Islam is the religion of the followers of the Prophet Muhammad (c. 570–632), who are usually called Muslims, but it also has a geographical application. The Islamic world is very large and expanding: a 2001 estimate put it at perhaps 1,200 million people, containing Arabs, Turks, Persians, Indo-Pakistanis, Indonesia-Malayans, West Africans and Afro-Caribbeans spread, of course, over even more political frontiers. Theoretically there is no divide between the Islamic state and faith, because, according to Islam, the state is a religious institution, guided by the Prophet’s words in the Koran, and is expected to legislate by the moral and practical precepts therein. Indeed, rather more than Christianity, Islam is a complete socio-economic and political theory, although, naturally, much developed and modified over the centuries. One example of this is in economics, where there is a strong belief in equality which leads, in theory at least, to the forbidding of usury (a doctrine the Roman Catholic church gave up even in theory in the Middle Ages). Another is that the theoretical equality of all Muslims (or at least all Muslim men) has prevented anything like the creation of an élite of institutionalized clergy; while individual spiritual leaders (see ayatollahs) have held great power, they have done so on the basis of their own talents, reputation or, in Weber’s over-used phrase, for once properly relevant, charisma.
Islam has been a major force in world politics since the 7th century. The Ottoman Empire, founded in the 14th century, reached its peak in the 16th century, controlling territories far into Europe, Africa and Asia. By the middle of the 19th century it had been reduced to a colonial status as a result of European expansionism, and was dissolved after the First World War. Since the Second World War, however, Islamic power, and the desire to create a truly Islamic state, has been resurgent in several Middle East and Asian countries, causing no little trouble on the world scene. Libya, under the militant leader Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi (b. 1942), was the first state to make Islam into a 20th-century revolutionary creed, partly in an effort to unify the whole Arab world against Israel and its Western allies. At roughly the same time Pakistan, which had been split off from the rest of the Indian sub-continent in 1947 specifically to make a home for Muslims, began to take this position as well. There is an increasing tendency to replace Westernized law, especially in criminal and family law areas, with the Koranic, or Shari‘a, law; some punishments under this system, including amputations and stonings, are regarded as barbaric in the West. Some moves have even been made to operate the economy as closely as possible on Islamic lines.
An example of the power of Islam was the sudden and shattering overthrow of the Iranian state by militant and right-wing Muslim political groups, and its subsequent violently coercive rule under the direction of Muslim holy men. The ability of this state to survive an eight-year long war with Iraq, a secular Arab state, testifies to the ideological and popular strength of the Islamic revolution. Another example was the fear of dissension among Muslims in the Asian republics of the Soviet Union, causing the latter to invade Muslim Afghanistan in 1979. The Soviet occupying force of over 100,000 troops was frustrated by the Muslim guerrillas, the Mujahidin, in what became their equivalent of the USA’s Vietnam War. Ultimately, as in Vietnam, the superpower had to withdraw, leaving most of Afghanistan in the hands of the Islamic forces (see Afghan War).
It is possible that Islam may grow to be as powerful an international political creed as either communism or capitalism have been. Certainly it is equally hostile to both, and represents, as well as a legitimate avenue for the expression of aspirations for self rule, a destabilizing force in world politics. However, it would be a mistake to treat Islam as a unified body; in particular, the split between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims is potentially as weakening as that between Catholics and Protestants was to Christianity as a world power in the Reformation period. It is notable that while a large majority, probably 80%, of the world’s Muslims are Sunni (followers of Sunna, the wayof Muhammad), in Iran Shi‘ites (who pay particular allegiance to ‘Ali, the cousin of Muhammad) are dominant, and are also in the majority in Iraq, although political and economic power is largely monopolized by the Sunni.
The presumed involvement of extreme Islamist groups (see fundamentalism) in the attacks perpetrated on the USA in September 2001, together with the role of Islamist organizations in the Arab-Israeli conflict and the oftenmisunderstood Islamic concept of Jihad led many in the West to believe Islam to be particularly susceptible to exploitation by those seeking to use terrorism as a political tool. While this is a misrepresentation of the religion (mainstream Muslim opinion repeatedly condemns such violent acts as ‘11 September’) it can be stated that strict adherence to Islamic beliefs clashes more resonantly with Western political and cultural norms than would similar commitments to other major world religions.
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