Contents:
As punishment for the city's stiff resistance, the Muslims destroyed Carthage for the second time in it's history, just as the Romans had done in BC. With Carthage finally destroyed, the Muslims were able to turn their attention back to the Berber resistance, in AD, the Muslims defeated Kahina once and for all at the Battle of Tabarka. Visigothic Spain was easily overrun in just a few years, but the Arabs were stopped by the Franks at the battle of Tours in AD.
Thus most of Europe was saved from Muslim rule and would to this day remain Christian. In just years since Muhammad first claimed prophethood, Islam had by force of arms, conquered all of Arabia and then expanded out and conquered as far west as Spain and as far east as Afghanistan. The Islamic Caliphate had become the largest empire the world had yet known, controlling some of the most important centers of civilization. Of the 5 Christian Patriarchates the 5 great urban centers of Christianity in the 6th-7th centuries AD , 3 of them now fell under Islamic rule Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch , with only Rome and Constantinople still under Christian rule.
From this point on, much of Mediterranean history would be characterized by the struggles between the Christian and Islamic faiths, the Christians holding the north side of the Mediterranean and the Muslims the south side. The battlegrounds were to be Spain , Jerusalem , Constantinople, and the islands caught in the middle.
Both faiths began as the teachings of a single man and both witnessed exponential, almost miraculous growth in just a few centuries.
However the method by which the two faiths spread could not have been more different. For the first three centuries AD, Christianity had spread by peaceful conversion.
Then once it became adopted as the official religion of the Roman Empire in the 4th Century AD, Christians had sufficient power to dominate, intimidate, and supress other religions. The followers of Islam on the other hand used military force from the very beginning of their history, even during the life of Muhammad himself.
Towns were brought under Islamic rule by conquest, and their main churches and temples were usually converted to mosques. Christians and Jews were treated a little fairer than followers of other religions as they were considered Abrahamic Faiths and would be tolerated as long as they paid the Jizya , a special tax that Jews and Christians had to pay the Islamic state in order to practice their religion.
In the first few centuries of Islamic rule, there is no evidence of forced conversion of Christians or Jews, nevertheless there were considerable economic and social pressures to convert to the ruling religion. Think you know all about the Rise of Islam? Test yourself on our quick online quiz. Hover the mouse cursor over the map features for more information. See an animated Version of this map on Youtube.
Some were nomadic Bedouin, others settled farmers, traders, and craftsmen in the oasis towns. Most worshiped numerous gods, among whom Allat, Manat, and Uzzat were prominent. They also feared spirits and sacrificed to them, as well as believing in blind fate. Christians were present in Yemen and Najran.
In later Muslim view, this pre-Islamic era was called the age of ignorance jahiliyya , a byword for barbarism, immorality, and idolatry.
It was not until Muhammad began insulting the traditional Pagan deities and insisting that the Pagan Arabs and their ancestors will burn in hell for eternity for worshiping false gods that they began to regard Muhammad and his followers with disdain. Photo: An anti-Ahok crowd gathered outside the courtroom protesting in south Jakarta. Another plausible explanation for the lack of Islamic messages in the inscriptions and coinage was that it was an attempt by the early Islamic rulers to preserve political and economic stability in the conquered territories. The Five Pillars are:. The Black Stone, a sacred object, had been removed to facilitate renovations to the Kaaba. To maintain economic prosperity, the Meccans needed to restore their prestige after their defeat at Badr.
According to these sources, Muhammad was born around a. His father Abdullah died a few months before his birth and his mother Amina when he was six, leaving him in the care of his grandfather who died two years later. Muhammad was then raised under the custody of his uncle Abu Talib, who took him on his trading caravan trips to Syria. As a young man he found employment with a rich widow, Khadija, who was fifteen years his senior. They were married when he was twenty five. They had seven children, but the three sons born to them died young. Of the daughters that survived, Fatima is the most famous.
Muhammad had a contemplative nature and used to retire for meditation to a cave on a mountainside near Mecca.
At the age of forty, while on such a retreat and in a state of trance, he claimed to have had a vision in which a heavenly being, later identified as the archangel Gabriel, committed to him the first in a long series of messages which he was commanded to preach to mankind. The migration to Medina called hijra was a turning point in the early history of Islam, and later was chosen to mark the beginning of the Muslim era. Muhammad was able to unite the various factions within Medina and lead them in the fight against his enemies.
In Medina he was transformed from a simple preacher to the ruler of the Muslim state, its lawgiver, supreme judge, and military commander. After several campaigns the Meccans finally surrendered, and Muhammad entered Mecca victoriously, destroyed its idols, and turned it into the center of Islam. Monophysite Christianity: influential in the Byzantine Empire that argued the divine and human natures of Jesus were unified.
This was in contrast to the orthodox definition that Jesus had two natures, one completely human and the other completely divine, and that they were not simultaneously present. While Islam adopts the Judeo-Christian idea of the fall, humanity is in general glorified in foundational and later Islam. Despite the Fall, humanity has the power to discern the unity of God and the reflection of the nature of God in creation. At the core of the Islamic message is that it is possible for human beings to live a perfect life in relationship to God. Islam is world-affirming. As a corollary to the generally optimistic view that Islam takes towards humanity, it also construes the created world as fundamentally a good place that was designed for the use and enjoyment of humanity.
Thus marriages for priests and interest in the pagan Greek and Roman science and technology.
The goal of individual life is to attain an afterlife within one of the heavens described in the Qur'an and to avoid one of the numerous hells. In that sense, it's not fair to describe Islam as a salvation religion; unlike salvation religions, Islam requires the active, ethical participation of the faithful in every circumstance of the conduct of their lives.
In Christianity, a salvation religion, on the other hand, it has been believed that individual efforts will never suffice in achieving one's salvation, without the blessings of God. Therefore, regarding the relationship between Islam and human values, we say that:. To Muslims, human beings are completely responsible for their own deeds, consequently their afterlife; and that all good Muslims could imitate the life of Muhammad, consequently achieving a perfect life.
Unlike early Christian fathers such as St. Augustine who contrasted logic and faith as two polarized things, and decided that logic should be dispensed with because it was misleading, and salvation was through the grace of God.
Islam spread through military conquest, trade, pilgrimage, and missionaries. Arab Muslim forces conquered vast territories and built imperial structures over time. The Origins of Islam Islam was a religion founded in the 7th Century AD by Muhammad, an Arabian merchant from the city of Mecca. In the centuries leading up.
Islam postulates that rationality is the highest function given to human beings and that no "faith" is legitimate without it. What iman means, then, is something closer to "reasoned faith. More than Judaism and Christianity, Islam emphasizes practice over the ory. Upon the death of Muhammad, the issue of succession came up. In the end, however, Muhammad's father-in-law, Abu Bakr, was named the khalifa or "Successor" of Muhammad.