History of Islam

Beginnings

"Islam" is an Arabic word that means "acceptance," "surrender," "submission," or "commitment," and is closely related to the Arabic word for peace (salaam; in Hebrew, shalom). Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, literally, those who make peace. Muslims are those who surrender to the will of God (Allah, in Arabic) in every aspect of their lives and enjoy the resulting peace with God and each other. The prophet Muhammad gave the name Islam to the religious movement he founded.

There are several events that could be considered the beginning of Islam, including the life ofMuhammad, or theHijra. If we seek the beginning of Islam in a sacred event, then perhaps it lies in the Night of Power (laylat al-qadar), when Muhammad received the call to be God's messenger. This article briefly sets the context for this decisive event, and notes its essential meaning in Islam.

In the Islamic worldview, the origins of the faith lie in God's initial creation of the universe and everything in it, including the First Parents, Adam and his wife. For a time, all creatures lived in perfect peace, but then the First Parents were tempted by Iblis and disobeyed God's rules. As a result, Adam and his wife were banished from Paradise, though God reassured Adam that the banishment was temporary. God promised to send messengers to Adam and his progeny, and these messengers would bring God's guidance. Adam was reassured that those who follow God's guidance will have no reason to feel fear or grief (surah 2:31-38).

One of God's most important messengers was Abraham (Arabic, Ibrahim), who was called by God to leave his home in Ur (in present-day Iraq). Abraham (whose name means "Father of Many Nations") is revered in the scriptures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as the ideal model of pure faith in the one true God. Abraham's islam was exemplary. He followed God's instructions in everything, and was even willing to sacrifice his own son because God had commanded it. The sacred story of Islam tells of how Abraham and his son Ishmael (Arabic, Ismail) built the Kaaba (literally "House of God") in Mecca, the center of Muslim worship.

Muhammad, the final messenger sent by God, belonged to the Quraysh, the tribe that controlled the sacred sites of Mecca, including the Kaaba. At the time of Muhammad's birth, ca. 570 C.E., the culture of the Arabian peninsula was generally animistic and polytheistic. Shrines with idols proliferated, especially in Mecca. The Kaaba was filled with idols that had been placed there by the different tribes and clans of Arabia. Allah, which means quite simply "the God," was the highest god, but only one among many.

Still, monotheism was not unknown, as there were Christian and Jewish tribes in Arabia. They too had received guidance from God's messengers, recorded in sacred writings such as the Torah (Moses), the Psalms (David), or the Gospel (Jesus). They were "People of the Book," or people who possessed sacred scripture. But from the perspective of Muhammad and his followers, God's message in these scriptures had become corrupted, whether by time or self-interest. A fresh revelation was needed, one that was incorruptible, and Muhammad was called to deliver it. Although Muhammad was a prophet to the Arabs of the 7th century, the message was timeless and intended for all humankind. It was God's final revelation, and thus Muhammad is called the last prophet, or Seal of the Prophets.

This revelation, which was to become the foundation of Islam, had its beginning in the Night of Power, which many traditional accounts date to the night between the 26th and 27th of Ramadan, the ninth month of the Muslim calendar. Muhammad often went to the caves of Mt. Hira near Mecca for solitary meditations and vigils, and on this night, he experienced a profound and disturbing vision. There are several versions of the story. They differ in the details, but the meaning is the same. An angelic being, later identified by Muhammad as Archangel Gabriel, appeared to him and commanded him to "recite" in the name of God. Muhammad did not respond immediately, and the angel took him by the throat and shook him as he repeated his command to "recite." Again Muhammad did not react, so the angel choked him until Muhammad agreed to do as he was told. So began Muhammad's years as a prophet, first to the Meccans and ultimately to all of Arabia.

This decisive event took place when Muhammad was forty years old, ca. 610, and the revelations continued until his death in 632. TheQuran is the record of the messages Muhammad recited in the name of God. It forms the basis of the religion of Islam, which by the time of Muhammad's death had united nearly all the people of the Arabian peninsula into a single polity with common beliefs and purpose. And it is the inaugural event for the establishment and spread of a religion that is now the second-largest religion in the world, with over one billion followers. Muslims live in almost every country in the world, and are the majority in forty-eight countries stretching from north Africa to southeast Asia, with the greatest populations concentrated in south Asia and Indonesia. Despite the great diversity in languages, customs, lifestyles, and beliefs, Muslims share their love for the messenger and dedication to the message.

Influences

Islam emerged in the 7th century C.E. in the city of Mecca, a flourishing and cosmopolitan commercial center on the coastal plane of Arabia. Muhammad did not claim to have invented a new religion, but to have brought a new revelation that returned the people of the peninsula to the one true God, known to the Arabs as Allah, the God of Abraham, Ishmael, Noah, Moses, and Jesus.

The Arabian peninsula is an arid region of deserts, steppes, and mountains. Nomadic herders were best equipped to survive the dry conditions, spending most of the year in the high central plateau cultivating flocks of sheep and goats, and relying on camels for food, transport, and clothing. In the spring, they would herd their flocks into the desert, where plants briefly bloomed in the spring rains. Water was only sufficient to support settlements and agriculture in a few oases and coastal areas. These geographic conditions were an impediment to would-be military conquerors and tended to isolate the people within. Not one of the great conquerors of antiquity was able to conquer Arabia, and the Arabs themselves did not unite to create a conquering state of their own. Resources were scarce, and tribal life was competitive.

The culture of Muhammad's time included belief in a number of spirits and powers, in particular those associated with rocks, springs, and trees. Deities were associated with various stars and planets, and the most important of these were goddesses. A superior deity was known as Allah, or "the God," but this god was somewhat vaguely defined and did not figure strongly into the religious practices of the time.

One of the main religious practices was the pilgrimage. There were shrines to various deities in different parts of the peninsula, but the most important center of pilgrimage was Mecca, where the rectangular stone building known as theKaaba stood. The Kaaba was filled with images of deities, including the gods of the different clans. During an annual season of pilgrimage, all fighting was prohibited. People came to Mecca from all over to perform the rites of pilgrimage, many of which survive to the present day. They also engaged in diplomacy, poetry competitions, and trade.

Muhammad was a member of a tribe called the Quraysh, one of the most powerful groups in Arabia. The Quraysh had control of Mecca, which in addition to being the center for polytheism became the most important stop along what soon became the primary trade route in the Arabian Peninsula. The Quraysh thrived on Mecca's expanding commercial economy. Hostilities between the Persian and Byzantine Roman Empires had ruined trade along the traditional overland route from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. A new route was needed, and the coastal plain of Arabia conveniently lay overland from the ports of Yemen. Mecca had the advantage of sitting at an intersection, where the north-south route for the transfer of goods from the east crossed another major route that led east into the Iraqi markets. The Quraysh gained a great deal of wealth and prestige from this particular set of circumstances, and it was initially to the Quraysh and the Meccans that Muhammad brought the message of Islam. The message required social and economic changes that the Quraysh at first resisted, leading to years of hostility and persecution. Yet it was Muhammad who ultimately united the Arabs of the peninsula into a single nation.

Trade with the regions to the north brought the Arabs into contact with Judaism and Christianity. Moreover, there were settled communities of Christians and Jews in the peninsula, and Arabic-speaking Jewish tribes. As a result, the Arabs were familiar with these two religions, and Muhammad's closely-related teachings. Teaching that Islam is the climax of monotheistic faith, Muhammad reached out to both Jews and Christians, seeking alliances and hoping to win converts to his message of social and religious reform.

Muslims and Christians enjoyed debate and dialogue, particularly over theological issues, and Muhammad invited Christians to pray in his mosque. Initially Muhammad and his followers followed the Jewish Arabs by facing Jerusalem for prayer, but shortly after arriving in Medina, Muhammad received a revelation instructing the Muslims to face Mecca when praying. This simple change served to distinguish Islam from Judaism, despite the strong affinities between the two.

Founders

Muhammad is known as rasul Allah, or God's Messenger to the Arabs, and to all of humanity. He was born in Mecca ca. 570 C.E., and died in Medina in 632. Most of what we know about Muhammad comes from theQuran, but we also have biographies written in the century after his death (called the sirah) and the hadith. Some general histories contemporary with the sirah are also useful sources of information about Muhammad's life.

Muhammad's father died before he was born, and his mother died when he was six years old, leaving him an orphan. He went to live with his paternal grandfather, who sent him to live with a nomadic tribe. This was customary at the time for boys born in the towns of the Arabian peninsula. Later, Muhammad began accompanying his uncle, Abu Talib, on trading expeditions to Syria. On one of these trips, Muhammad met a wealthy widow named Khadija. Khadija was impressed by his honesty, and hired him to manage her caravan business. Eventually she proposed marriage. The couple was married for twenty-four years and had at least seven children together, four daughters who survived to adulthood, and at least three sons who died in infancy. The marriage was monogamous, and by all accounts was very happy.

The night Muhammad was called to become a prophet of Allah, known as the Night of Power, took place when Muhammad was around forty years old. The strange and terrifying vision shook Muhammad deeply, but Khadija advised him to be steady and trust the vision. Muhammad began preaching to the people of Mecca in 613. His earliest messages focused on the oneness (tawhid) of Allah, the punishments that await the greedy and the proud on Judgment Day, and on exhorting people to show goodwill toward one another. He put special emphasis on the care of the poor, especially orphans and widows.

Muhammad gathered followers from a variety of segments of Meccan society, from both poor and weak clans, and wealthy ones. All seemed to be seeking something more fulfilling than the materialism offered by Meccan society. Muhammad and his followers critiqued the culture of competition and the high value placed on money and material goods, calling for submission to the will of the one true God. Mecca, however, was a center for trade and the most important destination in the peninsula for the annual pilgrimage that celebrated the pantheon of gods, a festival that netted for the Meccans their annual gross income. Therefore logically the merchant society of Mecca was not particularly receptive to Muhammad's critique of materialism and his calls for social reform and monotheism. The Meccans wanted Muhammad to stop preaching about monotheism and social justice. The most powerful tribal leaders in Mecca attempted to bribe him into silence by offering to share the wealth of the annual pilgrimage with him and even allowed for the God that Muhammad believed in to be deemed the most powerful of all the gods in Mecca. Muhammad did not cooperate with the Meccans' attempts at negotiations, and the Meccans began persecuting him and his followers.

In a town called Yathrib, north of Mecca, a civil war was tearing the town apart. Muhammad had established a reputation as both a charismatic holy man and a fair arbiter. So in 621 the city leaders sent a delegation to Muhammad to invite him to move to Yathrib. In 622, Muhammad and his followers left Mecca for Yathrib, an event remembered as the Hijra, or emigration. This event became year one of the Islamic calendar. Muhammad built the first mosque in his new home, and Yathrib became known as the city of the prophet, madinat al-nabi, or simply, Medina, one of Islam's three holiest cities (Mecca and Jerusalem being the other two).

Once in Medina, Muhammad drafted an agreement on behalf of the feuding clans that guaranteed mutual respect and religious freedom, and required common defense of the city. Muhammad and his followers flourished, and added many more followers to their ranks. He was deeply disappointed, however, when leaders of the Jewish tribes of the city, close allies of Muhammad's enemies in Mecca, did not accept his claims to be a prophet, although they too signed the treaty to live together in mutual respect. Until this time, Muhammad had taught that God's revelation to the Arabs was in a common stream with Jewish and Christian revelations, not a separate religion but the culmination of them. Upon this rejection from the powerful Jewish tribal leaders of Medina, Muhammad received revelation from God to break away and found Islam as a separate religion.

The Meccans continued to harass Muslims, confiscating and selling their property. They responded by defending themselves and their property. In 624, the Meccans and Muslims fought a major battle, with the Muslims defeating a Meccan force three times its size. Many saw this as a sign of God's protection, and converted to Islam. The following year, Muhammad and his troops suffered heavy losses in a second battle with the Meccans. Ultimately, however, Muhammad and the Muslims prevailed, and in 630, Muhammad and the Muslims took control of Mecca. Muhammad destroyed the idols in the Kaaba and the other shrines in the city, and performed the rites of pilgrimage.

Muhammad had married several women after Khadija's death, and he and his wives and children settled in Medina. The following year, many of the tribes of the peninsula pledged loyalty to Muhammad and Meccans converted to Islam. Muhammad had gained control of Arabia. After a pilgrimage to Mecca in 632, Muhammad fell ill and died in the home of his youngest and favorite wife, Aisha.

Sacred Texts

The word "Quran" means "recitation," because the Quran was first heard in sermons and public readings. Muslims believe it is still best communicated by being recited. The Quran has been translated into many languages, but only the Arabic version is considered authoritative. The sounds of the Quran recited aloud in Arabic are considered part of its nature, inseparable from its meaning. It is also believed to be divine, the eternal and literal word of God. It is filled with God's direct speech, revealed through the use of the first person plural ("we"). The original, divine version of the earthly book is considered coeternal with God, either in heaven or in the mind of God. Translations into other languages, removed from sacred Arabic words and sounds, are not the literal word of God, and are classified as interpretations.

The Quran is available in translation in every language of the world; non-Arabic-speaking Muslims read translations of the Quran as a form of extra devotion and look to the Quran as a source of divine guidance. All Muslims memorize verses from the Arabic Quran because verses from the Quran are required to be recited in the daily ritual prayer that all Muslims perform. The ritual prayer has remained in Arabic despite the fact that most Muslims in the world live outside of the Middle East. This provides Muslims a tremendous sense of unity and shared brotherhood and sisterhood throughout the world because the liturgy of worship has never changed. The most devout male and female Muslims—even those who are not religious authorities on Islam—will memorize the entire Quran in Arabic; those that do so are referred to as hafiz or hafiza.

The Quran contains a record of the revelations recited by the prophet Muhammad over a period of approximately twenty-two years in piecemeal, from 610 to 632. Muhammad commissioned scribes to record the revelations in writing, and at the time of his death, a number of his followers had memorized the entire text. As Muhammad's followers began to die, the community became concerned that variations on the revelations would proliferate, and the original, authentic revelation would become obscured. Work began on producing an authoritative version, starting with the time-consuming task of gathering all the revelations from both written and oral sources. Muhammad's wives, companions, and scribes all owned partial versions. The challenge was to correlate all the partial versions, decide between variations, and produce an authoritative version. Under Uthman, the third caliph, a team of scholars led by one of Muhammad's companions completed the task by around 650.

The Quran is approximately the same length as the Christian New Testament. It has 114 chapters, called surahs, which range in length from 3 to 286 verses. Each surah is named after an image or topic mentioned in it, and many of the names are memorable and appealing, such as "The Elephant," "Light," "Dawn," "Thunder," "The Cave," "The Moon," or "Smoke." The surahs are ordered from longest to shortest, except for the first one, which contains a brief invocation and is the shortest of all. The first surah, al-Fatiha, is the most recited chapter of the Quran as it is said multiple times in every ritual prayer. In contemporary printed Qurans, along with each chapter name, the heading of the surah also indicates whether it was revealed before or after the Hijra, as well as the number of verses it contains. The surahs vary in style and content, and the longer ones cover a variety of topics. Many Muslims and non-Muslims consider the Quran to be a masterwork, a work of incredibly beautiful and eloquent poetry and wisdom. Much of the beauty is lost in the Quran's translation to English, so this point may be hard to understand for those who do not understand Arabic.

As the literal word of God, the Quran is regarded as sacred and infallible. In the Quran, God's message is pure and uncorrupted. It is the primary source of belief and practice for Muslims, and is the source for understanding God's will for humans. It contains solutions to disagreements and practical challenges. As the territory under the Muslims expanded, and as time passed, the original context of the Quran changed. It became more urgent to understand the Quran's meaning in changed circumstances. The pursuit of historically textualized explanation and interpretation of the Quran became known as tafsir, or exegesis.

The second most important source of guidance for Muslims is the Sunna, the custom of the Prophet, which is recorded in the hadith. The hadith do not have the status of scripture, but they are deemed as canonical and are an important source for culture and guidance. Along with the Quran, they are the basis for shariah (political and religious law). In contrast to the Quran, which is the record of God's speech to Muhammad, the hadith contain sacred history, reports of the words and deeds of Muhammad and other early Muslims. After Muhammad's death, his companions compiled a record of all his teachings and actions. They passed these on so that the study of the Prophet's life and work would influence the community. Muhammad is the model Muslim, and the hadith are studied for their insight into understanding ideal Muslim behavior.

Historical Perspectives

Muslims live in nearly every country on earth, in places as diverse as Paris, Los Angeles, Bali, and Kandahar. They are old and young, male and female, urban and rural, rich and poor, university professors and kindergarten students, parents, farmers, shop owners, and CEOs. Yet dispassionate, even-handed, and data-driven studies of the lives of Muslims and Muslim communities have unfortunately been in the minority of the vast published output concerning Islam in the past thirty years. Concepts such as "Islamic terrorism" and "Islamic fundamentalism" summarily dismiss Muslims as dangerously anti-western. These hasty generalizations saturate the western media, despite the many criticisms of such obvious stereotyping. One of the most disputed theories has been Samuel Huntington's thesis of the post-Cold War "clash of civilizations." Despite its vague and untenable concept of "civilization identity," Huntington's perspective has recently enjoyed both political and popular influence.

Clichéd views of Islam and the "Islamic threat" proliferate in serious journalism and popular entertainment, despite patient and determined scholarly efforts to dispel them. In The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality?(3rd ed. 1999), John Esposito documented, in expert and accessible terms, the vast diversity in politics, cultural expressions, traditions, and historical realities of the world's Muslims. In The Failure of Political Islam (1994), Olivier Roy described the failure of political Islam to win over the great majority of Muslims. In Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World (Vintage ed. 1997), Edward Said discussed the ways in which some of the more crass stereotypes of Muslims have come to dominate American media coverage of the Middle East and the Arabs. In the first section of the book, "Islam as News," Said considers how Americans rely on the news media for their knowledge of Islam and Muslims. In consequence, information is limited to subjects deemed newsworthy, such as oil crises and terrorist attacks. Further, the limited information Americans get from the news media is filtered through American government and industry experts whose overriding concern is to determine who is friendly to U.S. interests and who is not. The result is a distorted view of Islam in which questions of local concerns and experiences are simply not asked.

Meanwhile, scholarship on Islam has changed considerably in the last thirty years. In the 18th and 19th centuries, European scholars specializing in the languages and literatures of the "orient" (Turkey and the Arab world, and later India, China, and Japan) were called "orientalists." The wars of the first half of the 20th century put an end to the old empires of the Ottomans, Russians, Germans, and Austrians, and then launched the period of decolonization that followed the Second World War. This led to the emergence of orientalist scholars from the very countries formerly governed by European powers and studied by European scholars.

These new orientalists challenged traditional orientalist assumptions, such as the belief that an "oriental essence" could be found within the cultures of Asia. In his seminal 1963 essay "Orientalism in Crisis," Egyptian sociologist Anouar Abdel-Malek argued that the national liberation movements of Asia, Africa, and Latin America demanded a new approach to understanding the problems of the orient. No longer would the peoples of the orient be merely the objects of the scholars' studies; they were the scholars themselves, with their own voices and their own deep interest in the problems of their nations and cultures. Abdel-Malek's essay was quickly followed by a critique of orientalism from the Palestinian Muslim historian A.L. Tibawi. In his 1964 essay "English-Speaking Orientalists," Tibawi discussed European Christian hostility toward Islam, seen most clearly in alliances between 19th-century Christian missionaries and orientalist scholars. These alliances, Tibawi argued, cast suspicion on the objectivity, or so-called "scientific detachment," of orientalist scholarship.

Edward Said's 1978 book Orientalismlaunched what was by far the most resonant and effective critique of orientalism. Said, a Palestinian Christian professor of English and Comparative Literature, analyzed orientalist scholarship and argued that it serves as a body of hegemonic discourse. Echoing Tibawi, Said discussed in great detail the failure of orientalist scholarship to adhere to such core intellectual virtues as rationality and objectivity. What orientalist scholarship does is create stereotypes through which power over Muslims peoples is asserted and justified. Instead of approaching the study of Islam or Muslims in terms of specific questions about local circumstances and historical influences, orientalism carelessly portrays all Muslims in an undifferentiated mass, describing them as irrational, backward, despotic, inferior, and so forth. The West is then by extension stereotyped as rational, progressive, humane, superior, and so forth. Other orientalist stereotypes include such untenable concepts as the so-called "Arab mind" and "Islamic society." Echoing Abdel-Malek, Said argued that whether consciously or not, the orientalists had created a discourse that serves to justify European, and subsequently American, imperialism.

Said's critique of the power exercised by scholarly discourse about "the Other" (those who are not us) sent shockwaves through academia, permanently altering the dynamics of such established disciplines as anthropology, history, sociology, and comparative religions. Many now seek to study Islam and Muslims with careful sensitivity to their own inherited assumptions. While Said has been rightly criticized from a number of positions, the majority of his critics accept his conclusions in principle.

Others, less interested in entering the debate over the validity of Said's claims, have taken his argument into the field to conduct fresh analyses of Islamic cultures and histories, and of the colonial empires that sought to subjugate the Muslims. Through this fresh and original scholarship, the richness and density of our shared knowledge on Islam and Muslims is increasing. For excellent examples of studies of the diversity and complexity to be found within specific localities and historical moments, see Yann Richard's Shi'ite Islam: Polity, Ideology, and Creed(Blackwell 1995), Peter Lamborn Wilson's Scandal: Essays in Islamic Heresy (Autonomedia 1988), or Lisa Lowe's Critical Terrains: French and British Orientalisms (Cornell 1991).

Modern Age

In the late 18th and 19th centuries, European nations were engaged in an aggressive and competitive campaign to secure new territories and new markets. In this age of European imperialism, certain key areas of the Muslim world attracted increased European attention. The European nations expanded their influence and established colonies in the Middle East, Africa, and India. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed in defeat in 1918 at the end of World War I, France and Great Britain assumed control of the Ottoman Empire's Middle East and north African territories.

In the 19th century, in response to the political and economic challenges of European imperialism, a number of schools of Islamic thought emerged that included important political and social components. Called Islamic revivalist movements, these schools, such as the Wahhabi movement in Arabia and the Mahdi movement in Sudan, were concerned that Islamic society appeared to be in decline. While not necessarily agreeing in the details, they shared a conviction that returning to careful adherence to the Quran and the sunnahwould restore independence and influence to Islamic societies.

In the 20thcentury, Muslims struggled with the political and economic challenges presented by European colonialism and imperialism, and with the intellectual and moral challenges presented by a rapidly-changing world of nationalism, secularism, anti-colonial struggles, and the Cold War. Two very different hypotheses found wide appeal among Muslims. Some, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, built on the revivalist teachings of the 19th century and argued for a return to Islamic traditions. Finding wide support among the working and impoverished classes of Muslims, they taught that Islam is a positive alternative to the modern world, which had left so many behind.  They led reformist movements that advocated for an Islamic system of government. Many of them spent time in prison for their political leadership and publications, particularly in Egypt and Syria.

Others advocated a search for a positive synthesis with the modern world, arguing that Islam can and should be reinterpreted in light of modern issues and concerns. In their writing, they built bridges between the traditional teachings of Islam and the modern challenges of secularism, nationalism, multiculturalism, and democracy. These modernists—such as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Muhammad Abduh, Qasim Amin,  Sayyid Ahmad Khan, and Muhammad Iqbal—were popular with the educated classes of the Middle East and south Asia.

In the 1950s and 1960s, most of the Muslim world won independence from the European colonial powers.  Many of the newly-independent states had not existed in their present forms prior to European intervention, including Lebanon, Syria, Sudan, Jordan, Iraq, and Pakistan. Pursuing their own interests, the European powers had created these states by drawing artificial borders on maps and appointing European allies as rulers. 

As a result, the anti-colonial struggle was replaced by another prolonged struggle, this time over national identity and political legitimacy. Who is Lebanese, and who is Syrian? Who is Pakistani, and who is Indian? Should the Arabs all be unified into one state? Why should former colonies continue within national borders imposed from London or Paris? Who is responsible for the Palestinians? Who has the right to lead the countries, and how should the leader be chosen? Struggles to find consensus on the answers to these intractable questions were conducted in the context of the Cold War and the American and Soviet tendencies to conduct that war by proxy, in a strategy the United States called "low-intensity warfare." As a result, political conflict was frequently conducted through wars instead of public debate, with a bewildering number of local and foreign interests influencing critical national events.

In this context, Islamic revivalists and Islamic liberal modernists competed with communist and other secular nationalist movements. Many Muslims who participated in and defended Islamic culture and practices nonetheless argued on behalf of the modern thesis of separation of religious and state functions, and for democracy founded in universal suffrage. They too joined political parties and social movements and campaigned for secular, national democracies. Secular governments neglected the role of Islam in the public life of Muslim societies and jailed Islamic revivalists and secular nationalists alike, because of the different challenges they presented to these governments. Many Muslim countries became one-party states or military regimes, or a combination of both. Political repression and uneven economic development contributed to growing popular unrest.

The combination of foreign interference, grinding poverty, political repression, and violence has led many Muslims to turn to Islam as their best hope for liberation, peace, security, health, and prosperity. The devastating effects on families of ongoing violence have caused particularly powerful grievances. Corrupt regimes, failed states, and the marginalization of Muslim immigrant populations in Europe have recently led some to seek more radical solutions to ongoing despair and repression through a more globalized Muslim community that transcends the boundaries of nation-states (e.g., al-Qaeda).

Islamic revivalism has become a powerful force in Muslim politics, present in nearly every Muslim country. At its heart is a belief that the politics of the 20th century have failed Muslims, and that a full return of Islam to the center of personal and public life will restore Muslim power and influence, and bring health and welfare to Muslim societies. To this end, Islamic organizations are active in social services, education, publishing and broadcasting, and economics. Meanwhile, secular Muslims work just as hard to achieve the same goals for their families and fellow Muslims. It remains to be seen how peace will be achieved.