Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Mickey Mantle

Yes there's more of what I learned, coming.  But I just finished a biography of Mickey Mantle and want to comment on it.

The book is titled, The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood.

As the title implies, the author, Jane Leavy, explores the themes of youth and innocence, as well as immaturity and denial.  Mickey, according to Leavy, never grew up, partly because he wasn't allowed to by "America."  Another biography of Mantle was titled A Hero All His Life.  Mickey was trapped in a role of someone else's choosing.

Leavy chose not to follow the classic form of most biographies, concentrating instead on specific moments in his life and weaving a narrative around them.  Some of the moments highlight the legend, the "tape measure" home run in Washington, the ball he hit in Yankee Stadium that would have gone into low earth orbit had it not smacked into the upper facade on its way out.  Other moments highlight the darker side of "The Mick," the public drunkenness, the marital infidelity, the erratic behavior.

Always there is a somewhat bizarre relationship with his fans.  He would be very accommodating at times and very rude at others.  The fans perhaps drove this dynamic, booing him lustily early in his career when he'd strike out; cheering wildly when he'd hit one of his bombs.  A nineteen year old from Commerce, OK thrown onto the biggest baseball stage in the world naturally had some adjustment issues.

Mantle was the ideal teammate, truly "at home" only in the locker room.  Nobody was more revered by his own teammates than Mantle.  Nobody picked up more checks.  Nobody treated rookies better.  Nobody did more to make sure his teammates got opportunities that could easily have been just for Mantle.  Also, Mantle left many hundred dollar tips for five dollar breakfast checks, even, sometimes, for a cup of coffee. 

The last third of the book deals with his post-baseball-career life.  Mantle literally did not know what to do with himself.  He retired after the 1968 season, long before the multi-million dollar contract came to pro sports.  So he had to earn money, still.  He became, essentially, a professional schmoozer.  He played golf, he shook hands, he signed autographs (the memorabilia boom only came toward the end of his life), he "made the rounds."  Of course, all of this involved drinking.  Lots of drinking.  Totally out of control drinking.  He drank for most of every day for 25 years.  His self-confessed greatest regret was turning his four sons into drinking buddies.  All four wound up in rehab and a couple with major health issues.

Mantle himself crashed and burned in 1994.  Checked himself into the Betty Ford Center, got sober.  Unfortunately the damage was already done and he died less than a year after gaining his sobriety.

Despite some annoying factual errors and sometimes murky sentences I rate this book highly and recommend it.     


Thursday, May 19, 2011

History 101

Fall of 2007 I started as a full-time, degree seeking student.  I knew I wanted to take a lot of History classes; 101: American History, 1492 - the Civil War seemed like a logical starting point.  What did I learn?

I learned (already knew some of this) what a bastard Columbus was.  I learned that the first African slaves came to America in 1609, eleven years before the Pilgrims.  I learned about the economics of colonialism and how the American Revolution can be only be truly understood by at least factoring in economic issues.  I also learned that the slavery issue had an economic component well beyond what I had been considering.

But the biggest thing I learned was that there is a very specific format that one must follow when writing history papers.  And that this even includes essay questions on exams.  I got a BC in this class, the only grade below B on my transcript.  But I learned. 

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Continued

Spring semester 2007.  Still part time, one class.  History of Science 201.  I wanted either Spanish or an interesting History class or another Political Science but as a "visiting student" I had to wait until all degree program students had registered and choose from what was left.

My Aikido Sensei, Math Major, UW Class of '72, had spoken of his History of Science class, way back then.  He still remembered everything.  Seemed like it anyway.  He made it sound quite interesting.  So I found an opening in and jumped in.

201 covered from the earliest recorded history up until Newton.  I missed the whole second week of lectures and suffered for it, a little.  When I came back we were up to the Greeks.  Ptolemy's astronomy.  Lasted for centuries.  The "problem of change."  In a science class?  Well, History of Science.  I began to realize that science and philosophy were much more intimately related than I had presumed.  Science, I guess, is our means of determining what is.  And philosophy our way of deciding what it means. 

This was the class where I began to ponder the nature of knowledge.  What does it mean when we say we "know" something?  How do we obtain knowledge? 

This question followed me through the rest of my classes.  I still don't "know" the answer.  But at least I now know enough to ask the question.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

What Else Did I Learn?

I was going to go class by class here and I may get back to that.  Tomorrow.  Today, though, I'm going to talk about why, as is pointed out on The Yellow Fringe today, http://yellowfringe.blogspot.com/2011/05/poor-bangladesh-astonishing-number-of.html America is lagging behind China and Denmark and even, apparently, Bangladesh at moving to "green" energy. 

In Politeia (we read all or part in three different classes), poorly translated as The Republic, Plato tries to describe the "perfect city" and how it would be governed.  He uses the character Socrates, his then deceased teacher, to critique Athenian democracy and to muse about some other possibilities.

Democracy, according to Plato/Socrates, is hampered by one fatal flaw: the People are not fit rulers.  They are, by and large, not that smart.  They are easily led astray.  They can be pandered to.  They think only of their own, narrow interests, individually, or they become factions and vote based again on self-interest.  Never do they think about the greater good.

Fast forward to America, today.  Why can't we switch to a green energy platform?  See above.  We are, somewhat, at least, a nation of not very well-educated, selfish morons, easily led astray by pandering politicians.  We believe what we want to believe, someone's always there to tell us we're "right."

"Don't listen to those lefty liberal commie tree-huggers promoted by the lamestream media.  Do whatever you want!  Consume!  Pollute!  Live for today!"

Because really, why should I sacrifice one iota for the next generation?  What have they ever done for me?

Democracy: can't live with it, can't live without it.   

Monday, May 16, 2011

What Did I Learn?

I "graduated" yesterday, with a Bachelor's Degree from the University of Wisconsin.  I say "graduated" because I actually still have to take (and pass) a summer class.  But that won't be a problem. 

So, the question is, what did I learn? 

Well, lots of things.  So I'm going to take a little time and go into some detail.  Literally class by class, over the next couple weeks.

To start, we go back to the fall semester of 2006.  My friend JD, works on campus, had put the idea in my head of taking a class or two for something to do.  I was always looking for new, interesting "diversions" so I thought, why not?

I went in, found the right person to talk to and got admitted as a "visiting student."  One class, take my pick.  I was a full time bartender then and Mr. C., a high school math teacher and frequent visitor suggested political science was my logical starting point.  So I looked there first and found ...

Political Science 104: Introduction to American Government and Politics.  Perfect!  So, what did I learn from that class?

First and foremost I learned that I liked being back in school, more than I ever had when I was younger.  Second, I learned that I could handle college level course work, but that it would require my best effort.

From the class itself I learned how our government works, in theory anyway.  We spent the first three weeks on the Constitution, including reading the whole thing, start to finish (a first for me).  Then we moved on to the different branches of government, how they work, where their powers overlap and where they serve as checks on each other.  Then elections.  Then parties.  Finally, the role of the press.

But the biggest thing I learned, long overdue, was (starting the process, anyway) how to read critically.  Who wrote the piece?  What is his bias?  What does somebody else say?  Which one do I believe?  And why?  Because he fed my bias or because he was more "credible," somehow?  Or did he just present his case better, and what are the implications of that?  Is there any "truth" or does it just come down to who is more persuasive?

More to come. 

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Thought I'd Share This

Bill Hicks and the Place of Corporate Comedy

Friday, May 13, 2011

Last One!

For my History of Science class:


Pure Science and Applied Science: A Symbiotic Relationship



            At least since Francis Bacon, claims have been made about the practical benefits to humankind that scientific research can produce.  At times, though, applications have preceded explanations, challenging how much “pure” science is needed.  The value of “applied” science is easily understood.  The steam engine, the electric light, the telegraph, all have benefits for humankind.  But while these are examples of applied science they could not have happened without foundation in pure science.  Are pure and applied science even separate things, or are they more like two sides of a coin?  This paper will argue that rather than thinking of “pure” and “applied” science as separate entities a more accurate distinction is that there are two kinds of scientists: those interested in knowledge for its own sake, and those who seek to apply knowledge to solve problems, and that like a coin, each side depends on the other for its full value.
            Francis Bacon’s New Organon (1620) is subtitled, Or True Directions Concerning the Interpretation of Nature.  In it he addresses the divide between the two ways of pursuing science.  “Let there be … two streams and two dispensations of knowledge … two tribes or kindreds of students in philosophy—tribes not hostile or alien to each other, but bound together by mutual services; let there in short be one method for the cultivation and another for the invention, of knowledge.”[1] (Emphasis added.)  Some people, Bacon says, will be constrained from “inventing” knowledge, “either from hurry or from considerations of business”; they will be the ones who apply the knowledge “invented” by the other group, the ones whom he invites to join him in penetrating further, “to overcome, not an adversary in argument but nature in action.”  Bacon sees himself as a “pure” scientist, a seeker of “certain and demonstrable knowledge.”[2]  But, he points out, there is also value to the other group, with whom his group is “bound together by mutual services.” (Emphasis added.)  It is clear why he sees the other group as needing his group.  This paper addresses why his group needs the other. 
            Scientists, as humans, must eat and have shelter.  They need clothes to wear, shoes, furniture, all the things that other men require.  Some men are “well-born” and need never concern themselves with these requirements.  Most men, however, must earn life’s necessities.  This creates a dilemma for the “pure” scientist.  Scientific research and experimentation have value to society but not always obviously or immediately.  Yet the scientist must eat every day.  Somehow he must have his needs fulfilled while he pursues his work.  At one time the Roman Catholic Church was a patron of science, providing the scientist with his basic needs so that he could go about his work.  The Church expected scientists to be content with “handmaiden” status; their discoveries were to be presented as revelation of God’s perfection.  However new discoveries became harder to reconcile with “scripture.”  Scientists wanted to pursue their science wherever it took them and not be enjoined from publishing their work.  The Church had no interest in supporting scientists who were not serving its purposes.[3]  Pure science suffered for want of application.
            At the beginning of the eighteenth century Thos. Savery claimed that he had devised a machine that would solve an old problem; water flooding underground mines.  Savery never produced a practical model, however his attempts shed light on the relationship between pure and applied science.  This attempt serves as a focal point for the joining of Bacon’s “two streams.” Savery demonstrated a working model of his “Miner’s Friend” in 1702 but still needed to make it work deep underground.  Savery had patented his pump and applied for an extension, which was granted.  Patents were crucial to allowing pure science to proceed.  With a patent Savery could attract investors who would have a reasonable expectation of seeing a return on their investment due to having exclusive rights to the machine’s application.  Investors allowed Savery to continue his work without having to produce immediate results.[4] 
            Perhaps more illustrative of the symbiosis of applied to pure science is James Watt’s improvements to the Newcomen (steam) engine.  Watt was a successful instrument maker but set that aside and set about to improve the engine’s efficiency.  This became a long process, made possible because several investors were willing to support him.  One in particular, Matthew Boulton, waited out an early patron who went bankrupt, allowing Boulton to pick up two-thirds interest in Watt’s enterprise.  Boulton’s deeper pockets in turn allowed Watt to scrap the light, flimsy model he had been constructing and begin again with a sturdier design.  The pairing worked very well for both parties: Watt devised a steam engine that proved so popular there were almost five hundred in use by the expiration of the patent, in 1800; Boulton created an innovative business model, including a “build to order” feature, and both men increased their wealth.[5]  Perhaps Watt’s science wasn’t completely “pure” as it was applicable to an engineering problem.  Certainly Watt built on earlier work by Boyle and Hooke but his work was original, too.  Watt was on both sides of the coin.
            Less than one hundred years later, in his Plea For Pure Science, H.A. Rowland made the case for keeping pure science apart from the applications to which it might be put.  He saw the need for science to be free to race ahead, letting the applied side come along at its own speed.  If work could only proceed at a pace fixed by applicability America could become like the Chinese, “a people … who have made no progress for generations, because they have been satisfied with the applications of science, and have never sought for reasons for what they have done.”[6]  Rowland also expressed concern that as most people could only appreciate the practical side of science, the pure scientist would perceive “that his higher ideas are too high to be appreciated by the world” and he will be dragged down to the level of the masses.[7]  If we do not disconnect the pure from the practical, he claims, the pure will die. 
            So the question of how the pure scientist will survive came up again.  “The scientist and the mathematician … must earn their living by other pursuits, usually teaching, and only devote their surplus time to the true pursuit of their science.”[8]  But even these men, because of small salaries and the atmosphere in which they exist, turn too often to commercial pursuits, to applied science.  Rowland calls upon these pure scientists, university professors especially, to pursue pure science with vigor, to forsake the pursuit of wealth.  He calls upon the universities to support these professors with ample salaries and the necessary space and equipment.  And he calls upon the wealthy families of the nation to concentrate their endowments, creating a few true universities. 
            Rowland’s plea is idealistic and impractical.  Pure science and applied science are intimately related.  Men will always seek uses for knowledge and return on investment.  Applied science needs pure science for foundation.  Pure science needs applied science lest it vanish from disinterest.  The coin cannot be split down the middle.


[1] Francis Bacon, The New Organon and Related Writings, edited, with an introduction, by Fulton H. Anderson, The Liberal Arts Press, New York, 1960, page 36.
[2] Ibid.
[3] David C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1992, pages 223-233, and Paolo Rossi, The Birth of Modern Science, First English translation by Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 2001, pages 73-98.
[4] Robert Friedel, A Culture of Improvement, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2007, copyright Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2007, pages 191-194.  
[5] Ibid, pages 201-207.
[6] H.A. Rowland, A Plea For Pure Science, Science, Volume 2, Issue 29 (August 24, 1883), page 242.   
[7] Ibid, page 243. 
[8] Ibid, page 244.

Word Count: 1200

Good Ol BlogSpot

Apparently Blogger "ate" a whole days worth of posts (at least).

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

One More

Here's the last assignment for my Islamic History class.  It was good but I'm glad it's over.  ; )


            How The Middle East Became Islamic

This paper will answer the question, how did the Middle East become Islamic?  It will argue that “becoming Islamic” was about more than adopting a set of religious beliefs.  “Islamic culture” was also part of the Islamization process.  This paper will further argue that part of the process included Muslims, the people spreading Islam, absorbing the culture of the regions into which they expanded.  Finally, this paper will argue that the religion itself incorporated ideas that were extant in the Arab Middle East during Muhammad’s life, facilitating its eventual spread.
            Muhammad began speaking to his fellow Meccans about the “one true God” between 610 and 620 C.E.  Monotheism was not familiar to most Arabs of Muhammad’s time; it certainly was not commonly practiced, thought there were both Jews and Christians on the peninsula.  Otherwise, Arabia was polytheistic.  The pattern of Arabian religion was simple.  There were no temples on the order of the societies of the Fertile Crescent and little or no mythology was produced.  Still, in the century or two preceding the birth of Muhammad monotheism was taking root in the settled societies bordering “Arabia.”  Mecca being on the trade route between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, Christians and Jews passed through with some regularity.  It is likely, though ultimately unknowable, that Muhammad, himself a merchant, came into contact with Jews and Christians during the course of conducting business and listened to their ideas regarding the creation of the world and the nature of the one true God responsible for its creation.  We do know that there were Jews in Medina when Muhammad arrived there from Mecca, where his message was not being warmly received, and that Muhammad initially tried to incorporate them into the Umma (Islamic community).  In any case, Muhammad, whether divinely inspired or not, created a religion that drew a line from God, through Adam, Abraham, Moses and Jesus, through himself and into the creation of the Qur’an, which he presented as revelation from the one God. 
            After Muhammad’s death, in 632, his followers began to spread his message.  Initially they were simply securing the borders, converting or conquering the nomadic tribes on the frontier.  Part of Muhammad’s message, though, had been to unite the Arabs in one polity, the Umma.  This produced tangible benefits for the members of the Umma, as spoils were collected from the newly conquered territories and distributed among the community, creating a political elite.  The newly conquered/converted regions saw benefits too, as commerce thrived under a central authority, along with a justice system to replace the tribal feuding that had previously existed.  As the Umma expanded toward Empire, people accepted Muslim rule largely because they were not expected to abandon their own religious beliefs.  They were asked only to accept the Qur’an’s societal rules and not to offend Muslim sensibilities by practicing their own religions ostentatiously.  The Muslim political community is what spread initially; people eventually converted to the religion, or not, as they saw fit.
            The spread of Islamic culture has a different dynamic.  First, culture is more than just one thing, including literature, poetry, music, visual art, architecture and, perhaps most importantly, social norms.  Pre-Islamic Arabian society left almost no evidence of any developed arts, other than some poetry.  So any Islamic art culture evolved as Islam spread throughout the region.  It evolved by combining elements of the various societies that were absorbed into the Islamic state.  When the Abbasids moved the capital from Damascus to Baghdad eastern influences (Persian, Chinese, Indian) began to dominate the previous Byzantine and Greco-Roman influence.  Persian influence is especially seen in paintings and rug weaving.  Also, the most famous work of Islamic literature is the Persian Book of One Thousand and One Nights (usually called The Arabian Nights, in the West).  Chinese influence is seen mainly in pottery and textiles; Indian mainly in architecture (which also had great Persian influence.)  These different influences all merged in Baghdad and later, when the capital moved there, Samara.
            Islamic social norms first arise from the Qur’an and the Sunnah (example of the Prophet).  The role of men and of women is spelled out in the Qur’an.  Muhammad had several wives so polygamy was permitted so long as a man could support them.  Over time, as Roy Mottahedeh points out, a social structure emerged based on bonds of loyalty.  Some of these bonds were based on oaths involving responsibilities and benefits for both parties.  Others were based on commonalities such as occupation.  First though, Mottahedeh points out, there was a consensus that one man should lead the whole Muslim community.  When the Caliphate was no longer an effective political office, Kings were “hired” from outside the community.  Only an outsider could rule in the best interest of the whole group, it was felt, since someone from within the group would tend to favor his “faction.”
            As to how the King and his court should behave, Nizamu’l-Mulk shows how customs of various other realms were incorporated into Islamic regal culture.  “Every courtier should have a rank and position allotted to him. Some should be permitted to be seated while others should be required to remain standing, as has been the custom from ancient times in the presence of kings and caliphs; the caliph always having as his courtiers the men who served his father. The Sultan of Ghazna always had twenty courtiers, of whom ten might be seated while the other ten stood. They derived this custom and practice from the Sámánid dynasty.” 
            Everything that can be called Islamic evolved as Islam spread through the Middle East or, as the actual religion, arose out of the context within which Muhammad lived.  Muhammad’s religious ideas can be traced to Judaism and Christianity (monotheism, salvation in the next life), with the specific “facts on the ground” (first accepting Medinan Jews, then not, in the name of political expedience) as he attempted to win converts playing a role, too.  The various arts were absorbed from the other cultures of the Middle East and rebranded (those that survived) as Islamic.            

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Finals!

I really hated writing that long paper (mostly).  This next one is much more my speed.  I have to write two three pagers, choice of three questions, to finish up with my History of Islam class (which turned out to be way more interesting than I ever would have thought).

Here's the first one:


This paper is a comparison of the Arab and the Saljuq conquests.  For this paper the term “Arab conquest” covers the period from Muhammad’s death in 632 C.E. until approximately 750 C.E. 
            The death of Muhammad was, in Lapidus’ words, unexpected.  Muhammad had recited the contents of the Qur’an to his followers over the course of more than a decade, including a great deal regarding how society should proceed, the roles of men and women, the penalties to be imposed for various transgressions, but nothing whatsoever regarding who should lead the community once he was no longer available.  Perhaps he felt that they should solve that problem for themselves.  In any case, his death created the possibility of dissolution of the community.  The Khazraj, a leading Medinan clan before Muhammad’s arrival, elected their own new chief.  Some of the Bedouin tribes, which Muhammad had brought into the community through a combination of force and persuasion, also began to reconsider their allegiance.  Leaders within the community conceived the idea of a succession and elected Abu Bakr, a close companion of Muhammad to be the first Caliph (successor). 
            Abu Bakr’s first task was to reestablish the unity of the Umma (community of Muslims).  The Khazraj bought into the succession; the tribes that did not were re-conquered.  This re-conquest put eastward and southerly pressure on non-aligned Arab tribes resulting in an expansion of the territory under Muslim control.  Abu Bakr also sent forces north to secure and extend the frontier, leading to the absorption of Syria into the Muslim orbit. 
            As the territory controlled by the Caliphate spread they began to mobilize the conquered pastoral tribes to expand the area of dominance.  They did this by sharing the spoils with them.  Their successes brought them into conflict with the Byzantine and Sasanian empires, which led eventually to the destruction of the Sasanian Empire and the taking of the territory south and east of the Mediterranean Sea, though the Byzantine Empire was not actually defeated and remained a threat on the frontier.  Lapidus attributes the military success of the Caliphate largely to the fact that both established empires were weakened (and perhaps overextended) by decades of war.  The people of the newly conquered territory accepted the commercial benefits created by the new arrangement and embraced Islam. 
            Administration of the new empire rested on two principles: keeping the Bedouins from pillaging farmland and working with the elites of the newly conquered societies.  The Caliphate established Amsar, military garrisons, at strategic locations to keep the Bedouins under control and to keep the soldiers out of the cities, where they might create civic disorder.  Islam was a unifying factor in keeping the populations under control, especially since no one was forced to convert.  Instead, local customs were allowed to continue, just as local leaders were permitted to retain leadership positions.  In this way the Caliphate could turn its attention to administration and expansion rather than putting down rebellions. 
            Tax collecting went on as always, with the system already in place being adopted by the Caliphate.  In Iran, for example, this meant the Sasanian combination of both land and poll taxes.  The general rule was the conquered people, especially peasants, workers and merchants paid taxes to the conquering soldiers, and the landowners and administrators.  Always the Caliphate was the supreme taxing authority, allowing the regional governors and soldiers a “cut.”
            The Saljuq conquerors came onto the scene in the mid eleventh century.  By this time the unity of the first hundred years after Muhammad’s death was only a memory.  The Caliphate still existed but the line of succession was no longer clear.  Ali, the fourth Caliph, had “lost” the Caliphate before his death leading to the Umayyad dynasty.  The Umayyads were eventually replaced by the Abbasids, a line tracing back to an uncle of Muhammad and seen by Muslims as more legitimate than the Umayyads, who had become nothing more than a military dictatorship (or at the very least were perceived as such by Muslims).  The Saljuq were actually a family of Oghuz Turks, led by brothers Tughril and Chagri Beg.  They came out of the central Asian steppe, crossing the Oxus River in 1025 and moving west.  In 1040 they defeated the Ghaznavids and ruled Khurasan.  Continuing west they moved into Iran, defeated the Buwayhids, continued into Baghdad and took control of the Caliphate.  By 1071 they had reunited the Muslim empire from Khurasan to the Mediterranean, even defeating the Byzantine army, capturing the Emperor and opening Anatolia to Turkish invasion.  The Saljuqs sought to rebuild the bureaucracy and sponsor Muslim religious activity as a means of acquiring legitimacy.  They were ill equipped to rule as bureaucrats, however, and when the brothers died, successors split the newly reunited empire into smaller territories.  Like the Arab Caliphs before them, the Saljuqs tried to adopt the governing institutions of their predecessors, most notably the raising of slave armies whose loyalties were bought with land grants.  Problems of succession, however, led to the breakdown of centralized power and left the various smaller regimes too weak to effectively defend their borders and hold territory.  By the middle of the eleventh century they began to succumb to Mongol invasions. 
            The similarities between the Arab and the Saljuq conquests, then, are military superiority, payment of their armies through taxation of the conquered people and the eventual loss of control due to problems with the succession.  The differences are the use of Islam as a unifying force by the Arabs and only a mostly unsuccessful attempt to do so by the Saljuqs and the defeat of the Byzantines and the taking of Anatolia by the Saljuqs, something the Arab Caliphate had repeatedly failed to accomplish. 

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Finished Product (Though I still have time for fixes)


Thesis
In the seventh century of the Common Era (C.E.) the Prophet Muhammad began to spread the idea of monotheism through the Arabian Peninsula.  He did this with a claim that the one true God had spoken to him, in Arabic, through the angel Gabriel.  Muhammad was initially met with skepticism and hostility, but by the time of his death his message had begun to take hold such that the religion of Islam was beginning to flourish and within 100 years of his death was the dominant religion of the Middle East.  This paper will examine the manner in which Muhammad spread his message and built a society based on the ideals of universal justice as articulated in the Qur’an, and compare his methods with the spread of Christianity in the first century C.E. by the Apostle Paul.
            Since we cannot actually know whether or not “God” spoke to Muhammad, or if Paul experienced a supernatural vision leading to his conversion in the early first century, this paper will take a neutral view of these “events” and treat both the Prophet Muhammad and Paul the Apostle as if they were simply “men with a plan.”  Each had an idea, divinely inspired or not, as to how his society could become more highly functional. 

Who Was Muhammad?
            If Muhammad was not inspired by “God” and acted on his own then it becomes important to learn about the man himself in order to understand his actions.  Muhammad was born in or around the year 570 C.E. in the city of Mecca, on the Western edge of the Arabian Peninsula, an area known as the Hijaz.  Arabia in the Sixth Century was sparsely populated, being mostly desert, and was inhabited largely by nomadic tribes whose only connection to other tribes was competition for the best grazing land.  Calling Mecca a city is even a bit of a stretch but it was a settled area inhabited by more than one tribe.  While Mecca had some role in trade with the Yemen to the south and Syria to the north (the fertile regions of the peninsula) it was primarily noteworthy as the site of the Ka’ba, a shrine venerated by the various polytheistic religions of the region.  As such Mecca was a rare place of “civilization” in a land where justice was that which one tribe could ensure for itself among other competing tribes.  At the Ka’ba feuds and other disputes had to be set aside so that all could perform such religious rituals as they had come to do. 
            Muhammad was born into a not especially influential family (the Banu Hashim) of the Quraysh tribe, who were powerful enough to be the guarantors of order in Mecca.  He was orphaned at an early age, lost his grandfather, whose house he had moved to, shortly thereafter and was adopted by an uncle.  Growing up in Mecca Muhammad saw inequality all around.  Within Mecca were wealth and power disparities; out past the frontier were nomads living a Spartan lifestyle.  Also there were inequities in what can be called their system of justice.  Then as always there were disputes between individuals and between tribes.  Justice depended upon one’s power, especially the power of the tribe to which one belonged.  Yet in Mecca, around the Ka’ba, people accepted that there was a standard of behavior that must be adhered to.
            While polytheistic “paganism” was prevalent among Arab nomadic tribes and most of the settled people of the peninsula, salvation religions were popular in the areas surrounding Arabia.  Jews and Christians were to the west and north with Manichaeism, Mazdaism and Zoroastrianism being practiced to the east.  Followers of these religions believed that there would be an end of time and a judgment day, ideas compatible with monotheism.  Muhammad was aware of these other religions and was exposed to their doctrines and their belief in an ultimate judge.  

The Qur’an 
In 610 C.E., according to Muslim tradition, the angel Gabriel appeared to Muhammad and began to reveal to him the words of the one true God.  Qur’an means literally “he recited” (among other possible translations).  Several chapters, or suras begin with the command “recite,” for example, sura 112:

                        Recite: He is God,

The One and Only,

                        God, the Eternal, Absolute;

                        He begetteth not, nor is he begotten,

                        And there is none like unto him.[1]

Tradition has it, then, that God intended for Muhammad to share this revelation with the Arab people. 
            It is also possible, however, to consider the Qur’an as Muhammad’s own thoughts and that when he began to share them with his people he was merely relying on his own sense of what society needed and would accept.  Robert Wright suggests that to properly understand the Qur’an one must first “put it in order.”  Not the order which it assumed about twenty years after his death, when it was first assembled as a finished text, but the order in which the suras were first shared by Muhammad.  This ordering, Wright asserts, accounts for the variance in tone, “from tolerance and forbearance to intolerance and belligerence and back.”  To read the suras this way “is to watch Muhammad’s career, and Islam’s birth, unfold.”[2] 

Muhammad’s Career, A Preface


            Looking back we can see that Muhammad set about to remake Arabian society in two ways which were codependent upon each other.  First he would promote monotheism; there is one God and He is master of all creation.  Second, there is one set of rules, one standard of justice, applied to all equally.  The idea of one omnipotent God, who would stand as ultimate judge on one’s day of reckoning, served to reinforce the value of one standard of justice.  The idea of equality elaborated in the second part appealed to the less powerful in society who would then embrace the idea of one God, as justice was something lacking in their lives. 

The Apostle Paul


            Six hundred years before Muhammad began his mission, another man set out to remake his society.  Saul of Tarsus, as Paul was originally known, was a “Hebrew” born in a University town in Asia Minor, “Greek in atmosphere though under Roman occupation,” in or about the fifth year of the Common Era.[3] Though confirmed details of his life are few, he was evidently educated at the University in Tarsus and went to the renowned University in Jerusalem and studied under Gamaliel, the most revered Hebrew teacher of his time.  Paul came out of Jerusalem not just a Pharisee, a Jewish “puritan,” but a strict one at that, having been taught that the Pentateuch, Jewish scripture, was the literal word of God, sent to “His people” through the prophet Moses.  The Book of Acts, part of the New Testament of the Christian Bible, speaks of Paul’s persecution of Christians (for not being strict Jews) prior to his conversion (to belief in Jesus of Nazareth as the Anointed One, or “Christ”) on the road to Damascus.  Various interpretations exist as to what caused this conversion including the appearance to Paul of Jesus in a vision.  William Van Buskirk attributes it, at least in part, to Paul’s hearing the words of St. Stephen (and then being put in charge of his execution) and having a change of heart.
Something in the manner of Stephen, perhaps his exaltation and certainty of faith, touched a deep chord in Saul’s nature and disturbed him profoundly.  And although he secured letters and hurried off to Damascus to apprehend other Christians, his mind grew more and more troubled.  Stephen had let fall a great revolutionary idea in the address he had made before the Sanhedrin, and in spite of every effort to do so Saul could not put it out of his mind.  On the way this idea continued to clarify itself until suddenly it burst forth in all its majesty, in a light above the brightness of the sun, in a voice that sent him bound by the Spirit to save the Gentile world.[4] 
Essentially, Stephen’s message was that the Children of Israel had failed in their spirituality, observing the letter of Jewish law, but not receiving the Spirit.  Stephen’s message, then, was that Jesus had come to set the people of God onto the right path.  Perhaps this meshed with Paul’s earlier classical education, which would have exposed him to Plato’s Socrates and the idea of a pure soul and knowledge through reason, as opposed to revelation.  In any event, Paul ceased persecuting Christians, became one himself and began to try to lead them. 
           

The Christian Church


            Unlike Muhammad Paul had no need to start his own religion.  He saw Christianity as being the vehicle for his ambition, an ambition at least similar to Muhammad’s: to unite the people in the society in which he lived under one set of rules, and to ensure justice.  In Paul’s case there was already a central government in place, that being the Roman Empire.  While the Roman Empire did have a justice system and a set of laws, Paul, like Muhammad in Arabia, 600 years later, saw injustice and inequality all around him.  As would be the case in Muhammad’s Arabia, justice depended upon one’s access to power, and most people had little of that.  Paul, already a monotheist, changed from the Jewish idea of following the (Jewish) Law to accepting all men as equals and believing in Jesus as Messiah.  Justice would be better served if all men were equal.  If all men are equals they should treat each other as equals.  Out of this Paul developed the idea that all men could be “brothers,” in this case, brothers in “Christ.”  There are conflicting theories as to how much of Paul’s philosophy traces to Jesus and how much of what Jesus says in the Gospels, especially Matthew and Luke, is actually Paul’s influence put into Jesus’ mouth by the authors of those Gospels.  Nevertheless we do have Paul’s own words in his Letters to several Christian congregations, and we can try to interpret them in the context of his mission.

Paul’s Mission

            Robert Wright suggests that one way to look at Paul and his mission is to think of Paul as CEO of a corporation, with a desire to expand.  To reach his goal Paul needed to convince people (his customers) that they needed what he was “selling,” and he needed to enlist some other people to set up “franchises.”  He was selling a particular brand of Christianity, one of many at the time.  Paul’s brand was based on the idea that Jesus Christ, the central figure of Christianity, held up as an exemplar and a prophet, wanted all men to live together in brotherhood.  As Wright and other New Testament scholars point out there is scant evidence that the historical Jesus said anything about brotherhood; the historical Jesus was more likely an apocalyptic Jewish prophet with no interest in converting Gentiles to Judaism or “saving” them.  But few people knew this.  Christian cults had begun appearing soon after Jesus’ death and Paul tapped into the enthusiasm generated by this new religion. 

Paul’s Method

            First, Paul sought to sell people on the basic idea that Jesus was a worthy focus of their worship.  The basic message of Christianity, at the time,
can be broken into four parts: Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah, the Christ; the Messiah died as a kind of payment for the sins of humanity; humans who believed this—who acknowledged the redemption that Christ had realized on their behalf—could have eternal life; but they’d better evince this faith quickly, for Judgment Day was coming.[5]
To this Paul added “brotherly love.”  Perhaps because he believed that “God” wanted that.  But maybe there was a more pragmatic reason.  Wright, again:
The doctrine emerges from the interplay between Paul’s driving ambitions and his social environment. 

In the Roman Empire, the century after the Crucifixion was a time of dislocation. People streamed into cities from farms and small towns, encountered alien cultures and peoples, and often faced this flux without the support of kin. The situation was somewhat like that at the turn of the 20th century in the United States, when industrialization drew Americans into turbulent cities, away from their extended families. Back then, as the social scientist Robert Putnam has observed, rootless urbanites found grounding in up-and-coming social organizations, such as the Knights of Columbus and the Rotary Club. You might expect comparable conditions in the early Roman Empire to spawn comparable organizations. Indeed, Roman cities saw a growth in voluntary associations. Some were vocational guilds, some more like clubs, and some were religious cults (cults in the ancient sense of “groups devoted to the worship of one or more gods,” not in the modern sense of “wacky fringe groups”). But whatever their form, they often amounted to what one scholar has called “fictive families” for people whose real families were off in some distant village or town. 

The familial services offered by these groups ranged from the material, like burying the dead, to the psychological, like giving people a sense that other people cared about them.  On both counts, early Christian churches met the needs of the day. 

To some extent, then, what Paul called “brotherly love” was just a product of his times. The Christian church was offering the spirit of kinship that people needed, the spirit of kinship that other organizations offered. A term commonly applied to such an organization was thiasos, or “confraternity”; the language of brotherhood wasn’t, by itself, an innovation.[6]
So Paul set out to spread his brand, “converting” existing churches when he could, starting new ones when he had to.  The way he did this was to work with people in motion.  First century Europe had no internet, no e-mail, not even “snail mail.”  If Paul wanted to use networking to spread his message he would first have to establish the network.  He did this by traveling himself and preaching his message, converting and establishing a network of churches.  But once he moved on he was unable to guide his people or even to know what was happening to them.  So he wrote letters and sent them with the “business travelers” of the day.  Several of these are collected in the New Testament, known as the Epistles of Paul.  “These letters aren’t just inspiring spiritual reflections, but tools for solving administrative problems.”[7]
            “Consider the famous ode to love in 1 Corinthians.”[8]  (“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful…”)[9]
Paul wrote this letter in response to a crisis. Since his departure from Corinth, the church had been split by factionalism, and he faced rivals for authority. Early in the letter, he laments the fact that some congregants say “I belong to Paul,” whereas others say “I belong to Cephas.” (Cephas is another name for Peter.)

There was another obstacle. Many in the church—“enthusiasts,” some scholars call them—believed themselves to have direct access to divine knowledge and to be near spiritual perfection. Some thought they needn’t accept the church’s guidance in moral matters. Some showed off their spiritual gifts by spontaneously speaking in tongues during worship services—something that might annoy the humbler worshippers and that, in large enough doses, could derail a service.

In other words: they lacked brotherly love. Hence Paul’s harping on that theme in 1 Corinthians, and especially in chapter 13. It is in reference to members’ disrupting worship by speaking in tongues that Paul writes, “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” And when he says, “Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant,” he is chastising Corinthians who deploy their spiritual gifts—whether speaking in tongues, or prophesying, or even being generous—in a competitive, showy way.

The beauty of “brotherly love” wasn’t just that it produced cohesion in Christian congregations. Invoking familial feelings also allowed Paul to assert his authority at the expense of rivals. After all, wasn’t it he, not they, who had founded the family of Corinthian Christians? He tells the Corinthians that he is writing “to admonish you as my beloved children… Indeed, in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. I appeal to you, then, be imitators of me.”

Had Paul stayed among the Corinthians, he might have kept the congregation united by the mere force of his presence, with less preaching about the need for unity—the need for all brothers to be one in “the body of Christ.” But because he felt compelled to move on, and to cultivate churches across the empire, he had to implant brotherly love as a governing value and nurture it assiduously. In the case of 1 Corinthians, chapter 13, the result was some of Western civilization’s most beautiful literature—if, perhaps, more beautiful out of context than in.

Thus, for the ambitious preacher of early Christianity, the doctrine of brotherly love had at least two virtues. First, fraternal bonding made churches attractive places to be, providing a familial warmth that was otherwise lacking, for many people, in a time of urbanization and flux.  Second, the doctrine of brotherly love became a form of remote control, a tool Paul could use at a distance to induce congregational cohesion.

By itself, this emphasis on brotherhood might not have called for doctrinal innovation. Long before Paul’s time, the Hebrew Bible had told people, “Love your neighbor as yourself”—an injunction, scholars now agree, meaning that you should love fellow Israelites (and an injunction Jesus quotes in the book of Mark). And for all we know, some of Paul’s congregations weren’t ethnically diverse—in which case cohesion within them called for nothing more than this sort of intra-ethnic bonding. So what exactly in Paul’s experience fostered the distinctive connotation of Christian brotherly love—the “universal” part, the part that crosses ethnic and national boundaries?

Part of the answer is that transcending ethnicity was built into Paul’s conception of his divinely imparted mission. He was to be the apostle to the Gentiles; as a Jew, he was to carry the saving grace of the Jewish Messiah—Jesus Christ—beyond the Jewish world, to many nations. (And he probably didn’t get this idea from Jesus, whose encouragement of international proselytizing at the very end of Mark seems to have been added to the book well after its creation.) Here, at the origin of his aspirations, Paul is crossing the bridge he famously crossed in saying there is no longer “Jew or Greek,” for all are now eligible for God’s salvation.

In putting Jew and Greek on an equal basis, Paul was, in a sense, giving pragmatism priority over scriptural principle. By Paul’s own account, the scriptural basis for his mission to the Gentiles lay in prophetic texts—notably, apocalyptic writings in the book of Isaiah, which half a millennium earlier had envisioned a coming Messiah and a long-overdue burst of worldwide reverence for Yahweh. And this part of Isaiah isn’t exactly an ode to ethnic egalitarianism. The basic idea is that Gentile nations will abjectly submit to the rule of Israel’s God and hence to Israel. God promises the Israelites that after salvation arrives, Egyptians and Ethiopians alike “shall come over to you and be yours, they shall come over in chains and bow down to you. They will make supplication to you.” Indeed, “every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.” Thus, “in the LORD all the offspring of Israel shall triumph and glory.”
So Paul’s basic message was that all men are brothers and should treat each other well, but to truly be accepted into the brotherhood one must accept the message that Jesus Christ was the Messiah and Jesus also wanted men to behave with love toward one another.

Muhammad

            Muhammad faced the same situation as Paul, with variations.  He saw injustice and inequality all around and he wanted to change that.  He was close enough to Jewish and Christian settlements that he was almost certainly aware of their presence and how their societies operated.  He could have attempted to convert his people to Christianity.  Instead he created his own version, borrowing from these earlier faiths.  Having to start somewhere he went first to his wife and, according to Muslim tradition, told her of a disturbing recent experience, which she helped him to recognize as divine revelation.  Or, alternately, he went to his wife with an idea regarding how he could improve local society and she encouraged him.  Either way, she went along, quite possibly believing that at the very least monotheism deserved her attention.  Muhammad set about sharing his message with other family members, immediate and extended, convincing some that he was a new prophet, failing to convince others. 

Using the Qur’an

Muhammad had a tool available to him that Paul did not, that being a still developing message from “God.”  Whether Muhammad actually was receiving revelations or he was creating them, the fact that they were emerging in “real time” meant that Muhammad could react to circumstances as they unfolded.
Initially, of course, he sought to influence the city in which he lived, Mecca.  The idea of a higher justice came largely from Jewish and Christian monotheism, it appears, but also from the Ka’ba, the shrine in Mecca, where people set aside their differences and suspended their blood feuds.  Muhammad likely believed he could just expand the idea of the Ka’ba to all of Mecca.  If to all of Mecca, to all Arabia.  If to all Arabia … well, first Mecca.  Unsurprisingly and unfortunately Muhammad’s message was welcomed by his people in inverse proportion to their status in society.  Unfortunate as the people he most needed to influence were the ones least receptive to it.  Unsurprising because, well, why would the people at the top of society, the ones whose needs were being met, wish to accept a radically different social order?  The early suras, taken chronologically, reflect Muhammad’s attempt to reorder his society.  They sound, in fact, remarkably like the Jesus of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, preaching meekness and humility, and the idea that positions would be reversed in the afterlife.  Sura 42, verse 20,

            To any that desires,
            The tilth of the Hereafter
            We give increase
            In his tilth; and to any
            That desires the tilth
            Of this world, We grant
            Somewhat thereof, but he
            Has no share or lot
            In the hereafter
While Muhammad built a following of the weak and dispossessed, much as Jesus had, the political elites of Mecca were not amused and when his uncle Abu Talib, who had been able to protect him through his influence as a member of the Quraysh, died, Muhammad fled to Medina. 

Muhammad In Medina

            In Medina Muhammad was welcomed as a Hakim, a mediator, and gained respect through his sage rulings.  When he began to preach his religious message, then, it was received much more enthusiastically than it had been in Mecca.  Medina became the first real home of the Umma, the Muslim community.  This is where Muhammad’s political ideas began to take shape.  The Umma would be a community of brotherhood.  All who accepted Muhammad’s message of the one true God who would sit in final judgment of all men at the end of days, the basic idea of all the extant salvation religions, would be welcomed as family. 
Medina, at the time, contained a Jewish population that had been accepted simply as people with their own brand of religion.  This was a source of potential conflict as part of Muhammad’s rules for the Umma was that members accept that there “is no god but God,” easy enough for Jews who already believed that, “and Muhammad is his prophet.”[10]  The second part proved problematic and after trying to convert the Jews in Medina Muhammad, who by this time had attained a great deal of authority and political power through his people skills, had two of the three clans exiled and the third slaughtered.[11] 
Fortunately and somewhat presciently Muhammad had claimed from the start that the God speaking to him, Allah in Arabic, was the same God who had spoken to Abraham and Moses, the same God worshiped by both Jews and Christians (something which the Jews and Christians didn’t necessarily agree on); he was merely the most recent prophet.  So as he set about spreading his religion and expanding the community of believers Christians and Jews, as well as polytheists, were welcome to join, needing only to profess their faith in the basic tenet: there is no God but God and Muhammad is his prophet. 
After consolidating his power in Medina and creating the first state-like political entity in Arabia Muhammad sought to bring his hometown, Mecca, into the fold.  This required military victory, which he achieved after some early defeats.  Once victorious, Muhammad again demonstrated his political acumen by bringing members of the Quraysh in as partners.  He then brought the nomadic tribes of the region into the community, having established good relations with them prior to his military campaign against Mecca (indeed they had been allies and crucial to his victory). 
Islam eventually spread throughout the Middle East, but it did so after Muhammad’s death in 632 C.E., just ten years after the flight to Medina.    

Similarities (and One Difference) Between the Prophet Muhammad and the Apostle Paul/ Conclusion

            Both Muhammad and Paul altered the societies into which they were born, forever.  Prior to Muhammad there was no Arab state, just numerous small tribes competing for resources and imposing justice by extracting revenge from the offending tribe.  Prior to Paul there were dozens of tiny Christian churches practicing various forms of worship of a figure about which they knew little.  There was a state-type government, indeed an Empire, but justice was something only the powerful could expect.  Both societies essentially were ruled by force; justice was what the strong imposed and the weak accepted, however unwillingly.  Muhammad and Paul both presented the idea of a community of equals who would treat each other with love and respect, who would band together to see that even the weakest members had access to justice.  Muhammad used military means to overcome his principal resistance; Paul never could have raised an Army to fight the Roman Empire and operated within it.  Both won many converts in their lifetimes but are remembered more for what they started, communities that lived on long after each died, still alive today, the Catholic Church and Islam.


[1] Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Qur’an: Text, Translation and Commentary, Tahrike Tarsile Qur’an, Inc., Elmhurst, New York, page 1806.
[2] Robert Wright, The Evolution of God, Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2009, pages 330, 331.
[3] Lyman Abbott, Life and Letters of Paul the Apostle, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York, page 19.
[4] William R. Van Buskirk, The Saviors of Mankind, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1929, page 410.
[5] http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/04/one-world-under-god/7335/2/
[6] http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/04/one-world-under-god/7335/2/
[7] http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/04/one-world-under-god/7335/2/
[8] Ibid
[9] The New Testament, 1 Corinthians, Chapter 13
[10] The Shahada, or, Profession of Faith, Professor John Bragg, lecture, 4 February, 2011.
[11] Fred McGraw Donner, The Early Islamic Conquests, Princeton University Press, Princeton New Jersey, page 62.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Here's Some More


Who Was Muhammad?

            If Muhammad was not inspired by “God” and acted on his own then it becomes important to learn about the man himself in order to understand his actions.  Muhammad was born in or around the year 570 C.E. in the city of Mecca, on the Western edge of the Arabian Peninsula, an area known as the Hijaz.  Arabia in the Sixth Century was sparsely populated, being mostly desert, and was inhabited largely by nomadic tribes whose only connection to other tribes was competition for the best grazing land.  Calling Mecca a city is even a bit of a stretch but it was a settled area inhabited by more than one tribe.  While Mecca had some role in trade with the Yemen to the south and Syria to the north (the fertile regions of the peninsula) it was primarily noteworthy as the site of the Ka’ba, a shrine venerated by the various polytheistic religions of the region.  As such Mecca was a rare place of “civilization” in a land where justice was that which one tribe could ensure for itself among other competing tribes.  In Mecca feuds and other disputes had to be set aside so that all could perform such religious rituals as they had come to do. 
            Muhammad was born into a not especially influential family (the Banu Hashim) of the Quraysh tribe, who were powerful enough to be the guarantors of order in Mecca.  He was orphaned at an early age, lost his grandfather, whose house he had moved to, shortly thereafter and was adopted by an uncle.  Growing up in Mecca Muhammad saw inequality all around.  Within Mecca were wealth and power disparities; out past the frontier were nomads living a Spartan lifestyle.  Also there were inequities in what can be called their system of justice.  Then as always there were disputes between individuals and between tribes.  Justice depended upon one’s power, especially the power of the tribe to which one belonged.  Yet in Mecca, around the Ka’ba, people accepted that there was a standard of behavior that must be adhered to. 
            While polytheistic “paganism” was prevalent among Arab nomadic tribes and most of the settled people of the peninsula, salvation religions were popular in the areas surrounding Arabia.  Jews and Christians were to the west and north with Manichaeism, Mazdaism and Zoroastrianism being practiced to the east.  Followers of these religions believed that there would be an end of time and a judgment day, ideas that led to monotheism.  Muhammad was aware of these other religions and was exposed to their doctrines and their belief in an ultimate judge.

The Qur’an 

            While polytheistic “paganism” was prevalent among Arab nomadic tribes and most of the settled people of the peninsula, salvation religions were popular in the areas surrounding Arabia.  Jews and Christians were to the west and north with Manichaeism, Mazdaism and Zoroastrianism being practiced to the east.  Followers of these religions believed that there would be an end of time and a judgment day, ideas that led to monotheism.  Muhammad was aware of these other religions and was exposed to their doctrines and their belief in an ultimate judge.   In 610 C.E., according to Muslim tradition, the angel Gabriel appeared to Muhammad and began to reveal to him the words of the one true God.  Qur’an means literally “he recited” (among other possible translations).  Several chapters, or suras begin with the command “recite,” for example, sura 112:

Recite: he is God, One,

                        God, the Everlasting Refuge,

                        Who has not begotten, and has not been begotten,

                        And equal to him is not anyone.

Tradition has it, then, that God intended for Muhammad to share this revelation with the Arab people. 
            It is also possible, however, to consider the Qur’an as Muhammad’s own thoughts and that when he began to share them with his people he was merely relying on his own sense of what society needed and would accept.  Robert Wright suggests that to properly understand the Qur’an one must first “put it in order.”  Not the order which it assumed about twenty years after his death, when it was first assembled as a finished text, but the order in which the suras were first shared by Muhammad.  This ordering, Wright asserts, accounts for the variance in tone, “from tolerance and forbearance to intolerance and belligerence and back.”  To read the suras this way “is to watch Muhammad’s career, and Islam’s birth, unfold.”[1]  

Sorry about the weird formatting.  Blame it on blogger.  (Or me.)

Muhammad’s Career


            Looking back we can see that Muhammad set about to remake Arabian society in two ways which were codependent upon each other.  First he would promote monotheism; there is one God and He is master of all creation.  Second, there is one set of rules, one standard of justice, applied to all equally.  The idea of one omnipotent God, who would stand as ultimate judge on one’s day of reckoning, served to reinforce the value of one standard of justice.  The idea of equality elaborated in the second part appealed to the less powerful in society who would then embrace the idea of one God, as justice was something lacking in their lives. 

The Apostle Paul


            Six hundred years before Muhammad began his mission, another man set out to remake his society.  Saul of Tarsus, as Paul was originally known, was a “Hebrew” born in a University town in Asia Minor, “Greek in atmosphere though under Roman occupation,” in or about the fifth year of the Common Era.[2] Though confirmed details are few, he was likely educated at the University in Tarsus and went to the renowned University in Jerusalem and studied under Gamaliel, the most revered Hebrew teacher of his time.  Paul came out of Jerusalem not just a Pharisee, a Jewish “puritan,” but a strict one at that, having been taught that the Pentateuch, Jewish scripture, was the literal word of God, sent to “His people” through the prophet Moses.  The Book of Acts, part of the New Testament of the Christian Bible, speaks of Paul’s persecution of Christians (for not being strict Jews) prior to his conversion (to belief in Jesus of Nazareth as the Anointed One, or “Christ”) on the road to Damascus.  Various interpretations exist as to what caused this conversion including the appearance to Paul of Jesus in a vision.  William Van Buskirk attributes it, at least in part, to Paul’s hearing the words of St. Stephen (and then being put in charge of his execution) and having a change of heart.
Something in the manner of Stephen, perhaps his exaltation and certainty of faith, touched a deep chord in Saul’s nature and disturbed him profoundly.  And although he secured letters and hurried off to Damascus to apprehend other Christians, his mind grew more and more troubled.  Stephen had let fall a great revolutionary idea in the address he had made before the Sanhedrin, and in spite of every effort to do so Saul could not put it out of his mind.  On the way this idea continued to clarify itself until suddenly it burst forth in all its majesty, in a light above the brightness of the sun, in a voice that sent him bound by the Spirit to save the Gentile world.[3] 
Essentially, Stephen’s message was that the Children of Israel had failed in their spirituality, observing the letter of Jewish law, but not receiving the Spirit.  Stephen’s message, then, was that Jesus had come to set the people of God onto the right path.  Perhaps this meshed with Paul’s earlier classical education, which would have exposed him to Plato’s Socrates and the idea of a pure soul and knowledge through reason, as opposed to revelation.  In any event, Paul ceased persecuting Christians, became one himself and began to try to lead them. 
           

The Christian Church


            Unlike Muhammad Paul had no need to start his own religion.  He saw Christianity as being the vehicle for his ambition, an ambition at least similar to Muhammad’s: to unite the people in the society in which he lived under one set of rules.  In Paul’s case there was already a central government in place, that being the Roman Empire.  While the Roman Empire did have a justice system and a set of laws, Paul, like Muhammad in Arabia, 600 years later, saw injustice and inequality all around him.  As would be the case in Muhammad’s Arabia, justice depended upon one’s access to power, and most people had little of that.  Paul, already a monotheist, changed from the Jewish idea of following the (Jewish) Law to accepting all men as equals.  Justice would be better served if all men were equal.  If all men are equals they should treat each other as equals.  Out of this Paul developed the idea that all men could be “brothers,” in this case, brothers in “Christ.”  There are conflicting theories as to how much of Paul’s philosophy traces to Jesus and how much of what Jesus says in the Gospels, especially Matthew and Luke, is actually Paul’s influence put into Jesus’ mouth by the authors of those Gospels.  Nevertheless we do have Paul’s own words in his Letters to several Christian congregations. 


[1] Robert Wright, The Evolution of God, Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2009, pages 330, 331.
[2] Lyman Abbott, Life and Letters of Paul the Apostle, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York, page 19.
[3] William R. Van Buskirk, The Saviors of Mankind, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1929, page 410.