Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India c5.s2.1

c5.s2.1

Muhammad, the prophet of Islam (full name Abu al-Qasim Muhammad ibn Abdullah ibn Abdul Muttalib ibn Hashim) was born in Arabia in or around 570 CE and died in 632. In 622 he had to migrate from Makkah to Madinah (called *hijrat*) and this year forms the first year of the Muslim Hijri calender. During his life time, Muhammad made Arabia a land exclusively adherent to Islam. After his death, the Arabs embarked on a series of territorial expansions and made themselves masters of Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Persia within a short span of twenty years, or, in the rhetorical words of Earnest Barker, Arab Islamism "Spreading with the rapidity of an electric current from its power house in Mecca, it flashed into Syria, it traversed the whole breadth of north Africa; and then, leaping the Straits of Gibralter it ran to the Gates of the Pyrenees."¹³ Such unparalleled feats of success were due to their proud feeling of Arabicism, their zeal for the new faith, and the material gains brought through holy war or jihad. The ponderosity of the jihad gave them the energy and the rapidity of electric current. And Islam came to be what the world has ever since recognized it to be - a militant religion, a creed of aggression and violence.