Islam: A Brief History

AMDG BVMH

1-27-07 World Religions David Brennan

Karen Armstrong's 202 page book, Islam: a Short History covers the religion Islam and what the teachings have to offer. The author herself has written books on Christianity and Buddhism as well. She is a former nun who now lives a self-proclaimed 'solitary life'. She suffers through the disease epilepsy and wrote about her trial in the 2004 book The Spiral Staircase. She believes that by writing on the Islamic religion that readers will come away with a better understanding of its meaning.

The story of Islam begins with a rich, young Arabic man named Muhammad ibn Abdallah, or simply The Prophet as he is better known amongst Muslims. While retiring to a cave on the summit of Mount Hira, he heard a voice call out to him on the night of 17 Ramadan. This voice poured the scripture into his mind and out of his tongue. Muhammad did not want to discredit Judaism or Christianity or even to start a new religion. He message was simply that of those before him, Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, and Jesus. The religion spread like wildfire throughout the Middle Eastern world directly through the Arabs.

Muhammad's son-in-law Ali, was eventually nominated as caliph, or leader of the Islamic nation. Ali was placed in the difficult position as Islam had just entered a five year civil war sparked by the assassination of the previous caliph, Uthman. Muhammad's wife, Aisha then launched attacks on Ali and continued the bloodshed. Ali eventually gained control of the warring parties and made his enemies suffer.

The most relevant information from this book is perhaps the history of the Sunni-Shiite split. Shii Muslims, partisan to Ali, believe that his descendents should rule in place of rashidun, or four rulers unrelated to Ali. Sunni Muslims however, believe that the rashidun should be revered. The Sunni make up the majority of all Muslims. The conflict still goes on today.

The last Islamic empire was the Ottoman empire, which formed in 1453 following the conquest of Constantinople. To protect their religious empire, they resorted to jihad, a holy war to fend of enemies namely Christians. The Ottoman empire would be disintegrated after World War I as the Western world rose to power. Islam is still associated with the Middle East today and conflicts are still raging internally