In the beginning of the seventh century the people of the Arabian Desert were divided into the urban craftsmen and the rural herders, the Bedouins.  Neither Bedouins nor urban dwellers had any sort of organized government.  Both pagan groups worshiped rocks.  At Mecca rested the worship center, a black stone shrine known as the Kaaba.

Muhammad born AD 570 into one of the poorest clans in Mecca claimed a revelation from Allah, “the one true God.” Muhammad’s religion became known as Islam, a word meaning, “to submit to God.”  The official designation of a believer became a Muslim.

Muhammad inspired his followers to battle by promising them slaves and booty for victory and threatening them with death, destruction, and damnation if they failed to follow his commands. Wanting to convert all Arabs to his teaching Muhammad attacked caravans and laid siege to towns. Convinced that war was a sacred duty his united tribes growing larger with each victory destroyed all who opposed Allah. Men were massacred, women raped, children enslaved.

On June 8, 632 Muhammad died at Medina where his mosque became the second holiest worship site in the Muslim world. The ancient Kaaba in Mecca remains the holiest shrine.

The third most important Islamic monument is the Dome of the Rock that stands on the site of the original Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. This site commemorates the alleged occasion of Muhammad’s ascent through the seven heavens to the very presence of Allah.

Muhammad claimed that over a twenty-year period the angel Gabriel dictated the Quran (“the recitation”) to him. The illiterate Muhammad repeated the words from memory; they were later chronicled, reaching the final written form under the third Caliph, Uthman.  

The Quran, divided into 114 suras (chapters), contains four sections:

1. Doctrinal passages concerned with death, resurrection, and judgment. Martyrs gain entry into paradise. Rewards go to those who fight against infidels. Hell consists of fire and acrid smoke.
2. Prophetic stories many of which are adaptations of pagan customs.  Others show evidence of Christian and Jewish influence with alterations to fit the Arabian point of view. For example, according to the Quran Allah commanded Abraham to sacrifice Ishmael instead of Isaac.
3. Proclamations and regulations: The Quran prohibits alcohol and pork consumption, gambling, idolatry, image making, usury, and asserts that women are inferior to men. The Quran contains 109 verses calling Muslims to war with nonbelievers. Ethical admonitions include compassion and mercy.  The contradiction between mercy and killing infidels remains unresolved.
4. Religious duties, known as the Five Pillars of the Faith, consist of the following:
   1. Prayer must be said five times every 24-hours facing Mecca on clean ground.
   2. Alms giving are expected to represent one-fortieth of a man’s earnings.
   3. Fasting is ordained.  Eating and drinking and all worldly pleasure are forbidden between sunrise and sunset during Ramadan, the ninth month of Islamic year.  Because the Islamic calendar is lunar, Ramadan falls at different times of the year.
   4. Pilgrimage to Mecca once in a lifetime at which time one must fulfill a series of rituals.
   5. Profession of faith in Allah and Muhammad.

Soon after the death of Muhammad, Islam split into three major sects:

1. The Sunnites maintain that representatives of the believers should elect the Islamic leader. They believe that the Sunna –the traditions—supplemented the Koran as a valid source of belief. Sunnites make up more than eighty percent of the Muslims.
2. The Shiites advocate that Muhammad’s successor, or Caliph, should be related to the Prophet by blood or by marriage. They hold the Quran to be the only source of truth.  When Muhammad died, the Shiites rejected Abu Bakr, the Sunnite Caliph. They argued that Muhammad had designated Ali husband of his daughter Fatima as leader.
3. The Sufis adhere to a mystical and ascetic ideal.  They denied the validity of rational judgment, maintaining that truth comes from divine revelation released by torturing the body.

Following the death of Mohammad a great wave of Islamic expansion swept over Asia, Africa and Europe.  When Muhammad died in 632 Islam authority extended over little more than one-third the Arabian Peninsula.  Within a hundred years of Muhammad’s death Islam dominated half of the civilized world.

At the close of the first millennium the Seljuk Turks won control of Asia Minor.  The Turks defended Islamic civilization during the Crusades that began in 1096 as a series of military expeditions led by European Christians to drive the Muslims from Jerusalem.  In 1099 the Christian crusaders gained control over Jerusalem.  The Islamic warrior Saladin retook Jerusalem in 1187.  Five years later Richard the Lion-Hearted and Saladin made a truce that allowed Christian pilgrims to enter Jerusalem. 

The Muslin culture declined with the invasion of the Mongols in the middle of the thirteenth century.  By the fifteenth century the Muslim Ottoman Turks prevailed in the Middle East.

During World War I the Ottoman Empire joined Germany to fight against the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Russia and the United States.  Following the war the League of Nations divided the Islamic lands into territories governed by the Allied victors.  Many of the current Middle East countries gained independence in the years between the two great wars.  Currently several hotbeds of Islamic conflict exist:

Saudia Arabia.  About 1500 the Saud dynasty established control over a small area of land that would later become Saudia Arabia.  In the mid-eighteenth century, the Saudis formed an alliance with a religious fundamental, Muhammad idn Abd al-Wahhab, a Sunnite who believed that Muslims should follow a strict interpretation the Islamic law.  In 1932, Ibn Saud proclaimed the Arabian Peninsula the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.  Ibn Saud’s success was due largely to his revival of the Wahhabi movement.  Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait precipitated the Persian Gulf War of 1991.  Saudi leaders fearing that Iraq would attempt to control their oil fields joined the United States and its allies in driving the Iraqis out of Kuwait.  Thousands of U.S. troops were stationed in Saudi Arabia from 1991 to 2003.  The Wahhabis strongly opposed the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia home of Islam’s two holiest cities.  Tensions between the ruling Saudis and the Wahhabis began to grow.  The most notorious Wahhabi Saudi-born millionaire Osama bin Laden became the leader of the terrorist organization al-Qaida.

Afghanistan.  In 1996 bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders moved to Afghanistan.  There they lived under the protection of the Taliban a conservative Islamic group that controlled most of the country.  On September 11, 2001 Islamic terrorists hijacked two commercial jetliners and deliberately crashed them into the twin towers of World Trade Center causing them to collapse.  The United States retaliated by briefly ousting the Taliban from Afghanistan.

Syria is home to diverse ethnic and religious groups dominated by the Sunni Arabs. Bashar al-Assad who has been president of The Arab Republic of Syria since 2000 has effectively suspended most constitutional protections for citizens, many of whom have fled the country. A civil war has splintered the country, divided national alliances and contributed to rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) founded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 1999.

Iraq.  In 1979 the Shiite Muslim Ayatollah Khomeini took control of Iran and fought a war with Iraq over territorial disputes.  The United States supported Iraq until the Kuwait invasion in 1991 when the United States organized the Islamic coalition against Iraq.  In March 2003 United States-led forces launched another war against Iraq to topple Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein a supporter of the Taliban. After the American presence in Iraq ended in 2011 fighters from the Syrian Civil War spilled into the country allowing ISIS to grab Iraqi territory.

Iran. The Persian Empire as Iran was then called collapsed with the invasion of Alexander the Great in 330 BC. Under the Sassanid Dynasty Iran again became a leading world power until Muslims raided the country in 651 AD. Following a coup in 1953 secular Iran gradually became close allies with United States until the 1979 revolution. With the fall of Saddam Hussein Iran has become a nuclear threat and the religious terror group Hezbollah, an Iranian surrogate has grown more powerful.

Pakistan.  In the nineteenth century the area that makes up Pakistan and India came under British colonial rule.  In 1947, Pakistan was created as a homeland for Muslims while the people of India were primarily Hindus.  Almost all the people of Pakistan are Muslims, but major cultural groups including Punjabis, Sindhis, and Pashtuns make establishing a unified nation difficult.

Palestine, the land at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea and between Egypt and southwest Asia, has for over 2000 years been the center of religious conflict.  Between 1933 and 1935, more than 100,000 Jewish refugees fled to Palestine to escape persecution in Nazi Germany and Poland.  In 1947, the United Nations (UN) divided Palestine into two states, one Arab and one Jewish.  The day after the Jews established the state of Israel on May 14, 1948, five Arab states—Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria—attacked Israel and were defeated.  In May 1967 Egyptian troops entered the Sinai Peninsula.  In the following six days, the Israelis destroyed the invading Islamic armies.  The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), founded in 1964, seeks to establish an independent state in Palestine.  The other Islamic states support the Palestinian’s fight against the Israelis, but exclude Palestinians from their own countries, considering them an inferior sect.

Malaysia a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary democracy divided into 13 states and a Federal Territory in Southeast Asia is rich in natural resources and racially and ethically diverse.  Islam is the official religion.  Kuala Lumpur with the world’s tallest building, the Petronas Towers, reflects the urbanization of Malaysia.  With Muslim mosques, Christian churches and Hindu and Buddhist temples standing side-by-side, stricter Islamic standards have engendered religious unrest.