History of Islam

Currently Islam is a faith that brings together some 1.2 billion adherents. How and when was launched such a comprehensive religion that is second only to members of the Catholic Church? Muhammad was an Arab born in Mecca around 570 AD, no father and mother; Normal life was spent without misfortunes thanks to their families.In his youth he married an older woman who was said to be very rich.
In those days, before he received a divine mandate, the young and all its Arab similar, was polytheistic and worshiped a black meteorite that was in the Kaaba, a building apparently built by Adam, construction became retouched for the same Abraham and Ishmael. There was no substantial change in the life of Muhammad until he was forty years old, when one day in the Hira cave appeared to him an angel, Gabriel, ordering him to recite.

Muhammad did not respond to the call three times, until the envoy, squeezed her throat and got to do what you ordered. According to Muslims, the first revelations made by Mohammed are written in the Koran. The best proof that it was a divine message conveyed is the illiteracy of the Muslim prophet, who had memorized all messages that Gabriel gave to repeat as desired.
In the next twenty years of his life, Muhammad would not fail to receive messages angel. Soon he informs his wife, and she helps him get followers, who at first were few and had to memorize also those revelations. As the Arabs did not know the role, Muhammad led some messages placed nearby leaves, wood, parchment and various other materials. Apparently, initially, the first followers of Muhammad, preferred memorized the entire Qur'an, ie, the book containing all the revelations God gave him to Muhammad through Gabriel.Later, the three written sources are complemented by the Hadith and Sunna, and Sharia. Muslims show much resistance to translate text into other languages, believing that these lost and faithfulness to the original message. Anyway, the Arabic language remains a fundamental requirement to read the holy Muslim scriptures.
As expected, the message of Muhammad, including ordering of monotheism in which Allah should be the only one you should praise, generated great resistance in Arab communities of the time. Muhammad was rejected by the tribes of Mecca and he and his followers marched to Medina, the city where the prophet would settle with his followers. At this output Mecca is known as AH, and happened to the 622 AD, the Christian calendar. That date is where it adopts the first year of the Islamic calendar. As the dialogue was not enough, the differences between the Arabs had to be resolved by force of arms; and so, after several years of struggle Mecca surrendered to Muhammad in January 630.

The Quran

As a first step, Muhammad decided to end all images and worship the gods in the Kaaba. The prophet died soon after, to the 632 dne have not spent many decades and Islam had spread across the Middle East, overcoming barriers of the Arabian peninsula.

The expansion of Islam and the crisis

Muhammad had died without leaving a son and successor. Abu Bakr, the Prophet's father, was appointed the first of those to follow on 8 June 632, and the title he inherited was the ruler or caliph. But soon protests erupted. A group of Muslims split claiming that he did not accept the succession thereby, but preferred to be elective, so they saw no need for a descendant of Muhammad is essential to rule the destiny of Islam. Those belonging to this group are called Sunnis. A Omar Abu Bakr succeeded him and him Othman, adviser and son of the prophet respectively.However, the Sunnis are not the only ones to appear and soon came the Shiite who claimed that they should be descendants of Muhammad in direct line managers govern the destiny of Islam. Therefore, the first caliph should or should be the cousin and son of Muhammad Ali Ibn Abu Talib, the first imam i Imam, who married the most beloved daughter of the prophet, named Fatima. She beget two grandsons of Muhammad, called Hasan and Husayn.Ali was finally chosen as the fourth caliph and ruled between 656 and 661 AD, but of course, things were not perfect, and war broke out against the governor of Syria, Muawiya. The dispute after a time conflict was decided by arbitration. But some Muslims disagreed group and a follower of Ali, separated, the jaridjitas  is called.

One killed the fourth caliph with the poisoned tip of a sword in 661 dne Sunnis and Shiites were further divided. The first, inclusive, elected a leader among the Umayyads, a wealthy lineage of Mecca that had nothing to do with the family of Muhammad. The Shiites meanwhile rushed to recognize Hasan Ali firstborn, as the true successor. The latter finally abdicated and was killed. Hussein, his brother, also came to power, but the Umayyads was murdered in 680 dne Shi'ites believe that in total there were twelve imane s, Ali being the first one. The latter is called Mahomet al-Muntazar and disappeared toward the 878 AD, leaving no offspring.Apparently, this faction of Islam continues to believe in the coming of a new magnet to restore the true Islam. Perhaps the closest thing to the idea of ​​a Messiah. Shiites make up about 20% of Muslims in the world.Since the seventh century, wars and internal friction did not prevent Islam grows enormously and spread throughout the Middle East, including India, Bangladesh and Indonesia. The extent allowed by the West threaten the Byzantine Empire, which he stomped on a whim several centuries later conquered all of North Africa. Perhaps Islam was accepted by his religious tolerance Christians and Jews, although they were forced to pay tribute. Anyway, the Muslims had great military success subjecting whole peoples and reached Gibraltar, winning the Iberian Peninsula. They tried to jump over France but were defeated at the Battle of Poitiers (732). The peninsula Muslims would not be free until 1492. As a result of its expansion, the holy city of Jerusalem, North Africa and the Anatolian peninsula fell into Muslim hands, seizing places of significance for both Jews and Christians.

This led to the papacy and the kingdoms of Europe, using their recapture as a pretext to search routes east and new lands in the current area of ​​Palestine and thus broke the Crusades, which eventually recovered Jerusalem only in some periods. Muslims never entered full in Europe beyond the border with France and Turkey and part of the Balkans , reaching master of Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean and great trade routes to Asia.

The Turks subjected to the Arabs, who had lost their former glory, however, they converted to Islam, keeping Jerusalem and vast territories of the Middle East in Mohammedan power, until finally they lost in 1918 to the First World War World. In recent times, Islam has undergone many changes, leading to several branches over thought, distant or not, the initiated by Muhammad however, this study only pointed to the two main acquaintances, Sunni and the Shiites. In recent years, the emergence of conflict with the state of Israel, fundamentalist sectors such as the Taliban and terrorist groups, if they have not decelerated expansion of this religion and curiosity for the world to show for it, yes endowed Islam a certain prestige, and for many westerners who ignore their history and the actual content of their dogma, Islamic seems to be synonymous with aggression and intolerance. By studying Eastern religions, from an anthropological mode and as objective as possible by Westerners, this situation could be reversed.