Islam

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Islam

• The Basics of a religion and a culture

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Basic Info.

• Islam is a monotheistic religion based upon the
  Qur'an (Koran), which adherents believe was sent
  by God (Arabic Allah) through Muhammad
• Followers of Islam, known as Muslims believe
  Muhammad to have been God's final prophet

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The tale of the tape

• Like Judaism and Christianity, Islam is
  considered an Abrahamic religion. (deriving from
  a common ancient Semitic tradition and traced by
  their adherents to Abraham a patriarch whose life
  is narrated in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament )
• With a total of approximately 1.4 billion
  adherents,
• Islam is the second-largest religion in the
  world.
• The majority of Muslims are not Arabs (only 20
  percent of Muslims originate from Arab
  countries).
• At current rates, Islam will soon become the
  second largest religion in the United States,
  and it is already the second largest faith in the
  UK.

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Simple History

• Secular historians place Islam's beginnings
  during the late 7th century in Arabia.
• Under the leadership of Muhammad and his
  successors, Islam rapidly spread by religious
  conversion and military conquest.
• Today, followers of Islam may be found throughout
  the world, particularly in the Middle East, North
  Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia.

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Early Islamic history

• Islamic history begins in Arabia in the 7th
  century with the emergence of Muhammad.
• Within a century of his death, an Islamic state
  stretched from the Atlantic ocean in the west to
  central Asia in the east, which, however, was
  soon torn by civil wars
• After this, there would always be rival dynasties
  claiming the caliphate, or leadership of the
  Muslim world, and many Islamic states or empires
  offering only token obedience to an increasingly
  powerless caliph.
• Nonetheless, the later empires of the Abbasid
  caliphs and the Seljuk Turks were among the
  largest and most powerful in the world
• After the disastrous defeat of the Byzantines at
  the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, Christian Europe
  launched a series of Crusades and for a time
  captured Jerusalem. Saladin, however, recaptured
  Palestine
• From the 14th to the 17th centuries, one of the
  most important Muslim territories was the Mali
  Empire, whose capital was Timbuktu.
• In the 18th century, there were three great
  Muslim empires the Ottoman in Turkey, the Middle
  East, and the Mediterranean the Safavid in Iran
  and the Mogul in India.
• By the 19th century, these realms had fallen
  under the sway of European political and economic
  power, due to European industrialism and
  colonialism.
• Following WWI, the remnants of the Ottoman
  empire were parceled out as European
  protectorates or spheres of influence.
• Islam and Islamic political power have revived
  in the 20th century. However, the relationship
  between the West and the Islamic world remains
  uneasy

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Beliefs

• Muslims believe that God revealed his direct word
  for humanity to Muhammad (c. 570632) through the
  angel Gabriel and earlier prophets, including
  Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus.
• Muslims believe that Muhammad is the last
  prophet,
• Muslims assert that the main written record of
  revelation to humanity is the Qur'an, which is
  flawless, immutable, and which Muslims believe is
  the final revelation of God to humanity.
• Muslims hold that Islam is the same belief as
  that of all the messengers sent by God to
  humanity since Adam, with the Qur'an, the text
  used by all sects of the Muslim faith, codifying
  the final revelation of God.
• Islamic texts depict Judaism and Christianity as
  prophetic successor traditions to the teachings
  of Abraham.

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The Five Pillars of Islam

• The Testimony of Faith (Shahadah) - the
  declaration that there is none worthy of worship
  except Allah (ArabicGod) and that Muhammadis His
  last messenger.
• Ritual Prayer (Salat) - establishing of the five
  daily Prayers.
• Obligatory (religious) almsgiving (Zakat) - which
  is generally 2.5 of the total savings for a rich
  man working in trade or industry, and 10 or 20
  of the annual produce for agriculturists. This
  money or produce is distributed among the poor.
• Fasting (Ramadan) - refraining from eating,
  drinking or engaging in sexual intercourse from
  dawn to sunset during the month of Ramadan, the
  ninth month in the Islamic lunar calendar.
• The Pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj) - this is done
  during the month of Zul Hijjah, and is compulsory
  once in a lifetime for one who has the ability to
  do it. If the Muslim is in ill health or in debt,
  he or she is not required to perform Hajj

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Jihad as the sixth pillar of Islam?

• A few Muslims, mainly belonging to the community
  of the Khawarij, hold that there is a sixth
  pillar of Islam, jihad literally meaning
  "struggle" or "endeavor", often understood to
  refer to holy war.
• This is viewed by many as a misinterpretation,
  especially in the sense of conversion by sword
  however, if the English use of "war" is meant
  spiritually/metaphysically (such as being "at
  war" with one's conscience), as opposed to
  literal armed conflict, it is considered to be
  the most precise and accurate translation.
• While jihad is widely considered a duty of
  Muslims, it is not specifically outlined as a
  pillar of Islam in either tradition or the
  Qur'an.
• Modern interpretations of Jihad have contributed
  to the phenomenon of Islamic terrorism and
  particularly suicide bombers. Adherents are known
  as Jihadists or Jihadiis and have been involved
  in a number of spectacular mass murder events

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The Quran (Koran)

• The Qur'an is considered by Muslims to be the
  literal, undistorted word of God, and is the
  central religious text of Islam.
• Muslims believe that the Qur'an was revealed to
  the prophet Muhammad by God through the Angel
  Gabriel on numerous occasions between the years
  610 and up till his death in 632. In addition to
  memorizing his revelations, his followers had
  written them down on parchments, stones, and
  leaves, to preserve the revelation.
• Muslims believe that the Qur'an is perfect only
  as revealed in the original Arabic. Translations,
  they maintain, are the result of human effort,
  and are deficient because of differences in human
  languages, because of the human fallibility of
  translators, and (not least) because any
  translation lacks the inspired content found in
  the original.

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Islamic Law -- Sharia

• The Sharia (Arabic for "well-trodden path") is
  Islamic law, as shown by traditional Islamic
  scholarship. The Qur'an is the foremost source of
  Islamic jurisprudence.
• Islamic law covers all aspects of life, from the
  broad topics of governance and foreign relations
  all the way down to issues of daily living
• Islamic laws that were covered expressly in the
  Quran were referred to as hudud laws and include
  specifically the five crimes of theft, highway
  robbery, intoxication, adultery and falsely
  accusing another of adultery, each of which has a
  prescribed "hadd" punishment that cannot be
  forgone or mitigated.
• The Qur'an also details laws of inheritance,
  marriage, restitution for injuries and murder, as
  well as rules for fasting, charity, and prayer.
• However, the prescriptions and prohibitions may
  be broad, so how they are applied in practice
  varies.

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Denominations

• There are a number of Islamic religious
  denominations, each of which have significant
  theological and legal differences from each other
  but possess similar essential beliefs.
• The major schools of thought are Sunni and Shi'a
  (Shiites)
• Sufism is generally considered to be a mystical
  inflection of Islam rather than a distinct
  school.
• According to most sources, present estimates
  indicate that approximately 85 of the world's
  Muslims are Sunni and approximately 15 are
  Shi'a.

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Sunni Muslims

• The Sunni are the largest group in Islam.
• In Arabic, as-Sunnah literally means principle or
  path.
• Sunnis and Shi'a believe that Muhammad is a
  perfect example to follow, and that they must
  imitate the words and acts of Muhammad as
  accurately as possible

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Shia (Shiites)

• Shi'a Muslims, the second-largest branch, differ
  from the Sunni in rejecting the authority of the
  first three caliphs.
• They honor different accounts of Muhammad and
  have their own legal traditions.
• Shi'a scholars have a larger authority than Sunni
  scholars and have greater room for
  interpretation.
• Shi'a Muslims hold that leadership should not be
  passed down through a system such as the
  caliphate, but rather, descendants of Muhammad
  should be given this right as Imams.

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Sufism

• Sufism is a spiritual practice followed by both
  Sunni and Shi'a.
• Sufis generally feel that following Islamic law
  or jurisprudence is only the first step on the
  path to perfect submission they focus on the
  internal or more spiritual aspects of Islam, such
  as perfecting one's faith and fighting one's own
  ego.

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Islam and other religions

• The Qur'an contains both injunctions to respect
  other religions, and to fight and subdue
  unbelievers during war.
• Some Muslims have respected Jews and Christians
  as fellow people of the book (monotheists
  following Abrahamic religions), while others have
  reviled them as having abandoned monotheism and
  corrupted their scriptures.
• At different times and places, Islamic
  communities have been both intolerant and
  tolerant. Support can be found in the Qur'an for
  both attitudes
• The classical Islamic solution was a limited
  tolerance Jews and Christians were to be
  allowed to privately practice their faith and
  follow their own family law. They were called
  dhimmis and paid a special tax
• The medieval Islamic state was often more
  tolerant than many other states of the time which
  insisted on complete conformity to a state
  religion.