Islam is usually considered as an Arabic language,
this is because it was an Arabic language during most of the VII century.
The third large religion was born in Arabia (together with Jewish and Christians).
Its prophet Mohammed was Arab, The sacred book, The Koran, was written
in Arab. In 632 al the Arabic peoples had intake its authority.
The armies belonging to the Arabs had conquered all the territories
from the Iberian Peninsula to the India in no more than a hundred years,
introducing a new local administration, the caliphate, where the Arabs
took the whole important positions of power and privilege.
Many of the Arabs believe that their amazing military
triumphs where due to the new religion. It also gave them more power because
of the benefits of the surrender peoples (bootees). The new empire gave
them the power of the trade, which gave a great chance for merchants and
for the local authorities who charge commission, to get lot of incoming.
It is not unusual that most of the foreigners wanted
to become part of this new privilege group. It changed from a cultural
way of expression to a universal and cosmopolitan society in a century.
Respect to others cultures by Arabs.
It is thought that the new religion was forced
to be accepted by the conquered tribes.
However we have to distinguish between the Islam as a government,
and the Islam as a religion.
The Koran says that there is no coercion about religion. Muslin Arabs
wanted to preserve their power and privilege by not expanding their religion.
Nonetheless the Koran says that Muslims must use their laws wherever they
live, so this is the reason why the Islam became widespread.
Arabs, since the first conquers, tend to leave
the systems and infrastructures as they were. As tribal peoples, they
had no previous experience about governing empires, so cleverly they prefer
to leave everything as it was, just taking the most important positions
and becoming the highest authorities. The Muslims judges, (or qadis),
only were used when important cases took place. The education system was
leave with the same teachers, without taking into account their religion.
Moreover, these teachers began to teach to Arabic Muslims.
Arabs where aware of the importance of their conquered
cultures, Omeyas promoted physics, mathematics, astronomers, etc., to come
to their cities to work. Furthermore, Arabs tend to learn the intellectual
traditions from the Mediterranean classic world, including essays of the
Greek and Latin philosophers, scientist, who usually where persecuted by
Byzantine Christians. As a result, most of the essays were written in Arab,
lately they were translated to many different languages.
Islam conversion consequences.
Many Arabs wanted to become part of the Muslim
community because they use to protect themselves.
The Koran says that all the men are equal. However
the Islam society was still based on a tribal hierarchy so the originally
members wanted more rights than those new ones.
A general characteristic of the Muslims is that
they had close ties between Muslims when dealing with foreigners; we can
not say the same between themselves. They had keep the same hierarchy between
them and also had in mind the tribe where they come from, for instance
the great rivalry between the clans la Mecca and Medina).
Whoever who was not Arab, had no preceding clan.
To become Muslim was extremely easy; the only requisite was to recite
the Shahada, the faith: “There is no other God than Ala, and Mohammed is
his prophet”.
