Islam gave a cultural identity to the arabs and unified them in the name of Allah

It was not only the heat of the desert that made cities like Fez and Marrakesh, in Morocco, to be built and organized as if they were one unit.


The essence of Islam, the religion founded by the prophet Muhammad (Mohamed) in the 7th century - and that arrived in Morocco at the end of the same century with the arab invasion -, also there it settled, starting to impose not only beliefs and rites, but a whole way of life and one vision of the world.

If Islam (the word means "volunteer submission to the word of God") preaches the union of muslims (term that means "those that submit voluntarily to Islam") , it is like so that they start to organize their everyday life.


If Allah asks for five prayers a day, all the paths of the medinas (towns) lead to the mosques. If they must wash (ablution) before praying, public fountains will be everywhere so that they can be purified. And when it is time to fast, all together, in harmony, will stop eating during the days of Ramadan, the sacred month of the moslem calendar.

The Unit

Union and unity are key words in Islam. Unity because God - Allah, in arab, which comes from joining al (the) with llah (God) - is one: the God, unique and one, Omnipresent and Almighty. Union because all islamic communities - like the medinas -, together should form one community, the umma.


One is also the holy book of Islam, the Koran, where Allah speaks in the first person. One should be the family. And complete is the character of muslims - exactly as in the novela The Clone are portraid the fictious characters of Ali and Abdul and all the circumstances of their families, that

become one when united by the marriages of their nephews Jade and Said, and Latiffa and Mohamed.

From chaos to order

To understand why unity is essential to Islam, a historical explanation - therefore , non-religious - takes us to the Arab Peninsula, between 570 and 632 A.D. , a time when the prophet Muhammad lived.


The region that until then had developed beside two empires - the Persian, to the east, and the Byzantine, to the west -, had been , with the growing of trade and the presence of travellers, receiving a strong influence of cristianity and judaism.

On the other hand, arabs were a disperse people, with no kind of unity. Organized in tribes that followed a leader (sheik), would not identify with anyone outside. And they still believed in desert demons (jinn) and in several Gods, besides worshiping sacred stones - most of them kept in the Caaba, in Meca, to today the sacred city of muslims.


They lived in disorder, ruled by banditism, orgies, child murder and rivalries. They were, so, condemned to not resist to the strenght of other conquering people , no matter how much the desert isolated them.

Fusion

It was in this context that Islam - that in a kind of fusion brought together concepts of christianity and judaism - gave the arabs a common language, cultural identity, integrity and expansionist force. So the emphasis on unity: of God and men around God.


What we saw following that, with the strenght that this union generated, was centuries of islamization in the building of a great empire.

The last prophet

Islam was not the work of Muhammad. According to muslims, Islam was created by Allah himself. The prophet was only a spokesman of the words of God revealed by angel Gabriel and transcribed in the Koram, which would explain why they are so beautiful and poetic.


The revelations occured in a cave in Mount Hira, near Mecca, during 23 years. Muhammad was 40 years old and already married to Khadijha, a widow heir to a caravan business.


By disclosing the revelations, Muhammad was persecuted

by the elite in Mecca and forced to flee to Yatrib (presently Medina). The year was 622, and this fact became know as Hegira. In 630, he came back and took over Mecca, becoming leader. He died in 632, after making Islam give unity to the arabs.



Further reading:

Symphony of colors "Directing The Clone was like conducting an orchestra", says Jayme Monjardim

Arab world and Islamic world Differences and similarities