A Historical Perspective

Historically, the now more than fourteen-centuries-year-old Islamic civilization founded in Medina in the first half of the seventh century CE stands on good ground to be considered as the first human civilization to have encountered and integrated into its socio-political order practically every major living religious tradition in the world that survives to this day. Moreover, classical Muslim historiography even added a good number of the minor or smaller religious traditions then in existence to this long list of Islam's cultural encounters with other religions and belief systems. These cultural encounters are made possible thanks to Islam's rapid physical and cultural expansion to the four continents of the world largely through military conquests but by no means confined to them.

Islam's evolving historical presence in the world that extended beyond the birthplace of its first socio-political order in the Arabian Peninsula to reach various continents was either physical or cultural and in some cases both. By physical presence I mean a noticeable existence of Muslim settlements or communities that exhibits their distinctive religious identity, particularly in the way they organize their collective or communal life. Underlying this communal life are beliefs and precepts which they all agree originated from the Quran and the Prophetic tradition (Sunna). And by cultural presence I understand it to mean a presence that is visible at two different levels, one tangible and the other intangible.