From Jesus to Jihad
0-750 AD
Quick recap
A Jewish ruled Israel reached its apex under Solomon in about 950 BC. His kingdom extended from the Euphrates River on the northeast south to the Gulf of Aqaba, an extension of The Red Sea. Interestingly, even though it was part of “the Promised Land”, Solomon did not rule Gaza – it was part of Philistia. In 99 BC, a Hasmonaean king, Alexander, conquered Gaza, and it was controlled by the Hasmoneans until the Romans conquered the region several decades later. It would be over 2,000 years (1967) before a Jewish state would again control Gaza.
A. Jewish Roman Wars.
It is estimated that there were some 2.2 million people living in Palestine mid-1st century AD, with a large majority being Jews. And then there were two of the greatest tragedies in Jewish history prior to the Holocaust: the Jewish Revolt/War of 66-70 AD and the Bar Kokhba Revolt about 60 years later. The Romans killed or enslaved over a million Jews during this period. Many Jews also died at the hands of Jewish Zealots who killed other Jews they felt were not zealous enough in opposing the Romans. Of the Jews who survived the two revolts, most were exiled such that by mid-2nd century AD, there were only a few thousand Jews remaining in Palestine. Nineteen centuries would pass before the majority of the people living in “Israel” would be Jewish, though even then, Jews would not constitute the majority of the population of what was then defined as Palestine.
I am not going to dwell on the causes of these revolts. (Here’s a Wikipedia link.) No doubt, the wise policies the Romans initially employed in Palestine gave way to foolish ones. Also, many Jews – especially the Zealots – drew confidence from their interpretation of Scripture that if they went to war against the Romans, God would intervene with His angels, the Messiah, and/or directly to defeat Rome and give them liberty. Things did not work out as they hoped. Not only were the Jews enslaved or slaughtered, their magnificent temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. (Many Christians believed this happened because the Jews rejected Jesus and Jesus predicted that the temple would be destroyed. (Mark 13:1-2)).
B. Era of Constantine.
The Romans considered Christians a sect of Judaism and for most of the three centuries following the founding of Christianity, Christians were persecuted, and many were martyred. The worst persecution occurred under Diocletian, the same emperor who divided the Empire into East and West. Early in the 4th century, Constantine battled other contenders for the throne of the Roman Empire. He credited Jesus Christ for his winning the decisive battle in 312 which secured him as the Emperor of the West. (In 324, he became sole emperor of the entire Roman Empire.) Significantly, he not only ended persecution of Christians, but he also made Christianity the preferred religion of the Roman Empire. He made Byzantium the Capital of what became the Eastern Roman aka the Byzantine Empire (after the fall of Rome in the west) and renamed the city “Constantinople”. A subsequent Emperor of Rome, Theodosius I, made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380 AD. Regarding Palestine, the Byzantines promoted the growth of Christianity in the Holy Land, and they discouraged Judaism. (A people group that flourished somewhat were the Samaritans.) The Byzantine era was a time of prosperity and cultural flourishing in Palestine. Many Christian churches were built there then.
Oh, by the way, there was another Roman civil war 350-353. Many Jews had returned to Palestine and mainly Galilee. In 352, a force of Jews attacked the Roman garrison in Galilee and destroyed it. Soon thereafter, Roman Emperor Gallus Caesar, who was in Syria at the time, sent Genl Ursicinus who defeated and then slaughtered many of the Jews.
C. The Advent of the Muslims.
Skip ahead 250 years. Despite the headwinds against the Jews, a significant number returned to Palestine. When the Sassanid Persian army invaded Palestine in 614, many Jews fought with the Persians against the Byzantines. Their forces destroyed churches, massacred 17,000 Christians, and took over Jerusalem. In 630, the Byzantines defeated the Persians and reclaimed Palestine. Many of the Jews were executed or exiled by the Byzantines for having allied with the Persians.
Islam was founded in Arabia in 610. Four years after the Byzantines had re-taken Palestine from the Persians, a Muslim army from Arabia defeated the Byzantines and captured most of Palestine. By 638, all of Palestine and Syria became part of the Muslim Empire. While they were at it, the Muslims invaded Mesopotamia and Iran. In 637, the Sassanid Empire was vanquished, and the massive riches of Persia were plundered by the Muslims. By 641, Muslim armies wrested Egypt from the Byzantines, depriving the Romans of their primary granary and important shipyards. With the wealth from Persia and sailors from Yemen, the Muslims quickly built a navy and in 652 defeated the Byzantine fleet near Alexandria. With their combined military forces, the Muslims controlled half of North Africa and Cyprus by 654. How the Muslims conquered so much so fast starting with nothing remains a marvel to historians.
Can you imagine what it would have been like to be a resident in Palestine during such a tumultuous time?
Holy Writings & Holy Places. Before continuing with the history of Palestine, I think it necessary to discuss some of the writings sacred to the Jews, Christians, and Muslims and explain why Jerusalem is religiously important to Muslims.
Holy Writings. The Jewish Bible aka the Tanakh, contains 22 books consisting of the “Law, the Prophets, and the Writings”. In very general terms, the Christian Scriptures includes the Jewish Bible plus the New Testament. Muhammad, the Founder of Islam and the author of The Quran, the holiest book of Islam, wrote in The Quran: “We believe in Allah, and in what has been revealed to us and to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the descendants (of Jacob) and in what was given to Moses and Jesus and in what the other Prophets received from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and we are those who submit to Allah.” (Surah 2:136).
So, in very general terms, Christians see themselves not as rejecting Judaism, but as adding to/improving on it. And Muslims do not see themselves as rejecting Judaism or Christianity, but as adding to/improving on them. The following is from a Wikipedia article: “Muhammad’s views on Jews”.
In the course of Muhammad’s proselytizing in Mecca, he viewed Christians and Jews, both of whom he referred to as ‘People of the Book’, as natural allies, sharing the core principles of his teachings, and anticipated their acceptance and support.”
Not only are the Jewish patriarchs and prophets revered in The Quran, so too is Jesus (Isa). While Mohammad did not believe Isa was the Son of God, he did refer to him as “The Spirit of God”. (Infidels to Mohammad, then, were not Christians or Jews, but the polytheists and atheists.)
Just as most Jews found it difficult to accept that Jesus was the Messiah and/or Son of God, most Jews and Christians found it difficult to believe that an Arab born in the 6th C AD could be God’s prophet. There was a large contingent of Jews in Medina. Mohammad offered them equality with Muslims in exchange for political loyalty, to which the Jews initially agreed. In time, though, the Jews there sided with Mohammad’s enemies and were exiled from Medina.
Holy Places. Most of us are aware why places in Jerusalem and Palestine are considered holy to Christians and Jews. But why to Islam as well? Muhammad did not visit Jerusalem during his lifetime. Muslims believe in Muhammad’s “Night Journey to Heaven” which goes as follows: Muhammad began at the Great Mosque in Mecca and then traveled to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on a winged horse-like creature known as Buraq. From there Muhammad ascended into heaven where he met with Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets and led them in prayer. In a lengthy debate with Moses, Muhammad convinced Moses to reduce the number of required daily prayers by Muslims from 50 to 5. This belief in The Night Journey made Jerusalem the third holiest city in Islam.
The Dome of the Rock was built in the late 7th century on the site on the Temple Mount where Muslims believe Muhammad ascended into heaven. The Temple Mount is where all three Jewish Temples were built by Solomon, the Babylonian exiles, and Herod, respectively. The “mount” is also Mount Moriah, the location where Abraham is believed to have taken Isaac to sacrifice him to God.
The Jews who lived in Palestine after it was conquered by the Muslims, enjoyed significantly more freedom than they had under the rule of the Byzantine Christians.
D. How Muslims Conquered so much Territory so Rapidly
The Roman Republic was founded in 509 BC. It would take 250 years before the Romans would conquer all of Italy. It would take another 400 years for Rome to reach the full extent of its empire – stretching from the Caspian Sea on the East to the Atlantic Ocean on the West.
Mohammed founded Islam in 610. When he died in 632, most of Arabia had accepted his religion and given Mohammed its fealty. Over the next 12 decades, the Muslims conquered lands from the Atlantic Ocean on the West to the Indus River in India, some 1,200 miles further to the east than the Romans had gone. Mohammed started with no money, no title, no military experience. What he had was a voice in his head and the visions that came from it. How was it possible for the Muslims to not only conquer so much territory in such a short time, but to control it for centuries?
I have heard said several times something to the effect that Jews and Muslims have hated each other and been at war ever since the days of Abraham’s two sons: Ismael (the “father of the Arabs”) and Issac (the “grandfather of the Israelites/Jews”) and there is nothing that can be done to change that. And so, we Americans should not waste our efforts trying to resolve an inherently intractable (God ordained) problem.
Based on my studies, for most of their history, the Islamic nations have been more accepting and tolerant of Jews and Judaism than other countries – especially those that were Christian. This changed at the outset of the 20th century, when Jewish leaders living in western countries, set about to make Palestine, where 85% of the population was Muslim, the homeland of the Jews. Jews had not represented more than 10% of the population of Palestine for the previous 1,800 years,
As I have come to learn, one of the main reasons for the rapid expansion and success of Islam has been its very willingness to tolerate other monotheistic religions and particularly Jews and Christians. This perspective came from Mohammed ‘s core belief that there is one God, who he referred to as “Allah”. Allah was the Creator of the Universe; he co-exists with humans, and he holds each individual person accountable for his/her actions. In the afterlife, those who please Allah by their right actions will be richly rewarded and those who do not will be severely punished. This concept often gave much greater meaning and purpose to an individual’s life. Muhammed believed that Allah was the same God referred to and worshipped in the Jewish and Christian bibles and therefore, they were fellow “People of the Book”.
The freedom of religion granted to the “People of the Book” did come with a cost – able bodied adult men were required to pay a special tax referred to as a jizya. Those who paid this tax were exempt from military service and understandably, in a warrior culture, were considered as second-class citizens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jizya. Not surprisingly, many Jews and Christians chose to avoid the tax and the citizenship stigma by converting to Islam. (Pagans, typically polytheists, did not have that option; they either converted to Islam or they were killed or enslaved.)
Let’s consider one area of conquest: Iberia (Spain & Portugal). Iberia had been a Roman possession since the end of the 2nd Punic War in 201 BC. In 380 AD, Christianity became the official religion throughout the Roman Empire. As the Western Roman Empire began to crumble in the 5th Century, Iberia was taken over by the Visigoths, the Germanic tribe that had sacked Rome in 410 AD. The Visigoth nobility were Christians and so they continued to administer Iberia similarly to the Romans.
The Muslims wrested Egypt from the Byzantines (Eastern Roman Empire) in 641 AD. With the subsequent capture of Carthage in 698, the Muslims ruled all North Africa. The best fighters in N Africa were the Berbers who were polytheists that worshipped Greek gods. They generally disliked the Byzantines and had few qualms about converting to Islam and joining in the Muslim conquests. In 711, Tariq, a Berber chieftain, took it upon himself to lead a band of 1,700 Berber tribesman (and recent Muslim converts) to cross the Straights of Gibraltar (the name comes from Tarik’s “Jabal” meaning mountain), to go plunder southern Iberia. They were overwhelmingly successful. So much so, that the Muslim Arab governor of N. Africa, Musa Ibn Nusayr, joined him with an Arab force of 18,000 fighters. They conquered most of Iberia within a few years. Muslims ruled all of Iberia for the next 250 years. The Muslim invaders never represented more than 2% of the Iberian population. How were they able to effectively rule it after defeating the Visigoth armies?
Initially, the Muslims appointed Jews residing in Iberia to assist them in administering their new territory. After a while, many of the local nobles, all Christians, who aspired to a share in power, began to embrace Islam and the Arabic language. However, most of the population remained Christians. “The historian Jessica Coope of the University of Nebraska argues that the pre-modern Islamic conquest was unlike Christianization because the latter was ‘imposed on everyone as part of a negotiated surrender, and thus lacked the element of personal conviction that modern ideas about religious faith would require’, but the conquest of Dar al-Harb was motivated not by a goal of converting the population to Islam but by the belief that everyone was better off under Islamic rule.” (See article.)
Returning to the question of relative treatment of the Jews, let’s continue with Iberia. In 1492 the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castille, issued the Alhambra Decree, ordering the expulsion of all Jews from their kingdoms. In a matter of months, Spanish Jews were forced to renounce their faith or leave their thousand-year homeland behind. And where did they go? The wise ones went to Muslim countries. “The most fortunate of the expelled Jews succeeded in escaping to Turkey. Sultan Bajazet welcomed them warmly. ‘How can you call Ferdinand of Aragon a wise king,’ he was fond of asking, ‘the same Ferdinand who impoverished his own land and enriched ours?’ Among the most unfortunate refugees were those who fled to neighboring Portugal.” (See article.)
Many of us in America have formed very negative perceptions of Muslims and the Islamic religion. It is often portrayed as being harsh, autocratic, and even evil. However, the great success enjoyed by the rapid spreading of Islam and its many adherents today belies such perceptions. Islam obviously offers something that hundreds of millions of people have found positive and worthy of commitment.
All of us in America who are unfamiliar with Islam need to take the time and effort to understand what the precepts and requirements of Islam are so that we are better able to interpret and hopefully play a positive role in addressing the current tensions in the Middle East and especially in that section of the region often referred to as Palestine. Here is a link to the Five Pillars of Islam. https://www.metmuseum.org/learn/educators/curriculum-resources/art-of-the-islamic-world/unit-one/the-five-pillars-of-islam
E. Origins of The Quran and Evaluation of the Muslim Faith
By 750 AD, the Muslim Empire extended over 4,000 miles east to west and included an area about 1.5 times the continental US. Considering that the primary mode of transportation was walking, it required 200 days for a person to travel from one end of the empire to the other. The empire encompassed hundreds of people groups each with their own existing cultures and languages. In that segment, I noted that Muslims have controlled most of that same territory ever since and I credited the Muslim’s tolerance of other monotheistic religions (for most of their history) as being a major factor for their success.
Most societies throughout human history have believed that a higher power (“God”) exists who in some ways holds them accountable, either as a society or as individuals. The degree to which the society believes pleasing God matters has varied greatly. More than most societies and certainly of large nations of people, Muslims from the start believed that pleasing Allah was very important to their success and wellbeing. The phenomenal expansion and success of their empire early on fortified this belief. In my opinion, this one firmly held belief in the importance of pleasing God/Allah has united Muslims from so many disparate cultures for all these many centuries. A critical question becomes, how to know what God wants from a given society?
As I have thought about it, it seems to me that the Muslims have had a significant advantage over many other societies in this regard. The Quran is considered by them to be the actual words of God – not simply inspired. These words were given to a single man, Muhammed, over a period of about 23 years. Muhammed was illiterate so he did not write down the revelations he was given. When revealed to him, he memorized them and shared them with others, who also memorized them. Over time, many people around Mohammed who had initially been skeptical of his claims regarding the revelations, changed their perspective, believed that he had received direct words from the one Creator God of the Universe, and followed him. Perhaps the most famous was Mohammed’s father-in-law, Umar, who became the second Muslim leader after Muhammed’s death.
Some of the revelations were written down by others contemporaneously with Muhammed sharing them. Within 20 years of Muhammed’s death, around 650 AD, the third leader of the Muslims after him, Uthman, formed a committee that compiled and produced the version of the Quran that still is still used today. This one book is the primary source of what God wants from those humans who subscribe to Islam.
The Quran not only addresses spiritual and religious matters, it also has guidance on how to live one’s life and govern a society from a man who had lived a full life (died at age 62), had been a businessman, the head of a household with children and multiple wives, had been a military leader – eventually the commander in chief of a significant Arab kingdom – and of course, was also the undisputed spiritual leader of his society. So, he had multiple life experiences that his followers could relate to. Most of those who knew him best, his companions, attested that Muhammed was the real deal.
Contrast this to the mythological gods of ancient Greece and Rome. There was no single source and of course no single God. Such worshipers were easily converted to Islam.
Years ago, we “adopted” a brilliant LSU exchange student from the UAE – Abdullah. Abdullah and I had many long conversations about our respective faiths. When viewing our respective faith founders through his eyes, I could see why he preferred Mohammed over Jesus. Jesus died in his early 30’s, never had his own family, nor a business, nor was a military leader, and he never wrote anything down nor did any of his contemporaries write down his words as he spoke to them. Jesus proposed turning one’s other check to his enemies. And the horrible death he died was supposedly to appease God/Allah. Abdullah could not accept that the magnificent merciful Allah would be so cruel to anyone, much less his only son. Abdullah found it much more logical and in line with human character to follow the advice of Muhammed than of Jesus. Needless to say, I did not convert Abdullah to Christianity and vice versa.
I am not trying to demean or discount Christianity or Judaism. My key point is that a substantial number of Muslims seem to take seriously the teachings of their faith, and act on them, and perhaps more so than do many people who claim to be Christians or Jews. Such adherence to their faith’s teachings has affected Muslims actions and interactions with other faiths and cultures. I think this may explain their success in retaining the loyalty of people whose ancestors were converted as much as 14 centuries ago.
I am by no means recommending that Christians opt for Islam. I am simply saying that Muslims have as much right to believe in and be proud of their faith as we do of ours. We of the Judeo-Christian faiths are not justified in looking down on Muslims for their religious beliefs.
This is the link to the Zoom recording of the presentation Jesus to Jihad given on May 28, 2024. Before clicking on the link, copy the passcode below it to your clipboard so you can enter it.
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This is the Dropbox link to the Power Power Presentation that I used for the Session #2. The URL to the video is included on a slide identifying the video. Click on the URL and it should take you to the video. If you are not able to open it, you may need to download the Dropbox app on your device. Also, once you open it, select “open in” and then choose “Power Point on the Web”. When that opens, then select “Slide Show” and “Start at Beginning”
Links to other Session Essays: https://quotesbydavid.com/history-of-palestine/