Civilization #28: Muhammad's Revolution of God

Okay, good morning. So we are doing Muhammad and the rise of Islam today. Muhammad, as you know, is one of the most important and influential figures in human history. He is as important as Jesus, but ironically we actually don't know that much about Muhammad. In fact, we probably know more about Jesus than we know about Muhammad. With Jesus at least we have a lot of his quotations, a lot of his sayings, which give us insight into his philosophy, his religion, his thinking, but with Muhammad we don't have that many quotations, we don't have that many written sources. In fact, the Quran, which is the holy book of the Islamic tradition, doesn't really mention him, even though in theory it is written by him. In fact, one of the earliest written documents about Muhammad is actually from a Christian bishop, written about 20 or 30 years after Muhammad's death in 632 CE. Okay, so we know he existed, so we know that he was a real person and he was the founder of the Islamic tradition, and this is what Sebeos says about Muhammad at that time: "A certain man from among those same sons of Ishmael, whose name was Mahmet." Okay, so Mahmet is Muhammad. In fact, we don't even know what his real name is.

Muhammad just means "blessed one" in Arabic. "A merchant." Okay, so he was a merchant. "As if by God's command, appeared to them as a preacher." So he was a prophet who rallied the Arabs to his cause. "Abandoning their vain cults, they turned to the living God who had appeared to the father Abraham." Okay, so Muhammad converted the polytheistic Arabs to the monotheism of the Jews. "So Mahmet legislated for them not to eat carrion, not to drink wine, not to speak falsely, and not to engage in fornication. He said with an oath, 'God promised this land to Abraham and his seed after him forever,' and he brought about as he promised during that time while he loved Ishmael." Okay, so what he's saying is the Arabs are the descendants of Abraham, just like the Jews and the Christians. "But now you are the sons of Abraham, and God is accomplishing his promise to Abraham and his seed to you." Okay, you have been, God promised you the promised land, and now this land has been taken away from you. Okay, Jerusalem, Israel has been taken away from you, and now we will take it back by going to war, jihad, holy war. "Love sincerely only the God of Abraham, and go and seize the land which God gave to your father Abraham.

No one will be able to resist you in battle because God is with you." Okay, so this is actually very similar to the story of Moses in the Bible, right? The Jews were enslaved in Egypt and Moses appeared before them and promised to take them back to Israel, right? So this is clearly following an ancient tradition, and so Muhammad in many ways is like Moses. In fact, what's really strange is that in the Quran the most quoted figure, the figure that is most mentioned, is Moses, not Muhammad or Jesus.

Okay, so let's try to figure out what's going on here. First of all, what Muhammad is saying is that Christians, Jews and Arabs are all one big family. Why? Because in the Bible it says that Abraham made a covenant with Yahweh. Abraham swore allegiance to Yahweh, in return Yahweh gave him the promised land. Now the promised land is not Israel, the promised land is all that territory going from the Nile to the Tigris in modern-day Iraq, so basically the entire Middle East. Okay, that's what the promised land is. Now this is important because Abraham had a wife, Sarah. Sarah for most of her life was not able to give birth, and if you don't have descendants, if you don't have children, you don't get the promised land, right?

So in desperation Sarah gave Abraham her maid named Hagar, and Abraham impregnated Hagar, and Hagar gave birth to a son named Ishmael, and then Ishmael went to the Arabian Desert and he is the father of the Arab people. Okay, and that's where Muhammad comes from, the Arabs. Sarah, by the miracle of God, would eventually be able to give birth to the Israelites, okay, and as we know the Israelites will eventually become the Christians. So in other words, the Christians, the Jews and the Muslims have a common ancestor in Abraham. Okay, so this is what this is saying.

So even though we don't have that many written sources about Muhammad, we have something called the Hadith. Okay, the Hadith is Arabic and it just means an oral tradition. So there are these stories about Muhammad that have been passed on orally from generation to generation celebrating his life. And so let's go over what is traditionally understood about Muhammad. So Muhammad was born in the year 570 into an Arab tribe, okay, and he's born in a place called Mecca in the desert.

He became a trader, a merchant, because most people at that time were either nomads or merchants, and at a very young age he married a very wealthy widow, and until the age of 40 his life was prosperous but uneventful. Then at 40 he started to meditate in a cave. Okay, that's a very common thing, to go to a cave and to meditate as a form of religious worship, and while he was at the cave the angel Gabriel appeared before Muhammad and he said to Muhammad, "You and your family have lost your way. You are the descendants of Ishmael, who brought the religion of Yahweh to the desert. Back then you were monotheistic, but then over time you became corrupted and became polytheistic, and so you have a mission. Tell your fellow Arabs the story of Yahweh, the story of the Bible, and return them to the love of Yahweh, return them to monotheism." And so Gabriel, in a series of visions, would tell Muhammad the story of the Bible, okay, including Moses taking the chosen people, the Jews, from Egypt back to the promised land, and this is considered a miracle and true because Muhammad was an illiterate merchant who had no exposure to the Bible, so this had to be true and this shows that this is all a miracle.

So Muhammad is now inspired by the Archangel Gabriel to preach the word of God, but at this time Arabia is a polytheistic, primitive and backward society, so the people of Mecca reject him. He spent 13 years in Mecca preaching the word but they rejected him. So eventually he decides to move to Medina, okay, and this move is very important, it's called the hijra, okay, the immigration. He and his followers moved from Mecca to Medina, and this starts the Islamic tradition, and this marks the year zero in the Islamic calendar, just as the birth of Jesus marks the year zero in the Christian calendar. Okay, so he goes to Medina because the tribes there have invited him to be a judge. The tribes there, one of the tribes is actually Jewish, they're fighting amongst themselves and they need someone to arbitrate their disputes, and so Muhammad goes and he creates something called the Constitution of Medina, which promises the freedom of religious expression to all people. Okay, there will be no religious prejudice in Medina. Eventually over time more and more followers are attracted to his message of monotheism, and he starts to build a following, an army, and because he's preaching a faith that is counter to the mainstream faith, he gets attacked by other Arab tribes and there are some setbacks, but through the love of God, through the will of God, he triumphs over them and he unites the Arabian Peninsula.

Now at this point they are a threat to the two major world empires at this time, the Byzantine Empire, who are the heirs to the Roman Empire, as well as the Sasanian Persian Empire, and they both attack him, sorry, they both attack the Muslims, but again through the miracle of God the Muslims are able to defeat both empires, and in less than 100 years they conquer most of the, okay. It is one of the greatest mysteries in world history how this happened. All right, how was it possible for desert people, okay, these are desert nomads who are poor and backward, how they were able to defeat two world empires and conquer most of the world? Their empire at its height would stretch from Spain in the west all the way to India and would include Egypt, the Levant, Mesopotamia and Iran. Okay, very impressive. How do they do that? And this mystery has never been solved. We will try in today's class to solve this mystery. In today's class we'll try to answer three major questions.

First of all, who was Muhammad really, who was this person, what did he believe, what did he want, that's the first question. Second question is how was this new religion, Islam, able to try, all right. And the third and last is why do we know so little about the early history of the Islamic tradition?

Okay, so given that we know so little about the early history, and given that there are few written sources about the early history and very little archaeology has been done because Mecca and Medina are the two holiest sites in the Islamic tradition, all right, so we don't have that much evidence. In this situation we can only use analogies. Are there historical incidents that are analogous or similar to what happened in the Arabian Peninsula 1500 years ago? And the answer is there are some, there are actually many, many similarities. All right, so I'll look at three, I'll just look at three. Okay, the first is from 1850 to 1864 in China, there's something called the Taiping Rebellion. I'm not sure if you know the story, but what happened was there was this young man, only in his 20s, his name is Hong Xiuquan, and he's trying to become a scholar official by taking the examination, and he failed three times already.

After his third attempt he runs into a Christian missionary who gives him a pamphlet, and he just reads that pamphlet and he learns about Jesus. Then he has a dream where he meets Jesus, and Jesus tells him, "You're my brother, you're my little brother." And after he fails the exam for the fourth time, he decides to abandon that scholar official route and embrace his destiny as the brother, as a Chinese brother, of Jesus, and eventually over the course of 10 years he's able to build a following, eventually conquers most of China and is almost able to overthrow the Qing Empire. But there are some other factors at work, for example the Western powers, mainly the British Empire, intervene on behalf of the Qing Dynasty. So a very similar situation with the Muslim conquest of the world, right? These are peasants who have this very strange new religion and somehow they're able to beat a major empire. And what the story of the Taiping Rebellion tells us is a new religion that is revolutionary in the right social, historical, economic circumstances can be very powerful. Okay, so what drove the Taiping soldiers in battle was both the idea of religious devotion, God is with us, and zeal, we are making a new world, and when soldiers are infused with both religious devotion and revolutionary zeal, they're not afraid to die, they will fight to the death, and that's why they were able to overwhelm the government's soldiers.

Okay, same thing happened in something called the War of Canudos from 1896 to 1898. In Europe, Canudos is a northern province in Brazil, and Brazil for most of its history was an extremely racist society where minorities were persecuted by the predominantly Spanish and white colonizers, and it was an extremely unequal society where few landlords controlled all the wealth. So the Canudos was a rebellion to overthrow these landlords and establish a kingdom of heaven. It was led by this preacher who preached the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven, just like Jesus, and he was surrounded by these peasants who overthrew the landlords. They were surrounded by bandits, who were criminals basically, they didn't have any guns, they didn't have any weapons, they didn't have any soldiers. The Brazilian army saw them as a threat and they sent three expeditions against these peasants. All three times the Brazilian army was destroyed. Okay, they lost the battle.

Why? Because again, when peasants have revolutionary zeal and religious devotion, they're not afraid to die, and so hand to hand they were able to defeat the Brazilian soldiers who were well armed and well trained. So with the fourth expedition the Brazilian army decided to send everyone, the entire Brazilian army was sent against this peasant uprising because they saw this as a threat to the social order, and what they did was rather than engage the peasants in hand-to-hand combat directly, they surrounded the area with artillery and they bombarded the peasants until they were dead. They basically nuked the peasants, okay, because they could not defeat the peasants hand to hand or directly. And in both times, the Taiping Rebellion and the War of Canudos, you can say it was a religious movement, but they were both revolutions, they were trying to overthrow the established social order.

Okay, so let's look at one more example of this, which is the French Revolution. Now we're going to spend a lot of time on the French Revolution next semester, so I don't want to spend too much time on it right now, okay, but you know the basic outline of the French Revolution, right, where the nobility and the were overthrown and they established a new government, and the monarchies of Europe united against France because they saw France as a threat to the established social order of Europe, and the French revolutionaries were able to defeat the combined armies of Europe, and under Napoleon they established a French, okay.

So all three incidents are very similar to what happened in the Arabian Peninsula in 600 CE. So in other words, what I believe happened is this was the world's first global revolution. Okay, so let me explain what I mean by that.

Okay, so first of all, let's better understand the Arabian Peninsula at this time. Okay, so this is the year 600, and again there are two major world empires. Around the Arabian Peninsula there's the Byzantine Empire, which is basically like this, okay, these are Byzantines, and they are the heirs to the Romans, so basically the Eastern Roman Empire. Okay, and they still think of themselves as the Roman Empire, but historically we call them the Byzantines now. And over here, okay, is what we call the Sasanian Persian Empire, and as you can see they're huge. Okay, this is India and this is Spain, by the way, okay, and this is Egypt. So these are huge world empires and then you have the Arabs in the Arabian Peninsula, which is this desert, okay.

And you look at this map and you'll be like, oh my God, how was it possible for the Arabs to defeat both the Byzantine Empire and the Sasanian Persian Empire? And the answer is this. What people don't understand, what people do not recognize, is in 600 CE the hotbed of innovation was actually here in the Arabian Peninsula. This was the most crazy, the most open and the most cosmopolitan center in the world at this time, and that's what people don't really understand. So let me explain why.

Okay, as you can see from this map, the Arabian Peninsula is a desert, but it's basically the center of the world, and remember in this class what you're taught is the world has always been connected through trade. Okay, so the Arabian Peninsula, even though you can't really have cities because you don't have any rivers and you can't really grow crops so you can't have agriculture, they've been trading with other nations and civilizations for thousands of years, okay, because there's a crisscross of empire. So if India wanted to access Egypt, okay, because again Egypt for the longest time was the wealthiest civilization, then they had to first send their goods to Arabia, and then the nomads would transport the goods into Egypt, okay.

So what does it mean to be a trading center? Well, the first thing that it means is you have access to the most advanced technology, information and knowledge in the world, because you're a trader, you go everywhere and you bring back not just goods but stories and information. They know everything about the world, they know exactly what's happening in the Byzantine Empire, they know exactly what's happening in the Sasanian Empire, even though most people don't know what's happening in the desert. Okay, also because you're traders, they're extremely open-minded, cosmopolitan, they have no prejudices, they have to be friends of everyone. And the third thing is, because they're traders, they have to constantly learn. Okay, so that's the first unique characteristic about the Arabian Peninsula at this time. These are open-minded, cosmopolitan people who are constantly absorbing new information, new knowledge to better their society.

The second thing about the Arabian Peninsula is that it's a war society. You don't have cities, you don't have centralized control, just tribes, okay, just different clans, different families fighting each other, so honor is very important. If you offend someone in my family, we go to war. Okay, but guess what, because they're always at war, these are brave people who know how to fight, and that's why both the Byzantines and the Sasanians hired these people as mercenaries.

Okay, and so as mercenaries they were learning the most advanced warcraft, military doctrine of both the Sasanians and the Byzantines. These were the best soldiers in the world basically, and what happened is that over time the Byzantines and Sasanians would set up states within the Arabian Peninsula, okay, so these are client states. All right, so that's the second thing, this is a war society, okay, who know how to fight.

The third thing that makes the Arabian Peninsula so innovative is its diversity. All right, so what do I mean by that? Okay, so as we discussed last class, Augustine creates this intellectual blueprint for the Catholic Church and the focus is on obedience. Okay, the idea is orthodoxy, meaning there is only one proper way to understand our religion, and if you disagree then it's heresy. Okay, and as we discussed, the problem with the Christian religion is it's very, very confusing. So we talked about the example of the Godhead, right, Jesus, Holy Spirit and God are one and the same. Well, this creates a lot of problems. For example, the very basis of the Christian religion is that Jesus died for our sins, right?

Jesus was sacrificed, he was crucified, and he suffered for our sins. Here's a question though: how does God suffer, how does God die? That makes no sense. So this is a debate that has never ended, okay. Even today Christians still fight over it, it's the idea of Christology: what is the nature of Christ? Is he divine, is he human, is he both, is he half and half, was he human here and then divine up there? There are lots of possibilities, and even today Christians, okay. So from the first day Christians have fought each other over the nature of Christ and the nature of the Godhead.

Okay, and again because of orthodoxy there's only one interpretation and you must follow that interpretation, and if you don't follow that interpretation, guess what, you either have to go somewhere else or you die. And so they're forced to go east, right? They either go to the Sasanian Empire or they go to the Arabian desert. Many go to the Arabian desert. Why? Because in the Arabian desert there's no central authority, you're free to practice the faith as you choose. And guess what, often those who are the most heretical, those who want to practice your own faith are the most innovative, because they like to ask questions, they like to explore, they want to practice a personal faith, they believe that God is someone you communicate with, right?

The Catholic Church demands that you can only access God through priests, you're not to read the Bible, you're not allowed to question orthodoxy, and the most intelligent people want to do that. They want to speak to God, they want to practice their own personal faith, they want to ask questions, and in this world at this time the only place you can do that is the Arabian Desert. You have lots of Christians here, Christians who are very controversial, they all end up in the Arabian Desert in order to practice their faith.

You also have a lot of Jews in the Arabian desert. Why? Well, first of all, I mean, the Arabian desert is very close to Jerusalem, right? So there's always been Jews there as traders, and when they go to the Arabian desert, remember, this is a common story about how the Arabs and the Jews come from one big family, Abraham. Okay, so they're able to coalesce and mingle and marry fairly easily. You also had a lot of Jews who are escaping persecution, right?

You also have a lot of Jews who fought in the civil wars against Rome and they lost and they had to run to the Arabian Desert, okay, so you have a lot of Jews here as well. You also have Zoroastrians from the Sasanian Empire, who again want to practice their own personal faith. So the Arabian Desert is a hotbed of religious diversity and tolerance. You are allowed to practice any faith and people respect it. Okay, and again they have some of the smartest Jews and Christians and Jans in the world at this point, people who will eventually lend their expertise to the Arab military machine. All right, so they will help the Arabs develop innovative siege warfare and military doctrine and science as well. Okay, does that make sense?

At the same time, while Arabia is increasing in terms of innovation and wealth and diversity, both the Byzantines and the Sasanians are declining in terms of social stability. Okay, so as we discussed in this class, whenever you have stability, what happens is you will eventually have inequality and corruption. So people within the Byzantine Empire are extremely unhappy for three reasons. The first reason is the problem of landlessness. Second problem is debt. These are problems that have existed throughout history. Why are there so many revolutions in Chinese history?

Because of these two problems, right? Because there are few people who control all the land and because the peasants get into debt so much that they can't pay it back, and their entire family for generations are enslaved to the landlords. But also at this time, because of the Catholic Church, you also have the problem of persecution, all right? You are not allowed to practice your own faith, you are only allowed to practice the faith that the Catholic Church demands of you. And the same situation is also true in the Persian Empire, all right? So the people are extremely unhappy.

At the same time there's a lot of instability within the government of these empires. Why? Well, first of all because they're always fighting each other. Okay, so wars, they're always fighting each other, and that causes them to lose a lot of resources. Okay, second is whenever you have large cities you have the problem of plagues, right, disease, plagues. So there are these plagues called the Justinian plague that wiped out about 10 to 20% of the population at this point. And the third problem is civil wars, right, because whenever an emperor dies they fight over who's the next emperor. So in other words, it seems that the Byzantines and the Sasanians are really strong and the Arabs are really weak.

When you actually analyze it, you realize that, oh wow, the Byzantines are extremely weak, the Sasanians are really weak, and the Arabs are really strong. The problem with the Arabs though is they're divided, right? They're divided into like thousands, tens of thousands of different tribes. So the question now is how do you unite them? So you need a leader to come and inspire the people. Okay, and this is Muhammad.

Now what's important for us to understand is there are lots of different prophets who think they're the Messiah at this point, okay, because the Zoroastrian religion and the Christian religion and the Jewish religion all believe that the Messiah will come, okay, and we call this apocalyptic eschatology. This is very, very popular, right, because with empires, the more stable empires are, the more corruption, the more inequality, the more social stagnation there is, okay, so people actually turn towards the idea of the apocalyptic. So there are hundreds of people who think of themselves as a messiah, but eventually Muhammad becomes a messiah of their people. Okay, and why? Well, fortunately we have a formulation of a great leader that we've learned in this class.

All right, so let me remind you of the formulation. The first is the person is strategic, he becomes visionary. Second is that the person is innovative, he becomes revolutionary. The third is the person is disciplined, he becomes selfless. Right, and so there are many individuals we've met in this class that follow this formula. So for example Philip of Macedon as well as Caesar, Philip and Julius Caesar, they reimagined warfare, they made their armies into meritocracies where the very best and the most loyal were able to rise up in the ranks regardless of class or caste, okay, and they were selfless, they were always the first in battle, they put the soldiers first. Okay, and so we can say that whoever Muhammad was would fit this description.

Okay, so let me explain. All right, you are in the Arabian Peninsula, there are tens of thousands of different factions, different tribes who have been fighting each other for centuries, they don't really like each other. Now how do you unite them, how do you get everyone to work together and defeat both the Byzantines and the Sasanians? Well, if you have three different messages you can unite everyone.

Okay, the first message is this: we are all God's children. Okay, Arabs, Jews, Christians, we are all descendants of Abraham, therefore we are all God's children, we are one big family. There should be no religious difference and persecution among us, and because we're all God's children and because we're all different, we should be free to practice any religion we want. The Christian religion is just as valid as the Jewish religion. Okay, so that's the first thing.

Second thing that you can say is that, okay, so you're basically creating a meritocracy. A meritocracy is basically revolution, right? The idea of class, the idea of caste, the idea of tribal loyalties goes against the will of God, because we're all God's children, we're all equal in the eyes of God, therefore those who are most willing to work hard to achieve God's vision on Earth should rise to the top, regardless of your religion, regardless of your class, regardless of your caste. It's a meritocracy.

Okay, and the third message is God gave us the promised land. This land that extends from the Nile to the Tigris is what God promised us. We are all God's children, so each and every one of us should have land. But the The Byzantines, the Persians stole this land from us, but the landlords, the wealthy, stole it from us.

Therefore we must fight a jihad to take it back, because that is God's will. When we take it back, we'll establish a kingdom of heaven on Earth, we'll follow God's law. God's law, equality, it demands mercy and tolerance, it demands openness, that is God's law. Okay, so that's Muhammad. So in other words, Muhammad was a revolutionary who wanted to overthrow the social order in order to establish the Kingdom of Heaven. He was the Messiah promised to the Jews and promised to the Christians, and who will now unite Arabs, Christians and Jews in achieving the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. That's who Muhammad was.

Okay, and so let's go back and read the description of Muhammad and his army by Sebeos to see if this is correct. "At that time a certain man from among the same sons of Ishmael, whose name was Mahmet, a merchant, as if by God's command." Okay, so he is the Messiah, he's the promised one, God has ordered him to do this. "Appeared to them as a preacher." Okay, so he united them, and they started to see themselves as all the children of Abraham, and therefore the children of God.

"And then Mahmet gave them the law of God: not to eat carrion, not to drink wine, not to speak falsely, and not to engage in fornication." This is the law of God, this is the Kingdom of Heaven. "He said with an oath, 'God promised this land to Abraham and his seed after him forever.'" This is the land that God promised to us, his children, but the Romans have it, the Persians have it, the landlords have it. "And he brought about as he promised during that time while he loved Ishmael. But now you are the sons of Abraham, and God is accomplishing his promise to Abraham and his seed to you." Okay, I have come to you as God's messenger, as God's prophet, to tell you that this land is yours and you must take it back. "Love sincerely only the God of Abraham, and go and seize the land which God gave to your father Abraham." Seize the land, overthrow the tyrants, overthrow the landlords, take it back. "No one will be able to resist you in battle because God is with you." Okay, so this combines revolutionary zeal, overturning of social order, with religious devotion, God is with us, and this is the same mentality that drove the French Revolution, the War of Canudos in Brazil, and the Taiping in China, and so this is the first truly global revolution.

Okay, and this explains why the Muslims were able to triumph over both the Byzantines and the Sasanians, because wherever they went they freed the people from debt and landlessness and religious persecution. You are now allowed to practice any faith you want, you have that freedom now, that's important to people. You now have some land where you can grow crops, and we will wipe away debt. Okay, so in less than 100 years, okay, look what happened, they were able to conquer the entire Persian Empire and half of the Byzantine Empire. Right, that's the power of religious devotion and revolutionary zeal. So that's how they were able to do it.

Now the last question we have is, why don't we know any of this? Why isn't this taught in history books? The answer is because the revolution worked out, because they won, they achieved the revolution, but now after they achieved the revolution they become an empire. If you're an empire you don't want people to revolt against you, so you have to whitewash this history, right? You don't want people to know that Muhammad was a revolutionary.

So you changed the history. The history is that Muhammad was disgusted by the inequality and corruption he saw in the world around him, and he promised the people freedom from religious persecution, from debt and from landlessness, and that's what drew followers to him. Right, you don't want another Muhammad appearing in your empire, so you change the history and say that, oh no, no, the real conflict was that Muhammad wanted monotheism, the Arabs wanted polytheism, that's what the problem was. Okay, and the same is true in China today, right? Who created the Chinese Revolution, who enabled the Communist Party to control China? Mao, right? Do you learn about Mao in school? No, you don't. Same thing, you understand? So they're trying to whitewash their history, because it's embarrassing for a global empire to celebrate a revolutionary who hated corruption and inequality. See, and that's why there's so little written about Muhammad, and that's why the Quran doesn't really tell us that much about Muhammad, okay, because his revolution won. Okay, is this clear to you? Do you have any questions? Okay, all right.

So we have two more classes before the semester ends, okay, they're both on Dante. The reason why is Dante is the greatest poet, the greatest prophet in human history, and he's really the second coming of Homer.

Remember, Homer created Greek civilization. Well, Dante, with his work the Divine Comedy, will create modern Europe, European civilization. Okay, so next class, next Tuesday, we'll start looking at Dante.