One of the significant events in the history of the world, which still baffles historians and the other students of the growth of human civilisation, is the rapid spread of Islam in its early history, without any historical parallel, before or after. Within a century after the death of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), Islam, which was still confined more or less to the Arabian Peninsula at his death, established an empire that stretched from the distant Spain to the boarders of China. As Islam advanced, kingdom after kingdom collapsed and became part of the nascent, but strong Muslim Empire. At another level, countless number of communities also embraced Islam. Obviously historians and philosophers needed an explanation to unlock this phenomenal advancement of religion, both at religious and political levels, whose original bearers were disorganised Bedouins and small town people of Arabia, who were until the emergence of Islam at each other’s throats. However, unfortunately, an influential approach to scholarship called Orientalism, that still shapes the Western approach to Islam and Muslims, explains this in terms of Islam’s violent subjugation of the conquered people.
To put in the classical Orientalist parlance, Islam offered only two choices, either the sword or conversion to non-Muslims, and the Orientalists, looking retrospectively from this binary world-view, one of the verses of the Quran, which talks about a specific historical context existed in the light of the complicated situation between the Arab pagans and early Muslim, described it as the verse of the sword.
No comments:
Post a Comment