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
Islam: The Untold Story "exotic" option of interviewing a Bedouin, and that although he had consulted Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr – "a token Muslim voice" – Nasr was a scholar of Islamic philosophy and not Islamic history. Asserting that "Islam: The Untold Story" was based on poor scholarship by assuming the superiority of secular Western historical inquiry over Islamic historical traditions, she argued that it would promote negative views of "an already poorly-understood faith and its much-maligned adherents." Abdullah al-Andalusi of the Muslim Debate Initiative sums "Islam: the Untold Story" as "a missed opportunity to transcend an outdated Besserwissen approach to comparative religion, and