Early parts of the book were making me uncertain about how far to go - author seemed rather credulous as to the activities of the founders . . . seemed to pretty much accept the stories as packaged (in a way that would never happen with Old Testament, Book of Mormon, etc.) Also seemed to take the position that Islam's earliest days are part of a somewhat systematized history. But then he gets around to discussing how pretty much nothing was written down for literally centuries (as discussed here) . . . and I felt like the overall discussion from there on was well balanced, at least from my limited-knowledge perspective. (And this is not to diminish the founder-achievements, just to note the timing of emergence of written source materials. Which is relevant.)
I thought this was a highly useful overview - necessarily very compact given the geographic scope and long time period, but that's fine. And I liked his premise - to help Westerners think about how the Islamic world (far from a monolith, of course) might think about the way the West emerged from a well-deserved reputation of "backwardness" relative to the Islamic world, to a position of greater development.
Some ideas that came through - not necessarily in order or particularly important, just thoughts that were new to me or came through in a different way -
- He explains how there ended up being three caliphates when by definition only one was possible (Spain, Egypt, original (based in Damascus, Baghdad, etc.)]
- Discusses the extensive Persian influence in the "original" caliphate - as this book discusses - sheer numbers and cultural weight were telling.
- Religious tenets that talk about peace, etc. But warrior mentality, head-of-religion conflated with head-of-state; jihad; what can only be called imperialist expansion, right? A religion that was literally fighting for its existence from day one - constant warfare or expansion coloring the development of the religion in those centuries before things were written down.
- Talks about how the Middle East areas that preceded Islam went through a cycle of expansion when everything works - easier to recruit and motivate warriors when you are capturing new territories and lots of loot that you can parcel out to them. Clearly applied to Islamic expansion - and Western empires - nothing wrong with any of that, seems to be the normal order of things. Except things get very difficult when expansion stops, let alone when contraction sets in.
- On the religious side - splits, fundamentalist, mystics (Sufi) emerge - normal for religions. And how the religion evolves to conveniently include principles congenial to those in power. See also Christianity, LDS, etc. A useful discussion.
- Part of Western self-loathing? Our culture-setters endlessly pillory Christianity; European colonization is racist, violent imperialism using religion as a cover; true enough, but how distinguishable from expansion by Islamic or other groups?
- Liked his perspective on the Crusades. Not nearly as significant to the Islamic world as the immediately-following incursion by Mongols - which was a genuine disaster. He thinks Crusades were stressful enough, but much more trumped-up now.
- Author moves onto discuss Islam in India, longer discussion in this book.
- Throughout there is helpful discussion of separation of Sunni and Shiite, and how the Shiite portion became centered in Persia/Iran c. 1500. Mentions plenty of other subgroups - Sufi, fundamentalists - Saud/Wahhabi.
- Secular/modernist movements in 20th century - started earlier, but that's the era I'm familiar with from '60s and '70s. Surprising how much that has changed.
- Good discussion of the failure of most of these countries to make much progress economically. Abundant natural resources can be a curse - elites sell them off to foreigners in exchange for private riches, little concern about effect on the overall country (author cites Iran, others).
- The difficulty of development of a modern state when there is no separation of church and state.
And more.
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