Ghanima (Spoils of the War) in Arabic Bedouin Culture and Islamic Religion

Abstract

When religion is born in a society's womb, it adopts that society's norms, culture, and perspective, especially the primitive societies because they strongly abided by the culture, standards, and perspectives. When Islam is born in early Arabic Bedouin society, it adopted many norms, standards, and perspectives of Arabs, including Ghanima which was practiced during the Jahiliyyah (the Age of Ignorance) and later it was adopted by Islam and became part of its legislation. The aim of the current study is to investigate the formulation of the Ghanima concept as the leading factor behind the Islamization of the majority of Arabs. In addition, the research will investigate the intelligence of Prophet Mohammed in dealing with the concept of Ghanima and employing it to enhance his preaching. The study does attempt to study the drawbacks or misconceptions of some people; instead, it concentrates on the psychological factors that led to turning a trivial norm into a religious value. Moreover, the study adopted a socio-historical approach to study the sociological values of the society in which religion is born and to study to what extent society members are committed to religious values that are part of their cultural norms. Furthermore, the study also studied the impact of conscious memories of Arabs on Islam and Ghanima as case study was under scrutiny.