The Mahdi Times May 2014 Issue | Page 47

His image too was thus ‘corrected’ like the European Christians did with Jesus giving us the ‘white’ or ‘tanned’ complexion Prophet of Makka so adored by most of the Muslim world today. These religious converts and economic migrants became known as Mawali. Mawali or mawālá (Arabic: ‫ )موالي‬is a term in Classical Arabic used to address non-Arab Muslims. The term gained prominence in the centuries following the early Arab Muslim conquests in the 7th century, as many non-Arabs such as Persians, Turks , Kurds and other Indo-Aryans converted to Islam. These converts were treated as second class citizens by the ruling Dark skinned kinky haired Arab elite - they continued to pay the tax required of nonbelievers and were excluded from government and the military until the end of the Umayyad Caliphate. Therefore, many of them were drawn to the anti-Umayyad activities of the Kaysanites Shia who were based in the Persian s хѕ̀