The Warrior Prophet

Islam present in Europe's cultural roots and Mohammed proclaims one God

There is a mixture of hostility, intolerance, and fear in the European attitude towards the Arabs. It's the result of the Crusades, which left behind a long wake of rancour.
Arabs did not forgive the Christians for invading their lands, massacring and pillaging under the pretext of freeing the Holy Sepulchre from the infidels, and reciprocated with their own invasions, massacres and pillaging. East and West fought for centuries, and are still fighting, a war with ancient roots that won't end unless the contenders recognize their respective wrongdoings, past and present, which are grave and recurring.
Yet, these implacable enemies are indebted to each other. Greek philosophy, for instance, (especially Aristotle and Plato) smoothed some of the harshest tracts of Islam, which in turn must be credited for saving it from oblivion after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, when that beacon of Western civilization risked being lost.
Europe's cultural roots contain much more Islam than the Europeans are ready to admit. For too many centuries they've been busy repelling the Arabs from European lands and leaving their mark. Merely examining Sicilian or Spanish - or even Austrian or Hungarian - architecture is enough to note it. Paying a little attention allows us to find Arabic words, idioms and ways all over the Old World; looking at the origin of things to discover how the Arabs handed us some surprising inventions and discoveries: zero ("sifr") in mathematics, the alembic ("al-ambiq") in chemistry, and general anaesthesia, which they applied methodically since 709, when they opened in Damascus the world's first real hospital. A few decades later, the Arabic schools in Palermo taught that the Earth was spherical and its centre was equidistant from the four cardinal points. In those same years, the Europeans were dogmatically convinced that the Earth was flat.
The Westerners have acquired these achievements without considering their origin; but they did come to us from the East, just like the rational cultivation of mines and land, selective horse breeding, rice and silkworms, cotton and sugar cane, and peaches, dates, asparagus, pepper, spinach, grapefruit.
In European imagination, Arabs are tragically linked to their mysticism, in whose name they are ready to perform the most savage actions. This is not true, and even if it were, our outrage would be hypocritical: during the Crusades, and even after them, we gave as much as we got. History must be considered in a different light: by freeing it of its bloodiest aspects and seeing it in the context of the great ideal movements that succeeded one another in the slow flow of civilization, looking for answers to ancient needs and new questions.
Let's begin from the start, then. Arabia is a barren peninsula that had not known civilization until the 6th century C.E. It was populated by nomadic tribes that did not possess the idea of nation: home was wherever one's tent was pitched. They worshipped the stones, where they believed godly beings were living. Every tribe had a god of its own, but in Mecca there was one that surpassed every other: Hubal, worshipped in the sanctuary of the Kaaba, where then as now the Black Stone was kept. Arabs claim it was sent from heaven, and maybe they are right, as it is most likely a meteorite.
Hubal became the most important god because it was adopted as the divinity of the most powerful tribe, the Quaraysh, who regarded themselves as direct descendants of Abraham and Ishmael. Mohammed, who was born in Mecca in 570, belonged to this tribe.
His father was already dead; six years later his mother Amina also died, and he was cared for by his grandfather Abd al-Muttalib. We know next to nothing about Mohammed's youth, except for his marriage at 25 with a rich widow, Khadija, who ensured his financial stability and bore him five children.
For his first 40 years, Mohammed attended to his family's affairs while being deeply concerned for the Arab condition, which was lacking religious and national identity. He understood the situation risked worsening and generating new divisions when some people formed a sect that refused to worship the Kaaba and championed the idea of one universal God. While sharing their belief, Mohammed deemed them fragile, because the idea came from men and not from God: it lacked a revelation. He was powerless to intervene. On a night in 610, however, Gabriel the archangel appeared in his dreams and told him, "You are the messenger of Allah". This was Mohammed's revelation as the Koran retells it.
Strengthened by this vision and others that followed it, he began preaching and declaring himself the prophet chosen by Allah to lead the Arabs along the path of truth. That path, he said, is one just like God, thus dismissing the old polytheism. His doctrine included elements of Hebraism and Christianity that went beyond simple monotheism: for instance, he recognized Abraham as the prototypical believer for his obedience to God's request of sacrificing his son Isaac, a request God rescinded in consideration of Abraham's faith.
He also said that true faith must manifest itself in everyday behaviour, because "every social act must be an act of worship." This way he turned every believer into a citizen and every citizen into a believer. Muslims (from musulman, "follower of Islam") were offered a simple religion that did not include complicated liturgy or convoluted theological reasoning. He imposed a single dogma ("There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is His prophet.") and a limited series of obligations: the five daily prayers towards the Kaaba and a collective one per week, charity, fasting during the month of Ramadan, and at least one pilgrimage to Mecca in a believer's life.
Mohammed never claimed to be a supernatural being, but only an envoy from God. This was not an act of humility; by saying that he was a man like any other, albeit with an exceptional relationship with Allah, he was affirming the perfection of human nature. As a consequence, man is good and God cannot burden him with unbearable weights. This was the novelty of Mohammed's message: the substantial optimism of Islamic theology that does not announce Valleys of Tears.
Mohammed's preaching was met with indifference and then hostility by his fellow citizens. Since he couldn't convince them, the Prophet accepted an invitation from the people of Medina to take the lead of that town and moved there. The date was July 16, 622, and it went down in history as the day of Hejira (meaning "emigration") that marks the start of the Muslim calendar. From Medina, Mohammed intensified his action for the religious and national unification of the Arabs, and when he returned to Mecca seven years later he was welcomed triumphantly. There he completed his plan, and by his death (in 632) Arabia had become the base of what would become Muslim Empire and Mecca had established itself as the religious centre for all Arabs.
Mohammed was neither an extremist nor an innovator, but a courageous man. He was the first Arab who went beyond tribalism, and this was an accomplishment in itself. By placing himself above all tribes he got rid of all their deities and proclaimed that there was just one God: Allah. It wasn't a cakewalk, and in order to get things his way he repeatedly recurred to the sword. He achieved his goals, giving religious and national unity to the Arabs, in close connection to each other. This was Mohammed's masterpiece. He was illiterate, but that did not prevent him from composing the greatest and most poetic text ever written in Arabic: the Koran, a religious code, a juridical source and a literary work. It was written by Mohammed's successor Abu Bakr, with the assistance of the "companions" (as the closest followers were called), and it reports the revelations that the Prophet received at various times from God by Gabriel the archangel. Muslims consider the Koran as the word of God.
This was the beginning of the modern history of the Arabs, and of their expansion both eastward and westward. In a handful of decades they conquered the Middle East to Persia and Iraq and northern Africa to Morocco. They were able to do it because they hit the world stage as a young population, closely knit by community and religious bonds, with a stated goal of saving humanity. The Prophet had claimed that all men are born Muslims and social and environmental conditions are what leads them away from truth. His followers and successors felt it was their moral duty to conquer in order to convert.
The Arabs managed to take maximum advantage of a peculiar situation; after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, ample political and cultural spaces had opened up in the Middle East and northern Africa, and the Eastern Roman Empire (Christian) could not fill them as it was going through one of its periodic crises. Byzantium was to be the sworn enemy of Islam for eight centuries, but in the early days of their expansion the Arabs managed to exploit its temporary weakness and filled their spaces themselves.
They did not destroy what they found, though. On the contrary, they gave rise to a multinational society that used Arabic as its lingua franca and tolerance as its strong point. The Islamic civilization was born out of the meeting, mediation and re-elaboration of different cultures. The Koran, far from mysticism and open to science, favoured the study of theology and philosophy, of law and grammar; chronicles and poems were written, astronomy, geography, optics, algebra, chemistry, medicine were advanced.
With such a background, the Arabs reached Spain's front door, just across 13 kilometres of sea separating it from Morocco. Greek mythology had the Pillars of Hercules located there. The army of the Prophet was led by Tariq Ibn Ziyad, a valorous yet prudent man who studied the landing for some time without finding a system to take the rock that towered threateningly above the sea.
Then, all of a sudden, he decided to launch the assault. He told his perplexed officers that the night before Mohammed had appeared to him in his dreams. "He was surrounded by many heroes of Mecca and Medina," the commander told them, "and he told me, 'Come on, Tariq, do what you set out to: open the gates of Europe to Islam.' Then I saw the Prophet flying in the sky over the water toward al Andalus." On the first day of May 711, Tariq gave his order, and by nightfall the Rock was his. It still carries his name: Gibraltar, from Gebel el-Tariq, "Tariq's Mountain".
When the Arabs invaded it, Spain was ruled by the Visigoths who had only plundered its riches without establishing any semblance of state. It was therefore quite easy for the new conquerors to spread like a wildfire to the Pyrenees. They spared the population, imposing reasonable tributes but respecting its customs and religion. Those who wanted to convert were welcome, those who preferred to remain Christians or Jews were allowed to against payment of a modest sum. Religious proselitism very rarely degenerated in persecution. In comparison to the invasions that Roman Europe had suffered from the north, the Arab invasion was the least harsh and the most fascinating, amazing everyone with its architecture, science, fashion, and sophisticated luxury.
The warriors of the crescent moon crossed the Pyrenees, and hadn't Charles Martel stopped them cold at Poitiers in 732, French history would have been very different. They did not relent, though, settling in Spain, which for centuries would remain Islam's stronghold in Europe, and in 827 they landed in Sicily and southern Italy, then under Byzantine rule. They took Mazara, then Palermo, Messina, Enna, Syracuse. The island was immediately raised to the rank of Emirate, theoretically depending from Baghdad's Caliphate (the central authority of the empire) but actually an independent entity, with its capital in Palermo.
Like in Spain, Arab culture in Sicily survived longer than Arab rule. Through constant exchanges with northern Europe, that culture spread prodigiously; even though the Arab models were not universally accepted (the Church and the Christian emperors in Byzantium had already erected religious and military barricades), Arab philosophical reflections, juridical theories and scientific conquests left an indelible mark on studies and universities.
This idyll was abruptly cut short by the Crusades. For three centuries, in successive waves, Christianity - spurred by the Papacy and by the need of expanding - hit the eastern shores of the Mediterranean in arms with the stated purpose of wrestling control of the Holy Sepulchre from Islam. Terrible atrocities were committed by both sides, and the epithet of "infidels" bounced back and forth between Muslims and Christians, generating resentment that lasts to this day. The liberation of the tomb of Jesus was a pretext for a war between religions and civilizations, the first such direct confrontation launched by Christian West against Muslim East.
Also, the balance of power within Islam shifted. After becoming absolute masters of a territory that went from Persia to Spain via Mediterranean Africa, Muslims lost their initial impulse. The Arab core slowly differentiated, and division and power struggles threatened to destroy the empire. It was saved by the Ottomans, Turkish Muslims who had formed their state in Anatolia and that expanded slowly to take over from the Arabs. The Islamic empire turned into the Ottoman empire, and under this name it survived until its fall in 1922.
The Ottoman Turks stormed Constantinople in 1453, and it was not just a fortunate war campaign: by taking the Christian Byzantine throne, the Ottomans appeared as the conquerors of the Eastern Roman Empire, a very prestigious image in the eyes of the Islamic world, after eight centuries of ferocious enmity. The Ottomans were rigorous defenders of religious orthodoxy and had an unequalled military prowess, and from 1453 on the confrontation with the West was total and with no holds barred on either side.
The Turks wanted Europe, not just because it was the goal the Prophet had set in Tariq Ibn Ziyad's dream, but also because it was the economic, religious and political heartland of their enemies. Also, the Crusades had been launched from Europe.
Suleyman II, the Magnificent, Leader of the Believers ("Dar al Islam") and Keeper of the Holy Cities (as he was called) enacted the project. He readied a titanic war machine that included bloodthirsty corsairs from Algiers as well as Greek, Dalmatian and Venetian renegades. He hurled this war machine against Europe: in 1521 he took Belgrade and the Balkans; in 1526 he defetaed King Louis II Jagellon and the flower of Hungarian nobility in the plains of Mohács; in 1529 he entered Budapest. Over the same period he systematically ravaged the coasts of southern Italy and Dalmatia, threatening the Aragon kings of Naples and the Venetian Republic.
Faced with the Islamic onslaught, the Christian rulers found unity, spurred once again by the Papacy, and in 1571 they sunk Turkish dreams of domination in the waters of Lepanto. They beat the Turkish fleet but could not vanquish the threat, because some 20 years later the Sublime Porte (another name of Turkish Islam) launched another campaign against Europe, marching westward from Hungary to Slovenia, Croatia, and Friuli in northern Italy. In 1683 they reached the walls of Vienna, where the Christian armies led by Jan Sobieski and Eugene of Savoy finally beat them back.
The Turks retreated to its former stronghold - the Balkans, Turkey, Asia Minor, and south-eastern Mediterranean. Rather then assaulting Christianity frontally, they chose political manoeuvring, influencing alliances and often becoming the needle in the balance of European politics. However, European politics would eventually spell their doom: independent riots, sparked in Europe, dismembered the Ottoman empire within just over a century, and by its dissolution in 1922 the empire had shrunk to Turkey alone. Mustafá Kemal Ataturk turned the old empire into a republic.
Despite wars and massacres, enmity and rancour, Europe was always fascinated with the Islamic world. Between the 1600s and 1700s it was a fixture of literary halls and university studies all over the Old World. From 1704 to 1714, French Orientalist Antoine Galland translated the "1001 Nights" (14 volumes), the long, wonderful and sensual tale that Shaharazád uses to postpone her fate, as bride of the ferocious king Shariyár who killed every virgin after marrying her and possessing her for one night. The book became an instant best seller. But Galland translated also the Koran and the "Indian Fables", extraordinary editorial successes that became a part of European culture.
In the same years Montesquieu published another best seller, "Persian Letters," a lighthearted but perceptive satire on customs. Three Persians travelling across Europe (Usbek, Rhédi, and Rica) exchange astonished letters with their reactions to European strange ways. Some 70 years later, Napoleon Bonaparte would introduce the Old World to eastern fashion, furniture, and systematic studies, especially in archaeology; the Strauss family would introduce in their production many Persian harmonies and tunes. These are just a few examples of an interest that ran for centuries.
After that came colonialism. The West decided to bring its own civilization eastward with the might of its weapons, forgetting how much Orient there was in its own culture. This time there was no pretext of mystical inspiration and Papal promotion, but naked ambitions of conquest. Old wounds were reopened and simmering enmities resurfaced.
Finally, these years, these months. A war has been launched to avenge 9/11, and a terrible postwar revealed its misguidedness. Once again the West exported to the East its worst values, and once again did it at the point of a bayonet. These worlds, so close, went back to immense distance. What's left is daily news, written in blood.
Meanwhile, almost 30 million Muslims are asking Europe, where they live, for a decent life.

Publication Date: 2004-09-19
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=4417