History of the Middle East balance of power in the Muslim world as Egypt once again emerged as a major power. Religion always played a prevalent role in Middle Eastern culture, affecting learning, architecture, and the ebb and flow of cultures. When Muhammad introduced Islam, it jump-started Middle Eastern culture, inspiring achievements in architecture, the revival of old advances in science and technology, and the formation of a distinct way of life. Islam primarily consisted of the five pillars of belief, including confession of faith, the five prayers a day, to fast during the holy month of Ramadan, to pay the tax for charity (the
Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement for the Propagation of Islam (those who depart from the right path) in distinction to disbelief in a basic element of the faith which would have excluded them from the Muslim community ("Ummah"). Muhammad Ali repudiated the idea of declaring the entire Muslim community as disbelievers, a term which, according to him, could not apply to non-Ahmadi Muslims indiscriminately, something which he accused Mahmud Ahmad of doing. Affirming a different typology of disbelief, i.e. that which subsists outside of Islam in contrast to that which does not entail exclusion from it, although Mahmud Ahmad held that Muslims who did not accept Ghulam Ahmad technically fell