Advent of Islam
Bernard Lewis believes that the advent of Islam was a revolution which only partially succeeded due to tensions between the new religion and very old societies that the Muslims conquered. He thinks that one such area of tension was a consequence of what he sees as the egalitarian nature of Islamic doctrine. Islam from the first denounced aristocratic privilege, rejected hierarchy, and adopted a formula of the career open to the talents. Lewis however notes that the equality in Islam was restricted to free adult male Muslims, but even that "represented a very considerable advance on the practice of both the Greco-Roman and the ancient Iranian world."
Bernard Lewis writes about the significance of Muhammad's achievements:
| “ | He had achieved a great deal. To the pagan peoples of western Arabia he had brought a new religion which, with its monotheism and its ethical doctrines, stood on an incomparably higher level than the paganism it replaced. He had provided that religion with a revelation which was to become in the centuries to follow the guide to thought and count of countless millions of Believers. But he had done more than that; he had established a community and a well organized and armed state, the power and prestige of which made it a dominant factor in Arabia | ” |
Read more about this topic: Early Social Changes Under Islam
Famous quotes containing the words advent of, advent and/or islam:
“Not until the advent of Impressionism does the repudiation of principles set in which opened the way for the burlesque parade of the fashionable and publicity-crazed modernities of our century.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“Not until the advent of Impressionism does the repudiation of principles set in which opened the way for the burlesque parade of the fashionable and publicity-crazed modernities of our century.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“During the first formative centuries of its existence, Christianity was separated from and indeed antagonistic to the state, with which it only later became involved. From the lifetime of its founder, Islam was the state, and the identity of religion and government is indelibly stamped on the memories and awareness of the faithful from their own sacred writings, history, and experience.”
—Bernard Lewis, U.S. Middle Eastern specialist. Islam and the West, ch. 8, Oxford University Press (1993)