I believe that the Constitution of Medina greatly emphasizes the importance of unity among the Islamic community (known as the umma). In this document, Muhammad creates laws for the citizens in Yathrib that will protect the Muslims as well as their faith. However, it is clear that it will take a strong community effort in order for Islam and its followers to flourish. Muhammad says that muslims must not let others spread evil among the umma and that "the hand of every man shall be against him" who attempts to do so. If a muslim is wronged or killed, other muslims are expected to "avenge the blood of one another" as well. I think that these types of laws stress how important each member of the umma is and explain that everyone's cooperation is needed. Another important idea presented by Muhammad is that all muslims and jewish tribes mentioned in the document must protect one another. Even though they have different faiths, they must fight together as one in order to fend off large enemies such as the Quraysh tribe of Mecca. Without this type of alliance, it seems doubtful whether or not the Islamic faith would have survived it's enemies attacks.
Did other people think that the "Constitution" stressed the importance of unity? Are there other facets of the document that seem important that I forgot to discuss?
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I definitely think that the Constitution of Medina stresses the concept of unity. They even include the Jewish tribes, showing that they are culturally aware of the times they are in, and are accepting, even though the Jews do not believe the same things that they do. I think the constitution is a unique piece of literature in the ideas that it tries to stress and the messages its trying to send. I think unity among Muslims was extremely important at this time, and this piece stresses that.
I think the Constitution also stressed the importance of unity. Even among the Jewish tribes the Muslims are supposed to let the Jews do what they want as long as they believe in the oneness of god, or a tawhid. I also thought it kind of strange that Muslims are not allowed to befriend a non-believer of God. Not only not be friends with them at all, but ignore them completely. I would think that Muslims would try to take these non-believers and convert them into the Islam religion.
This Constitution reminds me of any other Constitution like the Ten Commandments or even the Constitution of the United States. It tells people acceptable and non-acceptable actions. It tells people to protect their home front (Medina) and it unites people to fight off attackers. This Constitution a very important document to the Muslims and the Jews alike. It brings peace to both religions.
The Constitution shows a obvious idea of unity, as both posters have commented before. The community is accepting to the Jewish tribes but also says that if they do not follow/help the Muslim customs then they would be punished. It seems as though the Muslim community is very welcoming to any type of person/religion. Also, it explains that believers are protected from violence, everyone is a part of something and they do things as a whole.
I agree that the Constitution of Medina emphasizes the idea of unity. I think that it expressed the acceptance of Jewish tribes into this community. Even though they did not follow the same religion, they shared the belief of One God. In addition, I noticed the Medina Constitution gave peaceful guidelines for resolving the disputes with the tribes. It was clear from the text that they were not trying to forcefully convert the tribes to their religion or culture, but wanted to accept them into their umma.
Again, I agree with the unity concept.. Also, I realized that the phrase "loyalty is a protection against treachery" is used three times in the text... I would say that loyalty is stressed as well.
As for Sarah Ihn's comment concerning Islam believers converting non-believers... Speaking from personal experience, I have never been approached by a Muslim to "consider" the Islam religion, or see if Allah is right for me. I have never seen an Imam on television preaching the word of God. I have never had a Muslim leave a pamphlet on my door concerning Islam... I wonder, is it the religion itself or is it because of the US' 'situation'? Does the media's misconception of Islam and the stereo-type of the Muslim woman affect this lack of outreach? After all, I don't think that I could...
I believe it was Malcolm X who once said that Islam was the only religion that did not see color... I think this is also a great example of unity within the Muslim community, umma.
I have to agree with the concept of the Constitution showing and trying to promote unity among Muslims. I think a large part of the idea behind the unity is because of the time period that this was happening in. With all of the waring tribes and conflicts taking place, if the (at this time) relatively small number of Muslims that there were did not stick together and form a unity or cohesive unit than they would have been destroyed and the religion would have been lost to much larger more powerful influence s at the time.
I agree that the Consitution of Medina stressed the idea of unity. The mention of the Jewish tribes believing in the oneness of God (tawhid) shows this idea. I agree that this constitution is similar to the Ten commandments, in the way that it states what is acceptable and what is wrong. It also stresses the importance of non violence, which is important.
The concept of unity in The Constitution of Medina is the main point trying to be made. By accepting the Jewish tribes shows that the islam religion is not biased. It also I think lets the reader's ponder on the islam religion being accepting to not only Jewish tribes but others as well. By focusing on unity I think the constitution is a set of rules to form this community no matter what the background is.
One thing that i believe that the Muslims at this time were trying to achieve was unity. I really believe that the Constitution of Medina was trying to achieve this. They wanted to also accept the Jewish tribes. This was because they wanted to create more of their Umma. This is also seen as the Muslims being very accepting of all peoples.
I agree with Nick K. I believe that the Constitution of Medina had a lot to do with the time period, what was going on in the area, and the state of Islam. If they didnt form the umma and band together they would be alot more vunerable to attacks. They also accepted the Jewish tribes because they were trying to establish peace with them and form a sort of alliance.
Unity is definitely the main concept for The Constitution of Medina. I think that is what a constitution should do for a community. A community should have something that they can fall back on when conflict arises within ones community. I think this constitution truly solidifies the true meaning of Umma because this constitution branches to the whole community and even farther. As Sarah Ihns said in her blog, "Even among the Jewish tribes the Muslims are supposed to let the Jews do what they want as long as they believe in the oneness of god, or a tawhid." In one part of the constitution though, it was hard for me to believe that God would allow a revengeful act to take place against someone when they did something wrong to you. I thought they should try to prevent further altercations. I think it was just a good idea to come up with a written constitution so early in the game for Muslims because once you have your framework, you can start expanding.
I definetely agree that the constitution emphasizes the importance of unity and the fact that this is a real belief, and even though fairly new, people across many miles practice and base their lives around it. Since I am a Catholic and come from a very practicing family, I can easily relate it through my personal experiences. When I was reading the Constitution I thought of the ten commandments and how they are in some ways alike. They both base the purpose around rules, boundaries, and acceptable behavior such as nonviolence within the religious community.
Yes I think that the constitution of Medina stresses unity for the simple reason that everyone must stick together and fight for each other. As long as they have the same beliefs and isnt against the muslims. But even in that concept the muslims would try to make the non-believers believers so everyone can have the same beliefs which equals unity.
I think there is a definite stress to unity. They spoke a lot about the Jews being no different from the Muslims, people wise. And how they should be treated the same way. I think it is important to look at that from a modern day stance, there has been major conflict between the Jews and Muslims and it is interesting to see that this document which was written so long ago, pretains to the present day.
The constitution definately stresses unity. I think for the Islamic religion to flourish there needed to be a common factor that joined the various warring tribes. This might be off the subject but I was reading through the book of Joshua from the Old Testament (Bible) and Chapter 20 actually mentions the "city of refuge" that Israelites could go to if something happened to them. When I read this it reminded me of what Pr. Lucas mentioned in Lecture about the constitution and the safety zones set up. I'm curious if this chapter mentioned in Joshua, since it chronologically happened way before the "constitution", if it influenced that idea. I only say that because it seems from lecture that the Arab community had ties with the Jewish community in that region of the world.
The community in medina, before Prophet Mohammad came, there was large conflict between two major tribes, moreover there was some negative attributes such as discriminations based on color, origin, wealth and so on, so when prophet Mohammad came, he directly started to destroy the discrimination and start to build the brotherhood between all people, all people are leveled so the poor people are brother of the wealth, the white people brother of black, it does not matter from where is your origin. The only thing is matter that everybody is one unit and should feel for each other, and help each other.
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