Story of Civilization – IV.vii.iv – IV.x.iv

Here, Durant introduces the Muslim religion.  Anyone who says that Islam is a religion of peace doesn’t know what they are talking about, or is lying.  Islam was born in a sea of blood.  Its early history is clan-based or tribal warfare, vendetta, and murder.  Even after Mohammed died, Islam was a religion of violence.  One of its signal contributions to history was what is probably one of the greatest military achievements of the millenium: the Arab conquest of all lands south of the Mediterranean from Morocco to the Indus.

The Arab conquest is as interesting as many other surprising military events in history.  I found myself asking the same question of the Arab conquest that I asked of the Roman conquests in “Caesar and Christ”: how did they do it?  What made them so good?  In the Roman case, it turned out that the Roman legions had a relatively more dynamic formation than the Macedonian phalanxes that they opposed, allowing them to triumph by quickly adjusting tactics.  As it happens, this post suggests that the Arabs similarly turned mobility and dynamism to their advantage.  By having a force composed predominantly of cavalry, they were able to harrass their enemies with feints and scouting maneuvers until they discovered a point of weakness, at which point they could use their horses’ speed to coalesce on the weak points and concentrate attacks on them.  Presumably, the Arabs were not the first to discover the usefulness of cavalry; we have seen the Gothic tribes use similar tactics against the Roman legion, but perhaps such tactics had not yet achieved dominance in the Roman world itself.

In any case, the intricacies of warfare should not distract from the greater point: much of Islam’s early glory comes from religiously-motivated violence.  In fact, early Islamic violence was not motivated merely by faith in Mohammed in general, but by the specific promise that a death on behalf of the prophet would guarantee acceptance into paradise.  In one of the very first episodes in Mohammed’s story, after having preached Islam in Mecca and earned the enmity of the cults there, Mohammed fled to Medina.  The citizens there had offered him their protection, asking only what they would get should they die at the hands of the angry Meccans.  Mohammed promised them paradise.

Such promises were not merely given for the potential of death in defense of the prophet.  Later, in Medina, Mohammed personally led numerous raids on the trade and agriculture of the surrounding communities, again promising paradise to those who died in these raids.  Mohammed also assaulted – and exterminated – several neighboring Jewish tribes, on the concern that they might come to the aid of his enemies in Mecca.  His warriors were motivated by promises of paradise.  Again, these were not wars of defense, except under the most liberal definition of defense by attack.

Nor was Muslim violence confined to unbelievers.  The early history of Islam is rife with internecine strife, which lives to the modern day as the fight between Shia and Sunni.  One episode from Durant will inspire the imagination to understand this early history:

“Abdallah, made governor of Syria, managed the matter with humor and dispatch.  He announced an amnesty to the Umayyads, and to confirm it he invited eighty of their leaders to dinner.  While they ate, his hidden soldiers, at his signal, put them all to the sword.  Carpets were spread over the fallen men, and the feast was resumed by the Abbasid diners over the bodies of their foes, and to the music of dying groans.  The corpses of several Umayyad caliphs were exhumed, the almost fleshless skeletons were scourged, hanged, and burned, and the ashes were scattered to the winds.”

The point of these stories is not to malign Islam.  I have the highest respect for any individual who takes a set of premises – even be they religious in nature – and rigorously, logically applies those premises to his life, and follows them to whatever conclusions to which they may lead him.  I simply think it unfortunate that Islam should be misrepresented by its followers – such as here – in an effort to win… what?  Support?  Understanding?  Sympathy?

I can even accept someone who wishes to be a hypocrite, who wishes to call himself a Muslim but practice a religion solely of peace, so long as he admits that this is what he will do.  I will pick no quarrel with someone who acknowledges the violent and bloody history of Islam, starting with the Prophet himself, and then says, “I choose to call myself a Muslim, but I will not accept all of the teachings of the prophet, only those that please me, and allow me to conform with the secular mores of my time and place.”  I only ask that if this is what one will do, that he say so, that he admit that he cares not about premises, that his ultimate concerns are secular, or at least predetermined spiritual mores, and that he will use even the most tortured logic to get from any premise to his conclusion.