Early social changes under Islam

A number of historians stated that changes in areas such as social security, family structure, slavery and the rights of women improved on what was present in existing Arab society.

[1][2][3][4][5][6] For example, according to Bernard Lewis, Islam "from the first denounced aristocratic privilege, rejected hierarchy, and adopted a formula of the career open to the talents".

[1][7] Bernard Lewis believes that the advent of Islam was a revolution which only partially succeeded due to tensions between the new religion and very old societies that the Muslims conquered.

John Esposito sees Muhammad as a reformer who condemned practices of the pagan Arabs such as female infanticide, exploitation of the poor, usury, murder, false contracts, fornication, adultery, and theft.

[12] He states that Muhammad's "insistence that each person was personally accountable not to tribal customary law but to an overriding divine law shook the very foundations of Arabian society... Muhammad proclaimed a sweeping program of religious and social reform that affected religious belief and practices, business contracts and practices, male-female and family relations".

[17] Though the belief that pre-Islamic Arabs regularly practised female infanticide has become common among both Muslims and Western writers, few surviving sources are referencing the practice before Islam.

[18] Among ṣaḥīḥ Muslim sources, there are some individual named as having partaken in, observed, or intervened in cases of infanticide, such as Zayd ibn Amr, as stated in a hadith narrated by Asma bint Ab.

[24] Other writers, on the contrary, have argued that women's status in pre-Islamic Arabia was poor, citing practices of female infanticide, unlimited polygyny, patrilineal marriage and others.

[24] Valentine Moghadam analyzes the situation of women from a Marxist theoretical framework and argues that the position of women is mostly influenced by the extent of urbanization, industrialization, polarization and political ploys of the state managers rather than culture or intrinsic properties of Islam; Islam, Moghadam argues, is neither more nor less patriarchal than other world religions especially Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, and Judaism.

Legally controlled polygamy was an important advance on the various loosely defined arrangements which had previously been both possible and current; it was only by this provision (backed up by severe punishment for adultery), that the family, the core of any sedentary society could be placed on a firm footing.

([Quran 4:3])[12] The institution of marriage, characterized by unquestioned male superiority in the pre-Islamic law of status, was redefined and changed into one in which the woman was somewhat of an interested partner.

'For example, the dowry, previously regarded as a bride-price paid to the father, became a nuptial gift retained by the wife as part of her personal property'[12][27] Under Islamic law, marriage was no longer viewed as a "status" but rather as a "contract".

[12][27][29] According to a hadith collected by Al-Tirmidhi, "And indeed I order you to be good to the women, for they are but captives with you over whom you have no power than that, except if they come with manifest Fahishah (evil behaviour).

"[12] Similarly, Annemarie Schimmel wrote that "Compared to the pre-Islamic position of women, Islamic legislation meant an enormous progress; the woman has the right, at least according to the letter of the law, to administer the wealth she has brought into the family or has earned by her own work.

"[33] Leila Ahmed argues that examples of women inheriting from male relatives in pre-Islamic Mecca and other Arabian trade cities are recorded in Islamic sources.

[7] According to The Oxford Dictionary of Islam, women were also granted the right to live in the matrimonial home and receive financial maintenance during marriage and a waiting period following the death and divorce.

However, he states that Muhammad, in the historical context of his time, can be seen as a figure who testified on behalf of women's rights and improved things considerably.

[34] While the art historian Jonathan Bloom believes that the Qur'an does not require women to wear veils, stating that instead, it was a social habit picked up with the expansion of Islam,[35] the vast majority of Islamic scholars disagree,[36] interpreting the Qur'anic verses 24:31[Quran 24:31] and 33:59[Quran 33:59] as requiring female modest dress, including a veil covering the head.

[41] A. Giladi holds that Quran's rejection of the idea of children as their fathers' property was a Judeo-Christian influence and was a response to the challenge of structural changes in tribal society.

"[41] Sociologist Robert N. Bellah (Beyond Belief) argues that Islam in its 7th-century origins was, for its time and place, "remarkably modern...in the high degree of commitment, involvement, and participation expected from the rank-and-file members of the community".

Dale Eickelman writes that Bellah suggests "the early Islamic community placed a particular value on individuals, as opposed to collective or group responsibility".

[43] The Islamic idea of community (that of ummah), established by Muhammad, is flexible in social, religious, and political terms and includes a diversity of Muslims who share a general sense of common cause and consensus concerning beliefs and individual and communal actions.

According to Kelsay, this challenge was directed against these main characteristics of pre-Islamic Arabia:[45] These changes lay in the reorientation of society as regards to identity, world view, and the hierarchy of values.

Muhammad approved and exhorted certain aspects of the Arab pre-Islamic tradition, such as the care for one's near kin, for widows, orphans, and others in need and for the establishment of justice.

[45] Although Muhammad's preaching produced a "radical change in moral values based on the sanctions of the new religion, and fear of God and of the Last Judgment", the pre-Islamic tribal practices of the Arabs by no means completely died out.

The Qur'an told that the guidance comes to a community that regulates its flow of money and goods in the right direction (from top down) and practices generosity as reciprocation for God's bounty.

[55] According to Francis Edward Peters: The conquests destroyed little: what they did suppress were imperial rivalries and sectarian bloodletting among the newly subjected population.

In Palestine the Samaritans, according to tradition, gave such effective aid to the Arab invaders that they were for some time exempted from certain taxes, and there are many other reports in the early chronicles of local Jewish and Christian assistance.However, contemporary records of the conquests paint a more ambiguous picture.

[57] Writing around the same time in Mesopotamia, John bar Penkaye describes the Arab conquest as a bloody campaign involving severe destruction and widespread slavery, followed by famine and plague, which he interprets as divine punishment upon his people.

The author describes rebellions and civil wars breaking out not long after the conquest, demonstrating that "imperial rivalries" were not ended with the arrival of the Arab armies.