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Islamic Society and Politics I. Islam as a religious, political, and social movement

• A. Different from Christianity and Judaism in this way
  • 1.Judaism accepted the importance of political leaders being Jewish (King David)
  • 2.Christianity said that the kingdom of heaven was not on earth, that politics therefore mattered less than spiritual matters
  • 3.Islam said that Allah controlled all aspects of life, so they should all be in accord with Islam. This would make Islam potentially revolutionary.
• B. Likewise, Islamic society would be run by the Koran
• C. What was attractive about Islamic society?
  • 1.Like Christianity, Islamic society was quite egalitarian--all were equal under Allah
  • 2. Both patriarchal and revolutionary for women
    • a. demanded better treatment for women, particularly in property, inheritance and marriage rights
    • b. yet remained patriarchal, with women subservient to the male head of the family
    • d. St. Paul also said that women should listen to their husbands. Christianity was also both patriarchal and revolutionary for its day
  • 3. Islam as a route to social advancement
    • a. as the empire grew (under Muhammad and after), Muslims held positions of authority.
    • b. meant, however, that non-Muslims were looked down upon
    • c. slavery was widespread in Muslim countries
      • 1)Muslims could not be enslaved
      • 2)slaves therefore came from parts of Africa and non-Islamic groups
  • 4.Thus a highly organized social structure with Muslim men on top as leaders, teachers, and warriors.
  • 5. In the initial imperial expansion, only Arab Muslims had highest positions of authority
    • a. other Muslims could serve in the Army, make their way to power there
    • b. yet some avenues cut off to them as non-Arabs
    • c. also question of conversion
      • 1)non Muslims not forced to become Muslim
      • 2)yet non-Muslims had to pay a special tax
      • 3)the paradox of religion and finance!
• D. Trade and Islam
  • 1.based on production of goods, trade, and war
  • 2.as the empire grew, new goods were produced: cotton, metals, carpets
  • 3.trade and merchants had always been acceptable in Islam
  • 4.Bedouin background had accepted the importance of trade with other nations and peoples
  • 5.Arab lands were not very good for agriculture like, say, the Nile flood plain
  • 6.Islam was then able to be carried to various parts of the middle east, the east, and Europe on the backs of merchants as well as armies of the empire.
  • 7. Merchants established small Muslim communities in non-Muslim towns where they traded
  • 8. Also worked to attach themselves to local rulers as advisers
  • 9. In this way, established a nucleus for long-term conversion of the entire community
• E. Law and ethics
  • 1. Besides the Quran, the Hadith, a collections of sayings of Mohammed and stories of his life serve as source of law and ethics
  • 2. Over time, Muslim thinkers, the ulama, develop the Shari'a, the body of Islamic law
  • 3. Different version of Shari'a  develop in different regions -- much based on precedence, which gives rise to different schools of thought

II. Islamic Politics and Empire

• A. Under Muhammad, Islam began to grow--by 621 Most Arab groups were allied to the Prophet and his political organization
• B. After Muhammad died, Islam led by caliphs ("successors") who followed the Prophet's secular (though not prophetic) role.
  • 1.first Caliph was Abu Bakr, Muhammad's father in law
  • 2.question of how to pick caliphs would lead to the greatest split in Islam
    • a. Sunni would uphold traditional dynastic progression
      • i. caliph as temporal, secular ruler, a defender of the faith
      • ii. spiritual guidance from the ulama
    • b. Shi'ia would uphold an alternate progression based on Ali, Mohammad's son-in-law
      • i. spiritual authority passed down through the family of Mohammed
      • ii. emphasis on religious purity
      • iii. the imams, the spiritual leaders, officially abstained from secular power, regarding it as inherently wicked
      • iv. awaited the arrival of a mahdi ("guided one') who would usher in a golden age
    • c. Shiites would traditionally be Muslims of non-Arab extraction
    • d. powerful forces in Iraq and, especially, Persia (Iran) among Farsi-speaking people.
• C. Umayyad dynasty the first great dynasty in Islam Empire (661-750 AD)
• D. would be overturned by the Abbasid dynasty
  • 1.very long, powerful dynasty (750-1258)
  • 2.would conquer large sections of the world
  • 3. Began the de-Arabization of Islamic leadership, allowing other ethnic groups to rise in the hierarchy
  • 4. Also sees the outset the beginnings of political division of the umma, as an Umayyad prince established a separate dynasty in Spain
• E. Islamic empire one of the greatest empires on Earth
  • 1.stretched from Spain in West towards China in East
  • 2.put Muslims in constant contact with Christian West
  • 3.Muslim attacks on Byzantium (Eastern Rome) led to Crusades
  • 4.created animosity between Christians and Muslims in Jerusalem, elsewhere
• F. Yet also was a conduit for knowledge as well as goods
  • 1.Muslim centers of learning specialized in ancient Greek and Roman knowledge
  • 2.many books by the Greeks lost in Europe were maintained in Arabic empire
  • 3.mathematics and astronomy greatly aided by Islamic scholars
    • a. algebra
    • b. the idea of zero
  • 4.these ideas were brought back to the empire from outside or spread from the inside

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