Many social changes took place under Islam between 610 and 661, including the period of Muhammad's mission and the rule of his immediate successor(s) who established the Rashidun Caliphate. A number of historians stated that changes in areas such as social security, family structure, slavery and the rights of women improved on what was present in existing Arab society.Watt (1974), p.234Robinson (2004) p.21Esposito (1998), p. 98"Ak̲h̲lāḳ", Encyclopaedia of Islam Online
Bernard Lewis believes that the advent of Islam was a revolution which only partially succeeded due to tensions between the new religion and very old societies that the Muslims conquered. He thinks that one such area of tension was a consequence of what he sees as the egalitarian nature of Islamic doctrine. Islam denounced aristocratic privilege, rejected hierarchy, and adopted a formula of the career open to the talents.Leila Ahmed, Women and the Advent of Islam, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 665-691
Constitution of Medina
The Constitution of Medina, also known as the Charter of Medina, was drafted by Muhammad in 622. It constituted a formal agreement between Muhammad and all of the significant tribes and families of Yathrib (later known as Medina), including Muslims, Jews, and pagans.See: Firestone (1999) p. 118; "Muhammad", Encyclopaedia of Islam OnlineWatt. Muhammad at Medina and R. B. Serjeant "The Constitution of Medina." Islamic Quarterly 8 (1964) p.4. The document was drawn up with the explicit concern of bringing to an end the bitter intertribal fighting between the clans of the Aws (Banu Aus) and Banu Khazraj within Medina. To this effect it instituted a number of rights and responsibilities for the Muslim, Jewish, and pagan communities of Medina bringing them within the fold of one community-the Ummah.R. B. Serjeant, The Sunnah Jami'ah, pacts with the Yathrib Jews, and the Tahrim of Yathrib: Analysis and translation of the documents comprised in the so-called "Constitution of Medina." Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 41, No. 1. 1978), page 4.
The precise dating of the Constitution of Medina remains debated but generally scholars agree it was written shortly after the hijra (622).Watt. Muhammad at Medina. pp. 227-228 Watt argues that the initial agreement was shortly after the hijra and the document was amended at a later date specifically after the battle of Badr. Serjeant argues that the constitution is in fact 8 different treaties which can be dated according to events as they transpired in Medina with the first treaty being written shortly after Muhammad's arrival. R. B. Serjeant. "The Sunnah Jâmi'ah, Pacts with the Yathrib Jews, and the Tahrîm of Yathrib: Analysis and Translation of the Documents Comprised in the so called 'Constitution of Medina'." in The Life of Muhammad: The Formation of the Classical Islamic World: Volume iv. Ed. Uri Rubin. Brookfield: Ashgate, 1998, p. 151 and see same article in BSOAS 41 (1978): 18 ff. See also Caetani. Annali dell'Islam, Volume I. Milano: Hoepli, 1905, p. 393. Julius Wellhausen. Skizzen und Vorabeiten, IV, Berlin: Reimer, 1889, p 82f who argue that the document is a single treaty agreed upon shortly after the hijra. Wellhausen argues that it belongs to the first year of Muhammad's residence in Medina, before the battle of Badr in 2/624. Wellhausen bases this judgement on three considerations; first Muhammad is very diffident about his own position, he accepts the pagan tribes within the Ummah, and maintains the Jewish clans as clients of the Ansars see Wellhausen, Excursus, p. 158. Even Moshe Gil a skeptic of Islamic history argues that it was written within 5 months of Muhammad's arrival in Medina. Moshe Gil. "The Constitution of Medina: A Reconsideration." Israel Oriental Studies 4 (1974): p. 45. It effectively established the first Islamic state. The Constitution established: the security of the community, religious freedoms, the role of Medina as a sacred place (barring all violence and weapons), the security of women, stable tribal relations within Medina, a tax system for supporting the community in time of conflict, parameters for exogenous political alliances, a system for granting protection of individuals, a judicial system for resolving disputes, and also regulated the paying of blood-wite (the payment between families or tribes for the slaying of an individual in lieu of lex talionis).
Social changes
Practices John Esposito sees Muhammad as a reformer who condemned practices of the pagan Arabs such as female infanticide, exploitation of the poor, usury, murder, false contracts, fornication, adultery, and theft. He states that Muhammad's "insistence that each person was personally accountable not to tribal customary law but to an overriding divine law shook the very foundations of Arabian society... Muhammad proclaimed a sweeping program of religious and social reform that affected religious belief and practices, business contracts and practices, male-female and family relations". Esposito holds that the Qur'an's reforms consist of "regulations or moral guidance that limit or redefine rather than prohibit or replace existing practices." He cites slavery and women's status as two examples.
According to some scholars, Muhammad's condemnation of infanticide was the key aspect of his attempts to raise the status of women.Nancy Gallagher, Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures, Infanticide and Abandonment of Female Children A much-cited verse the Qur'an that addresses this practice is: "When the sun shall be darkened when the stars shall be thrown down when the mountains shall be set moving when the pregnant camels shall be neglected when the savage beasts shall be mustered when the seas shall be set boiling, when the souls shall be coupled, when the buried infant (mawudatu) shall be asked for what sin she was slain when the scrolls shall be unrolled...", though a hadith links the term used to the pull-out method.
The true prevalence of gendercide in this time period is uncertain. Donna Lee Bowen writes in Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an that it was "common enough among the pre-Islamic Arabs to be assigned a specific term, "Donna Lee Bowen, Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an, Infanticide Some historians believe it was once common, but had been in steep decline in the decades leading up to Islam, while others believe it occurred with some regularity as a means of birth control among destitute families both before and after Islam.
Though the belief that pre-Islamic Arabs regularly practised female infanticide has become common among both Muslims and Western writers, few surviving sources are referencing the practice before Islam. An inscription in Yemen forbidding the practice, dating to approximately 400 BC, is the sole mention of it in pre-Islamic records. However there's lack of information about that period so nothing can be said with certainty. Among ṣaḥīḥ Muslim sources, there are some individual named as having partaken in, observed, or intervened in cases of infanticide, such as Zayd ibn Amr, as stated in a hadith narrated by Asma bint Ab.
Social security
William Montgomery Watt states that Muhammad was both a social and moral reformer. He asserts that Muhammad created a "new system of social security and a new family structure, both of which were a vast improvement on what went before. By taking what was best in the morality of the nomad and adapting it for settled communities, he established a religious and social framework for the life of many races of men."Watt, W. Montgomery. Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman. Oxford University Press, 1961, pp. 229
Slavery
The Qur'an makes numerous references to slavery (, , ), regulating but thereby also implicitly accepting this already existing institution. Lewis states that Islam brought two major changes to ancient slavery which were to have far-reaching consequences. "One of these was the presumption of freedom; the other, the ban on the enslavement of free persons except in strictly defined circumstances," Lewis continues. The position of the Arabian slave was "enormously improved": the Arabian slave "was now no longer merely a chattel but was also a human being with a certain religious and hence a social status and with certain quasi-legal rights."Bernard Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East, Oxford Univ Press 1994, chapter 1
Lewis states that in Muslim lands slaves had a certain legal status and had obligations as well as rights to the slave owner, an improvement over slavery in the ancient world.Bernard Lewis, (1992), pp. 78-79 Due to these reforms the practice of slavery in the Islamic Empire represented a "vast improvement on that inherited from antiquity, from Rome, and from Byzantium."
Although there are many common features between the institution of slavery in the Qur'an and that of neighbouring cultures, however, the Qur'anic institution had some unique new features. According to Jonathan Brockopp, professor of History and Religious Studies, the idea of using alms for the manumission of slaves appears to be unique to the Qur'an (assuming the traditional interpretation of verses and ). Similarly, the practise of freeing slaves in atonement for certain sins appears to be introduced by the Qur'an. Brockopp adds that: "Other cultures limit a master's right to harm a slave but few exhort masters to treat their slaves kindly, and the placement of slaves in the same category as other weak members of society who deserve protection is unknown outside the Qur'an. The unique contribution of the Qur'an, then, is to be found in its emphasis on the place of slaves in society and society's responsibility toward the slave, perhaps the most progressive legislation on slavery in its time."Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an, Slaves and Slavery
Women's rights
To evaluate the effect of Islam on the status of women, many writers have discussed the status of women in pre-Islamic Arabia, and their findings have been mixed.Turner, Brian S. Islam (). Routledge: 2003, p77-78. Some writers have argued that women before Islam were more liberated, drawing most often on the first marriage of Muhammad and that of Muhammad's parents, but also on other points such as worship of female idols at Mecca. Other writers, on the contrary, have argued that women's status in pre-Islamic Arabia was poor, citing practices of female infanticide, unlimited polygyny, patrilineal marriage and others.
Valentine Moghadam analyzes the situation of women from a Marxist theoretical framework and argues that the position of women is mostly influenced by the extent of urbanization, industrialization, polarization and political ploys of the state managers rather than culture or intrinsic properties of Islam; Islam, Moghadam argues, is neither more nor less patriarchal than other world religions especially Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, and Judaism.Unni Wikan, review of Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the Middle East, American Ethnologist, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Nov. 1995), pp. 1078-1079Valentine M. Moghadam. Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the Middle East. (Lynne Rienner Publishers, USA, 1993) p. 5