Any modern nation that calls itself ‘Islamic’, is a form of blasphemy because, the true 'Islamic state' existed only during the time of the Holy Prophet. No other piece of land can ever claim to be Islamic in nature. Hence, no Arab country in the Middle-East, where Islam was born, calls itself an ‘Islamic’ state. After the Holy Prophet passed away, in the absence of his guidance, what emerged were Caliphates or Sultanates or Emirates who never enforced or embraced Sharia law. “Unlike Christianity, which preached a peace that it never achieved, Islam unashamedly came with a sword” Islam the second-largest religion in the world. The total number of Muslims in Asia in 2010 was about 1.1 billion. As the Partition of British India loomed large, the Rohingyas hoped to join the future Muslim-majority province of East Pakistan. In May 1946, they sent a group of leaders to meet with Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the soon-to-be founding president of urdu-speaking Pakistan, requesting that the two Muslim-majority townships of Buthidaung and Maungdaw be incorporated into the new Muslim country. Carving East Pakistan out of Bengal was posing its own complex demographic challenges. Understandably, Jinnah refused to interfere in what he considered the internal affairs of Burma. Muhammad Bine Bukhtiyar Khalji was the first Muslim's invader who attacked Kamrup (Assam) in 1206 in the hope to conquer China through Assam. In 1227 A.D. Naseeruddin invaded Kamrup and defeated the king Prethu. This historical point of view vividly reveals the capability of Muslims in the establishment of their rule over the some parts of the state namely in Hojo. They settled willingly in the state while others remained as captives who latter on got mixed with local Assames and leaving their native tongue and culture, they adopted Assamese culture and civilization as their own and married Assumes girls and settled down. From the very beginning, Mughal soldiers who remained as captives in Assam, and later settled here permanently were economically weak. Low-caste Hindus and tribals who embraced Islam were also poor and backward in every respect. Mughal were a Central Asian tribe called Timurids of Turkish-Mongolian origin with a mixed but sophisticated Persian culture, many of whom came to India and had as time passed became Indian Muslims. The Badshahs and the Sultans of Delhi made many attempts of expedition to conquer Assam and as a result a small number of Muslims stayed back as prisoners of war. For 600 years Ahom dynasty managed to keep the kingdom independent even after 17 attacks from the Mughals & Pathan invaders. Aurangzeb, the Mughal emperor, conquered Assam in 1661–62 but ruled only for a very short time due to guerrilla attacks on his forces, forcing them to leave. The last war between Ahoms and Mughals took place in 1682 wherein Mughal was defeated in Itakhuli (nearby Guwahati). That ended Mughal will to regain eastern parts of Assam. A considerable number of these Muslim settled and married local women. The greatest discontinuity in the history of Bengal region occurred on June 23, 1757 when the East India Company (a mercantile company of England) became the virtual ruler of Bengal by defeating Nawab Siraj-ud Daulah through conspiracy. The British policies and the activities of Christian missionaries who came into the region contributed significantly in creating a freeze effect on the communities and social formations. Colonial rule and missionary activities also contributed significantly in detailing the character and tenor of identity movements among the tribals and non-tribals in the post-Independence period. The introduction of British law, a modern bureaucracy, new modes of communication, the English language and a modern education system and the opening of the local market to international trade opened new horizons for development in various spheres of life. New ideas originating from the West produced a ferment in the South Asian mind. The upshot of this ferment were streams of intellectual movements which have often been compared to the Renaissance. Furthermore, the Pax Britannica imposed on South Asia created an universal empire that brought different areas of the sub-continent closer to each other. Burma was a known source of opium for many centuries. For centuries the opium industry had been centered in a tribal area, now in northern Burma, that was long controlled by no nation. The idea of exporting opium to China started with Warren Hastings, the first governor general of British India, in 1780. There was a huge balance of payments problem in relation to China. China was exporting enormous amounts, but wasn't interested in importing any European goods. That was when Hastings came up with idea that the only way of balancing trade was to export opium to China. East of India and eastwards through China there was a different way of consuming it which was by smoking it. That was very much more addictive. It was not traditionally the case that people smoked opium in India. however this ceremonial use was dying out in part due to increasing consumption of alcohol and the rising price of opium. Aboriginal tribes in china first knew about tea, that is the most popular brewed beverage of the world. Later Mongolians, Tibetans and Chinese came to know about it. The dutch east India company popularised it in Europe. The British had a monopoly over tea that came from China but they looked for a suitable alternative source when the Chinese authorities grew more hostile (because of the opium trade from Bengal which led to the opium wars. The opium trade directly damage India by the disruption of the agricultural timetable. So when they 'discovered' that wild tea plants grew in Assam , they experimented growing Chinese tea in Assam. That failed but ironically they found in Assam the most commercially suitable tea bush of all the tea species. They were devoid of the smell in their green unprocessed state but acquire both the flavour and fragrance when dried. In 1867, Goodenough, the Steward & Company bored Asia's 1st successful mechanically drilled oil well in Makum in Assam. (it was barely 8 yrs after the world's 1st oil well was drilled in Pennsylvania in USA. ) this was the beginning of the history of oil industry in India. this discovery of oil was the outcome of man's brave endeavors and sacrifices. Royal Dutch Shell & British-owned Burmah oil company incorporated in Scotland in 1886 (earlier called Rangoon oil company) operated in South Asia. Burmah Shell began its operations with the import and marketing of Kerosene for lighting and cooking. American John D. Rockefeller acquired control over numerous refineries and pipelines, he went on to form the 'Standard Oil' Trust of USA (operated under alias as Esso or now Exxon in India). To counter the growing significance of Standard Oil, three largest rivals - Royal Dutch, Shell and Rothschild’s - came together to form a single organisation called Asiatic Petroleum in South Asia. Burmah Shell had the honour of fuelling J.R.D. Tata's historic solo flight in a single-engine De Havillian Puss Moth from Karachi to Bombay via Ahmedabad. Bengal’s fertility made it an extremely prosperous region in the 18th and 19th centuries. Bengal was the 'bridgehead' from which the British empire expanded over the rest of India. Calcutta, its main city was the capital of the British Indian empire until 1912. From 1880s to 1905, the British industry accelerated the migration of local labour from U.P. and Bihar, yet, it had failed to meet the demand. The mill owners required not just 'sufficient' but 'flexible' labour supply. Overproduction and price drops threatened markets. The Bengali speaking Muslims settled in Assam during the British period. The British had brought them there for cultivation of jute more than 100 years ago. These Assamese Muslims are quite hard working but Assamese Ahoms and hill tribe Lalung are easy going and are not willing to work hard on char lands. However, there is no national register to give us any estimate. Historically there has been communal harmony between Hindus and Muslims and in creating this harmony Shakr Deo on one hand, and, Azan Fakir, on the other have played very important role. Assam came under direct British rule when the Ahom king was disposed in 1839 on the pretext of having failed to fulfill hid treaty obligations. The British conquest of Assam in 1826 and later of Cachar, the East India Company merged these areas with the Bengal province. Cachar remains largely Bengali-Hindu. After administrative reorganization in the wake of the 1857 mutiny, the largely Bengali speaking districts of Sylhet, Goalpara and Cachar were with some hill districts merged into the new Chief Commissioner’s Province of Assam. So too Cachar, which absorbed this cutaway Karimganj. All together a pre-existing Bengali-majority area now became included in Assam. The unusual situation in Assam was that the number of Bangla speakers was now twice that of Assamese speakers, because in 1874, since district of Sylhet had been transferred from Bengal to Assam. British policies of missionaries who came contributed significantly in creating a freeze effect on the communities and groups. During these colonial times, due to certain policies, Bangla culture has grown and become well-developed but Assamese culture has been in life support, even though both languages were derived from Pali dynasty. Assamese language was considered a Bengali dialect and so Bengali was imposed as the official court language as well by the British. Sylhetis Bangladeshis disproportionately represented in the colonial bureaucracy of Assam. In 1947 partition, much of Sylhet voted to join East Pakistan, except for the eastern extremity of Sylhet, in the Karimganj sub-division. The Hindu middle class in Bengal, which styled itself as the Bhadralok, was the greatest beneficiary of British rule. They originated from trading classes, intermediaries of revenue administration and subordinate jobs in the imperial administration. On the contrary, the establishment of the British rule deprived the immigrant Muslim aristocracy (Ashraf) of state patronage. The “Immigrant Muslim/Upper-Caste Hindu” coalition, which characterized Muslim rule, was replaced by a new entente of British and caste Hindus. The new land settlement policy of the British ruined the traditional Muslim landlords. The Muslim aristocracy which had hitherto been disdainful of their native co-religionists sought the political support of the downtrodden Muslim peasantry (Atraf), who were exploited by Hindu landlords and moneylenders. The Muslim elite in Bengal manipulated the social insecurity of the less privileged to their advantage without having to give up their exclusiveness. Since then, Assam people here have been crying about how everybody conspiring against us. The British rule of Bengal contributed to the emergence of a vernacular elite from among locally converted Muslims in the second half of the 19th century. This was facilitated by a significant expansion of jute cultivation in the Bangladesh region. The increase in jute exports benefited the surplus farmers (Jotedars) in lower Bengal where the Muslims were a majority. The economic affluence of surplus farmers encouraged the expansion of secular education among local Muslims. For example, the number of Muslim students in Bengal increased by 74 percent between 1882-1883 and 1912-1913. Faced with the economic and cultural domination of the Bhadralok (Hindu intermediaries in Bengal) and the Ashraf (traditional Muslim aristocracy), the newly created Muslim Jotedars, who constituted the vernacular elite, and Muslim peasants (Atraf) closed ranks. Despite their outward unity, the coalition of various Muslim interest groups in Bengal was fragile. The vernacular Muslim elite and the Atraf identified themselves with the local culture and language; the Ashraf was enthralled by Islamic universalism. The idea of a separate Muslim state gained increasing popularity among Indian Muslims after 1936, when the Muslim League suffered a decisive defeat in the first elections under India's 1935 constitution. In 1940, the Muslim League called for an independent state in regions where Muslims were in the majority. Campaigning on that platform in provincial elections in 1946, the League won the majority of the Muslim seats contested in Bengal. Widespread communal violence followed, especially in Calcutta. The Burma Campaign (1941-45), often hailed as the “forgotten war,” not merely brought international geopolitics at the doorstep of British India but also transformed the Bengali-speaking Muslims of Arakan into willful strategic players. With two colonial powers locking horns in Burma — Japan promising independence and Britain struggling to retain control of its crown colony — the Rohingyas cooperated with the British in the hope that they would be granted administrative autonomy. After the British retreat in early 1942, the northern Arakan region erupted in retributive communal violence against pro-British Rohingyas perpetrated by the pro-Japanese Buddhist population. During the three British-led Arakan Campaigns, the Rohingyas were recruited as part of the “V Force” — the wartime British intelligence-gathering guerilla group— against the Japanese. By late 1944, the pro-Japanese Burmese military units had grown disillusioned with the Japanese and Tokyo’s promise of Burmese independence. Aung San, the military leader of the Burma National Army and father of Aung San Suu Kyi, decided to switch loyalty to the British, leading to the 1945 Kandy Conference at the Allied headquarters of the South East Asia Command in present-day Sri Lanka. During the colonial period the British needed more plantations workers in Burma and the low-paying labourer jobs were simply offered to poor conservative muslims from pre-partition Bengal. That means Rohingyas were from pre-partition Bengal working for British-owned plantations all over Northeastern region. The low-paying labourer jobs under British were done by muslims bengalis and lakhs of tea tribes from Jharkhand (Chhotanagpur region) and Orissa. Bengali Bhadralok officers from over populated Bengal were sent here to fill the British government administrative posts. A 'scorched earth' policy was implemented in the Chittagong region, nearest the Burmese border, while large amounts of rice were exported to the Middle East to feed British and Indian troops there, and to Ceylon, which had been heavily dependent on Burmese rice before the war, and where large military establishments were being created as it was feared that the Japanese might invade the island. On 16 October 1942 the whole east coast of Bengal and Orissa was hit by a cyclone. A huge area of rice cultivation up to forty miles inland was flooded, causing the autumn crop in these areas to fail. This meant that the peasantry had to eat their surplus, and the seed that should have been planted in the winter of 1942-3 had been consumed by the time the hot weather began in May 1943. Famine once again began to stalk the land, and between 1943 and 1945, three million people are thought to have died of starvation and disease. The Bengal famine of 1943 is one amongst the several famines that occurred in British administered individed Bengal. It is estimated that around 3 million people died from starvation and malnutrition during the period. The distressing testimonies of famine victims attest to the famine-enforced sexual exploitation of women. Famine relief was belated and grossly insufficient. There were major added complications of disease, notably malaria and cholera, the shortage of medicine and the malabsorption of food. The famines in Bengal are absent from other texts dealing with modern British imperial history. The Satyajit Ray feature film "Distant Thunder" is an immensely moving account of this tragedy seen through the lives of a Bengali intellectual and his wife in a Bengali village setting. India is the largest producer of jute ('Golden Fiber') contributing 61.2% of the total world production. Before independence it had monopoly in world jute production. But after partition 80% of the jute growing area went to East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Assam is the third largest producer of jute in India accounting for 7.87% of its total area and 6.68% of its total production. Here Dhubri, Kokrajhar, Bongaigaon, Goalpara, Barpeta, Nalbari, Kamrup and Nowgong districts in the lower Brahmaputra valley contribute about three-fourth of the state's production. Cachar, Darrang, Sibsagar and Lakhimpur districts are other important producers. In the twentieth century, jute and tea were also vital commodities produced in Bengal and its neighbouring province, Assam. Bengal had a world monopoly in the production of raw jute, a fibrous plant used to make rope and sacking. Darjeeling and Assam teas competed with Chinese tea for dominance in the world market. Bengal was also a significant producer of paper, leather goods, chemicals and dyes; and it has continued to produce marvelous textiles, like sari. By the middle of the twentieth century, over-population and over-cultivation had eroded the fertility of the soil. British interventions into its economy – particularly heavy taxes on the land and policies that favoured British goods over Indian-made goods – contributed to its stagnation and decline. The plunder of Bengal directly contributed to the industrial revolution in England. The capital amassed in Bengal province was invested in the nascent British industries. Lack of capital and fall of demand, on the other hand, resulted in de-industrialization in the Bangladesh region. The muslin industry virtually disappeared in the wake of British rule. The rise of nationalism throughout British-controlled India, in the late 19th century, resulted in mounting animosity between the Hindu and Muslim communities. In 1885, the All-India National Congress was founded with Indian and British membership. Muslims seeking an organization of their own founded the All-India Muslim League in 1906. Although both the League and the Congress supported the goal of Indian self-government, within the British Empire, the two parties were unable to agree on a way to ensure the protection of Muslim political, social, and economic rights. Burma did not remain a part of British India for long, and under the 1935 Government of Burma Act, it became a separate crown colony in 1937. This had serious political and military repercussions within a few years. After the 1962 military coup in Burma, Rohingyas were classified as "foreigners". So most of these Burmese Muslims who stayed in Buddhist Burma after the British left in 1948 became technically declared stateless and now found themselves being forced back into Bangladesh. UN estimates that there are currently over 10 million such stateless people in the world. No great power interests are going to be served in saving the Rohingyas. So, help is improbable. It will be another Rwanda, not a Kosovo. The word “Islam” derives from the Arabic word “istaslama” which means, literally, “submission.” To refuse to submit is a sign of intolerance, religious bigotry, racism and blasphemy and most definitely against Islamic scripture and practice. For Islamic conservatives, clergy and scholars there can be no other interpretation. To Muslims it is natural to demand submission from those with other religious beliefs and not to reciprocate or show tolerance (unless forced to). This delusion is real among many Muslims. Muslims are now being forced to confront their long history of violent intolerance. A fundamental problem in the Islamic world; the belief that combining righteousness with murderous tactics is often the road to power and spiritual salvation. Pakistan has recorded more than 5,000 deaths attributed to religious intolerance since the 1980s. That include violence against different forms of Islam (usually Shia) as well as against Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Jews and others. Many Muslim leaders admit that there is a lot of Islamic terrorism but insist that it’s all the fault of infidels (non-Muslims) who are making war on Islam and this leads to some Muslims feeling compelled to fight back. Sunni extremists (like al Qaeda or ISIL) killing Shia (or any other sect that deviates from strict Sunni interpretations of Islamic law and religious customs). The Druze and Alawites are considered by many Muslims as pagans pretending to be Muslims. Until the 20th century most Muslims lived as part of some foreign empire, under local totalitarian monarchs or Western colonial administrators. The foreign empires disappeared early in the 20th century but democracy has had a hard time taking hold. Muslims are free to practice their religion in the West while in many Moslem countries others are not. Saudi Arabia does not even allow any religious buildings that are not Muslim. Thus there are no Christian churches, Hindu temples, Jewish synagogues or any non-Muslim house of worship in Saudi Arabia. It is against the law there. In some Muslim countries (like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan) the penalty for any Muslim converting is death. Radical Islam arose as an alternative to all the other forms of government that never seemed to work. In theory, establishing "Islamic Republics" would solve all problems. People could vote but only Muslims in good standing could be candidates for office. A committee of Muslim holy men would have veto power over political decisions. Islamic law would be used. It was simple and it makes sense to a lot of Muslims in nations ruled by thugs and thieves, especially if the people are largely uneducated and illiterate. Radical religious types are no fun and you can't argue with them because they are on a mission from God. Radicals throughout the Muslim world continue to take advantage of dissatisfaction among the people and recruit terrorists and supporters. To help this process along they invoke the ancient grudges popular among many Muslims. It will take a generation or so for everyone in the Muslim world to figure out where all this is going. It would also be nice if the Muslim world got their act together and expunged this malevolent tendency once and for all. The Arab Spring was supposed to help but so far it hasn't.
India's Delhi Sultanate (from 1206 to 1290) During the Delhi Sultanate, several Turkic and Afghan dynasties ruled from Delhi, including the Mamluk dynasty (1206-90), the Khilji dynasty (1290-1320), the Tughlaq dynasty (1320-1413), the Sayyid dynasty (1414-51), and the Lodi dynasty (1451-1526). In 1526 the Delhi Sultanate was absorbed by the emerging Mughal Empire. The Sultanate ushered in a period of cultural renaissance. The resulting "Indo-Muslim" fusion left lasting monuments in architecture, music, literature, and religion. Due to the sacking of Delhi in 1398 by Timur (Tamerlane), other independent Sultanates were established in Awadh, Bengal, Jaunpur, Gujarat and Malwa. The Mamluk Dynasty or Ghulam Dynasty, directed into India by Qutb-ud-din Aybak, a Turkic general of Central Asian birth, was the first of five unrelated dynasties to rule India's Delhi Sultanate from 1206 to 1290. Aibak's tenure as a Ghorid administrator ranged between 1192 to 1206, a period during which he led invasions into the Gangetic heartland of India and established control over some of the new areas. Aibak rose to power when a Ghorid superior was assassinated. However, his reign as the sultan of Delhi was short lived as he expired in 1210 and his son Aram Shah rose to the throne, only to be assassinated by Iltutmish in 1211. The Sultanate under Iltutmish established cordial diplomatic contact with the Abbasid Caliphate between 1228–29 and had managed to keep India unaffected by the invasions of Genghis Khan and his successors. Following the death of Iltutmish in 1236 a series of weak rulers remained in power and a number of the noblemen gained autonomy over the provinces of the Sultanate. Power shifted hands from Rukn ud din Firuz to Razia Sultana till Ghiyas ud din Balban rose to the throne and successfully repelled both external and internal threats to the Sultanate. The Khalji dynasty came into being when Jalal ud din Firuz Khilji overthrew the last of the Slave dynasty rulers, Muiz ud din Qaiqabad, the grandson of Balban, and assumed the throne at Delhi. The architectural legacy of the dynasty includes the Qutb Minar, Mehrauli by Qutb-ud-din Aybak, Sultan Ghari near Vasant Kunj, the first Islamic Mausoleum (tomb) built in 1231 AD for Prince Nasir ud din Mahmud, eldest son of Iltumish, and Balban's tomb, also in Mehrauli Archaeological Park. Not all Muslim invaders were simply raiders. Later rulers fought on to win kingdoms and stayed to create new ruling dynasties. The practices of these new rulers and their subsequent heirs (some of whom were borne of Hindu wives) varied considerably. While some were uniformly hated, others developed a popular following. The resulting "Indo-Muslim" fusion left lasting monuments in architecture, music, literature, and religion. In addition it is surmised that the language of Urdu (literally meaning "horde" or "camp" in various Turkic dialects) was born during the Delhi Sultanate period as a result of the mingling of Sanskritic Hindi and the Persian, Turkish, Arabic. Tīmūr bin Taraghay Barlas, known in the West as Tamerlane, was a 14th century warlord of Turco-Mongol descent, conqueror of much of western and central Asia, and founder of the Timurid Empire and Timurid dynasty (1370–1405) in Central Asia, which survived until 1857 as the Mughal dynasty of India. Informed about civil war in the Indian subcontinent, Timur began a trek starting in 1398 to invade the reigning Sultan Nasir-u Din Mehmud of the Tughlaq Dynasty in the north Indian city of Delhi. His campaign was politically pretexted that the Muslim Delhi Sultanate was too tolerant toward its Hindu subjects, but that could not mask the real reason being to amass the wealth of the Delhi Sultanate. Timur crossed the Indus River at Attock (now Pakistan) on September 24. The capture of towns and villages was often followed by the looting, massacre of their inhabitants and raping of their women, as well as pillaging to support his massive army. Timur wrote many times in his memoirs of his specific disdain for the 'idolatrous' Hindus, although he also waged war against Muslim Indians during his campaign. Timur's invasion did not go unopposed and he did meet some resistance during his march to Delhi, most notably with the Sarv Khap coalition in northern India, and the Governor of Meerut. Although impressed and momentarily stalled by the valour of Ilyaas Awan, Timur was able to continue his relentless approach to Delhi, arriving in 1398 to combat the armies of Sultan Mehmud, already weakened by an internal battle for ascension within the royal family. The Sultan's army was easily defeated on December 17, 1398. Timur entered Delhi and the city was sacked, destroyed, and left in ruins. Before the battle for Delhi, Timur executed more than 100,000 captives. Immense quantities of spoils were taken from India. According to Ruy Gonzáles de Clavijo, 90 captured elephants were employed merely to carry precious stones looted from his conquest, so as to erect a mosque at Samarkand. The circumnavigation of Africa by the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama in 1498 allowed Europeans to challenge Arab control of the trading routes between Europe and Asia. In Central Asia and Afghanistan, shifts in power pushed Babur of Ferghana (in present-day Uzbekistan) southward, first to Kabul and then to India. Claiming descent from both Genghis Khan and Timur, Babur combined strength and courage with a love of beauty, and military ability with cultivation. He concentrated on gaining control of Northwestern India, doing so in 1526 by defeating the last Lodhi Sultan at the First battle of Panipat, a town north of Delhi. Babur then turned to the tasks of persuading his Central Asian followers to stay on in India and of overcoming other contenders for power, mainly the Rajputs and the Afghans. The dynasty he founded endured for more than three centuries. Mughal rulers such as Akbar were known for their religious tolerance and administrative genius, where as Aurangzeb (who also deposed his father Shah Jahan) advocated orthodox Islam and aggressively persecuted Hindus and Sikhs. Later the mansabdari system gave way to the zamindari system, in which high-ranking officials took on the appearance of hereditary landed aristocracy with powers of collecting rents. As Delhi's control waned, other contenders for power emerged and clashed, thus preparing the way for the eventual British takeover. SufismThroughout the long Sufi saga, the West had been unaware of intervention in its affairs, or indeed of the very existence of a powerful organisation in its midst that was monitoring the course of history and at the same time maintaining its own hierarchy, objectives and worldview independently of the visible political and religious structures of society. But the Sufi masters knew that this unconscious condition, mainly imposed on the people by repressive forces outside their control, must end, and that the time of awakening was drawing near. Sufism grew historically as a reaction against the rigid legalism of the orthodox religious leadership and as a counterweight to the growing worldliness of the expanding Muslim empire. Sufism is found amongst both Sunnis and Shi'a, being a movement within orthodox Islam. However it has many links with Isma'ilism and other extreme Shi'a sects (Ghulat) as it developed in similar times and circumstances. Muhammad is regarded as the first Sufi master who passed his esoteric teachings orally to his successors who also received his special grace (barakah). An unbroken chain of transmission of divine authority is supposed to exist from Muhammad to his successor 'Ali and from him down to generations of Sufi masters (Sheikhs, Pirs). Each order has its own Silsilah (chain) that links it with Muhammad and 'Ali. One source of Sufism is to be found in the twofold presentation of God in the Qur'an: on the one hand he is described as the almighty creator, lord and judge, and on the other hand he is seen as abiding in the believer's heart and nearer to man than his own jugular vein. The first Sufis were ascetics who meditated on the Day of Judgement. They were called "those who always weep" and "those who see this world as a hut of sorrows." They kept the external rules of Shari'a, but at the same time developed their own mystical ideas and techniques. "Little food, little talk, little sleep," was a popular proverb amongst them. Mortification of the flesh, self denial, poverty and abstinence were seen as the means of drawing near to God, and this included fasting and long nights of prayer. Sufism searches for a direct mystical knowledge of God and of his Love. Its goal was to progress beyond mere intellectual knowledge to a mystical (existential) experience that submerged limited man in the infinity of God. It used Jewish, Christian, Gnostic, Hellenistic, Zoroastrian and Hindu traditions that were brought into Islam by converts from the many conquered populations. The name Sufi is derived from the Arabic word Suf which means wool. Early Sufis wore simple coarse woollen garments similar to those of Christian monks. Its cultural contribution was a rich poetry in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu, Sindi, Pashto and Punjabi, which spread its mystical ideas all over the Muslim world and enriched local literature and identity. Several techniques were developed to achieve the goal of a blissful union with Ultimate Reality. They were known as Dhikr (remembrance, mention of God) and Sama' (hearing). In the Dhikr Sufis would recite the many names of God and sing hymns of praise. Special forms of breathing were supposed to aid concentration and help them attain to an ecstatic state in which they actually felt they had reached union with God. During the Sama', poetry, music and dance were used as an aid to reaching the ecstatic state. These informal groups later crystalized into Sufi brotherhoods gathered around famous leaders. A charismatic hypnotist, carpet trader, Russian spy and mystic extraordinaire, George Gurdjieff was the son of a Greek-Armenian bard and was deeply impressed by his father’s songs concerning the great spiritual luminaries of a vanished past. The boy apparently began his search for the lost wisdom of the ancients at the early age of fifteen, and maintained it at huge cost to his health and material resources until he emerged, nearly thirty years later, a magus of mysterious yet undeniably charismatic authority. Possessed of enormous personal courage, during World War I Gurdjieff led a large posse of Russian followers across Eastern Europe to safety, through the raging battle lines of Bolsheviks and Cossacks in turn, eventually establishing a school in Fontainbleu, outside Paris, for the study and practice of methods of spiritual self-transformation. These methods, revolutionary in their day, are believed to have included the sacred dance and music exercises of the shamanistic Yesevi dervishes of Kurdistan, a community in which Gurdjieff seems to have received his initial training in Sufi techniques of “soul-making.” The Yezidis, a secretive Kurdish religious sect from which the Sufi Bektashi order has sprung, live to this day in the foothills north of Mosul in Iraqi Kurdistan pursuing a cult of angels. According to the British baroness E.S. Drower, who in 1940 published a detailed paper on the sect, the chief Yezidi angel is Malek Taus, the Peacock Angel who has some likeness to Lucifer, the fallen angel of Christian fame. A black serpent is also held in special reverence in the Yezidi religion as a symbol of magical potency – no doubt ultimately a symbol of kundalini and the spinal system of energies elaborated in spiritual physiology. While paying lip service to the Muslim faith, the Yezidi have their own unique cosmogony, mythology and ritual practices, which have more commonality with the Magian or Gnostic belief-systems than with either Islam or Christianity. Ceaselessly persecuted and destroyed by Kurdish Muslims and Ottoman Turks as well as Islamic armies of both Iraq and Iran, the once powerful Yezidi tribes have been almost wiped out as heretics of the first order. Only isolated groups are now left. These include small pockets in Central Kurdistan, the Russian Caucasus and in satellite communities in Syria, Lebanon, Anatolia and Iran. With the Mongol invasions, however, came difficult days for European civilisation as many sources of Sufi wisdom withdrew. The Sufi Masters of Wisdom known in Central Asia as the Khwajagan lineage withdrew at this time to the Trans-Himalayas, where their schools still persist. The Khwajagan were neither savants nor mystical ecstatics. They were practical men who assiduously practiced the breathing and mantric exercise of the zikr, fought their own weaknesses by means of trials based on humiliation and abasement, and during the Mongol depredations of the conquered western cities built new schools, hospitals and mosques. Some say these Masters, who may be synonymous with the Sarmouni, have continued to this day to head the Sufi hierarchy – which Bennett has called the Hidden Directorate – from its hidden Trans-Himalayan headquarters. Meanwhile, the Sufi orders left behind continued to strengthen their ties with other esoteric systems, such as the Magian secret societies in Persia and the Copts in Egypt, and to extend their formidable influence across the world into South-East Asia. In the Sunda Islands they amalgamated successfully with the indigenous shamans, Hindu-Buddhists and Taoists and were instrumental in establishing in Java one of the most influential schools of Tibetan Kalachakra Tantra in the world. The result was a chain of hybrid secret societies around the globe whose roots were buried deep in a freedom-loving soil compounded of Sufism, Magian wisdom and the Solomonic and Hermetic wisdom of the Egyptian Essenes. It was these pan-religious amalgamations that produced over the centuries initiatic schools like the Templars, the Chartres masters, the Rosicrucians, the Illuminati, the Freemasons and the Theosophists, all dedicated to working for the religious and scientific dawning of a new age free from religious intolerance. Throughout the long Sufi saga, the West had been unaware of intervention in its affairs, or indeed of the very existence of a powerful organisation in its midst that was monitoring the course of history and at the same time maintaining its own hierarchy, objectives and worldview independently of the visible political and religious structures of society. But the Sufi masters knew that this unconscious condition, mainly imposed on the people by repressive forces outside their control, must end, and that the time of awakening was drawing near.
"Civilization is the process in which one gradually increases the number of people included in the term 'we' or 'us' and at the same time decreases those labeled 'you' or 'them' until that category has no one left in it." Interestingly, not many Muslims want to accept that Allah was already being worshipped at the Ka'ba in Mecca by Arab pagans before Muhammad came. 1,400 years ago, armies of nomadsswept out of the Arabian desert and conquered half the world. Today, their descendants tell an extraordinary story. They say that God sent them a prophet - Mohammed - and that God then gave them an empire. MuhammadA prophet astute in statecraft and military strategy and an inspired statesman, changed the history and destiny of Arabia and of much of the world. He was born about 570 to the Banu Hashim family, reputable merchants in the tribe of Quraysh in Mecca. According to tradition, he was a penniless orphan who married Khadija, the widow of a rich merchant, somewhat older than himself. From about 620, Mecca became actively hostile, since much of its revenues depended on its pagan shrine, the Kaaba, under the protection of the Quraysh, and an attack on the existing Arab religion was an attack on the prosperity of Mecca. Following the death of Khadija in 621, Muhammad married eleven other women. Tradition relates that he and his followers were invited to the town of Yathrib by Jewish and Christian tribes after they were no longer welcome in Mecca. In 622, the first year of the Muslim calendar, they set out on the Hijra, the emigration to Yathrib, later renamed Medina, meaning "the city" where Muhammad concluded a treaty with the tribes of Medina. A large number of Medinans, known as the Ansar (helpers), were attracted to Muhammad's cause. According to several sources, early versions of Islamic practice included Jewish practices such as the fast of Yom Kippur and prayer to Jerusalem, perhaps influenced by the Jews of Medina. These were eventually dropped, and the direction of prayer was turned to Mecca. It was the Muslims from Arabia, nomads and settled people alike, whose invasions in the 6th and 7th cent. widely diffused both the Arabic language and Islam. They founded a vast empire, which at its height stretched from the Atlantic Ocean on the west, across North Africa and the Middle East, to central Asia on the east. The Arabs became the rulers of many different peoples, and gradually a great Arab civilization was built up. Although many of its cultural leaders were not ethnically Arabs (some were not even Muslims, but Christians and Jews), the civilization reflected Arab values, tastes, and traditions. In 624 Muhammad learned of a war party of the Quraysh, who were setting out to Medina to avenge the apparently accidental death of one Hadrami, a relative of the leader of the Quraysh. Muhammad and his army, aided by the Ansar auxiliaries, rode out to meet them at Badr. This battle, related in the Quran, is often called the first battle of Islam, but in fact there had been several skirmishes before Badr. Despite the numerical superiority of the Qurayshites, the Battle of Badr was apparently a clear victory for Muhammad. The Qurayshites prepared better for the battle of Uhud, fought in the following year. They gathered a force of some 3,000 men, including a strong cavalry contingent led by Khalid Ibn Walid, later a famous general of Islam. Though the Muslims had the initial advantage, they fell to looting the camp of the Meccans and abandoned a good archery position in the high ground. This allowed Khalid ibn Walid to save the day for the Qurayshites and inflict heavy losses on the Muslims. Uhud is often called the second battle of Islam, because it is the second battle referred to in the Quran, or perhaps because it was the second Ghazwa (A Ghazwa is a large scale raid that was led by Muhammad in person). Muhammad believed firmly in his position as last of the prophets and as successor of Jesus. Therefore, he seems at first to have expected that the Jews and Christians would welcome him and accept his revelations, but he was soon disappointed. Medina had a large Jewish population that controlled most of the wealth of the city, and a portion of them at least refused to give their new ruler any kind of religious allegiance. Muhammad, after a long quarrel, appropriated much of their property, and destroyed two Jewish tribes, the Banu Nadir and the Banu Quraizah. Muhammad fought the Banu Nadir and expelled them from Meccah. Muhammad and his followers constructed a trench around Medina as a part of its fortification, purposely making one section narrower than the rest, so that the Meccan attackers would try to cross the trench at that point. This formed a convenient trap which resulted in the death of many Meccans. Unable to cross the trench, the Meccans besieged Medina. Medina was saved by a miracle reminiscent of the destruction of Senacharib before Jerusalem. After 27 days of siege, according to tradition, God sent a piercing blast of the cold east wind. The enemy’s tents were torn up, their fires were put out, the sand and rain beat in their faces. Terrified by the portents, they broke camp and lifted the siege. By 630, Muhammad and the Muslims were strong enough to attack and conquer Mecca, despite the treaty, alleging that the Quraysh had violated the treaty first. The Meccans were forced to convert to Islam, and the powerful Quraish and Umayya tribes were incorporated into the Islamic leadership by giving members of their leaders, especially Uthman, prominent positions in the military and government. By this time pagan Arabia had been converted, and the Prophet's missionaries, or legates, were active in the Eastern Empire, in Persia, and in Ethiopia. The Qur'an is, among other things, a handbook for rules of war, prescribing the laws of treaties and of booty and commanding the faithful to Jihad, (holy war) against any who interfere with the practice of Islam. In practice, Jihad was often carried out as aggressive war well beyond the borders of Islam. Muhammad had created powerful force that could now wrest control of much of the subcontinent. In 632, Muhammad died after a short illness. Though he had been an astute statesman, he failed to make any arrangements for his succession. Mohammed left no sons, and in any case there was no tradition of sons taking over in the Arab world. Several choices were possible, and a deadlock between the clans appeared likely - a deadlock that would almost certainly have been fatal to a community threatened by enemies on all sides. One of the main candidates, Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, was passed over because he was considered too young to assume a position of such great responsibility. This decision was later to prove a major source of division in the Islamic community. Abu Bakr only lived for two years after becoming Caliph, but he managed to unite the whole Arabian Peninsula under Islam. In addition to his personal courage, warmth, and wisdom, Abu Bakr was well versed in the genealogical histories of the bedouin tribes, which meant that he was well placed to determine which tribes could be turned against each other and which ones could be enticed into alliances. The defeat of rival prophets and some of the larger clans in what were known as the Ridda Wars soon brought about the return of one tribe after another to the Islamic fold. Almost immediately after becoming the Caliph, or ruler, in 634 AD, the second Caliph Umar led Arab raids into both the Roman and the Sassanid empires. Both were surprisingly successful. Members of the Christian sects dominant in these areas, such as the Copts and Nestorians, had long resented the rule of the Orthodox Byzantines, who taxed them heavily and, periodically, openly persecuted them as heretics. Apparently both the Romans and the Sassanians were much weaker than the Arabs thought they were. Umar was assassinated in 644 AD, and succeeded by Uthman. Encouraged by these early victories, Uthman and his army organized a real campaign, and by 651 AD they took over most of Western Asia, from the Mediterranean coast to eastern Iran. Uthman was assassinated in 656, and succeeded by Ali, who had a somewhat more radical view of the Islamic faith. Ali was a famed warrior and experienced commander, and his deeply committed supporters soon gained the upper hand. Under Ali, the soldiers of the Islamic Empire fought their way through Egypt and North Africa, and although Ali was assassinated in 661, the armies continued and then crossed the Straits of Gibraltar to attack Spain in 710 AD. In the East, the Islamic Empire came up against the Tang Dynasty Chinese, who were also expanding their empire at this time. After the death of Ali, there was a bitter religious and political struggle between the followers of a more traditional Islamic faith, who were called Sunnis, and the more radical followers of Ali, who were called Shiites (SHE-eye-ts). The Sunnis won, and established the Umayyad dynasty, with its capital at Damascus in Syria. In Jerusalem, the Umayyads built the first major mosque, the Dome of the Rock, on the site of Solomon's Temple (and the place where Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac). They began building it in 687 AD and finished it in 691 AD. The ever-increasing size of the royal harem was just one manifestation of the Umayyad caliphs' growing addiction to luxury and soft living. Their legitimacy had been disputed by various Muslim factions from the outset of their seizure of the caliphate. But the Umayyads further alienated the Muslim faithful as they became more aloof in the early decades of the 8th century and retreated from the dirty business of war into their pleasure gardens and marble palaces. The Kharjites (meaning "those who left") protested against the compromise outcome of the battle and formed a separate movement as adherents of Ali. They continued to be important until about the eleventh century and eventually evolved into Ibadi Islam. Ibadism is neither Sunni nor Shia, and exists today mainly in Oman, East Africa, the Mzab valley in Algeria, the Nafus mountains of Libya, and Jerba island in Tunisia. These Shia, known as "Twelvers," believe that the Twelfth Imam did not die but disappeared in 874, and that he will return as the "rightly guided leader," or Mahdi, and usher in a new, more perfect order. A second Shia group, the Ismailis, or the "Seveners," follow a line of Imams that challenged the Seventh Imam and supported a younger brother, Ismail. In the course of history, Islam diverged into numerous schools and sects with different approaches and philosophies ranging from fierce and puritanical schools such as the Wahhabi of Saudi Arabia to tolerant and spiritualistic Sufi practitioners. Four different Sufi schools (Tasawwuf) arose in different parts of the Islamic world : The Naqshbandiah, the Qadriah, the Chishtiah, and Suharwardiah. Sunni (meaning "orthodox") Sunni Islam includes four systems of law ((Madh'hab) . One of these, the school of Malik ibn Anas (died in 796), which is observed today in much of Africa and Indonesia, originated with the scholars of Medina. The three other Sunni law schools (Hanafi, Shafii, and Hanbali) developed at about the same time, mostly based on Iraqi scholarship. The Arabs had perfected a form of warfare suitable for the desert, and for those times and conditions. The swordsmen mounted on camels, and living by raids and foraging were self-sufficient and didn't concern themselves with supply lines. They could come out of the desert that bordered Persian and Byzantine domains and strike at will. If they failed in battle, they could quickly retreat into the desert, where it was difficult for enemies mounted on horseback to follow. The failing Byzantine and Persian empires could not organize field armies large enough to decisively defeat the Arabs, nor could they provide the manpower for proper stationary defensive fortifications. The bedouin warriors were drawn to the campaigns of expansion by the promise of a share in the booty to be won in the rich farmlands raided and the tribute that could be exacted from the towns and cities that came under Arab rule. As an early Arab writer remarked, the bedouins forsook their life as desert nomads not out of a promise of religious rewards, but due to a "yearning after bread and dates." The rise of Muslim naval supremacy in the eastern end of the sea sealed the loss of Byzantium's rich provinces in Syria and Egypt and opened the way to further Muslim conquests in North Africa, the Mediterranean islands, and even southern Italy. By the early 8th century, the southern prong of this advance had reached into northwest India. The Arabs quickly conquered Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Egypt and Persia. When the Arabs first came out of the desert, they were for the most part illiterate and ignorant of the wider world. Their provincialism and cultural backwardness was no better revealed than at the moment when the victorious Muslim armies came within sight of the city of Alexandria in Egypt. Chroniclers of the great conquests record how the veteran Arab warriors halted and sat on their horses, mouths literally open in wonderment, before the great walls of the city that stretched across the horizon from the Pharos lighthouse in the north to perhaps the greatest library in the ancient world in the south. As this confrontation suggests, the Arab conquerors burst quite suddenly into some of the most ancient and highly developed centers of civilization known to human history. Within the confines of the Islamic domains were located the centers of the Hellenistic, Persian, Indian, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian civilizations as well as the widely dispersed Christian and Jewish traditions of thought and learning. The rather sparse cultural tradition of the Arabs, which one author has fittingly captured with reference to their "mental virginity," made them highly receptive to influences percolating from the subject peoples and remarkably tolerant of the great diversity of their styles and approaches to thought and artistic creativity. the words Khuda & Namaz are persian words for Allah & Salat. Education flourished in the Islamic lands, and literature, philosophy, medicine, mathematics, and science were particularly developed by the Arabs. At the same time in all the provinces of the huge empire, except in Persia, Arabic became the chief spoken language. The waves of Arab conquest across the East and into Europe widened the scope of their civilization and contributed greatly to world development. In Europe they were particularly important in Sicily, which they held from the 9th to the late 11th cent., and the civilization of the Moors in Spain was part of the great Arabic pattern. Christian scholars in those two lands gained much from Islamic knowledge, and scholasticism and the beginnings of modern Western science were derived in part from the Arabs. The Arabs also introduced Europe to the Greek philosophers, whose writings they had already translated into Arabic. In addition, scholars working in Arabic played a role as transmitters of ideas that paralleled the rise of Arab traders and merchants as the carriers of goods and inventions. Indian numbers, for example - which, along with Greek mathematics, introduction of paper from China, would prove critical to the development of scientific thinking in western Europe - were learned by Muslim invaders of India, carried to the Middle Eastern centers of Islamic civilization, and eventually transmitted across the Mediterranean to Italy and from there to northern Europe. But the best was yet to come. It is no exaggeration that from the 9th to about the 13th century, Arabic was the most important and the first language of science and learning that extended across civilizations. In this era, Islamic scientific discoveries and imagination significantly affected the thinking and creativity of virtually all Old World civilizations from western Europe to China. Much of the science and philosophy taught in universities in the Middle Ages was derived from Arabic translations, rendered into Latin in Spain in the 12th century. For the realm of Islam as well as for parts of Europe, the Muslim Arabs became the brokers of a cultural revolution, transmitting and integrating works of science, as well as technical advances from the far east. The use of ceramic tiles in construction was inspired by architectural traditions prevalent in Iraq, Iran, and in Central Asia. Rajasthan's blue pottery was an adaptation of Chinese pottery which was imported in large quantities by the Mughal rulers. There is also the example of Sultan Abidin (1420-70) sending Kashmiri artisans to Samarqand to learn book-binding and paper making. Khurja and Siwan became renowned for pottery, Moradabad for brass ware, Mirzapur for carpets, Firozabad for glass wares, Farrukhabad for printing, Sahranpur and Nagina for wood-carving, Bidar and Lucknow for bidriware, Srinagar for papier-mache, Benaras for jewelry and textiles, and so on. On the flip-side encouraging such growth also resulted in higher taxes on the peasantry. A significant aspect of the Muslim period in world history was the emergence of Islamic Sharia courts capable of imposing a common commercial and legal system that extended from Morocco in the West to Mongolia in the North East and Indonesia in the South East. The citified bedouin tribesmen were soon interacting intensively and intermarrying in considerable numbers with the local populations of the areas conquered. Equally critical, increasing numbers of these peoples were voluntarily converting to Islam, despite the fact that conversion did little to advance them socially or politically in the Umayyad period. Mawali, or Muslim converts, in this era still had to pay property taxes and in some cases the jizya, or head tax, levied on nonbelievers. By far the greater portion of the population of the empire were dhimmis, or people of the book. As the title suggests, it was originally applied to Christians and Jews who shared the Bible with the Muslims. As Islamic conquests spread to peoples, such as the Zoroastrians of Persia and the Hindus of India, the designation "dhimmi" was necessarily stretched to accommodate the majority groups within these areas of the empire. The Muslim overlords generally displayed tolerance toward the religions of dhimmi peoples. Though they had to pay the jizya and both commercial and property taxes, their communities and legal systems were left intact and they were allowed to worship as they pleased. This approach made it a good deal easier for these peoples to accept Arab rule, particularly since many had been oppressed by their pre-Muslim rulers. Broader social changes within the Arab and widening Islamic community were accompanied by significant shifts in the position of women, both within the family and in society at large. In the first centuries of Arab expansion, the greatly strengthened position of women under Islam prevailed over the seclusion and domination by males that were characteristic features of women's lives through much of the rest of the Middle East. Muhammad's teachings and the dictates of the Quran stressed the moral and ethical dimensions of marriage. The kindness and concern the prophet displayed for his own wives and daughters did much to strengthen the bonds between husband and wife and the nuclear family in the Islamic community. Muhammad encouraged marriage as a replacement for the casual and often commercial sexual liaisons that had been widespread in pre-Islamic Arabia. He vehemently denounced adultery on the part of both husbands and wives, though the punishment he recommended (100 lashes) was a good deal less draconian than the death by stoning later prescribed by some versions of Islamic law. He forbade female infanticide, which had apparently been widely practised in Arabia in pre-Islamic times. Women could not take more than one husband, but Muhammad gave his own daughters a say as to whom they might marry and greatly strengthened the legal rights of women regarding inheritance and divorce. He insisted that the bride-price paid by the husband's family be given to his future wife, rather than to her father as before. Perhaps one of Zainab's nieces best epitomizes the independent-mindedness of Muslim women in the early Islamic era. When chided for going about without a veil, she replied that God in His wisdom had chosen to give her a beautiful face and that she intended to make sure that it was seen in public so that all might appreciate God's grace. Many of the traditions of the prophet, which have played such a critical role in Islamic law afd ritual, were recorded by women, and his wives and daughters played an important role in the compilation of the Quran. Though women were not allowed to be prayer leaders, they played an active role in the politics of the early community. The sudden shift from Umayyad to Abbasid leadership within the Islamic Empire reflected a series of even more fundamental transformations within evolving Islamic civilization. The rise of the Abbasid caliphate represented a true social revolution. Arabs been displaced by Persians and others. The distinctions of aristocracy disappeared. The distinction between Arab Muslims and converted Muslims was likewise wiped away and the basis was laid for the eclectic and tolerant Muslim society of the golden age of Islam. The Abbasid caliph Al-Mansour built a capital city on an island between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, in place of a small Persian village. He called his capital Madinat as-Salam - the city of peace, but it came to be known by most people by its older Persian name, Baghdad. The revolts against the Umayyads had arisen in part from a lingering hostility toward the Umayyad clan. But they were even more a product of growing regional identities and divisions within the Islamic world. As Islamic civilization spread even farther under the Abbasids, these regional interests and loyalties made it increasingly difficult to hold together the vast areas the Arabs had conquered. They also gave rise to new cleavages in the Islamic community that have sapped its strength from within, from Abbasid times to the present day. The revolts against the Umayyads were also an expression of the growing displeasure, if not disgust, of the Muslim faithful with the absolutist pretensions and extravagant life-styles of the Umayyad elite. There was a very strong puritanical thrust to the resistance of the Abbasids and their Shi'ite allies. In the first phase of Abbasid rule, the Islamic contribution to human artistic expression focused on the great mosques and palaces. In addition to advances in religious, legal, and philosophical discourse, the Islamic contribution to learning was focused on the sciences and mathematics. In the early Abbasid period, the main tasks were recovering and preserving the learning of the ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean and Middle East. Beyond the works of Plato, for example, much of Greek learning had been lost to the peoples of western Europe. Thanks to Muslim and Jewish scholars in the Abbasid domains, the priceless writings of the Greeks on key subjects such as medicine, algebra, geometry, astronomy, anatomy, and ethics were saved, recopied in Arabic, and dispersed throughout the empire. From Spain in the west, Greek writings found their way into Christendom. Among the authors rescued in this manner, one need only mention Aristotle, Galen, Hippocrates, Ptolemy, and Euclid to demonstrate the importance of the preservation effort. Ironically, as we shall see, the victory of the Abbasids led to bureaucratic expansion, absolutism, and luxury on a scale beyond the wildest dreams of the Umayyads. Finally, the coalition of forces that overthrew the Umayyads was strengthened by the support of the mawali who were weary of being second-class citizens in the Muslim world. They saw the Abbasids as champions of a policy of active conversion and their admission as full members of the Islamic community. Of all the major transformations that were marked by the Abbasids' rise to power, the last was the most significant for the development of Islamic civilization. From the religion of a small, Arab warrior elite, Islam became a cosmopolitan and genuinely universal faith with tens of millions of adherents from Spain to the Philippine islands. Though the caliphate splintered, Islam spread under various rulers to Sub-Saharan Africa and South East Asia, and into Indonesia. The fact that they chose to build their new capital, Baghdad, in Iraq near the ancient Persian capital of Ctesiphon was a clear sign of things to come. Soon the Abbasid caliphs were perched atop jewel-encrusted thrones, reminiscent of those of the ancient Persian emperors, gazing down on the great gatherings of courtiers and petitioners who bowed before them in their gilt and marbled audience halls. The caliphs' palaces and harems expanded to keep pace with their claims to absolute power over the Islamic faithful as well as the non-Muslim subjects of their vast empire. The ever expanding corps of bureaucrats, servants, and slaves, who strove to translate Abbasid political claims into reality, lived and worked within the circular walls of the new capital at Baghdad. The bureaucratization of the Islamic Empire was reflected above all in the growing power of the wazir, or chief administrator and head of the caliph's inner councils, and the sinister figure of the royal executioner, who stood close to the throne in the public audiences of the Abbasid rulers. The wazirs, who were initially recruited mainly from the Persian provinces of the empire, oversaw the building of an administrative infrastructure that allowed the Abbasids to project their demands for tribute to the most distant provinces of the empire. Sheer size, poor communications, and collusion between Abbasid officials and local notables meant that the farther the town or village was from the capital, the less effectively royal commands were carried out. But for well over a century, the Abbasid regime was fairly effective at collecting revenue from its subject peoples and preserving law and order over much of the empire. The presence of the executioner perhaps most strikingly symbolized the absolutist pretensions of the Abbasid rulers. With a wave of his hand, a caliph could condemn the highest of Muslim nobles to death. Thus, even in matters of life and death, the Abbasids claimed a status above the rest of the Muslim faithful and even Islamic law that would have been rejected as heretical by the early community of believers. Though they stopped short of declaring themselves divine, the Abbasid rulers styled themselves the "shadow of God on earth," clearly beings superior to ordinary mortals - Muslim or otherwise. The openness and accessibility of the earlier caliphs, including the Umayyads, was increasingly unimaginable. The old days, when members of the Muslim community could request an audience with the caliph merely by ringing a bell announcing their presence in the palace, were clearly gone. Now, just to get into the vast and crowded throne room, one had to bribe and petition numerous officials, and more often than not the best result would be to win a few minutes with the wazir or one of his assistants. If an official or notable were lucky enough to buy and beg an audience with the caliph, he had to observe an elaborate sequence of bowing and prostration in approaching the throne. Positions at court and throughout the bureaucracy were won and lost depending on one's standing with powerful officials in the Abbasid hierarchy, and these great men could in turn be elevated or dismissed on the whim of the caliph. In the Hall of the Tree, for example, there was a huge artificial tree, made entirely of gold and silver and filled with gold mechanical birds that chirped to keep the caliph in good cheer. Sexual enjoyment, which within the confines of marriage had been condoned rather than restricted by the Quran, often degenerated into eroticism for its own sake. The harem, replete with fierce eunuchs, insatiable sultans, and veiled damsels, provided outside observers with a stereotypic image of the Abbasid world that had little to do with the life of the average citizen of the empire - and often even with that of the caliph and high officials. Yet as the following passage from The Thousand and One Nights describing the interior of the mansion of a Baghdad notable illustrates, the material delights of the Abbasid era were enjoyed far beyond the confines of the palace. This sort of living was, of course, highly offensive to the pious, particularly those of the dissenting sects, such as the Shi'as. The leaders of these risings promised to cleanse the Islamic community of the excesses of the court and notables. In the centuries of Abbasid decline, when real power passed to a succession of regional dynasties, there emerged a number of violence-prone sects, such as the Assassins whose members were devoted to striking down Abbasid officials whenever the opportunity arose. Even for less-radical Muslims, the excesses of the Abbasid court and elite classes made a mockery of their claims to be the religious successors of Muhammad and the upholders of Islamic law. The rise of the mawali was paralleled in the Abbasid era by the growth in wealth and social status of the commercial and landlord classes of the empire. The Abbasid age was a time of great urban expansion that was linked to a revival of the Afro-Eurasian trading network, which had declined with the fall of the Han dynasty in China in the early 3d century A.D. and the slow collapse of the Roman Empire in the 4th and 5th centuries. The Abbasid domains in the west and the great Tang and Song empires in the east became the pivots of the revived commercial system. From the western Mediterranean to the South China Sea, Arab dhows, or sailing vessels with triangular, or lateen, sails that later strongly influenced European ship design, carried the goods of one civilized core to be exchanged with those of another. Muslim merchants, often in joint ventures with Christians and Jews (which, because each merchant had a different Sabbath, meant that the firm could carry on business all week), grew rich by supplying the cities of the empire with provisions and by taking charge of the long-distance trade that specialized in luxury products for the elite classes. The great profits made from the trade were reinvested in new commercial enterprises or the purchase of land and in the construction of the great mansions that dominated the central quarters of the political and commercial hubs of the empire. Some wealth also went to charity, as required by the Quran. A good deal of the wealth was spent on building and running mosques and religious schools, baths and rest houses for weary travelers, and hospitals, which in the numbers of patients served and the quality of their medical care surpassed those of any other civilization to that time. The Muslims were challenged by the Crusaders who arrived in the Middle East in 1096 and captured Jerusalem in 1099. The Muslim world reacted slowly but surely to the unexpected and unwelcome intrusion of the "Franks." Salah Eddin, a Kurd, took control of Fatimid Egypt and declared an end to the Fatimid dynasty in 1171. He reconquered Jerusalem in 1187, having defeated the Crusaders at the battle of Hattin. The Crusaders lingered on in Syria and Palestine. The last fortress of the Crusaders, Acre, fell in 1291. Despite the conquest of Baghdad by the Buwayhids and Seljuk Turks, the Abbasids still ruled nominally as Caliphs until 1258, when the Mongols under Hulagu (also Holagu, Huleku) sacked Baghdad, ending the the temporal power of the Caliphate. The Mongols swept across the Middle East, reaching the Mediterranean and wreaking havoc in the already weakened remains of the Arab empire. The advance of Hulagu was finally stopped at the battle of Ayn Jalut near Nazereth in Palestine in 1260. The Mongols eventually converted to Islam and were integrated in the Muslim domains. However, the invasion of Hulagu was followed in the fourteenth and fifteen centuries by the invasion of Tamurlaine, who conquered Samarkand in central Asia and reached Syria about 1401. In the radical jihadist view, secular countries — both democratic and republic — are following the governance system of "Dajjal" (The Anti-Christ). They believe that Liberal democracy, is a fake and deceptive substitute for the Khilafah (Islamic rule of governance). This awareness of jihadist threat to liberal democrats is essential to counter violent extremism. It bears striking similarity to Wahhabism, the state religion of Saudi Arabia which once led the global jihad against the non-Muslims in general and particularly the moderate Muslims of the world who adhered to democracy and liberal Islamic values. They equally abhor the Western and European Muslims who play the role of their citizenship by voting in their elections, or contesting their elections through a democratic or republican party or pledging their allegiance to the elected president or prime minister. https://archive.org/details/classstructureec0000madd/mode/2up
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