A world Without Islam pdfdrive com

Arab converts to Islam, that began to rankle severely; these tensions eventually
led to the overthrow of the very Arab-oriented Umayyad caliphate by the more
multiethnic Abbasids in 750 CE. And this privileged position for Arabs within
Islam was, of course, directly contrary to the final address of the Prophet
himself:
O people! Verily your Lord is one and your father is one. All of you
belong to one ancestry of Adam and Adam was created out of clay. There
is no superiority for an Arab over a non-Arab and for a non-Arab over an
Arab; nor for white over the black nor for the black over the white except
in piety. Verily the noblest among you is he who is the most pious.
The history of Islam represents a gradual shift away from an ethnic
perception of the process of conquest and conversion and toward a more
idealized process of the universalization of Islam. Still, the problem of self-
asserted “Arab superiority” within Islam, while weakening, has still not
completely disappeared at the popular level among many Arabs. It stems from
the fact that Islam emerged from Arabia; that the Qur’an, the very words of God,
was revealed in Arabic; that the Prophet was an Arab; and from the unparalleled
richness of the Arabic rhetoric and language in the Qur’an, and the stunning
success of the early Arab conquests. But a key function of the pilgrimage, or
hajj, as an institution is to bring together Muslims from all over the world,
multiple languages and races, in one place to worship. Modern communications
have also hugely increased the awareness among all Muslims of the major
contributions of non-Arab Muslims to the totality of Islamic culture at the

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expense of ethnic identity.
How did conversions actually proceed? All conversion processes are
complex; they involve personal considerations as well as religious ones. Lapidus
perceives two distinct phenomena under way in this process. The conversion of
the animists and polytheists of the desert areas lay in the attraction of a vision of
becoming part of a greater and richer civilization for which there were multiple
incentives to join. This process stood in marked distinction to the urban or
agrarian monotheistic populations for whom “Islam was substituted for a
Byzantine or Sassanian political identity and for a Christian, Jewish or
Zoroastrian religious affiliation…. The old elites and the administrative
machinery of the Byzantine and Sassanian empires were incorporated into the
new regime.”
Thus, an extraordinary transformation took place over vast areas in less than
a century. As Lapidus states:
The Arabs were changed from a clan or tribal people into an “urban”
people, mingled with non-Arab peoples, abandoned military affairs, took
on civilian occupations, and lost their monopoly on Islam.
Correspondingly, non-Arab peoples entered the military and government
services, converted to Islam, adopted the Arabic language, and claimed a
place in the government of the empire in which they were initially
subjects.
In addition, minorities who had resented Byzantine, Sassanid, and other rule
believed their situation would improve under Muslim rule; time and experience
under the new Muslim caliphate mainly confirmed those hopes. Certainly fear of
the conquerors might impel some to conversion, but so would a desire to curry
favor with the new authorities for personal gain. Those who had long been
minorities began to perceive greater benefit in joining the religion of the
majority and becoming part of a mainstream culture, enjoying patronage and
new social mobility. Others would even choose to join the Islamic campaigns of
military conquest for adventure and riches.
But even this conversion process was not as rapid as is popularly conceived.
Research by the Columbia University scholar Richard Bulliet on the rates of
conversion of non-Arabs to Islam shows just how slow the process was in the
first Islamic century. Under the Umayyad caliphate, only 10 percent of the
populations that were conquered actually converted to Islam, compared to the
more multinational Abbasid caliphate, where the conversion rate went from 40

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percent to nearly 100 percent by the end of the eleventh century.
Nor were all communities converted. The very existence of large Christian
communities of many denominations across the Middle East, as well as many
Jewish communities, showed that “People of the Book” could opt not to convert,
and continue to worship as Christians and Jews, agree to pay the poll tax, and
thereby avoid military service and receive the protection of the state. Under the
Ottoman Empire a millennium later, the overwhelming majority of the empire’s
subjects in the Balkans indeed remained Christian and the rhythms of their lives
and religious worship did not change significantly.
In effect, then, the conversion process was very gradual and did not entail
huge or sudden changes in the life of the region, even as a rich new international
Islamic culture slowly emerged. Religion mattered far less than political, social,
and economic change. We witness major elements of continuity in the political
and social, even geopolitical, character of the Middle East as Islam gradually
moves in and takes over. Simplistic “Islam versus the West” or “versus
Christianity” polarity makes no sense.
Islam changed the political environment but was also changed by the
environment. As the Abbasid Empire took in ever more diverse ethnic
populations, cultures, and languages from Spain to Central and South Asia, it
inevitably developed a more cosmopolitan outlook, drawing on the talents of the
newly conquered populations. Nestorian and Syriac theologians, philosophers,
and thinkers helped form the intellectual foundations of the Abbasid Empire.
The Nestorian patriarch living inside the boundaries of the new Muslim Empire
came to possess great power and influence within Abbasid governance. A
process of intellectual ferment was under way that would lift Islamic civilization
to the highest level anywhere in the world at the time and for centuries to come.
We see an important process of fusion here as Islamic culture gradually
absorbed ambient cultures, traditions, languages, arts, histories, and experiences,
making Islam part of the region rather than merely an Arabian import imposed
on the area. It is this deep integration of Islamic culture into the most ancient
region of civilizations in the world that suggests in many ways a continuum of
large numbers of values, attitudes, and attributes. The Middle East was not
transformed by Islam into something brand-new, but rather subtly but
importantly took on one more rich new layer of culture on top of a deeply rooted
and established earlier mosaic.
Thus, these patterns of integration of Islam and Islamic culture into other
cultural traditions are a vital part of our perception and understanding of the
argument that the powerful geopolitical and cultural continuities of the region
abide. Had Islam not emerged onto the scene, most of these forces would have

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remained and evolved, just as they did with the new layer of Islamic culture on
top of them. Much of the same geopolitical forces and tensions were
perpetuated. There is no doubt, though, that Islam was able to unify these
regions under common civilizational patterns that proved exceptionally durable
to the present day, regardless of shifting political borders within Islam.
We have witnessed, too, how various Christian heresies served as ideological
vehicles for local resistance against the power of Rome or Constantinople; it
should not be surprising, then, to see these same problems of heresy were
perpetuated under Islam as well. Take North Africa. As Arab Sunni armies swept
along the North African coast establishing Arab power, the dominant Berber
populations, with their own distinct language, culture, and traditions, saw this
spread of Arab power as primarily an ethnic and political threat. As a result,
once the structures of new Muslim rule were established, the Berbers tended to
turn to Shi’ism and Kharijite (a radical Islamic school of thought) ideas; these
nonmainstream Islamic theologies served as a form of protest against dominant
mainstream Arab Sunni power. Berber nationalism, in effect, finds a vehicle in
heterodox Islam.

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