Islam is the youngest of the world’s three great monotheistic religions,
and today it is the second largest religion in the world with more than 1.5 billion followers.
It was promulgated by Muhammad in Arabia in the 7th Century.
The word Islam means “surrender” in Arabic,
in this case surrender to the one and only God, Allah.
Muslims follow the 5 principles of Islam:
Shahada: to declare one’s faith in the one and only God and belief in Muhammad as his messenger.
Salat - to pray five times a day Zakat - to give to those in need
Sawm - to fast one month per year in Ramadan And Hajj - to make a pilgrimage in Mecca
The two major sources of Islam are:
The Quran, sacred scriptures considered to be the words of Allah revealed orally to his messenger
Muhammad through the archangel Gabriel. Secondly, the Hadith, which the majority
of Muslims believe to be a record of the words and actions of Muhammad.
Islam originated when Muhammed received divine revelations from Allah namely submission to God,
the expectation that there would be a day of last
judgement, and the importance of caring for the poor and needy.
Muslims believe Muhammed was the last in a line of prophets including many mentioned
in the Old and New Testament, and that he taught their original and authentic faith.
Muhammed began to preach these revelations, gaining followers,
but also enemies who forced him to flee to Yathrib, modern Medina where he had allies.
He built an Islamic community and base there and then led multiple military campaigns,
many of them against his original Meccan tribe Quraysh before he was
ultimately able to return to Mecca and conquer it.
By his death in 632, Muhammad had managed to unite most of the Arabian Peninsula,
laying the foundation for the subsequent Islamic expansion under a series of successors known
as caliphs who would quickly spread Islam through warfare and trade.
There is some debate about whom of the first 4 caliphs were officially accepted.
Sunni Muslims, who represent 85-90% of Muslims today,
accept all four caliphs, while Shia Muslims only recognize caliph Ali.
Sunni and Shia form the two main denominations of Islam today, although smaller ones also exist.
Caliph Uthman is perhaps best known for leading the production of copies of the Quran based on
text that had been gathered separately on different parchment and bones during
the lifetime of Muhammad and also on a copy of the Quran that had been collated by Abu Bakr.
Under the Rashidun, Umayyad and then Abbasid Caliphates,
holy Wars called Jihad were fought to expand Muslim territory into the bordering
Persian and Byzantine empires as well as into Egypt and North Africa.
An increase in trade also helped spread Islam into east Asia, including the Indian subcontinent,
China as well as Indonesia.
From North Africa, Muslims were invited to invade Spain,
by the Christian leader Julian who needed help subjugating the Visigoth leader, Roderick.
They conquered the Iberian Peninsula easily, due to its fragmented nature
and their generous surrender terms, such as reduced taxes.
They established a presence in Spain that would last about 8 centuries and produced for some time
a golden age of literature, learning, culture and peace between Muslims, Christians and Jews.
Around the same period in the East, also a 5 centuries-long Islamic Golden Age started during
the reign of the Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid in Baghdad which was the largest city in the world.
Muslim rule from the Iberian Peninsula to the Indian subcontinent would see the
gathering and translation of the world’s Ancient classical knowledge into Arabic as well as the
rise of many Islamic polymaths, astronomers, mathematicians, physicians, and philosophers.
In the 11th century Middle East, The Seljuk Turks also rose to power and conquered vast territories
including Jerusalem. Their strict control over the Holy city was one of the factors that led to the
crusades, a series of holy wars between Muslims and Catholics that lasted for almost 200 years.
These series of wars eventually ended with Muslim victory in the Middle East:
Notable Leader Saladin led the Muslims during the Third Crusade: He founded the
Ayyubbid dynasty in Egypt, transforming it into a Sunni political and military power.
Islam’s power was weakened by the 13th century due to Mongol invasions:
The mONGOLS sacked the Abbasid capital Baghdad marking the end of the Islamic Golden Age,
although Muslims were later able to block THEIR advances at the Battle of Ain Jalut.
Other reasons include Tamerlanes invasions from the central Asia,
along with a population loss due to the Black Death.
Although these destroyed the traditional Islamic powers such as Ayyubids and Seljuks,
they also gave way to the rise of the Timurid Renaissance,
the Mali Empire, and the Bengal Sultanate which were major economic powers.
In the 1200s, another group of Muslim Turks known as the Ottomans also became very powerful and
created the Ottoman Empire: They conquered the Orthodox Byzantine empire and claimed a Muslim
Caliphate as they gained control over the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina. The
Ottomans ruled large territories for hundreds of years until Turkey was made a republic after WW1.
An important turning point in the History of Islam was in the 16th century, as Ismail I of Persia,
an enemy of the Ottoman Empire, founded the Safavid dynasty and led its conversion from Sunni
to Shia Islam to give Iran a cohesive and distinct identity as compared to the Sunni Ottomans.
In the west, Muslims who had been in Spain for several hundreds of years
became less united and were finally expelled from Iberia in 1492 by rising Christian powers.
Later in the 19th and 20th Centuries, Islam was substantially weakened by western powers,
which colonized Muslim nations for the purposes of trade.
Over the past century, important events that shaped the Muslim world included the fall of
the Ottoman empire, he creation of the Arab Gulf states including Saudi Arabia home to the holiest
Muslim cities of Mecca and Medina, the partition of British India into India and Muslim-majority
Pakistan before their independence, the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel
in the Middle East and the ensuing Arab-Israeli conflicts, the Islamic revolution of Iran and the
fight of many Muslim nations around the world to regain independence from western powers
Today, some extreme incidents led some to link Islam to terrorism , although the faith
historically advocates for peace and represents a huge diversity of people and cultures.