Chapter 2: The Rise of Islam and the Making of the Modern Middle East

Throughout the centuries, the descendants of Ishmael, Esau and Lot largely settled in the lands surrounding the Holy Land—particularly Arabia, northern Africa, the Levant (the area along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea) and Mesopotamia.

Since most of Ishmael’s offspring inhabited the vast desert region of the Arabian Peninsula, they became known as Arabs. Over the years, they developed the Arabic language, which has many linguistic similarities to Hebrew.

Though many of the Arabs were Ishmaelites, the descendants of other peoples of the region mixed with them and also became known as Arabs. As we have already noted, this included some descendants of Esau, one of whose wives was Ishmael’s daughter (Genesis 36:1, 8, 19).

Among the Arab peoples are also the descendants of Abraham’s nephew Lot, the father of the Moabites and Ammonites (modern-day Jordan). 

It’s also likely that some of the descendants of the various Canaanite tribes, who were in continual conflict with Israel, integrated with the Arabs. 

The Arabs before Islam—divided and weak

Throughout ancient times, the Arabs united into various kingdoms in Arabia—including the Sabaeans, the Minaeans, the Nabataeans, the Palmyrenes, the Ghassanids and the Itureans.

However, these were all regional kingdoms and could not unite all Arabs under their banner or challenge the more dominant empires of antiquity. They were all relatively short-lived.  

Ishmael’s descendants spent long periods in relative historic obscurity. Many Arabs in Arabia became nomadic Bedouins, surviving the harsh desert by raising camels and trading. For centuries, they were largely overshadowed by the far more powerful civilizations to their north, including the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire and the Sasanian (Persian) Empire. 

The Arabs were nearly all pagan polytheists, worshipping various gods associated with geographic features or heavenly bodies. 

Prominent gods of the Arabic pantheon included Hubal (associated with the moon), Allat, Al-Uzza and Manat. The people feared spirits that roamed the deserts called jinn. 

Though the hundreds of Arab tribes worshipped different gods, they shared a central sanctuary in Mecca known as the Kaaba. This structure housed 360 idols representing the gods of the various Arabian tribes. Many Arabs would make an annual pilgrimage to pay homage to their gods in this structure. 

For centuries, the polytheism of the Arabs kept them divided into tribes and prevented them from coalescing into a united Arab civilization. This kept the Arabs perpetually weaker than the civilizations to their north that were united under the banner of monotheistic religions. 

Before the seventh century, the notion of Ishmael’s descendants uniting into a formidable force capable of dominating the Middle East and northern Africa or of threatening Western civilization would have been inconceivable.

That all changed because of one man.

Muhammad and the birth of Islam

Muhammad was born into the Quraysh tribe in Mecca in around A.D. 570. He was born into an era that had recently seen the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, which left western and central Europe divided between the warring kingdoms of the Frankish and Germanic tribes. 

Following the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the center of Christendom shifted to Constantinople, located in modern-day Turkey, under the rule of the Byzantine Empire. Emperor Justinian had expanded the empire south into the Levant and northern Africa, bringing Catholic civilization to the edges of the Arabian Peninsula.

To the east of the Byzantine Empire was the vast Sasanian Empire, centered in Persia. It dominated Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf and extended into central Asia. 

Muhammad’s parents died when he was young, which led his uncle to adopt him as a boy. He spent his first 25 years shepherding his uncle’s flocks before becoming a merchant. At 25, he married an older wealthy merchant named Khadija. This enabled him to travel in caravans throughout the Middle East, bringing him into contact with people of various cultures and exposing him to the beliefs and practices of Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism.

This exposure led Muhammad to learn about other belief systems and consider the core reasons his people, the Arabs, remained relatively weak and fractured. Whereas the Arabs worshipped hundreds of gods that kept them divided into tribes with no central belief system, he saw how the monotheistic religions achieved unity and purpose through belief in a single God and a holy text.

Being married to a wealthy wife gave Muhammad time to ponder these philosophical and religious issues. 

He began taking journeys to a secluded mountain and cave outside Mecca to think and meditate. During these times of seclusion, beginning when he was 40 years old, Muhammad claimed to have seen visions and revelations from the angel Gabriel. He would claim to receive angelic revelations for the remainder of his life. 

He began sharing the messages that he maintained he had received during these visions with his family and friends, persuading some that he was a prophet of God. Since Muhammad was illiterate, these verbal messages were later recorded by his followers and compiled into the book known as the Koran (also spelled Quran), from the Arabic word meaning “the thing that is recited.”

His followers arranged Muhammad’s messages in order from shortest to longest and divided them into chapters, called suras. 

Through these messages, Muhammad taught that there was only one true God, and his name was Allah. This simple message, summarized in the Arabic phrase la ‘ilaha illa Allah (“there is no god but Allah”), ultimately inspired a new world religion that would change history. 

That religion became known as Islam (Arabic for “submission” or “surrender”). Adherents to this faith became known as Muslims (Arabic for “one who submits”). 

Muhammad’s teachings

Muhammad taught that Allah was the same God worshipped by the Jews and Christians. However, he asserted that those religions had corrupted Allah’s name and teachings over time.

Muhammad portrayed himself as Allah’s final prophet—the last in a string of prophets going back to Abraham and including Jesus of Nazareth. He criticized his people for their polytheism, idolatry and superstitions.

His teachings included stories and concepts drawn from the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, though modified to place the Arabs at the center of those narratives. Muhammad taught that the Old and New Testaments were also revelations of Allah but that the Jews and Christians had corrupted them. He claimed his revelations corrected those errors.

Muhammad, acknowledging the descent of his people from Ishmael, taught that Ishmael, rather than Isaac, was the true son of promise. He claimed Abraham and Ishmael had traveled to Mecca and together built (or rebuilt) the Kaaba—establishing Mecca as the center of Allah’s true religion.

Muhammad taught that Jesus was a Muslim prophet of Allah, but was not the Son of God and did not die for sins. Instead, Muhammad claimed that Jesus was saved from the Jews by Allah taking Him to heaven.

Muhammad embraces the sword

While Muhammad gradually gained a small following in his hometown of Mecca, his condemnation of idolatry made him increasingly unpopular with the establishment in Mecca.

In A.D. 622, Muhammad and his small band of followers fled north to Yathrib (later renamed Medina) for fear of his life. This journey became known as the Hegira (Arabic for “migration” or “journey”). To this day, the Hijrah marks year one on the Muslim calendar—the beginning of the Muslim era.

Medina’s people rapidly accepted Muhammad’s teachings, and he became the city’s political, judicial and spiritual leader. Muhammad was credited with bringing peace, unity and strength to Medina.

Though most of the Arabs in the city converted to Islam, Muhammad encountered religious opposition from Medina’s Jewish community. Since they rejected his teachings and the idea that he was God’s prophet, the Jews and Muhammad clashed.

Most of Medina’s Jews were eventually expelled or forced to convert on threat of death. This hostility would characterize relations between the Jews and Muslims for over a thousand years and continues into modern times.

Only eight years after fleeing his home, Muhammad returned, leading a powerful army to conquer Mecca.

He quickly entered the Kaaba, cleared it of its hundreds of idols and dedicated it instead to Allah. Under his rule, nearly all of Mecca converted to Islam. By controlling Arabia’s two most significant urban centers, Muhammad quickly conquered and converted most of the Arabian tribes.

By his death in 632, Muhammad had united virtually the entire Arabian Peninsula under the banner of Islam. By gathering the Arabs under one religious banner, Muhammad played an essential role in fulfilling the prophecy that Ishmael’s descendants would be a “great nation” (Genesis 17:20) and be able to fulfill key end-time prophecies.

Islam takes the world by storm

Upon his death, Muhammad’s father-in-law Abu Bakr (632-634) emerged as his successor. After solidifying Islam’s hold over the Arabian tribes through a series of wars, Abu Bakr and his successor Umar I (634-644) took Islam down a path that would forever change history and the world. Instead of remaining just the national religion of the Arab peoples, Islam burst out of Arabia and continued to expand—by the sword.

Over the next 100 years, through a series of bloody battles and military campaigns, the Arabs conquered and converted nations, civilizations and tribes all the way to the doorstep of Europe.

Between 634-642, the Muslims attacked the Byzantine provinces in the Middle East and North Africa, bringing Jerusalem, Syria and Egypt under Muslim domination. The loss of these lands marked the genesis of the historical tension between Catholic and Muslim civilizations. (Four centuries later, Catholic Europe would wage a series of unsuccessful wars known as the Crusades, attempting to reclaim the Holy Land from the Muslims.)

The Muslim forces also invaded the Sasanian Empire of Persia, bringing Mesopotamia and Persia under Muslim rule (633-651).

By 709, just 77 years after Muhammad’s death, Muslims controlled North Africa all the way to the Atlantic Ocean—simultaneously expanding further east into south-central Asia. These wars of the seventh and eighth centuries explain why the modern nations in and around the Middle East are Islamic to this day—including Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco.

Through this forceful expansion, numerous descendants of ancient peoples with historical animosity toward Israel—such as the Edomites, Moabites, Ammonites, Amalekites and Philistines—united with the descendants of Ishmael under the banner of Islam.

The forces of Islam set their sights on Europe

After conquering North Africa, the Muslim forces turned their eyes northward to Europe. In 711 they crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and in a few short years conquered the Iberian Peninsula (Portugal and Spain). The Muslim forces seemed unstoppable, and it seemed European civilization would soon fall to Islam.

With their sights set on western and central Europe, the Muslims invaded Gaul (France) in October 732. Europe was divided into many regional kingdoms, and defeat seemed likely. However, as we will see, it would have been a conflict with biblical prophecy for Europe to become a part of Islamic civilization.

In one of history’s most significant battles, the Muslim armies were thoroughly defeated by the Frankish forces under Charles Martel (Charles “the Hammer”) at the Battle of Tours on Oct. 10, 732.

Charles’ decisive victory halted the Muslim advance, safeguarding Western civilization and preserving Catholicism in Europe. Most of Europe remained religiously Catholic and never fell under the banner of Islam.

Historians credit Charles Martel with saving European civilization. This victory allowed his grandson Charlemagne to unite western Europe under the Germanic Franks. Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor on Dec. 25, 800—reviving the Western Roman Empire 324 years after its fall in 476.

This was the fifth of 10 revivals of the Roman Empire prophesied in the Bible (Daniel 7:7, 24; learn more about this in our articles “Daniel 7: Four Beasts and the Little Horn” and “What Is Babylon?”).

In order for this and other prophecies to be fulfilled, Europe could not fall to Islamic civilization.

Islamic civilization would predominantly populate the region south of Europe into the end times.

The rise of the Ottoman Turks

More than seven centuries later, the forces of Islam would again try to expand into Europe and threaten Western civilization—this time from the east.

The Turks, a Central Asian people who had converted to Islam, had largely settled in Asia Minor (modern Turkey) and began threatening Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire (which came to be known as the Byzantine Empire). Though the Turks first appeared in history in the central Asian steppes during the early centuries of the common era, it seems many of them may have originated from tribes descending from Esau.

One Turkish clan, the Seljuks, emerged as the most powerful Turkish group and coalesced under the leadership of Osman I in the 13th century. The Seljuk Turks became known as the Ottomans. 

In 1453, under the leadership of Mehmed the Conqueror, the Ottomans captured Constantinople, ending the Byzantine Empire and once again establishing Islamic civilization on the doorstep of Europe.

The ancient city, founded over 1,100 years earlier by Constantine the Great, became the capital of the Ottoman Empire and was renamed Istanbul. As a symbol of its triumph over the Orthodox Christianity of Byzantium, the then 900-year-old Hagia Sophia Cathedral was stripped of its Catholic symbols and converted into a mosque.

As an interesting historical sidenote, with the Ottomans now controlling the gates of Asia, Europeans began searching for alternative routes to India and East Asia to avoid passing through hostile Muslim lands.

This motivated the Spanish, who had just expelled the Muslim Moors from their land, to commission a young Cristóbal Colón (Christopher Columbus) to find a new route to Asia via the Atlantic Ocean.

His journey to the New World opened the doors to European expansion and colonization of the Americas—which would eventually lead to greater fulfillment of the birthright blessings that had been promised to Joseph (Genesis 48:19).

From Istanbul, the Ottomans continued their expansion northward into Eastern Europe throughout the late 15th and early 16th centuries—eventually bringing Greece and the Balkans under their dominion, reaching as far north as Hungary.

The Ottomans simultaneously expanded south and east into Egypt, the Levant and Mesopotamia.

The Ottomans tried to expand into central Europe by conquering Vienna, Austria, but were twice defeated and turned back by Europeans.

Though they tried, the forces of Islam were never able to conquer and integrate most of Europe into Islamic civilization. This should not surprise us, since the Bible indicates Europe and the Middle East would remain two separate and often conflicting civilizations into the end time.

The decline of Islamic influence

Over the next three centuries, the Ottoman Empire gradually declined and lost its territory in Eastern Europe through a series of wars with Europeans and Russians. As a result of siding with the Central Powers during World War I, the 400-year-old Ottoman Empire ended after the war and its former Middle East territories were partitioned among the victors.

Many of the former Ottoman territories were carved into the nation-states of today’s Middle East, including Iraq, Lebanon, Kuwait, Syria, Jordan, Turkey and Palestine (later the State of Israel). Because these modern states were created without regard to tribal divisions and the Sunni-Shia divide (see the sidebar “Understanding the Sunni-Shia Divide”), many continue to be plagued by war and terrorism to this day.

This fact was violently brought to the surface again when the fall of Saddam Hussein’s Sunni government in Iraq led to bloody Sunni-Shia fighting and the rise of the Sunni Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Interestingly, the Ottomans did not totally enforce Islam on everyone under their dominion and allowed Orthodox Christianity to continue. This permitted European culture to survive in Eastern Europe, but left a culture in this region that is very different from that of western and central Europe. The aftermath of Ottoman rule has been religious and ethnic conflict, border and land disputes, and economic struggles.

Despite Islam’s attempts to subjugate western and central Europe, it was never able to do so and has largely remained dominant in the lands south and east of the Mediterranean Sea.

As we have seen, the tension and rivalry between European and Islamic civilizations have deep roots that go back more than 1,000 years. This rivalry continues, and the belief that Islam must ultimately triumph over the world is still deeply embedded in Muslim thought. 

Ancient tensions continue today

Today, Islam represents the world’s second-largest religion, accounting for around 24 percent of the world’s population.

After the Ottomans were driven back from Vienna, Islamic civilization did not pose a serious threat to Europe for centuries.

With the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1922, the 1,200-year period of Muslim growth and expansion seemingly ended. Islamic civilization returned to its historic homelands and was largely consumed with internal struggles and conflicts over the next seven decades. 

It wouldn’t pose a serious threat to the West for nearly 100 years, when a group of Islamic extremists from Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terror network launched the deadly Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., which killed nearly 3,000 people in one day.

With those attacks, the sons of Ishmael continued their age-old struggle with the sons of Isaac. This tension between these two branches of Abraham’s offspring dominates headlines and global concerns today.

As we will see in the next chapter, end-time prophecy reveals that this conflict will continue, as will the historical tension between Islamic and European civilizations. This ancient animosity will ultimately help plunge the entire world into war.

The deep biblical and historical roots we have just covered help us understand our modern world and what lies ahead.

Sidebar: The Five Pillars of Islam

These five pillars represent the five basic practices expected of all Muslims.

  1. The declaration of faith. The Muslim faith is summarized in this basic profession (called the shahada): “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is His messenger.” 

  2. Daily prayers. Muslims are expected to recite prayers, called salat, five times a day. This is to be done on one’s knees facing toward the city of Mecca. 

  3. Alms. Muslims are expected to share their wealth with less fortunate Muslims through alms, also called zakat. 

  4. Fasting during Ramadan. During the sacred month of Ramadan, Muslims are expected to fast during the daylight hours, from dawn to dusk. 

  5. Pilgrimage to Mecca. At least once in their life, able-bodied Muslims are expected to take a pilgrimage, called the hajj, to the holy sites of Mecca.

Sidebar: Islam: A Religion of Peace and Violence?

Muhammad’s focus was on uniting his Arab kinsmen under the banner of one God (Allah) and one religion (Islam). His approach to achieving that goal was not always by peaceful persuasion.

Though his earlier Meccan ministry was largely peaceful, his messages became increasingly violent after he relocated to Medina. Muhammad would go on to spread his faith through the sword, and he waged several violent battles against both Arabs and Jews.

Due to this shift, the Koran contains earlier passages emphasizing peace and later passages emphasizing bloodshed against non-Muslims. To this day, moderate Muslims tend to emphasize his earlier messages, while radical Muslims tend to emphasize his violent messages, believing the later passages abrogate the earlier ones.

This precedent of violence, coupled with Koranic verses sanctioning bloodshed against non-Muslims, led Islam down a path that has often included horrific brutality.

In the Koran and in Muslim culture, this belief in waging “holy war” to advance Islam and destroy its perceived enemies became known as jihad (Arabic for “striving”). This is why parts of the Muslim community have been prone to violent radicalization and terrorism throughout history.

Modern acts of war and terror—including the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001; ISIS’s brutality against its enemies; and the Hamas attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023—were all carried out and justified by the Islamic idea of jihad.

Sidebar: Islam and the Holy Land

Jerusalem is considered the third-holiest city in Islam. 

Since Muhammad’s history was largely confined to Arabia, particularly the cities of Mecca and Medina, how did Jerusalem become significant to Muslims?

Muhammad believed that his work was a continuation of the work of the prophets of Judaism and Christianity. The Koran refers to Jews and Christians as “people of the book.” Though he thought their holy books contained many errors, he accepted the basics of what they taught.

Since Jerusalem played a key role in biblical history, it was also significant to him and his followers. Muhammad first taught his followers to pray toward Jerusalem. However, after the hijrah, he began teaching his followers to pray toward Mecca instead.

However, the primary connection Muslims make between their faith and Jerusalem is a story found in the Koran’s 17th sura (or chapter). In this section, Muhammad was taken on a night journey from “the Sacred Mosque to the farthest Mosque” (Al Aqsa in Arabic). From there, Muslims believe Muhammad was taken on a tour of heaven.

Though the Koran doesn’t specify where the “farthest Mosque” was located, after Muhammad’s death it became Muslim tradition that this Mosque was located on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem (Al Quds in Arabic). The Hadith, a collection of teachings attributed to Muhammad after his death, is the basis for this connection.

In 637, Muslims captured Jerusalem from the Byzantines and incorporated it into their empire. Upon entering the city, the Muslims visited the Temple Mount, only to find the Christian occupants had made it a trash dump. The Muslims built a small mosque on the south part of the complex (later rebuilt and known today as the Al Aqsa Mosque).

Several decades later they built the much more impressive Dome of the Rock over an outcrop of rock they believed was the site from which Muhammad ascended to heaven on his night journey. This location is also regarded by many Jews as the location where the Holy of Holies stood during the times of the biblical first and second temples.

Historian Karen Armstrong summed up the Dome’s significance: “The Dome of the Rock also had a message for the Jews. It occupied the site of their Temple . . . Now the sons of Ishmael had established themselves on this sacred site” (Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths, p. 240).

The Dome of the Rock was a symbol of Islam’s triumph over Judaism and Christianity.

Jerusalem remained under Muslim control for over four centuries before it was captured by the Catholic Crusaders in 1099. The city was reconquered by Muslim and Catholic forces multiple times.  

Throughout these centuries of Muslim rule, many Arabs settled in the Holy Land and became known as Palestinians. The radical elements among the Palestinians, particularly Hamas, demonstrate violent tactics eerily similar to the ancient Amalekites and Edomites (both descendants of Esau).

In 1948 the Jewish people were permitted to return and the State of Israel was established.

With the return of the Jews to their ancient homeland, a quagmire was created that continues unsolved to this day: How can the divided children of Abraham coexist in the same relatively tiny piece of land?

Sidebar: Understanding the Sunni-Shia Divide

To understand the Muslim world of the Middle East, it is important to understand the Sunni-Shia divide. Though both forms of Islam follow Muhammad and study the Koran, they diverge in some major ways.

The fundamental root of the split arose from the fact that Muhammad never designated a successor or a method for selecting one. After his death in 632, Muhammad’s followers established a new office called the caliph (from the Arabic word khalifah, meaning successor).

At that time, Muhammad’s close friend and father-in-law, Abu Bakr, was able to secure the new office and became the first caliph. Abu Bakr played an enormous role in the development of Islam—consolidating Islamic rule over the Arabian tribes, compiling the Koran and beginning the period of Muslim conquest outside Arabia.

However, his legitimacy was not universally accepted. A minority faction rejected Abu Bakr’s legitimacy and believed Muhammad had designated that his successors were to come from his direct bloodline. They believed that Muhammad had appointed his cousin and son-in-law, Ali ibn Abi Talib (Ali), as the rightful caliph, and that future caliphs should descend from this line. Ali’s followers referred to this line as the imam (Arabic for “one who leads the way”).

This disagreement led to the formation of two factions within Islam:

Sunni. The majority of Muslims came to accept Abu Bakr, believing that the caliphs should be selected by consensus and that the caliphate did not necessarily have to be held by a direct descendant of Muhammad. This majority view became known as Sunni (Arabic for “tradition”).

Shia. A minority of Muslims asserted that Muhammad’s descendants through the lineage of Ali were the legitimate leaders of the Islamic community. This faction became known as Shia (Arabic for “the faction” or “the party of Ali”).

In 680, the divisions between these two factions became more pronounced when one of Ali’s sons, Husayn, was killed by followers of the majority faction. Every year, Shiites commemorate his death as a martyr of Shia Islam. This event solidified the hatred and separation of the two factions.

Over time, other differences emerged in how the two factions practiced Islam, mainly regarding beliefs in the afterlife, how prayer is approached and the practice of self-flagellation. Another major difference is the belief in the coming of a future mahdi (a messiah-like figure who will come and establish a golden age of Islam before the world ends).

Belief in the coming of a future mahdi is central to Shia Islam. Shiites believe that the 12th imam, Muhammad ibn Hasan al–mahdi, was hidden by Allah (becoming “the hidden one”) and will reappear as the mahdi in the end time. While the idea of a future mahdi is present in Sunni Islam, it is not associated with the 12th imam or emphasized to the extent it is by the Shia.

Today, nearly 90 percent of the Muslim world is Sunni. Sunnis represent the majority populations of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Jordan, Afghanistan, Turkey and nearly all African Muslim nations. 

The Muslim nations with majority Shiite populations include Iran, Iraq, Bahrain and Azerbaijan.

Many of the tensions within the Muslim world in the past few decades can be understood only by understanding the Sunni-Shia divide. These tensions include:

It is impossible to fully understand the ongoing divisions and conflicts in the Muslim world without an understanding of the Sunni-Shia divide.

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