Civilization #28: Muhammad's Revolution of God

Muhammad is one of the most important and influential figures in human history, as important as Jesus. Ironically, we don't know that much about him. We probably know more about Jesus than we know about Muhammad. With Jesus, at least we have a lot of his quotations and sayings, which give us insight into his philosophy, religion, and thinking. With Muhammad, however, we don't have many quotations or written sources. The Quran, the holy book of the Islamic tradition, doesn't mention him extensively, even though in theory, it is his revelation.

One of the earliest written documents about Muhammad is from a Christian Bishop, Sebeos, written about 20-30 years after Muhammad's death in 632 CE. We know he existed, that he was a real person, and that he was the founder of the Islamic tradition. This is what Sebeos says about Muhammad at that time:

At that time a certain man from along those same sons of Ishmael, whose name was Mahomet, a merchant, as if by God's command appeared to them as a preacher, and proclaimed to them the path of truth. He taught them to recognize the God of Abraham, especially because he was learned and informed in the history of Moses. Now because the command was from on high, at a single order they all came together in unity of religion. Abandoning their vain cults, they turned to the living God who had appeared to their father, Abraham. So, Mahomet legislated for them: not to eat carrion, not to drink wine, not to speak falsely, and not to engage in fornication. He said: 'With an oath God promised this land to Abraham and his seed after him forever. And he brought about as he promised during that time while he loved Ishmael. But now you are the sons of Abraham, and God is accomplishing his promise to Abraham and his seed for you. Love sincerely only the God of Abraham, and go and seize the land which God gave to your father, Abraham. No one will be able to resist you in battle, because God is with you.'

What he's saying is that the Arabs are the descendants of Abraham, just like the Jews and the Christians. "You are the sons of Abraham, and God is accomplishing his promise to Abraham and his seed to you. God promised you the promised land, and now this land has been taken away from you. Jerusalem, Israel, has been taken away from you, and now we will take it back by going to war—Jihad, holy war."

This story is very similar to the story of Moses in the Bible. The Jews were enslaved in Egypt, and Moses appeared before them and promised to take them back to Israel. This is clearly following an ancient tradition, and so Muhammad, in many ways, is like Moses. What's strange is that in the Quran, the most quoted figure, the figure that is most mentioned, is Moses—not Muhammad or Jesus.

A Shared Ancestry: Abraham's Covenant

To understand what's going on, we must first recognize that Muhammad is saying Christians, Jews, and Arabs are all one big family. Why? Because in the Bible, it says that Abraham made a covenant with Yahweh. Abraham swore allegiance to Yahweh, and in return, Yahweh gave him the promised land. Now, the promised land is not just Israel; it is all that territory going from the Nile to the Tigris in modern-day Iraq—basically the entire Middle East.

This is important because Abraham had a wife, Sarah, who for most of her life was not able to give birth. If you don't have descendants, they don't get the promised land. In desperation, Sarah gave Abraham her maid, named Hagar. Abraham impregnated Hagar, and Hagar gave birth to a son named Ishmael. Ishmael went to the Arabian Desert, and he is the father of the Arab people, where Muhammad comes from. Sarah, by the miracle of God, would eventually be able to give birth to the Israelites. And as we know, the Israelites will eventually become the Christians. In other words, Christians, Jews, and Muslims have a common ancestor in Abraham.

Even though we don't have many written sources about Muhammad, we have something called the Hadith. The Hadith is Arabic and just means an oral tradition. There are stories about Muhammad that have been passed on orally from generation to generation, celebrating his life.

According to tradition, Muhammad was born in the year 570 into an Arab tribe in a place called Mecca in the Arabian Desert. He became a merchant because most people at that time were either nomads or merchants. At a very young age, he married a very wealthy widow, and until the age of 40, his life was prosperous but uneventful. At 40, he started to meditate in a cave, a common form of religious worship. While he was in the cave, the angel Gabriel appeared before Muhammad and said to him:

"You and your family have lost your way. You are the descendants of Ishmael, who brought the religion of Yahweh to the desert. Back then you were monotheistic, but then over time you became corrupted and became polytheistic. You have a mission to tell your fellow Arabs the story of Yahweh, the story of the Bible, and to return them to the love of Yahweh—return them to monotheism."

Gabriel, in a series of visions, would tell Muhammad the story of the Bible, including Moses taking the chosen people, the Jews, from Egypt back to the promised land. This is considered miraculous and true because Muhammad was an illiterate merchant who had no exposure to the Bible.

Muhammad was now inspired by the Archangel Gabriel to preach the word of God. But at this time, Arabia was a polytheistic, primitive, and backward society, so the people of Mecca rejected him. He spent 13 years in Mecca preaching, but they rejected him. Eventually, he decided to move to Medina. This move is very important; it's called the Hijra, the immigration. He and his followers moved from Mecca to Medina, and this starts the Islamic tradition and marks year zero in the Islamic calendar, just as the birth of Jesus marks year zero in the Christian calendar.

He went to Medina because the tribes there, one of which was Jewish, had invited him to be a judge. They were fighting amongst themselves and needed someone to arbitrate their disputes. Muhammad created something called the Constitution of Medina, which promised freedom of religious expression to all people. There would be no religious prejudice in Medina.

Over time, more and more followers were attracted to his message of monotheism, and he started to build a following, an army. Because he was preaching a faith that was counter to the mainstream faith, he was attacked by other Arab tribes. There were some setbacks, but through the will of God, he triumphed over them and united the Arabian Peninsula.

At this point, they became a threat to the two major world empires: the Byzantine Empire, the heirs to the Roman Empire, and the Sassanian Persian Empire. They both attacked the Muslims, but again, through the miracle of God, the Muslims were able to defeat both empires. In less than 100 years, they conquered most of the world.

It is one of the greatest mysteries in world history how this happened. How was it possible for desert people—poor, primitive, and backward nomads—to defeat two world empires and conquer most of the world? Their empire at its height would stretch from Spain in the west all the way to India and would include Egypt, the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Iran. This mystery has never been solved.

Historical Analogues: Religion and Revolution

Given that we know so little about early Islamic history and there are few written sources, we can only use historical analogues. Are there historical incidents that are similar to what happened in the Arabian Peninsula 1500 years ago? The answer is yes.

The Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864)

In China, there was a young man in his 20s named Hong Xiuquan who was trying to become a scholar-official. After failing the examination for the third time, he ran into a Christian missionary who gave him a pamphlet. He learned about Jesus and then had a dream where Jesus told him, "You're my little brother." After he failed the exam for the fourth time, he decided to embrace his destiny as the Chinese brother of Jesus. Over the course of 10 years, he was able to build a following that eventually conquered most of China and was almost able to overthrow the Qing Empire.

What the story of the Taiping Rebellion tells us is that a new, revolutionary religion in the right social, historical, and economic circumstances can be very powerful. What drove the Taiping soldiers in battle was both the idea of religious devotion ("God is with us") and revolutionary zeal ("We are making a new world"). When soldiers are infused with both, they are not afraid to die. They will fight to the death, which is why they were able to overwhelm the government's soldiers.

The War of Canudos (1896-1898)

Canudos is a northern province in Brazil. For most of its history, Brazil was an extremely racist and unequal society where a few landlords controlled all the wealth. The War of Canudos was a rebellion to overthrow these landlords and establish a kingdom of heaven. It was led by a preacher who preached the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven, just like Jesus. He was surrounded by peasants and bandits who overthrew the landlords. They had no guns, weapons, or soldiers. The Brazilian Army saw them as a threat and sent three expeditions against these peasants. All three times, the Brazilian Army was destroyed.

Why? Because again, when peasants have revolutionary zeal and religious devotion, they are not afraid to die. Hand-to-hand, they were able to defeat the well-armed and well-trained Brazilian soldiers. With the fourth expedition, the Brazilian Army decided to send everyone. The entire army was sent against this peasant uprising. Rather than engage the peasants in hand-to-hand combat directly, they surrounded the area with artillery and bombarded the peasants until they were dead. They basically nuked them because they could not defeat them directly.

The French Revolution

The French Revolution saw the nobility and the monarchy overthrown and a new government established. The monarchies of Europe united against France because they saw it as a threat to the established social order. The French revolutionaries were able to defeat the combined armies of Europe and, under Napoleon, established a French Empire.

All three incidents are very similar to what happened in the Arabian Peninsula in 600 CE. In other words, the Muslims were the world's first global revolution.

The Arabian Peninsula: A Hotbed of Innovation

Let's better understand the Arabian Peninsula at this time, around the year 600. There were two major world empires: the Byzantine Empire and the Sassanian Persian Empire.You might wonder how it was possible for the Arabs to defeat both empires. The answer is that in 600 CE, the hotbed of innovation was actually here, in the Arabian Peninsula. This was the most open and cosmopolitan center in the world at this time.

The Arabian Peninsula is a desert, but it's basically the center of the world. The world has always been connected through trade. Even though you can't have cities or agriculture, they had been trading with other nations and civilizations for thousands of years. If India wanted to access Egypt, they had to first send their goods to Arabia, and then the nomads would transport the goods into Egypt.

What does it mean to be a trading center?

1. Access to Technology and Knowledge: You have access to the most advanced technology, information, and knowledge in the world. As a trader, you go everywhere and bring back not just goods but stories and information. They knew everything about the world, exactly what was happening in the Byzantine and Sassanian Empires, even though most people didn't know what was happening in the desert.
2. Open-Minded and Cosmopolitan: As traders, they were extremely open-minded and cosmopolitan. They had no prejudices and had to be friends with everyone.
3. Constant Learning: They had to constantly learn new information.

The second thing about the Arabian Peninsula is that it's a warrior society. You don't have cities or centralized control, just tribes and clans fighting each other. Honor is very important. Because they were always at war, these were strong, brave people who knew how to fight. That's why both the Byzantines and the Sassanians hired these people as mercenaries. As mercenaries, they were learning the most advanced warcraft and military doctrine of both empires. These were basically the best soldiers in the world. Over time, the Byzantines and Sassanians would establish client states within the Arabian Peninsula.

The third thing that makes the Arabian Peninsula so innovative is its diversity. As we discussed previously, Augustine created an intellectual blueprint for the Catholic Church, and the focus was on obedience and orthodoxy—meaning there is only one proper way to understand religion. If you disagree, it's heresy. The problem with the Christian religion is that it's very confusing. We talked about the Godhead: Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and God are one and the same. This creates a lot of problems. For example, the very basis of the Christian religion is that Jesus died for our sins. But how does God suffer? How does God die? That makes no sense.

This debate over Christology—the nature of Christ—has never ended. Is he divine? Is he human? Is he both? Christians have fought over this from the first day. Because of orthodoxy, there's only one interpretation you must follow. If you don't, you either have to go somewhere else or you die. So, they were forced to go east, either to the Sassanian Empire or to the Arabian Desert.

Many chose the Arabian Desert because there was no central authority. You were free to practice the faith as you chose. Often, those who are the most heretical are the most innovative because they like to ask questions and explore. They believe God is someone you communicate with personally. The Catholic Church demands that you can only access God through priests; you are not allowed to read the Bible or question orthodoxy. The most intelligent people want to do that, and at this time, the only place you could do that was the Arabian Desert.

You had lots of Christians here, many of whom were very controversial. You also had a lot of Jews in the Arabian Desert. It's very close to Jerusalem, and there had always been Jews there as traders. They were also escaping persecution or had fled after losing civil wars against Rome. You also had Zoroastrians from the Sassanian Empire who wanted to practice their own personal faith.

The Arabian Desert was a hotbed of religious diversity and tolerance. You were allowed to practice anything, and people respected that. They had some of the smartest Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians in the world at this point—people who would eventually lend their expertise to the Arab military machine, helping them develop innovative siege warfare, military doctrine, and science.

The Decline of Empires and the Rise of a Leader

At the same time, while Arabia was increasing in innovation, wealth, and diversity, both the Byzantine and Sassanian Empires were declining in social stability. Whenever you have stability, you will eventually have inequality and corruption. People within the Byzantine Empire were extremely unhappy for three reasons:

• The problem of landlessness.
• The problem of debt.
• The problem of religious persecution.

The same situation was true in the Persian Empire. The people were extremely unhappy. At the same time, there was a lot of instability within the governments of these empires due to constant wars with each other, plagues like the Justinian plague that wiped out 10-20% of the population, and civil wars over succession.

In other words, it seems that the Byzantines and the Sassanians were strong and the Arabs were weak, but when you analyze it, you realize the empires were extremely weak and the Arabs were really strong. The problem with the Arabs, though, was that they were divided into thousands of different tribes. The question now is: how do you unite them?

You need a leader to come and inspire the people. At this point, there were lots of different prophets who thought they were the Messiah. Both the Zoroastrian, Christian, and Jewish religions believe that the Messiah will come. This idea is called apocalyptic eschatology, and it was very popular. The more stable empires become, the more corruption and inequality there is, so people turn towards this idea. There were hundreds of people who figured themselves as the Messiah, but eventually, Muhammad became the Messiah of their people.

The Qualities of a Great Leader

We have a formulation of a great leader:

1. The person is so strategic he becomes visionary.
2. The person is so innovative he becomes revolutionary.
3. The person is so disciplined he becomes selfless.

Individuals like Philip of Macedon and Julius Caesar fit this formula. They reimagined warfare and made their armies into meritocracies where the best and most loyal could rise up regardless of class. They were selfless, always the first in battle, putting their soldiers' lives first. Whoever Muhammad was, he would fit this description.

Imagine you are in the Arabian Peninsula. There are tens of thousands of different factions who have been fighting each other for centuries. How do you unite them to defeat both the Byzantines and Sassanians? You need three different messages to unite everyone.

1. We Are All God's Children. Arabs, Jews, Christians—we are all descendants of Abraham. Therefore, we are one big family. There should be no religious difference and persecution among us. Because we're all God's children, we should be free to practice any religion we want. The Christian religion is just as valid as the Jewish religion.
2. We Are a Meritocracy. This is basically a revolution. The idea of class, caste, and tribal loyalties goes against the will of God. Because we're all God's children, we're all equal in the eyes of God. Therefore, those who are most willing to work hard to achieve God's vision on Earth should rise to the top, regardless of religion, class, or caste.
3. God Gave Us the Promised Land. This land that extends from the Nile to the Tigris is what God promised us. We are all God's children, so each and every one of us should have land. But the Byzantines, the Persians, the landlords, and the wealthy stole this land from us. Therefore, we must fight a Jihad to take it back because that is God's will. When we take it back, we'll establish a kingdom of heaven on Earth. We'll follow God's law, which demands equality, mercy, tolerance, and openness.

In other words, Muhammad was a revolutionary who wanted to overthrow the social order to establish the Kingdom of Heaven. He was the Messiah promised to the Jews and Christians, who would now unite Arabs, Christians, and Jews in achieving this kingdom on Earth.

Let's go back and reread the description of Muhammad and his army by Sebeos to see if this is correct.

At that time a certain man from along those same sons of Ishmael, whose name was Mahomet, a merchant, as if by God's command...

He is the Messiah, the promised one. God has ordered him to do this.

...appeared to them as a preacher...

He united them, and they started to see themselves as all the children of Abraham and there fore the children of God.

So, Mahomet legislated for them: not to eat carrion, not to drink wine, not to speak falsely, and not to engage in fornication.

This is the law of God, the Kingdom of Heaven.

He said: 'With an oath God promised this land to Abraham and his seed after him forever.'

This is the land that God promised to us, his children. But the Romans have it, the Persians have it, the landlords have it.

'But now you are the sons of Abraham, and God is accomplishing his promise to Abraham and his seed for you.'

"I have come to you as God's messenger, as God's prophet, to tell you that this land is yours and you must take it back."

'Love sincerely only the God of Abraham, and go and seize the land which God gave to your father, Abraham. No one will be able to resist you in battle, because God is with you.'

Seize the land. Overthrow the tyrants. Overthrow the landlords. Take it back. This combines revolutionary zeal—the overturning of the social order—with religious devotion: "God is with us." This is the same mentality that drove the French Revolution, the War of Canudos, and the Taiping Rebellion. This was the first truly global revolution.

This explains why the Muslims were able to triumph over both the Byzantines and the Sassanians. Wherever they went, they freed the people from debt, landlessness, and religious persecution. You were now allowed to practice any faith you want. You had that freedom. You now had some land where you could grow crops, and your debt would be wiped away.

In less than 100 years, they were able to conquer the entire Persian Empire and half of the Byzantine Empire. That's the power of religious devotion and revolutionary zeal.

Why We Know So Little

The last question is, why don't we know any of this? Why isn't this taught in history books? The answer is because the revolution worked. They won. But now, after they achieved the revolution, they became an empire. If you're an empire, you don't want people to revolt against you, so you have to whitewash this history. You don't want people to know that Muhammad was a revolutionary, so you change the history.

The history is that Muhammad was disgusted by the inequality and corruption he saw in the world around him, and he promised the people freedom from religious persecution, from debt, and from landlessness. That's what drew followers to him. You don't want another Muhammad appearing in your empire, so you change the history and say, "Oh no, the real conflict was that Muhammad wanted monotheism, and the Arabs wanted polytheism. That's what the problem was."

The same is true in China today. Who created the Chinese Revolution, enabling the Communist Party to control China? Mao Zedong. Do you learn about Mao Zedong in school? No, you don't. It's the same thing. They are trying to whitewash their history because it's embarrassing for a global empire to celebrate a revolutionary who hated corruption and inequality.

That's why there's so little written about Muhammad, and that's why the Quran doesn't really tell us that much about him. Because his revolution won.