Islam cannot be understood from the outside

Once upon a time Muhammad had seen a dream; emigrated to a city located among palm groves. The Prophet listened to divine inspiration. On July 16, 622, he fled Mecca, which saved him from his enemies who threatened his life. With this, 1400 years ago, a new era and a new time calculation began in Islam. This was the Hijra, that is the story of fleeing. This topic was created based on article of Omar Sayfo, Middle East researcher and the expert of Islam.

Many people must have heard of the so-called Stockholm syndrome, but there is also a syndrome named after another city, and this is the so-called Jerusalem syndrome. The Jerusalem syndrome is a religious or spiritual psychosis that occurs when someone is captivated by Jerusalem. Jerusalem is a very unique point in the world, because it is a holy place according to three world religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. This city is, so to speak, the spiritual navel of the world. But does Mecca syndrome exist?

In a medical sense, it can hardly exist, the ‘Jerusalem syndrome’ is unique. There is also a difference in the religious sense, since while it is not obligatory to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, for Muslims it is necessary to make a pilgrimage to Mecca. There are also two types of this: the once-a-year large pilgrimage, the Hajj, and the small pilgrimage, the Umra, which can be performed at any time. The former is one of five pillars of Islam, it is obligatory for every Muslim once in a lifetime, depending on what they can afford financially. While visiting Jerusalem is primarily a spiritual experience, the Hajj also has social implications; the fact that someone is able to financially finance the expensive trip is already appreciated, and respected. The most important thing, however, is that at the peak of the Hajj, on Mount Arafat, the believer confesses his sins to God and finds forgiveness for them, and when he returns home, he tries to avoid further sins.

The city of Mecca is so holy that its gates are only open to Muslims. This city, along with Medina, lies in the Hijaz region of Saudi Arabia. Muslims of the world can enter here with the so-called ‘Hajj’ or pilgrim visa. On the visa application form, they ask about the applicant’s religion, but since there is no church in Islam and it is forbidden to question other religions, it is enough to know the ‘correct answer’.

Modern Mecca bears no resemblance to the Mecca of the Prophet’s time, nor even in traces. Partly because the nostalgia and attraction towards ancient ruins are western peculiarity, which began during the Renaissance and gained new impetus during the Enlightenment and then Romanticism. There was no Renaissance, Reformation, or Enlightenment in Islam. For this reason, secularization is also unthinkable, because Allah is there and everywhere. The structure of Islam itself has virtually not changed since its inception. Islam did not have its Nicene Creed either. There is no any ‘universality’ in religion. The Middle East lacks these West-defining characteristics.

Even the Kaaba shrine was rebuilt several times. In the corner of this is the black stone, the meteorite, which, according to tradition, Abraham sent down to Adam. The stone was originally white, then turned into black due to the sins of the people. Today’s Mecca is a modern city that combines Saudi puritanism and globalism. The reasons for the continuous transformation and expansion of the city are obviously economic. As in Muhammad’s time, pilgrims bring money today at the same way. So, the more guests the infrastructure can handle, the more the hoteliers earn. The other reason is political, because as the guardian of the holy places and the organizer of the pilgrimage, the Saudi dynasty increases its prestige within the Islamic world.

Exactly 1,400 years ago, on July 16, 622, Muhammad had to flee Mecca to find a new home in Medina. Historically, the Hijra is not a miraculous event at all, but its necessity was a consequence of the Abrahamic social and political conditions and logic. Muhammad was born around 570 in Mecca, into one of the poor clans of the influential Kuraj tribe. His father died before he would have seen the daylight, so his uncle and grandmother took him under their wings. Muhammad has been around forty when he married a wealthy widow, thus he became a wealthy merchant too. According to tradition, after this he received divine inspiration from the archangel Gabriel and then became a prophet. Since Muhammad preached equality before God, thus poor and slaves joined him primarily.

At the same time, since according to his teachings, Allah is everywhere, the meaning of the Arabian tribes making a pilgrimage to the Kaaba shrine, where the idols were kept at that time, and which meant a serious income for the Quraj tribe, was questioned. Consequently his teachings caused a lot of political and economic conflict. At this time Muhammad enjoyed a protection of his own origin and very influential grandfather, his lower ranked devoteers, on the other hand, weren’t protected by anyone. They were subjected to constant harassment and abuse. But Muhammad had taken care of his poor devoteers in their persecutions, thus, on his advice, his followers sought and received refuge from the Christian ruler of Ethiopia. Muhammad’s situation became hopeless when his influential grandfather died and his uncle, who was financially interested in the pilgrimage, became the leader of the Kuraj tribe.

Conquests masked by religions

Heavy fighting followed the withdrawal. Muhammad is not only the Prophet, but also a general. Is Islam a warlike or rather a conquering religion?

We ought not to image Muhammad as some kind of Arabic Alexander the Great, or Julius Caesar. He also aimed to create consensus, if only because violence begets violence, and bloodshed begets blood revenge. In such circumstances, any kind of consolidation is impossible. He not only united the Arab tribes with each other, but also united them with Islam, so that the conquests could begin in two directions, against the Christian Byzantium and the Sassanid Persia. However, it is important to note that this was not primarily for religious, spiritual, or ideological reasons, but very much for economic, social, and practical reasons. There were two pragmatic reasons of this expansion, the demographic explosion and the escape from drought, that is, the search for new natural resources.

Islam is a proselytizing religion, and all of Muhammad’s actions and words are a basis for reference, including those he did or said as a general. But he did and said a lot of things depending on what the actual situation was. That is why they examine his words in the context of current circumstances and look for answers to current questions through analogies. Religious scholars, on the other hand, are usually political and social actors at the same time, who take into account the current power relations and current political developments for their own benefit. Therefore, if a sultan, emir, or even a ‘secular’ dictator has peaceful or non-peaceful political goals, religious scholars loyal to him will find a way to explain why Muhammad would have done the same.

Abu Bakr was the companion, friend and father-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad during the Hijra. Later, he was the first caliph not recognized by the Shias, thus causing a split between the believers. His name may also be familiar from the fact that the first leader of the Daesh terrorist organization, Abu Bakr Baghdadi, borrowed his name from him. These 1,400-year-old conflicts are still borne by Muslims?

It is not entirely clear, but the fact is that after the death of Muhammad, the fight for the succession broke out, there were those who hinted that the most capable should follow him, they are the Sunnis, others believed that bloodline was decisive in inheritance – these are the Shias. This essentially political conflict then turned into a bloody war. However, to understand the conflict that continues to this day, it is important to point out that Islam never expanded in a vacuum, rather, it conquered peoples already had an ancient culture. For example, during the Umayyad empire (661-750), it adopted a lot of things from Byzantine thinking. Similarly, when Islam reached the ancient Persia, the people there ‘Persianized’ Islam. The twelve Shia imams, for example, are the continuation of Persian culture in Islam.

The Shia-Sunni conflicts of the past decades are typically the result of regional superpower rivalries, and the fact that in relation to modern Middle Eastern states, we cannot speak of nation-states in the European sense, therefore the most important element of identity is religion. When there is prosperity, this does not mean trouble, for example in oil-rich countries, but when there is a shortage of resources, especially when a Western ‘sponsor’ appears, the role of religion is enhanced as a mobilizing factor, and contradictions intensify.

According to some, Islam is six hundred years behind Christianity because it arose so much later. But then is Christianity left behind Judaism with few hundred years, following the same logic? These religions were born in completely different circumstances, spread in a different demographic environment and reached where they are now. You can’t even compare them. In the West, European Christianity is usually understood only as Christianity (Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Pravslav), and Islam as the Middle Eastern. But this gives a distorted picture.

It’s like comparing Scandinavia to Saudi Arabia. It is better to investigate regionally, than ideologically. For example, rather compare the Muslim Bosnians with the Christian Macedonians. Or compare Muslim Malaysia with the Christian Philippines. We do not see such a big cultural difference between the regions.

Of course, it is a fact that Muslim-majority countries are not among the most developed in the world, but this is not necessarily because of religion either. If we look at the Christian-majority countries of black Africa, we get a more nuanced picture.

The West demands ‘universal values’ from the Islamic world, such as women’s rights, human rights, etc. These are Western European ideas in the form we think of them, which were created after the Second World War and were given a universal character through the United Nations. There are various rights in Islam as well, there are even Western references, but the basis of reference is always primarily the teachings of Muhammad. However, it is important to note that the West has always been admired in the Islamic world. Muslims are not blind either, they saw the dynamism and development of Europe already in Napoleonic times.

The XIX century, a serious debate broke out in intellectual circles about why they lagged behind the West. There were several answers to this. There were those who saw the solution in copying the West, for example secularism and nationalism. Others – and they became the spiritual fathers of today’s Islamists – saw that the mistake was precisely that they deviated from the path marked by Muhammad, so they announced the ‘reform’ of Islam, which meant a return to an imagined past. However, all this is not necessarily anti-West.

Just as Muhammad fled from his persecutors to an uncharted landscape that he only saw in his dreams, it seems to many that today’s refugees and migrants view Europe in the same way.

In fact, ‘Hijjah’ in modern Arabic means migration and has no religious overtones. All research and surveys agree that Muslim migrants immigrate to Europe primarily for individual economic interests. However, it is a fact that some regional powers, such as Turkey, also try to mobilize their diasporas living in the West on religious grounds, and it is also a fact that there are preachers who talk about ‘demographic Jihad’. Islam is a religion of conversion though, but there are many parallel concepts about the method of conversion. Some people say that a Muslim should simply lead an exemplary life, thereby promoting religion, others say to talk about religion to non-Muslims, and there are, as we know, who believe that the head of the unbeliever should be cut off.

It is a problem in Europe that in the 1980s and 90s various Islamists who fled Muslim countries for political reasons appeared and want to ‘re-Islamize’ second and third generation Muslim immigrants. These self-proclaimed proselytes and missionaries justify their activities by saying that Muhammad also preached among the pagans.

But those religious scholars cooperating with European governments also go back to traditions, who say: the Muslims fleeing from Mecca to Ethiopia received protection from the Christian ruler, so in return Muhammad forbade for Muslims converting Christians.

Clash of cultures

Today, however, Islam has become the fastest growing religion, and according to forecasts, the number of its adherents will soon overtake that of Christians. What is the secret of its success?

Here again we tend to make the mistake of comparing the West with the Islamic world, and trying judge Islam with western eyes. In the developed Western world, the role of Christianity is actually decreasing indeed, but in the third world it is increasing. In Latin America, in some parts of Asia and Africa, Christianity is experiencing its heyday. It is also a fact that the number of Muslim immigrants is increasing in the West, primarily in Europe. However, this does not necessarily mean the strengthening of Islam.

If we examine the phenomenon, we see that groups of Muslim immigrants have different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, are diverse in terms of religion, and have different levels of education and integration. We are talking about communities full of divisions, competing with each other, who have a common religion, but this alone is not enough for any kind of unity.

Some have integrated well into the host country, but the integration of others has been a total failure. You cannot compare the situation of an Iranian doctor who fled 79s revolution with an Afghan refugee who grew up in a Pakistani refugee camp for instance, who never lived a normal life. Coexistence and integration problems are not exclusively of a religious nature, but can be traced back to broader cultural reasons. If only religious differences were a problem, then there would be no problem with the integration of Christian Latin Americans, Africans, and Caribbeans. But there are numerous problems with their integration either.

I hope this deeper insight helps you better understand Islam. Thanks for reading!