Peace (20 page)

Then, around 610, Mohammed's life changed. God began speaking to him through the archangel Gabriel, as his wife and a few other Meccans came to believe. The divine messages he received, sometimes in ecstatic fits, over the next two decades became the Qur'an, literally a recitation. An early recitation, the infamous Satanic Verses, seems to have allowed the worship of three jinn along with Allah, Supreme Being in Arabic, perhaps a theological effort to bring the Quraysh clans together as Mohammed had with the cloak.
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But as Quraysh hostility increased with the number of his followers, Gabriel told Mohammed to recant this recitation and condemn the jinn. From then on, Allah's message was, on the surface, surprisingly simple: Allah is the only and almighty God, Mohammed is the last of Allah's prophets, and the Qur'an is Allah's will. The Arabic word
islam
corresponds to the English word “submit,” i.e. to the will of Allah embodied in the Qur'an, and a
muslim
is one who so submits. For Muslims, then, peace was from the start both the result and the reward of this submission, individual in a spiritual sense and social in a behavioral one. “Peace is on him who follows the [Qur'an's] guidance,” and those who “believe and do good are made to enter gardens, beneath which rivers flow, to abide in them by Allah's permission; the greeting therein is, Peace.”
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Theologically, the meanings of the Arabic word for peace,
salaam
(as in the greeting,
Salaam Aleikum
, related to the Hebrew word Shalom) in the Qur'an are closely related to those of Judaism and Christianity. The peace of the next world takes on a more worldly appeal in Islam, but the process for reaching it is similar: after death, Allah will judge worthy to enter the garden abode of heaven those who believe in him and behave according to the Qur'an. In time, the basic Qur'anic criteria (
arkan addin
) for worthiness of the name Muslim, let alone heaven, became the Five Pillars. Each of the Pillars contributes to individual (spiritual, physical), social (economic) and/or collective (cultural) Islamic peace in its own way:

1.  
Shahadah
, the declaration of faith at births, on deathbeds and by converts: “There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is His messenger;”

2.  
Salah
, praying five times daily at prescribed times, in Arabic, facing the Kaaba in Mecca, as a means of communion with and thanksgiving to Allah;

3.  
Zakah
: a “religious tithe” given to the needy based on a fixed percentage of one's income, the more given the higher the spiritual reward, distinguished from charity (
sadaqa
) which is not required, but voluntary;

4.  
Sawm
: fasting, if health and age permit, from dawn till dusk for the holy month of Ramadan, including a focus on sin-free living such as abstaining from violence; and

5.  
Hajj
: a pilgrimage, if feasible, to Mecca once in one's lifetime to pray at the Kaaba as homage to Mohammed and the history of Islam.

Based on these and other principles drawn from the Qur'an, one of Allah's sacred names is the “giver of peace” who invites to the “abode of peace and guides whom He pleases into the right path.”
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On the right path, spiritual and behavioral submission is never to be an impediment to peace and peacemaking: “make not Allah, because of your swearing by Him, an obstacle to your doing good and guarding against evil and making peace between men.”
³⁶

The reason for the similarities between the three monotheisms is that Mohammed, whose genealogy is traced to Abraham, is viewed as the fulfillment of the Judeo-Christian prophetic tradition preceding him. The Torah and New Testament are called
qur'ans
, though referring to Jesus as the Son of God is blasphemy because even Mohammed was not divine but a divinely selected human messenger. Many Judeo-Christian narratives are adapted, and their historical or ethical points adopted, into the Qur'an with minor or significant variations. Those who uphold these traditions are referred to as the People of the Book (
ahl al-kitab
) aligned with Islam, rather than “unbelievers” separate from it, which is why Muslims have historically been more tolerant of and benevolent to Jews and Christians than other religious groups.
³⁷
Only later were the three religions divided by one god. Distinctions between Muslims, People of the Book and unbelievers made peace and peacemaking among them problematic. Islamic peacemaking must be carried out Qur'anically to be valid, and the complexity of its messages about this holy activity is comparable to that of the Torah, as its original audience was also a desert tribe. According to the Qur'an, peace and peacemaking must always be reciprocated: if opponents “incline to peace, then incline to it and trust in Allah.”
³⁸
With People of the Book and Muslims:

if two parties of the believers quarrel, make peace between them; but if one of them acts wrongfully towards the other, fight that which acts wrongfully until it returns to Allah's command; then if it returns, make peace between them with justice and act equitably; surely Allah loves those who act equitably.
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The logic behind this process is that “believers are but brethren, therefore make peace between your brethren and be careful of your duty to Allah that mercy may be had on you
.”
⁴⁰

But war, peace and peacemaking need not be initiated with unbelievers unless certain conditions are met. War, in Allah's name or otherwise, can be waged against unbelievers by Muslims – “except those who reach a people between whom and you there is an alliance, or who come to you, their hearts shrinking from fighting you or fighting their own people.” Peace is to be made “if they withdraw from you and do not fight you and offer you peace” because “Allah has not given you a way against them.”
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False prophets and gods were to be guarded against in the Torah and the Bible; to these the Qur'an adds false peacemakers.
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In a prophecy that proved remarkably accurate, the Qur'an says that Muslims

will find others who desire that they should be safe from you and secure from their own people; as often as they are sent back to the mischief they get thrown into it headlong; therefore if they do not withdraw from you, and do not offer you peace and restrain their hands, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them; and against these Allah has given you a clear authority.
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Yet, “When you go to war in Allah's way, make investigation, and do not say to anyone who offers you peace: You are not a believer.”
⁴⁴
Only centuries after Mohammed was a distinction made between territories of Islam (
dar al-Islam
) and territories of war (
dar al-harb
), in a ninth-century treaty on Islamic statecraft called the
Islamic Law of Nations
. Even then, it was made to distinguish where war could be justly carried out on religious grounds: only when non-Muslims lack “legal competence to enter into discourse with Islam on the basis of equality and reciprocity because they failed to conform with its ethical and legal standards.”
⁴⁵
In fact, “religion is conceived as a
limit
on war” by the majority of Muslim theologians, jurists and scholars both historically and presently.
⁴⁶
In this light, Jihad – “to strive” or “to struggle,” i.e., with oneself or others for Allah – as paradoxical as this may sound, is a form of
auto-peacemaking
insofar as it refers to an individual Muslim's internal quest for spiritual peace in submitting to Allah's will.
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Jihad becomes a form of war-making only when externalized as a pacification of non-believers who threaten the faithful or as necessary for their survival. Jihad in early Muslim expansion was used more as a lowest common denominator, catchphrase rallying cry in battle than a systemic rationale for war, territorial, economic or otherwise.

Islamic peace and peacemaking are illustrated in Mohammed's life after the recitations began and Muslims' rise to local, then regional power. Persecuted by the Quraysh, Mohammed and his intermediaries negotiated an agreement with the pagan Arab and Jewish tribes of Medina, a town some 200 kilometers north of Mecca, to relocate the Muslims there. This epic emigration, in which no recorded violence was involved, is known as
the Hijra. Formalized after their arrival as the Charter of Medina (
c
. 622), this historic agreement normalized not only relations between the newcomers and locals, but also between the locals themselves and with outsiders. Building on the long tradition of informal inter-tribal alliances based on common commercial, defensive and other interests, the Charter was innovative in its ecumenism under Mohammed's authority, whose reputation as a just mediator preceded him. He thus became an interreligious political leader only shortly after becoming leader of the Muslims. Promoting religious freedom, the Charter also prohibited religious violence, established a judicial system for internal conflict resolution and protocols for external relations. Unfortunately, the Charter was broken before it had the chance to work. For reasons that remain unclear, Mohammed expelled one of Medina's Jewish tribes, who then aligned with the Quraysh in an attack on Medina to regain control of the caravan trade, now in Muslim hands. In protest, Muslims no longer faced Jerusalem in prayer, but instead towards Mecca.

In 628, Mohammed negotiated the Peace of al-Hudaybiyyah with the Quraysh, stipulating the war would halt for ten years, Meccans and Medinans could freely ally themselves, but also that Muslim Meccans who moved to Medina without their guardian's consent were to be sent back, while the Quraysh were exempt from reciprocating. In the words of a modern scholar: “to spread the faith by peaceful means, or at least to re-establish thereby peaceful contacts with the peninsular Arabs, who continued to revere Mecca, as well as with Mecca itself, was, after all, the Muslims' professed motivation.”
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The Quraysh breached the Peace two years later, and with the converts Mohammed gained by this peaceful policy he captured Mecca. Within a few years of Mohammed's death in 632, the Arabian Peninsula was under the control of his companion and successor (
caliph
), Abu Bakr. Pausing briefly to consolidate his gains and to solidify Muslim unity, within decades the Caliphs conquered large and important parts of the Byzantine and Persian Empires, including what are today Egypt, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Syria, Libya and southern Turkey. According to a modern Islamic historian, “As a result of these campaigns, for the first time in its known history a period of peace was experienced throughout the entire Arabian Peninsula,” referred to as the Pax Islamica and discussed below.
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The rapidity of these vast early territorial gains is no less stunning than the low degree of violence Muslims used to achieve them. Weak from ongoing wars between the two Empires misruling them, the diverse inhabitants of these lands often sided with the Muslims against them, just as the Qur'an had prophesied. Some Christians, such as John of Damascus, saw Islam as a heretical sect of their own religion, which had already been infighting for centuries. Surely, when people refused to surrender
peacefully, they suffered for it. But it was usually not in the best interests of Muslims to kill peoples and destroy property that, left intact, could be ruled in and for peace to greater profit. Tribes of Muslims (
umma
) thus conquered and ruled with words, not simply with swords, tending to leave economic and administrative infrastructures of the regions they conquered intact, probably because this was the most effective way to leverage their proportionately tiny numbers compared to the conquered. Far from spreading Islam by the sword, the Qur'an states: “No compulsion is there in religion.”
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Tolerance of other religions alien to Islam, called People of the Pact (
ahl al-dhimma
), was added to that of the People of the Book, and the two were gradually grouped together as
dhimmis
entitled to legal and financial privileges or protections as long as they paid poll taxes. Their members increasingly converted of their own volition, usually with mixed motives. Whether they did or not, the most able of them meritocratically participated in the new Islamic states.

However, a fateful schism among Muslims had by this time occurred, detrimental to Islamic unitive peace down to our day. The fourth Caliph, Ali ibn Abu Talib (
c
. 600–61), claimed that legitimate Muslim leadership is based on belonging to Mohammed's bloodline, not just the emulation of his piety, as was the case with previous Caliphs. His supporters became known as Shi'a Ali (“Ali's Party” or Shiites), and those who opposed him Sunni, or traditionalists. Ali was succeeded by Muawiya, Mohammed's secretary and governor of Syria and Egypt on his behalf. He was contentiously awarded the Caliphate for reuniting the Arab tribes and in so doing founded Islam's first dynasty, the Umayyad (661–750), who ruled the Muslim empire from their capital at Damascus. The general sent to capture the city negotiated a peaceful surrender with natives by promising them no harm, no theft or destruction of property and respect for their religions in exchange for recognition of Muslim rule and taxes equivalent to what they were paying before. Muawiya made good on the promise and secured a temporary truce with the Byzantine Emperor, which allowed for major internal reorganizations.

Two distinct but related processes constitutive of the Pax Islamica intensified with the Umayyad: Islamization and Arabization.
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Islam's universality, its openness to Arabs and non-Arabs alike, and supremacy emerged with and against the official positions of other religions in the new Islamic state. At first, religious and with it socio-political integration had barriers; one had to become an adopted member of an Arab tribe (
mawali
) to be recognized as a Muslim. As these barriers broke down, however, so did early rationales for Muslim authority and taxation. In response to these developments, Abd al-Malik (685–705), the third Umayyad Caliph, embarked on Arabization campaigns by which state affairs were to be carried out in Arabic and hierarchies based on geo-social configurations, not just religion.
So while Islamization provided an impetus other than territorial-economic for Umayyad expansion of the Pax Islamica into North Africa, South Spain and Central Asia, Arabization provided a means of sustaining it.