Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland
Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland
Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland
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128 t CHAPTER SIX<br />
state <strong>and</strong> its place in the scheme of both Sacred History <strong>and</strong> their<br />
own lives. <strong>Islam</strong>’s experience was profoundly different. From its<br />
inception, the Muslim community, the umma, was both a religious<br />
<strong>and</strong> a political association, a “church” as well as a “state”; Muhammad<br />
was his own Constantine.<br />
The Creation of the Umma<br />
In 622 Muhammad accepted an invitation to leave his native<br />
Mecca, where he was the charismatic leader of a small conventicle<br />
of believers, <strong>and</strong> to emigrate to Medina as the arbitrator-ruler of a<br />
faction-ridden community of Arabs <strong>and</strong> <strong>Jews</strong>. This was a crucial<br />
period in Muhammad’s life, <strong>and</strong> the years following his migration<br />
were spent trying to <strong>for</strong>ge some kind of community in accordance<br />
with his religious principles <strong>and</strong> the political realities of the situation.<br />
As described in the Medina Accords, Muhammad’s original<br />
“community” (umma) at Medina included not only his fellow Migrants<br />
from Mecca <strong>and</strong> the newly converted Helpers at Medina,<br />
but <strong>Jews</strong> <strong>and</strong> Medinese pagans as well. The <strong>Jews</strong> were soon purged<br />
from both the umma <strong>and</strong> the town, <strong>and</strong> the pagans were dragged<br />
willy-nilly into it; the umma finally became exclusively a community<br />
of believers who accepted the dominion of the One True God<br />
<strong>and</strong> both the prophethood <strong>and</strong> the leadership of Muhammad.<br />
These were not artificial associations. Muhammad’s role as a<br />
prophet within a community that he himself had summoned into<br />
being necessarily included the functions of legislator, executive,<br />
<strong>and</strong> military comm<strong>and</strong>er. God’s revelations continued to spill from<br />
his lips. Now, however, they were not only threats <strong>and</strong> warnings to<br />
nonbelievers, but more often legislative enactments regulating<br />
community life, <strong>and</strong> particularly the relations of one Muslim with<br />
another. Thus was constituted an exclusively Muslim umma, <strong>and</strong><br />
its institutionalization can be charted in the Medina suras of the<br />
Quran, which are devoted not merely to shaping the Muslim sensibilities<br />
of the believers but to laying out some of the basic ritual<br />
requirements, notably daily liturgical prayer <strong>and</strong> the annual payment<br />
of zakat, the alms-tithe incumbent on all Muslims.