Introduction
The Islamic community has been dwelling on a patriarchal familial arrangement since time immemorial, and these cultural norms have influenced their societal behaviors. Perhaps such cultural norms may have come from the ancient kingdom leadership structures that dominated the Muslim creed for several decades. The Umayyad Caliphates were the earliest Muslim conquerors and the developer of the first Muslim dynasty from the period between 661 and 750 AD. The Roman Syria was by then dominated by numerous cultures of various origins.
The Umayyad designed and led a Muslim empire that grew rapidly through their mercantile approach that enabled them to consolidate the Islamic rule. Several societal and communal factors influenced the relationship between the Umayyad and their enemies. The war between the Umayyad and their neighbors involved a continuum of contributing factors that included religious variations, cultural differences, political divisions, and other lifestyle matters. This paper analyses cultural, religious, political and lifestyle differences between the Umayyad and the people they conquered.
Cultural issues during the Umayyad Regime
Perhaps the greatest contributor of the stalemates between the Umayyad and other empires was the cultural differences that the Umayyad Caliphates considered a leadership and progress threat in the Muslim community in the Roman Syria. The Umayyad came from a powerful Arab clan known as the Quraysh confederacy that was rich and frequently used to oppose the leadership of Muhammad that dwelled in the conformist patriarchal leadership techniques.
The Umayyad leaders also refrained from the practice of embracing the principle of communal respect and dignity for all members of the society, regardless of their economic status, religion, or cultural background. The Umayyad members fought against several cultural norms of the ancient Muslim community ranging from the patriarchal leadership, unframed legal units, the unstable economic frameworks, and the non-Muslim kindness. Moreover, the Umayyad leaders advocated for explicit Muslimism of a modern nature and Arabic culture, the formation of stable financial structures to support their economy, stable legal frameworks, and unanimity towards the egalitarian leadership succession system.
War against the Non-Muslim Arab Culture
The evolution of the Umayyad Empire witnessed a spate of cultural differences that influenced the stale relationship experienced between the conquerors and the conquered borderers. The Umayyad regime of the Umayyad Caliphates was a young group of Caliphs, but very powerful in a military war, which determined their conquest against the Muhammad regime. Culture was an influential factor in their differences because of the multicultural society that dominated Roman Syria. The Umayyad Caliphates who were of the Arabic origin had dominated the leadership with their cultural norms that they enforced on other minority tribes located within their borders.
Umayyad Caliphates were of the Arabic culture and practiced the Arabic Muslim, which they considered as the divine and legitimate culture in Syria. The tribal Arab leaders propagated the civilization of the Arab cultures that often remained distinguished as the Arabian acculturation. The powerful Umayyad Caliphates considered the other religiously converted Muslims as the second-hand Muslims who changed their religion, not from their own intrinsic obsession, but due to political coercion.
Generally, tribe factor has been of great influence in the culture of the people as it normally associates with certain cultural norms of individuals. The main characteristic of the Umayyad Caliphates was their Arabic cultural nature that permeated and controlled the leadership of the Umayyad Islamic Empire. The Umayyad recognized the increasing concentration of the non-Arab Muslims, Christians, and Hindus, who posed a threat to the leadership of the Umayyad because of their communication differences.
In the Islamic leadership of the Umayyad regime, communication was an important aspect that determined smooth governance across the Islamic dominated territories. The Umayyad Caliphates wanted to make the Arabic language as a communication tool that would foster an easy communication within the Umayyad-controlled territories. To enable the a smooth communication between the government structures and an easy fight against the non-Muslim individuals who posed a leadership threat to the cohesion of the Islamic Arabs, the Umayyad Caliphates made the Arabic language the official communication language. The conquered communities and religions consequently abided to the Arabic culture.
Fighting the Patriarchal Leadership Culture
From both the Islamic creed and the non-Islamic creed, the Umayyad Caliphates and their empire fought against several cultures that had mushroomed and settled around the ancient Roman Syria. Serious wars began when Prophet Mohammed died and left the leadership powers to the father-in-law Abu Bakr, who wanted to renovate the Muslim leadership with a different cultural practice. The Umayyad family had for several occasions fought against the leadership of Prophet Mohammad, who was the initiator and inciter of the patriarchal form of leadership within the Muslim community before 660AD.
Mohammad named successors from his family to maintain the patriarchal order. The family groups of Medina and Mecca were the two dominant families who formed the earliest leadership that ascribed to the cultural practice designed in the order of patriarchal caliphs. Although Ali Mohammed and Abu Bakr from the Medina and Mecca families continuously instigated the patriarchal form of leadership, a small group of Umayyad people that served in the government remained opposed to this leadership system.
Prior to the death of Prophet Mohammed and loss of the powerful influence of the Mecca and Medina families that advocated for patriarchal Caliphs, the Umayyad steadily rose to the leadership of the Muslim community. The Umayyad formed a series of rebellious strategies with an intention of devastating the successors of Prophet Mohammed, and most predominantly fought against the patriarchal leadership structures.
The Umayyad people and their leaders were of secular and worldly nature and their interest in the Muslim leadership failed to recognize the essence of religious principles and ethics. What inspired the Umayyad Caliphates most was the government and leadership arrangement that followed the earlier norms of the patriarchal leadership that Prophet Mohammed had instigated. The Umayyad leaders lamented about the continued leadership succession that dwelled on the principles of familial succession. Such government arrangements forced the Umayyad Caliphates to utilize their affluence and brilliance to accumulate political power through their trained mercenaries who never cared about the Islamic dogma.
The Arab-Islamic Culture of Art and Architecture
The Umayyad realized that the conformist Islamic culture was impeding innovation among the young, talented youngsters who wished to explore their life skills in the art and architecture industry. However, the Persians who were opponents of the Umayyad regime were highly suave in poetry, art, and architecture and their language had a domineering factor in the Roman Syria. The Umayyad Empire comprised of the dominant Arab leaders who wanted to increase the dominance of Islamic Arabs from communication to all forms of communal activities.
Persians were contemptuous about the leadership of Umayyad Caliphates, who favored the Syrian Arabs and segregated the Persians, the Iberians, the Shiites, the Muslim-converted Mawali, and the Abbasids. The Umayyad leader Mu’awiyya was a brilliant leader and wanted to subdue the Persian influence through dominating their poetic activities and culture. Most of the Umayyad leaders advocated for a change in the articulation of government documents and encouraged the translation of the Persian poetry, treaties, and fables into the Arabic language.
From their efforts of concentrating and expanding their Arab-Islamic culture, the Umayyad Caliphates converted the Persian literature, documents, poetry, and treaties into Arabic. Such efforts paved way for the development of the Arab-Islamic culture of art and architecture as part of the strategy of ensuring the dominance of the Arab culture in the leadership of the Umayyad Islamic Empire. “Arab elite adopted and developed uniquely Islamic versions of Byzantine and Persian administration, art, and architecture, and of Christian and Jewish theology and ascetic practices.”
Such manipulations inspired the Umayyad Caliphates and Arabic allied members to solidify their Arabic language, their Arab-Islamic art, science, mathematics, and architecture. The Arabic symbols and the government emblems were significant in transferring the Arabic virtues from the mainstream Arab community members of the Arab converts. The emblems were also important in stabilizing the growing Arab trade and business activities that most of the Umayyad Caliphates remained interested to undertake. The symbols dominated trademarks, government treaties, and allegories.
Religious Disparities during the Umayyad Era
Since the traditional era, religion has been a powerful tool that often influences the lives of the Muslims socially, politically and economically. Religious tolerance was the greatest influencing factor that contributed to the disagreements between the Umayyad Caliphates and the conquered people. The Umayyad Caliphates cared less about the leadership virtues that based on the Islamic region and the Islamic leadership principles.
The successors of Mohammed and the allies of the leadership of Ali wanted a leadership that purely endorsed the leadership principles established in the Islamic faith. However, religious forces from the Iberian Muslims, the Arab Muslims, the Persian Muslims, and the Iranian Muslims contributed to the leadership and religious overtones that marred the Umayyad Islamic Empire. During this moment, distinguishing the true Muslims, the religious psychopaths, and the Muslim converts was a confronting factor for the Umayyad emperors, who also ignored the religious doctrine. The Umayyad emperors considered the Arabic Muslims as the most devoted Muslims.
Umayyad Dilemma about the True Religion
Another significant problem that arose during the leadership of Emperor Mu’awiyya and the Umayyad Caliphates was the problem of distinguishing the devoted Muslims. Questions arose whether blood, tribe, culture can associate with the religiousness of individuals in the community. The opponents of the Umayyad emperors argued that blood of individuals could not be a determinant of the identity of individuals concerning religion.
The Christians, the Jews, the converted Muslims, the Persian Muslims, and several other non-Arab Muslims faced discrimination from the Umayyad emperor Mu’awiyya. Surprisingly, Mu’awiyya was not a fervent Christian and his irreligious character made him even more discriminating against the non-Arabic Muslims who opposed the Umayyad regime. Amongst Muslims, the non-Arab Muslims, the Christians and the Jews, the questions that continued to arise was that who amongst these believers practiced the true religion. The Mu’awiyya refused to accord with the religious principles that prophet Mohammed practiced and jumbled between the Arab Islamic doctrine and secularism.
The Arab-Islamic Religion Battles
The leadership of the Umayyad Empire under the irreligious Mu’awiyya was adamant to endorse the religious principles that Prophet Muhammad had earlier harmonized. Religious divide was a major concern for the Umayyad leadership regime, especially the clear separation between the mainstream Islamic religions. There were an ongoing inter-tribal disputes between the mainstream Muslim community, which comprised of several Syrian groups of Muslims and the Arab Muslims. The Islamic Arabs remained interested in ensuring that the Arab culture dominated the rest of the Muslim religious practices.
The Umayyad Kingdom remained divided into the Northerners and the Southerners where controversies about the true religion dominated. The Northern Arab-Islamic tribes included the Qays, Qays Aylan, and the Syrians, who made upon the majority rich. The Southern Arabic Muslim tribes were the Qahtan, the Himyar, the Kahlan, the Yemenites, and the Kalb, who comprised of the minority poor. Their stalemate was historical since the two Arab-Islamic communities had a constant rivalry that dated back to several religious battles in the Arabian Peninsula. Identifying the staunch Muslims between the two Umayyad groups was a dilemma.
The Anti-Muslim Battles
Apart from the Umayyad regime proving dangerous to the existence of other Muslim communities from the non-Arab society, the Umayyad Caliphates authoritatively discriminated the non-Muslim communities. The Cordovan Christians, the Jews, the Buddhists, and other minority religions, suffered religious intolerance during the leadership of Mu’awiyya and his successor Ali. There were constant wars between the Christians and the Arab Muslims who considered Muslim the most Godly religion that Christianity. “Many Christians believed that Islam and Christianity were not fundamentally all that different.”
Although converting from Christianity was optional for most of the ancient time under the Umayyad regime, government favoritism towards the Arabic Muslims forced most of the Cordovan Christians to convert to Muslim. However, the Umayyad Caliphates were contemptuous about the idea of converting from Christianity to Muslims predominantly for the basis of receiving recognition and some preferential treatment from the incumbent government. Radical Christians viewed this religious conversion trend as manipulative and reprimanded the Christian-Muslim converts for their conformist ideologies.
Socio-Political Issues
During the Umayyad regime, politics were ever controversial as the Muslims, Muslim converts, Christians and the Jews had divergent opinions about the leadership of Caliphate Mu’awiyya. The Umayyad conquerors were more skillful, wealthier, and more brilliant than their fellow leaders from the Patriarchal caliphs of the Medina community. The Umayyad Caliphates had a unique governance approach that dwelled on the monarchical principles rather than on the religious of tribal leadership.
The Umayyad Caliphs were more dissenting about the traditional form of succession that recognized family leadership, which Prophet Mohammed had upheld. Monarchical government arrangements resulted in serious leadership concerns and prompted the convergence of the non-Arabic Muslims against the leadership of the Umayyad Caliphs. The minority non-Arabic Muslims and other religions feared that their political underrepresentation would make them less privileged when the monarchical leadership takes control over the Umayyad Empire. The Christians, the non-Arab Muslims, and the Jews had varied perceptions in the manner in which leaders should behave politically.
A Monarchical Modern Lifestyle for the Arabs
What aggravated the opponents of the Umayyad Caliphates most was the economic unfairness, since the Umayyad came from the wealthy and powerful Arab clans. The enlightened Muslim and non-Muslim Arabs considered the efforts of the Umayyad Caliphs towards the endorsement of the monarchical structures as political strategies tailored towards destabilizing the other communities. The Umayyad Caliphs were tycoons from wealthy families that practiced business and trade, and their leadership accession could favor the secular traders and merchants without proper consideration of the Islamic leadership virtues.
The monarchical leadership is a form of leadership that allows individuals to have sovereign power to make personal leadership decisions within an empire. The religious fear of the fellow Muslims is that wealth, trade, and affluence would obstruct the doctrines and leadership practices that the Islamic religion endorsed. They feared that military power, war, unfair wealth allocation, and discriminatory politics would dominate the empire and displace the religious leadership ideologies that deemed crucial.
The conquered critics of the Umayyad leadership condemned the Umayyad Caliphates for propagating a monarchical leadership that would probably displace the Islamic rules of accession and succession. The modern form of monarchical leadership in the traditional Syria became a great fear for the Muslim community. They feared that non-Muslims who could manage to become leaders would probably fail to endorse the religious leadership principles, and such problems would amount to an abuse of the Islamic doctrine.
The Muslim fear about the monarchical leadership also involved the upsurge of the non-Muslim religions, which would have the opportunity to ascend to power through the monarchs. A remarkable occasion that demonstrates the plight of the non-Arab Muslims in the leaderships of the Umayyad Caliphs is the split in the Arab tribes into the Northerners and the Southerners. For instance, “the disputes between the Qahtan and the Qays tribes increased during the conquests for economic and political reasons.” More frequently, the Qahtan were prestigious about their Islamic culture in the Southern Kingdom, and such notions made them feel superior against the Qays of the Northern Kingdom.
Governance of Wealth and the Civilized Legal Frameworks
The leadership of the Umayyad Islamic Empire had its greatest interest in sidelining other Muslim and non-Muslim minorities because they considered them religious psychopaths with unstable religious foundations. However, conflicts were inevitable among the Muslim communities and Prophet Mohammad regularly preached about forgiveness and mutual understanding. Communities fought against each other and injustice was rampant among the underprivileged minorities. The Muslim community that dwelled on the principles of Prophet Mohammad believed in the religious ways of bringing peace, solving conflicts, solving territorial wars and handling criminal offenses.
The Umayyad regime was full of modern leadership techniques that raised religious concerns among the Muslims and some non-Muslims. Their first approach towards the monarchical leadership was through imposing the Muslim courts that based on the Arabic principles and fond of favoring the Arab families. The monarchical courts had a tendency of favoring the Arab families in issues that involved family chaos because being of the Arabic blood mattered. The non-Arab Muslims could not tolerate this form of racial favoritism in the courts where they hoped for justice.
Whether the Arabs appeared in the courts as claimants or the defendants, the courts mostly considered the wealth of the individuals and their ability to demonstrate communication fluency in the Arabic language. “High status at court was linked to the ability to speak and write Arabic well and with the knowledge of Arabic literature, in both sacred and secular.” The skills of individuals in writing court letters using the Arabic language never relied on the religious or ethnic affiliation of the communicators.
Understanding and accepting to adopt and use the Arabic language was at the discretion of individuals, but the political, social, and economic factors under the Umayyad emperors forced individuals to abide to the Arabic norms. Such indications meant that individuals would struggle to justify their Arabic lifestyle through communicating in fluent Arabic language. The non-Arab Muslims would often complain about the monarchical courts that the Umayyad emperors instigated to protect their ethnic identity and promote their ethnic norms.
Conclusion
The Islamic history under the Umayyad regime is a long story of religious differences, political intolerances, and ethnic discriminations. The Umayyad conquerors maliciously used their political power, their wealth, military power, and Arabic language influence, to manipulate the non-Arab Muslims who occupied parts of the Umayyad Islamic Empire. The Umayyad Caliphates were irreligious leaders who gave the Islamic religion a little attention just to favor the acculturation process of the non-Muslims into the Arabic Muslim that served with the principles of the Arab-Islamic community. The Umayyad emperors were leaders who wanted to undermine the patriarchal leadership and impose the leadership of individual sovereignty that based on the monarchical leadership principles.
The Umayyad Caliphs fought against their fellow non-Arab Muslims, tortured and sidelined the newly Muslim-converted Christians and Jews, and undermined the religiosity of the converted non-Muslims. The Umayyad Islamic Empire ranks the greatest Muslim empire of the early decades in the Islamic history, but its main leadership intentions were not in favor of a genuine Islamic culture. The major intentions of the Umayyad Caliphates and their regime were to suppress other non-Muslim communities and endorse the Arab-Islamic principles of the majority of the Muslim believers.
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