Continental Free States wrote:Islam, when it was being created, was very much an Arab centric religion. It was an ethnic religion with a mandate to universalize because fundamentally speaking it had been developed to justify the conquest of the Near East and North Africa and the colonization thereof by Arab Muslims. This is the essential reason why Quran is in Arabic (and why you need to have some understanding of High Arabic to be able to translate and interpret it to any degree), why Quran claims Arabic is the "perfect" language [despite such a statement not actually meaning anything linguistically], why much of Islam's oldest religious rulings originate from either pre-Islamic Arab traditions that have been reformed to fit a people who are no longer polytheists living a tribal life but are now monotheists in possession of Empire. It's essentially the primary reason for the genocide, displacement, dhimmitude and oppression of the MENA's native and non-Muslim people and the conquest and colonization of their homelands their at the hands of Arab Muslims going back the last 14 centuries. The problem, of course, rises when you consider that Islam... stopped being an ethnic religion, or even a universalist religion built to justify ongoing conquest and colonization by an ethnicity, roughly around the time the Third Fitna began. Islam as it is practiced in most of Iran, Central Asia and the Caucasus, or in Turkey and parts of the Balkans, or in India, Pakistan and Southeast Asia, or in much of Subsaharan Africa, is not, and has (other than in parts of Iran during the first few centuries) never been an ethnoreligion.
Islam is not an Arab-centric religion. The Qur’ân itself explains the fact it’s in Arabic as:
“Now if We had made it a Quran in a non-Arabic tongue they would surely have said, “Why is it that its verses have not been made clear? Why –an Arab speaking to us in a language other than Arabic?”
One hilarious historical account shows just how quickly non-Arabs were spearheading the scholarship of Islam:
Ibn Abi Layla wrote:Īsa ibn Musa [not to be confused with Īsa ibn Maryam] said to me, and he was a religious man who was an Arab supremacist, “Who is the leader of the jurists of Basra?”
I said, “Al-Hasan ibn Abi Al-Hasan.”
He said “Then who?”
I said “Muhammad ibn Sireen.”
He said, “What are these two?” I said, “They are both Persians & freed slaves.”
He said, “And who is the leaders of the jurists of Mecca?”
I said, “’Ata’ ibn Rabah.”
He said “Then who?” I said
“Mujahid, Sa’eed ibn Jubair, and Sulaiman ibn Yassar.”
He said, “What are they?”
I said, “Nubians and Persians.”
He said, “And who are the jurists of Medina?”
I said, “Zaid ibn Aslam, Muhammad ibn Al-Munkadar, and Nafi’ ibn Abi Junaih.”
He said, “What are they?” I said, “Non-Arab freed slaves.”
The color of his face began to change and he said, “And who is the leader of the jurists of Quba?”
I said, “Rabia Ar-Ra’i and Ibn Abi Az-Zinad.”
He said, “What are they?”
I said, “Among the non-Arabs.”
Then his face darkened and he said, “And who is the jurist of Yemen?”
I said, “Tawus, his sons, and Ibn Munabbih.”
He said, “What are they? Are they Arabs?” I said, “They’re not Arabs either.”
His veins throbbed, he stood up from his seat, and he said, “And what about Khorasan? Who is the leaders of the jurists of Khorasan?”
I said, “‘Ata’ ibn Abdullah Al-Khurasani.”
He said, “What is this ‘Ata’?” I said, “A non-Arab freed slave.”
His face became more inflamed and darker, and he paced around. I began to feel scared for him. He asked, “And who is the leader of the jurists of Syria?”
I said, “Makhul.”
He said, “What is Makhul?” I said, “He isn’t Arab, either.”
He began to have difficulty breathing and he said, “And who is the leader of the jurists of Kufa?”
By Allah, I would have said Al-Hakim ibn ‘Utbah and ‘Ammar ibn Abi Salman, but I feared that I may kill him. I said, “He is Ibrahim ibn An-Nakha’i and Ash-Sha’bi.”
He said, “What are they?” I said, “They are both Arabs.”
He said, “Allah is the greatest!” Then he finally calmed down and sat.
Speaking of Kufa, Kufa is one of the main reasons any Arab supremacist ideologies persisted.
A difficult city near Karbala & Basra, the Rashidun caliphs had sent Sahabah after Sahabah to bring order to Kufa, with no luck until ibn Masūd. However, there eventually became even more instability around the area of Kufa. From the martyrdom of Hussayn (A & may God be pleased with him) at Karbala, to the Kufa-Basra area soon becoming the base for the Ālawis (not to be confused with modern day Ālawis), the Ābbasis (Abbasids), the Khwarij (who were basically 8th century ISIS), the Mūtazila (people who believed that the Qur’ân was created, no one could see God, etc etc). Kufa also became a center of fabrication: people fabricated large amounts of Hadiths, especially ones that asserted the superiority of Arabs & inferiority of Abyssinians & Persians (such as one that claims the language of Jannah is Arabic while the language of Hell is Farsi).
Luckily the authentic Hadith books didn’t adopt them, but at a time before the four modern Sunni Madhabs, it was an annoying problem for Iraq. Enter the Ahl ar-Raî. One of the 3 Madhabs before the modern ones, they developed in, of course, the Iraq-Kufa area. Their name meant “People of Opinion”, though this name given to them somewhat derogatorily by the Ahl al-Hadith (“People of Hadith”, who were largely based in the Hijaz) is a bit of misnomer, as they weren’t about opinion per se, but rather rationally examining the context of Hadith & Qur’ân verses, and refusing to accept any Hadith they weren’t 100% certain was authentic (such as the ones calling Arabs superior). They were opposed in Iraq by the Ahl al-Dhahir (“People of What it Looks Like”), who believed that looking at the context of anything was haram and made you a kaffir. Speaking of Takfir, the Ahl al-Hadith, based far away from Kufa & the problems there, initially frequently takfired the Ahl al-Raî, under the impression they rejected the Hadiths all together. However, when scholars from both Madhabs actually met, they quickly realized they had mistaken beliefs about them.
Anyway, the universality of Islam is enshrined in the Qur’ân, and was long before Muhammad (S) had a state of his own, let alone control over all of Arabia. It would be illogical for Muhammad (S) to invent the idea of Islam’s universality to justify conquering the entire world when he was still in Makkah getting beaten up for praying at the Kaaba.
Makkan chapters of the Qur’ân call him “a warner for the UNIVERSE” etc, such as Surah al-Anbya, a Surah revealed in Makkah calling him “a mercy to all of mankind”.
His last khutbah asserting “Nor is there any superiority of a white over a black. Nor is there any superiority of a black over a white,” was not just words, it was an affirmation: non-Arabs aren’t inferior to Arabs. Under Ūmar ibn al-Khattab, he ordered that the languages, cultures, religions & cultural sites of the conquered regions not be harmed, specifically ordering in regards to Persia that they not be forced to adopt Arab culture or names.
Al-Jahiz, the same guy who essentially invented the theory of evolution, wrote a book in response to rising anti-black sentiments titled “the Superiority of Blacks [East Africans] Over Whites [Arabs]” (note that “pure” Arabs referred to themselves as “white”, Afro-Arabs, dark skinned Arab tribes, and Sub-Saharan Africans as “black” & Europeans as “red”), a largely satirical title to a book focused on striking down misconceptions as stereotypes about Islam, and reminding Arabs about just how many Africans & Afro-Arabs were prominent Sahaba).
However, of course things were not perpetually happy fun times: Zanj Africans would end up revolting against the Abbasids in the Zanj Revolt, taking control of Basra, Iraq (like I said, the region was quite volatile) for a couple decades.
