The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions

by Karen Armstrong

When Muhammad received his first revelations, in about 610 CE, many of the Arabs had become convinced that Allah, the High God of their pantheon,*8 was identical with the God of the Jews and Christians. Indeed, Christian Arabs often made the hajj pilgrimage to the Kabah, commonly regarded as Allah’s shrine in Mecca, alongside the pagans. One of the first things that Muhammad asked his converts to do was to pray facing Jerusalem, the city of the Jews and Christians whose God they were now going to worship. No Jews or Christians were required—or even invited—to join the new Arab religion unless they particularly wished to do so, because they had received valid revelations of their own. In the Qur’an, God told the Muslims that they must treat the ahl al-kitab, “people of an earlier revelation,” with respect and courtesy: Do not argue with the followers of earlier revelation otherwise than in the most kindly manner—unless it be such of them as ...

Eventually Muhammad’s religion would be called islam (“surrender”); “Muslims” are men and women who have made an existential surrender of their lives to God. This takes us immediately to the heart of the Axial Age. When Muhammad asked that his converts prostrate themselves in prayer (salat) several times a day, this was hard for the Arabs, who did not approve of monarchy and found it degrading to grovel on the ground like slaves. But the posture of their bodies was designed to teach them at a level deeper than the rational what islam required: transcendence of the ego, which prances, preens, and postures and continually draws attention to itself.

Muslims were also required to give a regular proportion of their income to the poor. This zakat (“purification”) would purge their hearts of habitual selfishness. At first, it seems, the religion of Muhammad was called tazakkah, an obscure word (related to zakat) that is difficult to translate: “refinement,” “generosity,” and “chivalry” have all been suggested as English equivalents, but none is entirely adequate. By tazakkah, Muslims were to cloak themselves in the virtues of compassion and generosity. They must use their intelligence to cultivate a caring and responsible spirit, which made them want to give graciously of what they had to all God’s creatures.

In the context of pagan Arabia, where the blood tie was the most sacred value, this amounted to blasphemy. It was unheard of to leave your kin and take up permanent residence with a tribe to whom you were not related.

In pre-Islamic Arabia, warriors were merciless. If they had managed to conquer the Muslim community, the Meccans would certainly have exterminated every man, and enslaved every woman and child. During this dark time, some of the revelations of the Qur’an instructed Muslims about conduct on the battlefield. Islam was not a religion of ahimsa, but the Qur’an permitted only defensive warfare. It condemned war as “an awesome evil,” and forbade Muslims to initiate hostilities.70 Aggression was strictly prohibited; there must be no preemptive strikes. But sometimes it was regrettably necessary to fight in order to preserve decent values.71 It was permissible to defend yourself if you were attacked, and while the war lasted, Muslims must fight wholeheartedly, pursuing the enemy vigorously in order to bring things back to normal. But the second the enemy sued for peace, hostilities must cease, and Muslims must accept any terms that were offered.72 War was not the best way of dealing with conflict. It was better to sit down and reason with the enemy, as long as arguments were conducted “in the most kindly manner.” It was much better to forgive, and be forbearing, “since God is with those who are patient in adversity.”

Muslims were forbidden to fight except in self-defense; retaliation must be strictly proportionate; it was not permitted to make war on a country where Muslims were able to practice their religion freely; civilian deaths must be avoided; no trees could be cut down; and buildings must not be burned.

But as soon as the balance shifted in his favor, Muhammad cut the destructive cycle of strike and counterstrike, and pursued an astonishingly daring nonviolent policy.

But during the homeward journey, Muhammad received a revelation from God, who called this apparent defeat a “manifest victory.”74 While the Meccans, inspired by the violence of the old religion, had “harboured a stubborn disdain in their hearts,” God had sent down the “gift of inner peace [sakinah]” upon the Muslims, so that they had been able to respond to their enemies with calm serenity.75 They were distinguished by total surrender to God, and this separated them from the pagan Meccans and linked them with what we would call the religions of the Axial Age.

The spirit of peace, said the Qur’an, was their link with the Torah and the gospel: “They are like a seed that brings forth its shoot, and then he strengthens it so that it grows stout, and in the end stands firm upon its stem, delighting the sowers.”

In every single one of the religions of the Axial Age, individuals have failed to measure up to their high ideals. In all these faiths, people have fallen prey to exclusivity, cruelty, superstition, and even atrocity. But at their core, the Axial faiths share an ideal of sympathy, respect, and universal concern.

The Axial sages put the abandonment of selfishness and the spirituality of compassion at the top of their agenda. For them, religion was the Golden Rule. They concentrated on what people were supposed to transcend from—their greed, egotism, hatred, and violence.

All the world religions have seen the eruption of this type of militant piety. As a result, some people have concluded either that religion itself is inescapably violent or that violence and intolerance are endemic to a particular tradition. But the story of the Axial Age shows that in fact the opposite is the case. Every single one of these faiths began in principled and visceral recoil from the unprecedented violence of their time.

The Axial Age began in India when the ritual reformers started to extract the conflict and aggression from the sacrificial contest. Israel’s Axial Age began in earnest after the destruction of Jerusalem and the enforced deportation of the exiles to Babylonia, where the priestly writers started to evolve an ideal of reconciliation and ahimsa. China’s Axial Age developed during the Warring States period, when Confucians, Mohists, and Daoists all found ways to counteract widespread lawless, lethal aggression. In Greece, where violence was institutionalized by the polis, despite some notable contributions to the Axial ideal—especially in the realm of tragedy—there was ultimately no religious transformation.

It is not difficult to find a religious justification for killing. If seen in isolation from the tradition as a whole, individual texts in, for example, the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, or the Qur’an can easily be used to sanction immoral violence and cruelty.

What should be our response? The Axial sages give us two important pieces of advice. First, there must be self-criticism. Instead of simply lambasting the “other side,” people must examine their own behavior. The Jewish prophets gave a particularly strong lead here. At a time when Israel and Judah were threatened by the imperial powers, Amos, Hosea, and Jeremiah all told them to scrutinize their own conduct.

The Indian doctrine of karma insisted that all our deeds have long-lasting consequences; blaming others without examining how our own failings might have contributed to a disastrous situation was “unskillful,” unrealistic, and irreligious. So too in our current predicament, the Axial sages would probably tell us, reformation must start at home.

We cannot hope to reform others until we have reformed ourselves. Secularists, who reject religion, should also look for signs of secular fundamentalism, which is often as stridently bigoted about religion as some forms of religion are about secularism.

In its own brief history, secularism has also had its disasters: Hitler, Stalin, and Saddam Hussein show that a militant exclusion of religion from public policy can be as lethal as any pious crusade.

Second, we should follow the example of the Axial sages and take practical, effective action. When they confronted aggression in their own traditions, they did not pretend that it was not there but worked vigorously to change their religion, rewriting and reorganizing their rituals and scrip...