A Concise History of Islam

Will, great article. I think you've given a lot of key details that are often left out in high school and undergraduate text book overviews of the religion.

You know, it's interesting the different fundamental views in Islam and Christianity. In both Islam and Christianity, an infidel is someone who is an unbeliever. But while Christ taught people to forgive their enemies, Muhammad had this to say:

>"I shall be with you. Give courage to the believers. I shall cast terror into the hearts of the infidels. Strike off their heads, strike off the very tips of their fingers." (Sura 8, Verse 12)

>"When you meet the unbelievers in the battlefield strike off their heads." (Sura 47, Verse 4)

This is interesting especially when looked at in the light of co-existence. How can any group of people, not just Christians, ever co-exist with a religion that sends messages like this? How can a nation like the US that has separation of church and state, ever negotiate with people whose reason is dictated by a faith that commands them to deal harshly with "infidels?"

It's particularly interesting for the US since we have religious freedom built into our Constitution. What happens if you take our current state of affairs and set it on an extreme path? What happens if somehow Arab Islamic states coordinated with Islamic cells in the US to deal with the "infidels?" How would we deal with it? Would we always wait for criminal action to deal with someone, or would we take action against the Muslim faith in general with a sort of super-Patriot Act?

Extreme as the situation may seem, it's not totally impossible. If the situation arose, I wonder how the policy-built US would fare against the God-built nation of Islam in any sort of significant conflict.

As Mark has said, great article Will. I agree also that much of the history of Islam and the entire Muslim culture is clouded with a smoke screen and given a hand wave thoughout many educational levels. However, as I read this article I began to think about the creation of democracy, though a much newer form of government and as you know, run under the belief that church and state are seperated. Though not started in totally violent/war like manner like Islam (which as we all know is deeply embedded in the political views of many states), democracy, and those that live in democratic states, has continually forced its will, opinions, and theology on others by use of force and war much like the Islamic states of old and possibly the present have and do. With democracy being as "young" as it is, there is still a long history to be written before it collapses. Now to my point. Though there are huge fundamental differences between the theologies and basis for Islamic and democratic states, do you believe that at some point in history the democratic society could possibly be viewed much like we view the Islamic states today? If we take a look back at history, there are examples, I admit not exact mirrors of democracy, but none the less similar, where democracy was created in similar fashion as the Islamic states of today and has attempted to concur others and force the idea that democracy is the ONLY way to conduct business. How do you feel (if you do at all) that comparisons between the forcefullness of the Islamic states' theologies differs from that of the means by which democratic states "push" their ideologies to other non-democratic states?

And finally, damnit Mark. I could sit on this site and respond to comments all day. Though not as well read as Will, many of the articles posted have some great debatable qualities. Look forward to visiting often! Maybe we'll have to get together again, drink some beers and have some deep conversations about some of the presented topics. I'll be sure to keep Erin away because she always wins!

Democracy was founded for the people by the people. Democracy has the adaptability to conform to changing needs in society. Societies are groups of imperfect people. Imperfect people cannot perfectly address all issues. Government will never be perfect whilst we are imperfect (sinners). Unless God casts down the plans for a perfect government, it will never be. So we work with what we have. Can one say that democracy is better than an Islamic ruled state? That would be a challenging argument to decide. This is an argument probably far too challenging for a person of average logic skills to tackle. Only small direct comparisons can be analyzed, many of which have already been posted.

The strength in democracy is also its inherent flaw; this is that everyone has a choice. People vote for the wrong reasons some times. Look at New Jersey... Many union laborers were coerced to vote for Jim McGreevey as a union friendly candidate in the last gubernatorial election. Had these people sat down and compared the candidates on many issues rather than this particular issue, votes may have been different. I'm not necessarily suggesting that some people should be excluded from voting, however I feel this trend is very dangerous to democracy. Add this to the lack of participation in US elections, and it is evident that our democracy is not operating efficiently. Now to stop ensuing ridicule of these statements before they start, I am not for taking away freedoms. "Live Free or Die" (New Hampshire state slogan) is my view on life.

It is obvious that democracy may not be the best form of government for societal cohabitation. It can however be improved. As any engineer can tell you (I hope) the first step is to identify the problems. Education? The plethora of useless laws on the books? Moral degradation? Human interpretation of existing laws and policies? Enforcement? Democracy is supposed to fulfill this step in the law making process. The breakdown occurs when it is obvious that not everyone is educated on the problems, or they are not compelled to cast their vote. Is there perhaps a way that democracy can address this issue? (short of forcing people to vote) I suppose time will tell. Though I personally do not like the idea of Islamic ruled states, one thing is for certain: It has withstood the test of time far longer than democracy. Only time will decide if this is to change, and we will all be dead long before there is any change in that statement.

friends,

Get a fresh prespective on Islam at www.galaxydastak.com.

While there, click on "On-line Publications". You may find an interesting reading in "Criminals of Islam". Ask questions on the forum or read to see what is being discussed.

Moby

This post is in response to 5 points that Mark brought up. I'll respond to them one at a time.

this problem has many dimensions to it. it would be exhausting to thoroughly analyze it, and even then, you may be just touching the surface of it. however, i'll touch on a few points. your friend has outlined the history of islam, which is good support for how islam has become militant and expansionist, and consequently, a threat to the rest of the world. there is definitely a distinction between the true religion and how it is followed, although sometimes i wonder if that even matters at this point.

1. Islam is inherently violent against non-believers

first off, the holy quran has multiple verses and stories that promote peace and tolerance. it states that all those who believe in God and live a life of righteousness, including jews and christians, will go to heaven. also, it states that there is no compulsion in religion. as for stories, one can look at cain and abel. this one story is the prototypical act of violence and how it was handled. abel said to cain: "...Yet if thou stretchest out thy hand against me, to slay me, I will not stretch out my hand against thee, to slay thee...I desire that thou shouldst be laden with my sin and thy sin...". this story seems to imply that one's sins will be forgiven through acceptance of non-violent death.

The problem comes when we use the word "jihad" to justify expansionism. jihad is a broad term meaning "to strive". it is used in the quran to describe the struggles of the prophet and the early muslim community. it's no doubt now that this one word itself is responsible for much of the militant ideology in the muslim world. the question is- how "islamic" were the expansionist muslim empires? people think that just because the prophet engaged in warfare, at a time when the small muslim community was being persecuted for its beliefs, that we are to do the same today. however, the quran explicitly sets guidelines for warfare. particularly, there must be some sort of persecution or aggression against your people. i also want to emphasize that every verse in the quran should be analyzed within the context of the entire scripture, rather than in isolation. of course if one studies certain translations of the quran, he can find verses that promote unjust warfare. many attribute these to mistranslation or misinterpration. that is why it's recommended to study several translations at once. i know someone who uses 10. the holy quran says that every messenger's message will be corrupted. islam is no exception. therefore it's every follower's obligation to search for the truth. what many muslims fail to do is try to figure out what a verse really means, and thereby resort to unsettled acceptance or even rejection of the scripture itself.

2. Their religion in hopelessly fused with their government

the question of islam's compatibility with democracy has been hotly debated since the beginning of the religion. true, the religion is hopelessly fused with their government. but is that what the holy quran teaches? proponents of secular states claim that to impose islam on a population is to place God within the constraints of human understanding, and is thereby equivalent to idolatry. others think that to abide by the laws of "scholarly" interpretation is to give people divine authority, and is also idolatry. the quran specifically states that the scholars will mislead you. but of course people are stupid and have twisted islam into a priesthood that is not ordained in the holy quran. others say that the "no compulsion in religion" verse is anti-legalism, and thereby demands democracy.

traditionally, muslims have refused to accept non-legalist interpretations of islam because they require the abandonment of many explicitly legal quranic verses. liberal muslims may, however, hold these problematic legal verses to be "overruled" by the "no cumpulsion" verse that i mentioned earlier. verses being overruled by others is not a new concept amongst muslims scholars, and it's termed "naskh", or abrogation. however, these same scholars would not go to the lengths of abbrogating legal verses with the "no compulsion" verse. to do so would undermine their authority. liberal muslims may also claim that the problem of legal verses may be solved through referece to the particular needs of the prophet and his community. they believe that later muslim communities need not immitate the legal practices of the prophet if they are more geared towards community law of that time, rather than one's individual spirituality. for example- the division of inheritance amongst one's children is partial towards sons. in that time women served primarily as childbearers rather than breadwinners. liberal muslims claim that this law is no longer applicable. today, men and women both contribute financially to a family, and should receive equal portions of inheritance to create a more equitable society. for matters of spirituality, however, such as fasting during ramadan, the principle is timeless and the law need not be changed.

traditionalists also object to non-legalist islam by claiming that society needs laws in order to be ethical. liberals argue that laws need not be based on religion- that muslims can live in a secular state that allows for freedom of religion.

3. Our ideas of democracy will never override their religion-driven government.

you're probably right.

4. People of Islam will always resist change outside of the realm of Islam.

i don't really understand your statement. however, if you meant that muslims will never break away traditionally practiced islam, i disagree. islam is by no means a monolithic religion. the "people of islam" will never be unified in thought. i imagine for every staunchly conservative muslim, there's probably a liberal reformist out there. one must separate culture from politics. during the weeks after 9/11, the holy quran was on the best-sellers list. as if it would give answers to why the incident happened. what about palestine? why wasn't that as big of an issue as what the holy quran says. why are there so many muslims in the middle east killing themselves and others in the name of God, and here you have muslims like me who are against it? i haven't suffered. i haven't been driven out of my home. i identify with america. i like democracy. there's no motivation for me to go blow up some building. but i also identify with islam- what does that say? it's not just a religious thing. i think radical muslims are driven by both political and religious motives. the political side of it is often sadly overlooked. if we could miraculously end the mass oppression over there, perhaps people wouldn't feel the need to terrorize.

5. Islam itself is a direct threat to any non-Islamic nation.

again, as i stated above, there are political motives as well. are terrorists bombing all embasies? no- mainly US and British ones. why? cuz they're non-muslim? no. the majority of countries in the world are non-mulsim. yet, most of them are not directly threatened by muslims.

This is a subset of the GDP metric, but I want to look at exports from the Middle East. I was curious to see what percentage of export revenue came from oil vs. every other product of middle eastern countries. Manufactured goods helped to propel Great Britain and later the U.S. to the top of the world economically. In order for the Arab nations of the world to climb their way up, they need to have something besides oil that makes them relevant.

GDP

>Saudi Arabia - $287.8 billion

Iran - $478.2 billion

UAE - $57.7 billion

Kuwait - $41.46 billion

Using the OPEC Revenues Fact Sheet (http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/opecrev.html) and the CIA page that Mark provided for total exports value and other goods, we see that exports besides oil are scarce (UAE being the exception):

Oil/Total Exports

Iran - $23.9/$29.88 billion (fruits, nuts, and carpets)

Saudi Arabia - $80.8/$86.53 billion (nothing else listed)

UAE - $23.7/$56.73 billion (natural gas, reexports?, fish, dates)

Kuwait - $18.7/$22.29 billion (fertalizers)

So besides oil, what is the Middle East providing the world that it cannot get frrom somewhere else?

For each of these nations foodstuffs is a top import. We all know that the world's oil reserves will never run out :) However, what happens if they do and this region can no longer afford to feed their growing population? No matter how peaceful a religion is, no one likes to go hungry.

The recent massacre of 49 unarmed Iraqi soldiers in Iraq has once again raised a question in my mind about Islam and Jihad. In this case, you have 49 Iraqis who were working to protect their people. Mostly likely, all of them were people of Islam. Suddenly, this other "Islamic" group comes in and executes them all.

My question pertains to neither of the involved parties. Rather, it pertains to every other Muslim who is aware that this happened and that similar events happen all of the time. If you know these actions aren't in accordance with the "will of Allah," and your faith strives to do the will of Allah, AND you know that these groups are giving your faith a bad name, what are you doing to fix it? Is there some limit on Jihad that I'm not aware of?

It seems funny to me that predominantly Christian nations, are the only ones that seem to actually be working toward creating any sort of stability in this region. What about all of the other Muslim nations? Why do they just sit back and watch (or resist help) as all of this goes on? What about American Muslims living in the comfort of freedom? Is there a "don't worry about it if you're doing well" clause in the Quran that I missed?

I just don't get it. I've been to Iraq. I've walked the streets. I did my best to make that country better. I'll probably go back. And I've got absolutely no ties to Islam. Where's the Jihad that is oh-so-needed in the Middle East? Where is the Muslim effort to fix this problem?

Islam claims to be peaceful, but it seems to just sit back and watch as it is engulfed in war and hatred. If anyone could clue me in, I'd greatly appreciate it.

I couldn't agree more with Professors McBride and Davison. The fact that Allawi blames the "coalition's negligence" for the death of 49 Iraqi soldiers only reinforces the points Professor McBride made about who is really to blame and who is doing anything about it. Islam is the reason those men are dead. ISLAM. If you think you can offer a different reason, I'd like to hear it.

I have been watching this Fallujah business fairly intently over the past few days and this is another example of failing to perceive the nature of the conflict. The news and the military are speaking of the insurgent effort fighting a last ditch effort in Fallujah. This is only partially true.

I believe that the military will discover shortly that there was nowhere close to the 3000 militants in Fallujah that they projected. It will be no more than a few hundred. The various terrorist organizations have arranged for a small portion of fighters to make a symbolic last stand in Fallujah. The majority of these groups have already departed the city to find new havens throughout Iraq or beyond her borders. From those martyred in Fallujah perhaps three times that number will spring up elsewhere, inspired by the valiant fatalistic stand against hopeless odds. Islam, like most religions, is very susceptible to fatalism.

What I think is more interesting is the developing attitudes on both sides. On the eve of the assault the residents and militants within Fallujah were heard chanting “God is great” amid the artillery strikes and aerial bombing. This is not surprising, of course. On the outside of the cordon similar activity was taking place. A Marine commander exhorted his troops saying, “The enemy has got a face. He’s called Satan. He lives in Falluja. And we’re going to destroy him.” (BBC News)

Though this is but anecdote, I think it demonstrates an important point. The U.S. is in an ideological fight. If the political authorities refuse to color it that way, the soldiers themselves will. Ideology breeds ideology and asymmetrical warfare is always a temporary condition.

I have some comments regarding your discussion of Pan-Arabism and nationalism (or lack thereof) in the Middle East. Do you truly believe that Pan-Arabism will be able to overcome the sense of nationalism that has been cultivated by the widely varying levels of economic prosperity among the Arab states in the Middle East? If Pan-Arabism dominates Middle Eastern politics, why haven’t the other Arab nations of the Middle East opened their doors and coffers to the Iraqi people in this time of turmoil? Isn’t alms-giving one of the five pillars of Islam? Surely they would run to Iraq’s aid in its current “struggle with the West” if they really believed in the Islam-fueled Pan-Arabic cause. You can argue the suspected flow of foreign “mujahadeen” into Iraq is a sign of Pan-Arabism; however, I’m not sure that it’s safe to claim the actions of these Islamic extremists are representative of the entire Arab world. I would argue that the incredibly prosperous oil-producing Arab states and their citizens do not want to be saddled with the burden of “their brother’s keeper,” and therefore continue to set back this Pan-Arabism that you argue for in your concluding statements. While I worked on the Iraqi-Jordanian border at Trebil, I saw an incredible amount of prejudice and hatred between the Iraqis and Jordanians. If Pan-Arabism dominates in these countries, how do you explain these attitudes? I would argue that the group of Iraqis and Jordanians that I worked with was a fairly accurate cross-section of those countries’ populations. The Iraqis envied the Jordanians for their relative economic and cultural prosperity while the Jordanians viewed the Iraqis with disdain as little more than savages. While the national lines may have been arbitrarily imposed by the West, they now represent distinct, tangible boundaries between poverty and prosperity that the prosperous are not quite as eager to discard for an intangible religious ideology.

Along similar lines, why do Arab states continuously beat their chests, rend their garments and wail publicly over the Palestinian struggle, yet all of the Palestinian’s Arab neighbors strictly prohibit Palestinian immigration and view Palestinians as lesser beings?

My thoughts aren’t challenges but rather questions for you. I’ve heard the Pan-Arabism argument before, but I’m not sure that I believe that there is supporting evidence at this point in time. Maybe the real rise of true Pan-Arabism is a historical blink away as

alternative energy sources are developed and the West is finally able to break away from her “Oil Shackles,” thus leading to an “economic realignment” in the Middle East.

Yes generally good, but we need to be careful about some of the sources that are known to have severe anti-Muslim biases. This is particularly true of Bernard Lewis, who is a neocon and White House favorite. (Bush gave him a medal, and Cheney presented him with an award at an American Enterprise Institute dinner recently.) He writes well, so it may take some time to recognize how profoundly wrong he has been in recent years - until the mid 80's, he had been focused on more scholarly treatment of medieval Islam, so his reputation was more intact then.

Lewis has been promoting his thesis that violence is the essential characteristic of Islam for a couple of decades, and it was him who coined the "clash of civilizations" phrase to claim that Islam and Christianity have always been in conflict. And he is behind the "Islamofascism" idea, athough he may not have used the term -- he does equate Communism, fascism and Islam. And he thought intervention in Iraq was a good idea so we could get Muslim civilization back on track.

Lewis trained one of the main informers for Campuswatch - that despicable think tank that spies on middle eastern studies professors and raises a stink about supposed antisemitism every time a prof criticizes Israel. Lewis has taken the Zionist line so far that he denies the Armenian genocide "The reality of the Armenian genocide results from nothing more than the imagination of the Armenian people." He claims that there is no serious proof of it. Armenian genocide denial has come to be central to pro-Israel thinking - as if the Jews are the only people worthy of genocide. The Turks are regarded as the only good Muslims because they are more supportive of Israel.

Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" is also indicative of bias and unreliable. John Esposito, a scholar of Islam, has consistently criticized Huntington for treating cultures as monolithic. Most agree it is too general. What does a clash of civilizations mean when so many cultures are involved? Esposito's point is that there isn't really any "essence" to any of the religions -- what people do is largely about politics and the way local cultures develop. People within the cultures use the religions to bolster their power and mobilize people. Notice how the gospels devote a great deal more space to the evils of being wealthy than they do to the evils of sexual deviance, whereas a lot of institutionalized Christianity has done the reverse. Esposito implies that Mohammad doesn't explain Bin Laden any more than Jesus explains Falwell.

They like to demonize others like Fisk who shows all sides to be terrible. In "Pity the Nation" - about Lebanon - Fisk makes both the PLO *and* the IDF look monstrous, which is fair on the evidence available. Fisk's "The Great War for Civilization" is informative, but Esposito's basic points are sound.

Here is an a article about Lewis:

http://www.merip.org/mero/interventions/sabra_interv.html