A little known event in the outside world, the Battle of Badr holds a special significance for Muslims throughout the world. This was the first major battle between the (small) Muslim community and their numerically superior opponents. Literally this battle was a battle for survival not only for the Muslims as a community but for Islam as a religion. The Muslim forces were vastly outnumbered by a ratio of about three to one. Moreover, their opponents, the Quraish were better equipped. All in all, this was a battle that should have gone the other way and the Muslims should have lost. Their victory ensured that Madina - the hub of the burgeoning Muslim community would henceforth be taken seriously as an upcoming power in the Arabian peninsula. From this time onwards, the Muslims were not in a serious danger of being wiped out despite several major struggles within Arabia that still lay in the future.
Why was Badr such a game changer? There have been many battles between embattled communities and a superior foe. Most of them did not result in history changing events. If the outcome had gone in the other direction, in most cases the course of history would have remained unchanged and the world we find ourselves in today would be largely unaffected barring perhaps a few cosmetic changes. What was ultimately so different about Badr?
In a day and age which de-emphasizes religion, a large number of people do not realize the way religion affected our ancestor's thinking and way of life. To a degree, this is still reflected in the Islamic world but elsewhere and even in the Islamic world, religious and non-religious life are viewed as two largely distinct and separate spheres. Most people in Muslim countries today will say that Islam is a complete way of life but this is largely lip service. This was not so in the past when religion played and vital and dynamic role in daily life. Understanding this is the key to understanding why Badr was so important.
As stated above, Badr was the one battle threatened the new religion's survival. Once this challenge was successfully overcome, Islam gained adherents at a steadily increasing rate. By the time the Prophet died, virtually the whole Arabian peninsula had become Muslim. If nothing further had happened, then the subsequent history of the world would have been very different. To understand this, one has to understand not simply political history but also religious history.
Arabia is right next to the Mediterranean Sea. At the time of the Battle of Badr, this area was divided between the Roman and the Persian empires. These two opposing camps were equally matched and for some time now there had essentially been a standoff between them. On the religious front, there was a continuous and steady expansion of Christianity. Till that point, the Arabs had not made any mark on the world scene. So it is not surprising that nobody foresaw the eruption of the Arab armies that was to occur a few years later. What was even less foreseeable was that these same Arab armies would be fighting in the name of a new religion that was to stop the expansion of Christianity in its tracks in the South and East. Thereafter, Christianity would expand to the north and the north-east.
If any Roman or Persian general had actually observed the Battle of Badr, they would probably have laughed at the numbers involved. Yet the repercussions were to be stunning. So lets go back to the question of what could have happened if the Muslims had lost this battle. We can say with a high degree of probability that as a consequence Islam as a religion would have been extinguished. What could be the consequences of that?
The empire that the Arabs established was not just a military one. For a people who were essentially tribal, the Arabs forged an astonishingly cosmopolitan and advanced looking society within an incredibly short period of time. One result of their conquests was that they acquired a large body of knowledge of various sciences. This they preserved. More importantly, this body was translated into Arabic and the work was then extended by Arab scholars. Nor was this the only contribution. The Arab empire also had (relatively) easy access to China and India. Arab rulers actively encouraged the importation and absorption of advanced in various sciences and technologies made by these cultures. So we had the spread of paper making techniques for example or much more importantly the incorporation of the concept of zero into mathematics.
Today, people who want to acquire advanced cutting-edge knowledge try to get admission into various universities in Western countries. At that time, people would try and get admission into various Arab educational institutes for the same purpose. So the Arab Muslim empire not only preserved the ancient knowledge, it extended and transmitted it to a wide range of people who then went back to their countries and set up educational institutes along the same lines. What is the genesis of Oxford and Cambridge? It is to be found in the educational structures that the early Arabs put up. Why did the Arabs do all this? Interestingly enough it was because of Islam. The Koran repeatedly points out to various natural phenomena as evidence of God's power and challenges its readers to study and think about them. The Hadith (collections of sayings of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH)) repeatedly emphasize the importance of education for both men and women. I mentioned above that in earlier times, religion was of extreme importance in the daily lives of people. For the Arabs who conquered Persia and vast swathes of the Roman empire, preserving, extending and spreading knowledge was a religiously sanctioned activity. In the process they forged a dynamic, cosmopolitan society at a time when the Church had a stranglehold on all aspects of Christian life.
If the Battle of Badr had been lost and as a result Islam extinguished, the Arabs would most likely not have ventured out of Arabia at all. If they had, they would not have been a coherent military force like they actually were. The most likely result would have been a three way standoff between Persia, Rome and the Arabs. Let's say that they managed to make the conquests that they actually did. Their empire in the absence of Islam would have been a military one much like the Mongol empire which came later. Over time, the Arabs would have been absorbed into the local culture just like the Mongols were. A new culture incorporating and expanding elements of the existing cultures and adding new ones to create something new and unique would not have arisen. Almost certainly important works by the ancient Greek scholars would have been lost; the Church at that time being intolerant of all knowledge which it did not specifically sanction. The important work that Arab scholars did in preserving, translating, extending and transmitting this knowledge would have not have taken place. Universities would not have been established in Europe at the time that they were and in the shape that they were. Indeed there is a possibility that universities would not have been established in Europe at all. This has a direct impact on the modern world since the great universities of the US are direct descendants of European universities like Oxford.
All the lost knowledge would have had to be re-discovered painstakingly over the centuries. Knowledge builds on the works of earlier generations. Re-discovering work done by the ancients would have pushed the existing state of knowledge by several centuries. This has a direct bearing on technology. Technological advancement rides on the back of pure science. We can build a reliable electricity infrastructure because we know the fundamental properties of electricity. In the absence of this we would not have been able to get consistent electricity.
The Arab influence can also be seen in other spheres. The whole concept of chivalry which played such an important role in medieval Europe and which was later to influence the concept of what being a gentleman entailed was heavily influenced by the Arab concept of chivalry. This in turn was influenced by Islamic doctrine. I would say that the Arabs refined their concept of chivalry after Islam. In the absence of Islam, this whole concept would have been different and would certainly not have influenced European notions of chivalry in the way it did. This means that today our idea of what being a gentleman means would have been very different. There are countless other examples of the many different ways in which Islam and the Arabs influenced the development of the modern world. Without Islam, these developments would have been very different both in scope, scale and timeline.
Before I conclude, there is another point to address that can arise in the reader's mind. Without Islam, the world would not be facing the problem of misdirected Islamic fundamentalism. My response to that is that without Islam, the world today would be in a very different form and in my opinion a much poorer place.
We normally tend to view history as a series of grand events. Empires operating on an epic scale. Clashes that are titanic in nature. Yet in the development of the world, it is often the small, unknown event that effects much greater, more far reaching change. The Battle of Badr is just such an event. If the battle had been lost, Islam would have been extinguished and had that happened, the repercussions would have flowed through time causing some events to not happen, others to happen differently and still others to happen which actually did not occur. The world today would have been a different and almost certainly poorer place not only economically but also culturally.
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