Islam, Arabs, and Culture

[swilhelm73]

So I was thinking about this topic in general, and it led me to a few questions...

1) Why was Islam able not just to spread as a religion, but also to spread Arabic culture with it? As a counter example, the spread of Christianity was generally not accompanied by the spread of Latin culture.

2) How did Persia manage to absorb Islam, but maintain a seperate culture, unlike say Iraq. I have a suspicion this might relate to Ishmael and the Shiite nature of Persian Islam, but this is just conjecture.

3) Are Pakistanis Arabs? Well there ethnic stock is not, they seem to be more heterogeneously Arabic in culture than say Persia.

 

[stnylan]

To answer question 1 only (because it is the only one I can answer).

Look at the different histories of the initial spread of both. Christianity began in a remarkably stable mutli-cultural, multi-lingual society (the Roman Empire). After adoption it was seen as a Roman religion - and by that time Roman was an over-arching concept that Greeks, Latins, Gauls, Hispanics, + others could all call themselves.

Islam was far more rooted in one people, and then transported by conquest. In doing so it wiped away previous religions, and since religion and culture tend to be deeply interwoven, especially at this time, the conquered peoples became Arabised as they adopted the new religion.

Highly simplistic, and with its faults but I think that is the basis of this difference.

 

[Aetius]

Originally posted by swilhelm73
1) Why was Islam able not just to spread as a religion, but also to spread Arabic culture with it? As a counter example, the spread of Christianity was generally not accompanied by the spread of Latin culture.

What is Arab culture? I have no idea what Arab culture was before Islam. The culture of the Fellahin and the Bedouins was quite different I suspect. So the resultant culture might be a mix of different cultures, even so there are probably large differences between a Hadendoa muslim and Chinese Muslim. The only unifying forces (apart from Islam itself) I can think of is the Arab language and the Hadj (journey to Mecca). In Christianity there was some unity created with the use of the Latin Language and Rome in the Catholic Church, the same is probably true with the Russian Orthodox church.

Originally posted by swilhelm73
2) How did Persia manage to absorb Islam, but maintain a seperate culture, unlike say Iraq. I have a suspicion this might relate to Ishmael and the Shiite nature of Persian Islam, but this is just conjecture.

This supposes that Iraq doesn't have a separate culture from other Arab countries, which I doubt.

Originally posted by swilhelm73
3) Are Pakistanis Arabs? Well there ethnic stock is not, they seem to be more heterogeneously Arabic in culture than say Persia.

No they are Indians who are Muslims, the history of the country makes this clear I think.

 

[unmerged(5205)]

and Afghans are closely related to Pakis.

 

[unmerged(234)]

Re: Re: Islam, Arabs, and Culture

Originally posted by Aetius
...No they are Indians who are Muslims, the history of the country makes this clear I think.

And the reason they have more in common with the "Arabic" muslims than the Persian/Iranian ones is probably that the Persian/Iranian are Shiit(sp?) while both Pakistan and the Arabic states are Sunni.

 

[swilhelm73]

Re: Re: Islam, Arabs, and Culture

Originally posted by Aetius
What is Arab culture? I have no idea what Arab culture was before Islam. The culture of the Fellahin and the Bedouins was quite different I suspect. So the resultant culture might be a mix of different cultures, even so there are probably large differences between a Hadendoa muslim and Chinese Muslim. The only unifying forces (apart from Islam itself) I can think of is the Arab language and the Hadj (journey to Mecca). In Christianity there was some unity created with the use of the Latin Language and Rome in the Catholic Church, the same is probably true with the Russian Orthodox church.

It would seem to that there is in fact an 'Arabic' culture that holds sway in most Islamic countries. Well say Moroccan, Egyptian, and Omani cultures all have their differences, it would seem they have much more in common that say Poland, Mexico, and France to pick three Catholic nations.

I think, however, that you make acutally have given the answer in the form of the Arabic language. While Latin, for example, was the language of Catholicism for most of its existence, there was no attempt to educate converts in it. And well it may have been the language of learning it was not the language of common coversation throughout Christendom. Language is certainly one of the most important aspects of a culture.

Originally posted by Aetius

No they are Indians who are Muslims, the history of the country makes this clear I think.

Ethnically, most Pakistanians are Baluchi, Pashtun, or Panjubi to my knowledge, though the latter could be considered 'Indian' of course.

As I noted though, my question was not on ethnicity, but culture.

 

[unmerged(10416)]

Isn't the quran only seen as 'the real thing' when it's read in Arab language? I once heard that this was one of the big differences between the way Muslims regard the quran and Christians regard the bible.

All over the islamic world, people read the quran in arabic, while the bible is available in all languages and the original (written in ancient greek) is only used by scholars.

So the concept of the holy book had a much more unifying influence on the islamic world.

 

[unmerged(13241)]

Well the quran has been translated in many languages, but the scholars claim that only the Arabic (orginal) is the right one, and that by translating it is looses his godly precision and the words become washed.

 

[unmerged(2833)]

Originally posted by proudirishmick
and Afghans are closely related to Pakis.

Not that simple. Afghans doesn't exist as coherent ethnic groups (neither do Pakistanis for that matter)

 

[unmerged(2833)]

Originally posted by swilhelm73
So I was thinking about this topic in general, and it led me to a few questions...

1) Why was Islam able not just to spread as a religion, but also to spread Arabic culture with it? As a counter example, the spread of Christianity was generally not accompanied by the spread of Latin culture.

2) How did Persia manage to absorb Islam, but maintain a seperate culture, unlike say Iraq. I have a suspicion this might relate to Ishmael and the Shiite nature of Persian Islam, but this is just conjecture.

3) Are Pakistanis Arabs? Well there ethnic stock is not, they seem to be more heterogeneously Arabic in culture than say Persia.

But Christianity did change culture when it was spread by conquest... Baltics, Americas....

 

[unmerged(5205)]

Originally posted by DarthMaur
Not that simple. Afghans doesn't exist as coherent ethnic groups (neither do Pakistanis for that matter)

right, Afghans are Tajik, Pashtun, Persian, etc. but since Pakistanis are also not all one ethnic group then you can't just say they're Indians who are Muslims because Pashtuns are not Indians, correct?

 

[Vulture]

Originally posted by madner
Well the quran has been translated in many languages, but the scholars claim that only the Arabic (orginal) is the right one, and that by translating it is looses his godly precision and the words become washed.

True... For a long time it was even forbidden to translate the quran. This was partly a reason for the Arabic culture spreading with the islam itself. In the first centuries after Mohammed, when Islam spread widely, people were forbidden to translate the quran... So the conquered people had to learn arabic, improving integration and assimilation.

 

[brandnew70x7]

There is no "Afghan" ethnic group. The main Afghan ethnic group is the pashtuns, commonly referred to as Afghanis.

BUT, Pakistan is not at all simular to them. It just so happens that half of Afghanistan was taken by the British, and incorporated into Pakistan later.

 

[unmerged(16020)]

I don't know, I think the cultures of Islamic countries which are farther apart vary quite a bit. Indonesia, Djibouti, Iran, Uzbekistan, Morroco, Bangladesh, and Saudi Arabia have quite different cultures.

 

[unmerged(5205)]

Originally posted by Lunar
I don't know, I think the cultures of Islamic countries which are farther apart vary quite a bit. Indonesia, Djibouti, Iran, Uzbekistan, Morroco, Bangladesh, and Saudi Arabia have quite different cultures.

yes, because indonesia, bangladesh, uzbek, etc. are so far away from the arab world that the only way Islam was spread was through Muslim merchants.The reason the Arab countries picked up the Arab culture is because they were actually conquered by the Arab armies and were forced to accept the culture

 

[Aetius]

Re: Re: Re: Islam, Arabs, and Culture

Originally posted by swilhelm73
Ethnically, most Pakistanians are Baluchi, Pashtun, or Panjubi to my knowledge, though the latter could be considered 'Indian' of course.

Sure but Egyptians are not Arabs either, they are Fellahin, Amarar, Bedouin and so on. It depends on what level of fidelity you wish to divide the country. Pakistan is for all intents and purposes an artifical state, created by moving Muslims in and Hindus out. The Muslim Indians have been living together with Hindu Indians for hundreds of years, their culture must be very similar to Hindu Indian culture. Of course there are regional variations, but essentially I believe this to be valid generalisation.

 

[Kasperus]

Originally posted by swilhelm73

1) Why was Islam able not just to spread as a religion, but also to spread Arabic culture with it? As a counter example, the spread of Christianity was generally not accompanied by the spread of Latin culture.

I don`t think this is actually that much a surprise, nor is it selfexplaining that islam brought arabic culture with it. Yes, the not-so-populated territories of north-africa and middle-east got arabized, though the more populated area`s behold a distinct culture for much longer (Iraq, Syria, Egypt and thus unsurprisingly Persia and far-eastern Islam).
Btw, how can you assert that latanized culture did not spread over the christianized countries? Spain, France, northern-Italy - all Germanic at a certain moment became nicely latinized later. And much more elements of latin culture have spread over farther Europe: which European language does not contain elements from Latin? We do all use latin writing (except the orthodox world then), we adopted latin art, calendar, traditions....

2) How did Persia manage to absorb Islam, but maintain a seperate culture, unlike say Iraq. I have a suspicion this might relate to Ishmael and the Shiite nature of Persian Islam, but this is just conjecture.

Again the population plays a role here methinks. A few Arabs could not so easily destroy such an old culture as the Persian.
Interesting to note here is that Islam did not so easily root into Persia anyway. Zoroathrism and other old religions remained important for longer periods. On the contrary, afaik the shiite sect didn`t play here an important role till the days of Safawids. There were sects as the Alamutes but these were rather an Fatamid offspring that a typical PErsian occurance.

Also interesting to note is that Persia has been under conquest by other peoples for ages - in fact from the Persian pre-Islamitic state till the Safawids there was no independant Persia at all - but these groups were all not numerous, 'barbaric' and their 'occupation' did never last longer than a century or two. THe arabs, TUrks, Turkomans, Mongols - al of these did not manage to 'break' the Persian culture. I think you could say it became quite resistant as a 'high' culture.

 

[unmerged(3420)]

Those lands originally conquered by the Arabs in the 7th Century (Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, North Africa) were all populated by Semitic people. The languages (mostly Aramaic, Coptic, and Phoenician) shared a great deal with Arabic (which is also Semitic). The Arab culture around Mecca also traded heavily with these areas, and so had a certain affinity and understanding with the conquests.

The one exception to this pretty picture is Persia. Here was a non-Semitic land, actually populated by an Indo-European race (Aryan and Iran share the same root). While Islam became deeply rooted here, Arabic did not, and Persia kept its own cultural identity.

Similar things happened in western North Africa, Spain, and the Indus valley. The native culture kept a hold on the population, even if the native religion didn't.

Shi'ism had little to do with it. The Shi'ites dominated Egypt, North Africa, (both under the Fatimids), Yemen, and Asia Minor at different times. The domination had important historical consequences, but did nothing to change the native culture.

Pakistan, like Persia, is populated by Indo-European stock, not Semitic stock like the Arabs.

 

[gzav]

more or less the same topic, how come indonesia is muslim? and since when? i dont remember the arabs being great colonisers, so how come they became muslims?
g

 

[unmerged(10416)]

Originally posted by gzav
more or less the same topic, how come indonesia is muslim? and since when? i dont remember the arabs being great colonisers, so how come they became muslims?
g

Originally posted by proudirishmick
yes, because indonesia, bangladesh, uzbek, etc. are so far away from the arab world that the only way Islam was spread was through Muslim merchants.The reason the Arab countries picked up the Arab culture is because they were actually conquered by the Arab armies and were forced to accept the culture

Merchants. The Indonesians did a lot of trading with Arab merchants (primarily from Oman) and they brought the new faith to Indonesia. I guess some settled in Indonesia and educated the locals on the tenets of Islam.

http://www.seasite.niu.edu/crossroads/russell/islam.htm