Jump to content

Islam

Edit links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 210.18.30.102 (talk) at 14:37, 18 August 2005 (→Etymology). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

And see Islam (disambiguation).
Part of a series on
Islam
Beliefs
Practices
History
Culture and society
Related topics

Islam listenⓘ (Arabic: الإسلام al-islām) "the submission to God" is a monotheistic faith, one of the Abrahamic religions, and the world's second largest religion.

Etymology

In Arabic, Islām means "submission" (understood as submission to God) and is described as a Dīn or Deen, meaning "way of life" and/or "religion." Etymologically, it is derived from the same root as, for example, Salām meaning "peace" (also a common salutation). The word Muslim is also related to the word Islām and means one who "surrenders" or "submits" to God.

Click here to know Islam. http://knowislam.info/drupal/support

Schools (branches)

There are a number of Islamic religious denominations, each of which has significant theological and legal differences from each other. The major branches are Sunni and Shi'a, with Sufism often considered as a mystical inflection of either Sunni or Shi'a thought.

The Sunni sect of Islam is the largest of the sects (some 80-85% of all Muslims are Sunni). Sunnis recognize four legal traditions (madhhabs): Maliki, Shafi'i, Hanafi, and Hanbali. All four accept the validity of the others and Muslims choose any one that he/she thinks is agreeable to his/her ideas. There are also several orthodox theological or philosophical traditions (kalam).

Shi'a Muslims differ from the Sunni in rejecting the authority of the first three caliphs. They honor different traditions (hadith) and have their own legal traditions. The Shi'a consist of one major school of thought known as the Ithna Ashariyya or the "Twelvers", and a few minor schools of thought, as the "Seveners" or the "Fivers" referring to the number of infallible leaders they recognise after the death of Muhammad. The term Shi'a is usually taken to be synonymous with the Ithna Ashariyya/Twelvers. Most Shi'a live in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon.

Sunni and Shi'a have often clashed. Some Sunni believe that Shi'a are heretics while other Sunni recognize Shi'a as fellow Muslims. According to Shaikh Mahmood Shaltoot, head of the al-Azhar University in the middle part of the 20th Century, "the Ja'fari school of thought, which is also known as "al-Shi'a al- Imamiyyah al-Ithna Ashariyyah" (i.e., The Twelver Imami Shi'ites) is a school of thought that is religiously correct to follow in worship as are other Sunni schools of thought". Al-Azhar later distanced itself from this position.

Another sect which dates back to the early days of Islam is that of the Kharijites. The only surviving branch of the Kharijites are the Ibadhi Muslims. Most Ibadhi Muslims live in Oman.

Wahhabis, as they are known by non-Wahhabis, are a more recent group. They prefer to be called the Ikhwan, or Brethren, or sometimes Salafis. Wahhabism is a movement founded by Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab in the 18th century in what is present-day Saudi Arabia. They classify themselves as Sunni and follow the Hanbali legal tradition. However, some regard other Sunni as heretics. They are recognized as the official religion of Saudi Arabia and have had a great deal of influence on the Islamic world due to Saudi control of Mecca and Medina, the Islamic holy places, and due to Saudi funding for mosques and schools in other countries.

Another trend in modern Islam is sometimes called progressive, liberal or secular Islam. Followers may be called Ijtihadists. They may be either Sunni or Shi'ite, and generally favour the development of personal interpretations of Qur'an and Hadith. See: Liberal Islam

One very small Muslim group, based primarily in the United States, follows the teachings of Rashad Khalifa and calls itself the "Submitters". They reject hadith and fiqh, and say that they follow the Qur'an alone. There is also an even smaller group of Qur'an-alone Muslims who claim to represent the authentic teachings of Rashad Khalifa and seem to have split from the Submitters. Most Muslims of both the Sunni and the Shia sects consider this group to be heretical.

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

Most Sufi orders, or tariqa, can be classified as either Sunni or Shi'a. There are also some very large groups or sects of Sufism that are not easily categorised as either Sunni or Shi'a, such as the Bektashi. Sufis are found throughout the Islamic world, from Senegal to Indonesia.

Religions based on Islam

The following groups consider themselves to be Muslims, but are not considered Islamic by the majority of Muslims or Muslim authorities:

The Druze and the Alawites (Alnusairiya) considered themselves Muslims for most of their history, although they have been regarded as not such at times of heightened fanatism in the main stream Muslim world.

The following religions are said by some to have evolved or borrowed from Islam, in almost all cases influenced by traditional beliefs in the regions where they emerged, but consider themselves independent religions with distinct laws and institutions:

The claim of the adherents of the Bahá'í Faith that it represents an independent religion was upheld by the Muslim ecclesiastical courts in Egypt during the 1920's. As of January 1926, their final ruling on the matter of the origins of the Bahá'í Faith and its relationship to Islam was that the Bahá'í Faith was neither a sect of Islam, nor a religion based on Islam, but a clearly-defined, independently-founded faith. This of course is seen as a considerate act on part of the ecclesiastical court and in favour of followers of Bahá'í Faith since the majority of Musilms would regard a religion based on Islam as a herecy.

Some see Sikhism as a syncretic mix of Hinduism and Islam. However, its history lies in the social strife between local Hindu and Muslim communities, during which Sikhs were seen as the "sword arm" of Hinduism. The philosophical basis of the Sikhs is deeply-rooted in Hindu metaphysics and certain philosophical practices. Sikhism also rejects image-worship and believes in one God, just like the Bhakti reform movement in Hinduism and also like Islam does.

The following religions might have been said to have evolved from Islam, but are not considered part of Islam, and no longer exist:

Islam and other religions

Main article: Islam and other religions

The Qur'an contains both injunctions to respect other religions, and to fight and subdue unbelievers. Some Muslims have respected Jews and Christians as fellow "peoples of the book" (monotheists following Abrahamic religions) and also have reviled them as having abandoned monotheism and corrupted their scriptures. At different times and places, Islamic communities have been both intolerant and tolerant. There are Quranic grounds for both attitudes.

Earlier passages of the Qur'an are more tolerant towards Jews and Christians. Later passages of the Qur'an are more critical of them. Sura 5:51 commands Muslims not to take Jews and Christians as friends. Sura 9:29 commands Muslims to fight against Jews and Christians until they either submit to Allah or else agree to pay a special tax.

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. In Islamic territories, they were not to bear arms or proselytize, and they were to pay the aforementioned special tax, the jizyah. They were second-class citizens, or dhimmis.

As many have pointed out, the classic Islamic state, while deficient by modern standards, was more tolerant than the Christian states of the time, which insisted on complete comformity to a state religion. Now most Christians embrace tolerance and freedom of religion -- as do most religions. Conversely, some modern Muslim states are far less tolerant towards non-Muslims than they were during the Golden Age of Islam. Even during this Golden Age, however, religious tolerance in Muslim states was never as great as it is in present-day Europe and North America.

History

Main article: History of Islam

Islamic history begins in Arabia in the 7th century with the emergence of the prophet 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 Fitnas. 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 Turk 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 restored unity and defeated the Shiite Fatimids.

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. Following WWI, the remnants of the Ottoman empire were parcelled 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.

Contemporary Islam

Countries with Muslim populations in excess of 10% (after the CIA World Factbook, 2004.

Although the most visible movement in Islam in recent times has been fundamentalist Islamism, there are a number of liberal movements within Islam which seek alternative ways to reconcile the Islamic faith with the modern world.

Early shariah had a much more flexible character than is currently associated with Islamic jurisprudence, and many modern Muslim scholars believe that it should be renewed, and the classical jurists should lose their special status. This would require formulating a new fiqh suitable for the modern world, e.g. as proposed by advocates of the Islamization of knowledge, and would deal with the modern context. One vehicle proposed for such a change has been the revival of the principle of ijtihad, or independent reasoning by a qualified Islamic scholar, which has lain dormant for centuries.

This movement does not aim to challenge the fundamentals of Islam; rather, it seeks to clear away misinterpretations and to free the way for the renewal of the previous status of the Islamic world as a center of modern thought and freedom. See Modern Islamic philosophy for more on this subject.

The claim that only "liberalisation" of the Islamic Shariah law can lead to distinguishing between tradition and true Islam is countered by many Muslims with the argument that any meaningful "fundamentalism" will, by definition, reject non-Islamic cultural inventions -- by, for instance, acknowledging and implementing Muhammad's insistence that women have God-given rights that no human being may legally infringe upon. Proponents of modern Islamic philosophy sometimes respond to this by arguing that, as a practical matter, "fundamentalism" in popular discourse about Islam may actually refer, not to core precepts of the faith, but to various systems of cultural traditionalism.

The demographics of Islam today

Main article: Islam by country

Based on the percentages published in the 2005 CIA World Factbook ("World"), Islam is the second largest religion in the world. According to the World Network of Religious Futurists, the U.S. Center for World Mission, and the controversial Samuel Huntington, Islam is growing faster numerically than any of the other major world religions. Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance estimate that it is growing at about 2.9% annually, as opposed to 2.3% per year global population growth. Non-Muslim observers attribute this growth to the higher birth rates in many Islamic countries (six out of the top-ten countries in the world with the highest birth rates are majority Muslim[1]); Muslims tend to stress the role of conversion in Islam's growth.

Commonly cited estimates of the Muslim population today range between 900 million and 1.4 billion people (cf. Adherents.com); estimates of Islam by country based on US State Department figures yield a total of 1.48 billion, 22.82% of the world's population (see Islam by country.) Only 18% of Muslims live in the Arab world; a fifth is found in Sub-Saharan Africa, about 30% in the Indian subcontinental region of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, and the world's largest single Muslim community (within the bounds of one nation) is in Indonesia. There are also significant Muslim populations in China, Europe, Central Asia, and Russia. The number of Muslims in North America is variously estimated as anywhere from 1.8 to 7 million, depending on which source is used.

Symbols of Islam

Green is commonly used when representing Islam. It is much used in decorating mosques, tombs, and various religious objects. Some say this is because green was the favorite color of Muhammad and that he wore a green cloak and turban. Others say that it symbolizes vegetation. After Muhammad, only the caliphs were allowed to wear green turbans. In the Qur'an, 18:31, it is said that the inhabitants of paradise will wear green garments of fine silk.

The reference to the Qur'an is verifiable; it is not clear if the other traditions are reliable or mere folklore. However, the association between Islam and the color green is firmly established now, whatever its origins may have been.

  • The absence of green from medieval European coats of arms is explained by the Crusades, when use of heraldic insignia became important: the crusaders did not use green because that was the colour used by their Islamic opponents.
  • In the palace of Topkapi, in Istanbul, there is a room with relics of Muhammad. One of the relics, kept locked in a chest, is said to have been Muhammad's banner, under which he went to war. Some say that this banner is green with golden embroidery; some say that it is black.

In early accounts of Muslim warfare, there are references to flags or battle standards of various colors: black, white, red, and greenish-black. Later Islamic dynasties adopted flags of different colors:

These four colors, white, black, green and red, dominate the flags of Arab states. See [2] and [3].

The crescent and star are often said to be Islamic symbols, but flag historians say that they were the insignia of the Ottoman empire, not of Islam as a whole.

See also

List of Islamic and Muslim related topics

Notes

  1. Shi'a muslims do not believe in absolute predestination (Qadar), since they consider it incompatible with Divine Justice. Neither do they believe in absolute free will since that contradicts God's Omniscience and Omnipotence. Rather they believe in "a way between the two ways" (amr bayn al‑'amrayn) believing in free will, but within the boundaries set for it by God and exercised with His permission.
  2. The Egyptian Islamic Jihad group claims, as did a few long-extinct early medieval Kharijite sects, that Jihad is the "sixth pillar of Islam." Some Ismaili groups consider "Allegiance to the Imam" to be the so-called sixth pillar of Islam. For more information, see the article entitled Sixth pillar of Islam.

References

  • Encyclopedia of Islam
  • The Koran Interpreted: a translation by A. J. Arberry, ISBN 0684825074
  • Islam, by Fazlur Rahman, University of Chicago Press; 2nd edition (1979). ISBN 0226702812
  • The Islamism Debate, Martin Kramer, University Press, 1997
  • Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook, Charles Kurzman, Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 0195116224
  • Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender and Pluralism Omid Safi, Oneworld Publications, Oxford, 2003. ISBN 1-85168-316-X
  • The Challenge of Fundamentalism: Political Islam and the New World Disorder, Bassam Tibi, Univ. of California Press, 1998

Online academic sources

Directories

Islam and the arts, sciences & philosophy

News and Information

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Islam&oldid=21292462"