On the death of Muhammad in 632, the leadership of the Muslim community (umma) passed to caliphs. The first four, known as the Rashidun or rightly-guided caliphs, ruled till 661.
From 661 to 750, the caliphs of the Umayyad dynasty had established a unified Muslim community. The Abbasid caliphate, which succeeded the Umayyads in 750, fell when the Mongols sacked Baghdad in 1258. By the early 16th century, three Islamic empires emerged. The Safavid in Iran, the Moghul in India, and the Ottoman in Anatolia, Syria, North Africa and Arabia. The Ottomans fell in the last century, and on March 3, 1924, Kemal Ataturk abolished the caliphate in Turkey.
HAJ (Setting out)
Every Muslim is obliged to perform the haj at least once, but one is forbidden to borrow money to make the trip. Those who have done so can add the title of haji to their name. The time set aside for the Haj is a five-day period at the last month of the Islamic lunar calendar. In the year 2002, about 1.3 million foreigners and 1.4 million from Saudi Arabia performed the haj. The Saudi authority has limit each country to 1 haj visa per 1,000 Muslim citizens. Security in the form of biometric face identification by iris scans, and digital fingerprint system are set up at immigration checkpoints. Pilgrims are allowed only to go to haj sites. Vice versa, everyone entering the pilgrim sites must have a pilgrim pass.
Sex is forbidden during the hajj and men must not cover their heads as a sign of humility.
Pilgrims are to walk couterclockwise round the Kaaba, in Mecca, seven times after proclaiming "Bismillah, Allah-o-Akbar (In the name of Allah! Allah is great). The Kaaba is a rectangular stone room covered in black silk and cotton embroidered in gold with Koranic verses. Male pilgrims will wear two pieces of unstitched, seamless white cloth (the ihram). One wrapped around the waist and the other across the chest and right shoulder. Women will wear long robes with their faces and hands uncovered.
Beneath the Kaaba is a marble-clad room housing the Zamzam well. The water is from a 35-metre deep spring. The well is enclosed by a double-fiber-glass wall. Pilgrims wash themselves with water piped to the outside of the glass wall.
From Mecca the pilgrims will move to Mina. There were 44,000 spacious air-cooled wall-to-wall carpeted tents to accommodate them. Pilgrims sleep together on the floor. After prayer the next morning they will then set off for Arafat, 7 km away. It was believed that this was where the final verses of the Koran were revealed to Muhammad and it was also here that he gave his last sermon. For those who like to they can climb on top of the hillocks.
The next morning the pilgrims will collect pebbles for the ritual stoning of Satan at Jamrat. In the past some there have been stampedes during the ritual and some have died.
The Saudis have now introduced the lesser pilgrimage known as the umra for nine months of the year. Pilgrims will be given a visa for four weeks and they can travel anywhere in the country.
Islam has never been a monolithic religion. There were fringe groups that differ fundamentally with the majority. The first such group to appear was the Khawarijites in AD 657, barely 25 years after the death of Prophet Muhammad. Then came serious rifts on issues surrounding the leadership of the fourth Caliph, Ali ibn Abi Talib, which divided the Muslims into two camps. About 300 years after, in the later part of the 10th century, this great schism the groups polarised into the Sunnis and Shi'ites.
As late as 1600, the Muslim world set the standard in science and mathematics, and had done so for 500 years. Then came the Reformation and the Renaissance.
Most fundamentalists followed strictly Prophet Muhammad's teachings, pray five times a day and read the Quran. They see the West as secular, ungodly and decadent, and they support the concept of theocratic government in which syariah becomes the law of the state. Every day, they live out the dialectic of din (religion) and duniya (worldly existence), trying to establish the dawla (the Islamic state). So being political is a part of being a Muslim. The Quran had taught them that a society that surrendered to God's revealed will could not fail. Muslims can restore their glory if they return to the original Islam. This became the slippery road into extremism as politicians are known to believe that the end justifies the means.
JIHAD
In 1902 Abdul Aziz bin Saud took forty followers and captured Riyadh. After that with the help of the Wahhabi clerics the house of Saud had ruled Saudi Arabia to this day. Abdul Aziz came from a line of chieftains. His great-great-grandfather had led a Wahhabi army to attack the Shia shrine of Najaf and Kerbala.
After capturing Riyadh, Abdul Aziz and the Wahhabis preached jihad (holy war) to rid Arabia of idolatry. The Wahhabis is a conservative sect in matters of Islamic laws and religious customs, especially with regard to women. Young bedouin, known as ikhwan (brothers), responded to their call and in 1925 they captured Mecca and Medina. After that the ikhwan became an uneasy force. In 1929 at Sabila, 200 miles north of Riyadh, the royalists used truck-mounted machine guns to put down a rebellion.
The Muslim world rejected the secular mindset and focused on submission to God. They chose to focus their energy on establishing the original Muslim community in Medina. Islamic laws, the Syariah, must govern the society at both the individual and social levels. Sovereignty lies with God, and the Caliphate was entrusted with the power and authority to execute the law and conduct international relationships. Dissociation of the spiritual from the temporal, known as secularism, is the root cause of social ills.
The reality is people entrusted with upholding them are not free of human frailty. Iran became an Islamic State after 1979. Now the power is in the hands of the conservative elders but the people wanted a greater say. The only way for any nation to enforce a theocracy is by force as demonstrated by the Taliban in Afghanistan. In this case it conclusively proved that it does not work. Pakistan an Islamic state could not experience peace, let alone glory.
THE NATION of ISLAM
The Nation of Islam (USA) was founded by W. Fard Muhammed in the 1930s, in the United States. The leadership passed on to Elijah Mohammed. W. Fard Muhammed was looked upon as God incarnate and Elijah a divine messenger. Its most famous member, Malcolm X, was known for advocating anti-white ideas, in contrast to Martin Luther King Jr's Christian's message of tolerance. After his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1964 Malcolm X disavowed the separatist strategy of the Nation of Islam. In 1975 he founded the Muslim American Society. The Nation of Islam was subsequently taken over by Mr Louis Farrakhan. In 2002, the group is estimated to have between 20,000 and 70,000 members.
It is estimated that there are between two million to seven million Muslims in America today, only about 1.5 million are African Americans, led by Imam W.D. Mohammed. The role of the imam is important as he is a spiritual and political leader and counsellor all in one. They believed that they have earned the political leadership of the Muslim community. The immigrant Muslims tend to consider themselves better versed in the Quran and the Sunnah. Their mosques are controlled by boards and the imam is very much an employee. Dr Zahid Bukhari, a Pakistani-born fellow at Georgetown University, says: "The cleavage between the indigenous Muslims and immigrant Muslims is very serious and real".
Islamisation became a global phenomenon after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini toppled Iran's Shah Pahlavi in 1979 and established the rule of the mullahs. Muslims around the world saw the Iranian revolution and the Shah's fall as an emancipation and Islamic revolt against the West. It gives them hope that Islam is capable of achieving great things again with its modern revival.
So Islamdom had increasing fallen behind. In the entire Muslim world one couldn't even find an indigenous multinational corporations. This is in spite of the fact that the Arab countries and Indonesia are endowed with great oil reserves. On the other hand South Korea with limited natural resources can boost of Hyundai and Daewoo. Barely 1 per cent of the world's scientists are Muslim. Israel alone has more than the entire Muslim world put together.
The Muslim world is weak and backward, and in most Muslim nations the political powers are in the hands of a small elite. Indonesia, the largest Muslim nation encountered economic difficult. It was the West with arms folded in front of their chest that forced down the medicine. When the Talibans went astray in Afghanistan the umma took no initiative and had to look from the sideline when the West dropped bombs it at will. Caught in such a dilemma it is no wonder that some found a purpose in dying rather then living without hope.