Evidence for God from Science

The first four caliphs were companions of the Prophet and their period of rule (632-661) is described by the majority of Muslims as the age of the Rightly Guided Caliphate. This was an era of expansion during which Muslims conquered the Sasanid (Persian) Empire and took control of the North African and Syrian territories of the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire. The Muslim community was transformed from a small city-state controlling much of the Arabian Peninsula into a major world empire extending from northwest Africa to central Asia.

This era ended with the first civil war (656-661), in which specific conflicts between particular interest groups provided the foundation for the broader political and theological divisions in the community and the Islamic tradition. The first two caliphs, Abu Bakr and Umar, had been successful in maintaining a sense of communal unity. But tensions within the community surfaced during the era of the third caliph, Uthman, who was from the Umayyad clan. Uthman was murdered in 656 by troops who mutinied over matters of pay and privileges, but the murder was the beginning of a major civil war.

The mutinous troops and others in Medina declared the new caliph to be Ali, a cousin of Muhammad who was an early convert and also the husband of Muhammad's daughter Fatimah (and, therefore, the father of Muhammad's only grandsons, Hasan and Husayn). According to Shi'i Muslim tradition, there were many people who believed that Muhammad had designated Ali as his successor. An Arabic term for faction or party is shi'ah, and the party or shi'ah of Ali emerged clearly during this first civil war. Ali's leadership was first challenged by a group including Aisha, the Prophet's most prominent wife and a daughter of the first caliph, Abu Bakr. Although Ali defeated this group militarily, it represented the tradition that became part of the mainstream majority, or Sunni, tradition in Islam, recognizing that all four of the first four caliphs were rightly guided and legitimate.

Ali faced a major military threat from the Umayyad clan, who demanded revenge for the murder of their kinsman, Uthman. The leader of the Umayyads was Muawiya, the governor of Syria. In a battle between the Umayyad army and the forces of Ali at Siffin in 657, Ali agreed to arbitration. As a result, a group of anti-Umayyad extremists withdrew from Ali's forces and became known as the Kharijites, or seceders, who demanded sinlessness as a quality of their leader and would recognize any pious Muslim as eligible to be the caliph. When Ali was murdered by a Kharijite in 661, most Muslims accepted Muawiya as caliph as a way of bringing an end to the intracommunal violence.

Another major period of civil conflict followed the death in 680 of the first Umayyad caliph, Muawiya. The Umayyad victory by 692 affirmed the pragmatic, consensus-oriented approach of the rising Sunni mainstream. Umayyad military power and the emerging pious elite's fear of anarchy resulted in the majoritarian compromise that is fundamental to Sunni views of society, community, and state. There is a tension between the pragmatic needs of soldiers and politicians and the moral aspirations of religious teachers. The Sunni majority usually accepted the necessary compromises, legitimized by the authority of the consensus of the community.

The main opposition to the structures of the new imperial community came from developing Shi'i traditions. Husayn, Ali's son, and a small group of his supporters were killed by an Umayyad army at Karbala in 680, and Husayn became a symbol of pious martyrdom in the path of God.

The world of Islam continued to expand, even during periods of civil war. By the mid-eighth century, Muslim conquests extended from the Iberian Peninsula to the inner Asian frontiers of China. The new Muslim state was, in many ways, the successor to the imperial systems of Persia and Rome, but the caliphates were clearly identified with Islam. The boundaries of the state and the Muslim community were basically the same, and the rulers, even when they were not known for piety, were still viewed by the majority as the successors to the Prophet.

In the era of the decline of the Sunni caliphate, Shi'i influence increased. During the eighth century Ja'far al-Sadiq, the sixth imam in the line of succession from Ali, provided the first fully comprehensive statement of Shi'i beliefs that became the basis for subsequent Shi'i mainstream groups. He provided opposition-ideology to the Sunni definition of the community but did not advocate revolution or virulent opposition to the Abbasids. The role of the imam was emphasized, and by the middle of the tenth century the moderate Shi'i mainstream accepted the imamate as spiritual and eschatological guide. This view defined a succession of twelve imams, the last of whom would enter a state of occultation and return as a messiah, or mahdi, in the future. The willingness to postpone expectations of a truly Islamic society until that return is an important part of Twelve-Imam (ithna ashari) Shi'ism. A minority maintained a more radical opposition, calling for messianic revolt, and identified with Ismail, a son of Sadiq who was not recognized by the Shi'i majority as being in the succession of imams. Ismaili Shi'ism provided the basis for the Fatimid movement in North Africa, which conquered Egypt in the tenth century and established a powerful Shi'i caliphate that lasted for more than two hundred years.

The traditions of mystic piety, called Sufism in the Islamic world, were formulated in works of people like Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058-1111), who promoted acceptance of inner spirituality as an important part of Islamic life, and Muhyi al-Din Ibn al-Arabi (1165-1240), who extended Sufism with a more pantheistic outlook that became the heart of subsequent presentations of Muslim mysticism. More puritanical renewalism received a classic articulation in the works of Ahmad Ibn Taimiyya (1263-1328), who argued that rulers who did not strictly rule in accord with Islamic law should be considered infidels and opposed by jihad if necessary. He defined this position in opposition to the newly converted Mongol rulers of the early fourteenth century, but his works have been an inspiration to many later activist movements.

Rise of Islamist Movements

Movements with primarily Islamic identification existed, but with less political influence. Pakistan, as an explicitly Islamic state, was unable to develop a clear constitutional self-definition. Internal divisions led to a civil war in 1971 and the secession of Bengal as independent Bangladesh. The Jama'at-i Islami continued to advocate its Islamist program and was respected but had limited political influence.

The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt cooperated briefly with the new military revolutionaries led by Nasser, but they were suppressed in 1954. In the 1960s the Brotherhood message was reshaped into more radical terms by Sayyid Qutb, who condemned Westernized societies as being ruled by sinful ignorance (jahiliyyah) and called for jihad against existing states in Muslim societies. Qutb was executed in 1966, but his writings laid the foundation for a new generation of underground Muslim revolutionaries. During the 1970s movements like Islamic Jihad and Takfir wal-Hijrah in Egypt may have differed in doctrinal specifics from Qutb, but they followed his mode of analysis. In many areas of the Muslim world, Qutb helped to define Islamic revolution.

There were other Muslim movements of revolutionary opposition to the establishment of the nationalist and sometimes socialist states. The Darul Islam movement in Indonesia fought a jihad against the new state from 1948 until its founder's execution in 1962. In Iran the Fida'iyan-i Islam was created in 1945, advocating a strict application of Islamic law and engaging in a series of terrorist assassinations. The organization ended with the execution of its founder in 1956, but former members were a part of later militant antigovernment groups.

Other Islamic organizations opposed to the increasing secularism and Westernization of Muslim societies adopted methods of education and mission to transform and Islamize societies. One of the largest Muslim associations in the world is the Tablighi Jama'at (in Urdu, "Party which Propagates"), which began as a devotional and educational organization in northern India in the 1920s. After World War II the movement spread rapidly throughout the world among Muslims in Western Europe and North America, as well as in Muslim societies. Many of the established Sufi orders have also adapted themselves to the conditions of modern society and quietly grew to be large devotional associations in virtually every Muslim community. In the United States a major movement developed among African Americans that was self-identified as Muslim, but this Nation of Islam association created by Elijah Muhammad (1897-1975) was not recognized as Islamic by most Muslims because of its distinctive doctrines of black separatism. But Malcolm X, a major figure in the movement, broke with its leaders in the mid-1960s and espoused a more mainstream Islamic perspective. When Elijah Muhammad died in 1975, he was succeeded by his son, Imam Warith Deen Muhammad, who transformed the movement into a clearly Sunni Muslim one. A smaller organization led by Louis Farrakhan continued to advocate the older black nationalist and separatist beliefs.

The Islamic Resurgence

A new Islamic spirit of renewal gained increasing visibility in the final quarter of the twentieth century. The most dramatic manifestation of this was the Islamic revolution in Iran. Secular and Islamic opposition to the autocratic rule of the shah increased in intensity during the 1970s. Leftist definitions of resistance had little appeal, and opponents increasingly mobilized around Islamic aspirations. Ali Shariati, who died under suspicious circumstances in 1977, presented a call for a rejection of state Shi'ism, advocating an egalitarian program of social justice that some saw as an Islamic form of Marxism.

The central figure of the revolution and the republic it created was Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini. He declared the possibility of an authentically Islamic state, even in the absence of the imam, if it represented the rule of the Islamic legal scholars (wilayat al-faqih). The constitution of the new republic created a system that survived a series of major political crises, including a long and costly war with Iraq in the 1980s and the death of Khomeini in 1989. Political life was strictly controlled, and minorities and opposition groups were suppressed. But within the limitations of the constitution, there was a remarkable degree of debate and disagreement over policy, which was confirmed in the presidential elections of 1997, when an advocate of a more open but still Islamically committed line of policy decisively defeated a more hard-line candidate supported by the more conservative clergy.

As leftist ideologies and nationalist state policies proved ineffective in coping with the social, economic, and political transformations of the late twentieth century, there was a significant shift to more Islamically oriented approaches throughout the Muslim world. This frequently was centered in movements of modern-educated professionals and students that neither advocated Qutb-style jihad nor accepted conservative ulama leadership. They viewed Islam as providing a comprehensive program for society but generally worked for the gradual Islamization of state and society rather than a revolutionary overthrow of existing institutions.

A variety of Islamic groups developed in Egypt that were separate from the Muslim Brotherhood although similar in aspirations. Former student militants became leaders of professional syndicates in the mid-1980s and helped to direct official policy and general public opinion in a more openly Islamic direction. In Malaysia the Islamic student movement ABIM was an important force on campuses, and in the 1980s its leader, Anwar Ibrahim, became a major political figure in the leading political coalition. The Islamic Tendency Movement in Tunisia gained political influence during the 1980s under the leadership of Rashid al-Ghanoushi. Although it was suppressed and its leadership jailed or exiled, in its reorganized form as the Nahda Party in the late 1980s and 1990s, al-Ghanoushi and most of the movement continued to advocate democratic participation rather than violent revolution.

In Algeria the emergence of political Islam as a major force took place quite rapidly when the National Liberation Front, facing demands for greater political participation, agreed to hold competitive elections. The Islamic Salvation Front won municipal elections in 1990 and was on the verge of gaining control of the national parliament when a military coup suspended the election in 1992. Throughout the 1990s open conflict between government and Islamist forces caused more than sixty thousand deaths.

Among Palestinian activists an Islamist movement, Hamas, developed alongside the long-established Palestine Liberation Organization led by Yasir Arafat (1929- ) and won significant support among those who mistrusted Arafat for his willingness to negotiate with Israel. Even in Turkey, where religion-based political parties are illegal, the Welfare Party, which advocated a greater formal Islamization of Turkish life, won more than 20 percent of the vote in national elections in 1996, and, in a highly divided electorate, its leader, Nejmettim Erbakan, served as prime minister in a coalition government until pressure from the Kemalist Turkish military forced him to resign in 1997.

The only country outside of Iran in which an Islamist movement came to power was Sudan. The Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood had been organized in the early 1950s and had participated actively in the politics of the parliamentary periods in 1956-1958 and 1964-1969 but had never had much electoral success. As an active political party in the third era of multiparty politics (1985-1989), the Brotherhood, reorganized as the National Islamic Front, was an important but minority force, winning about 20 percent of the votes. The military coup in 1989 was led by Islamically oriented officers who soon became closely identified with the front and its leader, Hasan al-Turabi. Turabi had an international reputation as an imaginative advocate of renewal and rethinking the foundations of Islamic law. He helped the regime establish a system of elective consultative councils and application of Islamic law, but the suppression of minorities and opposition in a brutal civil war raised doubts about the long-term Islamic significance of the Sudanese experience.

The violent side of Islam, however is not new and it is a clear part of Islamic history and it has been supported by the Qur'an and other Islamic authorities with equal claim to the other forms you want to use to define the whole movement.

The history also shows that this violent side of Islam has not been suppressed or reined in very effectively.

The question it begs is Why is this the case. The answer that many of us have come to, is that there is no basis in the Qur'an itself which motivates Muslims as a whole to do so.

You can disagree with the theory,

Aviatrix wrote:Let there be no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out clear from Error: whoever rejects evil and believes in Allah hath grasped the most trustworthy hand-hold, that never breaks. And Allah heareth and knoweth all things.

Why are you not willing to interact with these historical elements of Islam and why do you choose to attack the messenger rather than engaging with the material?

2. Westerner's who seek to understand Islam through the prism of the history of Christianity and Judaism are engaged in fallacious thinking as the foundations of the religions are not rooted in similar values. Islam from the very beginning, during the lifetime of its founder, immediately went to war to conquer and spread agressively their religion (and yes no doubt other motives were there, but the point is Islam served to promote the expansion in this manner not to slow it down.)

3. Western attitudes toward the history of the Crusades and their apologetic response to Islam today, fails to understand that Islam is expansionistic by nature and demonstrated history and that many of the countries today considered "Muslim" used to be Christian and were conquered and taken by force of sword, not the force of the teaching of Islam itself to persuade. The crusades are historically perceived to have been Christian aggression. They were not entirely but also represented a response to Muslim aggression that in the preceding centuries had conquered so many lands and peoples that previously were Christian and had not been made so by force.

5. Islam theocracies tie the forces of religion with the state together in a manner which invites similar abuses to past such associations with other religions but with the added threat that Islam was born in violence spread from its inception in violence and doesn't evidence a strong movement within to restrain those violent factors regardless of the words to the contrary by Muslims who are outside the countries involved.

Aviatrix wrote:Now, the issue of apostasy is entirely different. First of all, if Muslims actually killed apostates... the apostates would all be dead, wouldn't they? This may only be applied in a Muslim state, where the "apostasy" is literally treason. Therefore, it doesn't apply today, pure and simple. Countries that attempt to do so are not justified because they aren't ruled by a caliph or shari'ah, so they aren't Muslim states, and also because the apostasy is not an act of treason to the country itself. So again, that doesn't apply.