The phrase ‘religion of peace’ used rather ironically to describe Islam today was the title of a book written in 1930 by Ishtiaq Hussain Qureshi, a graduate of St Stephen’s college, Delhi; Aligarh Muslim University; and Cambridge, who advocated the creation of Pakistan, and later became history professor and Vice Chancellor of the University of Karachi in the 1960s.
Muslim migrants to the UK in the 1970s described their faith as ‘religion of peace’. Etymologically, the word ‘islam’, which means ‘submission’ is also linked with ‘salaam’ which means peace.
Even though left-wing professors have traditionally distanced themselves from religion, especially Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism; they were drawn to Buddhism and Islam, all through the 20th century, viewing them as religions of resistance.
The phrase ‘religion of peace’ was used by them to counter the othering of Muslims done by Western nation states in the wake of the 9/11 attack.
Western understanding of Islam
For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, the West ignored Islam. No one was told that the rise of colonisation marked the end of the great Muslim ‘gunpowder’ empires which controlled most of Asia for 300 years: The Ottomans of Turkey, the Safavids of Iran and the Mughals of India.
Even today, when history is taught in Western countries, it begins with Greece. Very little information is given about how the Greek city-states emerged in the shadow of the Persian Empire and the Mesopotamian cultures, and before that, the Syrians, Babylonians and Egyptians. Greeks are seen as the founders of civilisation and democracy.
Then we have the Roman city-states, and people talk about Rome and how it became Christian around 300 AD. After this, we are told how the vast Roman Empire was overrun around 500 AD by German barbarians. And these barbarians eventually became Christian.
Rome was controlled by Germanic tribes. The rest of Rome continued on the eastern side with its capital in Constantinople. This marked the nal rupture of the Christian world into two halves—the eastern half, claiming to be Orthodox (true) Christianity, and the western half, considering themselves the original Catholic (universal) Christianity.
Greeks and Romans had always fought Persians. By 700 AD, Persia had become Muslim. The Islamic military empire conquered Egypt (a Roman and Christian province) and the southern half of the Mediterranean. By 1000 AD, there was the Crusade, with Christians seeking to liberate Jerusalem from Muslim control.
American history professors and American filmmakers such as those who made the film, ‘Kingdom of God’, showed how barbaric Christians were as compared to the refined Muslims. They spoke of Baghdad, a city which had the ‘House of Wisdom’ where ideas from India and Greece were translated into Arabic, while Europe sank into the Dark Ages controlled by the Church. Basically, how the Renaissance and the Reformation of Europe, after the 1400s, owed much to the Arabs.
Before and after the Mongols
During Arab rule, we know that steel, cotton coffee, and sugar were brought from India and reached many parts of the world. The Arabs introduced what we now call modern agriculture, based on effective irrigation practices and a methodical, systematic, rational approach to managing soil and crops. This led to a time of great prosperity.
Nevertheless, the Arab Empire also saw the wiping out of the Persian Empire and the Zoroastrian faith. Persian history speaks of centuries of silence when the Persian Empire did not produce any works of literature until the Persians came to dominate the Islamic world and the Arab Empire effectively came under the control of Persian bureaucrats.
It was these Persian bureaucrats and their way of life that established the city of Baghdad under the Abbasids, which became a centre of learning.
While the religious and military aspects clearly came from the Arab lands, the cultural and bureaucratic elements seem to have originated from the Persian Empire. This conflict between the Arabs and the Persians continues even today, as we can see in the ongoing struggle for leadership in the Muslim world – whether it is sought from Turkey, the home of the old Ottoman Empire, from Saudi Arabia, where Mecca is located, or from Iran. This conflict is sometimes overlooked.
Few speak of how Islam changed after the Mongol invasion in the 1200s, and the fall of Baghdad. How Sufism rose, and became more and more militant, aligning with Sunni and Shia sultans who competed for power in Turkey and Iran and Central Asia. How the spread of Chinese gunpowder enabled the rise of the great Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires. How the oceans were controlled by Arab ships right up to Indonesia. How Europe was cut out of the lucrative Silk Route trade.
Gunpowder or Printing Press
While Islamic Sultans adopted gunpowder, they rejected the Printing Press (due to opposition of Calligraphers) which transformed Europe – it gave rise to the Scientific Revolution and enabled the rise of new shipping technology which enabled them to bypass and eventually overpower Arab shipping lanes.
Today, feeling threatened by the rise of Islamic militancy and immigration, many European historians are looking at the origins of Islam. They highlight the absence of clear historical evidence about the life of Muhammad, and that much of what we have are whitewashed oral traditions. There is even an argument by Christian apologists that the Quran was likely written near the city of Petra, as it refers to olive farmers and cattle herders—both of which were never found in Mecca.
These ideas are challenging traditional assumptions about Islamic history. Of course, each of these historians is influenced by their own politics, and therefore we must ask ourselves why a historian presents or interprets facts in a particular way. By reading historians from both ends of the political and religious spectrum, we gain a more nuanced understanding of the world.
