The Rise of Islam: Umayyad and Abbasid Empires Essay

Introduction

Islam is among the fastest-growing religions in the world. It has attracted and transformed the lives of different groups such as activists, rappers, politicians, artists, athletics, academics, and even scores of students in the Midwest. However, Islam still remains shrouded in mystery even with the increasing number of Americans converting to Islam. Islam shares many similar characteristics that are familiar to followers of Judaism and Christianity. It considers itself a related ideology that fits into a tight chronology with these two other religions. As the population of Muslims rises in many western countries, and as many people discover the impacts of Islamic modernization on western thought, science, and values, a new attitude is taking shape in the relations between Jews, Christians, and Muslims. ¹Thus, because of this spirit of mutual respect and toleration, many people have begun to speak of a judeo-christian-islamic heritage for the west.

In the realm of creation, Islam makes a clear distinction between the presence of God and everything besides Him. There are two basic categories: that whatever that is surrounded by the will of God and what His will is resisting. This indicates that one is either obeying Gods ways or doing wrong. All non-living things like rock, comets, or even water follow a well-defined natural law concerning their motion, atomic structures, and properties. Islam holds that God established all natural laws and thus, every physical material in the universe is considered to be surrendered to God. Therefore, the entire universe follows Islam. The Quran indicates that the whole physical universe is Muslim because the word Islam means surrendering to Allah for a person to have peace. Islam religion accepts the existence of angels. It indicates that they have light energy and can materialize into any form they need to in the physical world. They have no gender and have no free will and exist only to serve Allah. Despite the fact that they are intelligent, they have no emotional shortcomings or foibles.

Thesis Statement

Islam is noted to be among the fastest-growing religion in the world. If the trend proceeds like this for a few years, there will be more Muslims in the world and especially in America. The rise of Islam is because it’s the way of life and a philosophy of living that millions of individuals consult in their daily lives. It deals with questions that are frequently asked like why we exist in the universe, who is God, the nature of life an individual should live, and the life after death. Islams rise is also because it possesses a program that helps in improving a persons heart, mind, and spiritual strength². Therefore, through a daily regimen of prayers, supplication, good works, and a strong commitment to faith, Muslims try their best to live in harmony and peace with their fellow men and women and even with their environment. Thus, the rise of Islam Umayyad/Abbasids in the world is not accidental because it carries many benefits to its followers just like any other religion in the world. Therefore, this research has an argument that Islam is growing up at a faster rate and many lives may be converted to this religion because of its benefits. This research intends to find out how Islam religion began and how it has impacted peoples lives in the world in religious terms.

Pre-Islamic Arabia the rise of Islam Umayyad/Abbasids

The beginning of Islam is ascribed to the creation of the sixth century in Arabia. It has been a religion of action since its establishment rather than of contemplation. There is no single time that the prophet Muhammad disdains society or politics. Instead, He indicated that his mission was particularly concerned with human affairs like social, political, economic, military, and religious. He proves this by developing principles that made it difficult for future Muslim generations to divorce religion from secular affairs, to dismiss social or political issues as unreligious, or to relegate either to secondary importance³.

Islam originally won over converts among people in the near east who were closely familiar with Semitics monotheism, which is a short distance from Aramaic to Arab and from Abraham to Ibrahim, Judaism and Christianitys relationship with Islam was so close that the doctrine emerged in Islam that Judaism and Christianity were originally Islam itself but that the religion had been corrupted over time, for which purpose God had to remind mankind of the true path by sending it Muhammad and Quran. An Islamic empire was established following the early Islamic conquest leading to the spread of Islam as a religion. Islam gained more converts during the period of European colonial rule than in any other period, and in the post-colonial period, the geographical distribution of Muslims was also dramatically increased.

It is noted that had it not been for the British in India and the French in northern Africa, there would be few Pakistanis in Britain and few Algerians in France. However, although the Deoband movement started as a reaction to British rule in India, a missionary offshoot of the movement now controls almost half of the mosques in the united kingdom, accounts for more than three-quarters of domestically trained Muslims clerics, and plans to create Europes largest mosque next to the site of the 2012 Olympics in London. Therefore, if the historical trend persists and attempts to establish a worldwide caliphate succeseds, they will not likely be necessarily accomplished by a significant correspondence of Islam spread itself. More than a third of the population is assumed to be converted to Muslims even without a caliphate according to demographic and statistical trends.

In order for one to read writings of Islam, Quran lessons, and theology, individuals were required to learn Arabic language because it was assumed to be the language of God by the Persians and that Adam and eve spoke Aramaic according to some Muslim historians.Therefore, a Muslims first experience in Islam was involved in taking lessons in reading and writing Gods language, which is Arabic. Thus, with time, even non-Arabic languages came to accommodate the particularities of the spoken languages. The spread of Arabic as a scholarly language give a chance to both the Muslim and non-Muslim an opportunity to share their ideas across boundaries and generations, with truly impressive results in many fields. A significant number of the ancient Greek writings were translated into Arabic under caliphal auspices during the 9^th century. This was a period when most people in the west had lost the ability to enjoy this heritage. Therefore, through the translations into Latin of these Arabic versions of Greek writings led to the European rediscovering many of its work and ideas.Thus,had the Arabs remained in Arabia, the renaissance would not have occurred and the Islamic modernization would also not have happened.

In addition, the Arabs are the ones who offered the political and ideological foundations on which the Umayyad and Abbasid empires were built⁴. However, the Arabs themselves have been left behind despite it maintaining its culture and the importance for Islamic into civilized times. For instance, even at the height of arabo-islamic culture in the 9^th and 10^th century, most cultural luminaries were non-Arabs. Most Arabs are always under the rule of others like the Persians, Berber, or Turkish since the beginning of the 10^th century.According to some early Islamic historians, a large number of Arabic sources was originally from the period of the Abbasid caliphates. Having overpowered the Umayyad, the Abbasids made every trial to differentiate themselves from their opponents. They searched out for different scholars willing to characterize the Umayyad as unworthy over Islamic society. These works often referred to the Umayyad rulers as kings rather than caliphs. It is noted that, the Umayyad were a little different from monarchs of the pre-Islamic period, and therefore could claim no legitimacy as proper Muslim rulers. Abbasids main objective was to bring down the record of Umayyad achievement.Umayyads contributed significantly to the formation of Islamic society during their reign which lasted less than a century.

The development of regulations governing the affairs of non-Muslim was a gradual process, in good part, because of the sheer dimensions of the task of ruling such a variety of provinces. The status assigned to the non Muslims was known as dhimma meaning protection. The Arab Islamic administration provided protection and security in exchange for recognition of Islamic rule.

The rise of Islam is through conquest of land as well as the willing conversion of many of the inhabitants. It has missionary that assists in its work and war just like the Christian and other religions. Quran discourages forced conversion to faith. Therefore, its expansion has nothing to do with forcing people to change their religion. Currently, in America, Canada, and Europe the number of converts to Islam is rising each and every year. There are no organized crusades, no television broadcasting Islamic life, no magnetic personalities filling stadiums each month in different city and consequently no central planning unit to bring Islam to the western public. But instead, there are religious and cultural trends among certain groups that have continued to evolve year in year out⁵. For instance, it’s estimated that the conversion rate of African Americans to Islam has remained steady since the days of Malcolm X and the nation of islam.Therefore, as the number of converts raises, the general acceptance of Islam in the African American community as a viable life choice.

The rise of Islam in the world was also perpetuated by the efforts of the British who were searching for a cheap labor supply for their colonial plantations. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the British imported tens of thousands of Muslims from India to South America, the Caribbean, and South Africa. This led to their descendants carrying forward the Islamic practices. Immigration from Lebanon recently has also resulted into a good number of Muslim populations in Argentina. This is a clear indication that Muslims have inhabited every corner of the world globally and that their growth has been because of a wide variety of reasons. Muslim countries have become more valuable to many groups of people because of their riches in products such as fossil fuels, like oil and gas and the need to ensure easier access to foreign markets for western companies⁶.

Conclusion

The Islamic community is a political and religious community. To Muslims, the notion of religion as separable from the totality of the human context is unimaginable, even detestable. All life is sacred and must conform to the larger Islamic faith. Therefore, all who belong to Islamic faith share a sense of identity, and a sense of global community. Islam is divided into three regions and these include the territory of Islam, the territory of peace, and the territory of war. The territory of Islam identifies parts of the world where Muslims predominate and in which Islam, both its political and religious sense, governs and directs daily life and tribal or national policy. The second territory represents regions such as India and Africa, where Muslims are in the minority but are allowed the most part to live in peace and to exercise their religion freely. Thus the third territory is represented by the rest of the world.This third territory is viewed as an ideological battleground contested by groups with conflicting values than as a literal theater of war. Therefore, the rise of Islam into the world was perpetuated by various factors.Its rise has also resulted into various benefits by different communities in the entire world.

Reference List

Glasse, Cyril.The new encyclopedia of Islam. New York: Rowman Altamira, 2003.

Gordon, Matthew. The rise of Islam.USA: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2005.

Marie, Anne. Islam: an introduction. Harvard: Sunny Press, 1992.

Nigosian, Alexander. Islam: its history, teaching, and practices. India: Indiana University Press, 2004.

Saed, Muhammed.Islam: Questions and Answers – Calling Non-Muslims to Islam. New York: MSA Publication Limited, 2007.

Silverstein, Adam. Islamic history: a very short introduction.USA:Oxford University Press, 2010.

Bibliography

Eaton, Richard. Essays on Islam and Indian history.USA: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Margoliouth, David. Mohammed and the Rise of Islam.Harvard: Cosimo, 2006.

Mogler, Christian. The Rise of Islam: How could this Small Religious Movement Become Within

Centuries the Dominant Religion of the Mediterranean, and why was Christianity Not

Able to stop it.Yale: Grin Verlag, 2009.

Footnotes

1. Cyril Glasse,The new encyclopedia of Islam (New York: Rowman Altamira, 2003), 469.
2. Matthew Gordon, The rise of Islam(USA: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2005), 465.
3. Anne Marie, Islam: an introduction (Harvard: Sunny Press, 1992), 78.
4. Alexander Nigosian, Islam: its history, teaching, and practices( India: Indiana University Press, 2004), 56.
5. Mohammed Saed, Islam: Questions and Answers – Calling Non-Muslims to Islam (New York: MSA Publication Limited, 2007), 34.
6. Adam Silverstein, Islamic history: a very short introduction (USA:Oxford University Press, 2010), 290.