INDEPTH: ISLAM
How Islam Evolved
By Dr. Kristin Norget, Associate Professor of Anthropology, McGill University | Updated January 20, 2004
The history of Islam, one of the world's great religious traditions, is rich
and centuries old. Its founder was the prophet Muhammad, who was born in the Arabian Peninsula about 571. A charismatic leader, Muhammad came to establish a new faith and political order that swept across the face of the earth. After three hundred years, Islam had already expanded to three continents, across 10,000 km, and had joined people from North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. Today Islam embraces more than a billion people with diverse ethnic, linguistic and cultural backgrounds. It has hundreds of variations across the world, in Asia (including China, Indonesia and the Philippines), Africa (including Morocco, Sudan, Nigeria and Senegal), the Middle East, and significant communities in multi-cultural and multi-ethnic settings in Europe (including Bosnia and England) and North America. Today, Arabs make up less than a fifth of the world Muslim population.
ISLAM'S DIVERSITY
This diversity reflects the particular historic period in which Islam was adopted to local conditions and cultural traditions. Even pantheistic (a hierarchy of spirits worshipped in addition to God) versions of Islam may be found in parts of Indonesia, where Islamic faith often exists in "syncretized" form, that is, blended with other religious traditions such as Hinduism or Catholicism. Islam's deep intellectual tradition may be seen in classic styles of Islamic expression, including maraboutism in Morocco (a saint-centred system of ruler-worship emphasizing Sufism), and the Shi'ite scholarly tradition in the Middle East.
Over time, classical forms of Islam became complicated by other currents of thought such as secularism and Islamic scripturalism. Scripturalism emerged especially in reaction to Western powers which began to colonize the Islamic world from the end of 18th century. It is a scholarly fundamentalist orientation that underlines a return to the Koran – Islam's holy book – and the hajj, or pilgrimage.
SOURCES OF ISLAM
No other religion has been as distorted in Western
representations as Islam. Distinct enough from Christianity to pose as the
"other" – as it has done in the West for over a millenium – Islam has been
seen as irrational, despotic, even violent, steeped in backward
traditionalism. Yet the sources of Islamic faith are found in the same
setting as the other great monotheisms (single-god religions), Christianity and Judaism, from the Abrahamic world of the early Middle East. From the beginning, Islam was not simply a system of belief and practice, but a way of life and
world view. Islam sees itself as the clarified culmination of Christianity
and Judaism, the pure expression of truth, the final link in a long chain of
prophecy, the religion of primordial unity. Islam means "submission [to the
will of God]" and is intended as a return to an old, unadulterated faith,
not the creation of a new one. Islam does not identify itself with a single
people, as is the case of Judaism, or a single event in human history. Its
religious tradition is inclusivist, the message of God's divine oneness
relevant to every people and race.
ISLAM'S PRINCIPLES
The diverse schools and interpretations of Islam are deeply rooted and
united in the principles of Islamic revelation. Islam was born into a world
of polytheism, or belief in many gods. The statement most often
pronounced by a Muslim, referred to as the statement of faith, begins with
the words "There is no god but God [Allah]".
Islamic teachings rely on Muhammad's exemplary life and on God's commands. Muhummad received the revelations that comprise the Koran ("Word of God") – God's major gift to humans – over a period of 23 years in the cities of Mecca and Medina, in present-day Saudi Arabia. Muhammad and his followers condemned the idols worshipped by the polytheistic elite of Arabian society. The Hadith is the record of Muhummad's life and statements.
THE KORAN
Unlike the Hebrew Bible or Christian Gospels, the Koran contains brief
parables and stories but mainly consists of directives to Muhammad and his
people. For Muslims, the Koran is not just a book to be read, memorized
and studied, but is an eminently sacred text to be celebrated through song
and calligraphy. Much Islamic art is based on the artistic adaptations of
the form of the written Koran, and elaborate writings of the names "Allah"
and "Muhammad" are ubiquitous in art and architecture. Many Muslims also
believe that spoken and written sacred words have the power to ward off evil
or heal people's illness.
ROLE OF GOD
Islam underlines a conviction in the absolute supremacy of a single God who
holds all power over life and death. The foundations of Islamic faith are
revitalized through the basic rituals of Islam: the prayers, the fast, and
the pilgrimage to Mecca. The migration away from Mecca to Medina is
central to Islam. Early in his career as a prophet, about 622, Muhammad's life was threatened in Mecca. He fled or made the emigration (hijra) to the nearby
city of Medina. Tthis emigration marks the beginning of the lunar Islamic
calendar. There he was embraced by many Jews and non-Muslim Arabs as their
leader, and adopted several ritual practices of the Jews including food
taboos. While the avoidance of pork remains a staple dietary rule, Muhammad
gradually instituted other elements that distinguish Islam from Judaism and other religious traditions – including praying five times a day in the direction of Mecca, and Ramadan, a month of fasting from dawn to dusk.
FIVE PILLARS
The pillars of Muslim tradition, the testimony of faith (the Shahada);
prayer; almsgiving; and fasting must be practiced on a regular basis. But
the sacred journey to the centre of the faith, the pilgrimage (hajj), is
demanded only once in a lifetime.
Muhammad undertook a pilgrimage to Mecca in 632, the year of his death. He called on Muslims to take it forever more. The pilgrimage to Mecca annually unites the whole of the Muslim world in common action before one God.
According to Islamic scriptures, the prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) built the Ka'ba, the large cubic black-draped structure in Mecca around which Muslim pilgrims process during the annual rite. The Feast of Sacrifice is the pilgrimage's culminating act. Muslims around the world believe the performance of an animal sacrifice (e.g., a sheep, goat, duck, chicken) is part of their obligation to submit to God's commands as revealed through Muhammad.
SUBMISSION
Islam articulates enduring power as male-centred. It defines men as links to
what is permanent, and women as links to more ephemeral things. The Koran's
myth of Ibrahim (Islam's archetypal father) and Muhummad's act of sacrifice
established the principles of male inheritance and position at the centre of the Islamic culture.
In many parts of the world where Islam is the dominant religion, the model of faith through submission and sacrifice is enshrined in laws and institutions such as marriage and the family. As all people should submit to and obey God, son should submit to father, younger males should submit to older males, and all women and children to males. The Koran emphasizes the divine unity and the oneness, omnipotence, mercy and generosity of god; submission is celebrated as the way to peace and transcendence.
ISLAM AND POLITICS
The history of Islam cannot be separated from the history of Islamic society. Throughout history Islam created political institutions such as the caliphate and the sultanate. But these institutions were eventually challenged as observers watched political revolution take hold in the dominant colonial Western countries. France occupied the Maghrib, or the Western lands of the Arab world from the early 19th century until the middle of the 1950s and 1960s. The French Revolution, for example, indirectly resulted in a gradual erosion or destruction of traditional Islamic political institutions across the Islamic world.
MODERN ISLAM
This erosion is at the root of the political and social turmoil plaguing
the Islamic world today. Millennarian movements, which proclaimed the imminent demise of the existing order and the re-ascendance of Islamic dominance, began to spread across Muslim West Africa to India in response to the dominance of Western powers,
beginning with the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt in 1798. This millennialist
spirit, or Mahdiism, re-emerged in the mid-20th century amidst the hopes – and later disillusionment – raised by political independence. It has also
coloured the atmosphere of movements since then, such as the Iranian
Revolution in 1979.
Expressions of Islam, such as many of its fundamentalist versions today, are linked to the development of particular sets of social, economic and political factors which gave rise to them. The appearance of homogeneity and conformity in Islam is deceptive. Muslims continue to debate the implications of the Koran's teachings for everyday life, and the relation between religious and governmental authority. Taboos and dietary rules are strictly observed in some places and not in others. Women and men have have a more equal relationship in some forms of Islam (such as in Sumatra and Indonesia), than is the case in extremist forms of Islam (as in Talibanist Afghanistan). Most
families in the Islamic world are monogamous, and the practice of polygamy
is usually dicated by economic factors and the insistence of Islam to
integrate all members of society into a family structure.
Despite Islam's underlying unity, interpretations of the Koran and the particularities of Islamic practices are as wide-ranging across the world as are its followers.
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