How did Islam remain so united?

[Trevor_Dewey]

I think that the meteoric rise of Islam and its relative historical stability, is due (at least in part) to the simple rules of faith that every person can easily memorize and incorporate into his or her daily life: declaration of faith, daily prayer, alms, fasting, and pilgrimage. They are easy, simple, sacrificial, and largely communal.

Islam has never been “historically stable” and no it’s not seven simple rules of faith, it has a complex body of law (Shariah) that differs between sects. It had a meteoric rise because it conquered vast areas of the Middle-East, South-East Asia and Northern Africa and forced conversion by the sword, again nothing to do with supposed simple rules of faith. And of course in many Islamic country it is a death sentence if you are born Muslim and want to convert to Christianity.

 

[7_Sorrows]

If you say it in Arabic, but Allah is just the Arabic word for God. Even Arabic speaking Christians call God “Allah”.

but I thought all muslims use Allah whether they are Arabic or not.

 

[Thorolfr]

and forced conversion by the sword

That’s actually not true. People were not forced to convert and in fact, it took centuries before Muslims became a majority in the lands they conquered. The well known scholar Richard Bulliet has studied this extensively:

Richard Bulliet’s “conversion curve” shows a relatively low rate of conversion of non-Arab subjects during the Arab centric Umayyad period of 10%, in contrast with estimates for the more politically multicultural Abbasid period which saw the Muslim population grow from approx. 40% in the mid-9th century to close to 100% by the end of the 11th century.[16] This theory does not explain the continuing existence of large minorities of Christians in the Abbasid Period. Other estimates suggest that Muslims were not a majority in Egypt until the mid-10th century and in the Fertile Crescent until 1100. Syria may have had a Christian majority within its modern borders until the Mongol Invasions of the 13th century.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spread_of_Islam

 

[badnewsbarrett]

There is no Muslim Martin Luther, no Reformist Mosques, and I’m pretty sure there was never a Muslim King who founded his own sect so as to marry whoever he wanted (cough, Henry VIIIth cough).

But anyway, I would like to hear an answer from an actual Muslim person at some point.

There was a 19th-century Pakistani man who claimed to be the Messiah, and a prophet sort of on the level of Mohammed, albeit a non-law-bearing prophet. (Okay, modern-day Pakistan, at the time it was British-controlled India). Today, it is the fastest-growing sect of Islam, most Muslims do not recognize it as actually being Islam, and in Pakistan especially, it is among the most heavily persecuted religious groups in the world. In terms of doctrine and the way it’s recognized by orthodox Islam, this bears some comparison to forms of marginal Christianity like Mormons and JWs. This sect is called Ahmadiyya, by the way, and its adherents are known as Ahmadis or Ahmadi Muslims. There is a pretty regular contributor on Fox News that is an Ahmadi Muslim, and the Fox News hosts don’t seem to have completely figured out where he fits in to the rest of Islam, so it is good to know about this if you do see someone like this pop up from time to time.

Oh, besides that, Ahmadiyya is the only form of Islam that is thoroughly, completely, top-down and every which way in favor of secular government, religious freedom, Not forcing kids to practice Islam if their parents happen to be Muslim, the whole thing. They are also the most active in terms of evangelism (or aggressive, depending who you ask), they somehow have a lot of really wealthy members and a lot of well-funded missions, missionaries, and humanitarian networks that really do a whole lot of good without necessarily looking for converts at the same time…many of these things allow for some comparisons to Protestantism in a broad sense, and some of them continue to remind you of Mormons a little bit. Ah, you might be interested to know, the owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars- Shad Khan- is an Ahmadi Muslim.

So there you go. Despite the initial premise that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad is the promised Messiah and Mahdi, and the Mujaddid (Islamic reformer) of the 14th Islamic century, this is easily the most-favored sect of Islam in the West. Mostly because they are all on board with religious freedom and with secular government.

No, that’s not quite the same as when the leader of a country breaks the entire country off from the church it used to be united with (even though Islamic nations aren’t united to each other via a hierarchy that they have never had), but it is a bunch of new information that I trust you will look into. And for what it’s worth, Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Christians do not have massive Reformist movements or anything like an Eastern or Oriental version of Luther, Calvin, et al. So perhaps this fragmentation thing is not characteristic of all Christianity as much as it’s a characteristic of Catholicism and all those people that it completely lost control of, as no other Christian entity has ever done.

 

[Trevor_Dewey]

That’s actually not true. People were not forced to convert and in fact, it took centuries before Muslims became a majority in the lands they conquered. The well known scholar Richard Bulliet has studied this extensively:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spread_of_Islam

1. Wikipedia has an anti-Christian leftist bias, denies it has an anti-Christian leftist bias and is a terrible source.
2. Bulliet is pretty far left, and an Islamophile, and his conversion methodology is apparently suspect outside of Iran, which kept good records, comparatively. So I’ll continue to accept the traditional view of forced conversion that has a lot of historical evidence and ignore Bulliet’s attempts to sanitize history. Even if I hadn’t read his methodology was suspect, I would have still assumed they were suspect because we are talking over a.thousand years ago, record keeping isn’t that good.

 

[Eric_Hilbert]

Please read and follow:
forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=10806826&postcount=1

 

[commenter]

Part of the reason for the recent growth is the high birth rate, at a time when other religions, and persons of no religion, have far fewer babies. Large families tend to be religiously conservative.

Another reason is that Islam was, until a few decades ago, very isolated. Few Muslims had much contact with other cultures or other ideas; what contact they did have was mostly negative, for instance resisting influence of Western governments and corporations.

I think Islamic unity will likely decrease, as a result of young people getting higher education in non-Muslim universities, emigration to Western countries, and greater contacts with the West in general especially by those who are more educated and wealthy. I don’t mean they would necessarily leave Islam, but Muslim peoples will be affected by a variety of experiences.

Let us say a prayer that we will never again see Muslim fight against Muslim.

 

[7_Sorrows]

Part of the reason for the recent growth is the high birth rate, at a time when other religions, and persons of no religion, have far fewer babies. Large families tend to be religiously conservative.

Another reason is that Islam was, until a few decades ago, very isolated. Few Muslims had much contact with other cultures or other ideas; what contact they did have was mostly negative, for instance resisting influence of Western governments and corporations.

I think Islamic unity will likely decrease, as a result of young people getting higher education in non-Muslim universities, emigration to Western countries, and greater contacts with the West in general especially by those who are more educated and wealthy. I don’t mean they would necessarily leave Islam, but Muslim peoples will be affected by a variety of experiences.

Let us say a prayer that we will never again see Muslim fight against Muslim.

And how about never see again Muslim fighting against Christian?

 

[Trevor_Dewey]

That’s actually not true. People were not forced to convert and in fact, it took centuries before Muslims became a majority in the lands they conquered. The well known scholar Richard Bulliet has studied this extensively:

As has M.A. Khan in his book Islamic Jihad. The primary method of conversion for early Islam was the sword, that is to say by force applied through multiple avenues including: crushing taxes on non-Muslims, actual by-the-sword conversions, and unusual steps such as (during the Islamic rule of Indian) taking children in lieu of taxes and raising them as Muslim.

 

[arthra]

There is a classic book on the subject of the spread of early Islam entitled “The Preaching of Islam” that I would recommend… It’s online.

See:
books.google.com/books/about/The_Preaching_of_Islam.html?id=O45CAAAAIAAJ

and still in print.

Another reason I think for the rapid spread of Islam was that it allowed Christians and Jews in the Islamic domains to practise their religions.

A third was the two empires of the Sassanids and Byzantines were weakened by conflicts

A fourth was the taxation of the Byzantine Empire.

 

[Servant19]

There are offshoots of Islam like the Ahmadis in Pakistan, the Alawis in Syria, the Druze, and even the Baha’is.

If we are saying that Christianity is an “offshoot of Judaism” then yes, I would agree with you that the Baha’i Faith is an offshoot of Islam.

In all other senses, the Baha’i Faith is as independent from Islam as Christianity is from Judaism.

God bless you

.

 

[7_Sorrows]

If we are saying that Christianity is an “offshoot of Judaism” then yes, I would agree with you that the Baha’i Faith is an offshoot of Islam.

In all other senses, the Baha’i Faith is as independent from Islam as Christianity is from Judaism.

God bless you

.

How long have you been a member of the Baha’I faith? How do Muslims view members of Baha’I?

 

[ealfred]

I think there is a simple answer to the question. Christianity especially Western Christianity encouraged scholars to study and reflect on theology where Islam considers that to be the equivalent to what we would call heresy.

 

[Servant19]

How long have you been a member of the Baha’I faith?

I’ve been a Baha’i for 27 years now

How do Muslims view members of Baha’I?

Since there is no central authority figure in Islam, the range of views on the Baha’i Faith can go from extreme to extreme.

There are those Muslims who believe that Baha’i blood is worthy of being spilled at every opportunity, and there is the other end of the spectrum which believes that the Baha’i Faith has an important role to play in the spiritual destiny of the planet.

.

 

[7_Sorrows]

I’ve been a Baha’i for 27 years now

Since there is no central authority figure in Islam, the range of views on the Baha’i Faith can go from extreme to extreme.

There are those Muslims who believe that Baha’i blood is worthy of being spilled at every opportunity, and there is the other end of the spectrum which believes that the Baha’i Faith has an important role to play in the spiritual destiny of the planet.

.

Thanks for the reply.

 

[badnewsbarrett]

There is a classic book on the subject of the spread of early Islam entitled “The Preaching of Islam” that I would recommend… It’s online.

See:
books.google.com/books/about/The_Preaching_of_Islam.html?id=O45CAAAAIAAJ

and still in print.

Another reason I think for the rapid spread of Islam was that it allowed Christians and Jews in the Islamic domains to practise their religions.

A third was the two empires of the Sassanids and Byzantines were weakened by conflicts

A fourth was the taxation of the Byzantine Empire.

I feel like I should dispute the assertion that Islam, while forcing the submission of Jews and Christians, allowed them to practice their religions. Speaking for Christianity in particular, there is this person named Jesus Christ, who is kind of a big deal. One of his commands was to go into all the world and preach the Gospel, baptizing in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, and on it goes about teaching people to obey commands and so forth.

Christians, while forced into submission to Islam, were not able to do this.

Following the commands of Jesus (who, again, is kind of a big deal) is really a key part of practicing Christianity. And once again, with feeling, it was absolutely not permitted by the Muslim overlords. Christians were allowed to practice their religion in private, but not at all in public and certainly not in a way that is in accordance with one of the clearest and most forceful commands from Jesus to Christians…

That does not add up to a situation in which Christians are allowed to practice their religion. That is actually not a remotely truthful or accurate description of what that situation is like. Retract, please, or at least acknowledge that was a misleading description of events.

 

[Thorolfr]

I feel like I should dispute the assertion that Islam, while forcing the submission of Jews and Christians, allowed them to practice their religions. Speaking for Christianity in particular, there is this person named Jesus Christ, who is kind of a big deal. One of his commands was to go into all the world and preach the Gospel, baptizing in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, and on it goes about teaching people to obey commands and so forth.

Christians, while forced into submission to Islam, were not able to do this.

Following the commands of Jesus (who, again, is kind of a big deal) is really a key part of practicing Christianity. And once again, with feeling, it was absolutely not permitted by the Muslim overlords. Christians were allowed to practice their religion in private, but not at all in public and certainly not in a way that is in accordance with one of the clearest and most forceful commands from Jesus to Christians…

That does not add up to a situation in which Christians are allowed to practice their religion. That is actually not a remotely truthful or accurate description of what that situation is like. Retract, please, or at least acknowledge that was a misleading description of events.

Religious tolerance is really a fairly modern phenomenon everywhere, but Christians and Jews living under Muslim rule were really treated better by Muslims than what Jews or Muslims living under Christian rule ever were.

 

[ComplineSanFran]

Religious tolerance is really a fairly modern phenomenon everywhere, but Christians and Jews living under Muslim rule were really treated better by Muslims than what Jews or Muslims living under Christian rule ever were.

Agree. I have done studies on Church history and its treatment of Jews and Muslim under them and it is quite horrifying. I know more about anti-Jewish history than anti-Islamic, but regardless, Christianity has much to answer for.

 

[drac16]

Probably because of how rigid it is. Muslims try to practice Islam as closely to how prophet Muhammad did. This is done from important aspects of what he said, what he believed, where he traveled, how he traveled, his family life, his relationship with different communities, heck, even down to the way he used the restroom.

Introducing something new into the Islamic faith is called bid’ah and it’s considered a huge sin (for example, doing that sufi whirling is an innovation). We’re always taught to shun innovations and to warn people if someone is an innovator. Because of how committed the muslim community was and is to crossing every T and dotting every I, the sunnah has more or less been preserved, thus leading to unity.

 

[Thorolfr]

Introducing something new into the Islamic faith is called bid’ah and it’s considered a huge sin (for example, doing that sufi whirling is an innovation).

I actually know lots of Sufi Muslims and have even seen the Mevlevis from Turkey do their whirling (“Whirling Dervishes”). Being a Sufi is not a sin for a Muslim. Most Muslims used to belong to Sufi orders.