The world of Islam a translation from a German history journal
Islam and the World of the Arabs
In the book Chronicle of Humanity, that I purchased in Munich in 1984, the origins of Islam are described in detail and compared with Christian doctrine. I took the liberty and translated synopsizes of empires, religions and world leaders into English.
Book title: Chronicle of Humanity
Imprint:
© Chronik Verlag, Harenberg Kommunikation Verlags und Medien GmbH & Co. KG, Dortmund (1984).
Concept, editorial planning: Bodo Harenberg.
Editors: Raphaela Drexhage, Jens Firsching, Dr. Petra Gallmeister, Cordula Grüner, Ingrid Reuter, Ernst Christian Schütt.
Overview articles: Editorial staff; Brigitte Beier; Prof. Dr. Michael Erbe; Norbert Fischer; Ulrich Ernst Huse; Prof. Dr. Robert Jungk; Felix R. Paturi.
Country sections and calendars: Bernhard Pollmann.
Image editing: Norbert Fischer.
Copyediting: Ferdinand Schwenker.
Editorial coordination: Annette Retinski.
Dust jacket: Walter Nester, Lothar Alker.
Complete production: Westermann Druck GmbH, Braunschweig.
“Keep your friends close, but your enemies even closer,” an old proverb suggests. The origin of this proverb is uncertain. Considering Iran as a breeding ground for terrorism against Western civilization and the growing voices claiming that refugees from the Middle East are gradually eroding the identity of their host countries, it becomes crucial to understand the source of this perceived threat and why it became necessary to stop that ideology in its tracks. It is imperative to understand the underlying nature and motivations of those who want to bury the West.
Islam and the World of the Arabs
Islam, the youngest of the world religions, emerged in the early 7th century in a region that counts among the most economically unproductive areas of the Earth. This was a hot, arid landscape stretching over millions of square kilometers between Asia and Africa.
In the 6th and 7th centuries, the region was predominantly inhabited by nomadic Bedouins who barely sustained themselves on goat milk and dates and lived in tents made of animal hair. There were often blood feuds between the tribes; children were frequently killed right after birth to avoid further depleting the already meager food supplies of a tribe. Among the Bedouins, their highest human virtues were generosity, loyalty, and courage.
By the middle of the 6th century, there were three significant cities in northern Arabia, all located in the mountainous region of the Hejaz, which is bordered in the west by the Red Sea and in the east by the Great Desert. In the center of the Hejaz lay Yathrib, later Medina, situated in a small fertile oasis. About 400 km south was Taif, and northwest of it, in a basin surrounded by barren mountains, lay Mecca.
Due to its favorable location, Mecca was the most prosperous of these three cities. It derived high revenues from heavily laden camel caravans that passed through this hub of caravan trade. The leading citizens of the city belonged to the Quraysh clan, which ruled Mecca with financial and military power. Their prosperity was also supported by pilgrims who traveled to the Kaaba in Mecca, the holiest sanctuary of the Arabs. In the Kaaba, the Black Stone (a meteorite) is still revered today by Muslims as sacred. Allah, later the sole God of the Muslims, was at that time one of the principal deities of Mecca; around 500 other gods and goddesses were also worshiped there.
Muhammad Proclaims the Teachings of Islam
Around the year 570, Muhammad was born in Mecca as the son of an impoverished member of the Quraysh. In his youth, he earned his living as an employee of the wealthy widow Khadijah, who was fifteen years his senior. When Muhammad was 25 years old, he married her. Several children were born from this marriage.
In the year 610, the archangel Gabriel appeared to Muhammad on Mount Hira and proclaimed to him that Muhammad was the apostle and messenger of God. Muhammad initially doubted the authenticity of this appearance. Soon afterward, however, Gabriel revealed himself again and instructed him to awaken people and warn them of the impending judgment of God. Thus, in the year 613, Muhammad began publicly preaching in Mecca what the angel Gabriel had conveyed to him as divine truth.
Allah is the sole God of the universe; beside Him there are no other gods. Before Allah, all believers are equal, and although the fate of human beings is determined without their own doing, they must answer before Him on the Day of Judgment. The wealthy must share their possessions with the poor. The followers of Muhammad called this new doctrine “Islam,” meaning “submission to the will of God.”
Through his preaching, Muhammad offered the Bedouins new promises. Until then, death had been regarded by the Arabs as the end of all existence. The only measure of personal success was the wealth a person accumulated during life. Thus, many of the first followers of the Messenger were poor people who received Allah’s message with great hope for a better life in this world and the next. The wealthy Quraysh, however, fiercely opposed Muhammad, since his new teachings challenged their personal way of life.
After many of his followers had fled from Mecca under the growing pressure from the powerful in Mecca, Mohammed also secretly left the city in the direction of Jasrib in 622, which now received the name "Medinet al-Nabi", in short "Medina" (city of the envoys. This excerpt from Mohammed, called "Hedschra", is considered the beginning of the Islamic era.
With the preaching of the true faith and the purification of the old religion, political tasks also arose. Muhammad proclaimed social and legislative guidelines as well. Among other things, he improved the status of Arab women. In pre-Islamic times, a man could marry as many women as he wished. Muhammad, similar to Christianity, continued to subordinate women to men, but limited polygamy to four wives, whom the husband had to treat with equal kindness. An exception applied only to him as the Prophet. After the death of Khadijah, he married nine additional women.
For a long time, Muhammad also attempted to convert Jews and Christians to Islam, since Islam did not understand itself as a new religion, but rather as the final revelation following the Jewish-Christian prophets recognized as predecessors. Accordingly, many statements in the Qur’an, the holy book of the Muslims, correspond to the Old and New Testaments. However, the Christian belief that Jesus is the Son of God is explicitly rejected in the Qur’an.
When Muhammad failed to convert the Jews of Medina to Allah, he abandoned concessions to Jewish rituals (such as fasting on the Day of Atonement and praying toward Jerusalem). He established new practices unique to Islam. Instead of church bells, the muezzin now called the faithful to prayer at prescribed times, facing Mecca. The fast was extended to a full month, Ramadan.
Soon, the Messenger gained followers among warlike Bedouin tribes who, through their shared faith, overcame old tribal rivalries, enabling political unification. Under Muhammad’s leadership, Islam developed into the foundation of a theocratic community that adopted a mission-oriented militancy initially directed against the Quraysh of Mecca. Because the Muslims achieved a series of victories, many followers joined them. Fighting for Allah offered warriors a double incentive: in victory, the spoils of war went to the soldiers; in death during battle, immediate entry into paradise awaited the fallen.
Around 630, the Muslims conquered Mecca. Muhammad ordered all idols in the Kaaba destroyed, declared the city an Islamic sanctuary, and thus created a spiritual center for the religion. Muhammad died in the year 632. During the 22 years of his mission, he succeeded in uniting the Jewish-Christian tradition of a single God with a latent Arab national consciousness. Furthermore, through the holy book, the Qur’an—containing the words of Allah as transmitted through him—he established the practical-theological foundation of Islam, by which Muslims still orient their lives and religious duties today.
The Five Pillars of Islam
Five ritual obligations determine the life of a believer. Revealed by Allah, they have lost none of their validity for Muslims to this day. Faith, prayer, almsgiving, fasting, and pilgrimage are called the Five Pillars of Islam.
Faith is based on the statement: “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is His messenger.” When a believer professes this testimony, he becomes a Muslim without the need for special initiation rituals as in other religions. The highest virtue is obedience to Allah. The Muslim believes that Muhammad is the last of the messengers and that his word will guide believers until the Day of Judgment.
The second pillar of Islam is prayer, which must be performed five times a day at prescribed times. For this, ritual washing is required, without which the prayers are invalid.
The third duty of Islam is almsgiving, known as zakat. These alms are collected by the state and used to support the needy. By giving a portion of his possessions, a Muslim “purifies” what remains.
Fasting during the month of Ramadan commemorates the first revelation of the Qur’an to the Prophet and Muhammad’s first victory over the Quraysh. During daylight hours, Muslims must fast; eating and drinking are permitted only after sunset and before sunrise.
The final duty of believers is the pilgrimage to Mecca, known as the Hajj, which every Muslim should undertake at least once in their lifetime. This custom, adopted from Arab tradition, takes place once a year in the month of Dhu al-Hijjah. Because believers from distant regions gather in Mecca at this time, dressed alike and performing the same devotional practices, this experience gives Muslims a sense of unity and strength in their faith. This contributed significantly to the unification of the Arab empire.
A decisive difference between Islam and Christianity lies in their attitude toward war, which almost developed into a sixth pillar of Islam. While Jesus Christ sent his disciples to spread the faith peacefully, Muhammad called upon his followers to spread Islam by the sword.
Islam as a World Power
After the death of the Prophet, the religious community of Islam developed into a powerful political empire through conquest. Because Muhammad had failed to name a successor, bloody struggles over the office of the “successor,” the caliph, the religious leader at the head of Islam, broke out after his death and continued until the mid-8th century.
The first of the four “Rightly Guided” caliphs, who established the Golden Age of Islam, was the Qurayshite Abu Bakr, the father of Muhammad’s favorite wife Aisha. He led successful campaigns against Arab tribes that had fallen away from Islam and reunited the believers. At the same time, he expanded the realm by conquering large territories of Persia and the Byzantine Empire.
When Abu Bakr died in 634, Umar I, a close advisor to Muhammad, was chosen as his successor. During the ten years of his rule, Islam achieved its greatest conquests. Palestine, Syria, Egypt, and nearly all of Persia were incorporated into the Islamic empire. The local populations of these regions often welcomed the conquerors as liberators from Byzantine and Persian rule. The Arabs largely left existing administrative structures intact. Members of the “People of the Book” (Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians) were granted religious freedom in exchange for a poll tax. By converting to Islam, one gained the status of mawali (affiliates), but one could not become an Arab.
Division and Power Struggles among the Muslims
After Umar was murdered by a Christian slave, the caliphate passed to Muhammad’s son-in-law Uthman, who belonged to the Umayyad clan. Uthman incurred the hatred of many Arabs by filling important government posts with members of his family and disadvantaging capable men. After only twelve years of rule, he too was killed.
As the fourth caliph, the Islamic elite elected Ali, a cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad. Ali, however, faced an opposing caliph: Muawiya I, the governor of Damascus and a nephew of Caliph Uthman. Muawiya accused Ali of not having sufficiently avenged Uthman’s murder. During preparations for battle against Muawiya, Ali was assassinated. His followers, the Shiites, subsequently split off theologically from Islam. This branch of Islam is today primarily based in Iran.
Muawiya founded the hereditary Umayyad Caliphate (661–750), a form of dynastic rule that contradicted Islamic principles. He moved the capital of the empire from Medina to Damascus.
Under the Umayyads, Islam spread across North Africa. In 711, the Arabs crossed over at Gibraltar into Europe, conquered almost the entire Iberian Peninsula, and brought an end to the Visigothic Kingdom. In the same year, they reached India in the east. Over the decades, internal conflicts weakened the power of the Umayyad dynasty. Under the leadership of Abu al-Abbas, a descendant of an uncle of the Prophet, the Abbasids revolted against the Umayyads. In 749, Abbas proclaimed himself caliph and later had the Umayyad family systematically exterminated.
In the film Castilien released in 1968, one finds the legend of how the small Kingdom of Castile in the Pyrenees stopped the spread of Islam into the interior of Europe.
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I firmly believe that history will remember President Trump and his cabinet with great favor for the efforts in preventing these individuals from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
April 2026
May God bless you.
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