The Story of Islam
Where do I begin with the Story of Islam? There are so many tales to tell, gleaned from Arab-Muslim, Israeli-Jewish and Christian apologetics Web sites, from secular history books by such luminaries of academia as Will Durant, J.M. Roberts, and W.H.C. Frend, even from Encarta and Funk and Wagnalls encyclopedias (See: Readings, below). I suppose, as usual, it is best to start from the beginning. I will try to be brief.
Muhammad Ibn Abdullah, the "Prophet of Islam," was born circa 569-570. His father died before he was born, and his mother passed away while he was still very young. He was raised by an uncle in the small town of Mecca at a time when the various tribes of Beduins and others in the area worshipped as many as 360 different gods. The Ka'ba in Mecca was the central place of worship for all these gods, and images or idols to all of these were located there. It is even said that images of Jesus and Mary could be found at the Ka'ba, and evidence exists that some cult or offshoot of Christianity existed in the region. It was a place of pilgrimage for everybody, and business in the area was brisk whenever there was a Holy Day for some group or other to observe.
Stories about Muhammad's life are difficult to glean from the Koran. That does not appear to be its intention, but it is supposed to be the "recitation"(1) of the revelations supposedly given to him by the angel Gabriel. Most of what we know about him comes from another work, known in Arabic as Sunna; a collection of Hadiths, stories and sayings told in the early days of Islam about Muhammad and his followers (there are different versions of Sunna). Hadiths are not considered at the same level as the Koran by Muslims, but are used to explain Islam to children and new converts. Without Sunna binding the verses of the Koran together, it is intellectually difficult to plow through it, and almost impossible to make chronological sense of it. Of course, people who are forcibly converted have little choice in that matter (as many as 10,000 Muslims in Egypt today were forcibly converted, for instance).
Unfortunately, the Koran also appears to incorporate a number of Jewish and Christian 'haggadah' and 'apocrypha,' inauthentic stories about Jewish and Christian persons and places; stories that were never considered part of the canon of Scripture by either group. This is most inauspicious for Jews and Christians today, since the Koran is even more 'inerrant' to Muslims than the Bible is to Christians. As Jesus is considered the Word of God in flesh, the Arabic Koran is considered the Word of God in writing. It is to Muslims exactly what Revelation's 'original autograph' would be to Christians.(2) English and other translations are not true Koran; one must read it in the original Arabic to truly 'read' it. (Also, it is not organized in any organic way, and while many versions once existed, only one was finally kept and all others destroyed [around 200 years after Muhammad].)
For instance, consider that the Koran (Surah 9:30) declares that Jews say that Ezra the Scribe is the Son of God.(3) Now, when Jews try to explain that this is simply not true, it has never been true, it never will be true, then Muslims have to respond that the Jews are lying! After all, if a Muslim must choose between what the Jews actually say and what the Koran declares that they say, the Jews will lose every time. What that is asking them to accept is that the very words of their god are untrue!
Muhammad grew up in this environment where many different gods were worshipped. At the same time, he saw people cheating each other, tribes jockying for power or in vendettas, and practically every man for himself. Naturally, he desired to see people at peace and tolerant of each other. When Muhammad was 40, he began to tell his wife that he was being visited by the angel Gabriel. He recited to her the things that Gabriel had made him memorize. He began to preach in the streets these messages, and eventually he gained a few followers. A flaw in his message, as the locals saw it, was that he declared that there was only one god, just as the Jews said (Muhammad believed Christianity was "polytheistic"). This caused problems with the people of Mecca, whose livelihood depended on the various groups of worshippers who came there to celebrate their tribal deities. What would happen if the Meccans now told their many visitors that only one of them was true, and all the other gods were false?
Well, a stroke of luck came Muhammad's way just when things started to get really nasty. A number of Arabs from Yathrib (now Medina) had heard the local Jews talking about a coming Prophet who would bring all peoples together in peace. Now, when they heard about this new prophet in Mecca, they couldn't wait to hear what he had to say. They sent a delegation to offer him room and board if he would relocate. Muhammad happily accepted, and he took his followers to Yathrib, quite in a hurry. This starts the Islamic calendar.
Not long after Muhammad began to explain his revelations and to teach the sayings he was still receiving and memorizing from time to time, the local Jews in Yathrib began to realize that this man knew little about their Scriptures. What he had heard, and now incorporated into his recitations, were strange tales that the orthodox Jews knew to be fabrications; such tales as traveling Jews might tell over a camp fire to outsiders, just for fun. Muhammad was humiliated, and this is where Islam really began to spiral down into the maelstrom of hatred and violence.
First one tribe of Jews, then another, Muhammad drove out of Yathrib. They were allowed to take with them such belongings as they could carry, but not their tools or weapons. Everything they left behind, the Muslims took for their own. The last remaining tribe did not fare quite so well.
Muhammad declared them to be traitors to him and Islam after the Battle of the Trench. He laid siege to their homes. When they sued for peace, he granted (according to modern Muslims) their request for arbitration, to be decided by the Jews' ally -- a non-Muslim Arab. He declared them guilty, and sentenced the men to death, and their women and children to slavery. There is only one problem with this story for modern Muslims: If Muhammad, as they claim today, was so perfectly tolerant and merciful (distinct from the pagan Arabs he was trying to reform), then why did he not commute their sentence, banishing them as he had the others? It was certainly within his power, being the "aggrieved party." Besides, these Jews had not participated in the battle (as they had supposedly conspired to do), and Muhammad's forces had won the battle, anyway. Instead, Muhammad declared the judgment to be "according to Allah’s judgment, which issues from above, from the seven heavens." In that spring of 627 AD, Muhammad had the 600 or more unarmed, bound and helpless men beheaded, sold their women and children into slavery, and took all their goods for spoils to divide amongst his men.
History shows that Muhammad planned over 30 battles, and participated in 2 thirds of them himself. Islam only became a viable "religion," because they fought their way into political power. Islam, under Muhammad, aggrandized to itself by war and bloodshed the police power of the region, and ordered life according to the law of Islam, as Muhammad personally declared it to be.
When Muhammad finally took Mecca in 630 AD, he went to the Ka'ba and smashed all the idols and statues there, except for the single stone in one corner of the Ka'ba, which marks the beginning of the procession that Muslims make around the Ka'ba in their Hajj (pilgrimage) ceremony. This is the same ceremony that was practiced in Muhammad's youth, as it was from before history, in pagan rituals.(4) Muhammad declared on that day, "There is no god but Al-Lah!" (I can't find the source right now, but I remember reading that Al-Lah was the name of the god he grew up worshipping, his family god.) "Al-Lah" translates "the god," and this was supposed to be the greatest one in the entire Arab pantheon. Al-Lah is not, therefore, the same God worshipped by Jews and Christians, but a pagan god, once the greatest among many (according to those who worshipped it), but now elevated to a monotheistic position. Monotheism in Islam is, we now see, less a product of principled theology than of hatred for all other tribes and their religions.
Muhammad died two years after taking Mecca (some say by poison). In the years he had lived, he and his forces had captured, by acts of war, the central region of the Arabian Peninsula. From the time he died until 638 AD, only six years, Muslim forces had captured the rest of Arabia, Persia, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. The first Christian era in the Middle East was over. By 712 AD, Muslim forces had "spread Islam" across the coast of North Africa, and invaded Spain. Practically every island state in the Mediterranean was captured by force of arms: Corsica, Sardinia, Crete, Sicily, and Malta. They raided as far north as central Italy. They even held the city of Bari, Italy, for 75 years, until 916 AD, when they were finally driven out.
The borders between Islam and the Western World moved back and forth many times through the "Dark Ages." The 200 years of the Crusades from 1095 AD, the Muslim invasions of the Mediterranean and raids into Central Europe, the Turkish threat to Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire that lasted for centuries, are all too much for this little post. Suffice it to say for now, that Islam was the instigator in these campaigns. They invaded the Holy Land, Spain, Italy, and threatened all of Europe. It was their threat to the Western World that drew the French and Germans into the Crusades (only Normans, no Englishmen, were with Richard I, Couer de Lion, in the Third Crusade; 1189-1192 AD). It was their invasions into Spain and France, into Italy, into the regions around Constantinople that generated fear and reprisals from the Europeans. Islam had only itself to blame if the 20th Century seems to have started off badly.
After the first four caliphs of Islam, it was never again monolithic. Throughout the rest of its history it has been at war even with itself. The Ottoman Empire, which never consolidated all of Islam within its borders, nevertheless lasted from 1300 to the end of World War I. The end found the Ottoman Turks harassing everybody else within their power: the Jews and Christians especially, but even the Arabs. This is why the Arab leaders secretly contacted the British to form an alliance against their Islamic Turkish overlords. In the correspondence that solidified that alliance,(5) the Arabs demanded the entire Arabian Peninsula, Persia and Syria, Lebanon and Israel, all for their very own. But the British, despite their own rampant and pervasive anti-Semitism, found it difficult to make it official by supporting the Arabs' demands to deny entirely Jewish immigration and land purchase. The history of the late Ottoman Empire in that region (according to the Muslims' own Web sites) is replete with examples of such oppression against the Jews in that land.
The Ottoman Empire promulgated a constitution beginning in 1876; however the Sultan retained the right to disband the parliament. He exercised that right after the parliament sat for only two sessions, and a parliament did not convene again in Istanbul for 30 years. In that earlier parliament, officials elected from the region of Palestine tried to pass laws to deny Jews the right to buy land, or to immigrate there. After the Young Turk rebellion (1908), the new parliament actually had 4 Jews elected to it. They were, however, eager to identify themselves first as Turks, and Jews later. Palestinian Arabs, again, tried to pass laws against Jewish land acquisition and immigration there. These two points became the mantra of Arab and Muslim leadership in the region. Even so, local Arab leaders had great difficulty getting Muslim and Christian residents to sign petitions against Jewish immigration and land acquisition, peaceful pursuits that everybody else enjoyed. In contrast, Jews have never demanded that Arabs, Muslims or Christians be denied the right to immigrate into the region of Palestine, or to buy land there.
When the Great War was over and the Ottomans were driven back to Turkey, the French and British partitioned the rest of the Middle East (1918), and the British took the region now constituting Israel, Jordan and Iraq. Later, they went to the League of Nations for a Mandate. The Mandate included instructions to institute a Jewish National Home. The Mandate map shows the borders of the state that would be called Israel extending from the Jordan River to the Mediteranean Sea. What are now known as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were part of that map. It was called Palestine then, but it was always intended for Jewish self-rule. The region beyond the Jordan (at the time called "Transjordan") was intended for the Arabs.
Throughout history, Palestine was never a nation. The name comes from 135 AD, when the Bar Kokba revolt ended in Roman victory, and the Romans renamed the province after the Philistines as an insult to the Jews. Jerusalem was renamed Aelia Capitolina, as well. The region remained a province of the Roman Empire, even after the Empire divided into East and West. It was part of the Eastern Empire, known as Byzantium, when the Muslims took it in 638 AD. After that, it was a province of one Islamic empire after another. It was never an independent state apart from the state of Israel.
Christians have occasionally treated Jews execrably, in the First Crusade, in pogroms and inquisitions. Pardon me if I allow my predispositions to forbid taking a lot of time here to describe these. I am thoroughly ashamed of that history, and I humbly apologize for the "Christians" who did these things, or allowed them to be done. I do not ally myself with them in any way, and I do not excuse what they did. I do not expect to find them in Heaven, except for that last moment when they receive the judgment they richly deserve, because any version of Christianity that can allow people to do such things is no Christianity at all. It is a perverse caricature, an evil-clown parody, whose jokes are demons' doctrines, and whose laugh-tracks are the groans of the innocent. Who can lionize such people, but the sick and unholy? I will just point out that the true history of those episodes can be found in books, and I would suggest we resort to them and allow history to have its say without further comment from me. Jesus was a Jewish Rabbi, and he is my Lord; what more need be said?
By far, Jews have had a much worse history with Islam. While in history and archaeology we find many examples of Christians and Jews living in peaceful communities, each enjoying the fruits of his own labors, it is not so with Islam. While Jews were sometimes permitted to participate in government, serving as ministers, working as doctors and educators, they were usually treated as second-class citizens by the Muslims. The normal treatment was to be made to pay an extra tax (the Jizyah tax, which paid for "protection" - that is what the Muslims call it); to wear an identifying yellow belt; to walk instead of ride, or to ride only donkeys and never horses, and never with a saddle; to never build a house taller than a Muslim's; to never build a new synagogue, while abandoned ones were always converted to mosques. Little by little, in obedience to Islamic Hadith, the Jews were being driven from Muslim lands. The Hadith says that one of Muhammad's last commands was not to allow there to be two religions in Muslim land, so the Jews had to go. It is that way still.
Everyone talks about "Palestinian refugees," and demands to know when they will be repatriated or compensated. What about the Jews who were ejected from Arab countries in 1948? When will they be compensated? While Palestinians are compensated (though the media has failed to report it), by Israel, the United States, the UN, and (in very small part) Arab countries, not one dime has been paid to compensate Jewish exiles driven from Arab countries, Morocco to Afghanistan, since Israel became an independent state. Apart from US foreign aid, Israel has had to bear the entire cost of absorbing all these refugees.
Examine the League of Nations 1922 Mandate map of "Palestine." That was chopped down by half from what the Zionists believed was their homeland, by natural right. Then compare today's map of Israel. It is excruciatingly clear that Israel has already given up a great deal of land for peace. Still, they have no peace. Every day, we read about more shootings, more roadside bombings, more car bombings, more suicide bombings, more Katyusha rockets fired, more grenades thrown, more anti-tank shells exploded, more mortars fired, with which the Palestinians think they will change things to their liking. And every time Israel tries to defend itself against these terror attacks, Israel is called a terrorist nation, said to be causing terrorist actions by the Palestinians, and perpetuating the "cycle of violence," and it is called upon to refrain from self-defense. This is madness.
You may have heard of "Israeli Arabs." Who are these people? They are Palestinians who never fled the region when the Arab states warned them (1947) that they would make war if Israel declared itself an independent state. They are Arabs -- Muslims and Christians -- in every way identical to Palestinians, but who have lived in Israel right from its beginning, and who enjoy every right that ethnic and religious Jews enjoy in that country. They live and work in Israel, and they vote and have Arab members in the Knesset (Israel's parliament) to represent them. Yet the so-called "Palestinians" (as if they were something else) continue to accuse the Israelis of warring against Arabs and Muslims. This is a ridiculous situation, to which I see only one solution: All Palestinians who wish to become citizens of Israel may stay right where they are, and all those who do not can move to Jordan (Jordan is the only Arab country that allows Palestinians to become citizens; it is already a true Palestinian state), after which Israel can annex the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Then, we can stop talking about any part of Israel being "occupied territory," we can stop worrying about a "two-state solution," and we can stop paying for all these "refugee camps."
Well, to understand what is happening in the Central Asian Plateau, we have to go back to the 1750s. In response to the ill treatment that Arabs got from the Ottoman Turks, an Islamic teacher named Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab started a revival movement. It was strictly Koranic, puritanical, and militant. It led to a revolt, which the Ottmans put down. Nevertheless, the ideology -- Wahhabism -- has survived, and it is the fastest-growing sect of Islam today. It is the official religious sect of Saudi Arabia, today. This is the form of Islam practiced by Osama bin Laden, the Taliban, and in madrassas (religious schools) all over the Islamic world. This is the form of Islam that other Muslims say is "not true Islam." Unfortunately, that does not explain the widespread excitement, celebration and gloating over the September 11 attacks on the United States that we have seen amongst Muslims.
That is what we are up against, though, a "religion" that grasps at the police power of the state, and emulates a fascist government; that began in war, expanded it's territory in war, and (now that war is failing) seeks to advance its agenda by acts of terror. Islam is not a religion, it is an armed camp; its prophet was a commanding general; its prayers are war cries; its holiest rites are calls to indescriminate murder; and its greatest historic accomplishments are crimes against humanity.
Well, that's how I understand it,
Richard Allan Stauch
Ft. Myers, FL [formerly, Long Beach, CA]
Notes:
(1) There are three main theories for the definition of "Koran": a) 'collection'; b) 'binding together'; c) 'reading' or 'recitation'. The majority of Muslims accept the last view.
(2) The book of Revelation has been controversial partially because the Greek syntax in it is somewhat different from that found in John's Gospel and his three letters. The response made by many Biblical scholars who accept Revelation's inspiration (such as me) is that it is, far more than any other book of the Bible, dictation. Sections of the Gospels are 'recitations' of Jesus's words. In contrast, most of Revelation is. By comparison, this is exactly how Muslims view the entire Arabic Koran.
(3) Koran 9:30 "And the Jews say: 'Uzair (Ezra) is the son of Allâh, and the Christians say: Messiah is the son of Allâh. That is a saying from their mouths. They imitate the saying of the disbelievers of old. Allâh's Curse be on them, how they are deluded away from the truth!"
(4) In the Sunna, it says that Abraham and Ishmael built the Ka'ba and instituted its rituals just as Muhammad restored them, but subsequent generations had paganized it requiring that restoration. For instance, see the version of Sunna: Sahih Muslim, Book 43, Number 7179, which says:
"Ibn Abbas reported: During the pre-Islamic days women circumambulated the Ka'ba nakedly, and said: Who would provide cloth to cover the one who is circumambulating the Ka'ba so that she would cover her private parts? And then she would say: Today will be exposed the whole or the part and what is exposed I shall not make it lawful. It was in this connection that the verse was revealed: 'Adorn yourself at every place of worship' (Koran vii.31)." Also see: Rites of Hajj & Umrah, under "Tawwaf of Qudoom (arrival)" ["Tawwaf" is the word for the circumambulation of the Ka'ba, http://www.quraan.com/ManaasikUlHajjWalUmrah/Tawaaf.asp or Google "Tawaf naked"], where it says: "33. And there is in touching the Black Stone a great excellence as the Prophet said: "Allaah will raise up the Stone on the Day of Judgement, and [it] will have two eyes with which it will see, and a tongue which it talks with, and it will give witness in favor of everyone who touched it in truth."(39) And he said: "Touching the Black Stone and the Yemeni corner removes sins."(40) "The Black Stone is from Paradise, and it used to be whiter that snow, but the sins of the idolaters turned it black."(41)"
(5) The McMahon-Hussein Correspondence, 1915, had Sir Henry McMahon acting on behalf of the British Government, responding to Sherif Hussein of Mecca, after which the Arabs believed they had a promise of Arab control over all the areas that would be liberated from Turkey, except a section West of Syria and some other minor concessions. McMahon wrote that, "The two districts of Mersina and Alexandretta and portions of Syria lying to the west of the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama, and Aleppo cannot be said to be purely Arab, and should be excluded from the limits demanded." A map of questionable authenticity is said to have accompanied that letter, indicating the region west of Damascus, but only inluding Lebanon. The region of Palestine is certainly "west of" Damascus, as well. After WWI, when it became clear that the region of Palestine "could not be said to be purely Arab," it was obvious (to all but the Arabs) that it should be excluded, too.
Selected Readings:
David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and The Creation of the Modern Middle East (New York: Henry Holt & Co/Owl Books, 2001)
Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, Jewish Literacy: The Most Important Things to Know About the Jewish Religion, Its People, and Its History (New York: William Morrow & Co,1991)
W.H.C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984)
Will Durant, The Story of Civilization: Vol. 3 Caesar and Christ (New York: MJF Books, 1944)
Will Durant, The Story of Civilization: Vol. 4 The Age of Faith (New York: MJF Books, 1950)
Orlando Patterson, Freedom: Vol. 1 Freedom in the Making of Western Culture (New York: BasicBooks, 1991) -- Vol. 2 is expected in February 2002.
J.M. Roberts, The Pelican History of the World (London, England: Penguin Books, 1988)
Modern Israel Map: http://www.templebuilders.com/maps/politicalhtm.htm
British Mandate Map: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/mandate2.html
League of Nations Mandate for Palestine: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Palestine_Mandate.html
Arab al-Nakba (the Catastrophy): http://www.alnakba.org/
Christian Apologetics: http://debate.org.uk/topics/history/home.htm
Israeli Myths & Facts: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths/mftoc.html
[Secular] Encyclopedia of the Orient: http://lexicorient.com/e.o/index.htm
Koran and other Islamic Literature (several languages): http://www.quraan.com/
Koran (searchable, in English): http://www.hti.umich.edu/k/koran/