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Islamic World

Spread of Islam in the World

Today Muslims constitute almost one fourth of the world population. Due to the stereotype propagated by some writers and thinkers there might be some people who think the spread of Islam in different parts of the world is the result of Islamic conquests that took place in the first decades of Islamic history. There are two important points that should be noticed in this regard:

1. There are many countries with Muslim majority or a big Muslim population where no conquest took place such as Indonesia, the most populated Islamic country.

       2 - The inhabitants of the conquered lands were not forced to change their faith. History shows us that many of the them converted to Islam much later after the conquest. The History of the Conquest

It was during the leadership of caliphs ( 632 – 56 ) that the conquest of territories outside Arabia began.

While the Caliphs were based at Mecca and Medina, the Umayyads moved the seat of power to Damascus. Their successors, the ‘Abbasids ( 750 – 1258 ), who were less Arab-centred, built a new capital, Baghdad, in a fertile area on the main routes between Iraq, Iran and Syria.

The Arab conquests started as sporadic tribal raids. A proper army was probably not organized before 634 , but once formed, it made expeditions eastwards towards the Sasanian empire and northwards to Palestine and Syria against the Byzantine empire.

The Muslim army defeated the Byzantines at Yarmuk ( 636 ), and the newly organized Muslim navy destroyed the Christian fleet at the Battle of the Masts ( 655 ). Constantinople was sporadically besieged during this period, though never captured. On the oriental front, the Sasanian army suffered a crushing defeat at the battle of al Qadisiyah (637), and Ctesiphon was taken soon afterwards; this caused the disintegration of the Sasanian Empire. The army moved westwards towards Egypt in 639 , and by 646 Heliopolis and Alexandria had fallen. The city of Fustat was founded in 643 , and northeast Africa was occupied. From Alexandria, naval expeditions were launched against Cyprus and Sicily and under the Umayyad dynasty the Muslims emerged as a major sea power. The eighth century saw further expansions eastwards as far as the river Indus and the Sind region and westwards through northern Africa to Spain and France where the over-stretched army was stopped at the battle of Poitiers by Charles Martel .

The surprising speed at which the conquests took place can be attributed to various reasons including discontent with despotic leadership and heavy taxation among the local population, especially in Syria and Spain.

Edward Browne, quoting Dozy, the Dutch orientalist, writes further:

"During the first half of the seventh century," says Dozy in his excellent work on Islam, "everything followed its accustomed course in the Byzantine as in the Persian Empire. These two states continued always to dispute the posses­sion of Western Asia; they were, to all outward appearance, flourishing; the taxes which poured into the treasuries of their kings reached considerable sums, and the magnificence, as well as the luxury of their capitals, had become proverbial.

But all this was in appearance, for a secret disease consumed both empires; they were burdened by a crushing despotism; on either hand the history of the dynasties formed a concatenation of horrors, that of the state of a series of persecutions born of dissensions in religious matters.

At this juncture it was that, all of a sudden, there emerged from deserts hardly known and appeared on the scene of the world a new people, hitherto divided into innumerable nomad tribes, who, for the most part, had been at war with one another, now for the first time united. It was this people, passionately attached to liberty, simple in their food and dress, noble and hospitable and witty, but at the same time proud, irascible, and once their passions were aroused, vindictive, irreconcilable and cruel, who overthrew in an instant the venerable but rotten Empire of the Persians, snatched from the successors of Constantine their fairest provinces, trampled under their feet a Germanic kingdom but lately founded, and menaced'. The rest of Europe, while at the same time, at the other end of the world, its victorious armies penetrated to the Himalayas.

Yet it was not like so many other conquering peoples, for it preached at the same time a new religion. In opposition to the dualism of the Persians and a degenerate Christianity, it announced a pure monotheism which was accepted by millions of men, and which even in our time, constitutes the religion of a tenth part of the human race.”

The expanding Muslim army was at first only composed of Arab tribal groups, mostly infantry and some cavalry forces. Gradually it transformed itself by recruiting locally during its campaigns. The role played by the mawali (‘converted non-Arab clients’), such as Berber warriors in the western campaign to Spain and, eastwards, Persians and Turks, is well-known. The Umayyad armies relied on elite Syrian corps and increased the role of the cavalry and especially of units in armour, though the infantry was predominant. The first Abbasid armies, on the other hand, relied mostly on Khurasani elite forces and, by the early ninth century, the cavalry became clearly dominant. From the eleventh century onwards the horse-back archery techniques of Central Asian and Turkish origin began to play a major role in Muslim warfare. Muslim commanders left the social structure of the conquered territories almost intact by appointing local Muslim governors and relying on local administrative and financial systems. The spread of Islam

Hearing that Muslims conquered territory "from the Atlantic to the borders of China," many people reading about Muslim history often wrongly imagine that this huge region instantly became "Islamic." The rapid conquests led to the idea that Islam spread by the sword, with people forced to become Muslims. In fact, however, the spread of Islam in these vast territories took centuries. In other words, the expansion of territory under Muslim rule happened very rapidly, but the spread of Islam in those lands was a much slower process.

Muslims did not force people to convert to Islam. Anyone who accepts Islam under pressure might not be sincere, and conversion in name only is useless to them, and harmful to members of the faith community.

Prophet Muhammad set a precedent as the leader of Madinah. Under his leadership, the Muslims practiced tolerance towards those of other religions. They were parties to the Constitution of Madinah and to treaties with the Muslims. Later Muslim leaders were required to be tolerant, based on the authority of both the Qur’an (in this and many other verses), and the Sunnah.

The Process of Conversion: The first two khalifahs required most of the inhabitants of Arabia who had been pagans to affirm their loyalty as Muslims. Christian and Jewish communities were allowed to continue practicing their faiths. In Yemen there are still Jewish communities. Outside Arabia, however, the khilafah did not force non-Arabs to become Muslims. Historians are surprised that they did not even encourage them to become Muslims. Only Khalifah ‘Umar ibn ‘Abd al-‘Aziz (ruled 717–720) made an effort to encourage people to accept Islam, and sent out missionaries to North Africa and other areas. During the early khilafah (632–750), non-Arabs began to accept Islam of their own free will. New Muslims migrated to Muslim garrison cities, to learn about Islam and possibly to get jobs and associate themselves with ruling groups. Whatever their reasons their actions became more common over the years, and expanded the Muslim population. These migrants became associates, or mawali, of Arab tribes. The mawali also tried to convince their relatives and members of their ethnic group to become Muslims. Some migrant Arab and mawali families made important contributions in preserving and spreading Islamic knowledge. They became scholars of Islamic law, history, literature and the sciences. In this way, Islam spread in spite of political rulers, not because of them.

During the years of the Umayyad khalifahs from 661–750 CE, the overwhelming majority of non-Arab population of the Umayyad—which stretched from Morocco to China—were not Muslims. Toward the end of that time, the North African Berbers became the first major non-Arab group to accept Islam.

Within a few centuries, Christianity disappeared almost completely from North Africa—as it did from no other place in the Muslim world. Jews remained as a small minority, with many living in Muslim Spain. Iranians of Central Asia were the second major movement in the spread of Islam, beginning in about 720 CE. Both of these early groups of converts tried to gain independence from the central government but at the same time contributed in spreading the religion of Islam in the region.

Developing a Muslim culture. In the central lands, the gradual spread of Islam is difficult to trace. Some scholars, such as Richard Bulliet, think that in Egypt Islam reached 50 percent of the population in the 900s. By about 1200, Muslims were more than 90 percent of the population. In Syria, Islam spread more slowly. Iraq and Iran probably reached a Muslim majority by around 900 CE. In much of Spain and Portugal, Islam became established between 711 and about 1250. After the Reconquista by Spanish Catholics was completed in 1492, and many Muslims and Jews were expelled from Spain, Islam continued to exist until after 1600.

In the East, Muslim law treated Zoroastrians, Buddhists, and Hindus just as it treated Jews and Christians. Muslim rulers offered them protection of life, property, and freedom of religious practice in exchange for the payment of a tax, as an alternative to military service. In Sind (India), the Buddhist population seems to have embraced Islam over about two centuries (712–900). Buddhism disappeared entirely. Hinduism in Sind declined much more slowly than Buddhism.

All of the lands described above were territories under Muslim rule. After the decline of unified Muslim rule, Islam spread to lands outside its boundaries. Anatolia (or Asia Minor), which makes up most of modern Turkey, came after 1071 under the rule of Turkish tribesmen who had become Muslims. Islam spread gradually for centuries after that.

When the Ottoman Turks reached south-eastern Europe in the mid fourteenth century, most Albanians and Bosnians and some Bulgarians became Muslims. Beginning in the fifteenth century, however, Islam did not spread rapidly in this area, perhaps because the population resented or disliked the centralized government of the Ottoman Empire. Strong feelings about religion and ethnicity in the region may also have been a cause.

Continuing Spread. Beginning in 1192, other Muslim Turkish tribesmen conquered parts of India, including the area of present-day Bangladesh. The number of Muslims there gradually increased in India from that time. The people of Bangladesh were Buddhists, and, beginning about 1300, they—like the Buddhists of Sind—rapidly embraced Islam, becoming a Muslim majority in that region. Elsewhere in India, except for Punjab and Kashmir in the north-west, Hinduism remained the religion of the majority.

In South India and Sri Lanka, traders and Sufis, or mystical followers of Islam, spread Islam and carried it to Southeast Asia by 1300 CE. Over the next two centuries in today’s Indonesia—the Spice Islands—Islam spread from Malaysia to Sumatra and reached the Moluccas in eastern Indonesia. Entering a land where Buddhism, Hinduism and traditional faiths of the island people existed, it took several centuries before practice of Islam became established as it was practiced in other Muslim lands. In Central Asia, Islam gradually spread to the original homelands of the Turks and Mongols, until it was the main religion of nearly all Turkic-speaking peoples. Islam spread into Xinjiang, the western part of China, where it was tolerated by the Chinese empire. Much earlier, in the 8th and 9th centuries, a group of ethnic Chinese Han had accepted Islam. These groups continue to practice Islam today. Islam spread to China through the seaports such as Guanzhou, where the earliest Chinese masjid exists.

Africa. Before 1500, Islam spread widely in sub-Saharan Africa. The first town south of the Sahara that became majority Muslim was Gao on the Niger River in Mali before 990, when a ruler accepted Islam. Over the centuries, many rulers followed. By 1040, groups in Senegal became Muslims. From them Islam spread to the region of today’s Senegal, west Mali, and Guinea. After the Soninke of the Kingdom of Ghana became Muslims about 1076, Islam spread along the Niger River. Muslims established the kingdom of Mali in the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, and Songhai from1465 to 1600. Farther east, Kanem-Bornu near Lake Chad became Muslim after 1100. In West Africa, like Turkestan, India, and Indonesia, it was traders and later Sufis who introduced Islam, and many rulers accepted it first, followed by others. African Muslim scholars became established in the major towns like Timbuktu, and they taught, wrote and practiced Islamic law as judges. By 1500, Islam was established in West Africa throughout the Sahel belt and along the Niger River into today’s Nigeria.

In East Africa, traders had spread Islam down the coast by the tenth century, and it gradually developed further in the following centuries. In the Sudan, south of Egypt, the population of Nubia gradually became Muslim during the fourteenth century, through immigration of Muslim Arab tribesmen and preaching Islam, and because Christian rule became weak in the region. Muslim rule and influence, however, did not extend south of Khartoum, where the Blue and White Niles before 1500 CE. Islamic World Today

As of 2010, over 1.6 billion or about 23.4% of the world population are Muslims. Of these, around 62% live in Asia-Pacific, 20% in the Middle East-North Africa,15% in Sub-Saharan Africa, around 3% in Europe, and 0.3% in the Americas

Actually there is a debate concerning authenticity of the statistics regarding Muslim population in the world. Some Islamic organizations and individual accuse secular governments of decreasing their number in statistics in order to deprive them from their social and political rights.

Countries with the largest Muslim populations (2010)

Indonesia 204,847,000 (88.1%)
Pakistan 178,097,000 (96.4%)
India 177,286,000 (14.6%)
Bangladesh145,312,000 (90.4%)
Nigeria75,728,000 (47.9%)
Iran74,819,000 (99.6%)
Turkey74,660,000 (98.6%)
Egypt73,746,000 (90%)
Algeria34,780,000 (98.2%)
Morocco32,381,000 (99.9%)
Iraq31,108,000 (98.9%)
Sudan30,855,000 (97%)[77]
Afghanistan29,047,000 (99.8%)
Ethiopia28,721,000 (33.8%)
Uzbekistan26,833,000 (96.5%)
Saudi Arabia25,493,000 (97.1%)
Yemen24,023,000 (99.0%)
China23,308,000 (1.8%)
Syria20,895,000 (92.8%)
Malaysia17,139,000 (61.4%)
Russia16,379,000 (11.7%)

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is an inter-governmental organization grouping fifty-seven states. 49 are Muslim countries, the others are non Muslim countries with Muslim minorities. The organization is the collective voice of the Muslim world to safeguard the interest and ensure the progress and well-being of their peoples and those of other Muslims in the world over. Type of governments

As the Muslim world came into contact with secular ideals, societies responded in different ways. Some Muslim countries are secular. Azerbaijan became the first secular republic in the Muslim world, between 1918 and 1920, when it was incorporated into the Soviet Union. Turkey has been governed as a secular state since the reforms ofMustafa Kemal Atatürk. By contrast, the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution replaced a mostly secular regime with an Islamic republic led by Imam Khomeini.

Some countries have declared Islam as the official state religion. In some of those countries the legal code is largely secular. Only personal status matters pertaining to inheritance and marriage are governed by Sharia law.

The states that have adopted Islam as the ideological foundation of state and constitution are as follows:

Afghanistan
Iran
Mauritania
Pakistan
Saudi Arabia
Yemen

The states in Muslim world that have declared separation between civil/government affairs and religion are listed below:

Albania, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burkina Faso, Chad, The Gambia, Guinea, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Mali, Northern Cyprus, Nigeria, Senegal, State of Palestine- West Bank, Syria, Lebanon, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Turkey, Tunisia, Uzbekistan

The following Muslim-majority nation-states have endorsed Islam as their State religion.

Algeria, Bangladesh, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Morocco, Pakistan, Palestine, Somalia, United Arab Emirates, Brunei Darussalam.

These are neutral states without any constitutional or official announcement regarding status of religion or secularism:

Indonesia, Sudan, Niger, Djibouti, Sierra Leone. Sects

The Islamic law exists in a number of variations, but the main forms are the five (four Sunni and one Shia) and Salafi and Ibadi schools of jurisprudence

Hanafischool in Pakistan, North India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Turkey, Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, other Balkan States, Lower Egypt, Spain, Canada, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Russia, Caucasus Republics, China, Central Asian Republics, European Union, other countries of North and South America.
Maliki in North Africa, West Africa, Sahel, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.
Shafi'i in Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Eritrea, Somalia, Yemen, Maldives, Sri Lanka and South India
Hanbali in Saudi Arabia,
Jafari (Shia Ithnaashari) in Iran, Iraq, Bahrain and Azerbaijan. These four are the only "Muslim states" where the majority is Shia population. In Yemen, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey, and Syria, are countries with Shia populations. In Lebanon the majority Muslims (54%)and the percentage of the Shia is higher than Sunnis.
Ibadi in Oman and small regions in North Africa

Islam in Africa

It was estimated in 2002 that Muslims constitute 45% of the population of Africa. Islam has a large presence in North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Swahili Coast, and much of West Africa, with minority but significant immigrant populations in South Africa.

Muslims in Africa mostly belong to the Sunni denomination, although there are also a significant number of Shias. In addition, Sufism, the mystical dimension of Islam, has a presence. The Maliki madh'hab is the dominant school of jurisprudence amongst most of the continent's Sunni communities, while the Shafi'i madh'hab is prevalent in the Horn of Africa, eastern Egypt, and the Swahili Coast. The Hanafi fiqh is also followed in western Egypt

Sufism, which focuses on the mystical elements of Islam, has many orders as well as followers in West Africa and Sudan, and, like other orders, strives to know God through meditation and emotion. Sufis may be Sunni or Shi’ite.

Salafis criticize the folklorists Sufis, who they claim have incorporated "un-Islamic" beliefs into their practices, such as celebrating the several events, visiting the shrines of "Islamic saints".

West Africa and Sudan have various Sufi orders regarded skeptically by the more doctrinally strict branches of Islam in the Middle East. Most orders in West Africa emphasize the role of a spiritual guide. In Senegal and Gambia, Mouridism Sufis claim to have several million adherents and have drawn criticism for their veneration of Mouridism’s founder Amadou Bamba. The Tijani is the most popular Sufi order in West Africa, with a large following in Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Gambia

Legal system

The Sharia law broadly influences the legal code in most Islamic countries, but the extent of its impact varies widely. In Africa, most states limit the use of Shar’ia to “personal-status law” for issues such as marriage, divorce, inheritance and child custody. Cohabitation or coexistence between Muslims and non-Muslims remains, for the most part, peaceful.

Nigeria is home to Africa’s largest Muslim population. In 1999, Nigeria’s northern states adopted the Shar’ia penal code, but punishments have been rare. Egypt, one of the largest Muslim states in Africa, claims Shar’ia as the main source of its legislation, yet its penal and civil codes are based largely on French law. Islam in Europe

According to the Pew Forum, the total number of Muslims in Europe in 2010 was about 44 million (6%), excluding Turkey. Approximately 9 million Turks are living in Europe, excluding the Turkish population of Turkey, which makes up the largest Muslim immigrant community in Europe. However the real number of Muslims in Europe is not well-known. The percentage of Muslims in Russia (the biggest group of Muslims in Europe) varies from 5 to 30%, depending on sources.

The Muslim population in Europe is extremely diverse with varied histories and origins. Today, the Muslim-majority regions of Europe are Albania, Kosovo, parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, parts of Bulgaria and Macedonia, as well as some Russian regions in Northern Caucasus and the Volga region. The Muslim population in Western Europe is composed primarily of peoples who arrived to the European continent in or after (1945), when France declared itself a country of immigration. Islam in Americas

Islam is a minority religion in all of the nations and territories of the Americas. However, the United States, in which estimates vary due to a lack of a census question, is generally believed to have the largest population, with between 1.3 and 2.7 million.

Some West African slaves taken to the Americas by colonists may likely have been Muslims, although they became forcibly converted to Christianity. Most Muslims in the former British Caribbean came from the Indian Subcontinent as labourers following the abolition of slavery. This movement also reached Suriname, although other Muslims there moved from another Dutch colony, which is now Indonesia. In the United States, the largest Muslim ethnic group is of African Americans, who converted in the last century, including the syncretic, radical and revisionist Nation of Islam. However, in South America, the Muslim population is mainly composed of wealthy immigrants from the Levant, including Lebanese and Syrians.