Crossroads to Islam
by Noel Rooney
[ bookreviews ]
Here's an intriguing hypothesis, with some good evidence to back it up: Islam did not arise as the traditional account has it, as a revelation to a prophet, and then as an inspiration for the empire which followed it; instead, the religion was founded after the empire, as a way of gluing it together; and the traditional account is a retrospective apology for the political birth of the religion.
Even the Islamic empire did not come about as the traditional account has it; instead, the Byzantine empire gradually withdrew its influence from the middle east and allowed, even invited, the Arabs to come in and take it over. Thus the birth of Islam becomes a product of Byzantine politicking.
And the evidence? The authors have looked at archaeological excavations from the time, and found that the Greeks began to withdraw from the middle east from the late sixth century, so that by the time of the Islamic 'invasion and conquest' there were very few troops in the area, and what troops there were, were Arab militias who quickly fell in with the new rulers.
They also examined coins from the region (numismatics offer a useful perspective on history, and are underused as evidence generally) and found that the changeover seems to have been both gradual and relatively peaceful. More to the point, the inscriptions on coins do not show any evidence of Islam as we know it until a good couple of generations after the events of the Prophet's life are supposed to have happened.
And finally, there are copious rock inscriptions in the area, many of which can be securely dated; again, these inscriptions do not show the influence of Islam, but rather a vague and prototypical monotheism which eventually evolves into traditional Islam; the implication being that the Arabs picked up monotheism from the Jewish and Christian populations, and from those Arabs who had converted to Christianity under Byzantine rule.
It naturally follows from these findings that the historicity of Mohammed is called into question; the Prophet is rarely mentioned on early coins and inscriptions, and begins to appear only a couple of generations after the Hejira. Could it be that the story of the Prophet and his revelation, and his binding the fissiparous Arabs into a mighty empire, is a wishful fiction concocted to justify the increasingly powerful empire which, in the traditional account, we are supposed to understand was founded in his name?
On the other hand, perhaps this is a tacitly prejudiced piece of historical revisionism, masquerading as authentic research. Having read the book, I am still not quite sure which of these readings is the strongest; both are available from the book itself. There are quietly unkind references to Arabs and their capacity for empire-building here; and the overall thesis, that the Islamic empire is a creation of Byzantium for its own political purposes, has a heavily - and unavoidably - political ring to it.
In fact, it is interesting to see how, in recent years, as the west and the muslim world square up to each other on all sorts of fronts, an increasing number of scholarly works have appeared, almost exclusively from western academics, putting Islam and its origins under a pointedly forensic microscope. Of course, this may be an accident of timing; but it looks for all the world as if a concerted effort is being made in the west to undermine the muslim view of its own history.
There may be perfectly good academic reasons for this; certainly the traditional account is not easily criticised in the muslim world, so western scholars have more freedom to investigate. And there are reasons to doubt the probity of an account written after the events by a highly centralised authority (although muslims will tell you that there is no such thing as a 'church' of Islam, there is a central canon of authority, and it has absolute discretion when it comes to history).
However, I can't help suspecting that the timing of the effort is at the very least a cause for a certain amount of glee of the schadenfreude variety in western academic circles. And it may well give comfort to those empire-builders bent on 'reforming' the muslim world to suit their own version of a perfect society.
This is not a light read, and is by no means a polemic; it is a closely argued academic exercise, with a good deal of attention paid to the minutiae in the evidence. But its provenance (the authors are Israeli) and its thesis are unlikely to endear the book to muslim readers. Is a dialogue possible between traditionalists and these academic outsiders? Perhaps, but perhaps not right now.
