This week in the course you will be studying the origins and history of Islam, the third
major monotheistic religion in the West.  Similar to Christianity, Islam is a revealed and
an evangelical religion.  In the case of Islam the revelation was connected with the
prophet Muhammad who originally was a merchant in the city of Mecca on the Arabian
peninsula.  Also similar to Christianity, Islam rapidly expanded to become a world
religion and, much like Christianity, closely connected with a political empire.  

After Muhammad experienced his first revelation about the new religion, there ensued a
lengthy struggle to convince the inhabitants of the city of Mecca to convert.  When that
failed, Muhammad and his close friends fled to the city of Medina, where he
successfully created a new religious community.  Please remember that in the cases of
the early development of each major Western religions, Judaism, Christianity and
Islam, there did not exist any separation of church and state.  Instead government and
religion were closely intertwined (theocracy).  Eventually, just before his death
Muhammad returned to Mecca in triumph. 

In many respects the empire that Islam created in the eight and ninth centuries,
expanding first on the Arabian Peninsula, then the Near East, then North Africa, was
one of the three heirs of the Roman Empire along with Western Europe and the
Byzantine Empire.  The Islamic empire inherited most of the Near East and North Africa
which had formerly been within the confines of Rome.  In addition, Islam inherited much
of the philosophical and intellectual heritage of both the Greeks and Romans and
actually preserved that for the Latin West to rediscover in the late Middle ages.