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InhoudThe Life of the Prophet (I. Lapidus) ....................................................................................................... 2
What do we actually know about Mohammed (P. Crone) ...................................................................... 6
The Problem of Stoning in the Islamic Penal Code: An Argument for Reform ..................................... 9
Stoning in the Shariah ......................................................................................................................... 9
Stoning in the Quran and Sunnah ..................................................................................................... 10
Stoning and International Human Rights Law .................................................................................. 11
Toward a Reform Methodology........................................................................................................ 12
The Rise of Islam in the World ............................................................................................................. 13
The pre-Islamic Middle East ............................................................................................................. 13
The Arabs .......................................................................................................................................... 14
The Rise of Islam .............................................................................................................................. 14
The Prophet ................................................................................................................................... 14
The Conquests ............................................................................................................................... 15
Explanation ................................................................................................................................... 16
The Conquest Society ....................................................................................................................... 16
The first civil war (656-61) ........................................................................................................... 16
The early Umayyads (661-83) ...................................................................................................... 17
The second civil war (883-92) ...................................................................................................... 17
The Later Ummayads (684-750) ....................................................................................................... 18
Conversion .................................................................................................................................... 18
Muslim society .............................................................................................................................. 18
Sect formation ............................................................................................................................... 18
The fall of the Umayyads (744-50) ............................................................................................... 19
the Abbasid Empire........................................................................................................................... 19
the Abbasid dilemma .................................................................................................................... 19
The Shuubiyya .............................................................................................................................. 20
Al-Mamun (813-33) ...................................................................................................................... 20
Islam en het dagelijks leven – ‘Vasten is alles met je mond’; de viering van de ramadan ................... 20
Het verloop van ramadan .................................................................................................................. 22
De vijftiende en zeventwintigste ramadan ........................................................................................ 24
De betekenis van vasten .................................................................................................................... 25
Ramadan in Nederland ...................................................................................................................... 26
1
,The Life of the Prophet (I. Lapidus)
Compared with the founders of other great religions, the sources of our knowledge of the Prophet's life
are abundant. We have:
• The Quran itself, Muslim scripture, believed by Muslims to have been revealed by God
through the angel Gabriel to Muhammad – the direct revelation of God’s word and will, the
ultimate source of Muslim belief, and the inspiration to live in the way God requires of human
beings.
▪ In the Muslim view the Quran is the final revelation and supersedes the previous
Jewish and Christian dispensations. The Quran was fully compiled after the Prophet’s
death and an official version promulgated by the Caliph ‘Uthman (644-56).
• The hadith, or sayings of the Prophet. In the Muslim view, these are Muhammad’s own
inspired utterances, as opposed to Quranic utterances. The Hadith deals mainly with ritual,
moral, and other religious matters.
• The biography compiled by Ibn Ishaq.
From these sources we know that the Quran was revealed over the last two decades of Muhammad’s
life, from about 610 until his death in 632. In his biography we do not see him propounding-a fixed
system of belief. He was a judge rather than a legislator, a counsellor rather than a theorist. We see the
Prophet as a man to whom the revelation has given a new direction in life, a direction whose
implications and possibilities constantly unfold before him.
Muhammad was born around ap 570 into the once-prominent clan of Banu Hashim. His ancestors had
been guardians of the sacred well of Zamzam in Mecca, but by his time the clan, though engaged in
commerce, was not among the most influential. Muhammad's father died before he was born. He was
raised by his grandfather and then by his uncle, Abu Talib. Muhammad married his employer, Khadija,
a rich widow. They had four daughters and several sons; all the boys died in infancy. In the years before
the revelations Muhammad was wont to retreat to the mountains outside Mecca to pray in solitude.
About the year 610, the seeker after religious truth received his first revelations. The first words revealed
to him were the opening five lines of sura (chapter) 96: “Recite: In the Name of thy Lord who created,
created Man of a blood-clot. Recite: And thy Lord is the Most Generous, who taught by the Pen, taught
Man that he knew not.” In the early years the content of these revelations was the vision of a great, just
God, Allah, who would on the day of judgment weigh every man’s works and consign him to bliss or
damnation. The early revelations emphasized the fear of the last judgment, piety and good works, and
warnings against neglect of duties and heedlessness of the final day of reckoning. Opposed to the
worship of God and fear of the last judgment were presumption, pride in human powers, and attachment
to the things of this world. This was the false pride of the Meccans, which led them to the sin of avarice
— neglect of almsgiving and the poor. Eschatological piety, ethical nobility, and prayer formed the
basis of early Islam. The revelation in the Quran bore important similarities to Christianity and
Judaism:
• Christian parallels are evident in the articulation of Muhammad's vision of the last judgment
— the prediction that it would come with thunder, trumpets, and earthquakes, that the world -
would be destroyed and the dead resurrected, that it would be a terrifying moment when, one
by one, all men passed before God, the angels interceding only for the good.
• Ideas similar to Judaism, such as uncompromising monotheism, belief in written
revelations, the conception of a prophet sent to a chosen people, and certain specific
religious practices are also prominent in the Quran.
For three years after the first revelations, Muhammad remained a private person, coming to terms with
God's message. He related his experiences to his family and friends, and the force of his inspiration and
the compelling language in which it was clothed persuaded them that his visions were indeed divine
2
,revelations. A small group of people accepted his ideas and gathered around him to hear and recite the
Quran. These were the first converts, and they included his wife Khadija, Abu Bakr and ‘Ali, later to
be Caliphs (the Prophet's successors as leaders of the Muslims).
After three years the time had come for a public mission. In about 613 Muhammad received the
revelation that begins “Rise and warn.” He began to preach publicly, a first step toward injecting
religious ideas into the actualities of social and political life. Significantly, the first converts were
rootless migrants, poor men, members of weak clans, and younger sons of strong clans — those people
most dissatisfied – with the changing moral and social climate of Mecca, for whom the Prophet’s
message proved a vital alternative. Muhammad's preaching met with almost universal opposition.
From the Quran we know that the Quraysh, the traders who dominated Meccan life, belittled
Muhammad’s revelations. They scoffed at the bizarre notion of a last judgment and resurrection, and
asked for miracles as proof of the truth of his message. Muhammad’s only response — still the Muslim
response was that the Quran itself, with its unique beauty of language, is a miracle and a sign of
revelation. Nonetheless the Quraysh denounced Muhammad as a kabin, a disreputable sort of magician
or madman. Then came insults, harassment of Muhammad and his followers, and an economic boycott
that extended to keeping the Muslims from purchasing food in the markets. This opposition was
couched in religious terms, but Muhammad’s preaching was in fact an implicit challenge to all the
existing institutions of the society — worship of gods and the economic life attached to their shrines,
the values of tribal tradition, the authority of the chiefs and the solidarity of the clans from which
Muhammad wished to draw his followers.
As Muhammad’s mission unfolded it became clear that it involved not only the presentation of the
Quranic revelation, but the leadership of the community. Prophecy implied eschatological vision and
knowledge of God’s will, which in turn entailed right guidance and social leadership. We have a
concrete sign that as early as 615 Muhammad had become the leader of a community, and that those
who believed in his teachings constituted a group set apart from other Meccans. For the sake of religion
people were willing to leave their families and clans and take up life together in a foreign land. The
bonds of common belief were stronger than the bonds of blood. In this way, the new religion
threatened to dissolve the old order of society and create a new one.
From about 615 or 616, he no longer made many converts. He had by then about a hundred followers,
but the Meccan boycott had made it clear that to join Muhammad was to invite hardship. In 619,
Muhammad resolved to seek support outside Mecca. By then his situation had become precarious. His
wife Khadija and his uncle Abu Talib were dead; the support of his clan had diminished. Now
Muhammad understood that to protect himself and his followers, to overcome the resistance of the
Quraysh, and to gain a hearing from Arabians beyond the small circles spontaneously attracted to him,
some kind of political base was necessary. This juncture, the situation of the agricultural oasis of
Medina was a godsend. Like Mecca it was inhabited by various clans rather than by a single tribe, but
unlike Mecca it was a settlement racked by bitter and even anarchic feuding between the leading tribal
groups — the Aws and the Khazraj. Also, Medina had a large Jewish population, which may have
made the populace as a whole more sympathetic to monotheism. In 620 six men of Khazraj accepted
him as Prophet. In 621 a dozen men representing both Khazraj and Aws Pledged to obey Muhammad
and to avoid sin, and in 622 a delegation of seventy-five Medinans paved the way for his coming to
Medina by taking the pledge of al-‘Aqaba (the pledge to defend Muhammad). With the guarantees
provided by the pledge, Muhammad and his followers made the journey to Medina. The community of
Islam originated at that moment; the Muslim calendar dates the Christian year 622 as the year 1.
The journey is called the hijra (migration). For Muslims the word has come to mean not only a change
of place, but the adoption of Islam and entry into the community of Muslims. The hijra is the transition
from the pagan to the Muslim world — from kinship to a society based on common belief.
3
, In Medina Muhammad and his Medinan hosts also came to a formal political agreement. Muhammad
and his Meccan followers were to form one political group with the clans of Medina, called an umma
(still the word for the community of Muslims). Meccans and Medinans would act as one in the defense
of Muhammad and of Medina against outsiders. No clan would make a Separate peace. Without unity
or ‘effective leadership, his opponents were too divided to resist the consolidation of his power. The
pagan clans were converted to Islam.
The Quran now stressed that Muhammad was sent to restore the pure monotheism of Abraham.
Bypassing the Jewish and Christian scriptural legacy, Muhammad’s community would no longer
include Jews and Christians, but would be a distinct religion superseding Judaism and Christianity.
To carry out his mission, Muhammad went on to exile two of the Jewish clans, execute the male
members of a third, and seize their property for his followers. By winning over the Medinan pagans and
destroying his opponents, including the Jewish clans, Muhammad made all of Medina a Muslim
community under his rule. In the years that followed, Muhammad worked to create a community based
on shared religious beliefs, ceremonies, ethics, and laws. This work proceeded on several levels.
First, the Quran set down the rituals of Islam. These include the five pillars of the faith:
• Salat (ritual prayer);
• Zakat (almsgiving);
▪ Almsgiving was a symbol of the renunciation of selfish greed and acceptance of
responsibility for all members of the community of faith.
• Hajj (pilgrimage);
• The fast of Ramadan;
• Shahada (the obligation to bear witness to the unity of God and the Prophethood of
Muhammad).
When collectively performed, reinforced the collective awareness of the Muslim community and its
members’ consciousness of a special destiny. In pre-Islamic Arabian society, the basic family unit was
the patriarchal agnatic clan, a group of people descended directly in the male line from a common
ancestor and under the authority of the eldest male or chief member of the family. Status, duties, and
rights stemmed entirely from the clan. Property was regulated by the customs of the group. Marriages
were arranged by the heads of the families with a view to the interests of the families rather than the
wishes of the couple to be married. Women were of inferior status and were not full members of the
group. Quranic teachings attempted to strengthen the patriarchal agnatic clan. The Quranic rules
against incest were crucial for the viability of group life, for biological heredity, and for the creation
of marriage bonds between families. Divorce, though still relatively easy, was discouraged.
Polyandrous marriages were condemned because they undermined patriarchal family stability. Since
the family-descended through its male heirs, the Quran provided rules to assure knowledge of paternity.
The family ideal was buttressed by a clear definition of its collective duties in the all-important matter
of responsibility for crimes. As in pre-Islamic times, all the male kin were held responsible for the
protection of family members, but the Quranic teachings tried to reduce the devastating effects of the
blood feuds that often resulted from this obligation. They urged that the aggrieved party accept
compensation in money rather than blood, and ruled that if blood retaliation were insisted upon, only
the culprit himself could be slain, rather than any male relative. Furthermore, in the context of the
patriarchal family the Quran provided for moral and spiritual reform and introduced a new freedom and
dignity to individual family members. In particular, it enhanced the status of women and children,
who were no longer to be considered merely chattels or potential warriors but individuals with rights
and needs of their own. A woman was now able to hold property in her own name, and was not
expected to contribute to the support of the household from her own property. Finally, at least some
possibility was opened for a divorce on the woman’s initiative. Nonetheless, despite the emphasis on
the security and status of women, the Quran did not establish equality of rights for men and women.
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