spent with the Meccans shouting insults from the outer side of the ditch, with the Medinans shouting back. A few arrows were shot. Finally, with three dead among the attackers and five dead defenders, the desert Arabs began to defect. Soon the entire Meccan army left.78
Even as the Meccans disappeared over the horizon, Muhammad turned his troops against the fortified enclave of the Banu Qurayza, the last Jewish clan in Medina. Some accounts claim they favored the Meccans; others bring no such charges. Whatever the case, after a short siege they, too, asked for surrender terms, but this time there would be no mercy.79 Great trenches were dug, all the Jewish men were lined up along them and beheaded—from six to nine hundred of them.80 The Jewish women and children were sold into slavery—Muhammad took one of the widows as a concubine.81
The massacre of the Banu Qurayza has greatly troubled those recent Western writers who are most favorably disposed toward Muhammad and Islam. Ironically, their efforts to put a better face on the event would seem to make matters worse. Everyone agrees that the fate of the Banu Qurayza was entirely in Muhammad’s hands—that had he wished to spare them, they would have lived. So, to explain why Muhammad did it, these writers blame the barbaric Arab culture. Thus, Karen Armstrong warned that this event should not be associated with “Nazi atrocities” because “[t]his was a very primitive society—far more primitive than the Jewish society in which Jesus had lived and promulgated his gospel of mercy and love some 600 years earlier.”82 Similarly, W. Montgomery Watt reminded his readers that “in the Arabia of that day…[the tribes lacked] what we would call common decency. The enemy and the complete stranger had no rights whatsoever.”83 In framing this “excuse” these Western authors implicitly deny Muhammad’s divine inspiration, reducing him to just another primitive Arab having no greater moral comprehension than the average Bedouin warrior. This is an amazing “slip,” given the admiring tone of their biographies. On this event the traditional Islamic authors are far more consistent, holding that the fate of the Banu Qurayza was ordained by God as revealed to Muhammad, and that they obviously deserved what they got.84 It is true, of course, that Muhammad had a civilizing influence on the assorted Arab tribes. As he managed to unite them, he imposed a more inclusive definition of community as embracing all believers, thus causing a considerable reduction in the bloodshed caused by inter-tribal aggression—as will be discussed. But this innovation offered no protection to outsiders such as Jews.
Having dealt with the Banu Qurayza, Muhammad sent his forces against an even greater prize, the rich Jewish community of Khaybar—a vast date palm plantation ninety miles south of Medina. The Jews’ desert allies betrayed them (probably having been bribed), and they had to stand alone against the army of about sixteen hundred men that Muhammad led against them. The Jewish forts quickly fell to the far superior forces, and large numbers of Jews were taken prisoner and sold. Muhammad took two of the young Jewish women for wives, one of them the same day he had her husband executed for trying to conceal his goods.85 All the other Jewish communities in the region quickly agreed to pay regular tributes to Muhammad.
Now it was Mecca’s turn. As Muhammad began to march with ten thousand men, many of them from newly allied desert tribes, he was joined by many additional contingents along the way,86 some of them even from Mecca. Facing reality, the city fathers quickly negotiated a settlement. In return for no resistance, Muhammad offered amnesty to all. After marching into Mecca peacefully, the Prophet kept his word, except for ten men and women who had once mocked him in public. These he had executed. Of course, the Ka’bah was cleansed of idols, but the black stone was kept and the Ka’bah was rededicated as a Muslim shrine (the Qur’an says that the Ka’bah originally was built by Abraham).
With Mecca finally in his fold, Muhammad launched an expedition against those desert tribes that still remained apart. That accomplished, Muhammad stood unchallenged as head of an Arab State that controlled nearly all of the Arabian Peninsula and was able to send military expeditions probing to the north and the east, especially into Syria. This was not yet a Muslim army—most of his tribal allies did not embrace the new faith, as will be seen. But it was Muhammad’s army, so it might as well have been a Muslim army in that it fought battles that extended the Prophet’s rule.
Muhammad was now in his sixties, but he continued to be very active and to take new wives. Then, in May 632, he fell ill. After several weeks he seemed to be getting better, and everyone looked forward to his recovery. But he soon relapsed, and on June 8 he died, his head in the lap of his favorite wife ‘Ā’ishah, daughter of Abu-Bakr, whom he had married when she was nine. Muhammad was buried under the floor of ‘Ā’ishah’s bedroom, on the very spot where he had died. Since then, a mosque has arisen over the Prophet’s humble grave in Medina, and it has been “adorned with gold, silver, marble, mosaics and diamonds” as the “rulers of Islam have heaped rich gifts upon it and vied with one another in embellishing it.”87
Muhammad’s death took everyone by surprise, and no arrangements had been made for his succession. This touched off a crisis of leadership, but eventually his old and trusted friend Abu-Bakr took over.
ISLAM
The great world faith founded by Muhammad came to be known as Islam, an Arabic term meaning “submission.” Followers of this faith are called Muslims, which means “submitters” in Arabic.88 Unlike the Eastern faiths, there is nothing very complex about its doctrines or practices. Indeed, that Islam is easy to learn and to follow greatly facilitated its spread.
The Five Pillars
Like Judaism, the religion that Muhammad left to the world has often been called a religion of orthopraxy, or correct practice, in contrast with Christianity’s concern with orthodoxy, or correct beliefs or doctrine.89 This difference is fully evident in the Five Pillars, which encompass the foundations of Islam, only the first of which concerns belief: the Shahada, which is the Muslim confession of faith. It consists of but one sentence: “I bear witness that ‘There is no god but God’; I bear witness that ‘Muhammad is the messenger of God.’” All that is required to be fully accepted as a convert to Islam is to recite this sentence in the presence of two Muslim witnesses.
The second pillar is Salat, or worship. It involves engaging in formal prayer five times a day (and at other occasions such as funerals and during eclipses). Muslim prayers involve recitation of a fixed set of words, at five specific times, beginning at just before daybreak and ending just after sunset. Prayer also requires a succession of body postures—bowing, prostrating, and sitting—while facing Mecca. Since there are no “priests” in Islam, all adult Muslim males are expected to be able to perform the role of imam, or prayer leader, although in practice “professional” specialists exist and some of these imams gain immense respect and influence in both religious and secular affairs. Every Friday Muslim men (but not women) also must attend prayers at a mosque. Mosque is actually an English word based on the Arabic word masjid, which means “place of prostration.”90 Thus, any space dedicated to Muslim ritual is a mosque, but most often a mosque is a building, the Islamic equivalent of a church or temple. Before praying, Muslims wash their hands, face, and feet—preferably with running water.
The third pillar is Zakat, or almsgiving. Muslims are required to give alms to support those in need, and to do so at the end of each year. Zakat is not considered charity, but an obligation to Allah—a sort of loan to God that will be paid back multifold.91 Sawm identifies the duty to fast from dawn to dusk each day during the month of Ramadan. The fifth pillar is Hajj, which refers to the expectation that all Muslims will make a pilgrimage to Mecca during their lifetimes.
It could be argued that the requirement to obey holy law known as Shari’a is a sixth pillar. The scope of Shari’a is not limited to religious matters since Muslims have traditionally made no distinction between the religious and the secular and regard the Shari’a as an adequate basis for the full legal system of a Muslim state. An additional sort of “professional” clergy are the specialists in Shari’a, known as the “ulama,” or the “learned.”92 Their rulings, known as ijtihād, carry great force. Indeed, “ulama” often rise to official government positions, and those who do have been known since the seventeenth century as mullahs.
Shari’a is based on two sources: the Qur’an and Sunnah (“custom”), which derives from accounts of how Muhammad lived and his many sayings (see Hadith, below). Many matters of Muslim law are specified in the Qur’an, especially dealing with virtues and charity. But Sunnah is the basis for many of the practical aspects of day-to-day Muslim life. Examples include the dietary laws (which very closely approximate kosher as defined by Judaism); rules concerning defilement such as those limiting the use of the left hand (it being reserved for unclean matters); circumcision; and very strict rules concerning treatment of the Qur’an, such as never placing any object on top of this holy book.
The Qur’an
Islam is the third religion of “the book,” but with a very great difference. The Old and New Testaments are collections of writing having many different authors. The Qur’an is a unitary work that consists of 114 Suras (chapters) of varying length. It is not a history—only seven or eight actual places are mentioned. “Identifying what the Koran is talking about in a contemporary context is therefore usually impossible without interpretation…. We could not tell that the sanctuary was in Mecca, or that Muhammad himself came from there, and we could only guess that he established in Yathrib [Medina].”93 The Qur’an is a series of messages or sermons, spoken in the first person (the more majestic “We” is often substituted for “I”), as is appropriate for a scripture that claims to consist of the actual words of Allah that were repeated to Muhammad by the Angel Gabriel. Tradition holds that Muhammad could neither read nor write, although some modern scholars are convinced that he was literate.94 If so, one must wonder why he seems not to have written down any of his revelations. Instead, he recited them repeatedly and encouraged followers to memorize them, although it is said that scribes sometimes wrote down what Muhammad recited.
A page from the Qur’an. For all that it is beautiful, this traditional Arabic script lacks short vowels, which often causes confusion as to which of several possible words actually is intended. (Musee du Quai Branly, Paris; Photo: Rèunion des Musées Mationaux/Art Resource, New York)
When Muhammad died unexpectedly in 632, apparently there was no written Qur’an. This prompted an intensive search for any written portions that could be found, “many of them written on crude materials such as scraps of leather.”95 In addition, a great deal of material that had been memorized and transmitted orally was put in writing, probably for the first time, and an “official” Qur’an was assembled. Inevitably, this process caused a great deal of confusion and conflict as to what may have been overlooked, suppressed, or added. Muhammad himself contributed greatly to these problems since he never ceased to revise, to reorganize, and to add and delete material. Thus there are “indications that parts of earlier revelations were not included in the scripture. Early Muslims…were aware that…passages had been deliberately excluded by the Prophet, since [they] referred to them as what was ‘abrogated,’ ‘lifted,’ ‘caused to be forgotten’ or ‘dropped.’”96 Indeed, the Qur’an says this directly: “Such of Our revelations as We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, we bring (in place) one better or the like thereof” (II:106). The Qur’an (XXII:52) also apparently acknowledges the withdrawal of the so-called Satanic Verses. These are said to have been inserted by Muhammad as an appeal to Meccans by acknowledging the three pagan Goddesses worshipped at the Ka’bah. But it later was revealed to Muhammad that these verses did not originate with Allah, but came from Satan, and hence were revoked. In any event, due to Muhammad’s tendency to revise and rearrange, many sections of the Qur’an are “of a composite character, holding embedded in them fragments received by Muhammad at widely differing dates” often with somewhat “incongruous” results.97
Questions also persist because of the inherent ambiguities of Arabic script in this era—there are no short vowels and no diacritics in the earliest surviving texts. This has resulted in inevitable controversies as to the precise word that is meant in various places—albeit most words in the Qur’an are not in doubt. However, the ambiguities that do exist pose some significant questions of interpretation.98
In any event, all challenges to the authenticity of the Qur’an must confront the literary evidence that it all was “written” by the same “author.” It is a matter of Muslim orthodoxy that the Qur’an is the most beautiful and powerful poetry ever written in Arabic. This claim, combined with the orthodox Muslim belief that God spoke to humanity in Arabic, which qualifies it as the divine language, makes it sinful to translate the Qur’an into other languages. Indeed, those Westerners who have ventured to render the Qur’an into their own languages have done so very circumspectly and have warned that no translation can provide more than a faint glimmering of the real thing. The eminent Cambridge Arabist A. J. Arberry (1905–1969), who translated a portion of the Qur’an into English, wrote that “the rhetoric and rhythm of the Arabic of the Koran are so characteristic, so powerful, so highly emotive, that any version whatever is bound in the nature of things to be but a poor copy of the glittering splendor of the original.”99 Similarly, the English convert to Islam and celebrated novelist Marmaduke Pickthall (1875–1936) flatly asserted that “the Koran cannot be translated,” and qualified his “translation” with the title The Meaning of the Glorious Koran since no one could translate “that inimitable symphony, the very sounds of which move men to tears and ecstasy.”100 This may well be true, but a surprisingly large number of Muslim writers have long disputed the Qur’an’s literary merits.101 Those of us lacking command of Arabic cannot evaluate this issue, but we can notice that the claimed literary merits are entirely absent from English translations of the Qur’an as well as from translations into other European languages.102 In Western languages, most readers will find the Qur’an “prosaic” and often “tedious.”103 However, this may be purely a matter of inadequate translations: to effectively translate good poetry requires a translator who is a good poet.
Be that as it may, clearly the Qur’an is not the work of some committee, nor can it be a collection gathered from various forgers and conspirators. Of course, this does not rule out substantial omissions or the fact that even slight alterations, even the changing of a single word, could have had a dramatic impact on meaning. Western scholars tend to accept the existing Qur’an as a reliable guide to Muhammad’s teachings—disputes over authenticity are primarily among various Muslim sects and factions.
In addition to the Qur’an, Muslims also place great weight on collections of writings known as Hadith. These consist of three elements. The most important Hadith consist of sayings attributed to Muhammad and accounts of his actions—the biographies, or sira, as noted above. To a considerable degree these parts of the Hadith are akin to the Christian Gospels and the Book of Acts. They are Muhammad’s teachings, not Allah’s revelations, and thus the source of Sunnah law. Second, the Hadith also include Muhammad’s comments on the Qur’an (known as tafsir) and, third, his assessments of actions taken by others and his legal reasoning (known as fiqh). Examples of the latter:
The thing that is lawful but is disliked by Allah is divorce.
Actions will be judged according to intentions.
All of the major branches of Islam accept the authority of the Hadith. The trouble is, they bitterly dispute which collections are authentic and which are not.
As already mentioned, many Suras refer to characters and stories in both the Old and the New Testaments, and there often are very substantial differences between the Qur’an and the Bible. This is especially the case vis-á-vis the Old Testament since Muhammad had far more contact with Jews than with Christians. This is overwhelmingly reflected in the Qur’an, which includes far more Jewish than Christian material. Aside from retelling the birth of Jesus and acknowledging that Mary was virtuous, the Qur’an has very little overlap with the New Testament other than to deny that Jesus is anything more than “a messenger, the like of whom had passed away before him” (V:75) and quoting Jesus directly as saying, “O children of Israel! Lo! I am the messenger of Allah unto you” (LXI:6). Consistent with this, on the side of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, facing the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, it is written in Arabic: “God has no son.”
To the extent that Muhammad’s views about Jesus were influenced by his contacts with Christians, it is important to know that the Christians living in Arabia at that time were overwhelmingly members of various heretical groups. Many of them were Nestorians, a Christian group that began in the fifth century and was condemned as a heresy for teaching that Jesus was simply a man inspired by God, a position fully compatible with the one subsequently expressed in the Qur’an. The Qur’an also denies that Jesus was crucified, that it was only a “look-alike” of Jesus who was nailed to the cross (IV:157–158). This, too, is a common “heresy,” known to the early Christian fathers as Docetism, and is very prominent in the Gnostic writings—Basilides, the second-century Alexandrian Gnostic teacher, even claimed that Jesus stood by and laughed while the wrong man suffered in his place.104 Various Gnostic groups also were influential among the tribes in Arabia during Muhammad’s time, particularly the Manichaeans with whom Muhammad may have had some contact.105
In contrast to the slim attention paid to Christianity, the Qur’an “retells” numerous Old Testament stories about Abraham, Moses, Solomon, David, and other leading figures. Often the character is abruptly brought into the discussion and the biblical account is simply alluded to and not retold, but when there are retellings they often depart greatly from the biblical “originals.”106 The Jewish scholars in Medina were quick to point out “the way in which the Koran distorted the Old Testament stories and the errors and anachronisms of which it was full.”107 It was partly in retaliation for these criticisms that Muhammad attacked Jewish groups and settlements in Arabia, and the issue remains as incendiary today as it was then. It seems unnecessary to summarize these disputes, but keep in mind that while Jews and Christians believe that the Qur’an is in error, thus reflecting Muhammad’s misunderstandings about and ignorance of the Bible, Muslims believe that the Bible is wrong, that Allah’s original revelations were corrupted by Jews and Christians. This disagreement ultimately rests on faith, as does the ultimate point at issue: Are Yahweh, Jehovah, and Allah different names for the same God?
Allah
As would be expected, since Allah was the name associated with the withdrawn High God of Arab paganism, the word itself is actually generic: Ilah is the Arabic word for God, and al-ilāh means “the God,” hence Allāh. However, despite the constant condemnations of anything less than absolute monotheism, like Judaism and Christianity, Islam is also a dualistic religion. Angels abound—some aid believers in battle; others known as jinn serve as guardian angels who record each person’s deeds in preparation of the Last Reckoning, and huge numbers surround Allah to everlastingly praise him. Islam also acknowledges Shaytan, that being the Arabic term for Satan (also known as Iblis). As do the other two monotheisms, Muslims teach that this evil creature leads humans into error and sin after having fallen from high status among the angels, and that he will promote evil until held accountable at the Last Day.
Although traditional Muslims contend that Yahweh and Jehovah are simply other names for Allah, they also believe that Jews and Christians have so corrupted their understanding of God, that in effect they worship different Gods. Indeed, when examined with care, Muslim conceptions of God not only differ considerably from Jewish and Christian doctrines, but differ quite significantly among the various Muslim groups. The most crucial of these various disagreements concerns the issue of free will versus predestination. Since the Qur’an sometimes affirms free will and sometimes asserts that all of one’s life was predetermined by Allah at the beginning of time, it is a never-ending dispute that divides Islam “into two distinct camps.”108
Some Muslim sects, including the Shi’ah and the Mu’tazilis, affirm free will—that humans are able to govern their actions and thus to choose between doing good and evil. This, then, is the basis for divine judgment as to entering Hell or Paradise. However, the Sunni majority holds otherwise: that despite the existence of Shaytan, God is responsible for both good and evil and all human actions are predetermined. The Sunni start from the assumption that Allah has absolute freedom to act as he chooses. Hence, if God is just, it is only “because he wills to be just; were he to will otherwise his actions would still be right and good.” Hence there is no intrinsic basis for good or evil; they are merely conventions. “Were God to stipulate in shari’ah that lying, adultery, and theft were good, they would be allowed in spite of the fact that human reason may judge them evil.”109 In any event, humans do not choose good or evil. Everything anyone does was already written in their book at the beginning of time:
Naught of disaster befalleth in the earth or in yourselves but it is in a Book before We bring it into being (LVII:22).
Unto whomsoever of you willeth to walk straight.
And ye will not unless (it be) that Allah willeth (LXXXI:28–29).
And finally:
Thus God misleadeth whom He will, and whom He will doth he guide aright (LXXIV:34).110
Perhaps the single most important thing that sets Allah apart from Yahweh and Jehovah is that Islam teaches that he utterly defies all understanding. It is impossible for human intellects to grasp any aspect of Allah, nor can he reveal himself further since he is unknowable. Consequently, reasoning about the nature of God is regarded as impossible by some Muslim scholars and denounced as blasphemy by many.111 Instead of concerning themselves with the sorts of questions about God that occupy Christian theologians, Muslim scholars devote their efforts to working out the intricacies of Shari’a, or holy law.
Thus, the dominant Muslim conception of God is of a very intrusive, unpredictable, incomprehensible divinity.112 Nothing may be assumed about Allah, not even that he loves us, as that, too, might be a limiting factor. Whereas Christians assume that Jehovah is the epitome of rationality, Muslims deny that Allah is rational or even virtuous, these being human judgments entirely—some Muslim thinkers even have denied the existence of “causality altogether,” even in earthly matters, on grounds that it is contrary to God’s unlimited freedom to act.113 Indeed, elsewhere I have pointed out that such doctrines, including the “orthodox” claim that all attempts to formulate natural laws are blasphemous in that they, too, would limit Allah’s freedom, have played a major role in the failure of Islam to keep pace with the West.114
Finally, Allah is without any physicality, and all references to his hands, or face, or to his sitting on a throne that occur in the Qur’an are to be taken as metaphorical. As so often happens, most Muslims find so distant and incomprehensible a God somewhat daunting. Thus, in an effort to humanize the supernatural, for most Muslims “religion consists above all in invoking the local saint and visiting his ‘marabout’ [tomb]…[reflecting] the irrepressible need for mediation which seems inherent in human nature.”115 Even so, what most Muslims believe about Allah is that he is utterly inaccessible and fundamentally beyond all understanding. One simply submits.
BUILDING AN ARAB STATE
Submission to Allah was the basis of the Arab State created by Muhammad, which was interpreted as submission to Muhammad’s rule. Authoritarian states ruled by a king or an emperor were, of course, typical of the times. What was different about the new Arab State is that it was a true theocracy—the ruler was the actual head of the religion. That was to be expected during Muhammad’s lifetime; he had created the state partly on the basis of his authority as Prophet (which drew to him a committed core of followers), and partly through treaties negotiated on the basis of his assembly of an army. Some desert tribes joined Muhammad’s coalition only after he sent forces against them; others were drawn to Muhammad’s banner through the promise of a share in future booty. As for the urbanites, after Mecca set the example, other towns were allied through treaties specifying regular payments for “protection”—not only the Jewish communities, but also the Christian communities, such as Najran at the southwestern tip of the peninsula, and pagan Arab communities, too.
The result was an Arab State embracing all of Arabia. Three logically related principles distinguished this state from anything seen before.116 The first was the notion of umma, of a community defined and set apart purely on religious grounds. All other group characteristics were subordinated to this one feature—clan, tribe, language, and race were to be given no significance in defining members of the umma of Islam. It was purely a community of believers, and therefore the individual’s bonds to the community were not those of kinship or proximity, but were moral! To betray the umma was to betray God. In this fashion all the traditional ties to communities were replaced by the contrast between believers and unbelievers. Hence, the principle was adopted (although soon to be ignored) that there must be no feuding within the umma, that conflicts were only legitimate with outsiders. The second principle was that the authority of the state was God-given. Hence it was claimed that laws were not enacted or proclaimed, but were discovered by close study of the Qur’an and the Sunnah. The third principle was that there could only be one central authority. Given Islam’s strict monotheism—“the idea that there was but one locus of divine power in the universe—may have made it easier for Muslims to accept as well the idea of a single locus of political authority in the realm of worldly affairs.”117
When the Prophet died and was succeeded by his close friend Abu-Bakr, the theocracy continued as Abu-Bakr’s sole leadership was acknowledged. Of course, he was not Muhammad’s successor as a prophet, that mission was now taken to be ended, but Abu-Bakr’s role soon included interpretation of Shari’a and an initial effort to gather up the Qur’an, as well as being head of the Arab State. Indeed, Abu-Bakr was the first to hold what became known as the office of Caliph, literally “successor” to the Prophet. Abu-Bakr’s greatest achievement as Caliph was to hold the Arab State together when many of the desert tribes attempted to abandon the cause, as did some of the southern towns as well. Abu-Bakr dispatched armies at once to counteract these threats, and a series of victories in what are known as the Ridda wars settled the matter.
Of course, it took more than a Caliph to sustain an Arab State—it took a sophisticated and relatively united governing elite. Such an elite rapidly took shape during Muhammad’s last years and, as might well be expected given the Prophet’s background and that of many of his first converts, it consisted of “merchants and financiers of the Hijaz.”118 This elite quickly developed techniques for controlling and directing the warlike propensities of the desert tribes.
Two years after Muhammad’s death, Abu-Bakr died, too, and was succeeded as Caliph by ‘Unmar ibn-al-Khattab, a former Meccan merchant who was one of the last converts Muhammad made in that city before the withdrawal to Medina. ‘Unmar was well known for his asceticism and his lack of humor, and under his stern leadership the Arab State set out to conquer the world, in the name of Islam.
THE FAITH MILITANT
Before he died, Muhammad had gathered a military force not only able to dominate Arabia, but sufficient for him to contemplate expansion beyond. Incursions into the Fertile Crescent had become increasingly attractive because the rise of an Arab State greatly diminished the opportunities for the desert tribes to impose protection payments on the towns and villages, as well as ending their freedom to rob caravans. So, attention turned to the north and east where “rich spoils were to be won, and warriors could find glory and profit without risk to the peace and internal security of Arabia.”119 Raids by Muhammad’s forces into Byzantine Syria and Persian (Sasanian) Iraq began during the last several years of the Prophet’s life, and serious efforts ensued soon after his death.
Conquest
In typical fashion, many historians have urged entirely material, secular explanations for the Muslim conquests. Thus, the prominent Carl Heinrich Becker (1876–1933) explained that the “bursting of the Arabs beyond their native peninsula was…[entirely] due to economic necessities.”120 Specifically, it is said that a population explosion in Arabia, combined with a sudden decline in caravan trade, were the principal forces that drove the Arabs to suddenly begin a series of invasions and conquests at this time. Nonsense! The “population explosion” never happened, but was invented by authors who assumed that the “civilized” Byzantines and Persians could only have been overwhelmed by barbarian “Arab hordes.”121 The truth is quite contrary: the invasions were accomplished by remarkably small, very well led, and well-organized Arab armies. As for the caravan trade, if anything, it increased in the early days of the Arab State, probably because the caravans were now far more secure.
A fundamental reason that the Arabs attacked their neighbors at this particular time was because they finally had the power to do so. Having become a unified state rather than a collection of uncooperative tribes, the Arabs now had the ability to sustain military campaigns rather than the hit-and-run raids they had conducted for centuries. As for more specific motivations, as mentioned, Muhammad had seen expansion as a means to provide new opportunities, “in the form of booty and captured lands” for the desert tribes. And indeed, many desert Arabs were eager to attack, and some members of the ruling elite were attracted by the opportunity to rule new territories. But most important of all: the Arab invasions were planned and led by those committed to the spread of Islam.
The first conquest was Syria, then a province of the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium). It presented many attractions. Not only was it close, it was the most familiar foreign land—the merchants of the Hijaz had regularly dealt with Syrian merchants, some of whom came to the trade fairs at Mecca. Then, too, it was a more fertile region and had larger, more impressive cities, including Damascus. Not incidentally, in those days Jerusalem was also a Syrian city. Hence, Syria offered an attractive opportunity for both greed and creed!
Syria also presented a target of opportunity because of its unsettled political situation and the presence of many somewhat disaffected groups. After centuries of Byzantine rule, Syria had fallen to the Persians (Sasanians) in about 611 CE, only to be retaken by Byzantium in about 630 (two years before Muhammad’s death). The Persians destroyed the institutional basis of Byzantine rule, and when they were driven out, a leadership vacuum developed. Moreover, Arabs had been migrating into Syria for centuries and had long been a primary source of recruits for the Byzantine forces. In addition, some Arab border tribes had long served as mercenaries to guard against their raiding kinsmen from the south. The Arabs in Syria had little love for their Roman rulers. Hence, when the Arab invasions came, many Arab defenders switched sides during the fighting.
The first Muslim forces entered Syria in 633 and took an area in the south without a major encounter with Byzantine forces. A second phase began the next year and met more determined resistance, but the Muslims won a series of battles, taking Damascus and some other cities in 635, and by 636 the Byzantine army abandoned Syria. Meanwhile, other Arab forces had moved against the Persian area known today as Iraq. The problem of unreliable Arab troops also beset the Persians just as it had the Byzantines—in several key battles, whole units of Persian cavalry, which consisted exclusively of Arab mercenaries, joined the Muslim side. By 637 the Persian army was routed, and the capital city of Ctesiphon had fallen to Arab forces.
Now, the Arab forces in Syria moved west and south, soon reaching the Mediterranean shore: Jerusalem was taken in 638, Caesarea Maritima in 640. The next year Arab armies invaded Egypt, taking Cairo; Alexandria fell to them in 642. Since they now were holding some major port cities, the Muslims began to build a fleet and in 649 sustained an invasion of Cyprus—Sicily and Rhodes were pillaged soon after. Then, in 655 the Muslim fleet shattered the Byzantine fleet off the Anatolian coast. A major Muslim Empire now ruled most of the Middle East and was spreading along the North African coast. Thirty years later the Empire stretched past Tangier and reached the Atlantic. By 714 much of Spain was occupied, and Muslim forces had expanded far to the east, occupying the Indus Valley. Shortly thereafter, Caliph Abu’l-Abbas al-Saffah moved the capital of the Muslim Empire from Damascus to a new city he built on the Tigris River in Iraq. Its official name was Madina al-Salam (City of Peace), but everyone called it Baghdad.
It was not until the battles had been won that civilians moved in to enjoy the status of ruling conquerors and a privileged lifestyle paid for by local taxes, these being the migrations that too many historians have confused with the invasions. This is obvious from the fact that the population of the Arabian Peninsula declined greatly subsequent to the Muslim conquests.122 That the Arabs fled their arid, unproductive homeland for the far more favorable climates and easy living of the new areas is hardly surprising. Even so, the migrant Arabs were always very greatly outnumbered by the locals. Thus it was that the Muslim conquerers constituted a small elite who ruled over large populations of non-Muslims, most of whom remained unconverted for centuries, as will be seen.
The Muslim conquest of the Middle East resulted in an Islamic overlay of Christianity, well illustrated by this mosque in Turkey. Originally built in the fourth century as a massive Christian church, it was converted into a mosque by painting over the Christian mosaics and adding a tall minaret at each corner. (Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, Turkey; Photo: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, New York)
How did the Arabs triumph so quickly and seemingly so easily? Many historians unfamiliar with military arts have found this inexplicable. They ask: how could a bunch of desert barbarians roll over the large, trained armies of the “civilized” empires? One must ask why these same scholars have not been similarly astounded by the victory of the Germanic barbarians over the “civilized” Romans on the other side of the Mediterranean? The two developments are relatively comparable, aside from the fact that the Arabs were better organized and better led than the Germanic tribes that took Rome.
The first thing to recognize is that the more “civilized” empires did not possess any superior military hardware, with the exception of siege engines, which were of no use in repelling attacks. Everyone depended on swords, lances, axes, and bows. Moreover, by this era there no longer were dedicated and highly disciplined “citizen soldiers” in the imperial forces—not in those Rome sent against the Germanic tribes, nor in those fielded by Byzantium or Persia. Instead, these forces were recruited from hither and yon, and mostly drew “foreigners” who served mainly for pay, which placed limits on their loyalty and their mettle. Indeed, as mentioned above, many of the rank and file in the Byzantine and Persian forces were Arabs, large numbers of whom ended up deserting to the Muslim side.
Nor were the “professional” armies of Persia and Byzantium better trained. The desert Arabs devoted themselves to arms from an early age, and when they went into battle, the individual Muslim fighters were part of a close-knit, small unit of men from the same tribe, who fought alongside their relatives and lifelong friends and thus were under extreme social pressure to be brave and aggressive. Because the Arab forces traveled by camel rather than on foot, they were far more mobile; they could always find and attack the most weakly held places and avoid the main Persian and Byzantine forces until they had them at a great disadvantage.
Contrary to what many would suppose, a very significant Arab advantage lay in the small size of their field armies—they seldom gathered more than 10,000 men and often campaigned with armies of 2,000 to 4,000.123 Their successes against the far larger imperial forces were similar to those often enjoyed by small, well led, aggressive forces in the face of lumbering enemy hosts—consider the tiny Greek armies routing the Persians. In fact, due to their smaller numbers, the Arab invading forces often were able to far outnumber their opponents on a given battlefield because their much greater mobility allowed them to “git thar fustest, with the mostest,” as the American Civil War commander so famously explained. The imperial forces either wore themselves out marching in fruitless pursuit of a battle or made themselves vulnerable by spreading out and trying to defend everywhere at once.
As should be clear, the Arab forces were very well led. Not by their tribal leaders, but by officers selected from “the new Islamic ruling elite of settled people from Mecca, Medina or al-Ta’if.”124 All of the middle to higher ranks were staffed from the elite by men who clearly understood administration, including the chain of command, and who were able to keep the larger strategic goals in mind while embroiled in tactical engagements. In fact, they were so aware of the need to “win the peace” that they imposed tight discipline on their forces vis-á-vis civilian populations, choosing instead to make very substantial, regular payments to their fighters in lieu of booty. Finally, of course, it was religion that bound the entire enterprise together—the Muslim Empire was the triumph of the umma!
Conversion
But it was a very long time before this empire was truly Muslim in anything but name. The reality of the Muslim Empire was that in the beginning very small Muslim elites ruled over non-Muslim (mostly Christian) populations in the newly conquered areas. This runs contrary to the widespread belief that early Muslims were uniformly a bunch of religious fanatics who demanded immediate conversion, and that, in addition, Islam aroused such intense and immediate appeal that voluntary mass conversions soon followed Muslim conquests. But, as noted in Chapter 7, mass conversions don’t happen. As for widespread Muslim fanaticism, it seems to be a very recent phenomenon—a reaction both against modernity and anger over the lack of modernity. No doubt there always have been some Muslim fanatics, as there always have been fanatical Jews and Christians, as well as fanatical atheists, but it appears that most Muslims of, say, the seventh and eighth centuries, were as instrumental and lackadaisical vis-á-vis their faith as were most medieval European Christians. In any event, the conversion of the Muslim conquests took centuries.
Richard W. Bulliet125 has provided superb data on conversion to Islam in the various conquered regions. For whatever reason, from earliest times, Muslims produced large numbers of very extensive biographical dictionaries listing all of the better-known people in a specific area, and new editions appeared for centuries—eventually Bulliet was able to assemble data on more than a million persons. The value of these data lies in the fact that Bulliet was able to distinguish Muslims from non-Muslims on the basis of their names. Then, by merging many dictionaries for a given area and sorting the tens of thousands of people listed by their years of birth, Bulliet was able to calculate the proportion of Muslims in the population at various dates and thus create curves of the progress of conversion in five major areas. Because only somewhat prominent people were included in the dictionaries, these results overestimate both the extent and the speed of conversions vis-á-vis the general populations in that elites began with a higher proportion of Muslims and Muslims would have continued to dominate. Consequently, Bulliet devised a very convincing procedure to convert these data into conversion curves for whole populations.
Table 8–1 shows the number of years required to convert 50 percent of the population to Islam in five major areas. In Iran it took 200 years from the date of the initial conquest by Muslim forces to the time when half of Iranians were Muslims. In the other four areas it took from 252 years in Syria to 264 years in Egypt and North Africa. At the bottom of the table we see that it took 310 years to convert 50 percent of the Roman Empire to Christianity, based on the projection presented in Chapter 7. And as was true for Christianity, conversion to Islam occurred rather more rapidly in the cities than in the rural areas.126
As to why things happened somewhat more rapidly in Iran, two things set it apart from the other areas. Probably the most important is that for more than a century after falling to Islamic invaders, the Iranians frequently revolted against Muslim rule and did so with sufficient success so that many very bloody battles ensued, as did brutal repressions. These conflicts would have resulted in substantial declines in the non-Muslim population, having nothing to do with conversion. Secondly, the climate of fear that must have accompanied the defeats of these rebellions likely would have prompted some Iranians to convert for safety’s sake and probably caused others to flee.
That it took a bit longer to convert the Empire to Christianity than to convert these areas to Islam is also no surprise. Had the Christians begun their efforts in Rome under a Christian emperor and with control of all governmental functions, surely their task would have been somewhat eased—there would have been no persecutions, for one thing. That the Christians actually succeeded in a comparable time frame seems truly remarkable.
The most fundamental finding in Table 8–1 is consistency. From that, several important conclusions would seem to follow. First, the data strike another blow to the idea of mass conversions—it took a long time to convert the Islamic conquests. Second, the remarkable comparability of elapsed times, including the speed of the Christianization of the Empire, strongly suggests that there is statistical regularity to conversion—that there may be something approaching a constant pattern at which conversion proceeds through any given social network. Indeed, conversion seems to be another phenonomenon best represented by the S-shaped or sigmoid curve, which has been found to characterize many other sorts of population-wide social changes, such as the diffusion of new technology and market penetration of new products.127
THE SPLINTERED “MONOLITH”
Not only did it take centuries to convert most of the conquered people to Islam, but even then significant non-Muslim minorities persisted within many parts of the Islamic world. To this was added, from early days, multitudes of Islamic sects. Both sources of pluralism often ignited angry and sometimes bloody conflicts.
Non-Muslim Minorities
For at least a century, many Western writers have praised the existence of tolerant, multireligious Muslim states. The most prominent example is Moorish Spain, which often has been hailed as “a shining example of civilized enlightenment”128 and the “ornament of the world,”129 in contrast with Christianity’s repressive and prejudiced ways. In particular, enlightened treatment of Jews under Islam is compared with their often tragic persecution by Christians. This is pure fiction! Not that Muslims were more intolerant than Christians, but they surely were no less so. Consider these facts.
Not only did Muhammad initiate the banishment and murder of Jews, these practices have often been repeated by Muslim authorities.130 Thus, ‘Unmar, the second Caliph, expelled all Jews from the Arabian Peninsula. As for “enlightened” Moorish Spain, about 4,000 Jews were murdered there in 1066 and several thousand more in 1090.131 Much is made of the fact that upon having reconquered Moorish Spain, in 1492 Ferdinand and Isabella ordered all Jews to convert to Christianity or to leave. But almost nowhere is it mentioned that in doing so, they merely repeated a prior Muslim policy: in 1148 all Christians and Jews were ordered to convert to Islam or leave Moorish Spain immediately, on pain of death.132 Consequently, the great Jewish scholar Moses Maimonides (1135–1204) pretended to convert to Islam and lived many years in fear of being found out, even after having fled to Egypt.133 The special Jewish vulnerability under Muslim rule stemmed in part from the fact that most of the new Muslim Empire consisted of societies that initially included large Christian majorities. This provided Christians with some protection as a matter of practicality.
But even when banishment or murder were not in the offing, Jews and Christians in Muslim societies were placed under severe restrictions and highly stigmatized. As the remarkable historian of Islam Marshall G. S. Hodgson (1922–1968) pointed out, from very early times Muslim authorities often went to great lengths to humiliate and punish dhimmis—these being Jews and Christians who refuse to convert to Islam. It was official policy that dhimmis should “feel inferior and to know ‘their place’…[imposing such laws as] that Christians and Jews should not ride horses, for instance, but at most mules, or even that they should wear certain marks of their religion on their costume when among Muslims.”134 In other places non-Muslims were prohibited from wearing clothing similar to that of Muslims, nor could they be armed.135 In addition, non-Muslims were invariably severely taxed compared with Muslims.136
Let me reiterate that I am not suggesting that Islam was more intolerant than Christianity. But it is important to refute the politically correct nonsense that medieval Muslims were possessed of a modern sense of inclusiveness.
Muslim Sectarianism
The most persistent mistake Westerners make about Islam is to think of it as monolithic. Like Christianity and Judaism, Islam has always spawned large numbers of disputatious sects and sustains many bitter factions even within various sects.137 In fact, serious sect movements began during the Prophet’s lifetime in the sense that at least three other Arabs also claimed to be prophets and successfully founded significant competing monotheistic movements.138
One of these was Musaylima who also “recited revelations in rhymed prose” and who, some sources suggest, began to do so before Muhammad began having visions.139 A “sura” attributed to Musaylima has survived: “God has been gracious to the pregnant woman; He has brought forth from her a living being that can move; from her very midst.”140 Like Muhammad, Musaylima also was influenced by Christianity and gained the support of a major Arab tribe.141 Hence, in about 631, Musaylima sent envoys with a message to Muhammad proposing that they share authority. Muhammad replied that “if it were not that envoys must not be slain I would cut off your heads.” He then dictated an angry response to Musaylima “the liar.”142 Shortly before his death, Muhammad sent troops against Musaylima, who was killed in the battle.
Another competitor was Al-Aswad al-Ansi, who rose to power in Yeman. He was known as the “veiled one” because he normally wore a mask in public. Like Muhammad he organized an army, conducted raids on caravans and towns, and established a large political base. Muhammad sent a select group of ten of his companions to infiltrate Al-Aswad’s court. Having gained the support of one of Al-Aswad’s wives (whose previous husband had died opposing Al-Aswad), two of Muhammad’s supporters gained access to Al-Aswad’s bedroom and stabbed him to death while he slept. Tradition has it that the murder took place only hours before Muhammad’s own death, but that he learned of it through a revelation while still alive.143
A third prophetic challenger was a woman named Sajah, who gained the support of a northern nomadic border tribe that had previously accepted Nestorian Christianity. She, too, had revelations in rhymed prose. Muhammad died before he could take action against her, but Abu-Bakr crushed her dissenting movement during the Ridda wars.144 Sajah’s fate following the defeat of her army is unknown.
The existence of competing prophets is an aspect of the origins of Islam that would seem worthy of serious study, especially in connection with the apparently widespread expectations that an Arabian prophet was coming. But very few of the leading modern studies even mention any of them,145 and those that do settle for a sentence or two146—only Rodinson devoted most of a page to the matter even though he omitted Al-Aswad.
Muhammad’s unexpected death was the principal cause of the most important and longest-lasting schism in Islam, between the Shi’ah and the Sunni. Not having officially designated his successor, tensions arose over who should lead. One party believed Muhammad should be succeeded by his closest heir; the other party believed his successor ought to be selected by the group who had served as Muhammad’s primary assistants and confidants. Since Muhammad did not leave a biological son, his cousin and son-in-law, Ali, was proposed as the true heir. Ali’s claim was supported by most of Muhammad’s relatives, but opposed by some of Muhammad’s longtime companions and by the Medinan leadership, who united behind Abu-Bakr, Muhammad’s old friend and father-in-law. Ali did not contest the selection. Just before his death, Abu-Bakr appointed ‘Unmar as his successor. Again Ali went along. But when ‘Unmar was murdered and the Companions of the Prophet (as his old friends now were known) once again passed over Ali, selecting another of Muhammad’s sons-in-law ‘Uthman as Caliph, this not only greatly offended Ali, but angered Medinans because ‘Uthman favored the Meccans. When ‘Uthman also was murdered in 656, the people of Medina proclaimed Ali as Caliph. But they were opposed by ‘Ā’ishah, daughter of Abu-Bakr and Muhammad’s favored child bride, along with the leading Meccans, and they (probably falsely) accused Ali of complicity in ‘Uthman’s death. This led to the Battle of the Camel, a bloody confrontation that ended with the defeat of Ali’s forces and his withdrawal to a garrison town in Iraq, later to be assassinated.
Thus was the unity of the umma destroyed forever. “Henceforth no caliph would be able to rule without an army.”147 Perhaps an even more significant result was that never again would there be an “Islam.” To say someone is a Muslim necessarily raises the question: what kind of Muslim? There are scores of possible answers.
Ali’s supporters came to be known as the “Seceders” and lived on as the Shi’ah (or Shi’ites), and those from whom they broke away are known as the Sunni. The Sunni are by far the largest group of Muslims today, being dominant in most Islamic nations; the Shi’ah are the dominant group in Iran, and they also are the majority in Iraq where they were long suppressed by a Sunni minority and by Saddam Hussein..
This Iranian fresco shows Sunni soldiers beheading dead Shi’ah fallen in battle sometime in the seventh century. The wives of the Shi’ah are being forced to watch the dismemberment from behind their veils. (Imam zadeh Shah Zaid, Isfahan, Iran; Photo: SEF/Art Resource, New York)
Since this initial split, many sects have emerged within both the Shi’ah and the Sunni—in fact, the famous mystical Sufi movement seems to have broken off from both of them. There is no authoritative catalogue of Islamic sects, nor are there available membership statistics for the various Muslim groups within specific nations. Thus the most cited source on the religious profiles of the nations of the world148 is able only to report the total number of Muslims within a nation, and can only list the various Muslim groups active in a nation without a statistical breakdown. Even so, the lists suggest a very diverse and often bitterly divided Islam. Consider Saudi Arabia. It is reported to be 93.7 percent Muslim, or just over 20 million Saudis. The Saudi Muslims are said to be almost entirely Sunni, with only 130,000 Shi’ah. But the Wahhabis, a militant sect within Sunnism, make up the dominant group, and the other Saudis mainly belong to other sects including Shafiite, Hanafiite, Malikite, Hanbalites, and 60,000 Ismailis.149 In contrast with Saudi Arabia, Iran is said to be 97 percent Shi’ah, with only 2.6 million Sunnis. Of course, there are many different kinds of Shi’ah in Iran, including Imamites and Ahl-i-Haqq. Even these lists of various Muslim sects within a country greatly minimize the extent of Islamic diversity because there are bitter divisions within most sect groups. Even so, the very recent World Values Surveys of Muslim nations did not bother to use the opportunity to ask respondents their particular affiliation or preference. Instead, we learn that 98.5 percent of those surveyed in Iran are “Muslims,” and we must turn elsewhere even to learn that the majority of them probably are Shi’ah. It is the same for the other Islamic nations in the surveys—everyone is coded as part of an undifferentiated Muslim “monolith,” which doesn’t exist. My friend Mansoor Moaddel, a distinguished expert on Islam, has told me that in any given Islamic city there is as much variation among the local mosques as there is among Protestant churches in American communities.
CONCLUSION
Competition among its many sects has helped Islam avoid the centuries of weakness inflicted on Christianity by its having become an uncontested monopoly faith. Of course, here and there, and from time to time, a particular Islamic sect would manage to abolish its competitors, and whenever that took place, the average level of individual Muslim commitment declined. However, from earliest days, Islam has often displayed the immense competitive advantage of monotheism: the capacity to inspire unwavering commitment among rank-and-file believers. Like their Christian and Jewish counterparts, ordinary Muslims were ready to make great sacrifices for their faith and eager to convert others to believe in the One True God. That belief can, of course, be a two-edged sword. If it made the Jews in Arabia willing to be slaughtered rather than to recant their faith in Yahweh, it made the Muslim Arabs equally willing to slaughter them for not embracing Allah. Fortunately, that kind of intolerance can be overcome without any corresponding loss in fervor, as it has been in many modern situations.150
However, it also must be acknowledged that thoughout history, much that is read as Muslim religious intolerance has often had less to do with religious zeal and more to do with the unwillingess of tyrannical states to abide nonconformity, religious or otherwise. And there lies the great historical burden of Islam: taken as in keeping with the will of Allah, the Arab State established by Muhammad has persisted through the centuries in Muslim nations, with its fundamental tyranny unmodified and rarely challenged.