Islam
By Merry Wiesner-Hanks
Prophet Muhammad founded the Islamic faith in the seventh century.
A hundred years later, it was a widespread faith with a core set of
values and practices, but that had also adapted to local culture in
many different regions. Today there are 1.8 billion Muslims connected
in a network of belief and community.
Introduction
Islam was founded by the religious reformer and prophet Muhammad
(ca. 570-632 CE). He was born in Arabia, became a merchant, and
married a wealthy widow, Khadija. A pious man, when he was about
forty he began to experience religious visions instructing him to
preach, which continued for the rest of his life. Muhammad described
his revelations in a stylized and often rhyming prose as hisQur'an, or
"recitation." His followers memorized his words and some wrote them
down. Shortly after the Prophet's death, memorized and written
materials were collected and organized into an official standard
version. Muslims regard the Qur'an as the direct words of God to his
Prophet Muhammad and it is therefore especially revered. (When
Muslims around the world use translations of the Qur'an, they do so
alongside the original Arabic, the language of Muhammad's
revelations.)
This eleventh-century Qur’an,now in the British Museum,was designed for reading aloud, which
was and is an important part of Muslim worship. The small marks indicate proper pronunciation and
pauses. By LordHarris, CC BY-SA 3.0
Muhammad's visions ordered him to preach a message of a single
God, which he began to do in his hometown of Mecca. He gathered
followers, but also provoked resistance. In 622 he migrated with his
followers to Medina, an event termed thehijrathatmarks the
beginning of the Muslim calendar. At Medina, Muhammad was more
successful, gaining converts and forming the firstumma, a word
meaning "those who comply with God's will." This community united
his followers from different tribes and set religious ties above clan
loyalty. He returned to Mecca at the head of a large army. He soon
united the nomads of the desert and the merchants of the cities into
an even larger umma of Muslims. By the time Muhammad died in 632,
Muslim forces had conquered all of the Arabian peninsula. The
religion itself came to be called Islam, which means "submission to
God." Mecca became its most holy city.
Religious ideas
The political authority of Muslim rulers was spread by military victories,
but the religious practices and ideas of Islam proved attractive to
people both inside and outside Muslim states, partly because of the
straightforward nature of its doctrines, and many converted. The
strictly monotheistic theology outlined in the Qur'an has only a few
central teachings: Allah, the Arabic word for God, is all-powerful and
all-knowing. Muhammad, Allah's prophet, preached his word and
carried his message. All Muslims had the obligation ofjihad(literally,
"self-exertion"), to strive to submit to God, spread God's rule, and lead
a virtuous life. According to the Muslimshari'a,or sacred law, five
practices—the profession of faith in God and in Muhammad as God's
prophet, regular prayer at home or in mosques, fasting during the
sacred month of Ramadan, giving alms (charity) to the poor, and a
pilgrimage to Mecca, if possible—constitute what became known as
the Five Pillars of Islam. In addition, the Qur'an forbids alcoholic
beverages and gambling, as well as a number of foods, such as pork.
The Ka’aba,the black stone building at the centerof the most important mosque in Mecca, is the
holiest site in Islam. Today more than 2 million visitors come to Mecca every year during the five-day
period of pilgrimage. By Adli Wahid, CC BY-SA 4.0
Muhammad called for unity within the umma, but shortly after his
death his followers split over who was his proper successor, resulting
in assassinations and civil war. This dispute created a permanent
division within Islam between a larger group known as Sunnis and a
smaller group known as Shi'a, which sometimes erupted into violence.
This split did not halt the expansion of Islam. As the Dar-al-Islam—the
"abode of Islam"—grew, laws and practices that had been developed
in the Arabian peninsula mixed with existing traditions and new
teachings emerged. Especially in cities such as Baghdad and
Córdoba, creative thinkers and scholars from many different
backgrounds built on Greek, Persian, and Indian knowledge,
translating works into and out of Arabic and writing new works.
The eighth century saw the beginning of a mystical movement within
Islam known as Sufism, which emphasized personal spiritual
experience. Sufis taught that divine revelation could come not only to
scholars studying the Qur'an, but also to certain holy individuals who
could fully lose themselves and unite with God. This did not become a
separate branch, because most Sufis taught that those who gained
knowledge of God through mysticism still had to follow the Qur'an and
obey the shari'a. Sufis were often wandering ascetics, venerated for
their wisdom and austere lifestyle, and some were poets. Many people
came to regard them as saints, made pilgrimages to shrines dedicated
to them, and engaged in distinctive rituals, often involving music,
dance, or the recitation of sacred texts. Learned theologians
sometimes objected to these rituals, arguing that they led people away
from the essentials of Islam, but they were very popular.
Society and family life
The Qur'an and other sacred texts of Islam recommend marriage for
everyone, and approve of heterosexual sex within marriage for both
procreation and pleasure. As in Judaism, most teachers, judges, and
religious leaders in Muslim societies were married men. Polygyny
(when a man has more than one wife) was common in Arabian society
before Muhammad, though it was generally limited to wealthier
families. The Qur'an restricted the number of wives a man could have
to four, and prescribed that he treat them equitably. As elsewhere,
marriages in Muslim societies were generally arranged by the family.
The production of children—especially sons—was viewed as
essential, with rituals and prayers devised to help assure the
procreation and survival of offspring.
The Qur'an holds men and women to be fully equal in God's eyes.
Both are capable of going to heaven and responsible to carry out the
duties of believers for themselves. But it makes clear distinctions
between men and women, allowing men to have up to four wives and
setting a daughter's share of inheritance at half that of a son's. Though
women played a major role in the early development of Islam, after the
first generation the seclusion of women became more common in the
Muslim heartland. Men were to fulfill their religious obligations publicly,
at mosques and other communal gatherings, and women in the home,
though women generally had access to a separate section of the
mosque. Muslim law did allow women more rights to property than
was common in other contemporary law codes, however, and wealthy
Muslim women used their money to establish schools, shrines,
hospitals, and mosques.
Islamic culture was urban and commercial and gave merchants
considerable respect. Muslim merchants developed a number of
business practices that would later spread widely, including thesakk
(the Arabic word that is the root of the English check), an order to a
banker to pay money held on account to a third party.
olitical developments and the spread of
P
Islam
During the century after Muhammad's death, Muslim rule expanded
from the Iberian peninsula in the west to Central Asia and the Indus
River in the east, along the trade routes that had long facilitated the
movement of people and ideas. The unified Muslim state, called the
caliphate, broke apart. Regional dynasties established their own
Muslim states in Spain, North Africa, Egypt, and elsewhere, which
themselves fought with one another and saw ruling families rise and
fall. During the ninth and tenth centuries, Turkic peoples in the
steppes of Western and Central Asia converted to Islam, and in the
thirteenth century many Mongols did as well. Merchants and teachers
carried Islam to West Africa on the camel caravan routes that crossed
the Sahara, and to the East African Swahili (Arabic for "people of the
coast") coast and Southeast Asia on the ships that criss-crossed the
Indian Ocean. Intermarriage between Muslim traders from distant
lands and local women was often essential to its growth, with women
providing access to power through their kin networks. People were
attracted by Islam's spiritual and moral teachings, approval of trade,
and global connections. Islam also appealed to many rulers for a
combination of religious, political, and commercial reasons.
When people at any social level converted, they often blended in their
existing religious ideas and rituals. They passed these on to their
children, and very diverse patterns of Islamic practices, rituals, and
norms of behavior developed. For example, in Arabia, Persia, and
South Asia, women's presence in public was restricted, but in Western
Africa, Southeast Asia, and the central Asian steppes, women often
worked, socialized, and traveled independently. Male merchants or
scholars visiting from areas where women's activities were more
restricted were shocked at these very different customs, just as they
were at other aspects of Islamic practice that differed from their own.
This diversity has continued to today, when there are about 1.8 billion
Muslims, in every country of the world.
Primary source: The Qur’an
The Qur'an is organized into chapters calledsuras,which are divided
into verses. This is an English translation of the first sura, recited in
daily prayers and on other occasions.
Praised be God, Lord of the Universe, the Beneficent, the Merciful and
Master of the Day of Judgment, You alone We do worship and from
You alone we do seek assistance, guide us to the right path, the path
of those to whom You have granted blessings, those who are neither
subject to Your anger nor have gone astray.
