The Origins of Islam: From Ancient Judaism to Muhammad's Revelations, Study notes of World Religions

Download The Origins of Islam: From Ancient Judaism to Muhammad's Revelations and more Study notes World Religions in PDF only on Docsity! REL 100 Lecture 20 1 In this session we’re gonna be looking at the religion of Islam. As we’ve said earlier, ancient Judaism provides the roots for contemporary Judaism, for Christianity, and then also for Islam. And so Islam takes its roots very deeply into ancient Judaism. Yet as far as it being an established, specific religion, it’s the newest of the major world religions. Islam didn’t really become established as its own unique religious movement until early in the 7th century C.E. But to illustrate where the roots come from a little bit into ancient Judaism, we can go back to Genesis 16. And I’m gonna read from the Good News Bible, today’s English version, and read a couple of sections here that are sections into which Muslims sink their roots as far as in ancient Judaism. So first of all what we have here is you might remember Abraham was the father or the patriarch of Judaism. That’s also the case with Islam. And where we’re at here in the story in Genesis, Chapter 16, is that God has come to Abraham and told him that he would be the father of a great nation. But Abraham is very old now. His wife, Sarah, is very old, around 100 years old and 90 years old, and they have no children. So this would seem to be a problem. And so Sarah did what was really the responsibility of the wife during this time and in this culture. One of the things that the wife did in the household was that she oversaw the childbearing in the household. And part of that was to insure that there were enough children to take care of livestock and take care of property, and also enough children that once the parents were old, that the children could take care of the parents and then once the children had died — excuse me — the parents had died, the children could take care of what was inherited from the father. REL 100 Lecture 20 2 Well, they’re old now and they have no children. Plus, there’s this promise that God has made them about having many descendants, so Sarah did what a responsible wife would’ve done in that culture and she sought other ways to bring children into the household. And so she — that’s where this story takes up. Abraham’s wife, Sarah, had not borne him any children, but Sarah had an Egyptian slave girl named Hagar. So Sarah said to Abraham, “The Lord has kept me from having children so why don’t you sleep with my slave girl. Perhaps she can have a child for me.” Abraham agreed with what Sarah said. And so she gave Hagar to him to be his concubine. Abraham had intercourse with Hagar and Hagar became pregnant. When she found out that she was pregnant, she became proud and despised Sarah, possibly saying, “I’m gonna be the mother of this great nation. It’s not going to be you. These descendants are gonna come through me with Abraham, not through you.” So Sarah said to Abraham, “It’s your fault that Hagar despises me. I gave her to you and ever since she found out that she was pregnant, she despised me. Now, the Lord judge which of us is right, you or me.” Abraham answered, “Very well. She’s your slave. She’s under your control. Do whatever you want with her.” So Sarah treated Hagar so cruelly that finally Hagar ran away. Then an angel of the Lord [so from the Hebrew Bible, from the Christian Old Testament, this would be an angel of God or Allah would be the name for God that you would find in Islam] — the angel of the Lord met Hagar at a spring in the desert on the road to REL 100 Lecture 20 5 that that is their father, Ishmael. And then you have Isaac, son of Sarah, and the Jews say that that is their father. And that’s the source also of a lot of the conflict, as we’ve talked previously, that goes on in the Middle East today even, as far as trying to figure out who really has the rightful possession of this land. But the roots go back that deeply into ancient Judaism. But it didn’t really come on the scene — Islam didn’t — until much later through the life of a prophet named Muhammad. Muhammad was born late in the 6th century, I believe around 570 C.E. He was born in Arabia, what’s Saudi Arabia today, and he was born in the city of Mecca. And out of Muhammad and out of his teachings and out of his life came this religion that we now call Islam. Islam means submission to God or submission to Allah, as is the translation for God in the Arabic language. And those who follow this religion of Islam are called Muslims. So Muslims are people who are submitted to Allah or submitted to God. So Islam is the name of the religion, Muslim is the name of those who follow this religion. So Muhammad is born in the city of Mecca late in the 6th century C.E. In this city he was — his parents died when he was young and so he ended up being raised by an uncle. His family was not very wealthy. He was not educated formally, but he was trained in a trade by his uncle. He was trained to be a camel driver. Which maybe you could compare that to being like an 18-wheeler truck driver today. Because camel caravans were what were used to carry exports and imports to various parts of Arabia and to other places in the world at that time. So he was a camel driver and eventually he went to work for a woman named REL 100 Lecture 20 6 Khadija. She owned a larger trading business. She was a wealthy widow woman. And over time, Khadija and Muhammad ended up getting married because Khadija saw this man that she saw was very fair in business. He was very upright in how he handled situations. And so she married him. And so Muhammad is married to his boss, Khadija, and they both become pretty significant business leaders there in the city of Mecca. Now, let me create a little bit of a picture of Mecca because this will play back in as Muhammad’s message enfolds that he receives from Allah a little bit later. Mecca, I would say — you might be able to compare it to, like, say, the New York City of Arabia at this time, in the late 6th, early 7th century C.E. Mecca was a place of commerce. Pretty much any trade that happened in that part of the world went through Mecca or maybe even came out of Mecca. If you were a company that did a lot of trade, you probably had some sort of a base or a satellite or something there in Mecca. So business came through there and a lot of commerce was there, a lot of money was there in Mecca. Mecca was also a major religious center. There were shrines to various gods and animals and all kinds of polytheistic worship throughout the city and people would make pilgrimages to Mecca to worship these various deities. So you’ve got a major city of commerce and business and money, a lot of people there because of that. It’s a major city of religious pilgrimage and so a lot of people there because of that, lots of spiritual people. And then you’ve got all these people there so a third thing you have is just a pretty active social life in Mecca. And so there was a lot of promiscuity, there REL 100 Lecture 20 7 was prostitution, there was a lot of alcohol, all the things that go typically with sort of a transient group of people in an area. So you’ve got this major business center, a major spiritual center, a major social center there in Mecca. Well, Muhammad and Khadija have this business in the city of Mecca. Over time, though, Muhammad begins to start to see a bigger picture or wonder about a bigger picture in life. He’s got all this wealth and got all this stuff going for him, but it just seems like something’s maybe missing. Something isn’t quite right there. And so he begins to go outside the city and just try to seek whatever truth is really there that maybe he’s missing. And as he goes outside the city at various times, he begins to have these revelations. In these revelations, in these experiences that are maybe like visions or dreams, during these revelations the angel, Gabriel, speaks to him on behalf of the God, Allah, and begins to give him a message and begins to give him some truth. Well, Muhammad receives several of these revelations but says nothing to anybody for quite awhile. Eventually, though, he feels compelled to go out and to begin to speak this message. So the first person he went to was his wife, Khadija, and he told her about the revelations. Khadija believed what Muhammad told her. She accepted that message and she encouraged Muhammad to preach that message to people if that’s what this angel was telling him to do on behalf of this God, Allah. Because of Khadija’s response, Khadija is considered the first convert to Islam. Muslims say that that shows the credibility of Islam because Muhammad’s family were the first to accept his message. When you look at the other major religious prophets, that was not the case. Jesus’ family was not the first ones on board. Buddha’s family. REL 100 Lecture 20 10 permeating out from that area. So monotheism would’ve been a little more of a familiar idea to people in the north. But for whatever reasons, the people in Medina more readily received this message that Muhammad had about this one God, Allah, and what he called people to as far as submitting to him. So really in Medina was when Islam took off, when it was really allowed to grow, when it really exploded into a movement that was a vital movement. Because of that, that move from Mecca to Medina in 622 is an event that’s given a name and it’s celebrated even today by Muslims. It’s called the Hejira or the Hegira. And what the Hejira is with Hegira is when Muhammad and his followers fled Mecca and moved to Medina in 622 C.E., and that’s considered the real beginning of Islam as an established, specific, distinct religion. Because when they moved to Medina, it took off and it grew. So they’re in Medina and in Medina the religion grows. By 629, all of Medina and much of northern Arabia, seven years later, was under Islamic rule either by conversion or by some sort of force. But one way or another, most of northern Arabia was under Islamic rule, was what you would call Islamic. So in 629, Muhammad decided to go back to Mecca and try to convert Mecca again. And so he got together a group, an army, and they went down to Mecca and more or less they went with a twofold plan of conversion. To put it in lay terms, basically what they did is they went down there and Plan A was that they would try to bring about conversion to the city of Mecca by persuasion. That the message would be preached, they would see if people would accept the message or not, and that would be by persuasion if they would accept the message. That was Plan A. REL 100 Lecture 20 11 If Plan A didn’t work, then they would go to Plan B which was forced conversion by military takeover. Well, Plan A didn’t work so they went to Plan B. There was a huge battle that happened and Muhammad and his army eventually won the battle. And so Mecca was established as an Islamic city and Islamic rule was set up in Mecca. One of the things that was significant in Mecca, that’s still very significant today, was that there was this one sort of central shrine of polytheistic worship there in Mecca called the Ka’aba today or the house of God. At that time there was a polytheistic shrine. And so what Muhammad did was they cleansed that shrine because Muhammad came to understand through some sort of revelation or vision that that shrine, that stone, had roots that went back to Abraham. That there had been some miraculous events from the life of Abraham that had happened there at that site. And so he wanted to reestablish that, rededicate that to the cause of Allah. So that was cleansed, rededicated as a symbol of monotheism and as a remembrance that there’s only one God, Allah, and that shrine today is called the Ka’aba. That’s still the central Islamic site in Mecca. Whenever Islamic pilgrims take their pilgrimage to Mecca, the Ka’aba is one of the central places that they visit. And we’ll talk a little bit more about that later when we talk about the pilgrimages. But there’s some shots here that you can see what that Ka’aba looks like today and you can see people that are all around that on the pilgrimage to Mecca as you look there at the pictures that we have. So Muhammad — that was in — excuse me — 629 when conversion of Mecca was forced by military takeover. Muhammad died in 632. By the time he died in 632, all REL 100 Lecture 20 12 of Arabia was Islamic, either through conversion by persuasion or conversion by force. And that’s still the case today. Arabia, now called Saudi Arabia because of the ruling family that’s there — Saudi Arabia is Islamic today. Most of the laws reflect Islam. Islam is the predominant religion today still in Saudi Arabia. Drinking alcohol is still prohibited today in Saudi Arabia. Establishing other religions besides Islam and other worship to Gods besides Allah is illegal today in Saudi Arabia. So still an Islamic country today, even 1400 years later. So Muhammad’s influence. Let’s recap that. Muhammad eliminated polytheistic worship in Arabia, had been a center for polytheistic worship for many years but he eliminated that. That’s still the case today, that it’s a center of monotheistic worship of Allah. And so, secondly, he established truly monotheistic worship of this one God, Allah. He established monotheistic worship to Allah. Third, he united Arabia under one faith, the faith of Islam. And again, that’s still the case today. Also, as far as Muhammad, Muhammad is viewed by Muslims as God’s final prophet, this final and greatest prophet. That’s one of the statements of faith of Islam is that there’s no God but Allah and Muhammad is the prophet of God, the final prophet of God. And so Muhammad is viewed by Muslims as God’s final prophet. He is the culmination of a line of prophets that includes Adam, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. So Muslims accept of all the prophets from Adam up through all the prophets that you would have in the Torah or the Christian Old Testament. Even Jesus is accepted as a prophet within Islam. And accept as a true prophet. But what the belief is and the teaching in Islam is is that Jesus preached a true message of Allah but his message REL 100 Lecture 20 15 These would be the core requirements. If someone’s a devout Muslim, these are the things that they would follow. The first of those Pillars is the creed or the statement of faith. And what the statement of faith says, as I mentioned earlier, there’s no God but Allah and Muhammad is the prophet of God. Again, that’s just like the statement of faith of Islam. When someone speaks that and they say that that’s what they believe, that Allah is the only God and that Muhammad was his prophet, implying that Muhammad was his final prophet, the climax of his prophets. Then if someone believes that, they’re Muslim. This is a creed that’s spoken whenever Muslims pray. This is a creed that is spoken daily. It’s a creed that’s spoken over children when they’re born or when any rites of passage happen with Islamic children, that there’s no God but Allah and Muhammad is the prophet of God. Central belief of Islam. If you believe that, you’re Muslim. Just like saying Christianity. There’s different creeds. Some are as simple as Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Some would say if you make that statement and you believe that, you’re Christian. Well, for Islam, if you can say there’s no God but Allah and Muhammad is His prophet, you’re Muslim. The second Pillar is prayer. Muslims pray and, if they’re devout, five times a day. And they have set times from sunrise to sunset and into the evening, midday, mid afternoon, when Muslims pray. And this prayer has certain rituals attached to it. There’s a certain posture of prayer, a posture of submission. Again, the idea of Islam. Submission to Allah. And so when Muslims pray, they are on their knees with their arms out in front of them flat on the ground, and then they press their forehead to the REL 100 Lecture 20 16 ground. So a very submissive stance as far as their prayer. Again, they pray five times a day wherever they are in the world. They pray facing the direction of Mecca. And so in an Islamic home or a home of Muslims, they would know which wall of the house faces in the direction of Mecca and so that’s where you bow when you have your daily prayers, in that direction. There is typically to be some sort of a cleansing or washing before prayer. Ideally, that’s with water. A cleansing of the hands and the mouth and the face and the feet. If water is not available, it’s done symbolically or ritualistic in some way to symbolize clean hands going into the presence of God and purity going into the presence of God for prayer. Muslims gather weekly for prayer, regularly, and that’s on Friday during the midday time of prayer. Muslims will come together for prayer. That’s called a mosque. A mosque is any time that Muslims are anywhere that Muslims gather for prayer. So the mosque is actually the gathering, but it’s also come to be the name of the building that Muslims might gather in to pray. It typically has a dome on top of it. Not necessarily, but typically. So this regular prayer, this gathering, is called a mosque. And again, that happens on Friday — Fridays during the midday times of prayer. Generally in these prayer times the men and women are separated into their own areas. If it’s a mosque that they come in, often there’s a women’s side and a men’s side where they do their ritual bath, ritual cleansing, in their own pools. They go on their own sides, have their own prayers. Segregation is common, especially in traditional Islam. Here in the U.S. where there’s been some adaptation to culture, you’ll find some mosques where men REL 100 Lecture 20 17 and women pray together. But separation and segregation is common. If they are in the same place, usually the men are in front and the women are in back. Still segregated in some way. But keeping the men up front and the women in back for these prayers. So prayer is significant. There are many other rituals, standards, laws about prayer within the Qur’an, but that’s the second of the Pillars. The third Pillar is fasting, going without something, often food, for spiritual reasons is the idea of fasting. In Islam, there is an annual month of fasting. It’s called Ramadan or Ramzan. Ramadan is a month in the Islamic calendar every year and during that time, during that month, Muslims do not eat or have sexual relations during the daylight hours. Now, in the evenings they can eat and drink and do all that, but during the daylight hours there’s to be a total abstention from that. And during the times when typically they would eat, those are times rededicated to prayer. Ramadan is a time of rededication, a time of repentance. It’s a time of reconciliation. It’s a time in which Muslims are not to go to war or not to be in a war. So it’s this annual month of rededication of submission to Allah. Let me say something about the Islamic calendar here. The Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar and so it doesn’t match up with our Western calendar exactly because it would be just a 28-day month each month. And in Islam, they don’t address that calendar, the Western calendar. Now, in Judaism they do. There’s a point that comes where they adjust the calendar back. And so every year in Judaism, the holidays that are in the fall are always in the fall. They may be earlier or later in the fall but they always are. The same for spring. Because they adjust it to the Western calendar. But REL 100 Lecture 20 20 And there were some differences over that. There were some who thought that that should stay within the family. Well, Muhammad didn’t have any sons and, of course, a woman could not be the leader of the religious community, and so he had a son-in-law that people said, “This son-in-law, Ali, he should be the one to take over, to succeed Muhammad.” Keep it in the family. There were others who said, “No, it’s more about the commitment and the dedication, so it should be Muhammad’s first and closest disciple.” Male disciple. It couldn’t be his wife because it couldn’t be a woman, from their perspective. So you had those that said it should be Ali, the son-in-law. Keep it in the family. Others said no, it should be his first and closest disciple. And so because of that, these two groups split, based on that human line of authority. Some following Ali, some following his disciple. Those who followed his disciple is a group that’s called today the Sunni’s or Sunnites. This would be the largest group within Islam. It’s the group that you find the greatest diversity, the greatest variety within this group. That the Sunni’s more easily adapt to the cultures that they’re in and so there’s more cultural variation that you have with Sunni Islam. But this would be by far the largest group of Muslims today, probably 75% or so of the Muslim world would be Sunni Muslims. And again, at the core, the main distinction was over the line of authority that they followed after Muhammad’s death. But it’s also become the one that is more open to change, more open to cultural adaptation. And so you’ll find a lot more variety in Sunni Islam than you will in the other kinds of Islam. The other group that came out of that initial split after Muhammad’s death are the REL 100 Lecture 20 21 Shia or the Shi-ite’s. This is actually a pretty small group of the Islamic population, maybe 15 or 20%. This would be potentially the strictest group, the group that would be most attentive to Islamic law. Because of that, what comes out of this group tends to be some of these splinter groups that are more militant. Certainly not all Shi-ite’s are militant. Just because someone’s a Shi-ite Muslim, it doesn’t mean that they’re a militant. But because Shi-ite Islam emphasizes a lot more — following the teachings as closely as possible and because there are teachings about militarily defending the cause of Islam or militarily defending Muslims, they are those Shi-ite Muslims who would be much more quick than, say, Sunni’s to declare Holy War. The term in Islam for Holy War is Jihad, which you’re probably become very familiar with in recent years because of situations that have happened globally. Jihad typically is called Holy War, but the reality is Jihad means struggle. And the idea is struggling for righteousness and justice. And so in Islamic teaching, the idea of Jihad is that everyone should be participating in Jihad. That if I were a Muslim, daily I should be practicing Jihad with myself. I should be struggling for righteousness and justice in my own life. I should be struggling for righteousness and justice in the community around me, participating in Jihad. But there’s also this broader sense of Jihad that can become Holy War. Where there’s a situation between societies or communities or countries where righteousness and justice from the perspective of some Islamic leader — where righteousness and justice needs to be reestablished. And so Jihad, Holy War, is also called in that place. So today in a lot of places where there’s some Islamic leaders who have declared Jihad REL 100 Lecture 20 22 against, say, the U.S. or against Europe, that’s because those particular leaders see the U.S. as in some way oppressing Muslims, opposing Islam, bringing some sort of distress and antagonism against Islamic people, and so there are certain Islamic leaders then that can declare Holy War, Jihad, to maintain and to bring back the righteousness and justice in that place. So the Sunni’s and the Shi-ite’s — again, those are the main groups. A third group would be the Sufi’s. These are the monks of Islam. Obviously it’s a very small percentage, but these would be the people that would be the mystics. They would tend to leave society, live in monasteries. There are women who are Sufi’s as well. And the emphasis is on seeking union with God. The emphasis is on seeking union with God through contemplation, asceticism, and prayer. The emphasis of the Sufi Muslims is seeking union with God through contemplation, asceticism, and prayer. Often Sufi’s have less of an emphasis on the text of Islam and more of an emphasis on the experience of Allah through Islam. So these are the three groups that you still find today in the Islamic world. I mean, when you hear things about Iraq, if that’s something that you’re attentive to, you hear about the Shi-ites and the Sunni’s, trying to decide who’s gonna have more power there in Iraq. So there’s a lot of even dispute between one another. There have been Shi-ite groups who have been angry at Sunni groups or Sunni leaders because they were very open to the U.S. They were open to Western ideas. And so there have been some Shi-ite groups who oppose them and even try to eliminate those Sunni leaders because they were so open to Western ideas or to Western people, to Western theology.