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Saudi Arabia
RELIGION
Early Development of Islam
The vast majority of the people of Saudi Arabia are Sunni Muslims.
Islam is the established religion, and as such its institutions
receive government support. In the early seventh century, Muhammad,
a merchant from the Hashimite branch of the ruling Quraysh tribe
in the Arabian town of Mecca, began to preach the first of a series
of revelations that Muslims believe were granted him by God through
the angel Gabriel. He stressed monotheism and denounced the polytheism
of his fellow Meccans.
Because Mecca's economy was based in part on a thriving pilgrimage
business to the Kaaba, the sacred structure around a black meteorite,
and the numerous pagan shrines located there, Muhammad's vigorous
and continuing censure eventually earned him the bitter enmity
of the town's leaders. In 622 he was invited to the town of Yathrib,
which came to be known as Medina (the city) because it was the
center of his activities. The move, or hijra (see Glossary),
known in the West as the hegira, marks the beginning of the Islamic
era. The Muslim calendar, based on the lunar year, begins in 622.
In Medina, Muhammad--by this time known as the Prophet--continued
to preach, defeated his detractors in battle, and consolidated
both the temporal and spiritual leadership of all Arabia in his
person before his death in 632.
After Muhammad's death, his followers compiled those of his words
regarded as coming directly from God into the Quran, the holy
scripture of Islam. Other sayings and teachings of his and his
companions as recalled by those who had known Muhammad, became
the hadith (see Glossary). The precedent of his personal deeds
and utterances was set forth in the sunna. Together the Quran,
the hadith, and the sunna form a comprehensive guide to the spiritual,
ethical, and social life of an orthodox Sunni Muslim.
During his life, Muhammad was both spiritual and temporal leader
of the Muslim community; he established Islam as a total, all-encompassing
way of life for individuals and society. Islam traditionally recognizes
no distinction between religion and state, and no distinction
between religious and secular life or religious and secular law.
A comprehensive system of religious law (the sharia--see Glossary)
developed during the first four centuries of Islam, primarily
through the accretion of precedent and interpretation by various
judges and scholars. During the tenth century, however, legal
opinion began to harden into authoritative doctrine, and the figurative
bab al ijtihad (gate of interpretation) gradually closed,
thenceforth excluding flexibility in Sunni Islamic law.
After Muhammad's death, the leaders of the Muslim community chose
Abu Bakr, the Prophet's father-in-law and one of his earliest
followers, as caliph, or successor. At the time, some persons
favored Ali, the Prophet's cousin and husband of his daughter
Fatima, but Ali and his supporters (the so-called Shiat Ali or
Party of Ali) eventually recognized the community's choice. The
next two caliphs--Umar, who succeeded in 634, and Uthman, who
took power in 644--were acknowledged by the entire community.
When Ali finally succeeded to the caliphate in 656, Muawiyah,
governor of Syria, rebelled in the name of his murdered kinsman
Uthman. After the ensuing civil war, Ali moved his capital to
Mesopotamia, where a short time later he, too, was murdered.
Ali's death ended the period in which the entire community of
Islam recognized a single caliph. Upon Ali's death, Muawiyah proclaimed
himself caliph from Damascus. The Shiat Ali, however, refused
to recognize Muawiyah or his line, the Umayyad caliphs; in support
of a caliphate based on descent from the Prophet, they withdrew
and established a dissident sect known as the Shia.
Originally political in nature, the differences between the Sunni
and Shia interpretations gradually assumed theological and metaphysical
overtones. Ali's two sons, Ahsan and Husayn, became martyred heroes
to the Shia and repositories of the claims of Ali's line to mystical
preeminence among Muslims. The Sunnis retained the doctrine of
the selection of leaders by consensus, although Arabs and members
of the Quraysh, Muhammad's tribe, predominated in the early years.
Reputed descent from the Prophet continued to carry social and
religious prestige throughout the Muslim world in the early 1990s.
Meanwhile, disagreements among Shia over who of several pretenders
had a truer claim to the mystical powers of Ali produced further
schisms. Some Shia groups developed doctrines of divine leadership
far removed from the strict monotheism of early Islam, including
beliefs in hidden but divinely chosen leaders with spiritual powers
that equaled or surpassed those of the Prophet himself. The main
sect of Shia became known as Twelvers because they recognized
Ali and eleven of his direct descendants (see The Middle Ages,
700-1500 , ch. 1).
The early Islamic polity was intensely expansionist, fueled both
by fervor for the new religion and by economic and social factors.
Conquering armies and migrating tribes swept out of Arabia, spreading
Islam. By the end of Islam's first century, Islamic armies had
reached far into North Africa and eastward and northward into
Asia.
Although Muhammad had enjoined the Muslim community to convert
the infidel, he had also recognized the special status of the
"people of the book," Jews and Christians, whose scriptures he
considered revelations of God's word that contributed in some
measure to Islam. Inhabiting the Arabian Peninsula in Muhammad's
time were Christians, Jews, and Hanifs, believers in an indigenous
form of monotheism who are mentioned in the Quran. Medina had
a substantial Jewish population, and villages of Jews dotted the
Medina oases. Clusters of Christian monasteries were located in
the northern Hijaz, and Christians were known to have visited
seventh-century Mecca. Some Arabic-speaking tribal people were
Christian, including some from the Najdi interior and the well-known
Ghassanids and Lakhmids on the Arabian borderlands with Constantinople.
Najran, a city in the southwest of present-day Saudi Arabia, had
a mixed population of Jews, Christians, and pagans, and had been
ruled by a Jewish king only fifty years before Muhammad's birth.
In sixth-century Najran, Christianity was well established and
had a clerical hierarchy of nuns, priests, bishops, and lay clergy.
Furthermore, there were Christian communities along the gulf,
especially in Bahrain, Oman, and Aden (in present-day Yemen).
Jews and Christians in Muslim territories could live according
to their religious law, in their communities, and were exempted
from military service if they accepted the position of dhimmis,
or tolerated subject peoples. This status entailed recognition
of Muslim authority, additional taxes, prohibition on proselytism
among Muslims, and certain restrictions on political rights.
Data as of December 1992
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