Averroes Foundation
	for Faith and Reason in Islam

Solution 8: Scarface

Malik al-Ashtar was a loyal companion to Ali Ibn Abi Talib and served as his commander in several battles. The name "al-Ashtar" (meaning "the torn" or "the cut") referred to a scar in his face his sustained in battle. When Ali became the Steward (Khalifa) of the Muslims, several factions challenged his rule, most potently Muawiya Ibn Abi Sufyan, who was governor of Syria, appointed by Ali's predecessor Umar Ibn Khattab. Battles ensued, but the conflict was not resolved.

When Muawiya sent Amr Ibn al-As to take Egypt from Ali's appointed governor Muhammad Ibn Abu Bakr, Ali sent Malik al-Ashtar for defense. On the way, Malik al-Ashtar was poisoned by Muawiya's agents. After the assassination of Ali, Muawiya became the next ruler of the Muslims, turning the the Muslims into a dynastic empire.

Muhammad Asad, born Leopold Weiss in July 1900 in what was then Austro-Hungarian Lwow in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now Lviv in Ukraine, was a Jew who converted to Islam. An opponent of Zionism, he debated Chaim Weizmann. He befriended King Saud, the founder of Saudi-Arabia, and spent time among the Arab Bedouins and rode with them to Mecca on the back of a camel. Later, he helped form the State of Pakistan and became on of Pakistan's first embassador to the United Nations. Later, he moved to Marocco and wrote The Message of The Quran, arguably the best Quran translation and commentary of its time. He spent his last years in Andalusia, where he is now buried. In Vienna, the place in front of the United Nations building has recently be renamed into Muhammad Asad Square. Asad wrote a memoir "The Road To Mecca", which inspired a documentary about him with the same name.

The Confederacy, consisting of the Meccans and their allies, moved out to attack the Muslims and their allies in Medina. The Muslims and their allies build a trench to defend Medina, which held off the attackers. On the other side of Medina were the initially neutral Banu Qurayza, which the Confederacy tried to persuade to join their course and attack Medina from the other side. At that point, Nuaym Ibn Masud, a respected Arab leader, secretly converted to Islam and visited the Prophet (p) to offer help. Nuaym Ibn Masud then went to the Banu Qurayza and told them to ask for hostages from the Confederacy, as a guarantuee that the Confederacy would not abandon them. Then Nuaym Ibn Masud went to the Confederacy and told them the Banu Qurayza were secretly allied with the Muslims and would ask for hostages to turn them over to the Muslims. This caused a dispute between the Confederacy and the Banu Qurayza which the were unable to resolve. Eventually, the Confederacy gave up and left.

Abdus Salam, a practising Muslim, shared the Nobel Price of Physics 1979 with Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg, two known confessing atheists, for their work on electro-weak interaction. Their work consisted of showing that two interactions previously considered indepedent, the electromagnetic and the weak nuclear interaction, could be described by a unfied theory, the Glashow-Weinberg-Salam theory of electro-weak interaction. GWS theory includes the prediction of two new particles that communicate it, the W and Z bosons, which were discovered subsequently. Later, a unified theory of electro-weak and strong nuclear interaction was added. It is not known how to create a unified theory including the fourth known force, gravitation. While we have a theory of the messenger particle of strong interaction, the gluon, the messenger particle of gravitation, the graviton, is still unknown. Some deny Abdus Salam was Muslim, because he was a member of the Ahmadiyya, who have a different interpretation than other Muslims of what it means that the Prophet (p) was the last messenger of God.

After facing the Meccans in several battles, the Muslims, led by the Prophet (p), dispatched for Mecca to perform the pilgrimage. The Meccans intercepted the Muslims near Mecca and the two parties engaged in negotiations leading to the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah. Muslims reacted with discontent, when the Meccans insisted that the phrase "Muhammad Messenger of God" be replaced with "Muhammad Son of Abdullah", and even more so, when the Prophet (p) agreed that the Muslims would have access to the Kaba not this year, but the year after. Omar Ibn Khattab (who would later become the second caliph) asked Ali Ibn Abi Talib (who would become the fourth caliph), whether the Prophet (p) was not the Messenger of God. The Muslims would only go along with performing their pilgrimage rituals there and then, after the Prophet (p) shaved his head as part of the rituals.

Abu Musa Jabir ibn Hayyan (c. 721 - c. 815), a Persian or Arab Muslim polymath known in Europe as Geber, is the father of modern Chemistry. Ibn Hayyan stressed that doing experiments was a prerequisite to mastery. His main teacher is Ja'far al-Sadiq, the sixth Shia Imam, after whom Twelver Shia are also called Jafari. Much of Ibn Hayyan's writings are so incomprehensible - probably coded - that the term gibberish is speculated to refer to him. Ibn Hayyan is credited with the discovery of the three most important inorganic acids: sulphuric, nitric and hydrochloric acid. He also discovered aqua regia ("royal water"), a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acid, one of the few reagents capable of dissolving gold and other noble metals. This sparked interest in Ibn Hayyan's work, because it was assumed that if gold can be dissolved, it can also be created. A Spanish 13th/14th century alchemist published under the name Geber, hence became known as Pseudo-Geber. Some of Ibn Hayyan's basic procedures and lab equipment are still in use. Today, the inorganic acids discovered by him are widely used industrial commodities, to the extend that their production volume is a good indicator of the industrial strength of a society.

Almost from the time of the Prophet (p), Muslims had been carving away territory from the Byzantine Empire, most recently the Ottoman sultans. The final blow came in 1453, when Ottoman Sultan Mehmet Fatih ("Conquerer") captured the Byzantine capital, Constantinople. The entrance to the Golden Horn, a bay bordering Constantinople to the North, was blocked by a chain. Mehmet Fatih bypassed the chain by moving his ships over land. The Ottomans surprised the Byzantines with the largest cannon of the time. The fall of Constantinople, which was renamed Istanbul, shocked Europe. The largest church of Constantinople, the Hagia Sophia, was turned into a mosque, and inspired Muslims to build mosques with domes, like the Hagia Sophia.

Among the first Muslims, those not protected by high social status faced severe suppression. For their safety, the Prophet (p) sent some hundred of them to Abyssinia to live under the protection of the Christian Najashi (Emperor) of Aksum, Ashama Ibn Abjar, in Abyssinia. The Mekkans did not appreciate this and sent Amr Ibn As to convince the Najashi to surrender his guests. Amr tried to convince the Najashi, that his guests followed a religion different both from Christianity and Makkan Paganism and therefore illegitimate. The Najashi and his court listened to a recitation from Surah Maryam and were touched, and the Najashi declared it a ray of light from the same source as the revelation he knew. Then Amr pointed out that Muslims deny the Christian belief that Jesus is the son of God. To the surprise of his own bishops, the Najashi agreed with the Muslims. Amr had to return empty-handed.