2021 Lect 33 Islam 2 — Transcript

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1. 0:02our first lecture about islam focuses
2. 0:05upon the foundations
3. 0:07of the faith and we talked about the
4. 0:09life of muhammad
5. 0:10and then the expansion that takes place
6. 0:13after his death
7. 0:15in this lecture we're going to just dig
8. 0:17in a little bit deeper to the tenets of
9. 0:19the faith
10. 0:20and talk about what it meant to become a
11. 0:22muslim
12. 0:23and then think about its context and
13. 0:25legacy in relation to the
14. 0:27other monotheistic religions
15. 0:33from the readings you probably deduced
16. 0:35if you were not familiar with it already
17. 0:38that the center of the muslim faith
18. 0:41is devotion to god so of course muslim
19. 0:45it means one who submits
20. 0:47so there's this idea that you are
21. 0:49supposed to submit your
22. 0:51own will to that of god and
23. 0:54in order to show that piety and devotion
24. 0:58there are five main things that you are
25. 1:01asked to do
26. 1:02as a muslim the first is to to submit
27. 1:06and then there are these five pillars of
28. 1:08the faith
29. 1:11first of all you need to make a pledge
30. 1:13of faith
31. 1:14to say that there is one god and that
32. 1:18muhammad is his last
33. 1:19prophet so within islam we had talked
34. 1:22about them
35. 1:23drawing upon the foundations of judaism
36. 1:26so islam
37. 1:27recognizes the importance of prophets
38. 1:29such as moses
39. 1:30such as jesus however muhammad is
40. 1:34is the last and and greatest prophet
41. 1:37there's also a call to prayer you are
42. 1:40supposed to pray
43. 1:42five times a day um you are supposed to
44. 1:45face toward mecca which as we
45. 1:46talked about is really the holiest um
46. 1:49city
47. 1:50within islam and that gets to another
48. 1:52pillar which is if possible
49. 1:54you should make a trip to the holy city
50. 1:57of mecca to see
51. 1:58those sacred sites and this doesn't mean
52. 2:01that if you can't make it you're
53. 2:02you're kicked out there are all kinds of
54. 2:05provisions for people who are
55. 2:06unable to travel because of poverty or
56. 2:09because of ill health
57. 2:10but if you're able to go you should do
58. 2:12that
59. 2:13charity to the poor is something which
60. 2:15we can link all the way back to
61. 2:16muhammad's earliest days in medina
62. 2:19when they started to give alms and to
63. 2:21take care of the city's poor
64. 2:23and that's something that a faithful
65. 2:24muslim should continue to do
66. 2:26and charity is to the poor but there's
67. 2:28also a tradition of hospitality
68. 2:30so if anyone comes to you in need of a
69. 2:33place to stay
70. 2:34a food of water if you are able you
71. 2:36should extend that to them
72. 2:39and then finally we're moving into
73. 2:41ramadan
74. 2:42we can talk about fasting so
75. 2:45fasting abstaining from food is
76. 2:48something that was part of
77. 2:49many different religious traditions we
78. 2:51talked about it being part of
79. 2:53buddhism it's part of christianity and
80. 2:56indeed it's part of islam as well
81. 2:59so those are the five main things that a
82. 3:02muslim should commit to
83. 3:04submit himself to god's will in that way
84. 3:07we had mentioned the recitations that
85. 3:10muhammad received over the course of his
86. 3:12life and that were written down
87. 3:14of course that is the the quran the holy
88. 3:16text
89. 3:17and the importance of of being familiar
90. 3:19with what you are told to do in the
91. 3:21quran
92. 3:22and then there's also this body of
93. 3:24wisdom which surrounds the quran
94. 3:27you know when we talked about judaism we
95. 3:29looked at the torah which was the
96. 3:31judaic scriptures and then we talked
97. 3:33about the talmud
98. 3:34this this collection of sayings so the
99. 3:36hadith
100. 3:38are thought to be these wisdoms and
101. 3:41sayings
102. 3:42of the prophet and these are the types
103. 3:45of things
104. 3:46that muslim scholars can really sink
105. 3:49their teeth into
106. 3:50and and talk about the meanings of these
107. 3:52different types of hadith
108. 3:54and from them extract further ideas
109. 3:57about how a good muslim should live how
110. 3:59a community
111. 4:00should be organized what the
112. 4:01relationship should be between
113. 4:04fathers and sons and wives and husbands
114. 4:06those types of things
115. 4:10so that's really the core of of islam
116. 4:13and we'll consider
117. 4:15what impact this is going to have
118. 4:16culturally on the next slide
119. 4:25we begin this course looking at
120. 4:27religions that were primarily
121. 4:29polytheistic and we've seen that develop
122. 4:32into hinduism into forms of
123. 4:35animism there will be polytheistic
124. 4:37religions throughout
125. 4:39africa and northern europe and
126. 4:42asia so polytheism is not going to go
127. 4:45away
128. 4:46however i think it's worth noting that
129. 4:48the monotheistic tradition
130. 4:50of christianity judaism and islam
131. 4:53as we move into the modern period is
132. 4:55going to have a profound effect
133. 4:58throughout the middle east and north
134. 5:00africa and then of course it's going to
135. 5:02be brought over into the americas once
136. 5:04we look at the period of european
137. 5:05expansion
138. 5:07so that's one of the reasons why we
139. 5:08spend a while developing
140. 5:10these three different religions because
141. 5:12of the long-term impact that they have
142. 5:15they also have some continuities of
143. 5:18course the most obvious one is the
144. 5:20belief in in one god and one true
145. 5:22god hence hence monotheism but they also
146. 5:26have a tradition of a holy scripture
147. 5:28and this scripture whether it's the
148. 5:31judaic scriptures the christian bible
149. 5:33or the quran they they share elements
150. 5:37of scripture through what is considered
151. 5:40you know the old testament or the hebrew
152. 5:42scripture
153. 5:43and then they also have the scriptures
154. 5:46as a political and
155. 5:48and moral code it's a way of of living
156. 5:50it tells you how to live a good life
157. 5:53and there's um a belief that this
158. 5:56that this word this document is divinely
159. 6:00inspired it's not
160. 6:01just something that wise people wrote
161. 6:03down as we might think about something
162. 6:05like plato
163. 6:06or aristotle but this is in fact a
164. 6:08divinely inspired scripture
165. 6:12the other three things that these faiths
166. 6:14have in common
167. 6:15is the belief of an aft in an afterlife
168. 6:18and there are
169. 6:19certain sects within uh judaism
170. 6:22or islam or christianity in which they
171. 6:25interpret that idea of afterlife
172. 6:28a little differently but on the whole
173. 6:30there is a sense that you will either
174. 6:31receive
175. 6:32a reward or punishment in the next life
176. 6:34for the way
177. 6:36that you've conducted yourself in this
178. 6:38life and there's an emphasis on
179. 6:40preparing for that next life
180. 6:42which all of these three hold in common
181. 6:46the last thing i want to mention is just
182. 6:48a little bit of the impact
183. 6:50on the west of this massive um expansion
184. 6:53that takes place shortly after
185. 6:55muhammad's death they talked about the
186. 6:56arab
187. 6:58conquest and by that they mean that
188. 7:00rapid expansion
189. 7:01that happens throughout the um
190. 7:05it starts in the arabian peninsula and
191. 7:07then of course all the way across
192. 7:08north africa and up into
193. 7:11europe which we talked about last time
194. 7:14so what's the long term
195. 7:15impact of that well the first one is the
196. 7:18decline of christianity
197. 7:20uh we talked about some reasons why
198. 7:22perhaps uh islam was preferable to many
199. 7:25people living in those areas
200. 7:27and then we also looked at the the
201. 7:29aspect of military conquest but
202. 7:31christianity is going to um in a sense
203. 7:34lose
204. 7:35some of those territories which had been
205. 7:37converted during that first
206. 7:38wave of christian expansion now
207. 7:42one of the things that's changed over
208. 7:44the last um
209. 7:45i would say you know 30 to 50 years is
210. 7:48our perspective of how much did this
211. 7:50really disrupt
212. 7:52connections between east and west and
213. 7:55initially
214. 7:56um you know historians had the tendency
215. 7:58to portray it as this great disruption
216. 8:00you know once
217. 8:01the uh levant uh the eastern part of the
218. 8:04mediterranean had converted to islam
219. 8:06then then there was significant break
220. 8:09there was a significant break between
221. 8:11these two cultures that
222. 8:12took place until the crusades in the in
223. 8:15the
224. 8:1611th and 12th centuries but i think
225. 8:19better research has been done to show
226. 8:21that although there is a temporary
227. 8:23disruption because of this warfare
228. 8:26that's going on because of the
229. 8:27establishment
230. 8:28of new political structures
231. 8:31although there's a temporary disruption
232. 8:33this
233. 8:34figures itself itself out pretty quickly
234. 8:37and i think we've we've seen this
235. 8:38throughout the course that
236. 8:40you know trade and economic
237. 8:43opportunities
238. 8:44tend to blaze new pathways and so very
239. 8:47quickly you have the resumption of trade
240. 8:50both through the sea
241. 8:50and over land between these different
242. 8:52groups
243. 8:54i would suggest that it's not it
244. 8:56wouldn't be unusual
245. 8:58even in the 9th and 10th centuries to
246. 9:00really see
247. 9:01merchants that were professed muslims
248. 9:04and merchants that were professed
249. 9:06christians
250. 9:07and different forms of polytheism within
251. 9:09a marketplace they are probably doing
252. 9:12business
253. 9:13with um with jews and christians and
254. 9:16different people uh who all are
255. 9:18interested in
256. 9:19in getting access to these different
257. 9:21goods that are flying across the
258. 9:23the mediterranean on ships and and
259. 9:25moving across the empire on the silk
260. 9:27road
261. 9:28so i think that there's more of a sense
262. 9:30of economic connectedness than we had
263. 9:32thought before
264. 9:34the other thing that's eventually going
265. 9:36to change
266. 9:37is going to be some of this uh
267. 9:39dissemination of
268. 9:41of learning that will make its way into
269. 9:44the west primarily through
270. 9:46the iberian peninsula there will be
271. 9:48academies and schools that are set up in
272. 9:50what is today
273. 9:51spain and a lot of the teachers
274. 9:54in these universities are and scholars
275. 9:57are going to be
276. 9:58uh muslim coming from arabic nations and
277. 10:01persian
278. 10:02nations there's a one of the reasons for
279. 10:04that is because
280. 10:05in the early christian period and into
281. 10:08the middle ages
282. 10:09there was a very there was a real
283. 10:11uncomfortableness
284. 10:12um with the body and
285. 10:16being able to look at the body in a
286. 10:18scientific way
287. 10:19and so some of the most advanced medical
288. 10:21treaties of the time are going to be
289. 10:23done by arabic scholars
290. 10:25and make their way up into the west
291. 10:28they are also able to translate greek
292. 10:32texts they're working with aristotle and
293. 10:34it's
294. 10:35in fact through the arabian peninsula
295. 10:38that aristotle is going to regain a lot
296. 10:41of popularity
297. 10:42and gradually make its way into western
298. 10:44universities such as the university of
299. 10:46paris
300. 10:47where scholars like thomas aquinas are
301. 10:49going to work on christian scholars are
302. 10:51going to work on it
303. 10:52but there definitely is a dissemination
304. 10:55of learning that's going to take place