Islam: Its History, Values and Technology

Steven Dutch, Professor Emeritus, Natural and Applied Sciences, Universityof Wisconsin - Green Bay

The Islamic World is not at all a monolithic entity

Americans tend to lump Arabs, Turks and Iranians together. Not only are they distinctlanguages and cultures, they belong to different language families. Iranian iscloser in affinity to English than to Arabic, although it is written with Arabic scriptand has borrowed many Arabic words. The Kurds, also Indo-European speakers, are theoriginal inhabitants of Kurdistan; the Turks and Arabs moved in around them much later.

The Islamic World

A Little About Arabic

Although Muslims speak many languages, Arabic speakers make up a large proportion ofthem and Arabic is the language of the Koran; Islamic schools teach the Koran in Arabicjust as Jewish yeshivas teach the Talmud in Hebrew. Arabic is a literary languagefully on a par with Latin or Greek, and Arabic scholars fully analyzed the structure oftheir own language, not always in the same way that Western grammarians analyze languages.Unfortunately, Westerners who become fluent in Arabic tend to be highly impressed withthemselves, and want other readers to be equally impressed. The most user-friendly bookson learning Arabic tend to be written by Arabs, who have the attitude that an imperfectbut sincere attempt to communicate is far preferable to an aloof attempt to attainperfection first, or being so intimidated by complexity that one never tries atall.

Arabic belongs to the Afro-Asiatic (Semitic) family of languages along with Hebrew. Theselanguages are characterized by the use of three-letter roots that are modified in manyways to form words. For example, the root k-t-b connotes writing; kitabmeans book, maktaba means library, and so on. The root s-l-m connoteswisdom and conformity with God; salaam means peace, Sulimanis the equivalent of the name Solomon.

Most words in European languages change by adding suffixes to the end: write, written,writing, writes, writer. Arabic makes many words by adding prefixes. For example, adding aprefix to the s-l-m root gives us Islam, submission to God's will,and Muslim, one who practices Islam. The use of prefixes means that thereare almost no alphabetical dictionaries of Arabic like those for most European languages;to look up a word in an Arabic dictionary, you have to identify the root, look it up, thenlocate the derivative word. An alphabetical dictionary of Arabic would have giganticsections of words beginning with i-, b-, t- and m-, the most important prefix letters.

Arabic lacks common sounds found in English, like p and v, but also has many sounds notfound in English. Arabic makes many sounds farther back in the mouth and throat thanEnglish does. For example, there are two versions of the sounds s, t, d, and z,characterized by one version being darker and heavier than the other. Arabic transcribesthe word "tungsten" using the two t sounds, the heavier sound for the first tand the lighter (like English t) for the second. Some sounds do not exist even remotely inEnglish at all. The "A" in "Arabic" is actually a sound called"ayn" and is considered a consonant in Arabic; it's formed by saying"a" far back in the throat. The sound usually written "gh" has noequivalent in English at all, yet curiously enough everybody can say it. Think of PeterSellers as Inspector Clouseau with his grossly exaggerated French r's and you have it. Thesound transcribed as "q" is about halfway between k and g and formed deeper inthe throat than either.

Arabic does not distinguish clearly between the vowel sounds o and u or e and i, anddoes not indicate short vowels at all except in special cases. Rbs hv lttl trbl rdng txtwrttn ths wy bcs thy cn fgr mst wrds frm cntxt. But there is no single right way totranscribe Arabic to English or vice versa; thus we have Koran and Q'uran, Muslim andMoslem, Mohammed, Muhammad, and even Mahomet in older spellings.

Adding to the complexity is the fact that written Arabic is rarely spoken and spokenArabic is rarely written, and the dialect variation from Morocco to Iraq is enormous. Forexample, mountain is jebel in Saudi Arabia but gebel in Egypt. The version of Arabic inthe Koran is considered to be the definitive version and all Arabs insist they speakArabic. 

To consider an analogy, imagine starting at the northwest corner of Spain and walking south and eastalong the coast. The language would grade from Galician to Portuguese to Spanish to Catalan to Frenchto Provencal to Franco-Italian to Italian to Sicilian. Now imagine all these people stillusing the Latin Bible, using that form of Latin in their newspapers, and insisting, asgood Catholics, that they all spoke Latin, and you get a fair idea of the linguisticcomplexity of Arabic. Or imagine us using the language of the King James Bible innewspapers and all other correspondence, but contemporary English on the street. Arabictexts for non-natives tend to stress Saudi-Gulf Arabic (the homeland), Egyptian Arabic(the most speakers, and the most voluminous broadcasting) or some written standard form ofArabic.

By the way, with apologies to Paula, there is no such name in Arabic as Abdul. KareemAbdul Jabbar is more properly written Kareem Abd al-Jabbar. Abd (beginning with ayn) meansservant. Kareem Abd al-Jabbar means "generous servant of the Almighty." There isa name Abdullah (Abd-Allah), "servant of Allah", but Abdul, or Abd al-, is apartial nonsense name meaning "servant of the...."

The Nature of Islam

Arabia in Mohammed's time was a patchwork of various animistic tribal religions. Largersettlements usually had Jewish and Christian communities. The Christian communities wereusually splinter sects that faced persecution in the Byzantine Empire and found life onthe periphery of the Greco-Roman world more congenial. Mohammed was born about 570 inMecca. He was a prosperous trader who certainly had contact with Jewish and Christiandoctrines both in Arabia and on his travels to the frontiers of the Byzantine Empire.About 610 he began claiming to receive visions and messages from the angel Gabriel. Thesewere written down about 650 as the Koran; Moslems believe they were transcribed fromoriginal sources written down personally by Mohammed. Mohammed began preaching a doctrineof monotheism and moral rectitude, and aroused enough opposition that he was forced toflee to Medina in 622. (Medina in Arabic simply means city; Medina al-Kuwait means KuwaitCity, but Medina by itself always refers to the city in Arabia.) Medina and Mecca are thetwo holy cities of Islam and non-Moslems are not permitted in either. (I have a street mapof Mecca. I have a better chance of going to Mars in my lifetime than going there.) Theflight to Medina, the hegira, marks the start of the Moslem calendar.

In Medina, Mohammed continued to gather support. He was able to return to Mecca intriumph in 630 and had unified most of Arabia by the time of his death in 632

The Pillars of Islam

The basic tenets of Islam are summarized in the Pillars of Islam:

1. The Creed: "There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is His Prophet." Conversion to Islam consists of reciting the Creed before witnesses.
2. The five daily prayers: dawn, midmorning, noon, midafternoon, and dusk.
3. Alms for the poor. In many Islamic nations this is now part of the normal taxation system.
4. Fasting during Ramadan: no food, drink, tobacco or sex during daylight hours. Exceptions are made for pregnant women, travelers, and those doing heavy labor. Since believers are free to indulge at night, Ramadan has shifted away from its meaning of fasting and come to mean party time in some parts of the Moslem world, with believers simply inverting their schedules and doing little during the day. This trend troubles many Moslem religious leaders. Western guides to the Middle East advise travelers to simply forget about doing business during Ramadan.
5. Pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj) in commemoration of Mohammed's flight and return. The title Haji denotes one who has made the Hajj. Thomas Abercrombie, an American convert to Islam, wrote of meeting a Nigerian who walked across Africa for two years to make the Hajj, and Indonesians who spent weeks in the holds of cramped ships. Strict Moslems believe the journey should involve hardship and look with some displeasure on the idea of flying in on an air-conditioned jetliner.
6. Some authorities add a sixth pillar: Jihad or Holy War in defense of Islam. Although it might mean literally coming to the military defense of Islam, many authorities stress more the meaning of active opposition to evil and injustice, rather than literal warfare.

The Koran

The Koran is about as long as the New Testament, but consists mostly of moral teachingsrather than historical accounts. It is much like the Old Testament books of Proverbs orthe prophets in tone. It is composed of 114 chapters or Suras, with a short openingchapter, then arranged from longest to shortest. Each is identified by some unusual wordwithin the chapter: The Cow, The Bee, The Table, and so on, as well as an indicationwhether the chapter was written at Mecca or Medina. Many Muslims have committed the entireKoran to memory. The Arabic of the Koran is considered the definitive version ofArabic. Since the Koran is considered to define the Arabic language, Arabs everywhereinsist they speak Arabic despite the great variations in the language (which are at leastas great as the differences between Spanish and Italian). Also, strictly speaking, therecannot be a true translation of the Koran; translations are considered paraphrases.

The Spread of Islam

The spread of Islam was due to many factors, but its inherent appeal must beranked high among the reasons for its acceptance. It offered simplicity. Just asearly Christianity cleared away a baffling fog of competing deities for first-centuryRomans, so did Islam for many of its converts from polytheism. To many seventh-centuryChristians, puzzled by some of the intricacies of a then overly-complicated theology, itmust have had a similar appeal. If some Islamic societies are conservative, oftenoppressive by Western standards today, Islam was revolutionary in its time. It stressedequality and offered rights for women. And it held high moral teachings;integrity, honesty, fairness and justice are always powerful selling points.

The Western stereotype of Islamic expansion is the jihad or holy war, and to besure, the explosive growth of Islam and its sweep from Arabia to Spain and central Asia inless than a century was an expression of consummate military skill. But conquest does notalways equal conversion. In the wake of their conquests, the Arabs offered goodgovernment and tolerance. Also, there were incentives to conversion.Recognizing his intellectual kinship with Christians and Jews, Mohammed referred to themas "People of the Book"; people with their own sacred Scriptures. "Peopleof the Book" were allowed to retain their own religions, however, they were assesseda nominal tax. The result was probably as unhealthy for Islam as superficialconversions have been for Christianity; someone who was a nominal Christian could easilybecome a nominal Muslim and save the tax. Originally there was forced conversion ofpagans, and as recently as the 19th century pockets of pre-Islamic religions were forciblyconverted in Iran and Afghanistan. But when the Arabs invaded Persia and encounteredadherents of Zoroastrianism, and later encountered Hinduism in India, they recognized theimpossibility of forcibly converting all these nonbelievers and eventually extended themthe status of "People of the Book" as well.

The Later History of Islam

Once the initial military impulse of the Arabs was spent, Islam continued to diffuse bytrade, penetrating Central Asia and China, converting Indonesia and part of thePhilippines, and penetrating far down the east coast of Africa and into sub-Saharan WestAfrica. Some of these West African Islamic states were flourishing. Timbuktu is symbolicin English of remoteness, but in its prime about 1000 A.D. it was a center of wealth andscholarship.

Islam lacks the formal heirarchies and rituals that characterize Christianity, althoughthere are officially recognized teachers and leaders in Islam. Although there are manysects within Islam, they are not as sharply or formally defined as within Christianity.The most serious split in Islam began about 700 A.D., over the succession to the Caliphateand the more fundamental issue of mixing other ideas in with the core teachings of Islam.The more orthodox group, the Shiites, live mostly in and around Iran and make up about tenper cent of the world's Muslims; the remaining 90 per cent are termed Sunnites.

The difference between Shiites and Sunnites defies Western categories. TheShiites separated from the main mass of Islam because of dissatisfaction overthe admixture of traditions into Islam and the increasing worldliness of theleadership of Islam. In that respect we might - very loosely - compare Shiitesto Protestants. However, Shiites place an emphasis on veneration of holy men andpilgrimages to their tombs that is more reminiscent of Catholic practice,whereas Sunnites reject these practices and thus seem more like Protestants.However, any comparison between Islamic and Christian groups must betaken with the greatest caution.

Although Shiites have come to be considered the more conservative group in recentyears, not all conservative Muslims are Shiites. In Saudi Arabia, a puritanical Sunni sectcalled the Wahhabi (named for its founder, Muhammed Wahhab, who was born about1700) became allied with the Saud family during its rise to power. The Saudsstill rely heavily on the political support of the Wahhabi and allow them to dictate manyinternal policies related to religion and morals within Saudi Arabia.

At one time Islam had a supreme head, the Caliph (from Kalifa, successor). Unlike the Pope, the Caliph couldmarry and the title could be inherited. Since the Caliph was head of a powerful nation,political marriages with the Caliph's family were common, and as a result of one, theCaliphate merged with the Ottoman sultanate. When the last Ottoman sultan was deposed in1922, there was no alternative mechanism for naming a successor and since that time, theCaliphate has been vacant. In the present climate of Islamic revival, we should not besurprised if attempts are made to restore the title.

Beginning in the 1960's, Islam began to burgeon in popularity among American blacks.Islam was seen as more authentically African than the Christianity that was frequentlyinherited from slave days, and the militant aspects of Islam appealed to blacks who sawthemselves locked in a struggle with white society.

Effects of Islam

When the Arabs conquered Persia, they soon found a monastery in the western mountainfringes of Iran called Jundi Shapur, where scholars for years had been preserving andelaborating on classical Greco-Roman learning. Dazzled by what they found here and atother sanctuaries, they launched on a campaign of intellectual expansion as energetic astheir military expansion had been. The achievements of Baghdad, Cairo, Cordoba andSamarkand at their height can be likened only to those of ancient Greece.

Arabic scholars did not merely admire and copy classical learning, but went beyond itto create their own innovations in astronomy and mathematics. The range of theircontributions is suggested by Arabic technical terms still in use; if a technical termbegins with "al-" there is a very strong likelihood it's from Arabic. Alchemy,alcohol, algebra, algorithm, alizarin, alkali, almanac, amber, azimuth, and azure all comefrom Arabic. So do a large fraction of our star names, some with amusing twists. A brightstar in Orion was called yad-al-jawza in Arabic. Unfortunately, the letters y and b arevery similar in Arabic; b has one dot beneath the letter and y has two. To further confusematters, Arabs often draw a short line instead of making two dots. A 13th century Europeanscholar whose Arabic was perhaps a bit shaky misread the y as b, and to this day the starname is written Betelgeuse (pronounced "Beetlejuice") - an 800-year oldtypographical error. The Arabs rediscovered the ancient Greek astrolabe and refined itinto a highly sophisticated computing device as well as a work of art. There areperhaps1500 medieval astrolabes still in existence; prices begin at $100,000.

For centuries, the Islamic world was a pivotal link between East and West. In additionto innovations from the Islamic world itself, so-called "Arabic" numbers weretransmitted from India, as were the foundations of trigonometry. Innovations like paper,the compass and gunpowder diffused to Europe from China along the trade routes through theIslamic world. And paradoxically, given the present tensions with Israel, for centuriesthe Islamic World provided a sanctuary for Judaism. Jews enjoyed far greater freedom andsafety in the Islamic world than in most parts of Europe.

The Islamic World Today

Secularism and Orthodoxy

The conflict between sunnite and shiite Muslims is part of a larger struggle betweensecularism and religious orthodoxy. One additional aspect of this struggle is the struggleto deal with technology without losing Islamic identity and becoming submerged in thegeneral stream of Western culture.

Oil

Until the 1920's, Saudi Arabia was scarcely changed from Mohammed's day. During WorldWar I, the British had successfully mobilized Arab rebellions to overthrow the stagnantOttoman rule over the Middle East. The resulting patchwork of countries was an attempt topay off obligations to Arab leaders and maintain a balance of power between variousWestern interests. The Saud family conquered most of Arabia during the 1920's, creatingthe present Saudi Arabia. None of the boundaries in the region are of much historicalsignificance.

The discovery of oil in the Persian Gulf brought Arabia's isolation to an abrupt endand created powerful tensions that endure to the present. On the one hand the Arabs wantedthe oil wealth and needed Western experts to extract it. On the other hand, many Arabsresented the fact that Westerners had the expertise, seeing it as a threat to their ownstatus. Nobody visits Saudi Arabia as a tourist; all persons entering the country must besponsored by an Arab. Saudi Arabia officially has no freedom of religion. As the homelandof the sacred cities of Mecca and Medina, only Islam can be officially tolerated in SaudiArabia. This policy created problems for Western oil field workers, especially when theybegan bringing their families in.

The impasse was resolved by one U.S. Ambassador. A Southern "good ole boy",his appointment caused some professionals in the State Department to cringe, but heunderstood how to play religion and politics. He pointed out to the King that Saudi Arabiawanted only people of good character in the country, and many of the most desirablecandidates would not come if they could not worship as they chose. What evolved was a sortof "don't ask, don't tell" policy in which the government would not search tooaggressively for clandestine religious activities among foreigners, although attempts toproselytize Arabs would be swiftly and harshly curtailed. There is, however, asemi-official religious police that does keep an eye out for non-Islamic activities, soWestern non-Moslems keep their activities under fairly deep cover.

Turkey and Moslems in Europe

Islam tried to penetrate Europe via three routes. The earliest and mostsuccessful was via Spain, portions of which they occupied for over 750 years.The least successful was via Sicily, which was held for a time by the Arabs. Thelast was via the Balkans. The Turks invaded the Balkans in 1395 and hold aremnant to this day.

The Ottoman Empire picked the wrong side in World War I and as a result lost itsholdings in the Middle East. The victorious Western powers had grandiose plans for carvingup the rest: Greece would get the Aegean coast, France and Italy segments along theMediterranean, Russia control of the Bosporus and Dardanelles, and Armenia would becomeindependent. The Turks fought off the Greeks in a bloody conflict, sufficientlyintimidated the major powers, already exhausted by World War I, so that they did notintervene, and held on to Armenia.

Having secured Anatolia, the Turks under Mustafa Kemal launched a vigorousWesternization campaign. They abandoned the Arabic script that had been used for writingTurkish and adopted a Roman alphabet. (It is a myth that the Roman alphabet is bettersuited to writing the sounds of Turkish; Persian and Urdu still use modified Arabic scripts torepresent Indo-European sounds not found in Arabic.) They also purged the language of an enormous numberof borrowed Arabic and Persian words. In recognition of his accomplishments, Kemal wasgiven the title "Ataturk", or "father of the Turks." He is almostfanatically revered in Turkey.

One commentator observed "If you're looking for a Muslim country that is moderate,democratic, and pro-Western, Turkey isn't the best game in town, it's the only gamein town." Without in any way minimizing the violence of Turkey's past orits present spotty human-rights record, the Turks havecome light-years in a short time. The Turks regard themselves as European and want to beregarded as European. When National Geographic recently published a new map ofEurope, they held to the traditional custom of regarding Turkey as part of Asia. Inresponse to a protest from the Turkish Embassy, National Geographic lamely citedtradition as an excuse. Turkey is under serious pressure from militant Islamic movements.Given the stakes, the time has come to scrap outmoded traditions and regard Turkey as partof Europe before we lose them.

The Turks brought Islam to Europe, where sizable Muslim populations still exist in theBalkans. Balkan Muslims desperately want to be considered Europeans; they're justEuropeans who happen to be Muslims. Militant Islamic movements are seeking to radicalizeEuropean Muslims; ethnic violence against Muslims plays right into their hands.

Russian Southward Expansion

Central Asian politics throughout the 19th century was dominated by the "GreatGame", a sparring match between Russia and Britain for control of the frontiers ofIndia. At that time, Russia was rapidly expanding southward into the Islamic lands ofcentral Asia. Russian southward expansionism has been a major historical trend, andalthough the growth of the Russian Empire has been reversed with the disintegration of theSoviet Union, a future resurgence is not out of the question.

Terrorism

Terrorism seems new only because Europe is nearing the end of an unusual period markedby the dominance of large powers and generally accepted rules of warfare, largely dictatedby Europeans. Attacks on civilians, reprisals, private and non-state militaryorganizations, and hostage-taking have been part of warfare since earliest times. "Muslim"and "Shiite" are not synonyms for "terrorist" or"extremist".

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Created 27 August 1998, Last Update 20 January 2020