“In Islam, as in Christianity, there has always been tension between its universalistic teachings and their application in concrete situations. Local ethnocentric attitudes have had a powerful effect. Western Arabia was the dynamic center of the faith at the time of Mohammed’s death in A.D. 632, and Arabs led the jihad that spread quickly throughout the Middle East in the years that followed. Although the brotherhood of the Companions and the Followers welcomed people without regard to race or color, some practices of Arab armies inevitably led to structured social inequality. Victorious warriors not only demanded the right to booty in the form of available goods and women, but some of them also laid claim to land in conquered territories. Within Arabia, this tended to disintegrate tribal structures without introducing ethnic stratification. In other lands, Arabs conquerors formed a landed aristocracy extracting wealth by taxation from a free peasantry that was often ethnically different.” “Mohammed had proclaimed the equality of all believers; less than a decade after his death, a hierarchy was institutionalized under Omar. In the new Muslim states, Arabs enjoyed the highest degree of prestige and honor, with non-Arab Muslims ranked below them, and ‘Unbelievers’ at the bottom. Moreover, the Arab-led jihad carried more than the new religion. It also took with it an ethnic Arab legacy that included some prejudice against Negroes.” St. Clair Drake “Black Folk Here and There - Volume 2” Page 91
Posted on: Sun, 07 Dec 2014 06:32:21 +0000
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