The contentious issues at the reformations were the authority of the Pope. The authority and accessibility of scripture and the precise meaning of the Eucharist (the ritual of sharing bread and wine to represent Christ's body and blood, as he did with his disciples the night before his death) The protestant churches rejected the supremacy of the Pope, emphasis was placed on the authority of the bible and the tradition of early church. A believer they said could be saved by the grace of God. Also, they believed on the priesthood of all believers. (BBC World Service, London WC2 B4PH, UK. - www.bbc.co.uk) (Ref. X)

Christians believed that Jesus Christ was (is) the Son of God who came to earth as a man to restore the relationship between humans and God, which had, gone wrong. Also they believed that God reveals himself in three forms, father, Son, and Holy Spirit. However these three forms are regarded as a unity, sharing one substance. At the time of Jesus birth the Jewish people were hoping for the coming (arrival) of the Messiah.

His followers however, came to realize that he was not the predicted Messiah and the Jews continued to expect the coming of the Messiah. In Hebrew Messiah means the anointed one, and the Messianic hope is that God will send a deliverer, an anointed one, who will liberate the faithful and establish an age of peace and righteousness (Ref 5: page 49 1)

While the schism and difference continued to exist between different religions of the world, and before the split and reforming movement began among Christians, a new prophecy took place in the lands of Middle East in 610 AD and a new religion was founded, grew and began to be divided into many branches.

It was the emergence of Mohammed and his proclamation as a messenger of God and presentation of the verses of Quran as messages of God. The religion of Islam became more than a system of belief for Moslems. The faith provided a social and legal system and governed things like family life, law and order, ethics, dress and cleanliness as well as religious ritual and observance. Moslems were guided to follow God's will by the holy book the Quran, which they regarded as the unaltered words of God.

Mohammed was not only a religious leader, but a political leader as well. This established a close relationship between religion and politics and helped to ensure the rapid spread of faith and its influence on the complete way of life in many countries (BBC world Service, (Ref. X)

It was when Muhammad was aged forty (i.e. in AD 610) that the first revelation came to him. Muhammad himself has related that, one day, while he was meditating on Mount Hira, near Mecca, as was his custom, the Angel Gabriel appeared to him and instructed him three times to read. Then the Sura of al-Alaq was revealed: 'recite in the name of thy Lord who created; created man of congealed blood.

Muhammad fled in terror at this revelation, but his wife Khadija comforted him and became the first believer. His cousin 'Ali who was only nine or ten years old at the time became the second to believe and Zavd, the other member of his household, was next. The first from outside Mohammed's household to believe was Abu Bakr. A number of others also gathered around Muhammad at this time although the details of how these earliest of his followers became believers are not, for the most part available.

Then after about four years came the moment when Muhammad made a public announcement of his mission. Once at a gathering of his own clan of the Hashim family and once at a general meeting of Meccans on Mount Safa. Muhammad proclaimed his mission and called on the people to abandon idolatry and to worship the one true God. This public announcement aroused the fiercest opposition from the Meccan notables, for any abandonment of idol-worship threatened the position of the Kaba as the foremost center of idol-worship in Arabia which in turn meant the destruction of Mecca as a commercial center. Mohammed's followers at this stage were mostly young men of no influence in the community. Some were members of powerful clans but could exert no influence because of their youth. Others were slaves. All of the Meccan nobility combined against the new Prophet and only the protection of Abu Talib (who stood by his nephew on account of kinship and not because he was a believer) saved Muhammad from death while several of his followers endured the cruelest tortures and many faced abuse and insults.

At this earliest stage, Muhammad appears to have taught a very simple religious doctrine: that there is only one God who has sent Muhammad as His messenger to mankind; that idol-worship is prohibited as are various other practices such as the burying alive of baby daughters; and that man must purify his thoughts and actions in preparation for the Day of Judgment.

So harsh did the persecution became that in 615 Muhammad ordered a group of his followers to migrate to Ethiopia and seek there the protection of its Christian King. The Quraysh leaders even sent emissaries to Ethiopia to try to persuade the King to return the refugees but the King refused. (Ref IV: 3)

Mohammed had to struggle within the relatives and tribes in order to protect his life and provide support to enable him to gain power for guidance of the people. It was through slow but steady progression that Mohammed could attract the people who pledged that they would refrain from idolatry, murder of their off springs, adultery, theft and calumny and would obey the prophet. In an occasion some forty of the Meccan notables gathered in the council chamber of the town and decided that Muhammad must be killed, that night however, Muhammad slipped away from the town with Abu Bakr and hid in a near by cave.

Ali slept that night in the Prophet's bed in order to fool the assassins who were keeping watch. In the morning, the attackers were furious when they discovered that their prey had evaded them and, for a time, 'Ali's life was in danger. Despite a thorough search for him and the placing of a reward upon his head, Muhammad slipped through the net of the Meccans and reached Yathrib, which was henceforward called Madinat anNabi, the City of the Prophet, or just Medina for short. This move of the Prophet from Mecca to Medina signaled the turnabout in his fortunes. That year, AD 622, the year of the Hijra (Hegira) or Emigration, is the starting point of the Islamic calendar.

When Muhammad first arrived in Medina, his followers were still a minority among the inhabitants but Muhammad himself had been invited there as an arbitrator between the feuding tribes of Aws and Khazzraj and therefore his personal prestige was high. His role in the first few years of his presence in Medina was mainly a political one. He was a builder of bridges between the rival factions in the town. In the first year, he set up a confederation of all the groups who lived in Medina. This alliance involved a commitment to fight together against outside enemies, not to make a separate peace with the enemy and not to give refuge to anyone who had committed a crime or an act of aggression or had stirred up dissension. The treaty of alliance made the city of Medina a sanctuary and Muhammad the arbitrator in any disagreements. The Jewish tribes of Medina were included in the alliance with full right.

In order to strengthen ties between his own followers, Muhammad caused each of those who had come with him from Mecca, the Muhajirin (the emigrants), to adopt one of his followers in Medina, the Ansar (the helpers), as blood brothers.

The next few years Muhammad engaged in two conflicts, an external conflict with Meccans and an internal conflict with his opponents within Medina. Both groups of opponents were working to destroy the Medina Confederation and bring Mohammed's power to an end. After many small skirmishes and three major battles (Badr-Mount Uhud-Medina), Mohammed was able to return to Mecca with large army in triumph in 630 AD.

The following year, the ninth year of the Hegira, is known as the 'year of Delegations' for it was in that year that deputation's came from all over Arabia tendering their submission to Muhammad. From Yemen in the south and Bahrain in the east they came. It must have been especially pleasing to Muhammad to see the submission of the town of Ta'if that had rejected him so contemptuously years before. To each of these places Muhammad sent one of his close disciples to teach them Islam. Even the Christian tribes of the north came to acknowledge Mohammed's suzerainty and to pay the poll-tax which Islam decreed for non-Muslim subjects.

Shortly after his return to Medina, in the summer of 632, Muhammad fell ill, and after a few weeks of ill health he died. During the Meccan phase of his ministry, Muhammad taught a very simple religious ethic centered on the need to put aside idol-worship and turn to the one true God. Later in Medina these teachings were expanded. Three fundamental tenets remained at the core of the religion:

Belief in one God and rejection of all idols;
Belief in Muhammad as the messenger of God;
Belief in the Day of Judgment.
But to these were added a number of obligatory ritual observances:
Obligatory Prayer, five times a day;
Fasting for the month of Ramadan;
Paying of alms;
Pilgrimage to the Kaba;
Jihad, or Holy War against idolaters.

To these were added a number of laws regulating social transactions such as marriage, divorce, inheritance, etc. as well as a moral and ethical code enjoining chastity, honesty, tolerance, forgiveness, etc. These in brief were the teachings enshrined in the Quran and promulgated by Muhammad. They were to become the foundations of the Islamic community.

The major social achievement of Mohammed's ministry was the welding together of a hundred or more disparate and feuding tribes into one nation, a union that overrode the ties of kinship and the enmity of blood feuds. So united was this people that the might of neither Byzantium nor Persia could stand before it. So powerful was the imetus given to this nation by Islam that within one generation it had conquered territory stretching from Tunisia to the borders of India and within a few generations this backward and primitive people became the center civilization in the Western world and remained thus for almost four hundred years. (Ref. IV: 8)

As to Mohammed's personal life, he led a simple existence. Although by the end of his life he was a powerful and rich ruler, he contented himself with plain clothing, simple food and austere surroundings. His judgment was renowned both in dealing with his adversaries and in settling disputes between individuals and clans. In his political dealings he never used force where negotiations would suffice nor did he initiate aggression but only moved against those who had already demonstrated their hostile intentions. He was a gentleman, to whom the sight of human suffering caused sorrow and pain and he would grieve if ever his followers went beyond what was immediately necessary in the process of fighting and killing. The few executions that were carried out on his orders were of men who had continually striven to undermine his positions over a long period of time despite many warnings or who had professed Islam and then betrayed their fellow believers. To other enemies he was often magnanimous in victory to such an extent that his own followers sometimes complained that he treated his enemies better than he treated his followers.

The fact that Muhammad took more than a dozen wives has at times occasioned critical comment in the West. But a number of facts should be realized in connection with this. Muhammad at first took only one wife, Khadija, and he was happy with her and took no other wife until she died after twenty-five years of marriage. Muhammad himself was fifty years of age by this time. It should not be imagined that Mohammed's later marriages were out of sexual desire. They were contracted mostly for political or humanitarian reasons. These later wives were either widows of followers of his who had been killed in battle and had been left without a protector, or they belonged to important families or clans whom it was necessary to honor in order to strengthen alliances. Many were of advanced years and only one had not been married previously - 'A'isha, the daughter of his close companion, Abu Bakr, whom the prophet wished to honor. Indeed, that his later marriages were not due to a voluptuous nature is indicated by the fact that although his first wife, Khadija, bore a total of eight children, only one more child was born to Muhammad after Khadija's death.

After the death of the Prophet, an ad hoc assembly of Muslims chose Abu Bakr to be the leader of the Islamic community, the Khalifa (Caliph). Abu Bakr's Caliphate only lasted two years (AD 632-634) during which the most important event was the suppression of a revolt of many Arab tribes who had apostasies from Islam immediately upon the Prophet's death.

Abu Bakr appointed as his successor 'Umar, During 'Umar's Caliphate (AD 63~44) the Muslim armies achieved the most remarkable victories against both the Persian and Byzantine Empires. The succession to Umar was decided by a council of six, appointed by the Caliph. This council made 'Uthman of the Umayya family caliph. 'Uthman ruled for twelve years (AD 644-656) but became very unpopular toward the end of his life. He was assassinated in 656 and 'Ali was acclaimed Caliph. But Mu'awiya of the Umayya family rose in revolt. 'Ali's assassination in 661 paved the way for Mu'awiya to become Caliph. (4: 16)

Mu'awiya moved the capital of the Islamic Empire to Demascus and instituted the Umayyad dynasty. This dynasty held away until AH 132/AD750* with a total of fourteen rulers. They are generally considered by many Muslim historians to have been corrupt, irreligious and treacherous. Only 'Umar II (Ad 717-20) is generally regarded in a favorable light.

The revolt of Abu Muslim in Khurasan overturned the Umayyad dynasty and put into power the 'Abbasid Caliphs, who were descended from the Prophet's uncle al-Abbas (Spain remained in the hands of the Umayyads, however). The Abbasids made Kufa in Iraq their capital, but later in 763 they began the construction of a new capital, Baghdad. The 'Abbasids wielded real power for about 150 years but thereafter came increasingly under the control of their Turkish mercenaries and then under the power of a succession of dynasties that controlled Baghdad, the seat of the Caliphate.

The Islamic lands were split up with different dynasties controlling the various parts. For a brief period, one ruler might control a large part of the Islamic lands but only with the rise of the Ottoman Empire and the conquests of Selim the Grim in the early 16'h century did most of the Islamic lands (excluding Iran, India and Central Asia) come under a lengthy period of stable unified rule. The Ottoman Empire was broken up at the end of the First World War and the Ottoman Caliphate terminated in 1924.