5-1-2022- Islam PART 1:

Spread of Islam:
Islam was simple, straight forward, and not complex in comparison with Christianity and
Judaism
Comparison of Islam to Christianity and Judaism
In Islam, there is a clear-cut situation and definition of God. However, in Christianity, the idea of
God is a little bit complex where God is a single entity split with three different phases: the
father, the son, and the whole spirit. Judaism is a very church-like organization where there are
large hakham and small hakhams as well.
Judaism is the most complex religion among the three religions.
Dogma and liturgy: A lot of rules and explanations
Reasons that allow Islam to spread as fast:
They were able to unify all the Arab tribes from the desert, these people lived in the desert on
horseback, so they were tough people and used to fight a lot and they formed a strong army.
In middle east: the spread of Islam was peaceful, smoother, less violent than Persia.
Main Reason: Since in the middle east, people were ahel ketab that believe in one god, however
people in Persia were apostate (people that believe in many gods polytheistic). In middle east,
Christians and Jews can keep their own religion, however in Peria either you become Muslim, or
you will be killed. You can practice your own religion normally and you need only to pay al
Jezia.
In Africa and Persia, people were apostate.
Three Reasons:
1- Unlike Christianity and Buddhism, Islam neither renounced nor condemned material
wealth. Jews and Christians living in Muslim lands were taxed but not persecuted.
Converts to Islam were exempt from paying a poll-tax levied on all non-Muslim subjects.
2- Into the towns that would soon become cultural oases, Muslims brought expertise in
navigation, trade, and commercial exchange (Islam brought new knowledge of trade,
navigation, commercial exchange since Arabs were tribes that used to do commercials.)
3- They fostered favorable associations between Arab merchants and members of the ruling
elite (in Africa, for instance) and rewarded converts with access to positions of power and
authority
(Islam build one nation or state from all the regions Islam has opened, so this encourages
trade and commercial exchange between them and before there were different empires
like Persia, Byzantium, Egypt, … This improved the economy of everyone in those
countries and improved their life.)
Ottomans: Turkish
Between 620-661 C.E., the capital of the Islam empire was Makka during the period of prophet
Muhammad and the four califs. However, between 661-750 C.E., the capital was Damascus and
ruled by Omayyat, and between 750-1258 C.E., the capital of Islam was Baghdad and ruled by
the Abbasid. After 1258 C.E., the Arabs were unable to rule themselves till now and they are
always ruled by an external power.
The Mongols are people from central Asia (Northern China, south Russia, Kazakhstan,
Turkmenistan), those people live in tribes (were nomads), strong people, always living on
horseback, very war-like same as Arabs at the beginning and they were in hundreds of thousands
but they were divided into different tribes and it happened three or four times in history when
one of the leaders was strong enough to unite all the tribes and when they united into a one tribe
the world has changed in history. The first time they united was in the 400th C.E. and lead to the
destruction of the roman empire. The next time they united was in this period and lead to the
destruction of the Arabs empire. So, every time they united the whole world suffers. At another
time they united, they destroyed the Chinese empire and the Chinese had to build the great wall
of China to stop any further attacks.
Why they are strong? They fight from the horse back and they learned how to shoot arrows from
the horse back, they used to attack in a strategic manner, they run Infront of their opponents and
threw arrows and they run away, and they kept doing this until the other army becomes anger
and starts its attack, and then they attack you surprisingly from the back and the sides. This
strategy works well against an army, and it doesn’t work well against a city. However, when they
face a city, they preferred not to attack because many of their soldiers will die. So, they would
offer the city a surrender if the city surrender, practically nothing will happen. Hence, they would
change the leader and they leave a small army in the city and change few other things. However,
if the city refused to surrender, they would do a horrific act by attacking the city on mass and
they destroyed the whole city and kill every male inside of it and then sell all the woman and
children as slaves. They used this strategy to fear the other territories once they do it once.
When the Mongolian army arrived at Baghdad, the caliphs in Baghdad knew what will happen if
they didn’t surrender and they didn’t surrender. So, there was a big clash and the Arab army tried
to attack the Mongolian army, but they failed and got destroyed and three week later, the army
breach the wall of Baghdad and they destroyed the city and killed every male and all the nobles,
and they destroyed one of the greatest libraries in the world called dar l hekma and threw more
than half million of books in the dajla. The legends said that the dajla stayed blue for a month
after that because of ink from all the books and from that moment on, the Muslim civilization
never recovered, and it witnessed a decline especially the Arab Muslim civilization.

600-1258: Arab Islamic Period (green)

10-1-2022- Islam PART 2:

Islamic Culture:
In Islamic state, there is no separation between politics and religion. Islam is a theocratic
country. Theocracy: when the leader of the state is a religious figure like Iran and Vatican. This
creates a certain unity since all the countries that Muslims have invaded and took over and
became part of Islam have common characteristics in culture, religion, and the way how people
live.
Scholarship in the Islamic world:
Following Muhammad’s dictum to “seek knowledge,” Islam was enthusiastically receptive to the
intellectual achievements of other cultures and aggressive in its will to understand the workings
of the natural world. (Advice of the prophet).
During the Omayyad and early Abbasid periods, Islam witnessed a big revival of science, and
the Muslims played an important role in translating all the Greek books and manuscripts. [Arab
scholars preserved hundreds of ancient Greek manuscripts—the works of Plato, Aristotle,
Archimedes, Hippocrates, Galen, Ptolemy, and others— copying and editing them in Arabic
translations.] All these inventions and philosophy were translated to Arabic by Muslims and
when Islam spread, they invaded Andalos, they spread them there in the Omayyad period.
Therefore, when Islam starts to interact with Christians, they retranslated them to Latin and this
how all these books came back to Europe and plays an important role in the revival of the
European civilization after the dark ages. Hence, Islam preserved all the knowledge and books
and transmitting them to the Europeans.
Three examples of the Arab influence in the book:
Most important input of the Arabs: Numbers, Medicine, & Astronomy
Arabic numbers and mathematics: the Arab play a very important role in mathematics especially
a guy called al-Khwarizmi. Al- Khwarizmi was the one who created the earliest form of
algorithms that we use them in computer nowadays. The second one was Ebn- Sina who was one
of the greatest philosophers and doctors. The third one was the influence of Arabs in astronomy
since they were strong in math, and they always want to know Makka where. So, they were
creating new stuff in astronomy. The Arabs nowadays are using the Hindu-numbers and the
Latin’s are using the Arabic numbers. The Arabic numbers are creative numbers since they are
based on angles. The Arabs and the Indians region created the Zero number. The idea of the zero
was complex since it is nothing and at the same time it is everything. In addition to that, the zero
has no beginning and no ending. This brings up to mind the concept of the god that you cannot
see and represents everything and the god that has no beginning and no end. So, we couldn’t
speak up of zero with out having the idea of the god that Islam has (lam yaled walam yulad).
Ebn Sina continued what the Greeks start doing since the Greeks who related the illness to cause
and effect for example if you live bleeding, you will die and if you stop the bleeding, you will
survive. It became a science and Ebn Sina pushed it further in a scientific way when he tasked
his students to spread a fresh meat in different regions in Baghdad and every day, he sent his
students to check the state of the meat and the area where the meat stays longer fresh, they will
build the hospital where the environment is clean and less bacteria there. (Thinking scientifically
about medicine).
Unfortunately, all of these great men at one time or another, they were called atheist,
antireligious, and they were offensively treated and after a few generations less and less people
dared to invent since there were less freedom and change in the society. This was illustrated in
the example that said that all the Arab countries that contain around 250-300 million of
population create books as much as Netherlands that contains 10 million of population.
Islam Poetry (book)
Sufi Poetry: The most popular is Jalal Aldine El Roumi (book)
Islamic Architecture:
Since Islam starts in a time where people used to sculpture human like figures and taking them as
gods, Islam prohibited the lightness drawing and sculpturing the lightness of man. Hence, all of
their architecture relies on two things: Calligraphy and Arabesque.
Calligraphy (Kufi writing to draw letters): the use of words and letters in a nice fashion look that
is pleasing to the eye. In other words, the use of words to create an interior design. (Kalam
monammak)
Arabesque (patterns): are pattens in drawing that repeats shapes and lines that comes from nature
like the shape of flower or leaves of tree and patterns are created from them. (zakhrafet). It gets
creative by Muslims since they were prohibited to draw human like shapes and sculptures.
Calligraphy and Arabesque are sculpturing and not only drawings.
Glossary: book