The+Rise+of+Islam

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=Muhammad and the Idea of the //Umma//: Islam 622-1300=

Richard C. Foltz article on "Trade and the Rise of Islam"

Terms to know: Islam //Umma// Quraysh Beduin Muhammad Mecca Arabian Peninsula Arabic //Hejirah// Medina //Quran// //Sunna Shari'a// //Ulama// Five Pillars of Islam Abu Bakr //Umar Uthman//

We could look at **Islam** in multiple different ways, and from multiple different perspectives. The complexity of the religion and the cultures it encompasses, combined with the broad big-picture view we try to use in World History gives us many angels from which to look and evaluate.

Of all of those angles, the one I think is most relevant to our own time is the idea that the creation of Islam involved the creation of an idea Muhammad called the **//Umma//**. This can be translated in several different ways. Roughly, it means the "community" of Muslims - the family of believers. In an interesting way, this seems to be an analog of one of the most critical socio-political ideas of the West in the 18th and 19th centuries: the nation. I don't want to suggest that Muhammad was building a modern nation. In fact, we need to distinguish here between the idea of //nation// and the //nation-state//. However, in the creation of a body of people unified by common language, common history, and common culture (and even, to go as far as Mazzini would in the 19th century, common God-given mission), Islam was certainly national in scope and intent. To make another important distinction, it seems clear that we cannot credit Islam with providing the idea or the philosophy behind later European nation-states. However, we can certainly credit the Islamic //nation// with the dubious distinction of having been the foil for the earliest attempts to create a kind of national unity in Europe by the Catholic Church during the Crusades, from 1095 to 1204. Islamic ideas were less important in Christendom, or Europe, than was the fact that a unified Islamic //nation// provided a common enemy for Pope Urban II to build a nationalistic fever around. From this perspective, then, as a new organizing force on the historical stage, and consequently as the driver of change in other parts of the world, Islam deserves some serious attention.

The first thing we have to do, then, to show how the above thesis is true, is to define the idea of the //nation//, then we'll see if Islam fits this idea. According to modern researchers, including such important scholars as Benedict Anderson, Partha Chatterjee, and Homi K. Bhabha, the nation is a cultural construct, very much like language. We create the idea of a nation by creating a belief that certain people share commonalities which make them in some essential way the same as each other. These commonalities include such things as common patterns of behavior and language, and those common patterns derive from perceived common experiences in history, in sense of purpose, in religion, and culture. Another national commonality that can, but does not have to, exist is a common governmental structure. The people that share these commonalities thus perceive themselves as belonging to a specific society, and that society is defined by the common behavior, language, history, and belief systems of those people. The primary difference between a nation and, say, a kingdom, is in this definition. A kingdom includes all of those people who find themselves living under the law of a king due to chance, conquest, or choice. In a nation, the geography and body politic are not defined by the conquests and laws of a king, but by the participants in the society themselves. Thus their perception of belonging is critical to the stability and strength of the nation.

Islam certainly fits this pattern well. Regardless of ethnicity, Muslims came, in the early 7th century CE to see themselves as unified by language (Arabic), culture (the culture of Islam), law (the Qur'an), and history (the creation of the Islamic community - the //Umma//). What about Islam made this possible?

First, the creation of the religion itself was a centralizing and unifying event. The Arabian peninsula, where Muhammad grew up and where he first began to recite the Qur'an was, in the late 6th century CE a diverse place in terms of culture and religion. It was populated primarily by nomadic **Beduin** tribes (though many of them had given up the nomadic existence, as had Muhammad's tribe, the **Quraysh**, and become farmer/herders, or city traders by this time, as well). The tribal nature of existence on the Arabian peninsula, even then a harsh landscape of arid sand and flatlands, walled on two sides by mountain ranges and seas, made it nearly impossible to unify, even in a theoretical sense. Each Beduin group had its own ideas about existence. Each was ruled by a patriarch who drew his authority from a link to a deified ancestor who was usually honored at a family shrine of some sort. The beliefs of each tribe were usually unique, as were their pantheons - some of the gods they shared, through marriage and other contact, but usually the pantheon of each group was unique and specific to that group. None of these early Arabian religious beliefs was systematic, nor did they require absolute adherence to the exclusion of all other religious systems. Language among these groups, while it was based on the same roots, was extremely varied as well. Thus the world Muhammad entered sometime between 590 and 600 CE was diverse, economically backward, and relatively inhospitable to human life.

Interestingly **Muhammad** himself, an orphan early in his life, brought up to be a trader by his paternal uncle in **Mecca**, was a monotheist, in the same sense that Abraham was a monotheist. That is, Abraham worshipped a God he called El or Elohim (Elohim is the plural form) as his God. But, it now appears to scholars, Abraham's worship of that God was not an exclusive worship, but rather, a choice of one God above many others whose existence was acknowledged. Muhammad was not a Christian, nor was he Jewish. Instead, he appears to have worshipped El independently.

Muhammad was also a very successful and charismatic businessman. He had started by managing the supply of caravans for his uncle as a boy. By the time he reached adulthood, he had gone through several career stages, from supplying caravans to running them then to negotiating with merchants, and potential raiders along the routes to make sure that everyone arrived safely at their destination. He was apparently so skilled, and so scrupulously honest, that he acquired a reputation for trustworthiness that was known the length and breadth of the **Arabian Peninsula**. He also spent time in a network of caves outside of Mecca getting away from the crowd and meditating and praying.

It was during one of these meditation expeditions that Muhammad claimed to have seen the Angel Gabriel, and been told to recite the Qur'an, after which he heard himself saying words that he knew to be directly from God. Being illiterate himself, Muhammad took his memory back (and his memory was, according to Islam, blessed so as to be perfect in this manner) and had friends and relatives who could write put it down on paper for him. Prior to his death, there were a number of ideas and passages that he had kept in memory and not written down. The Qur'an itself would not be organized until several years after Muhammad's death. But the writings that came from his recitations were expected to be perfect because they were God's word, and because they had been blessed by God. Those passages were in Muhammad's native language - Arabic. Since the word of God came in Arabic, the Qur'an, to be legitimate, had to be in Arabic. Thus we have already one of the centralizing, nationalizing ideas - a common language. Wherever in the world you might be, to understand the Qur'an as it would come to be organized, you would need to read **Arabic** - a common language for the //Umma//.

Language was, of course, not the only commonality that Muhammad's new faith provided for its converts in the here and now. One of the other critical points in common for Muslims was the history of the faith itself. This became particularly true in 622, the traditional starting date for Islam as an organized religion. 622 marked an important transition point, since Muhammad decided in that year to accept an invitation from the city of Medina, which had aspirations of becoming another major trading entrepot like Mecca, but needed someone to help control Beduin raiders along its trade routes. Muhammad was just the guy, with his reputation for fair play and for excellent negotiating skills. After sending some of his early followers ahead of him, Muhammad himself set out from Mecca in September of 622 on what has become known as the **//Hejirah//** - the migration. After successful negotiations, and some wars of submission in the area around **Medina**, during which Muhammad also was reciting the parts of the Qur'an that deal with methods of warfare, etc., he successfully led an army against Mecca and retook that in 625.

This was the first great movement of the faith, and during this time, Muhammad elucidated much of importance to the later community. It was during this time that Muhammad created the idea of the //Umma// as a community of the faithful. He also during this period began the process, because he was governing Medina, of elucidating Islamic law.

The legal ideas that Muhammad created were based around an important theme: that human government does not exist to make law. Rather, government's purpose is to enforce God's law, which has been provided in the **//Quran//**, the series of biographies of Muhammad known as the //Hadith//, and the books of precedent known as the **//Sunna//** and the **//Shari'a//**. Law is not a subject for humans to play with. Since God's mind is perfect, then God's law must be perfect, and for we imperfect humans to imagine we could improve it by amending it is the height of arrogance. Instead, in the original system, The government would carry out sentences pronounced by independent religious scholars (known as //**Ulama**/Ulema// these scholars were not perfect, and they were aware of their own imperfections. They therefore decided to hear cases in council, in hopes that the moderating influence of the group would reign-in radical political interpretations, and keep them closer to the meaning of the law as intended by God. For our purposes, the key here is that by basing the Law in the Qur'an we can see that Muhammad and his followers were creating a common religion, and by extension a common historical and cultural experience that would be shared by all Muslims.

These commonalities were added to by the creation of the idea of the **Five Pillars of Islam**. These were acts on which adherence to the faith were based. To be a Muslim, one had to practice these acts as prescribed. No Muslim was free from them, and this prescribed behavior became the basis of a common culture, and directed Muslims toward a common spiritual and political center. The first of these pillars was the statement of faith. This was simply a declaration that one believed in only one God, and that Muhammad was the prophet whose words were the truth about God. This was to be said upon joining the faith, it was also the primary prayer, and was used as a greeting. The second pillar was the requirement that all Muslims pray five times each day, and when they did so, they were to face Mecca, the birthplace of Islam. This, of course, was an act that was specific to Muslims, and emphasized to them their identity as Muslims wherever they went, for they would have to interrupt their daily activities and pray, no matter whom they were with, or what they were doing. It also emphasized Mecca as a geographical center of the faith. The third of the pillars was an injunction to give alms to the poor and provide money for social needs. This of course united Muslims in service to the Muslim community - to the //Umma//. Then there was a requirement that all Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset during the holy month of Ramadan, uniting Muslims in symbolic suffering in honor of their one God, and in payment for wrongdoing. Certainly this is a powerful act that is also symbolic of the shared realities among those who followed Islam. Finally, if one could, one was expected to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in a lifetime. This visit to the center of the faith tended to give Muslims a sense of the population and power of the faith itself, brining them to its very core, both geographically and spiritually. These are powerful community-building acts.

This was accomplished, in a foundational way, during the lifetime of Muhammad. By his death, he had even gone a step further by, in a sense, predicting the great success that Islam would have in the world. He had sent a letter to both the Byzantine emperor, and the king of Persia informing both of them that their best bet for survival was to convert to Islam. If they didn't, the letter made it plain that the Muslims would overrun their empires.

Muhammad did pass away, like all men, in 632. Near death, he made it plain to his followers that he was nothing more than a prophet, that he would be leaving them, and not coming back, and that they would have to care for the faith of Islam. This proved to be tricky. After Muhammad's death, his personal charisma was gone, and a number of those who had been converted to the faith began to slowly drift away. The creation of commonalities became critical at this point in order to keep the faith alive. The leaders of Islam, those who had been closest to Muhammad, thus got together and elected one of their own, one of the first converts to the Islamic faith, Muhammad's uncle, Abu Bakr, to become the first Caliph.

The job of the Caliph was not to take over the position that Muhammad had had as prophet. Instead, the Caliph was to be the political center of the //Umma//. He was to protect Muslims everywhere, to command the army, protect the holy places of the faith, and lead Muslims as a community. Beyond that, he did not have greater authority than other ulama.

As center of the faith, the first caliphs did a number of things to bring Islam back into unity. **Abu Bakr**, and his successor, **//Umar//**, brought Syria and Iraq under the control of Islam after they were lost by the Persian empire. The acquisition of these territories was crucial from a strategic standpoint. Their agricultural production added to the economic power of the //Umma//, and the population increase augmented the size of the Muslim armies. With this, the //Umma// was set for further conquest, and further trade activity with the rest of the world.

//**Uthman**//, the third caliph, undertook the process of organizing Muhammad's papers into a readable volume that would become the Qur'an, and then "published" his Qur'an by distributing copies of it to major population, political, and religious centers, so that a large number of Muslims could have access to their holy scripture. Although the Qur'ans were huge, heavy books, and made of leather and vellum - hardly pocket-sized - their availability made the unity of the faith greater than ever.

All of this combined, finally, with the concept of Jihad. This term does not appear in the Qur'an. It is an Arab concept older than the Islamic faith. Translated to English, it means personal challenge. One can say, for example, "it is my jihad to beat my last marathon time." The jihad for the Muslim community was to bring the Truth to the world. This need to proselytize led to discussions about how best to convert those who were not yet familiar with the faith. Violence was not considered the answer. However, it was considered best to convert people within an atmosphere of proper Islamic government, law, and behavior. Thus conquest with the aim of adding more people to the faith was a common idea. This caused the division of the geographical world into two parts: the House of Islam, where the proper faith was the shepherd of all, even if they had not yet chosen to follow the way of Islam, and the House of War, in which Islam was not yet established. Such terminology, even though war was not the only, or even the primary means of gaining converts, tended to provide Muslims with the last piece of the national puzzle: a group of people against whom Muslim identity could be defined. In recognizing those who were "not Muslim," the //Umma// was able to define and refine itself into a unified society, regardless of ethnicity, centered around the religious culture of Islam.

Common language, common culture, common religion, common history, common law, and common behavior were made possible by Muhammad's new systematic faith. Those commonalities encouraged Muslims of all ethnicities to see themselves as a part of the same venture, part of the same culture, and loyal to that above all other things. This is certainly a nation, though not a nation-state, since it was defined by the existence of believers, wherever they were, and regardless of the government that they answered to. Ironically, this nation, in its quick growth, and appeal to large numbers of people would become the foil for a group of people who espoused a different set of religious beliefs, but who were also in the process of creating a common culture and nation in the 11th century. This second group, of course, were the Christians of Europe, led into the movement toward common culture and the creation of the idea of Christendom by Pope Urban II in the First Crusade.