Islam: Teaching

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Islam Teaching
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The Quran

• The highest authority in Islam
• Gods revelation to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel
• Over 23 years in bits
• Exact reproduction of a heavenly book, the
  mother of all books.
• The authentic Quran is in Arabic only
• All translations are interpretive and therefore a
  distortion of the original.
• Many references and allusions to OT
• Composite text w/o sequence or chronology

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The Quran

• Originally much of the text was committed to
  memory and later reduced to writing.
• It is uncertain how much of the text in writing
  at Muhammad's death.
• No official text at the time of Muhammad's death
• Compilation by Zaid under Abu Bakr
• Collected written and memorized portions.
• Islamic Tradition divinely preserved to every
  letter and punctuation
• Incomplete and imperfect due to forgetting
• Zaids compilation one among a few others none
  imposed as official.

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The Quran

• 19 years after Muhammads death disputes arose
  regarding the correct reading of the Qur'an, as
  other codices were extant at the time.
• Uthman orders every codex but Zaids destroyed to
  obtain uniformity in the text.
• Corrected and rewritten in the original dialect
• Zaids text imposed as official.
• One text no variants?

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Hadith

• Informal sayings, miracle stories, record of the
  Prophets life
• Not revelation
• Compiled during the generations following
  Muhammad's death.
• Prescribes the details of Islamic life and
  practice.
• The goal is to emulate the Prophets lifestyle.

Know that the key to happiness is to follow the
Sunna Mudammads actions and to imitate the
messenger of God in all his coming and going, his
movement and rest, in his way of eating, his
attitude, his sleep and his talk. God has said,
What the messenger has broughtaccept it, and
what he has prohibitedrefrain from it! (597).
That means, you have to sit while putting on
trousers, and to stand when winding a turban, and
to begin with the right foot when putting on
shoes. (Quoted by Geisler and Saleeb, Answering
Islam, 84)
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Sharia

• Islamic Law
• Based primarily on the Quran and the Hadith
• Four schools of Sharia in Sunni Islam
  characterized by how loosely or rigidly the
  Quran and Hadith are interpreted.
• Addresses the totality of religious, political,
  social, domestic and private life.
• Muslims are not totally bound by the Sharia when
  they live or travel outside the Muslim world.
• Breakdown in the last century due to influence of
  Western culture.

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Beliefs

• God
• There is no God but Allah
• Affirms the oneness and uniqueness of God
• The fatherhood of Allah is blasphemous
  suggesting that God engages in sexual activity.
• God is the greatest
• Affirms that God can do anything he wills
• He is far greater than all created beings and
  needs nothing

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Beliefs

• God
• In the name of Allah, the most gracious and the
  most merciful
• Affirms Gods grace and mercy
• If God wills
• Affirms that God predestines everything that
  happens

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Beliefs

• Angels and jinn
• Angels are created from light
• A hierarchy of angels exist between Allah and
  humanity and four archangels including Gabriel
  who revealed the Quran.
• Each person has two angels assigned to him one
  to record good deeds, and the other, bad deeds

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Beliefs

• The jinn are usually evil spirits
• Created from fire
• Led by satan (iblis)
• May possess people
• May tempt, cause physical harm
• Folk Islam
• May be animistic
• Obligations viewed as a means to warding off evil
  spirits

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Beliefs

• Prophets
• Quran mentions 25 prophets, most are biblical
  figures.
• All taught the message that Muhammad taught, but
  the texts of these other prophets is today
  corrupted.
• Each prophet is for a particular age
• Jesus was a prophet to the Jews
• Muhammad is the final prophet of God

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Beliefs

• Regarding Jesus
• The Quran affirms
• His virgin birth (345-47)
• His many miracles (349)
• His ascension (4158)
• The Quran denies that
• He is God (5117)
• He died on the cross (4157)

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Beliefs

• Regarding Jesus
• According to hadith
• Jesus will return, take a wife, and have
  children.
• After forty years of unprecedented peace, he will
  die and be buried alongside Muhammad.
• He will be resurrected with everyone else and
  judged by God.

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Beliefs

• Other Holy Books
• Moses revealed the law (Tawrat), David gave us
  the psalms (Zabur), Jesus left us the gospel
  (Injil), and Muhammad left us recitations
  (Quran)
• The Quran is the latest, final and highest
  authority
• People of the Book

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Beliefs

• Judgment
• One day the trumpet will sound and the living and
  the dead will appear before God.
• Resurrection of all
• The standard for salvation will be
• A sincere submission to Gods will
• More good deeds than bad ones
• God forgives by fiat
• A substitutionary atonement is nonsensical
• Heaven is the reward and hell is the punishment.

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Beliefs

• The Decrees of God
• Allah is sovereign
• All that Allah wills comes to pass
• Whatever Allah does not will does not happen
• Freedom-predestination debates
• Accountability of humanity

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Beliefs

• Heaven Jannat
• A place of unimaginable bliss and wealth
• A garden with trees, fruit, food, wine and sexual
  pleasures
• A place where the desires of faithful Muslims are
  met
• Only those who die as martyrs in jihad are
  certain of heaven including 72 virgins and the
  virility of 100 men.

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Obligations
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Obligations

• Confession, faith or Creed shahadah
• To recite the with conviction There is no God
  but God and Muhammad is his messenger
• Prayer salat
• Perform ritual prayers while facing in the
  direction of Mecca five times a day
• On Fridays, early afternoon prayer should be in
  congregation at a mosque
• Alms zakat
• Each Muslim should give one fortieth of his
  annual income.
• Fasting sawm
• During Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic
  year, the fast begins at dawn and ends at dusk.
  Those engage in heavy labor are excused from
  fasting, as are children, the sick, pregnant,
  menstruating and nursing women. Night is a time
  of eating, drinking, socializing and praying.
• Pilgrimage hajj
• Any able-bodied Muslim who can afford it must,
  once in his life, travel to Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

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Pilgrimage
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Obligations

• Jihad effort or struggle, Holy war
• A sixth pillar?
• Two principle ways jihad can be fulfilled
• The heart The inner personal striving for the
  purification of one's own heart doing battle
  with the devil and overcoming his inducements to
  evil.
• The sword wage war physically against
  unbelievers and enemies of the Islamic faith.
• Islam sanctions war with other nations as a
  defensive measure when the faith is in danger,
  when an Islamic territory is taken over by
  non-Muslim powers.

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Other Terms

• Ummah The worldwide community of Muslims
• Ijma Consensus of opinion among Muslim scholars
  and leaders.
• Imam one who leads congregational worship or
  religious leaders within the Muslim community.
• Isa Jesus

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The Islamist Movement
The main mission for which the Military
Organization is responsible is The overthrow of
the godless regimes and their replacement with an
Islamic regime. Other missions consist of the
following 1. Gathering information about the
enemy, the land, the installations, and the
neighbors. 2. Kidnapping enemy personnel,
documents, secrets, and arms. 3. Assassinating
enemy personnel as well as foreign tourists. 4.
Freeing the brothers who are captured by the
enemy. 5. Spreading rumors and writing
statements that instigate people against the
enemy. 6. Blasting and destroying the places of
amusement, immorality, and sin not a vital
target. 7. Blasting and destroying the embassies
and attacking vital economic centers. 8.
Blasting and destroying bridges leading into and
out of the cities. (The Al Qaeda Manual,
discovered by Manchester, England Metropolitan
Police)

• Advocate violence to combat all things contrary
  to Islam including democracy and secular
  government. Violence is believed to be justified
  in the Quran.
• Global implementation of an Islamic government
  based on Shariah.
• Establish a global Caliphate.

The confrontation that we are calling for with
the apostate regimes does not know Socratic
debates..., Platonic ideals..., nor Aristotelian
diplomacy. But it knows the dialogue of bullets,
the ideals of assassination, bombing, and
destruction, and the diplomacy of the cannon and
machine-gun. Islamic governments have never and
will never be established through peaceful
solutions and cooperative councils. They are
established as they always have been by pen
and gun by word and bullet by tongue and
teeth (The Al Qaeda Manual, discovered by
Manchester, England Metropolitan Police)
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The Islamist Movement

• Assignment
• Answer Is orthodox Islam advocate violence?
• Read
• Ordinary Wahhabism Parts 1-3
• http//english.russ.ru/politics/20011116-pr.html
• http//www.islamistwatch.org/

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Women in Islam
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The Mosque