ISLAM WAS A PROCESS OF EVOLUTION

Take note, though, that my views are not exactly what you would call the popular view and I base my assumptions on the recorded history of that period, specifically in that region. And note, also, that history was already being recorded long before that time so we need to base our conclusions on documentary evidence and not stories passed down by word of mouth over hundreds of years.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Mariam Mokhtar wrote an interesting piece called Umno Baru’s Ten Commandments (READ HERE), which I feel I need to address since there are quite a number of fallacies in that article that may give non-Muslims the wrong perception regarding Islam.

In fact, many Muslims, too, do not comprehend Islamic history (Mariam Mokhtar as one example). Hence wrong assumptions need to be corrected in the interest of truth and justice.

Most Muslims understand Islamic theology. Not many, though, understand the development of this theology. They think that Islam ‘came down’ over 22 years during the time of Prophet Muhammad and that the development of Islam ended with the death of the Prophet.

That is actually not so and I will try to explain why I say this.

Take note, though, that my views are not exactly what you would call the popular view and I base my assumptions on the recorded history of that period, specifically in that region. And note, also, that history was already being recorded long before that time so we need to base our conclusions on documentary evidence and not stories passed down by word of mouth over hundreds of years.

To do a study on the evolution of Islam we need to break down this evolutionary process into many periods.

The first period would be the 22 years of the time of the Prophet. It is said that the Prophet was born in the year 570 and died in the year 632 at age 62-63. It was not until he was about 40, though, before Muhammad attained prophet-hood with the first revelation of the Quran. Then, for the next 22-23 years until he died, Muhammad propagated his new religion.

Even then this first period of the development of Islam can be broken down into two phases, the Mekah phase (12 years) and the Medina phase (10 years).

The Mekah phase can be concluded as the peaceful period of the propagation of Islam while the Medina phase was the more militant period of Islam. Even the Mekah verses of the Quran and the Medina verses reflect these two different periods.

I would even dare say, and risk getting whacked for saying it, that the Mekah verses of the Quran were more compromising while the Medina verses were less compromising.

Then, after Muhammad died, we had another 29 years of the Four Caliphs from 632 to 661. This period was also in Medina.

This was then followed by the Umayyad period of 661 to 750. And from hereon the headquarters of Islam was transferred to Damascus in Syria (the place which is currently facing a civil war with 130,000-150,000 people killed). And this was when they conquered new territories from Spain to the Hindu Kush in India.

This, in fact, was the bloody period of Islam. When the Umayyads conquered Spain they brought back 10,000 slaves while India had to send 1,000 pretty boys a year as slaves to Damascus.

Before this there were two great empires in existence — the Persian Empire (Sasanian dynasty) based 20 miles south-east of Baghdad and the Eastern Roman Empire based in Constantinople. The Muslims of Medina under Uthman managed to sack the Persian Empire but the Umayyads failed miserably when they took on Constantinople.

What is most interesting to note, though, is that the Persian and Roman Empires were corrupt and affluent. Their rulers lived a lavish lifestyle of sin and pleasure. And this was what the Umayyad rulers aped. Within just a few years the Umayyads became worse than the Persians they replaced and the Romans they dreamt of replacing but failed to do so.

And this was why the Umayyad Empire lasted less than 100 years.

In 740, the Persians revolted and eventually, after a bloody civil war at great loss of life on both sides, the Umayyads were ousted. In 750, a new Abbasid Empire emerged and which was based in Iraq (the seat of the old Persian Empire).

This empire, which was headquartered in Kufa, Samarra and then Baghdad, lasted until 1258 when it was sacked by the Mongols led by Hulagu Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan.

Now, while the 29-year Medina period was mainly a period of continuing the traditions of the Prophet and the 89-year Umayyad period of Syria a period of conquest, corruption and opulence, the Abbasid period was the period of defining Islam.

While the Umayyads may have conquered a lot of new territory, they did not really want the people of these occupied territories to convert to Islam. Non-Muslims living under an Islamic government needed to pay a poll tax so it is better that they remain non-Muslims and pay tax. After all the Umayyads needed money, plenty of money to finance their lavish and expensive lifestyle, so they were more interested in money than in converts.

The Abbasids, however, who were based in the seat of the ancient Persian Empire where Zoroastrianism was the religion of that territory, wanted to absorb the non-Muslims into Islam, obviously for political reasons. Hence many Zoroastrians converted to Islam while Christians remained Christians and paid tax.

In fact, the Zoroastrian Persians complained that the Christians were given special treatment (as long as they paid a poll tax) while the Zoroastrians were treated badly unless they converted to Islam. Hence many Zoroastrians became Muslims but in name only. At heart they still believed in their ancient Zoroastrianism.

And this was a problem the Abbasids faced. The Zoroastrians who converted to Islam were fake Muslims and secretly were still very much Zoroastrians. But over time they had been absorbed into Islam and this, too, meant they had ‘infiltrated’ Islam, so to speak.

The Abbasids wanted to erase the Arabic roots of Islam (as Persians hate being called Arabs even until today and even in the UK) so they embarked upon ‘Persianising’ Islam. They needed to give Islam a new identity and that was when they reinvented Islam.

Basically it was a political strategy so that they could declare their predecessors, the Umayyads, as deviants, not true Muslims, infidels (kafirs), and so on.

Just to digress a bit, when the Abbasids took over, they hunted down all the Umayyads right up to the doorstep of Spain, and brought them back to Iraq. They then held a great feast and while everyone ate and laughed they watched the Umayyads being killed with a slow death. In short, the Abbasids held a party over the bodies of the Umayyads.

Hence they had to justify the propaganda that the Umayyads were not really Muslims so killing them was a very Islamic thing to do. And hence, also, the Umayyad version of Islam needs to be wiped out and replaced with the Abbasid version.

And this was when they came out with the Hadith or sayings of the Prophet so that Islam and even some parts of the Quran could be ‘correctly’ interpreted or reinterpreted. The Abbasids had to convince everyone that the earlier version of Islam was not too correct and herewith is the correct version.

This, of course, would be open to debate and will be a debate that will never end until the end of time and will never come to any consensus. However, one example, which the Persian Shias would quote, would be that the Quran states that Muslims must pray three times a day whereas the Hadith says it must be five times a day, which is the same practice as Zoroastrianism.

Hence are modern Muslims following the Quran or are they following Persian Zoroastrianism as stipulated in the Abbasid Hadith?

That is just one example but if you were to do a detailed study of the Abbasid Hadith you will find a lot of Zoroastrianism in Islam.

The other thing to note is that the Saracens were already around long before the birth of Prophet Muhammad. Ptolemy already recorded their existence back in the year 100 plus (he died in the year 168) and the Saracens were supposed to have been Ishmaelites (followers of Ishmael).

It is believed that Abraham had two sons — Ishmael, the eldest son from a slave named Hagar, and Isaac, the younger son from Abraham’s wife, Sara. The Jews regarded Isaac as the legal successor to Abraham while the Saracens regarded Ishmael as this legal successor.

Hence the Saracens were initially called Hagarenes and, later, Ishmaelites.

But then we are talking about a period long before the birth of both Prophet Muhammad and Jesus Christ. This was a period soon after Moses led his people out of Egypt and not documented until about 100 years or so after the birth of Christ and about 500 years before the birth of Prophet Muhammad.

So, if the doctrine of Ismail being the legitimate successor to Abraham was an Islamic doctrine then how come long before Christ the Saracens of the Northern Sinai Peninsula already believed in this doctrine?

And that is why in the early days Muslims were referred to as Saracens and later as Muhammadians (because they followed the Saracen doctrine and Zoroastrian rituals).

And that is why I am of the opinion that Mariam Mokhtar is wrong about her assumptions in her article I mentioned above. She quotes the Ten Commandments and suggests that the Umno Muslims are bad Muslims for violating the Ten Commandments.

The thing is Muslims do not follow the Ten Commandments. There is so much evidence in Islamic history to prove that Muslims are ‘exempted’ from the Ten Commandments under certain situations and conditions. If you go by what happened over 1,400 years of Islamic history (or even just look at what happened during the Umayyad and Abbasid periods) you can see that the Islam you believe it to be and the Islam that is are two different ideologies.

Hence is Mariam Mokhtar talking about theoretical Islam or historical Islam?