Social Origins of Islam - Book Report/Review Example

Book Summary: Social Origins Of Islam: Mind, Economy, Dis The origin of Islam stems from the ideology of Quran that swept the Arabian Peninsula and introduced new patterns of life, through building on the already existing cultural patterns of the Arabs, so much that it almost eroded the traditional cultures that already existed (Bamyeh, 262). Nevertheless, it is not only the Quran ideology that formed the fundamental basis of the rise of the Islamic culture, religion and way of life, but also the blending of the existing pre-Islamic culture with a changing economic lifestyle that introduced trade and money-based exchange (Bamyeh, 122). This blending was the reinforced by the new form of world view that arose from the Quran ideology and the consequent Islamic theology, resulting in the establishment of Islam not only as a religion, but also as culture and way of life of the Arabs. However, it is only through the Islamic conquest outside of the Arab peninsula that the ultimate challenge of consolidating Islam as an irrevocable religion and complete theology text was achieved (Bamyeh, 261). Thus, although the Quran and the changing economic lifestyle can be credited with achieving the full transformation of the pre-Islamic Arabian culture into a consolidate Islamic way of life, the pre-Islamic poetry had long suggested of a society that was already in transition, and which simply required a force that would drive the process of transition, owing to the fact that the pre-Islamic culture of Arabs was so disconnected and disjointed, that it could pave way for any meaningful transformation (Bamyeh, 97). The pre-Islamic culture was so disjointed that the society had lost its way of taking care of the vulnerable part of the society, such as the orphans and the poor. This opening that gave the Quran ideology; enhancing the welfare of Umma through alms paying as a mode of taxation, a chance to gain root and transform the outlook of the traditional Arab culture, with the creation of a more equitable society, where the wealthy and the well-endowed would not only be taxed for God, but also for the vulnerable and the poor in the society (Bamyeh, 251). Mecca was at the core of the transformation of the pre-Islamic Arabic culture and it played an important role in the subsequent cultural transformation that occurred to establish and entrench Islam as the new culture and way of life (Bamyeh, 250). Mecca was the antecedent element where the traditional Arabian culture that existed before the introduction of Islam were mutilated and forgotten, and a whole new cultural and social system based on the concept of civilization and intellectualism first took root. Therefore, the rise of the non-traditional ideology based on the poetry and economic lifestyle of trade formed the background for the introduction of a whole set of Islamic ideology, which would then revolutionize the worldview of the Mecca residents, and forthwith spread to the rest of the Arabian peninsula and even beyond, no longer as a function of ideological change, but as a war of revolution (Bamyeh, 251). The Arabs settled and lived a life that was sedentary, consisting of nomadic lifestyles and less agricultural activities that could not spur any prosperity (Bamyeh, 3). Neither trade in the nomadic goods nor in any other form commodities had taken root in this society, such that life the pre-Islamic Arab culture was characterized by a vast terrain of people living in solitude, completely shut from the outside world, and depending on a culture that neither enhanced solidarity nor gave perpetuity (Bamyeh, 12). Living in the desert made life for the Pre-Islamic Arab peninsula a culture of non-communication, with neither thinking nor idealizing, and with absolutely no hope that things could get any better. The mere fact that life during this period was characterized by dessert nomadic lifestyle where the daily routine was moving from one region of the desert to the other in search for water and fodder for the animals, meant that the pre-Islamic Arab society had absolutely no solid culture, no definitive boundary and no solidarity that defines a people living together as a society (Bamyeh, 16). The nomadic context therefore formed a transmutation between war and peace, but the major problem is that there lacked an instrumentation of a major center of authority within the pre-Islamic culture that would guaranteed the people living the nomadic desert life style of their safety or alternatively of their capacity for war (Bamyeh, 248). Thus, the unsuspected intrusions and infiltration of the outside forces that sought to dispossess the nomadic occupants of the Arabian Peninsula of their camels, a most priced possession at the time and even now, created the need for a normalizing instrument that would at least create the discourse of peace as a possibility (Bamyeh, 247). Therefore, the vastness of the desert horizon made the human actors in the vast desert mere insignificant actors in the wider social circles, while their culture of lack of centrality of authority inevitably rendered the community living in the pre-Islamic Arabian Peninsula vulnerable and prone to paramount subjectivity of any of the forces that could seek to establish such a centrality of authority (Bamyeh, 3). In this respect, an incidence that either spelt war or spelt the breach of peace of the nomadic society would then create a great doubt about the efficacy of the discourse of peace, and such instrumentation was slowly being deliberated (Bamyeh, 247). The nomadic and sedentary lifestyles, with auxiliary divisions that had no much difference, were the two predominant lifestyles within the Arabian Peninsula, which constituted the culture of the region both before and even after the coming of the Islam (Bamyeh, 17). The nomadic lifestyle was categorized as the original culture of the Arabic people, with the sedentary lifestyle developing much later as its subsidiary. The subsidiary sedentary lifestyle of the Arabian Peninsula developed after a relative period of peace and stability that enabled the nomadic lifestyle to generate and accumulate some wealth, thus prompting the need to establish a more settled lifestyle. In this respect, the sedentary lifestyle then became the precursor to the establishment of the Islamic culture and lifestyle, although the effort to establish a perfect sedentary lifestyle was continuously frustrated by the need to seek for water and fodder for livestock, thus an establishment of a code of justice in the society would not appeal to community’s lifestyle (Bamyeh, 245). The consequence of the failure of the nomadic and the sedentary lifestyles to allow the infiltration of the Islamic culture of trade and money-based economy therefore led to the rise of war as the only tool through which the establishment of a code of justice would become possible. In this respect, the introduction of Islamic culture in a way of imposition to the Arabic Peninsula was informed by the ideology that the culture and lifestyle of Islam constituted a more “entrenched and glorious” way of life when introduced under the banner of religion (Bamyeh, 229). The culture of sedentary and nomadic lifestyle had produced a pre-Islamic culture that was almost immutable, since it was characterized by the austerity of life that was just reproducing in cycle while creating little or no accumulation of wealth. Thus in an attempt to live a life of more prosperity, the Arabian society forced the pre-Islamic Arabian society that resulted to raiding, which was at times reinforced by plunder and occasional hunting (Bamyeh, 17). The effect of this cycle of perpetuating life meant that the society was highly immutable through the introduction of a new culture and lifestyle through purely religious doctrine means. Thus war came in handy as a necessity to entrench the Islamic culture amongst the people of the Arabian Peninsula, while the money-based economy and trade acted as the bait of possible prosperity for a society that had little means of rising to prosperity (Bamyeh, 229). On the other hand, the Bedouin lifestyles observed by section of the Arabian Peninsula region had no much difficulty in penetration of the culture of Islam as a religion and a money-based economic lifestyle, since the Bedouin lifestyles was observed to adapt an “opportunistic attitude towards the idea of Allah” (Bamyeh, 229). Nevertheless, the Islamic ideology provided the platform, through which the Bedouin lifestyles could transform from the initial un-resourceful and chaotic lifestyle that was characterized through infighting, to a more prosperous life through the process of the Islamic conquest that spread far and wide beyond the Arabian Peninsula. The Bedouin lifestyles seemed to be characterized by a cycle of eternal nomadic resemblances that made the community less and less prosperous as years went by, owing to the continued strain and scarcity of the nomadic life that was just normative (Bamyeh, 53). The only possible escape route to this life of lack of prosperity for the Bedouin people was the occasional and seasonal agriculture and small-scale trade both in the Northern and the Western Arabia, and thus it is the multifaceted activities of this community which was predominated by agriculture, hunting and pastoralism that made it difficult to create understanding in times of totalities (53). This was much worse compared to the sedentary lifestyle of the nomadic Arabia, since the result of such predomination by different activities where none of such activities fully defined the culture of the society resulted in the formation of a more disjointed Bedouin society (230). The disjointed nature of the Bedouin society made it a fertile ground for experimentation with a set of ideologies and practices, since the disjointed nature of the society created an opening for diversity and possible amended to the core principles of the community culture (Bamyeh, 158). This was a better space for the upcoming Islamic religious faith, since it gave Prophet Muhammad the platform for propagating the divine knowledge that took the form and style that came to be known as Quran (Bamyeh, 158). In addition, the Bedouin had far more problematic characteristics that made the society more permeable by external ideologies and forces of change, compared to the more immutable sedentary Arabia. This is because, the Bedouin was characterized by a series of pre-Islamic religions of paganism and Hanifism which added to the already confused lifestyle and culture of the Bedouin community, since none of these religions could act as a “finished product” in itself, resulting in a society that had absolutely no glue that would hold it together (Bamyeh, 79). Therefore, the penetration of the Islamic ideology as a culture and lifestyle found as easy route to encroaching the Arabian pre-Islamic culture through penetrating the Bedouin society and then using it as a platform for the conquest of the other societies in the Arabian Peninsula as well as beyond, through adapting scholasticism, also referred to as the “science of speech” as the major philosophy (Bamyeh, 115). Therefore, language analysis takes a central role in the history of spreading the Islamic faith, which makes the Islamic religion not a mere offshoot of a faith, culture and lifestyle, but also a rise in the system of intellectualism that still resonates with the concept of modern civilization. In this respect, the Quran has also been prefigured in the context of a poetic writing, which takes the style and form of speaking, as opposed to the conventional method of other writing that applies narrative writing (Bamyeh, 115). Therefore, the Islamic culture was introduced through integrating the new concept of language analysis to the traditional culture of baseless faith that was diverse amongst the Bedouin society as well as the sedentary communities. Thus, after the spread of the Islamic culture, lifestyle and religion came under two major strategies: the application of linguistic form through which knowledge can be distinctly manifested, and the search for a “position of authority “from which the speaker should speak (Bamyeh, 158). Nevertheless, while such an intellectual approach found an easy way of penetrating the Bedouin community, the situation was very different for the other sedentary and nomadic Arabian Peninsula communities, where the mere application of the prophetic voice and strange calling did not get a home to rest, due to the fact that movement in such communities was the way of life (Bamyeh, 157). Consequently, it was inevitable for the Islamic ideology to adapt the form of warfare as a strategy for penetrating through the sedentary and the nomadic communities, while at the same time alluring them with the vision of prosperity and improved lifestyle that was different from the pastoralism, hunting and raiding, through introducing the economy of trade and money-based exchange. Nevertheless, even though the introduction of the culture of Islamic religion was based on the failure of the pre-Islamic cultures, its vision and future outlook was not connected from these cultures either (Bamyeh, 263). Works Cited Bamyeh, Mohammed A. The Social Origins of Islam: Mind, Economy, Discourse. Minneapolis [u.a.: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1999. 1-316. Print. Read More