Editing Political aspects of Islam (section)

===Origins of Islam===
{{Main|Pre-Islamic Arabia|Religion in pre-Islamic Arabia|Early Muslim conquests|Historical reliability of the Quran|Historicity of Muhammad}}
[[File:ArabianpeninsulaAL.PNG|thumb|Arabia united under Muhammad (7th century CE)]]

[[Early history of Islam|Early Islam]] arose within the historical, social, political, economic, and religious context of [[Late Antiquity]] in the [[Middle East]].{{sfn|Robinson|2010|p=9}} The second half of the 6th century CE saw political disorder in the [[Pre-Islamic Arabia|pre-Islamic]] [[Arabian peninsula]], and communication routes were no longer secure.<ref>{{cite book|author= Christian Julien Robin|title= Arabia and Ethiopia. In The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=GKRybwb17WMC&pg=PA297|year= 2012|publisher= OUP USA|pages= 297–99|isbn= 9780195336931}}</ref> [[Religion in pre-Islamic Arabia|Religious divisions]] played an important role in the crisis.<ref name="Robin302">{{cite book|author= Christian Julien Robin|title= Arabia and Ethiopia. In The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=GKRybwb17WMC&pg=PA302|year= 2012|publisher= OUP USA|page= 302|isbn= 9780195336931}}</ref> [[Judaism]] became the dominant religion of the [[Himyarite Kingdom]] in Yemen after about 380 CE, while [[Christianity]] took root in the [[Persian Gulf]].<ref name="Robin302"/> There was also a yearning for a more "spiritual form of religion", and "the choice of religion increasingly became an individual rather than a collective issue."<ref name="Robin302"/> While some [[Arabs]] were reluctant to convert to a foreign faith, those [[Abrahamic religions]] provided "the principal intellectual and spiritual reference points", and Jewish and Christian loanwords from [[Aramaic language|Aramaic]] began to replace the old pagan vocabulary of [[Arabic language|Arabic]] throughout the peninsula.<ref name="Robin302"/> The ''[[Hanif|Ḥanīf]]'' ("renunciates"), a group of [[Monotheism|monotheists]] that sought to separate themselves both from the foreign Abrahamic religions and the [[Religion in pre-Islamic Arabia|traditional Arab polytheism]],<ref name="Rubin 2006">{{cite encyclopedia |author-last=Rubin |author-first=Uri |author-link=Uri Rubin |year=2006 |title=Ḥanīf |editor-last=McAuliffe |editor-first=Jane Dammen |editor-link=Jane Dammen McAuliffe |encyclopedia=[[Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān]] |volume=II |location=[[Leiden]] |publisher=[[Brill Publishers]] |doi=10.1163/1875-3922_q3_EQCOM_00080 |isbn=978-90-04-14743-0}}</ref> were looking for a new religious worldview to replace the pre-Islamic Arabian religions,<ref name="Rubin 2006"/> focusing on "the all-encompassing father god [[Allah]] whom they freely equated with the Jewish [[Yahweh]] and the Christian [[Jehovah]]."{{sfn|Rogerson|2010}} In their view, [[Mecca]] was originally dedicated to this monotheistic faith that they considered to be the one true religion, established by the patriarch [[Abraham]].<ref name="Rubin 2006"/>{{sfn|Rogerson|2010}}

According to the [[Historiography of early Islam|traditional account]],<ref name="Van-Ess 2017"/><ref name="Lewis1995a"/> the [[Islamic prophet]] [[Muhammad]] was born in [[Mecca]] around the year 570 CE.<ref>"The very first question a biographer has to ask, namely when the person was born, cannot be answered precisely for Muhammad. [...] Muhammad's biographers usually make him 40 or sometimes 43 years old at the time of his call to be a prophet, which [...] would put the year of his birth at about 570 A.D." F.&nbsp;Buhl & A.T.&nbsp;Welch, ''Encyclopaedia of Islam 2nd ed.'', "Muhammad", vol.&nbsp;7, p.&nbsp;361.</ref> His family belonged to the Arab clan of [[Quraysh]], which was the chief tribe of Mecca and a dominant force in western Arabia.<ref name="Lewis1995a"/><ref name="Robin287">{{cite book|author= Christian Julien Robin|title= Arabia and Ethiopia. In The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=GKRybwb17WMC&pg=PA287|year= 2012|publisher= OUP USA|page= 287|isbn= 9780195336931}}</ref> To counter the effects of anarchy, they upheld the institution of "sacred months" when all violence was forbidden and travel was safe.<ref name="Robin301">{{cite book|author= Christian Julien Robin|title= Arabia and Ethiopia. In The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=GKRybwb17WMC&pg=PA301|year= 2012|publisher= OUP USA|page= 301|isbn= 9780195336931}}</ref> The polytheistic [[Kaaba]] shrine in Mecca and the surrounding area was a popular pilgrimage destination, which had significant economic consequences for the city.<ref name="Robin301"/><ref name="Zeitlin49">{{cite book|author= Irving M. Zeitlin|title= The Historical Muhammad|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=sbhJJ7AOLL4C&pg=PA30|date= 19 March 2007|publisher= Polity|isbn= 978-0-7456-3999-4|page= 49}}</ref>

The [[Early history of Islam|origins of Islam]] as a religious and political movement are to be found in the life and times of the [[Islamic prophet]] [[Muhammad]] and his successors.<ref name="Polk 2018">{{cite book |last=Polk |first=William R. |author-link=William R. Polk |year=2018 |chapter=The Caliphate and the Conquests |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ozFDDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA21 |title=Crusade and Jihad: The Thousand-Year War Between the Muslim World and the Global North |location=[[New Haven, Connecticut|New Haven]] and [[London]] |publisher=[[Yale University Press]] |series=The Henry L. Stimson Lectures Series |pages=21–30 |doi=10.2307/j.ctv1bvnfdq.7 |isbn=978-0-300-22290-6 |jstor=j.ctv1bvnfdq.7 |lccn=2017942543}}</ref> In 622 CE, in recognition of his claims to prophethood, Muhammad was invited to rule the city of [[Medina]]. At the time the local Arab tribes of [[Banu Aus|Aus]] and [[Khazraj]] dominated the town, and were in constant conflict. Medinans considered Muhammad as an impartial outsider who could resolve the conflict. Muhammad and his followers thus moved to Medina, where Muhammad drafted the [[Constitution of Medina]]. The laws Muhammad established during his rule, based on the [[Quran]] and his own doing, are considered by Muslims to be ''[[Sharia|sharīʿa]]'' or Islamic law, which Islamic movements seek to re-establish in the present day. Muhammad gained a widespread following and an army, and his rule expanded first to the city of [[Mecca]] and then [[Spread of Islam|spread]] across the [[Arabian peninsula]] through a combination of diplomacy and [[Early Muslim conquests|military conquests]].<ref name="Polk 2018" />

The real intentions of Muhammad regarding the spread of Islam, its political undertone, and his [[Dawah|missionary activity]] (''da’wah'') during his lifetime are a contentious matter of debate, which has been extensively discussed both among [[Ulama|Muslim scholars]] and [[Kafir|Non-Muslim]] scholars within the academic field of [[Islamic studies]].<ref name="Poston 1992">{{cite book |author-last=Poston |author-first=Larry |year=1992 |chapter=Daʻwah in the East: The Expansion of Islam from the First to the Twelfth Century, A.D. |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hzvnCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA11 |title=Islamic Daʻwah in the West: Muslim Missionary Activity and the Dynamics of Conversion to Islam |location=[[Oxford]] and [[New York City|New York]] |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |pages=11–12 |isbn=9780195072273 |oclc=133165051}}</ref> Various authors, Islamic activists, and historians of Islam have proposed several understandings of Muhammad's intent and ambitions regarding his religio-political mission in the context of the pre-Islamic Arabian society and the founding of his own religion:<ref name="Poston 1992" />

{{Blockquote
|text=Was it in Muhammad's mind to produce a world religion or did his interests lie mainly within the confines of his homeland? Was he solely an [[Arabs|Arab]] [[Nationalism|nationalist]]—a political genius intent upon uniting the proliferation of [[Tribes of Arabia|tribal clans]] under the banner of a new religion—or was his vision a truly international one, encompassing a desire to produce a reformed humanity in the midst of a new world order? These questions are not without significance, for a number of the proponents of contemporary da’wah activity in the West trace their inspiration to the prophet himself, claiming that he initiated a worldwide missionary program in which they are the most recent participants. [...] Despite the claims of these and other writers, it is difficult to prove that Muhammad intended to found a world-encompassing faith superseding the religions of [[Christianity]] and [[Judaism]]. His original aim appears to have been the establishment of a succinctly Arab brand of [[monotheism]], as indicated by his many references to the [[Quran|Qurʾān]] as an ''Arab'' book and by his accommodations to other monotheistic traditions.<ref name="Poston 1992" />
}}