Outside of the Latin world, in Spain, Sicily, and North Africa, and surrounding Byzantium in Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, was the world of Islam. For centuries, Islam has both a threat and the source of new ideas to the Greek East and Latin West. Between the 7th and 12th centuries, Islam became the center of a brilliant civilization and of a great scientific, philosophic, and artistic culture. Although its language was neither Greek nor Latin, Islam was produced a great deal of Greek culture which managed to preserve for the Latin West. Generally, it can be said that Islam absorbed and added its culture to the heritage of Greece, Rome, Judaism, Christianity, and the Near East.
In the beginning of Muslims era, there were both open and cautious. They borrowed and integrated elements of other cultures into their own. The new religion of Islam in a moment was adopted elements of Christian, Jewish, and pagan religious beliefs and practices. The Muslims tolerated religious minorities within territories whom had conquered so long as these minorities which recognized Islamic political rule, paid taxes, and did not become an apostate among Muslims. On the other hand, Muslims were careful to protect the purity of their religion, language, and law from any foreign influence. Even though there have the crisis of the passage of time, and with increased conflict with both eastern and western Christians, this protective instinct is still become stronger. Moreover, Islamic culture did not penetrate the west in the same way that Germanic culture did, but it would remain strange as well as threatening to the West.
The most fundamental in Islam was its religion itself and it is true for the medieval west as well. However, by knowing more about early Christianity could make others know more better about early Islam. The reason is because Christianity was produced by a literate culture while Islamic religion was formed largely in an illiterate and nomadic culture. The Arabian Peninsula was considered as the home of Islam. The Peninsula is predominantly deserts and the tribes who inhabited this area were nomadic. They were traveled from place to place. Politically, Islam was not a unified territory also did not have any centralized government.
The great unifying agent in Islamic civilization was clearly defined by our prophet Muhammad (pbuh). He was born at Mecca and raised by moderate family. His father had died in the year of his birth and his mother died when he was 6 years old. At the time of prophet Muhammad's birth, Mecca was one of the most prosperous caravan cities. However, Mecca was still tied to the traditional social and religious life of the Arabian world. In other words, it was governed by the tribal societies of the desert. Membership in the tribe was determined by blood descent. In such an order, the interests of the individual were always subordinate to those of the group or tribe. Each tribe worshipped its own gods in the form of objects from nature (moon, sky, dog, cat, ram) but all Arabs worshipped one object in common: the Kaaba, a large black stone enshrined at Mecca. It was the Kaaba that made Mecca significant as a place of worship and pilgrimage.
As a youth, prophet Muhammad worked as a merchant's assistant, traveling the major trade routes of the Peninsula. When he was 25, he married the widow of a wealthy merchant and became a man of means. He also became a kind of social activist, critical of Meccan materialism, paganism, and the unjust treatment of the poor and needy. Prophet Muhammad worked hard at his career, and like so many "saviors" and prophets, he also was bother by doubts. Because of the problem, he left Meccan society and lived a life of isolation in the desert. In 610, and at the age of 40, he received his first revelation and began to preach. He believed his revelations came directly from God, through the angel Gabriel, who recited God's word to him gradually. These revelations grew into the Qur’an which his followers compiled between 650 and 651. The basic message prophet Muhammad received was a command to all Arabs to submit to God's will or in other word is knowledge of tauhid. As far as tauhid is concerned, Islam means the "submission to the will of God.". The basic beliefs of prophet Muhammad's religion were
(1) God is good and omnipotent
(2) God will judge all men on the last day and assign them their place either in Heaven or Hell
(3) Men should thank God for making the world as it is
(4) God expects men to be generous with their wealth
(5) Muhammad was a prophet sent by God to teach men and warn them of the day of judgment.
It ought to be clear that many of these beliefs are similar to those of the Judeo-Christian tradition. However, Muhammad's religion was not a mere copy. Instead, Muhammad's religion grew as a result of the social and economic conditions of Mecca itself. One other difference ought to be noted. Christianity was produced in an urban environment while the faith of Muhammad was fashioned from his life in the desert. For Muhammad, there were also five obligations which were essential to his faith:
(1) the profession of faith – there is no God but Allah and Muhammad was the last prophet
(2) prayers had to be uttered five times daily
(3) the giving of alms, or charity
(4) fasting
(5) the pilgrimage to Mecca. These laws are recorded in the Qur'an, a book which contains all of the revelations of Muhammad.
