Adventures in Islam, Part 2

I'm 3 chapters into my primer on Islam.  I've learned a lot of stuff, most of it is pieces of history, names and places that aren't particularly relevant in understanding Muslims today.  It will inform my study of the Koran, and gives a better background for asking interesting questions.  Do you have something that you don't want to ask questions about because you feel so ignorant that you're afraid you'll also look stupid?  Yep.  That's where I'm starting from.  Much like when coworkers or friends start to talk about wine (sorry, sommeliers), any talk about Islam would just leave me behind and not be very interesting.

So, to sum up 60 pages of reading: Muhammad was born in the late 500s on a band of land called the Hijaz.  It runs along the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia today.  At the time, there were bands of Christians and Jews in the area, but the Arabs were polytheistic pagans.  Life was centered around the tribe, and the shaykh was not just the administrator of the law; he was the law.  There was no "law of the land" as we understand it today.  Quick example: if you killed someone from your own tribe, you'd be forced to pay damages or killed yourself.  If you killed someone from a neighboring tribe, your shaykh had complete power to prevent you from prosecution.  It may start a blood fued between the tribes, but that was at the shaykh's discretion.  

Muhammad married late (age 25) into a wealthy merchant family.  This family, the Quraysh, controlled the city of Mecca.  They had decreed that within a certain radius of the Kaaba that violence was forbidden.  This was the first zone of law that we would understand as such.  After 15 years of marriage, Muhammad was meditating in a cave and got a visit from the angel Gabriel.  Worried that he might be posessed by jinn, he consulted his brother in law who was familiar with Christan and Jewish scripture.  He assured Muhammad that this was from god, and that Muhammad had been called as a prophet.  Kadija, Muhammad's wife, was also an early believer.

The message that Muhammad started to preach was one of sacrifice and submission.  Islam means "to submit".  His first converts were the poor in the city of Mecca.  His rich relatives eventually forced him to leave the city.  He took his followers to Medina, where he became not only a prophet a civic leader, but also took on the role of military commander.  His arrival in Medina starts the Hijrah, the Islamic calendar.  Much like the birth of Christ starts the gregorian calendar, the Hijrah starts on September 24th in a certain year, which is year 1, day 1 of the Muslim era.  

Within 8 years, Muhammad had gone from a "crazy guy preaching in the streets of Mecca" to the Prophet of Arabia.  He had a huge army, and Arabia had submitted to Allah.  Muhammad died in the 11th year of the Hijrah, at his home in Medina.  By the year of his death, Islam had spread over the entire Arabian peninsula, with missionary forces preaching the Word to tribes scattered all around.  The Koran was finished, and despite some wrangling for the "I am the next prophet" title after Muhammad's death, Islam was an ongoing concern.

The Arabia that Muhammad left behind was much different from the one he inherited.  Arabia was now populated by monotheists.  Islam allowed for Jews and Christians to practice their religions in peace.  Muhammad's call was specifically to preach to those who had not received the revelation from God as Moses had for the Jews or Jesus had for the Christians.  Law was no longer dependent on a person's tribe so much.  Laws were part of Islam, and administered universally.  Care for the poor was ingrained as a virtue.  

Interestingly, Islam was carried forward by both military (conquering towns and forcing its residents to convert) and spiritual (sending teachers to preach) means.  I've got a ton to learn before I can say a whole lot more about it than that.  It is a tribute to Muhammad's skills as a man and personal character that he was able to accomplish such a huge cultural shift in his lifetime.  Now, on to more study and fun!