“Allah had helped you at Badr, when ye were a contemptible little force; then fear Allah; thus may ye show your gratitude. When thou didst say unto the believers: Is it not sufficient for you that your Lord should support you with three thousand angels sent down (to your help)?  Nay, but if ye persevere, and keep from evil, and (the enemy) attack you suddenly, your Lord will help you with five thousand angels sweeping on” (Quran 3:123-125).

These verses of the Quran, revealed shortly after Muhammad’s very first victory at Badr, help explain a great deal of the imagery that has perpetuated news channels following the protests in the Middle East.

Be it the Libyan rebels challenging Gadhafi forces with only the most rudimentary weapons at their disposal; protesters in Syria standing up against government tanks armed with nothing more than the rocks in their hands; or other similar displays of courage and conviction in Egypt, and more recently Bahrain, in the face of extraordinary odds and extreme adversity; there is always that phrase Allah Akbar, God is Great, in the air.

It is more than mere bravado. Much like Badr, where around 300 of Muhammad’s believers overcame a far superior army three times their size, there is a strong belief among Muslims that strength of faith alone can strike a mortal blow to the opponent.

While this conviction that God sends his angels in aid of the righteous has more often led to terrorist organizations taking on world superpowers, it is also this very conviction that has proved valuable in mobilizing hundreds of thousands of people into action to topple their own vicious regimes.

However, this is as far as the influence of religion goes. Go back to the very heart of the uprising in Tunisia, and the event which set off this domino effect is most peculiar if put in the context of an Islamic revolution. What sparked off everything was the actions of Mohamed Bouazizi, who on December 17, 2010 set his own body on fire following abuse by policemen and local authorities. Religion played no role in this act, which most Muslim clerics would describe as unforgivable.

This is because while certain mullahs have gone ahead and approved of suicide bombings in the context of Jihad, self-immolation is considered suicide of a different nature. According to Muhammad, “He who commits suicide by throttling shall keep on throttling himself in the Hell Fire (forever) and he who commits suicide by stabbing himself shall keep on stabbing himself in the Hell-Fire” (Bukhari 2:446).

Not only that, uprisings which have Islam at their core are characterized by suicide bombings and attacks on foreigners, non-Muslims, and any other aspect of the community which does not conform to a most stringent interpretation of the religion.

No attacks of this nature played a role in the Middle East revolution. There were no suicide bombings and no attacks on night-clubs, churches or other symbols of ‘Western influence.’ Indeed, foreign journalists, who are often targeted by militant Islamic groups, were heralded as heroes in the context of this revolution for bringing attention to the plight of the people.

Most surprisingly perhaps, there was significant support among the rebels for US military intervention in Libya, which had just in recent history used Islam to justify attacks on the West.

Religion, therefore, may have played a role in giving people faith that their efforts would culminate in a triumph of justice. It didn’t, however, help set off the revolution or dictate the terms and demands of the protesters. The protesters never called for a implementation of Shariah, but rather the focus was on issues relating to tyranny, corruption, poverty, inflation, freedom of speech, and human rights. These were the very problems which sparked off the revolution in the first place.

In a place like the Middle East, where Islam permeates most aspects of Muslim’s lives, it may be hard to isolate people’s actions from religion. It would be thoroughly wrong in this case, however, to place Islam at the heart of this revolution where it served as nothing more than a mere accessory to a struggle in which people fought to get back their freedom and rights.