Islan+in+the+Middle+East

ISLAM IN THE MIDDLE EAST.... Islam in Arabia, its native place

Islam expanded very rapidly after the death of Muhammad (632). Here Mohammed and his successors proved succesful at both military conquest of those who resisted the new Islamic community and the conversion of non-believers. Abu Bakr succeeded Mohammed and became the first Caliph. He focused on ending paganism among the Arab tribes. Under Abu, Arabia became for the first time a region controlled by a central authority, the Islamic community at Medina. Here a merchant community fired by a firece commitment to their new faith. Abu Bakr and his supporters extended their control over the Arabian peninsula and launched exploratory raids north into Byzantine Syria. The Arab warriors were in part fired by a religious commitment and the concept of jihad. Muslims are obliged by the Koran to extend the faith to non-believers as well as to defend Islam from attack. The concept of jihad as delivered in the Koran did not include agressive warfare against non-Muslims. Arab warriors did in fact wage "holy war" was who interpreted the Koran as providing them a justification as well vas the material weath to be gained by conquest. The military capability gained by uniting the Arab tribes gave the Isamic community the capabulity of enbgaging in military operations beyond small-scale raids outside the Arabian peninsula.

Mesopotamia and Nervant The spread of Islam into the wider-Middle East was made possible by Arab victories over Byzantine armies.The encounter with the Byzantines was the first of many major battles between Muslims and Christians. It was Omar who acted as Calif or head of the Moslem community (634-44) that initiated the explosive expansion of the Arabs and Islam. Omar achieved the first great successes of Arab armies outside of the Arabian Peninsula. He struck north at the then expansive Eastern or Byzantine Empire ruled by the Emperor Heraclius. Omar's armies attacked Syria, seizing large areas. The Arabs at the Battle of Yarmuk (636) in Syria decisively defeated a Byzantine Army. The Arabs entered Jerusalem and finally Damascus (638). This was the beginning of a major religious shift in which Islam gradually replaced Christianity in the Middle Eastern. Arab rulers imposed a personal tax on all non-Muslims which of course encouraged many to convert. There were forced conversions later in the Caliphate, but at first this was relatively rare. In fact the conquering Arabs were not at first anxious to convert captive populations because the tax paid ny non-believers was a lucrative source of income. Yarmuk also marked a long series of Muslim attacks on the Byzantines and other Christian kingdoms in the west and Persians in the east. This is notable because modern Islamists now call Americans and Europeans as "Crusaders" and describe the Crusades as a Christian assault on peace-loving Islam. This view of history conventiently ignores nearly four centuries of unrelenting Muslim attacks on Christian kingdoms in the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe.

Persia The Arabs swept through the Holy Land and Mesopotamia, first driving back the Byzatines. Arab armies after the conquest of the Byzantine Levant turned east to Pe rsia. The Persian Empire confronted by Arab armies had been weakened by war with the Byzantine Empire. Arab warriors, fired by Islamic fervor, smashed much larger Persian armies. The Arabs first seized Mesopotamia (modetn Iraq) from the Persians and then conquered Persia itself. Arab armies continued Omar's military campaigns. The crossed the Euphrates and attacked the Persian Sassanian Empire.At the time most in the people in the region were Christianmedia type="custom" key="7394229" width="120" height="120" align="right"s and Zoroastrians. Islam when the Arab conquet began, developed approches for dealing with the "conquered peoples". The conquered peoples were "protected persons" only if they submitted to Islamic domination by a "Contract" (Dhimma), paid poll tax - jizya - and land tax - haraj - to their masters. Any failure to do so was the breach of contract, enabling the Muslims to kill or enslave them and confiscate their property. Zoroastrianism was gradually replaced by Islam as the majority religion of the Persian people. While these provisions seem draconian, they were less rigorous at the time than the approaches taken when Christians conquered Islamic principalities. Persia was not, however, Arabized like Mesopotamia, the Levant, Egypt, North Africa, Somalia, and Sudan. At in part out of resistance to the Arabs, the Shiia sect of Islam became dominant in Persia.