ISLAM: THE STRAIGHT DOPE

A Self-styled Expert Explains Everything

Are Arab terrorists out to get us? What’s their beef? What exactly is gomg on here? Since the ‘War OnTerror’ now seems to be a permanent part of life I thought it worthwhile to do some investigating. All I had at the time were the usual stereotypes about Muslims: how they’re said to abuse women, how they bow down to pray five times a day, the wonderful paradise awaiting them when they die. I acquired several popular books on the subject of Islam and its founder Muhammad, and dug in. The following is s brief summary of what I’ve learned so far.

  

A TIGER BY THE TAIL

Muhammad didn’t realize what he was getting into. All he wanted was a little law and order, some stability so he could conduct business unmolested. Instead, he created a new faith from scratch that by the end of his 23-year prophethood was well on its way to becoming one of the world’s major religions. There are those who might see this accomplishment as something akin to unleashing a new, particularly resistant strain of bubonic plague on the world. That’s a little harsh. We have to consider conditions that prevailed in Arabia circa 600 AD..



THE SETTING

The Roman Empire which had civilized a big part of the world never quite masde it to Arabia. The closest it ever got was to Arabia’s western edge. In Muhammad’s day a Christianized remnant called the Byzantine Empire still hung on there. Across the border in Arabia where Muhammad lived life was in chaos. There was essentially no rule of law. The population consisted primarily of individual tribes scattered over the landscape, each with its own leader. The various tribes were constantly at war with each other, battling for survival. Not a great place to raise kids.

Or to run a business. Muhammad worked for a trading company headquartered in the town of Mecca. The company’s caravans while out on the road always were under threat of attack. Muhammad spent a lot of time thinking about the situation. On his days off he’d go out to a cave near town and brood. He knew God, or Allah as they called him there, had once sent a messenger preaching a better way of life. Something about the messenger had irritated the Roman rulers so they killed him. A bit of the message had rubbed off though. Those folks over in Byzantium still abided by it, not very well but sure a lot better than here in Arabia. Muhammad wished there could be some way get his own people to import some of that love-thy-neighbor philosophy.

DREAMS DO COME TRUE

Imagine Muhammad’s surprise when one day the Archangel Gabriel suddenly appeared before him in his cave. It seems that Allah had been working on a plan to re-introduce Christ’s message, just as Muhammad had been yearning for. And this time, by golly, he was going to make it stick. That certainly was good news to Muhammad. He felt better right away. But that was just the beginning. Gabriel went on to inform Muhammad that he, Muhammad, had been hand-picked to help out. Muhammad in fact would become Allah’s personal messenger. His job would be to make Allah’s wishes known to the people.

Had Allah read Muhammad’s mind and picked him because he knew Muhammad was inclined that way? Or had Allah planted the idea in Muhammad’s head himself, to soften him up for the announcement when it came. Maybe he’d been grooming Muhammad all his life. That could acount for a number of bizarre incidents, recalled later, that happened in Muhammad’s earlier years. (Another possibility is that Muhammad just made the whole thing up: no Angel Gabriel, no Allah. This idea is expanded on later; for now we’ll stick to the official story.)

It’s a litle easier to understand why Allah might have chosen the city of Mecca as the place to make the big revelation. Mecca had long had a reputation as an extremely holy spot. For generations Arab tribesmen of various religious persuasions had been journeying to Mecca, for the chance to worship their dieties at the Kaaba, that big black box in the center ot town. It’s possible that Allah had been considering using pilgrims like those as a good way to spread his word.



We can conjecture all we want but of course there’s no way of ever knowing the facts. What we do have is Muhammad’s own testimony about how he felt on learning of the new job. He wasn’t at all sure he could handle it. He told Gabriel he was just a simple man, no education. No way could he consider himself qualified to speak for The Supreme Being. Gabriel assured him he’d do just fine. Gabriel would tell Muhammad what to say. All Muhammad had to do was repeat what he heard.



THE KORAN

Allah’s complete message took a long time to deliver - more than twenty years in fact. During that time he revealed to his followers step-by-step instructions for creating an ideal society, a paradise on earth where all humanity would live in harmony. (The plan as it turned out had one fatal flaw. The whole thing depended on the idea that people everywhere could unite under a common set of beliefs. You’d think Allah would know better.)

Allah delivered his instructions one at a time in a series of revelations called suras. Though the entire process took a long time to complete, two fundamental principles appeared at the very outset. First, Allah’s followers had to recognize Allah as the one and only true god. Secondly, they must be ready to follow all of Allah’s instructions exactly, no holding back. What they call ‘submitting to his will’.



Once those two basic ground rules were firmly established, additional suras came thick and fast, eventually detailing every aspect of daily life. Major emphasis was on rules of conduct, with the aim of transforming rigid, harsh and impatient personalities into tranquil, merciful and patient individuals. Suras took issue with unethical business practices and social injustice. Others called for the freeing of slaves and for proper treatment of women, orphans and the poor. So far so good. What’s not to like?

After Muhammad’s death the entire batch of suras, 113 in all, was collected into a single volume, which now is Islam’s holy book, the Koran. The Koran is seen as the direct unvarnished word of Allah.

THE MIDNIGHT JOURNEY

Going was slow at first. The only means of disseminating information was by word of mouth, obviously a tedious process. Then there was an understandable amount of skepticism. The idea might sound good in theory but who was to go first? If I tried loving my neighbor but he chose to remain a jerk, wouldn’t that put me in a pretty awkward position? In spite of such difficultties the word did spread. Year by year more and more people decided to give it a try.

Apparently Allah was quite content with the rate of progress. After a few years he felt it was about time for a face-to-face look at this new prophet of his. He arranged valet service to come pick Muhammad up in Mecca and bring him to Allah’s headquarters in Jerusalem for an interview. The means of transportation was a winged donkey-like animal capable of leaping from horizon to horizon in a single stride.

Bing Maps puts the distance at 916 miles one way. That’s highway miles. As the donkey flies it could be one or two hundred miles less. That’s still a phenomenal amount of ground to cover, round trip no less, in a singlr night and still have time for a summit meeting. One thing to emerge from that get-together was Allah’s famous rule ordering followers to pray five times a day. (Allah originally asked for fifty times but Muhammad was able to negotiate him down.)



‘KILL THE MESSENGER’

As the number of converts continied to grow recruitment became easier - the snowball effect. Success however began to attract hostility from those remaining un-converted. One tribe in particular, the Quraysh, had openly opposed Muhammad’s reform ideas from the start. They were polytheists and Muhammad’s insistence on just a single all-powerful god rankled them.The Quraysh also happened to be the most powerful tribe of the region. It seems they occupied a place in society analogous to that of our 20th century Mafia. The general lawlessness suited them fine; they’d learned to manipulate it to their advantage. They didn’t appreciate what looked to them like Muhammad’s attempts to muscle in on their territory.

It got to the point where the Quraysh and some of their cronies decided Muhammad had to go. They arranged to have Muhammad murdered one night in his sleep. Had a date set and everything. Muhammad got wind of the plot and managed to slip out of town just in time, taking a contingent of followers with him. He re-located his headquarters to the city of Medina (Bing Maps: 271 miles) where some local tribes had promised him protection.

THE BATTLE OF BADR

Okay! That was it by golly! No more Mr Nice Guy. They weren’t going to have Muhammad to kick around anymore. He’d put up with their insults, harassment and threats for 13 years, turning the other cheek like Allah said. Forget that! He was out for blood now, itching for revenge. He didn’t have long to wait. He learned of a Quraysh caravan on its way home from Syria, due to arrive soon back in Mecca. The caravan would be passing through a place called Badr, not far from Muhammad’s new headquarters. Muhammad rounded up a gang of some 300 volunteers and went out to Badr to wait.

When the caravan showed up, Muhammad was a bit put off to see it was being escorted by a security force at least three times the size of his own
group. Well, too late to back out now. As it turned out, in spite of the odds Muhammad’s people managed to pull off a victory. (Otherwise most of us by now probably wouldn’t even know Muhammad ever existed.) Muhammad attributed the upset to an army of 3000 angels Allah sent to help out.

The battle of Badr proved to be a major turning point in Muhammad’s career. It showed him for one thing that jihad or holy war was the real way to go. The old soft-sell approach wasn’t doing the job, at least not fast enough. From now on it would be the sword. If people weren’t smart enough to accept his world of goodwill and harmony on their own he’d jam it down their throats.

Though to Muhammad the Badr victory stood out as a huge success, to the Quraysh it wasn’t really that big a deal. Sure, they’d have to break Muhammed’s kneecaps someday, but one caravan? Heck, caravans were hijacked all the time: cost of doing business.

Well it wasn’t all that simple. As it turned out, the two groups continued to cross paths over the next few years in increasingly bloody battles. Other tribes of the region would pitch in to help. Muhammad was disappointed to see Jewish and Christian tribes siding mostly with the Quraysh. He thought as fellow monotheists they ought to be supporting him, not the pagans. Muhammad didn’t always come out on top either. Sometimes the angelic cavalry would show up a little too late or maybe not at all.

Gradually however the mighty Quraysh did wear down. In 630AD Muhammad marched back into Mecca, the place where he’d had to run for his life eight years earlier.

JIHAD

One of Muhammed’s first moves was to clear the Kaaba of all pagan idols. He announced that from now on the Kaaba wuld be only for Muslims. No more pagans, Christians or anything else. The Kaaba was the holiest shrine in the Muslim world and every Muslim would be required to pilgrimage there to worship at least one time in their life. Furthermore all Muslims in whatever part of the world would bow toward Mecca when reciting those five daily prayers.

Vanquishing the Quraysh established Muhammad as the undisputed strongman of Arabia. He spent the final two years of his life then carrying his holy war to the rest of the country. Many independet tribes of all different faiths still existed throughout Arabia. His goal (Allah’s command of course really) was to see all tribes united under the flag of Islam. Muhammad’s approach was to send a message to whichever tribe he’d picked out inviting them to accept Islam. He’d give them four months to think it over. If no affirmative response, down came the sword.

Allah did ask Muhammad to go a little easy on Jewish and Christian tribes. They in fact were to be allowed, under certain conditions, to continue practicing their own religions, misguided though they may be. The reasoning was that as monotheists, Jews and Christians really did worship Allah; they just didn’t know it. Do the math: if there’s only one god, who else could it be? So Jews and Christians, known collectively as ‘People of the Book’, already were in compliance with Allah’s first commandment. It was only fair they should at least have a chance at the second one too, submission to his will.

For pagans it was a different story. Allah the Merciful allowed them those four months to pack up and leave the country if they so wished. Once Muhammad moved in though it was convert immediately or die, no fooling around. Muhammad did have a little leeway. All men had to be killed of course but women and children, if he wanted to, could be taken home alive and sold as slaves.

Muhammad wasn’t too happy about letting the People of the Book off like that. He was still miffed at how they’d supported the Quraysh. Allah cheered him up with another of his suras. He announced that in return for their protected status, People of the Book would have to pay Muhammad’s people a hefty annual ’poll tax’. That sounded good to Muhammad. The extortion money would go a long way toward financing the rest of his work.

The People of the Book didn’t have a very easy time of it. Besides the poll tax, they were subjected to any number of harsh restrictions designed to emphasize their second-class social status. For starters, their religious practices must be done most discreetly. No praying, singing, bell-ringing etc audible from the street. No displaying of religious symbols such as crosses or steeples.

They couldn’t ride horses or possess weapons of any kind. (Muslim men by contrast regularly carried swords as part of their daily attire). Book People had to display certain symbols on their clothing and cut their hair a certain way, to make their status clear when out in public. They were required to yield their seats to Muslims. Striking a Muslim even in self defense, or just grabbing hold of one, called for instant beheading. Those Muslim swords were for more than just show.

Collecting the poll tax provided a special opportunity for humiliation. Book People had to kneel submissively while the tax collector called them insulting names. He might take them by the beard and slap their face. A soft-sell approach probably would have served better at ...