Early Life of Muhammad

• born in 570 CE on the Arabian Peninsula, Muhammad was orphaned at an early age
• at age 25, he married Khadijah, a wealthy widow and trader
• around age 40, while meditating in a cave on Mt. Hira, Muhammad is said to have had an arresting religious experience in which the angel Gabriel commanded him to recite a message about God
• terrified, Khadijah consoled and supported him to convey the message given to him
• other family members were the first to respond to Muhammad’s message; others in Mecca were hostile. Muhammad continued to receive revelations.

Muhammad in Yathrib

• around age 50, Muhammad accepted an offer from the neighboring town of Yathrib to relocate there from Mecca to mediate a dispute, with the understanding that those in Yathrib would also embrace Muhammad’s message; this move known as the Hijrah
• Muhammad, joined by supporters helped Muhammad to reform the city of Yathrib on a model consistent with the revelations he had received
• Meccans, motivated by fear of the implications of Muhammad’s revelations for their livelihood, led attacks on Yathrib

Muhammad’s Return

• Muhammad, sufficiently strong in military prowess to require a truce from the Meccans, re-entered Mecca triumphant and there instituted reforms at the site of the Ka’bah, a building enshrining a revered black stone
• Remaining based in Medina (as Yathrib became known) and using military strength to maintain the support of Meccans, Muhammad pursued a campaign to consolidate support throughout the Arabian Peninsula until his death in 632

Five Pillars of Islam

• Shahada: a sincere declaration of faith in the oneness and uniqueness of God, and in Muhammad’s role as messenger of God
• prayer in a proscribed manner at five designated times during the day
• Zakat: payment of a portion of one’s income for the support of disadvantaged Muslims
• fasting during the daylight hours of the month of Ramadan
• travel, if one is physically and financially able, at least once in one’s lifetime to the city of Mecca during the month of pilgrimage

Sources of Authority

• Quran: a collection of the revelations understood to have been spoken by God through Muhammad
• Sunna: collections of reports, or “hadiths,” of the words and actions of Muhammad. These don’t hold the same weight as the words of God, but they uphold Muhammad as a model on the grounds that he best understood God’s will for a person’s speech and behavior and acted accordingly

Succession

• Prior to his death, it is widely believed that Muhammad did not designate a successor to assume leadership after he passed away
• Controversy attended the selection of the first caliphs, or successors
• Dispute over succession resulted in the split between contending factions of Muslims: Sunni and Shia

Sunni and Shia

• Although they initially divided over questions of proper succession, additional differences developed over time
• Sunni make up the majority of Muslims; they’ve maintained the caliph need not be a blood relative of Muhammad
• Shi’a, the minority in the Muslim world, maintained that the caliphate needed to descend through Muhammad’s family
• the Shi’a have undergone divisions among themselves, based on conflicting perspectives on the later succession of the caliphate

Expansion of Islam

• following Muhammad’s death, his succeeding caliphs scored astonishing victories in conquering new territory outside the Arabian Peninsula
• Jerusalem was quickly conquered; an important acquisition in the respect that popular accounts of Muhammad’s life would place Jerusalem subordinate in importance only to Mecca and Medina
• By the mid-eighth century, the Muslims had consolidated control over territory from Spain in the west to Persia in the east
• Conquered persons were not required to convert; Jews and Christians were treated with special concessions, although any non-Muslim remained at best a second-class citizen

Sharia

• With the lightning expansion of Muslim territory, an increasing urgency attended the task of formulating a judicial system consistent with revelation and able to be instituted in newly acquired land
• The development of sharia, or law, involved debates over the appropriate role of:
• ijma’: the consensus of Muslim religious specialists
• qiyas: drawing analogies from examples in the Quran and Sunna to new situations not explicitly mentioned in those texts
• ra’y: personal judgment of the arbitrator
  
  
• Varying weights accorded to each of the above resulted in different schools of jurisprudence, different ones in effect in different parts of the Muslim world:
• Hanifite: more liberal, more emphasis on ra’y, found in Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan and India
• Malikite: has relied heavily on ijma’, found in parts of Saudi Arabia and Africa
• Shafi’ite: rejected ra’y, elevated hadith above Quran, found in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Indonesia
• Hanbalite: most conservative, rejected ra’y, maintained Quran above hadith, found in Saudi Arabia

Greek Philosophy and Muslim Thinkers

• influx of Greek ideas posed new questions for Muslim thinkers on the following issues:
• requirements of moral purity of Muslims
• questions about free will versus determinism
• questions whether the Quran has always existed or was created in time by God
• the nature of God: human-like or absolutely different from human beings?
  
  
• Al-Ash’ari (died in 935) formulated what became orthodox positions, arguing for middle compromises on many of the alternatives posed above
• Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (died in 1111) brought the practices of mystical Muslims (“sufis”) in line with orthodox notions of Muslim practice
• Ibn Arabi, after al-Ghazali, presented new notions: that God is the only reality and that all created things are expressions of that reality. He regarded sufism as a perfection of that expression
• Ibn Rushd (1126-1198) drew on Aristotle to develop speculative philosophy. Al-Ghazali had attacked such practices, and his views eventually won out

Crusades
at the end of the eleventh century, Muslim rulers faced what they regarded as an unprovoked attack from foreign powers when their own territories came under siege from European Catholic crusaders

Islam in India

• Arabs and Turks made ongoing forays into India since the eighth century, culminating in the Moghul empires
• even at their most powerful, Muslim rulers in India did not rule over populations of Indian converts to Islam. Sufis, nevertheless, were effective in drawing Indians to conversion
• Some Indians blended Muslim and Hindu forms of religious thought and practice

Baha’i

• a controversial claim is that the community of religious practitioners known as Baha’is emerged out of Islam
• Baha’u’llah (1817-1892), in Persia, has been regarded by some as an expected manifestation of God. Some regard this claim as having roots in Shia expectations of a significant caliph appearing in the future

Muslim Responses to Modernism

• Muslims have entertained a range of responses, as indicated by these figures:
• Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab argued for an outright rejection of modernism, espousing a purist, fundamentalist vision of Islam. This vision has struck a responsive chord in Saudi Arabia and parts of Africa, India and Indonesia
• Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838-1897) is one example of a significant impulse among Muslims to counter the colonialism of Muslim territories by European powers
• Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905) in Egypt and Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-1898) in India held that Islam was entirely compatible with rationalism and science
• two Indian Shia, Amir Ali (1849-1928) and Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938) saw parallels between modern secularism and Islam, arguing for a liberal version of Islam

Islam and Modern Nation-States

• Originally conceived of as a Muslim state by Muhammad Iqbal, Pakistan has nevertheless been ruled by military leadership for almost all of its history
• Although regarded as a Muslim hero by some, Gamal Abdel Nasser’s credentials as a Muslim leader in Egypt were questioned by more ardent visionaries such as Sayyid Qutb; Egypt’s current administration has not been taken its cue from such strong religious advocates
• Ayatollah Khomeini’s assumption of power after the fall of the shah in 1979 Iran served as an example for Muslims of a state run by religious authorities. Such a possibility in other countries elicited mixed reactions from Muslims
• the existence of the state of Israel is regarded by some Muslims as a source of distress, making Arab-Israeli relations a contentious issue

Islam in the U.S.

• Muslims of the Midwest are frequently descendants of Syrian and Lebanese Muslims who immigrated to this country around the turn of the twentieth century
• Muslims on the East Coast are frequently more recent immigrants from more Islamically conservative countries such as Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia
• Black Muslims throughout the U.S. share as part of their history the innovative interpretations of Islam offered by early advocates of Black Islam such as:
• Noble Drew Ali (1886-1929)
• Elijah Muhammad (1897-1975)
• Malcolm X (1925-1965)
  
  
• Two major Black Muslim organizations in the U.S. today are:
• American Muslim Mission, an organization recognized for its orthodoxy by many immigrant Muslims in the U.S.
• Nation of Islam, which continues the tradition of innovative interpretations of Islam offered by early Black Islam advocates

Worldview: Islam

• oneness and uniqueness of God upheld as a central conviction
• emphasis placed on submission of one’s will to the will of God
• annual communal celebrations are especially noteworthy include:
• Id al-Fitr, marking the end of the fast at Ramadan’s end
• Muhammad’s birthday
• judgment is expected after death that will determine one’s fate in either paradise or hell