Islam plays a huge role in the world today. It is based off of the two main religions of the world, Judaism and Christianity. As a faith, it accepts aspects of both religions, as Christianity was based off of Judaism, and next, with Muhammad came the Islamic religion. Islam recognizes people of both other religions as those "of the book." Muslims, the followers of Islam, make up most of the Middle East. Another name for the Middle East is the Islamic World, because of the prevalence of Islam there. It is a complex region of sorts, which includes such ethnic backgrounds as Arabs, Africans, Turks, Kurds, Asians, and Caucasians as well. It started out in Mecca, and has grown at an exponential rate to all places of the world. It is the fastest growing religion on the globe today.
From the beginning, the Middle East was the meeting place for many different cultures.
English: A green version of http://commons.wikimed...
English: The Muslim population of the world map by...
The distribution of the predominant Islamic madhha...As early as the 600s A.D. Muslims have had an extraordinary influence on these "Old World" civilizations. Because it was a focal point of trade and the like, the Arabs have had a vast impact on the world, as it is today. According to Richard Eaton, "From the perspective of global history, perhaps the most significant theme of early Islam is the evolution of a relatively parochial Arab cult into a world civilization, indeed history's first truly global civilization...At work here were several factors: the emergence of...urban centers that provided foci for the growth of Islamic civilization; the conversion...to Islam; the ability of Muslim culture to absorb, adapt, and transmit culture from neighboring civilizations; and the elaboration of socioreligious institutions that enabled Islamic civilization to...flourish." This idea that the Islamic World is the first real global civilization is a different approach to global history. Eaton's...