These movements were driven by Muslims—poor nomads as well as peasants and urban craftsmen—longing to overthrow the feudal order of their times, i.e., the Abbasid, Seljukid, and Ottoman dynasties in the Near East.
Mikhail A. Reisner (Michael von Reusner, 1868–1928), ethnic German historian of law and publicist produced a detailed Marxist analysis of the Koran from the perspective of social studies.
[9] The Koran, Reisner continues, only guarantees the right to property and creates a “World Trade Company of Believers” (mirovaia torgovaia kompaniia veruiushchikh) under God's own leadership.
Many elements in the Koran reflect a merchant's position: the prayers and rituals are not very complex and do not require “spiritual contortions”; the pilgrimage to Mecca (ḥajj) is linked to a trade fair; tithes (zakāt) is restricted to a moderate level, and believers are exhorted not to squander their money; while usury is forbidden, Muslims are encouraged to make moderate profits; and, of course, the Koran emphasizes the importance of oaths, correct measurements, and the faithful return of the deposit.
[10] Reisner explains that mystical elements, which tended to supersede the clear class distinctions, were to enter Islam only much later, mainly stemming from the Persian tradition.
The gradual dissolution of the ancient tribal and clan structures in Muslim Medina must not be ascribed to the religion of Islam but rather to the development of Meccan trade capital, and in general to the transition to private property in slaves, cattle, and other possessions.
“With an eagerness and love for detail that is characteristic for the petty bourgeoisie, the boring, depressing and dull Suras of the Medinan period lay down the regulations for property and inheritance as well as buying and selling”.
The nomads, by contrast, did not play an active role in Beliaev's scenario; after Muhammad's death they easily committed apostasy and had to be forced back to Islam by the first caliph, Abu Bakr.
[15] Valentin Ditiakin [ru], an expert on the history of Marxism, took as his starting point the works of Marx and Engels instead of Islamic tradition, nor Western Oriental studies or even Reisner.
Ditiakin conceded that Marx and Engels had only limited sources at their disposal and never devoted a special study to Islam; nevertheless he believed they came to important insights on this topic.
According to Ditiakin, Engels’ statements led to the apparent contradiction that the uncivilized Bedouins, who were defeated and driven out of their country by foreign invaders, created an “ideological system” that would ultimately rescue Arabia and soon rule over a huge part of the world.
[25] Due to this scarcity and competition, Arab tribes now occupied the oases and towns of the Hijaz, like Mecca and Medina, which had hitherto been inhabited mainly by Jews and other settled populations.
Due to the increased mutual raiding and warfare among cattle-breeders, more and more Arab nomads lost their livestock, settled around these settlements as pauperized and dependant clans, and took on agricultural work to make a living.
The tribal organization, according to Asfendiarov, was not simply a “residue” (perezhitok) of the past that was doomed to vanish, but rather a very functional element necessary for survival in all three economic environments.
Tomara's article in the Ateist special issue of 1930, entitled “The Origin of Islam and Its Class Basis”,[33] points at the role of peasants and agriculture in 7th-century Arabia.
The increasing need to reward peasant supporters led to the expulsion, and later annihilation, of the Jewish clans of Medina, for they held the best arable land in and around the oasis.
Also, “if Islam was the religion of the nomadic cattle-breeders, then Paradise would have been depicted [in the Koran] as infinite steppes of high grass, similar to the way how American Indians imagined their reward in the Hereafter as hunting grounds in prairies with plenty of bisons and other wild animals.”[37] Accordingly, in the War of Apostasy (ridda) after Muhammad's death the Bedouin tribes tried to reclaim the pasture lands they had lost to the poor Medinans and to agriculture.
As both the Sassanid and the Byzantine empire were now in political and economical disarray, the Bedouins found an easy outlet by emigration to Persia, Syria, and Egypt.
After a series of battles the reactionary merchants of Mecca decided to embrace the new religion, because they understood that Islam would provide them with a new instrument for ruling over the Arab tribes.
It is at the hands of these rich merchant families, according to Klimovich, that Islam finally turned from a revolutionary movement into an instrument for oppression and spiritual enslavement of the Muslim masses.
[43] It seems that with his insistence on the “progressive” character of early Islam Klimovich intended to develop a new and specific strategy for anti-Islamic propaganda, one that would pull the carpet from underneath the believers’ feet.
After graduating in 1929 Klimovich returned to his hometown Kazan, where he was a member of the local branch of the League of the Militant Godless (Soiuz Voinstvuiushchikh Bezbozhnikov, SVB).
In Sotsialisticheskoe Stroitel’stvo na Vostoke i Religiia,[45] Klimovich maintained that the Muslim periphery of the Soviet Union was witnessing an ongoing revival of Islam.
Klimovich explained the book's structure, the Koranic image of God, as well as its narratives on the creation of the world, Judgment Day, Paradise, and Hell.
According to Klimovich, no contemporary sources on Muhammad's life have come down to us; the earliest known reports and biographies of the prophet, like that of Ibn Isḥāq/Ibn Hishām, were written by Muslim authors of the mid-8th and 9th centuries.
[54] During the Stalinist Era and the domination of Feudalism theory, Klimovich understood he had to withdraw from his view that Islam had initially been a progressive social protest movement.
As we have seen, Engels remarked that religion was a “fantastic” reflection on life, that Islam was the “reaction of the Bedouins” as well as the “first act of the awakening Arabian national consciousness”, a “return to the old”.
Naumov's review essay attacked Evgenii Beliaev, who had recently published a textbook with Russian translations of Western European Orientalists.
Instead of being separated, he insisted, “the three systems were distinct parts of a unified economy of Arabia in those days, with the trade regions having a dominant role on the basis of their feudal relations”.
Naumov also attacked many other Marxist Orientalists, including Liutsian Klimovich for his view that Islam was a “social revolution” of the “progressive elements of Arabic trade capital”.