essay on the islam religion

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Mormons and Muslims

Spencer j. palmer , arnold h. green , and daniel c. peterson , editors, understanding islam, daniel c. peterson.

Daniel C. Peterson, “Understanding Islam,” in  Mormons and Muslims: Spiritual Foundations and Modern Manifestations,  ed. Spencer J. Palmer (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University 2002), 11–43.

Daniel C. Peterson was associate executive director for Brigham Young University’s Institute for the Study and Preservation of Ancient Religious Texts when this was published.

Why should we seek to learn about and to understand Islam? If the attacks of September 11, 2001, and subsequent events haven’t made the answer to this question obvious, nothing else is likely to do so. But there are more fundamental reasons, and these far transcend the terrorist horrors of that morning. A sizable portion of the earth’s population adheres to the religion of Islam, and Islam—a major force in human history for a millennium and a half—is a powerful, living factor in international politics in the Near East, Africa, and Asia.

Moreover, even apart from the palpable shrinking of the globe that has resulted from modern communications, means of transportation, and the interlinking of national economies, Muslims can no longer be simply dismissed as people far away and “over there.” Increasingly, Muslims are our neighbors. By means of immigration, high birth rates, and conversions, Islam is rapidly becoming a mainstream religion throughout the West. There may well be more Muslims praying in the mosques of the United Kingdom on Fridays than there are worshipers in the Church of England on Sundays. A mosque stands prominently on the hills above Guatemala City. A few years ago, I spoke in a mosque in the relatively small city of Hamilton, New Zealand, and I have met with Muslim leaders in most of the major cities of Australia. And, although precise figures are difficult if not impossible to come by, Muslims may soon outnumber Jews in the United States of America.

However, for Latter-day Saints there is an even more fundamental reason for seeking to understand the faith of approximately a billion of God’s children on earth: He has commanded us to do so. The Lord has told us to seek after knowledge of things both in heaven and in the earth, and under the earth; things which have been, things which are, things which must shortly come to pass; things which are at home, things which are abroad; the wars and the perplexities of the nations, and the judgments which are on the land; and a knowledge also of countries and of kingdoms—

That ye may be prepared in all things when I shall send you again to magnify the calling whereunto I have called you, and the mission with which I have commissioned you. (D&C 88:79–80)

In this essay, I will first offer an extremely basic summary of the history and theology of Islam. [1] Then I will offer background for apparent Muslim anger against the West to provide guidance on what lies behind current newspaper headlines. Although current events are ever-changing, the fundamental issues and historical facts will not be altered by breaking news.

A Basic History of Islam

On the eve of the birth of Islam—which is to say, in the late sixth and early seventh centuries after Christ—the Arabian peninsula was a place far removed from the major centers of culture and political power. A vast and desolate area, it was for the most part sparsely populated by Bedouin nomads and punctuated only occasionally by small oasis towns.

The two great powers of the day were the Byzantine empire, the Greek-speaking and Christian continuation of the old Roman empire (which now had its capital in Constantinople), and the Persian empire of the Sassanids. The Persians were followers of the prophet Zoroaster, or Zarathustra. Each empire was militantly dedicated to its own religion and to the destruction of the other. Perso-Roman hostilities were centuries old. However, when the seventh century dawned, the two empires were about to embark on a long war that would eventually leave each of them exhausted and vulnerable to a totally unexpected threat from Arabia.

The Arabians were polytheists but perhaps not very pious ones. [2] Somewhere up above the jinn (the “genies”) and the subordinate godlings to whom they occasionally paid a little attention was the distant and mysterious high god, Allah. His name—or, better his title, which takes its emphasis on the second syllable—is simply the Arabic equivalent of the English word God. Allah is a contraction of the Arabic words al and ilah, which, together, mean “the god.” In other words, it is related to the old Semitic names for the high god, EI and Elohim, the latter of which should be quite familiar to Latter-day Saints. Elohim is formed from the Hebrew word eloh, “god” and the masculine plural suffix -im. It should never be thought that Allah is the name of some strange idol or foreign deity. In fact, Arabic and Turkish Christians use the same word for God as do their Muslim counterparts, and Allah is the word used for God in the Arabic translation of the Book of Mormon and other Latter-day Saint materials.

To most of the pre-Islamic Arabians, though, Allah was too remote to pray to or even to think about. But things were changing. Arabia had long derived much of what wealth it possessed from the trade routes that ran its length, bringing frankincense and myrrh from Yemen, Ethiopia, Somalia, and even India. It was probably along the most important of these trade routes that Lehi had led his caravan six hundred years before Christ. [3] Not far from that same trade route was the ancient oasis of Mecca—hot and dusty, clustered around a brackish well called Zamzam. As our period opens, Mecca was beginning to grow very wealthy. It had managed to gain a major share of the caravan trade, and, with its shrine, called the Ka’ba, it had become a significant center of pilgrimage for the entire Arabian peninsula.

However, wealth brings change, and change brings problems. Class distinctions arose, and every man was after his own self-interest. The old values of family and tribe, which had taken the place of a government in the modern sense, fell victim to a new lust for gain. Widows and orphans, who had been secure and cared-for under the old tribal system, were now left largely on their own. Some men, though, seem to have been sensitive to these problems, and they began to look, or at least to yearn, for something better. They sought higher values than wealth, and a higher religion than the vague and primitive paganism around them.

Little was available. There were Jews in pre-Islamic Arabia, but they weren’t interested in converts. There were Christians, as well—but to align oneself with Christianity was, willingly or not, to make a political statement and to join the pro-Byzantine “party.” On the other hand, if one decided to become a Zoroastrian that could be seen as aligning oneself with the pro-Persian “party.” And such choices had consequences, because both the Byzantines and the Persians, as part of their ongoing rivalry, were becoming interested in the merchant wealth that traversed Arabia and were seeking control of peninsular trade routes.

So these seekers—or, as they are known in Arabic, these hunafa’—seem to have held to a non-aligned and simple monotheism, praying and fasting and hoping, perhaps, for something better.

Muhammad was one of them. [4] His father died before he was born in 570, and his mother died while he was a small boy. As an orphan, he was exposed to many of the rigors of life in Mecca. Even though he triumphed over his disadvantages by virtue of character and ability, and even though he became a caravan merchant himself and married a rich widow, he seems not to have forgotten his childhood. He always remained sensitive to children, to widows and orphans.

In the year 610, Muhammad was in a cave in the hills above Mecca, praying and engaging in religious devotions. According to later Muslim tradition, it was there that the angel Gabriel—he who made the Annunciation to Mary—came to Muhammad with the beginning of the revelation of the Qur’an, the holy book and bedrock of Islamic faith and doctrine.

Muslims today regard the Qur’an (or, as it is sometimes spelled, the Koran) as the literal word of God. That is, it is not about Muhammad (as the four Gospels are about Christ), nor is it by Muhammad. It is a collection of the actual words of God to Muhammad as God spoke them in Arabic. (A translation of the Qur’an, according to the orthodox Muslim view, is therefore not the Qur’an; only the Arabic original can claim to be the veritable words of God.) Muslims also view the Qur’an as the Word of God, a role which in Christianity is taken by Christ Himself, as the logos of John 1:1. The Qur’an is taken from the great, celestial Book, which was with God from all eternity, uncreated, as God’s everlasting and unchanging utterance. (The Torah and the Psalms and the Gospels come likewise from the heavenly tablet but are viewed as corrupted in their present form.) It might be helpful, for Latter-day Saints, to compare the Qur’an to the Doctrine and Covenants. Unlike the Old Testament or Book of Mormon, the Qur’an is not a narrative or history. But like the Doctrine and Covenants, it is a collection of revelations on many different subjects, arranged in a roughly chronological order. [5]

Muhammad’s early days as a prophet were spent in his hometown of Mecca. His revelations during this period were intense, poetic, vivid, apocalyptic, and concise. They proclaimed the reality of physical resurrection and the imminence of the end of the world and of judgment day. They called for social justice; they denounced the practice—widespread in pagan Arabia—of female infanticide. Muhammad preached against shirk (Arabic “association” or, more loosely, “polytheism”), the ultimate sin of worshiping something or someone else beside (or instead of) the one true God. His preaching earned him a small following at first, mostly of the insignificant and the disenfranchised, and a great deal of contempt, ridicule, and actual persecution.

It was perhaps during this period that Muhammad’s famous Night Vision occurred. Unfortunately, accounts of the vision are so garbled and contradictory that it is difficult to ascertain the real facts. In any case, the basic story as given by Islamic tradition is that Muhammad was taken during the night from Central Arabia to the holy city of Jerusalem, where he led several of the ancient prophets in prayer on the temple mount and from which he then ascended through the seven heavens into the presence of God. His ascent is said to have commenced from the very spot where Abraham was sent to sacrifice his son. This is the place now enclosed, on the temple mount, by the famous Dome of the Rock.

Muhammad’s situation in Mecca was not infinitely bearable. As the anger of Mecca’s city fathers against him intensified, they even began to plot against his life. So when a group of men came for the pilgrimage from a village called Yathrib and asked Muhammad to come and act as an arbitrator in the squabbles that were ruining their town, he jumped at the chance. First he sent his followers, and then he himself went to the town which would ever afterwards be known as Madinat al-Nabi, “the city of the Prophet”—or, simply, Medina (pronounced Meh -deen- ah ). This emigration, called in Arabic the hijra, took place in the year 622, and the Muslim calendar is dated from this year.

Muslims were entirely correct in seeing, in the hijra, a fundamental turning point in the life of the prophet and in the nature of Islam. From being a rejected preacher, Muhammad became a statesman, a diplomat, a judge. His revelations became longer, more prosaic, full of detail on inheritance law and the like. (It is something like the difference between Isaiah and Leviticus or even the difference between Doctrine and Covenants section 4 and a Brigham Young sermon on farming, mining, or irrigation canals.)

Muhammad was phenomenally successful. Within a few years, he conquered Mecca. Already, he had made the Ka’ba and its attendant pilgrimage rituals part of Islam. Today, Mecca and the Ka’ba are the geographical center of the universe to approximately a billion Muslims. (Medina is the second holiest city; Jerusalem is the third.) By the end of his career, he essentially ruled the entire Arabian peninsula. But the prophet died in 632. And, since the Qur’an had labeled him “the seal of the prophets,” in the view of the overwhelming majority of Muslims there can be no more.

Still, somebody had to succeed Muhammad as the political head of a now growing and quite powerful Muslim state. His followers divided, on the question of who this successor should be, into two major groups which still exist today. The Sunnis, the majority of Muslims, cared less about the identity of the ruler than about the fact that there must be one, in order to avoid anarchy and civil strife. The Shi’ites, on the other hand, insisted—somewhat as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (now known as the Community of Christ) once did—that the leadership of the community legitimately belongs to the family of the prophet. That disagreement persists to the present time.

After Muhammad’s death, the Arabs poured out of their desert home. The ancient and mighty Persian empire, weakened and demoralized by its long war with Constantinople, collapsed before a ragtag army of Bedouin nomads. The Byzantines, too, lost much of their territory—including their breadbasket, the incredibly fertile province of Egypt. Within a hundred years, Arab armies were in India, as well as in what is today known as Spain and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.

Islam, however, did not spread by the sword. While the Arabs conquered huge territories, they did not force conversions. In fact, for certain reasons they actually tended to discourage conversion, especially in the early days. Their general practice was to allow freedom of worship to Jews and Christians, merely taxing them at a somewhat higher rate—among other things, to maintain the armies, in which Jews and Christians did not have to serve. Islam was, in fact, uniformly more tolerant of minority religions than was medieval Christianity.

Another fact that it is important to recognize in this context is that the terms Arab and Muslim are not equivalent. While most Arabs are Muslims, not all are. And most Muslims are not Arabs. Indeed, the largest Muslim nation is non-Arab Indonesia. Iran and Afghanistan, too, though overwhelmingly Muslim, are not Arab. And Islam is a powerful and sometimes dominant presence in such varied places as China, Pakistan, India, Nigeria, Kenya, and Bangladesh.

The immense empire that the early Muslims suddenly controlled required laws and techniques of governing that were far different from those of the simple nomads of Arabia. Where was guidance to be found? The Qur’an, of course, was the most prestigious and the most authoritative source of legal and moral guidance. But it was also very limited in terms of the range of issues that it covered. So, for a while, the young Arab empire simply followed the laws and practices of the areas that it conquered and left much of the day-to-day government in the hands of the local population. But this was not a satisfactory solution. Many Muslims began to wonder, “What did Muhammad, our Prophet, do in situations like these? Is there an ideal Islamic way to govern?” And they began to gather information about what, in fact, he had done and said, on almost any question that could be imagined.

Eventually, this information took the form of reports called hadith (pronounced “ha -deeth” ) or, as the word is often (if not very precisely) translated, “traditions.” It is largely on the basis of these hadith that the all-inclusive legal code of Islam was constructed. The code is called the shari’a (roughly pronounced “shar- ee -ah”). Actually, it is somewhat misleading to call it a legal code, since it regulates things that are far removed from anything that would be recognized as “law” in the contemporary secular West. Not only does it deal with crimes, inheritance, marriage, and divorce, but, rather like the Talmudic law of Judaism, it lays down rules on prayer, fasting, etiquette, and virtually every other aspect of human existence.

Out of this mix of Qur’an and hadith, of Sunni and Shi’ite, of Arab and Persian and Turk and Mongol and African and Indian, grew a remarkably rich and complex culture. It drew on Jewish legends and on Greek philosophy, medicine, and science, on Indian mathematics and Persian manners. It produced lawyers and mystics and skeptics and poets. We must be careful, then, when we talk about Islam. Very few generalizations on this subject will be true of, say both a tenth-century surgeon in Baghdad and a twentieth-century Indonesian peasant. Although far fewer “denominations” exist in Islam than in Christianity, there are innumerable points of view, and Islam’s history is every bit as rich and complex as is Christendom’s.

The Five Pillars of Islam

We would be skeptical, wouldn’t we, of anyone who purported to tell us all about Christianity in fifty minutes or in a few pages. Would he or she be able to do justice to the Roman Catholics, the Unitarians, Christian Science, the Latter-day Saints, Eastern Orthodoxy? To Luther, St. Augustine, Jim Jones, Martin Luther King, Billy Graham, St. Francis, and the Apostle Paul? To the Jesuits and the Moonies and the Reformation and the Council of Nicea? To the philosophical theology of St. Thomas Aquinas as well as the beliefs of a television revivalist? And this is just scratching the surface!

With this warning in mind, though, I shall now proceed to explain some basic concepts of Islam. Perhaps the best way of doing it is to discuss, briefly, the basic principles known as the five pillars of Islam.

The first pillar is known as the shahada (pronounced “sheh- had- ah”), the “testimony” or the “profession of faith.” It is fulfilled when someone says, with full sincerity, “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is His Messenger.” The first part of the statement is a declaration of a timeless monotheistic principle, while the second half of the statement identifies the specific historical community of monotheists to which the speaker belongs.

Second is prayer. This may be performed anywhere, and should be done (minimally) five times daily. It involves a prescribed set of physical movements, as well, of course, as turning heart and mind toward God. On Friday’s, it usually is performed at least once in a building called, in English, a mosque (pronounced “mosk”). This word is a garbled version of the Arabic masjid , meaning “a place of bowing” ( sajada). Mosques are simply places of prayer. Islam has no priesthood and no ordinances or sacraments. Most mosques are open to visits by non-Muslims. Typically, each mosque has a highly ornamented niche in one of its walls, called a mihrab (pronounced “ mih -rob” ). This arched, recessed niche is designed merely to indicate the direction of Mecca, toward which all Muslims face during prayer. It is most definitely not, as some have supposed, some kind of idol or the actual object of prayer. Many mosques also feature a platform, called a minbar, that often resembles a flight of stairs. It is from this platform that the local religious official, the imam, gives his Friday sermon. One other characteristic feature of almost all mosques is the exterior tower called a minaret. From this tower, faithful Muslims are summoned to prayer five times each day. Loudspeakers have mostly replaced the old muezzin, or prayer-caller.

The third pillar is the practice of almsgiving. Muslims tend to take this principle very seriously, and Islamic governments typically levy a tax that is specifically designed to fulfill the requirement of giving to the poor.

Fourth is the practice of fasting, especially during the holy month of Ramadan, when no food or drink is consumed between sunrise and sunset for the entire month. Since the religious calendar of Islam is a lunar one, the month of Ramadan cycles through the seasons and through the solar calendar that we use and that even Muslims employ for their secular business and day-to-day lives.

The fifth and last pillar is the hajj, or the pilgrimage to Mecca. It is obligatory for every Muslim who is able to do so, that he or she complete the pilgrimage at least once in a lifetime. Pilgrims dress in white, and perform various rituals including circumambulation of the Ka’ba.

Some have tried to establish the principle of jihad (pronounced “ jee -had” ) as a sixth pillar. This word is usually translated into English as “holy war,” but it means, literally, “struggle” or “striving.” Drawing on a teaching generally ascribed to the Prophet Muhammad, Muslims often distinguish the “greater jihad”— struggle against one’s own evil, base, selfish, or unrighteous inclinations—from the “lesser jihad” of military struggle against the enemies of Islam. But even in military jihad, Islamic law has long held that the deliberate targeting of noncombatants, of children, women, and the elderly, is unjustifiable. And it has insisted that those launching a jihad must first summon their enemies to accept Islam (“submission”). Furthermore, at least in theory, jihad is supposed to be defensive. “Fight in the way of God with those who fight you,” says the Qur’an, “but aggress not: God loves not the aggressors.” [6] Nor is suicide acceptable: “Cast not yourselves by your own hands into destruction.” [7] Those who die on behalf of Islam are considered martyrs (shuhada’). [8]

Other Basic Beliefs

Muslims have traditionally expended more thought on law and ethics than on theology, but certain theological principles are reasonably clear and universal. For example, God is One. He is not a Trinity. He is completely different from anything earthly. He is purely spiritual and invisible. Moreover, He is all-powerful and probably determines all human actions. One of the most common Arabic phrases is In sha’ Allah, “If God wills,” which is repeated before almost any action or promise. This is sometimes seen as a kind of Muslim fatalism, but compare with James 4:13–15, where the same kind of respect for God’s sovereignty is enjoined.

Islam recognizes the biblical prophets and several others and believes that literally thousands of prophets are lost to history but known to God. Significantly among these, Muslims accept Jesus of Nazareth as a prophet and as having been born of a virgin. The Qur’an speaks of Jesus as a “word” of God. Islamic believers expect His Second Coming at the end of time. But most hold, on the basis of certain passages in the Qur’an, that His crucifixion was only an illusion of the Jews. They believe that He was not crucified and atones for no sins, that He is not the Son of God, and is not divine. Allah alone is God. “Say: He is God, the One and Only; God, the Eternal, Absolute; He begetteth not, nor is He begotten; And there is none like unto Him.” [9]

Muhammad, too, is only a prophet. But, as noted above, he is the “seal of the prophets,” which is almost always taken to signify that he is the last of them. Muslims object greatly to their religion being called “Muhammadanism” and to being themselves termed “Muhammadans.” This implies, they say, that Muhammad occupies the place in their religion that Christ occupies in Christianity—and such a supposition is false. They do not worship him. The correct name of their faith is Islam (pronounced “Iss -lam ” ), meaning “submission (to God).” An adherent of the religion of Islam is a Muslim (“Muss- lim”), a “submitter.”

Muslims are noted for some of the prohibitions of their religion. Although, unsurprisingly, not all are faithful, they are directed to refrain from drinking wine, and, like Jews, to avoid pork. They are commanded by their religion not to make religious images and pictures—which is, again, reminiscent of Judaism.

Westerners have also been fascinated by such things as the veiling of women and “harems.” In passing, it is worth noting that the historical origins of the veiling of women are unclear but that it may well have been borrowed from Christians several centuries after Muhammad’s death. (Muhammad’s own wives veiled themselves because of their special status in the community, but the rule probably was not generally applied.) And harems, never very common, are almost extinct in the world of contemporary Islam.

What should Latter-day Saints make of Muhammad and Islam? If Qur’anic statements against the divinity of Christ accurately represent the teachings of Muhammad—and there is no evidence that they do not—then we cannot accept him as a true prophet in the full sense of the word. We have little choice in this matter because, as Revelation 19:10 explains, “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy” (emphasis added). But it is virtually certain that Muhammad was sincere, and it may well be that he was inspired by God to do and say much of what he said and did.

Elders George A. Smith and Parley P. Pratt of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles had a high opinion of him in 1855, at a time when just about everybody else in Europe and America thought it obvious that Muhammad—along with Joseph Smith, incidentally, who was often compared to him—was a cunning fraud. [10] And that high estimation has continued into recent times. In a 15 February 1978 declaration, the First Presidency paid tribute to Muhammad, among others, as a divinely inspired religious and moral leader: “The great religious leaders of the world such as Mohammed, Confucius, and the Reformers, as well as philosophers including Socrates, Plato, and others, received a portion of God’s light. Moral truths were given to them by God to enlighten whole nations and to bring a higher level of understanding to individuals.”

The History Behind the Headlines

As I write, slightly more than six months after the brutal attacks of September 11, 2001, portions of the Arab and Islamic world are gripped in mounting anguish and even despair, overflowing with seething anger, and oppressed by a growing sense of urgency. [11] It is important for people in the West to try to understand why this is so (though I should not be taken as claiming that to understand is wholly to excuse). In order to understand, however, we must once again look to the past.

For several centuries, Islam, along with the region and culture that it dominated, was at the forefront of civilization and human achievement. In fact, in Muslim eyes, Islam was civilization, and those who lived beyond the Islamic world were often regarded not only as infidels but as barbarians. [12] During the time of the Islamic world’s richest flourishing, only China could claim a comparable level of culture. But even China was not entirely to be compared, since its culture was basically confined to one ethnic group, while, by contrast, Islam’s dominion was vast, even intercontinental (including southeastern Europe, West Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, and North Africa) and its subjects were multiethnic and multiracial.

For most of its first thousand years, Islam clearly exercised the greatest military power on earth. From its homeland in Arabia, its armies came to dominate not only the Middle East but also parts of Europe, Central Asia, North Africa, portions of the eastern and western African coasts, and large areas of the Indian subcontinent. Only the threat of their eastern Islamic rivals in Persia kept the Ottoman Turks from deploying their armies westward and conquering Europe. [13] And, even so, by 1682–83 the Ottomans were conducting their second siege of Vienna.

Muslims had commerce and communications everywhere. They had inherited advanced knowledge and skills from their predecessors in the ancient Near East, Greece, and Persia. They had taken the decimal system from India and the art of making paper from China—and it is very difficult to imagine modern civilization without these two elements. In fact, the indebtedness of the West to the Islamic world is illustrated nicely by the number and nature of the words that we have borrowed from Arabic and cognate languages. These include such terms as algebra, alchemy, algorithm, nadir, zenith, and even punch. Such indebtedness was incurred, as well, by the influence of Islamic thinkers like Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and Averroës (Ibn Rushd) upon St. Thomas Aquinas, the Doctor Angelicus, who was incomparably the greatest philosopher of the Latin Middle Ages and, for many years, effectively the official theologian of the Roman Catholic Church.

Islamic rulers were tolerant of their Christian and Jewish minorities not only because such tolerance was enjoined by Islam but also, very likely, because of a sense of comfortable security. Christians were looked down upon. As for today, although Islam’s record of pre-modern toleration is far better than Christendom’s, that toleration has receded under current conditions of threat, despair, and anger; and the links of Christian and Jewish minorities to the West, and their concomitant prosperity, have caused hatred in some circles.

The Crusades represented a brief interruption of the Muslims’ seemingly inevitable march toward ultimate triumph, but the Crusader states didn’t last very long and didn’t prove lastingly significant from the Near Eastern point of view—although they proved very fruitful for the Europeans, who were exposed, through them, to a much superior civilization. Byzantium continued to shrink. And, as for the rest of Europe, it was dismissed by those few Muslim writers who concerned themselves at all with it as a dark and barbarous place, valuable largely as a source of strong slaves and useful raw materials. Much of Europe depended, for its science and civilization, on translations from Arabic, sometimes even translations of works originally composed in Greek. Even Europe’s religion had been borrowed from the Near East.

In 1453, Constantinople finally fell to the Ottoman Turks. And, now that the Byzantine Empire had been conquered, the so-called Holy Roman Empire, in Europe proper, was slated to be next.

But that conquest did not happen.

In retrospect, we can see that a certain stagnation had entered into the Islamic world with the advent of the Mongols and the Turks, if not before. The great translation movement that had brought so much of Greek medicine, science, and philosophy to the Muslims was past by this time. New intellectual stimuli were no longer entering Islamic life at anything like the previous astonishing pace.

Meanwhile, Europe was surging forward. Chairs of Arabic and Persian (of “oriental” languages) began to appear in European universities such as Cambridge, Oxford, and Paris. But Muslims seems to have known little, and to have cared less, about such things. They knew nothing about the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the technological leaps associated with Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press and with the Industrial Revolution. While there have long been “Orientalists” in the West, it is only quite recently that “Occidentalists” began to appear in the Near East. And, for a long time after that, even those Near Easterners who knew Western languages tended to be not Muslims but Christians and Jews, who had a natural reason to cultivate ties with their fellow believers in Europe.

While Muslims traveled extensively within the Islamic world (in order to perform the hajj, or pilgrimage, to Mecca, as well as for ordinary commercial purposes), they seldom if ever traveled to Europe. Unlike Europeans, many of whose holiest places were located in the Near East, Muslims had no objects of pilgrimage in Europe. Furthermore, for many centuries, Muslim merchants saw little in Europe to attract them. The slaves and raw materials of Europe could be purchased at trading posts located along the border between the predominantly Christian and predominantly Muslim lands, so there was no real need for Muslims to enter into Europe. And those few merchants from the Near East who actually penetrated Europe tended to be, once again, either Jews or Greek or Armenian Christians. And, again in stark distinction to Near Eastern attitudes, Western merchants tended to view the Mediterranean (and, hence, the Islamic world that occupied much of it) as a vast, sophisticated, and incredibly wealthy trade emporium—as, in fact, it had long been. Jewish and Christian commercial travelers had local communities of co-believers to help them both in Europe and the Near East, whereas, by contrast, no European communities of Muslims existed under Christian domination to facilitate trading by Islamic businessmen. Likewise, while Europeans maintained permanent embassies in the Near East, Islamic states dispatched only occasional envoys—who entered, disposed of their business, and left as soon as they possibly could. In fact, Muslims thought it ethically and theologically wrong to visit, let alone to live in, infidel territories. As believers in Muhammad’s message had fled pagan Mecca to join him in his exile in Medina, so too were later believers to flee the rule of unbelievers and gather with the faithful. Thus, while Europeans had considerable knowledge of and exposure to much of the heartland of the Islamic world, Muslims had little if any direct knowledge of Europe. Accordingly, long after the notion was out of date, Muslim residents of the Near East typically regarded Europeans as primitives who had little to offer to civilized people.

When Vasco da Gama pioneered his route around the cape of Africa at the end of the fifteenth century, he managed to connect Europe and Asia in a way that allowed European merchants to bypass the Near East. Accordingly, countries such as Egypt, which depended heavily upon revenue from tariffs on imports and transit goods—and which, as luck would have it, was in that very period under the rule of the architecture-loving and rather free-spending Circassian Mamluks—saw their income plunge. By the seventeenth century, the Portuguese, the Dutch, and other intrepid Europeans had established permanent bases in Asia that gradually evolved into colonies. The Islamic world was now outflanked.

But things became worse still. Columbus’s first voyage to the New World, also in the late fifteenth century, opened the Americas (with their gold and silver and other resources) to European exploitation and vastly increased the size of Christendom, both absolutely and relative to the by now fairly stable size of the Islamic world. Bernard Lewis, a brilliant Anglo-American scholar of Islam, uses coffee and sugar—significantly, both originally products of the Near East—to illustrate the economic consequences for the Islamic world of European colonization in Asia and the Americas: Coffee came from Ethiopia. Gradually, though, its use spread via Arabia and Egypt to Syria and Turkey, and then on to Europe. Sugar came originally from Persia and India. By the end of the eighteenth century, however, even Muslims in the Near East were drinking coffee from beans that had been cultivated in Dutch Java or in the colonies of New Spain, in the Americas. And they were mixing it with sugar from the British and French West Indies. Only the hot water with which they mixed these ingredients was local. And then, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, European companies gained control of the water and gas supplies in the Near East. [14]

Western commercial expansion meant that western legal principles guided the formation of international commercial law—even in the Muslim lands. Thus, the shari’a, which most Muslim rulers had honored in theory but ignored in practice (since they wanted laws they could shape or spin to their own advantage) became even further marginalized.

At the close of the fifteenth century, the Spanish had reconquered Spain after nearly 800 years of Muslim presence and cultural efflorescence there. As the last Muslim ruler of Granada rode away from his beloved palace, the Alhambra, he turned to take one last look at it in a pass still known as the Ultimo Suspiro del Moro, “The Last Sigh of the Moor.” A tear trickled down his cheek. Seeing it, his mother-in-law remarked, “It is fitting that you should weep like a woman for what you could not defend like a man.”

During this period, the Islamic world needed creative, dynamic, and resourceful leadership. Unfortunately, during this period the formerly dependable sources of its leaders failed. The Ottoman Empire, for example, had been founded and developed by a long and essentially unbroken series of extraordinarily competent (if seldom exactly saintly) sultans like Selim the Grim, Mehmet the Conqueror, and Suleyman the Magnificent. But then the empire passed into a period that has often been compared to a lengthy and eventually fatal illness, an epoch that can be illustrated by (but cannot be entirely laid at the feet of) a series of sultans who were as incompetent and ineffective as their predecessors had been brilliant. Not a few of them may even have been mad.

What had changed? One thing that had altered was the method of handling young Ottoman princes while they waited to take their turn on the sultan’s throne. In the earlier days of the Ottoman empire, the princes had been sent out to gain experience as army commanders and provincial governors. Thus, when a new sultan came to power, he already had considerable experience with both military and civil administration, and with the various peoples under Ottoman rule. However, young princes accustomed to command sometimes grew impatient when their fathers took too long to depart the scene, and fathers, watching them, grew nervous upon their imperial thrones. Accordingly, it was decided to keep the princes in the harem with their mothers, thus depriving them not only of the opportunity to launch a coup—which was the goal—but also, as a lamentable side effect, of any experience beyond the restricted environs of the women’s quarters of the palace. And then, in order to eliminate rival claimants and the instability that they could create, the custom arose of executing all of the other princes once one of them had succeeded to the sultanate. So what was left to the young princes and their mothers was constant palace intrigue, which they practiced as if their lives depended upon it—which, of course, they literally did. There can be little wonder, therefore, that many of those who came to the throne were not only inexperienced and untested but neurotic and paranoid. And then, suddenly, they were all-powerful. It was a perfect recipe for disaster.

The second siege of Vienna failed as the first had. Then, in 1686, the Ottomans lost Buda, and a century and a half of Muslim Turkish rule in Hungary came to an end. A Turkish lament of the time captures the impact that the loss carried:

In the fountains they no longer wash In the mosques they no longer pray The places that prospered are now desolate The Austrian has taken our beautiful Buda. [15]

Yet the defeats were by no means over. The Ottomans suffered several reverses, for example, at the hands of Peter the Great. In 1699, they were obliged to sign the Treaty of Carlowitz, in which they made concessions to victorious Christians, something previously unthinkable. Nobody in the Muslim world had seen the loss of Spain as terribly significant. It was, they imagined at the time, just part of the normal ebb and flow of war. Muslims would, it was thought, eventually take Andalusia back. In retrospect, however, the Spanish Reconquista began to be seen as one in a now long and menacing list of disasters and losses. Muslims began to perceive that Islam, or the Islamic world, had entered into a period of crisis and that something had to be done.

At first, it was assumed that military reforms were the primary need. Thus, very limited European help was sought by various Islamic rulers, most notably by the authorities of the Ottoman empire. They decided to buy what they needed, which was not limited merely to weapons but also included consultation on military organization, the conduct of warfare, and actual training.

Accordingly, Western experts begin to arrive, bringing with them expertise in military engineering, artillery and ballistics, and the mathematics associated with such subjects. They also brought Western military uniforms and, even, Western military music. [16] Improved administrative techniques were introduced into the civil bureaucracy as well as the military. For one thing, there were renewed efforts to base employment and promotion on merit and qualifications rather than, as was typically the case, on patronage and connections. Ironically, though, such reforms, in making autocratic regimes more efficient, also tended to make them more oppressive, which would have consequences for the future.

But such alterations were still not enough. Between 1768 and 1774, the Ottomans suffered further defeats at the hands of the Russians. And these defeats were particularly painful because their effects could not be dismissed as limited merely to outlying areas. On the contrary, their consequences could be felt in the Islamic heartland itself. The Treaty of Küçuk Kaynarca (1774), for instance, granted the Russians rights of navigation and even intervention within the Ottoman empire. Indeed, in 1783, Russia actually annexed the Crimea, a traditionally Muslim land.

Meanwhile, Portugal and the Netherlands—relatively tiny European countries—had come to dominate Asian trade and to control the seas. This occurred partly because of the manifest superiority of European sailing vessels over their Islamicate counterparts. So clear was this superiority that, by the eighteenth century, even Muslim pilgrims from India and Indonesia, finding them cheaper, safer, and more reliable, were booking passage to Mecca on Dutch, English, and Portuguese ships.

One thing that should be clear from this history is that, despite the differing and often impassioned accounts offered up by some contemporary Muslim political leaders and thinkers, Western imperialism was attracted by preexisting weakness in the Islamic world; it did not cause it. While colonialism certainly exacerbated many problems in the region, most of those problems—and the most fundamental of them—cannot actually be blamed on the West (nor, for that matter, attributed to any other external factor). Places like Hong Kong, with far fewer natural resources than the Islamic world, have nonetheless flourished economically. Moreover, strength repels colonization: even tiny Switzerland, surrounded during the Nazi period by Hitler’s Germany to the north, Mussolini’s Italy to the south, occupied Austria to the east, and Vichy France to the west, managed to maintain its independence. By contrast, the vast and populous Indian subcontinent, because it was divided among squabbling factions, fell prey to the armies of a small island off the coast of Europe, and Queen Victoria was able to claim the title of Empress of India.

It is tempting to say that unless and until Muslim leaders and thinkers recognize that they have a problem—in much the same way that those who attend Alcoholics Anonymous must recognize that they have a problem—they will never be able to solve it. So long as the CIA or the Zionists or the French or the British or Mossad or the United States are blamed for all of the weaknesses and frustrations in the region, there can be little or no substantial progress.

In 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte conquered and occupied Egypt. The French were driven out of Egypt only a few years later, but, tellingly, not by the Egyptians and not by any coalition of Muslims. Instead, it was the British who claimed the honor, and French occupied Egypt now came effectively under British control. If the Crimea had been a traditionally Islamic land, and its surrender a terrible shock, Egypt was absolutely central to the Islamic world. It had been ruled by Muslims since roughly a decade after the death of Muhammad, and its loss to the European infidel—and the inability of the Islamic world to do anything about that loss—represented not merely a catastrophe but a revelation.

It was now impossible to miss the fact that the Islamic world was in actual decline. Merely military reforms had clearly not been sufficient to fix what was wrong. And, with Westerners now bestriding their heartland as conquerors and rulers, Muslims became painfully aware of European superiority in many aspects of political life and in technical and scientific achievement. Moreover, the French and British occupations spread to the Near East ideas that were beginning to circulate in Europe and that were, by the standards of the Islamic world, positively revolutionary. The French embassy in Istanbul had already established a newspaper there; Napoleon’s occupying forces founded newspapers in Egypt. The Jesuits in Beirut also recognized the powerful potential of newspaper journalism, and their publications soon acquired influence far beyond the Lebanese Christian community. Western ideals and concepts were circulating in Muslim cities.

Much against their traditional inclinations, Muslim leaders began to send student delegations to Europe for study. “Our countries,” declared Shaykh Hasan al-’Attar, an Egyptian cleric who had worked with Napoleon’s troops, “should be changed and renewed through knowledge and sciences that they do not possess.” The student delegates were intended to master the practices of Western civil administration and to learn what they could of Western science and technology. And this, to a certain extent, they did. But they also began to return with some of the ideas that were circulating on the Continent in the wake of the French Revolution. This was awkward for the old elites who had sent them, and probably for the returning students as well. Technology was one thing. Notions of representative democracy, human rights, and freedom of the press were quite another. Muslims wrestled, along with the world, with such concepts as liberty, equality, and fraternity. Although, as early as the era of Napoleon, some Muslims recognized the threat to Islam posed by the ideology of the French Revolution, many regarded it—precisely because it was non-Christian, or even anti-Christian—as relatively safe.

The movement known as the “Young Ottomans,” modeled on Giuseppi Mazzini’s “Young Italy,” which sought to unify Italy under a republican form of government, arose in the mid-1860s. The Young Ottomans and their allies sought to establish their own newspapers, to found parliamentary institutions, and to institute liberal reforms of various kinds. They called for representative democracy, fundamental changes in school and university curriculum, and alterations of the traditional agrarian and merchant economy in the direction of free-market capitalism. And, of course, the Christian and Jewish minorities of the Islamic world, with their long-standing ties to their fellow believers in Europe, rapidly developed a taste for progressive Western thinking and served as conduits for the entry of such ideas into the Near East.

Liberal reformers in the Near East were encouraged by the outcome of the 1905 Russo-Japanese War, in which the Japanese, the only Asian people to adopt parliamentary democracy, defeated Russia, the only European country to reject it. The precedent was inspiring. The future must have seemed bright with promise.

But liberal democratic reform too failed to solve the problems of the Near East and the Islamic world, largely because it failed to come to effective power in the region. The British, for example, lingered on in Egypt long after the time when the Wafd Party—which had staked its credibility on the promise that European colonialists would depart once local elites had shown themselves capable of democratic self-rule—expected to reclaim Egypt’s dignity as a fully sovereign, autonomous state. For their part, the Ottoman sultans and their courts were wary of democracy. Although they experimented with parliamentary representation, they dissolved such bodies at the first sign of genuine independence. The legacy of the failure of genuine democracy to take root in the Islamic world is still apparent, even in relatively benign places like modern Egypt. Ritualistic elections are held, yet there is little true choice for the electorate, and, while a great deal is said about freedom, it has little solid reality anywhere in either the Near East or, for that matter, in the Islamic world generally.

Such facts made the sense of backwardness and stagnation among Muslims even more painfully apparent. And not a few Europeans noticed it. With astonishing chauvinism (to say nothing of historical ignorance) some French voices—the self-announced French mission civilisatrice made for a form of colonialism that was arguably much harsher than that of the British—were heard to declare that Arabs and even the Arabic language were incapable of sustaining genuine civilization. This cannot have been other than humiliating to those sensitive and educated Arab souls who heard of it. Finally, and perhaps worst of all, the establishment of Israel—by people coming mostly from Europe and the West, recognized and legitimated with stunning speed by Western governments—represented, in the minds of many Muslims, the emergence of a European colonial outpost in some of the holiest of Islamic territory.

Some other remedy to the problems of the Islamic world had to be found. And many people soon came to believe that they had found that remedy in socialism and in nationalism, which had the distinct advantage over later proposals that members of all Near Eastern faiths could participate as equals in the furtherance of their cause. For example, prominent leaders in the older Palestinian movement included not merely Muslims but such notorious militants as the Christian George Habbash, of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. [17] It was Palestinian ethnicity that counted, not religious affiliation. The Palestine Liberation Organization (or PLO) continues to be a largely secular or, at least, non-sectarian operation. And pan-Arabism—the notion that all of the Arabs form one nation, and that political reality ought to reflect that ideal—came to dominate a substantial portion of the Islamic world under the inspiration of Gamal Abdel Nasser (d. 1970). However, to make a rather long and dismal story brief, socialism and Arab nationalism failed too. Just as Lenin’s and Stalin’s “five-year plans” and economic collectivization proved disastrous for the former Soviet Union, the command economies erected by Nasser and others led to economic ruin and, in many cases, to tyranny and oppression. Nasser’s attempt to unify Egypt and Syria in the United Arab Republic (1958–61) fell apart after only three years, his pan-Arabist military adventure in Yemen was a disaster, and the Six-Day War was, at best, a pan-Arab humiliation. Today, perhaps only Libya’s Qaddafi still holds to the old dream of Arab nationalism.

The sense of frustration and embarrassment among elites in the Islamic world grew even more acute with the failure of these latest attempts to cure their ever more obviously dysfunctional region. They could not fail to notice, for example, that the nations of East Asia, which had begun at an even lower economic and social level than had the Near East—and which had, in addition, been devastated by the horrors of the Second World War—were now competitive with the West, and not merely economically but scientifically and technologically. The situation in the Islamic world is, unfortunately, far different. In contrast to its golden age, many centuries ago, little if any original science is done by Muslims living in Muslim countries, and little if any new technology is created there. Still today, Western investments do not come, by and large, to the Near East and the Islamic world. Instead, Near Easterners and other Muslims prefer to invest outside of their region, often in the West. If fossil fuels (essentially petroleum products) are excluded from the calculation, the exports of the entire Arab world are roughly on a par with those of Finland, a country of five million people. [18] And, ominously, fossil fuels are a finite resource. They are not renewable and not exclusive to the Middle East.

The social, economic, and political problems in the region include oppressive and tyrannical regimes and, despite oil revenues, continuing widespread poverty and illiteracy. In fact, as democracy takes root throughout much of the former Eastern bloc, as well as in Latin America and the new economic powerhouses of the Pacific Rim, Muslim states can now be seen—and not a few Muslims see themselves—as bringing up the absolute rear. Even where money abounds, at least for the moment, oil shaykhs are hiring Koreans and other Asians to do much of their work. Large American and European engineering firms build their airports and palaces and desalinization plants. Filipinos do much of the menial work, including domestic service and construction. It is hardly a long-term formula for a vibrant economy, and that fact hasn’t escaped notice within Muslim and Near Eastern circles.

One way of conveying something of the sense of perplexity and despair that many thinking Muslims now feel is to compare it to a hypothetical case among Latter-day Saints. We are accustomed to hearing reports of the continued growth of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It has been steady almost from the beginning, and even spectacular. We see ourselves as fulfilling Daniel’s prophecy of the stone cut out of the mountain without hands, which will eventually come to fill the whole earth (see Daniel 2). We expect to grow, and we look confidently forward to the triumph of the cause in which we are engaged. How would it be, though, if we were to enter a prolonged period when the growth ceased—when, in fact, we began to lose members, and found ourselves forced to sell chapels off by the score, and perhaps even close down a few temples because we no longer had the resources to maintain them?

Some members of the Church of Jesus Christ, I’m sure, would conclude that the gospel must not be true. In their view, the prophecies would have been proven false and their faith misplaced. Likewise, some Muslims, in the face of Western dominance and influenced by secularized Western thought, have given up their belief in Muhammad, the Qur’an, and even God. For the most part, though, they have remained prudently silent.

Some members of the Church, when faced with declining success, would suggest that we simply needed to improve our methods and practices. With a little tinkering here and there, they would say, and perhaps after borrowing a few ideas from successful organizations, our missionary program would be up and running again, and we would be back on the prophesied path. This would be very much the same kind of response that we saw among the Ottomans, when they looked to European models to improve their military practices and civil administration.

Still other members of the Church, however, would suggest that we needed to get “back to basics,” that our real problem was to be more faithful, to read the scriptures more and more deeply, to live the gospel more vibrantly, to be better disciples. And that, in a nutshell, despite the cultural differences and the occasionally appalling form that the “back to basics” movement has taken among some Muslims, is essentially what Islamic fundamentalism seeks to do. Of course, not all committed Muslims are fundamentalists, and not all fundamentalists are terrorists. And many of their criticisms of the immorality of the West are not wildly different from those that will be heard from the pulpit at any given conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. One of the most obvious and substantial differences between Latter-day Saints and Islamic fundamentalists in this regard, though, emerges from our different views of human freedom. Although the Qur’an expressly declares that there should be “no coercion in religion” (la ikraha fi al-din) , [19] Islamic societies have typically tended toward control rather than freedom. Proper behavior should be imposed by strong social constraints and, in some cases, by force. The Wahhabi movement that provided ideological support for the establishment of the kingdom Saudi Arabia in 1932was a harbinger of the future for the rest of the Islamic world in calling for a return to simplicity and Islamic seriousness; and, backed by Saudi oil wealth, the Wahhabis have in fact been pivotal in the spread of fundamentalism among Muslims around the world.

A Return to Their Roots

The humiliating disaster of the Six-Day or 1967 War was a crucial turning point in the history of both the Near East in particular and the Islamic world in general. Since everything else had clearly failed, those who had been saying all along that, as one popular bumper sticker among American Muslims has it, “Islam is the Answer!” now began to receive a hearing. They could point out, with some plausibility, that all of the cures heretofore proposed for the malaise of the Islamic world—enhanced military technology, improved administrative techniques, parliamentary democracy, nationalism, even socialism and Marxism—had been based upon foreign, Western ideas. Why not go back to Islamic roots? The Muslims had been spectacularly successful in previous centuries on the basis of their own traditions and religious practices, without borrowing from Western culture. [20]

A good illustration of the rising demand that Muslims return to their own roots rather than seeking salvation in the West might be a 1962 book by Jalal Al-e Ahmad (Iranian, d. 1969) entitled Gharbzadegi. Its Persian title might be translated, roughly, as “Westtoxification” or “Occidentosis,” and it argues, passionately, that Iran in particular needed to escape what its author saw as the near-total political and cultural dominance of the West. Another illustration, even more powerful, is the changed character of the Arab-Israeli conflict as it was manifested in the 1973 War. Whereas the disastrous 1967 War had been fueled by Nasserite secular nationalism, Nasser had now departed the scene via a 1970 heart attack, and the new Egyptian leader, Anwar al-Sadat, turned to Islamic symbolism to label the next military effort the “Ramadan War.” And it was lost on nobody, on the Muslim side, that, for the first time in many years, Arab armies enjoyed at least some limited success during a war conducted under the aegis of Islam.

At the same time, the famous Arab oil embargo filled the Arabs and Muslims generally with renewed confidence, and believers began to suspect that it was not merely by chance that God had given petroleum—”the oil weapon”—in such vast quantities specifically to the “holy land” of the Muslims, the Arabian peninsula.

Then in 1977–78, the Islamic Revolution overthrew one of the secular West’s most important Near Eastern allies, Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, the Shah of Iran. Once again, Muslim observers noted the power of Islam, or what some Western political analysts had initially dismissed as a ragtag bunch of mullahs and religious fanatics.

In 1989, the Afghan mujahidin drove the army of the mighty Soviet Union out of their country. Was it mere coincidence that the Berlin Wall came down during the same year and that, late in 1991, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics broke up? After years of increasing frustration and apparent powerlessness, the strength of Islam had been made manifest and vindicated. The tide had clearly turned, many believers thought, and the future was now bright with assurance. In 1992, Afghanistan was declared an Islamic state.

The name most commonly given by outsiders to this surge of interest in getting back to the roots and in living more Islamically was “Islamic fundamentalism.” The term is, however, more than a little problematic. It originated, apparently, with the publication of a series of conservative Protestant Christian tracts called the Fundamentals, published between 1910 and 1915. Yet though Protestant fundamentalism is parallel in certain ways with Islamic “fundamentalism,” they are certainly not the same thing. For many years, in fact, no word equivalent to English fundamentalism even existed in Arabic and other Muslim languages. And scholars prefer, on the whole, to refer to “Islamism” and “Islamists,” so as to avoid undesirable and even misleading connotations. For example, fundamentalism seems to connote ignorance and backwardness. But many prominent Islamist leaders are quite well educated and are neither backward nor provincial. Osama bin Ladin was trained as an engineer. His chief lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was schooled as a physician in Egypt where, as in much of the Near East, physicians and engineers are at the very top of the educational ladder. Ironically, though, the word fundamentalism has now been adopted by journalists and other writers in the Islamic world itself, to denote a movement that, on the whole, rejects cultural borrowings from the West.

Islamic fundamentalism is dedicated to the purification and reformation of beliefs and practices in accordance with the “fundamentals” of the Islamic faith. As such, it is part of a general world phenomenon dedicated to restoring lost values, truths, and practices, or to what some scholars like to call, in a fancy but insightful word, “repristinizing” religious faiths that have grown old, sloppy, and lax. Parallel movements (all of them troubled by certain developments in the modern world, some of which truly are troubling by almost any standard) occur not merely among Muslims and Christians, but also among Jews, Sikhs, Hindus, and other large religious traditions. Fundamentalists are reluctant to adapt to what they see as the evil features of modernity. They repudiate compromises and “sell-outs.”

In the Islamic context, fundamentalists are often hostile to official clergy on the government payroll. More broadly, religious reform in Islam necessarily involves political reform. “Church” and state are not separate in Islam for the simple and sufficient reason that they were never separate in the life of Muhammad, the model Muslim. Some fundamentalists call for the return of the caliphate, which was abolished in 1924 by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. Most if not all call for a restoration of the shari’a, which, they argue with considerable justification, is just as sophisticated and complex as any code of law in the West.

Pan-Islamism, it seems, has virtually replaced nationalism as a driving force in the Islamic world. The more or less secular Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) now finds itself rivaled by the even more militant Hamas, an explicitly Islamic movement that has transformed the conflict from one between Arabs and Israelis into one pitting Muslims against Jews. A few years ago, sensing the way the wind was blowing, even Saddam Hussein, whose Arab Ba’th party has always been a quintessentially secular nationalistic and socialistic product of an earlier period, discovered the “fact” that he is a descendant of the prophet Muhammad and placed the traditional Islamic cry Allahu akbar! (“God is most great!”) on the Iraqi flag.

Islamic regimes now control Iran and the Sudan and, until they were recently overthrown by American military force, dominated Afghanistan. The precise details of their programs are often rather vague, apart from a promise to return to ostensibly Islamic ways of doing things. But they have been able to agree on their hostility toward the West and, specifically, toward the United States of America. They resent American economic hegemony (called by one wit, in India, “Cocacolonization”), but their attention is focused on the United States primarily because America is now the world’s only true superpower. This is, of course, rather ironic, since it can certainly be argued that British and especially French colonialism were far more deliberately injurious to Islamic interests than American foreign policy has been and that recent Russian behavior toward the Islamic world has been straightforwardly brutal. And it is doubly ironic, since Islamists tend to use Western devices—cassette tapes, for example—to spread their messages. When the Ayatollah Khomeini returned from his exile in France to a triumphant welcome in the streets of Tehran, he flew back in a Boeing jetliner and rode into the city in a Chevrolet. In fact, even the elaborate Shi’ite hierarchy in Iran, with its “ayatollahs” and “hujjatulislams,” can be viewed as something that developed under Western influence.

Why is much Muslim hostility so focused upon the United States? I believe that a bit of psychohistory may be appropriate here, although I generally abhor such an approach. It seems to me that the United States has an effect upon many Muslims that is simultaneously both repulsive and seductive. This was brought home to me during the last months of my residency in Cairo, Egypt. Soviet troops had invaded Afghanistan and were openly bombing and killing Muslims throughout that country. Yet nothing happened to Soviet embassies. Then came a disturbance at the Great Mosque in Mecca. A rumor circulated that the Americans had been involved, and United States embassies across the Islamic world were attacked. I began to ponder why the mere rumor of an American misdeed provoked violence in several different Muslim countries, while open and brutal injuries done by the Soviets to thousands of Muslims in Afghanistan drew virtually no public response.

Americans are the heirs of the resentment that Muslims feel about all of the colonialism and imperialism and oppression that they have endured or—and the difference is not especially important—that they feel they have endured at the hands of the West. They perceive a deep hypocrisy in American attitudes. While, for example, Americans seem to care about Israeli Jewish suffering, they turn a blind eye (at least in much Arab and Muslim opinion) to the suffering of Palestinian Muslims. [21] Americans seem, too, to be continuing the hypocrisy of imperialist predecessors in the sense that, while supporting democracy at home, they seem perfectly comfortable with repression abroad. Earlier colonialists were themselves repressive; American foreign policy, in pursuit of its objectives of containing international communism and assuring the stability of oil and other markets, has often found itself supporting undemocratic regimes. And, of course, blaming others—the Zionists, Israel’s Mossad, the CIA—serves the interests of more than a few failed governments in the Islamic world: it distracts popular attention from the poverty and tyranny that characterize the region. (The image of the Jews in the Muslim world has changed dramatically since the establishment of Israel in 1948. Where the Jews were once held in rather benign contempt, they are now commonly held in bitter awe as a race of malicious supermen.)

Many Muslims today live in a state of mind that must be much like that of Europeans in the medieval Age of Faith—even, alas, to the point, at least figuratively, of seeing malevolent demons behind the actions of their enemies. Islam has undergone no Reformation. Muslims have not yet learned, within their own societies, to live alongside adherents of other faiths as full equals—as Europeans were gradually forced, very reluctantly, to do. Their culture has not assumed the skeptical stance that, for both good and ill, has characterized Western civilization since the Enlightenment. Islamic civilization was once the greatest of its day and among the greatest in human history. The seeds of its decay were sown internally, and the steps that must be taken to restore it to its historic place in world culture must be taken by the Muslims themselves.

[1] I offer a longer and somewhat more complete survey in Daniel C. Peterson, Abraham Divided: An LDS Perspective on the Middle East, 2d ed. (Salt Lake City: Aspen Books, 1995). I might note here, incidentally, that, although their meanings were originally somewhat distinct, the terms Middle East and Near East are currently used as synonyms by virtually all specialists in the field.

[2] Most scholars believe that they did not take their pagan religion very seriously. I tend to believe that their religiosity has been underestimated. But this is not the place to argue that point.

[3] See Lynn M. Hilton and Hope Hilton, In Search of Lehi’s Trail (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1976); Hugh Nibley, Lehi in the Desert/ The World of the Jaredites/ There Were Jaredites (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1988), 1–149; Warren P.Aston and Michaela Knoth Aston, In the Footsteps of Lehi: New Evidence for Lehi’s Journey across Arabia to Bountiful (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1994); Noel B. Reynolds, “Lehi’s Arabian Journey Updated,” in Book of Mormon Authorship Revisited: The Evidence for Ancient Origins, ed. Noel B. Reynolds (Provo: FARMS, 1997),379–89.

[4] There are many biographies of the prophet Muhammad, and many of them are quite good. I offer an approach of my own to the subject in Daniel C. Peterson, “Muhammad” in David Noel Freedman and Michael J. McClymond, eds., The Rivers of Paradise: Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, and Muhammad as Religious Founders (Grand Rapids and Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans, 2001), 457–612.

[5] As a matter of fact, the chapters are in roughly reverse chronological order.

[6] Qur’an 2:190. Presumably, Osama bin Ladin’s justification for his actions against American targets was that, in his view, he was simply fighting a defensive struggle to combat ongoing American aggression against the Islamic world. That might eliminate the need for prior warning of a war since, from his point of view, the war was already under way. And he avoided the prohibition against targeting noncombatants by redefining all participants in the economy of the United States as, effectively, facilitators of American military and economic hegemony. Under such reasoning, of course, no serious distinction between combatants and noncombatants would ever be possible—taxpayers support armies, mothers feed future soldiers—and the humane provisions of Islamic law would be easily evaded.

[7] Qur’an 2:195.

[8] Precisely like the Greek word martyros, the Arabic term means both “martyr” (in the English sense) and “witness.”

[9] Qur’an 112.

[10] See Journal of Discourses 3:28–42.

[11] This portion of the present essay was heavily influenced by Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).

[12] Ancient Greeks, Persians, and Chinese adopted the same attitude at various points in their history. In fact, our word barbaric derives from Greek, and, more particularly, from the Greeks’ unflattering imitation of the way non-Greek languages sounded to them: bar-bar-bar-bar-or, in other words, pure gibberish.

[13] By the same token, the Ottoman Islamic threat to the east probably helped to dissuade Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, from sending his troops to crush the Lutheran Reformation in northern Europe. History moves in mysterious ways.

[14] Lewis, What Went Wrong? 50.

[15] Cited by Lewis, What Went Wrong? 17.

[16] Interestingly, many years later, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, while rejecting most forms of music as decadent and immoral, was to make an exception for martial music. His views on the subject may have been influenced not only by his reading of Islamic principles but by his understanding of Books 2 and 3 of Plato’s Republic. He is said to have been a student and admirer of Plato.

[17] It has to be said, of course, that—very much like several of the warlords of Lebanon—he was a Christian in pretty much the same sense that a Mafia don is a Christian.

[18] See Lewis, What Went Wrong? 47.

[19] Qur’an 2:256.

[20] Actually, of course, this is not precisely accurate. With their rapid expansion and their systematic efforts to translate Western and other books on medicine, science, philosophy, and many other subjects into Arabic, Muslims in the first centuries were quite open in many ways to cultural influences from the outside. The books published in Brigham Young University’s new Graeco-Arabic Sciences and Philosophy series will illustrate that openness very clearly.

[21] U.S. intervention on behalf of Muslim Kuwait, following Iraq’s invasion of that small nation, is dismissed merely as an expression of our interest in oil. And U.S. intervention on behalf of Muslims in the Balkan states tends simply to be dismissed or forgotten.

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By: History.com Editors

Updated: March 26, 2024 | Original: January 5, 2018

Islam is the second-largest religion in the world after Christianity, with about 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide. As one of the three Abrahamic religions—the others being Judaism and Christianity—it too is a monotheistic faith that worships one god, called Allah.

The word Islam means “submission” or “surrender,” as its faithful surrender to the will of Allah. Although its roots go back further in time, scholars typically date the creation of Islam to the 7th century, making it the youngest of the major world religions. Islam started in Mecca, in modern-day Saudi Arabia, during the time of the prophet Muhammad. Today, the faith is spreading rapidly throughout the world. Widely practiced in the Middle East and North Africa, it is also has many adherents in South Asia—Indonesia, in fact, has the largest number of followers of the Islamic faith.

Islam Facts

• The word “Islam” means “submission to the will of God.”
• Followers of Islam are called Muslims.
• Muslims are monotheistic and worship one, all-knowing God, who in Arabic is known as Allah.
• Followers of Islam aim to live a life of complete submission to Allah. They believe that nothing can happen without Allah’s permission, but humans have free will.
• Islam teaches that Allah’s word was revealed to the prophet Muhammad through the angel Gabriel.
• Muslims believe several prophets were sent to teach Allah’s law. They respect some of the same prophets as Jews and Christians, including Abraham, Moses, Noah and Jesus . Muslims contend that Muhammad was the final prophet.
• Mosques are places where Muslims worship.
• Some important Islamic holy places include the Kaaba shrine in Mecca, the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, and the Prophet Muhammad’s mosque in Medina.
• The Quran (or Koran) is the major holy text of Islam. The Hadith is another important book. Muslims also revere some material found in the Judeo-Christian Bible .
• Followers worship Allah by praying and reciting the Quran. They believe there will be a day of judgment, and life after death.
• A central idea in Islam is “jihad,” which means “struggle.” While the term has been used negatively in mainstream culture, Muslims believe it refers to internal and external efforts to defend their faith. Although rare, this can include military jihad if a “just war” is needed.

The prophet Muhammad, sometimes spelled Mohammed or Mohammad, was born in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, in A.D. 570. Muslims believe he was the final prophet sent by God to reveal their faith to mankind.

According to Islamic texts and tradition, an angel named Gabriel visited Muhammad in 610 while he was meditating in a cave. The angel ordered Muhammad to recite the words of Allah.

Muslims believe that Muhammad continued to receive revelations from Allah throughout the rest of his life.

Starting in about 613, Muhammad began preaching throughout Mecca the messages he received. He taught that there was no other God but Allah and that Muslims should devote their lives to this God.

Hijra, Abu Bakr

In 622, Muhammad traveled from Mecca to Medina with his supporters. This journey became known as the Hijra (also spelled Hegira or Hijrah), and marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar.

Some seven years later, Muhammad and his many followers returned to Mecca and conquered the region. He continued to preach until his death in 632.

After Muhammad’s passing, Islam began to spread rapidly.  A series of leaders, known as caliphs, became successors to Muhammad. This system of leadership, which was run by a Muslim ruler, became known as a caliphate.

The first caliph was Abu Bakr, Muhammad’s father-in-law and close friend.

Abu Bakr died about two years after he was elected and was succeeded in 634 by Caliph Umar, another father-in-law of Muhammad.

Caliphate System

When Umar was assassinated six years after being named caliph, Uthman, Muhammad’s son-in-law, took the role.

Uthman was also killed, and Ali, Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, was selected as the next caliph.

During the reign of the first four caliphs, Arab Muslims conquered large regions in the Middle East, including Syria , Palestine , Iran and Iraq. Islam also spread throughout areas in Europe, Africa, and Asia.

The caliphate system lasted for centuries and eventually evolved into the Ottoman Empire , which controlled large regions in the Middle East from about 1517 until 1917, when World War I ended the Ottoman reign.

Sunnis and Shiites

When Muhammad died, there was debate over who should replace him as leader. This led to a schism in Islam, and two major sects emerged: the Sunnis and the Shiites.

Sunnis make up nearly 90 percent of Muslims worldwide. They accept that the first four caliphs were the true successors to Muhammad.

Shiite Muslims believe that only the caliph Ali and his descendants are the real successors to Muhammad. They deny the legitimacy of the first three caliphs. Today, Shiite Muslims have a considerable presence in Iran, Iraq and Syria.

Other Types of Islam

Other, smaller Muslim denominations within the Sunni and Shiite groups exist. Some of these include:

• Wahhabi : This Sunni sect, made up of members of the Tameem tribe in Saudi Arabia, was founded in the 18th century. Followers observe an extremely strict interpretation of Islam that was taught by Muhammad bin Abd al-Wahhab.
• Alawite : This Shiite form of Islam is prevalent in Syria. Followers hold similar beliefs about the caliph Ali but also observe some Christian and Zoroastrian holidays.
• Nation of Islam : This primarily Black, Sunni sect was founded in the 1930s in Detroit, Michigan. Black Muslims now comprise one-fifth of all Muslims in the United States.
• Sufism : A mystical denomination of Islam, those who follow the Sufi faith seek to attain a purer state of existence through their personal and direct relationship with God.
• Kharijites : This sect broke from the Shiites after disagreeing over how to select a new leader. They are known for radical fundamentalism, and today are called Ibadis.

The Quran (sometimes spelled Qur’an or Koran) is considered the most important holy book among Muslims.

It contains some basic information that is found in the Hebrew Bible as well as revelations that were given to Muhammad. The text is considered the sacred word of God and supercedes any previous writings.

Most Muslims believe that Muhammad’s scribes wrote down his words, which became the Quran. (Muhammad himself was never taught to read or write.)

The book is written with Allah as the first person, speaking through Gabriel to Muhammad. It contains 114 chapters, which are called surahs.

Scholars believe the Quran was compiled shortly after Muhammad’s death, under the guidance of Caliph Abu Bakr.

Islamic Calendar, Symbols

The Islamic calendar, also called the Hijra calendar, is a lunar calendar used in Islamic religious worship. The calendar began in the year A.D. 622, celebrating the journey of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina.

The Islamic calendar indicates the proper days of Islamic holidays and celebrations, including the period of fasting and prayer known as Ramadan , which occurs during the ninth month of the calendar.

As in many religions, there is no single image or symbol of Islam that is universally accepted by all Muslims worldwide.

The crescent moon and star has been adopted in some predominantly Muslim countries as a symbol of Islam, though the crescent moon and star image is believed to pre-date Islam and was originally a symbol of the Ottoman Empire.  

In some other applications, such as the International Red Cross and Red Crescent humanitarian aid movement, a red crescent indicates that followers of Islam are respected and treated accordingly.

The color green is also sometimes associated with Islam, as it was reportedly a favorite color of Muhammad's and is often featured prominently in the flags of predominantly Muslim countries.

Five Pillars of Islam

Muslims follow five basic pillars that are essential to their faith. These include:

• Shahada : to declare one’s faith in God and belief in Muhammad
• Salat : to pray five times a day (at dawn, noon, afternoon, sunset, and evening)
• Zakat : to give to those in need
• Sawm : to fast during Ramadan
• Hajj : to make a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once during a person’s lifetime if the person is able

Islam’s legal system is known as Sharia Law. This faith-based code of conduct directs Muslims on how they should live in nearly every aspect of their lives.

Sharia law requires men and women to dress modestly. It also outlines marriage guidelines and other moral principles for Muslims.

If crimes are committed, Sharia law is known for its harsh punishments. For example, the punishment for theft is amputating a person’s hand. Adultery can carry the penalty of death by stoning. However, many Muslims do not support such extreme measures.

Muslim Prayer, Holidays

The prophet Muhammad is credited with building the first mosque in the courtyard of his house in Medina. Mosques today follow some of the same principles he established in A.D 622.

Muslim prayer is often conducted in a mosque's large open space or outdoor courtyard. A mihrab is a decorative feature or niche in the mosque that indicates the direction to Mecca, and therefore the direction to face during prayer.

Men and women pray separately, and Muslims may visit a mosque five times a day for each of the prayer sessions. In addition to hosting prayers, mosques often function as public gathering places and social centers. 

The two major Muslim holidays are:

Eid al-Adha : celebrates the Prophet Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son for Allah.

Eid al-Fitr : marks the end of Ramadan—the Islamic holy month of fasting.

Muslims also celebrate other holidays, such as the Islamic New Year and the birth of Muhammad.

Islam Today

In recent years, Islam’s supposed association with terrorism and mass murder has sparked a political debate in many countries. The controversial term “radical Islam” has become a well-known label to describe the religion’s connection to acts of violence.

Recent surveys have found that in countries with high Muslim populations, the majority of Muslims have overwhelmingly negative views of terrorist groups like ISIS .

While Muslims aim to clear up misconceptions about their faith, the religion continues to spread rapidly. Today, Islam is the world’s fastest growing religion. Experts predict Islam will surpass Christianity as the largest religion by the end of the century.

Islam, BBC . Islam Fast Facts, CNN . Basic Facts About Islam, PBS . What is Sharia Law and How is it Applied? BBC . In nations with significant Muslim populations, much disdain for ISIS. Pew Research Center . Islam Rituals and Worship: Symbolism,  The Religion Library . The Islamic Calendar: TimeandDate.com . Sufism. The British Library . What is Sufism?  The Threshold Society . "Black Muslims account for a fifth of all U.S. Muslims, and about half are converts to Islam," by Besheer Mohamed and Jeff Diamant, January 17, 2019, Pew Research Center .

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What do Muslims believe and do? Understanding the 5 pillars of Islam

Senior Religion + Ethics Editor/ Director of the Global Religion Journalism Initiative

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For people who would like to learn more about Islam, The Conversation is publishing a series of articles , available on our website or as six emails delivered every other day , written by Senior Religion and Ethics Editor Kalpana Jain. Over the past few years she has commissioned dozens of articles on Islam written by academics. These articles draw from that archive and have been checked for accuracy by religion scholars.

When I was growing up in India, my father’s Muslim friends would get me new clothes for Eid al-Fitr, a festival that celebrates the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, just as they would for their own children. Later in the day, loads of sewain , a vermicelli dessert filled with nuts, would be sent to our home.

I learned about many cultural rituals in these interactions, but as someone who is not a Muslim, I did not have a deep theological understanding of the Islamic faith until reading the writings of our scholars as an ethics and religion editor.

Today, we will take you through some of the basic tenets of the Islamic faith.

For Muslims, Prophet Muhammad is the most revered of all men. He is the last and most authoritative in a line of prophets that includes Moses and Jesus and is believed to have received direct revelations from God through the archangel Gabriel.

These revelations form the basis of the Muslim holy text, the Quran. The Quran refers to God as Allah, which is the Arabic word for God.

Muslims belong to many different sects – including some you may have heard of, like Sunni and Shiite – but they all share these same fundamental beliefs.

The Islamic faith

There are five pillars – or basic tenets – of the Islamic faith. These are professing one’s faith; praying five times a day; giving zakat, or donating a certain portion of one’s wealth; fasting during Ramadan; and making a pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

Each of these pillars is an important part of being Muslim. As scholar Rose Aslan writes, “ Many Muslims organize their days around the call to prayer and others stop what they are doing during the call and make supplications to God .”

In countries such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and India, the call to prayer can be heard through loudspeakers mounted on minarets. The sacred text is recited by professionals to evoke piety in their listeners.

Muslims pray in the direction of Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Inside mosques, a prayer niche, a recess in the wall, known as the mihrab, indicates the direction of Mecca.

Scholars explain that for many Muslims, the practice of prayer helps them experience God in an intimate way. The 13th-century Persian Sufi poet Rumi spoke of his experience of prayer as a “delight,” that opened the “window” of his soul.

For all Muslims who have the “physical and financial ability” to undertake the journey, the five-day pilgrimage to the Great Mosque of Mecca and the surrounding area is an obligation to be undertaken once in their lives. Inside the Great Mosque of Mecca is a black, cube-shaped structure, the Holy Kaaba.

The Kaaba holds a deep religious significance for Muslims. The Quran tells the story of Ibrahim, who, when commanded by God, agreed to sacrifice his son, Ismail. Scholar Ken Chitwood explains that Muslims believe the Kaaba holds the black stone upon which Ibrahim was to sacrifice Ismail .

The pilgrimage ends with Eid al-Adha, the “feast of the sacrifice.”

Fasts and feasts

If you have heard about or seen your Muslim neighbors fasting, then what they are observing is Ramadan. Muslims believe that the Quran was first revealed to Prophet Muhammad during the month of Ramadan.

Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar and lasts either 29 or 30 days. During Ramadan, Muslims observe a fast from sunrise to sunset each day, so they wake up early to share food before the sun appears and end it in later in the evening.

In the 12-month Gregorian calendar used in much of the world, the timing of Ramadan can vary from year to year. The dates depend on when the new crescent moon is visible.

The fasting, as scholar Mohammad Hassan Khalil explains, is a way for Muslims to be conscious of God . It is also meant to help them understand what it is like to be poor.

The fasting ends with the celebration of Eid al-Fitr. Muslim communities often organize large feasts for breaking the fast that are known as “Iftaar” (literally, “breakfast”) at which people from all religions are welcomed. I’ve often attended Iftaar feasts in India.

On Eid, Muslims gather in the mosque for prayers, which are followed by celebrations. In many South Asian countries, sewain are distributed around to friends and neighbors. But customs can vary, and Muslims from different countries and cultures will bring their unique food and traditions to the celebrations of this holy day.

This article was reviewed for accuracy by Ken Chitwood , a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Berlin Graduate School of Muslim Cultures & Societies at Freie Universität Berlin. He is also a journalist-fellow at the University of Southern California’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture.

Fact: The first Muslim to ever recite the call to prayer was Bilal Ibn Rabah, son of an enslaved Abyssinian woman, in the city of Medina in the seventh century. At the time, early Muslims were debating the best way to audibly announce the time for prayer so people would know when to gather at the mosque. – From an article written by Rose Aslan , Assistant Professor of Religion, California Lutheran University.

Do now: Listen to these sounds of the call to prayer , and ask yourself how they make you feel.

In the next issue: Who is an American Muslim ?

You can read all six articles in this Understanding Islam series on TheConversation.com , or we can deliver them straight to your inbox if you sign up for our email newsletter course .

Articles from The Conversation in this edition:

Explaining the Muslim pilgrimage of hajj

What is the significance of Friday prayers in Islam?

Why Ramadan is Ramadan: 6 questions answered

On Eid 2017, a peek into the lives of Puerto Rican Muslims

Further Reading and Resources:

Institute of Social Policy and Understanding : ISPU conducts research to help journalists and others better understand the lives of American Muslims.

“ Islam: An Introduction ,” by Annemarie Schimmel: A comprehensive introduction to Islam by an influential Islamic scholar who was a professor at Harvard University from 1967 to 1992.

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Encyclopaedia of Islam three Comprehensive and authoritative encyclopedia of concepts, people, places related to the Islamic world and culture. Each entry has a bibliography.

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Search HOLLIS Advanced Search (in Library Catalog) for [name of religion] + bibliography as a subject . If you are looking for a bibliography in English, you should use the refining options on the left-hand side under Language to limit to items in English.

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Introductory essay

Written by the educators who created Understanding Islam, a brief look at the key facts, tough questions and big ideas in their field. Begin this TED Study with a fascinating read that gives context and clarity to the material.

The TED Talks provide a unique opportunity for an educated layman to learn about the core beliefs and practices of Islam beyond the TV sound bites. These lectures are delivered in a straightforward, lucid and accessible manner, yet are profound and thought-provoking, arousing in the audience an interest to pursue further into a more engaged study of Islam and its varied civilizational expressions across the Muslim world. Mumtaz Ahmad, President, International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan

For historic reasons, it's never been easy for non-Muslims to learn about Islam. Since the Crusaders' efforts to reinstate Roman control over Jerusalem, images of Islam as an ideology founded by a fanatic, posing as a prophet, and encouraging extremism have circulated widely. (Among other vestiges of this era is the saying, "If the mountain won't come to Muhammad, Muhammad will go to the mountain." This was the punch line in a story about Muhammad's failed effort to prove he was a prophet by commanding a mountain to come to him.) In the modern era the British struggled to maintain their control over Arab and Indian lands, derisively referred to by Rudyard Kipling as the "white man's burden." The young Winston Churchill wrote of Sudanis resisting British conquest, "How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedianism lays on its votaries!" He included among them "fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog." (Sir Winston Churchill; ( The River War , 1st ed., London 1899, II:248) The French felt compelled to undertake a "civilizing mission" among Africans, including the Muslim North Africans, casting those who preferred to rule themselves as insurgents and terrorists.

Without this background, it's difficult to comprehend the vehemence of contemporary Muslim struggles for good governance, much less reactions to insults to Islam, its scripture, and prophet. The TEDTalks presented here provide a framework for meeting that challenge. Presenting Islam as Muslims perceive it, beginning with the Qur'an (Islam's sacred scripture; "Koran" in archaic spelling), TED speakers allow us to appreciate that Islam shares its major prophets and core values with Judaism and Christianity. Tracing the historic origins of radicalism, they also reveal the key distinctions between mainstream Islamic values and those motivating headline-grabbing extremists. Finally, sampling some of the ways in which Muslims are working to provide positive role models for their children, and present mainstream views of Islam to non-Muslims using the tools of popular culture, TED speakers provide hope for a future in which non-Muslims and Muslims may work together to realize those shared values.

The Qur'an

Independent scholar and TED speaker Lesley Hazleton undertook a study of the Qur'an — the sacred scripture of Islam — in order to write a biography of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, and discovered that it was a challenging task indeed. She quotes 19th-century historian and essayist Thomas Carlyle describing the Qur'an as "a wearisome jumble." For Carlyle it was "as toilsome reading as I ever undertook." That's because the Qur'an is not a book to be read like any other book. It's a book of scripture central to Islamic belief and practice, sacred to hundreds of millions of people all over the world. As such, in the words of contemporary Muslim philosopher Tariq Ramadan, the Qur'an is considered "more than a mere text[;] it is a traveling companion" through life. Ramadan writes, "For the woman or the man whose heart has made the message of Islam its own, the [Qur'an] speaks in a singular way. It is both the Voice and the Path. God speaks to one's innermost being, to his consciousness, to his heart, and guides him on the path that leads to knowledge of him, to meeting with him: 'This is the Book, about it there can be no doubt; it is a Path for those who are aware of God.'"

As Hazleton notes, the sound of the Qur'an recited is exquisitely, hauntingly beautiful. It reflects, in her view, "the rhythmic cadence" of the deserts and mountains of Arabia, where it was delivered over a period of 22-23 years in the 7th century. Scholar Michael Sells addresses the aesthetic qualities of the Qur'an in his unique introductory text Approaching the Qur'an (White Cloud 2007). Sells focuses on the shortest chapters (suras), which are generally believed to be the earliest ones. While later chapters often deal with practical issues of communal life and social justice, the early verses are deeply spiritual. They focus on the grand themes of creation and the purpose of human life. The powerful imagery, especially of these early chapters of the Qur'an, is conveyed most effectively by the human voice. The art of Qur'an recitation is among Islam's most cherished, and gifted Qur'an reciters can achieve fame worldwide. Sells has provided a CD with his book so that readers can experience the chanted Qur'an themselves — whether they understand Arabic or not.

Indeed, Arabic speakers comprise only perhaps one quarter of the world's Muslims. The majority of the world's Muslims are Indonesian, Indian, Bangladeshi, or Pakistani. Millions more are Malaysian, African, Central Asian, Chinese, European, Latin American, or North American. But the Qur'ân is considered to be authentic only in Arabic, so virtually all Muslims pray in Arabic. The text exists in translation in most languages, but once translated, it is no longer considered to be the Qur'an. As with all translations, it is an interpretation. The recited Qur'an, as Ramadan notes, speaks directly to the heart of Muslims.

For non-Muslims, on the other hand, the Qur'an must be approached with some preparation. To begin, the term qur'ân means "recitation" or "reading," reflecting the Muslim belief that it is the word of God, not of the prophet who delivered it. Muslims believe that the Qur'an is timeless, revealed word for word in the Arabic language through God's final messenger, Muhammad (d. 632).

In fact, the Qur'an states that its message has been delivered numerous times before. It refers frequently to the Torah and the Gospels, telling people that that they should remember those texts and following their teachings, clearly assuming people are familiar with them. As a result, the Qur'an does not recount their historic narratives. Instead, it uses characters and events familiar to Jews and Christians to make specific moral or theological points. References to Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Moses, and Jesus, for example, thus appear frequently but not in chronological order.

The Qur'ân also refers to prophets unknown to Jews and Christians, but all prophets are believed to have preached the same message of social justice as a reflection of true belief. The Qur'ân, in other words, considers its teaching to be part of the monotheistic tradition that began with the covenant between God and humanity forged at the time of Abraham. (See, e.g. verses 43:13, 2:136-7, 26:194-197; 6:92.) As TED speaker and scholar Karen Armstrong discovered when she began her study of Islam, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are indeed "sister religions." The Qur'an teaches that if people understood their diverse scriptures properly, there would be no religious disputes and, what's more, they would recognize that the Qur'ân truly confirms what had been revealed before. But the Qur'an recognizes that there are disputes among the communities that came to be distinguished as Jewish and Christian (27:76-77; 11:118), and that many people did in fact reject the message of Muhammad. (61:5-6) It offers explanations for these problems, identifying what it considers misinterpretations of the earlier messages. (E.g., 2:124; 3:45, 4:171; 2:87; 4:157.)

Yet the Qur'an teaches that these differences should not be a source of conflict. There must be no compulsion in matters of religion, the Qur'an insists. (2:256) Instead, people of all communities should work together for shared goals. Rather than disputing over doctrine, all who claim to believe should simply "compete with one another in good works." (5:48) Good works, in the Qur'an's perspective, include anything that promotes justice: charity, caring for parents and relatives and the poor, freeing slaves, keeping promises, being sincere and steadfast in one's commitments. And doing such works reflects genuine encounter with the divine. There is one God, who is the sole provider, protector, guide, and judge of all human beings. God created all human beings, and created them equal. Genuine awareness of God thus inspires people to serve God by safeguarding the dignity and equality in which all were created. (See, e.g., Ch. 107; 89:15-18.)

The Qur'an describes this responsibility as stewardship, khilafah . The related term khalifah is later used in the political sphere to mean "successor" of the Prophet (and anglicized as "caliph"), but in the Qur'an it has a much broader meaning. In a famous verse, the Qur'an says that God created humanity to be His khalifah (2:30). Human beings were put on earth to be responsible for all creation.

The majority of the Qur'an's later, more practically-oriented verses deal with specific aspects of that stewardship. Among the Qur'an's most detailed legislation is that designed to improve the status of women. As Hazleton notes, the Qur'an directly addresses both males and females. It is also the only major religious text to acknowledge misogyny and enjoin correctives. (See, e.g., 16:59-60; 43:17; 81:8-9; 4:24; 2:187; 30:21; 4:29; 4:35; 4:128; 2:24; 2:229; 9:71; 2:228) Protection of orphans is another major focus of the Qur'an's program for social justice. There are other aspects of stewardship, as well. Hazleton refers to the Qur'an's environmental concerns, for example (see e.g., 15:19). But altogether, as both Karen Armstrong and Faisal Abdul Rauf stress in their TEDTalks, the Qur'an's intense concern for the most vulnerable members of society, and commissioning of human beings to protect them, reflects Islam's overarching ethos of compassion. In one of its most paradigmatic verses, the Qur'an recalls that, as God (Allah, in Arabic) taught the people of Israel, killing one person is like killing all of humanity, and saving one person is like saving all mankind. (5:32)

Matters of Interpretation

TED speakers Mustafa Aykol, Maajid Nawaz, Maz Jobrani, and Naif al-Mutawa demonstrate that Muslims, at least as much as non-Muslims, wonder how a religion that insists on human dignity and compassion for all living beings could be associated with atrocities like female circumcision, honor killings, and terrorism. In the cases of circumcision and honor killings, it's simply a matter of pre-existing cultural practices being confused with religious teachings. But in the case of terrorism, as Aykol argues, the answer lies in perversion of religious teachings in response to specific political conflicts.

Aykol notes that Islam stresses specific individual liberties. Articulated in classical legal texts as the "goals" or "purposes" of Islamic law (Shari`ah), they include the right to life, religion, family, property, and reason or dignity. Despite economic and political decline in the later Middle Ages, Islamic traditions stressing human dignity remained vibrant. They became the core of reform movements that emerged under the impact of colonialism in the 19th century. By that time virtually all Muslim majority regions - North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia - were under European control. Reformers of this era ("modernists," in Aykol's terminology) exhibited considerable optimism that once free of foreign control, Muslim societies would recover their cultural dynamism and continue to contribute to global civilization.

But the outcome of World War I created a backlash against Europe and a strong sense of Islamic exceptionalism. Prior to World War I, Britain had convinced Arab leaders to assist them and their allies in defeating Germany by rebelling against Germany's ally, Ottoman Turkey. In return, Britain would recognize Arab independence. That promise, however, was violated. Britain and France in fact kept control of the territories they already dominated in North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Egypt), and took control of Syria (which at that time included Lebanon), Palestine (the territories later divided into Israel and the West Bank), Transjordan (roughly the portion of traditional Greater Syria that lies between Iraq and the Jordan River, eventually renamed Jordan), and Iraq — often ruling through local surrogates. In this context, a new generation of grassroots reformers stressed a sharp distinction between European and Islamic culture, the purity and superiority of Islamic values, and the sufficiency of Islam for all human needs — personal, social, and political. Leaders of this politicized Islam ("Islamism") organized community-based societies to provide social services generally unavailable to the poor through the European-controlled governments and, as a result, became very popular.

By the mid-20th century, Europe lost its dominance in the region, whether through revolution or due to economic and political exhaustion, leaving a legacy of economic and social underdevelopment and, in many cases, communities with no bureaucratic infrastructure except the military. As throughout the formerly colonized world, military-dominated, authoritarian governments thus became the norm. Islamist groups continued to fill the gaps in social services, and thus continued to grow in popularity. They also grew bolder in their political demands. As Aykol notes, increasing political pressure by Islamists resulted in increasing suppression of Islamist opposition by authoritarian post-colonial governments. Islamist organizations were frequently banned, their leaders arrested or assassinated, and many of their members imprisoned and tortured.

The systematic persecution of Islamists by authoritarian regimes resulted in the radicalization of some. The majority of Muslims and the majority of Islamists retained Islam's characteristic moderation. The atrocities committed by the radicals are thus condemned by the vast majority of Muslims as violations of core Islamic values. This became increasingly evident during the last quarter of the 20th century, when political setbacks unleashed a rash of extremist outbreaks in Egypt, Algeria, and Afghanistan.

Egypt was plagued by terrorist attacks and its President Sadat was assassinated (1981), Algeria descended into a shockingly brutal civil war following the military government's cancellation of elections (1992), and Afghanistan became a deadly war zone as warlords battled for dominance following Soviet withdrawal (1980), which ultimately led to the dominance of the repressive Taliban (1996). In all cases, the result was even further suffering in disadvantaged Muslim communities. By the 1990s even the Islamic government established with great optimism in Iran in 1979 had become extremely unpopular. Its people had suffered terribly in a brutal war with secular Iraq, and its increasingly youth-dominated population longed for freedom, development, and global cultural engagement.

By the 1990s, therefore, Islamism was undergoing a transformation. Early Islamist efforts had apparently failed, and new generations emerged whose experience of Islamism was scarcely more positive than had been their parents' experience of secular rule. Mainstream Islamists therefore intensified their demands for representative, participatory governance, and equality of all citizens before the law. Some earlier-generation Islamists had rejected use of the term "democracy" for the kind of government they advocated, given its association with the secular European governments who had caused such resentment in their colonial realms. Newer generations of reformers had no such qualms. They are the ones who rose to roles of leadership during the Arab Spring.

Not all Muslims are Islamists. Some indeed distrust the Islamists and advocate secularism, fearing that Islamism will result in the kind of oppressive societies developed in Iran and Afghanistan. And not all Islamists are pro-democracy. Pockets of militant, anti-West radicals remain and continue to plague both mainstream Muslim communities and the radicals' Western targets. But mainstream Muslims collectively struggle to counter the extremists' messages in diverse ways. TED speaker Maz Jobrani uses the performance art of comedy to challenge Hollywood-style stereotypes of Islam and the Middle East. Maajid Nawaz presents his personal experiences as a terrorist recruit, and describes his efforts to provide coherent media-based outreach programs to counter the outlaw-chic extremist allure for Muslim youth in Pakistan. Shereen El Feki describes how some Arab cultures are using music videos, comics, and even Barbie to promote positive perspectives of Islam; and Naif al-Mutawa introduces his immensely popular comic book series, The 99, offering superheroes embodying Quranic values such as justice, mercy, and wisdom as role models for Muslim children. The goal is for newer generations to emerge from the burdens of the past empowered by an appreciation of Islam's core values and confidence that the world will respect them.

Let's begin Understanding Islam with "On reading the Koran," the TEDTalk from journalist and scholar Lesley Hazleton. In her talk, the Jewish-born, Catholic-schooled Hazleton describes what she learned after spending three months in a close reading of the Koran, studying four well-known translations and the seventh-century Arabic text.

Lesley Hazleton

On reading the koran, relevant talks.

Karen Armstrong

My wish: the charter for compassion.

Feisal Abdul Rauf

Lose your ego, find your compassion.

Mustafa Akyol

Faith versus tradition in islam.

Maajid Nawaz

A global culture to fight extremism.

Maz Jobrani

Did you hear the one about the iranian-american.

• Evidence Islam is Truth
• The Benefits of Islam
• Beliefs of Islam
• How to Convert to Islam
• Worship and Practice
• The Hereafter
• Stories of New Muslims
• Comparative Religion
• The Holy Quran
• The Prophet Muhammad
• Current Issues
• Islamic History
• Systems in Islam

Evidence Islam is Truth 159 articles

• The Scientific Miracles of the Holy Quran 15 articles
• The Scientific Miracles of the Prophet Muhammad Sayings 2 articles
• Muhammad in the Bible and Other Scriptures 4 articles
• The Authenticity and Preservation of the Holy Quran 21 articles
• Evidence of Muhammad’s Prophethood 29 articles
• Logical Proofs 45 articles
• The Existence of God 62 articles

The Benefits of Islam 62 articles

• The Door to Eternal Paradise 3 articles
• Salvation from Hellfire 1 articles
• True Happiness and Inner Peace 28 articles
• Forgiveness for All Previous Sins 1 articles
• Benefits to Society 15 articles
• Benefits to Science and Civilization 7 articles
• What Others Say about Islam, Muhammad, and the Quran 7 articles

Beliefs of Islam 211 articles

• What is Islam 21 articles
• The Six Pillars of Faith and Other Islamic Beliefs 49 articles
• About God 63 articles
• The Purpose of Life 22 articles
• Stories of the Prophets 64 articles

How to Convert to Islam 13 articles

• How to Convert to Islam and Become a Muslim 13 articles

Worship and Practice 115 articles

• The Five Pillars of Islam and Other Acts of Worship 49 articles
• Islamic Morals and Practices 66 articles

The Hereafter 35 articles

• Paradise 8 articles
• Hellfire 9 articles
• The Journey after Death 12 articles
• The Day of Judgement and Its Signs 9 articles

Stories of New Muslims 277 articles

• Men 98 articles
• Women 132 articles
• Priests and Religious Figures 20 articles
• Personalities 32 articles

Comparative Religion 160 articles

• Jesus 59 articles
• The Bible 21 articles
• Christianity 26 articles
• Mary 10 articles
• Judaism 20 articles
• Hinduism 5 articles
• Buddhism 2 articles
• Sikhism 2 articles
• Scientology 2 articles
• Tolerance in Islam 6 articles
• Uncommon Faiths 17 articles

The Holy Quran 234 articles

• The Authenticity and Preservation of the Holy Quran 26 articles
• Structure and Attributes of the Quran 17 articles
• Selected Topics from the Quran 25 articles
• A Summary of the Quranic Chapters 123 articles
• Essential Verses in the Quran 28 articles

The Prophet Muhammad 124 articles

• Pearls from His Sayings 19 articles
• His Characteristics 22 articles
• His Biography 19 articles
• Evidence of His Prophethood 29 articles
• About His Sayings 15 articles
• Stories of His Companions 22 articles

Current Issues 92 articles

• Human Rights 14 articles
• Jihad and Terrorism 2 articles
• Women 39 articles
• Islam and Non-Muslims 23 articles
• Sects Attributed to Islam 14 articles

Islamic History 25 articles

• In Brief 15 articles
• In Detail 10 articles

Systems in Islam 77 articles

• Family 18 articles
• Politics 3 articles
• Economy 11 articles
• Justice 6 articles
• Crime and Punishment 7 articles
• Health and Nutrition 19 articles
• The Environment 13 articles
• Islamic Songs (Nasheed)
• New Muslims
• Short Videos About Islam

Evidence Islam is Truth 122 videos

• The Scientific Miracles of the Holy Quran 17 videos
• The Scientific Miracles of the Prophet Muhammad Sayings 2 videos
• Muhammad in the Bible and Other Scriptures 2 videos
• The Authenticity and Preservation of the Holy Quran 25 videos
• Evidence of Muhammad’s Prophethood 6 videos
• Logical Proofs 33 videos
• The Existence of God 38 videos

The Benefits of Islam 102 videos

• The Door to Eternal Paradise 3 videos
• Salvation from Hellfire 6 videos
• True Happiness and Inner Peace 36 videos
• Benefits to Society 39 videos
• Benefits to Science and Civilization 13 videos
• What Others Say about Islam, Muhammad, and the Quran 6 videos

Beliefs of Islam 176 videos

• What is Islam 43 videos
• The Six Pillars of Faith and Other Islamic Beliefs 37 videos
• About God 53 videos
• The Purpose of Life 24 videos
• Stories of the Prophets 15 videos

How to Convert to Islam 8 videos

• How to Convert to Islam and Become a Muslim 8 videos

Worship and Practice 16 videos

• The Five Pillars of Islam and Other Acts of Worship 7 videos
• Islamic Morals and Practices 8 videos

The Hereafter 17 videos

• Paradise 3 videos
• Hellfire 2 videos
• The Journey after Death 5 videos
• The Day of Judgement and Its Signs 8 videos

Stories of New Muslims 235 videos

• Men 180 videos
• Women 34 videos
• Priests and Religious Figures 5 videos
• Personalities 18 videos

Comparative Religion 123 videos

• Jesus 65 videos
• The Bible 20 videos
• Christianity 27 videos
• Mary 2 videos
• Judaism 6 videos
• Tolerance in Islam 9 videos

The Holy Quran 51 videos

• The Scientific Miracles of the Holy Quran 9 videos
• The Authenticity and Preservation of the Holy Quran 31 videos
• Jewels from the Quran 7 videos
• A Summary of the Meanings of Its Verses 1 videos

The Prophet Muhammad 71 videos

• Pearls from His Sayings 2 videos
• His Characteristics 32 videos
• His Biography 21 videos
• Evidence of His Prophethood 9 videos
• About His Sayings 1 videos
• Stories of His Companions 5 videos

Current Issues 64 videos

• Human Rights 14 videos
• Jihad and Terrorism 30 videos
• Women 20 videos
• Islam and Non-Muslims 10 videos

Islamic History 21 videos

• In Brief 3 videos
• In Detail 18 videos

Systems in Islam 25 videos

• Family 4 videos
• Politics 1 videos
• Economy 2 videos
• Justice 13 videos
• Crime and Punishment 2 videos
• Health and Nutrition 3 videos

Islamic Songs (Nasheed) 14 videos

• NBN Band 1 videos
• Zain Bhikha 1 videos
• Ahmad Bukhatir 2 videos
• Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens) 2 videos
• Kamal Uddin 2 videos
• Labbayk 1 videos
• TalkIslam 2 videos

New Muslims 148 videos

• Merits of Islam 8 videos
• Islamic Beliefs 11 videos
• Acts of Worship 27 videos
• Islamic Lifestyle, Morals and Practices 23 videos
• The Holy Quran 11 videos
• Prophet Muhammad 32 videos
• Social Interaction 22 videos
• Increasing faith 23 videos

Short Videos About Islam 26 videos

• Islam in 3 Minutes 18 videos
• Understanding Islam By Yusuf Estes 8 videos

Islam at a Glance

• Intro E-books
• What is Islam

A Brief Introduction to Islam (part 1 of 2)

Description: a brief introduction to the meaning of islam, the notion of god in islam, and his basic message to humanity through the prophets..

• By Daniel Masters, AbdurRahman Squires, and I. Kaka
• Published on 21 Apr 2008
• Last modified on 24 Apr 2010
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Islam and Muslims

The word “Islam” is an Arabic word which means “submission to the will of God”.  This word comes from the same root as the Arabic word “salam”, which means “peace”.  As such, the religion of Islam teaches that in order to achieve true peace of mind and surety of heart, one must submit to God and live according to His Divinely revealed Law.  The most important truth that God revealed to mankind is that there is nothing divine or worthy of being worshipped except for Almighty God, thus all human beings should submit to Him.

The word “Muslim” means one who submits to the will of God, regardless of their race, nationality or ethnic background.  Being a Muslim entails wilful submission and active obedience to God, and living in accordance with His message.  Some people mistakenly believe that Islam is just a religion for Arabs, but nothing could be further from the truth.  Not only are there converts to Islam in every corner of the world, especially in England and America, but by taking a look at the Muslim World from Bosnia to Nigeria, and from Indonesia to Morocco, one can clearly see that Muslims come from many various races, ethnic groups and nationalities.  It is also interesting to note that in actuality, more than 80% of all Muslims are not Arabs - there are more Muslims in Indonesia than in the whole Arab World!  So, though even though it is true that most Arabs are Muslims, the large majority of Muslims are not Arabs.  However, anyone who submits completely to God and worships Him alone is a Muslim.

Continuity of the Message

Islam is not a new religion because “submission to the will of God”, i.e. Islam, has always been the only acceptable religion in the sight of God.  For this reason, Islam is the true “natural religion”, and it is the same eternal message revealed through the ages to all of God’s prophets and messengers.  Muslims believe that all of God’s prophets, which include Abraham, Noah, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, brought the same message of Pure Monotheism.  For this reason, the Prophet Muhammad was not the founder of a new religion, as many people mistakenly think, but he was the final Prophet of Islam.  By revealing His final message to Muhammad, which is an eternal and universal message for all of mankind, God finally fulfilled the covenant that He made with Abraham, who was one of the earliest and greatest prophets.

Sufficient is it to say that the way of Islam is the same as the way of the prophet Abraham, because both the Bible and the Quran portray Abraham as a towering example of someone who submitted himself completely to God and worshipped Him without intermediaries.  Once this is realized, it should be clear that Islam has the most continuous and universal message of any religion, because all prophets and messengers were “Muslims”, i.e.  those who submitted to God’s will, and they preached “Islam”, i.e. submission to the will of Almighty God.

The Oneness of God

The foundation of the Islamic faith is belief in the Oneness of Almighty God - the God of Abraham, Noah, Moses and Jesus.  Islam teaches that a pure belief in One God is intuitive in human beings and thus fulfils the natural inclination of the soul.  As such, Islam’s concept of God is straightforward, unambiguous and easy to understand.  Islam teaches that the hearts, minds and souls of human beings are fitting receptacles for clear divine revelation, and that God’s revelations to man are not clouded by self-contradictory mysteries or irrational ideas.  As such, Islam teaches that even though God cannot be fully comprehended and grasped by our finite human minds, He also does not expect us to accept absurd or demonstrably false beliefs about Him.

According to the teachings of Islam, Almighty God is absolutely One and His Oneness should never be compromised by associating partners with Him - neither in worship nor in belief.  Due to this, Muslims are required to maintain a direct relationship with God, and therefore all intermediaries are absolutely forbidden.  From the Islamic standpoint, believing in the Oneness of God means to realize that all prayer and worship should be exclusively for God, and that He alone deserves such titles as “Lord” and “Saviour”.  Some religions, even though they believe in “One God”, do not make all of their worship and prayers for Him alone.  Also, they also give the title of “Lord” to beings that are not All-Knowing, All-Powerful and Un-Changing - even according to their own scriptures.  Suffice it to say that according to Islam, it is not enough that people believe that “God is One”, but they must actualize this belief by proper conduct.

In short, in the Islamic concept of God, which is completely based on Divine Revelation, there is no ambiguity in divinity - God is God and man is man.  Since God is the only Creator and continual Sustainer of the Universe, He is transcendent above His creation - the Creator and the creature never mix.  Islam teaches that God has a unique nature and that He is free from gender, human weaknesses and beyond anything which human beings can imagine.  The Quran teaches that the signs and proofs of God’s wisdom, power and existence are evident in the world around us.  As such, God calls on man to ponder over the creation in order to build a better understanding of his Creator.  Muslims believe that God is Loving, Compassionate and Merciful, and that He is concerned with the daily affairs of human beings.  In this, Islam strikes a unique balance between false religious and philosophical extremes.  Some religions and philosophies portray God as just an impersonal “Higher Power” who is uninterested, or unaware, of the life of each individual human.  Other religions tend to give God human qualities and teach that He is present in His creation, by being incarnate in someone, something - or even everything.  In Islam, however, Almighty God has clarified the truth by letting mankind know that He is “Compassionate”, “Merciful”, “Loving” and the “Answerer of Prayers”.  But He has also emphasized strongly that “there is nothing like unto Him”, and that He is high above time, space and His creation.  Finally, it should be mentioned that the God that Muslims worship is the same God that Jews and Christians worship - because there is only one God.  It is unfortunate that some people mistakenly believe that Muslims worship a different God than Jews and Christians, and that “Allah” is just the “god of the Arabs”.  This myth, which has been propagated by the enemies of Islam, is completely false since the word “Allah” is simply the Arabic name for Almighty God.  It is the same word for God which is used by Arabic-speaking Jews and Christians.  However, it should be clarified that even though Muslims worship the same God as Jews and Christian, their concept of Him differs somewhat from the beliefs of other religions - mainly because it is based completely on Divine Revelation from God.  For example, Muslims reject the Christian belief that God is a Trinity, not only because the Quran rejects it, but also because if this was God’s true nature, He would have clearly revealed it to Abraham, Noah, Jesus and all of the other prophets.

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Introduction to Islam: An Online Text

M. Cherif Bassiouni

Introduction

The purpose of this book is to convey to a non-Muslim audience an understanding of Islam, its history, culture, and contribution to civilization.

The mix of an easy-to-read text and visual representations including maps, charts, pictures, and drawings with informative captions explains the important message of Islam in a way that the reader will hopefully find thoughtful and appealing. Relevant verses of the Qur'an and sayings of the Prophet (Hadith) have been included where appropriate, as support for the narrative, and their interspersing sets out their relevant importance. The Arabic text of the Qur'an was also included because no translation can do it justice.

Most of the Qur'an quotes were translated by me in reliance upon several published translations, especially The Holy Qur'an translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali (Khalil Al-Rawaf, 1946). My translation was done with a view to make the non-Arabic reader better understand the intended meaning.

This is both an informative and an artistic book which covers many aspects of Islam: religious, historical, geographic, social, legal, political, economic, cultural, scientific, and artistic. These aspects are dealt with in a way which at times may seem cursory but this does not forsake accuracy or depth.

The primary goal of this book is to inform those who know little or nothing about Islam and to enhance their understanding. As an educator that is all I can ask for and as a Muslim, that is all I can aspire to. But as a member of the family of humankind I would feel gratified if this book can lead to a better understanding among peoples of the world and thus contribute to peace and harmony in our universe. Whether all or some of these expectations will be fulfilled is some thing the reader will have to judge.

M. Cherif Bassiouni Chicago, September 1988-H. 1409

In the Beginning

The religion of islam, islamic law - the shariah, schools of thought in islam, the social system and morality of islam, economic aspects of islam, islamic civilization, the present and the future, about the author, acknowledgements.

It is estimated that there are over 900 million Muslims today. Many live in the Arab World (estimated at 120 million), but many more live in countries such as Iran, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, China, the USSR, Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, and Sudan. An estimated 3 million Muslims reside in the United States.

The world's three monotheistic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—were born and developed in that small region called the Middle East. Abraham was born in the city of Ur, Mesopotamia (Iraq), some 1900 years before Jesus was born in Bethlehem (Palestine). Muhammad was born in Mecca (Saudi Arabia) in 570 A.D. Moses lived in Egypt, as did Jesus for a brief period in his infancy; Muhammad traveled throughout the Arabian Peninsula.

The Middle East straddles Africa and Asia Minor It is bordered on the north from Turkey to Tunisia by the Mediterranean. To the southeast it is bordered by the Indian Ocean, which encircles the Arabian Peninsula, and to the east by the mountains of Iran and Turkey. To the west of Egypt lies the Sahara Desert. The races which inhabited these territories were the Semites, Hammites, Aryans, and the Indo-Europeans.

The Middle East region is the cradle of all the ancient civilizations. The oldest of these civilizations, the Egyptian, extended over five millennia. The fourth millennium B.C. witnessed the birth of the great civilizations along the Tigris-Euphrates valley (Turkey, Syria, Iraq). The Nile-centered Egyptian civilization was largely self-contained; those of the Tigris-Euphrates valley had more frequent contacts with other civilizations. As a result, they were periodically transformed as they came in contact with different cultures and peoples. The most important of these ancient civilizations were the Sumerian, Mesopotamian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Assyro-Babylonian, Aramean, Phoenician, Carthagenian, Canaanite, Hebrew, Philistine, Chaldean, Hurrian, Hittite, Kassite, and Mitani. Their peoples spoke a number of languages including Akkadian, Aramaic, Syriac, Sumerian, Hebrew (the language of the Torah), and Arabic (the language of the Qur'an).

In the first century BC the Greeks and then the Romans through conquest established their presence in the region. Then from the seventh to the eighteenth centuries AD the Arabs extended their presence to Europe and Asia. The ebb and flow of their conquests enriched the cultures with which they came in contact through the intermingling of peoples and the transfer of values and knowledge. The richness of Arab Islamic culture in the arts and sciences and the dissemination of Arab Islamic culture throughout the Mediterranean basin and Asia Minor and into Europe and portions of Asia and Africa has served to make it one of the foundations of today's civilizations.

He it is who created the heavens and the earth in six days; then mounted the throne. He knoweth all that entereth therefrom and all that cometh down from the sky and that ascendeth therein; and He is with you wheresoever ye may be. And Allah is Seer of what ye do. Qur'an 57:4

Prophet Muhammad and the Birth of Islam

The word "Islam" is derived from the same root as the words salaam (peace) and silm (the condition of peace). Islam means to abandon oneself in peace. A Muslim, consequently, is one who in peace gives or surrenders himself or herself to God. Islam means accepting the faith freely—heart, mind, and soul. Surrendering to Islam, as a result, means giving oneself to belief without reservation, accepting the tenets of faith, and following both the letter and the spirit of the Qur'an's prescriptions.

Abraham, also called "The Patriarch," is the most important of the early prophets to the Jews, Christians, and Muslims. He founded, in what is now Mecca, the first temple in the world for the worship of a single god. He was also the father of lsma'il (Ishmael) and Ishaq (Isaac). The descendants of Isaac ultimately formed what became the Hebrew tribes. The tribes of the Arabian Peninsula, the descendants of Isma'il, were the first people to become Muslims.

Until the 7th century the entire area of the Arabian Peninsula bordered on the west by the Red Sea, on the east by the Gulf, on the south by the Indian Ocean and on the north by the Fertile Crescent (now Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, portions of Palestine and Jordan) was inhabited for the most part by nomadic tribes. There were three Jewish tribes in Yathrib near Madina and others in Yemen. There were also a few Christians in the north and west of the Peninsula and in Yemen. Most of the inhabitants, however, were pagans. Muhammad was known to meditate in the solitude of the desert. He frequently visited a cave called Hira just outside Mecca. During one of his meditations—he was 40 years old at the time—he received the first of his revelations from God. The Qur'an identifies the bearer of the message as the angel Gabriel, who commanded the Prophet Muhammad to read. When Muhammad responded that he didn't know how, Gabriel replied, "Read in the name of your Lord Who created man from a clot of blood..." In this way Muhammad became the bearer of the divine message.

Proclaim! (or Read!) In the name of thy Lord and Cherisher, Who created— Created man, out of a (mere) clot of congealed blood: Proclaim! And thy Lord is Most Bountiful,— He Who taught (the use of) the Pen... Qur'an 96:1-5

In Islam there can be no confusion or doubt that Muhammad was a man, and only a man, chosen by the Creator to fulfill a divine mission as a prophet. Muhammad's mission was literally to "read" what Allah had ordered and ordained, nothing more. The Prophet received his revelations from God, sometimes in solitude sometimes in the presence of others. Words flowed from his mouth in a way that others described as inspired. This was Muhammad's wahy (divine inspiration or revelation). Muslims believe that the Qur'an is the Word of Allah expressed through the revelations to the Prophet.

Among the Arab tribes, the most powerful and noble was the Quraysh, into which Muhammad ibn 'Abd Allah ibn 'Abd al-Muttalib was born on Monday at dawn on the 12th of Rabi' Awal (the year 571 in the common era calendar). That year was known as the year of the Elephant—the year the Abyssinians invaded Mecca to destroy the Ka'ba. The year received its name from the fact that the army of the Abyssinians was supported by elephants!

According to tradition, the Prophet Muhammad is a direct descendent of Ishma'el, the son of Abraham. Muhammad's mission was presaged by the deliverance of his father, 'Abd Allah, after he had been chosen for sacrifice. The story is this. 'Abd Allah had nine brothers, but he was the favorite son. His father 'Abd al-Muttalib was in charge of the well of the pilgrims. When the water of the well, Zamzam, dried up, he was at a loss as to what to do. He was advised to make offerings to the gods of one of his sons. Muhammad's father was chosen by lot. Reluctant to carry out the act, 'Abd Allah's father beseeched the pagan priests to spare his favorite son. They suggested that camels be offered in his stead. It took one hundred camels to satisfy the gods. The well filled again, and the life of 'Abd Allah was spared. This recalls the saying of the Prophet: "I am the son of the sacrificed..."

After his birth, as was the custom of the Arabs, Muhammad was given to a wet nurse, a nomad named Halimah as-Sa'diyah, to learn the ways of the desert early on in life. She recounted the following story about the Prophet. When the boy was four years old, two men dressed in white came, took the child, and removed something black from his chest. This story is often used to interpret Surah 94, Verses 1-3, of the Qur'an, which reads: "Have we not Expanded thee thy breast?, And removed from thee thy burden, the which did gall Thy back?"

At the age six, Muhammad lost his mother, Aminah of the clan of az-Zuhrah. 'Abd al-Muttalib cared for him until the age of eight. His uncle, Abu Talib raised him, and taught him caravan trade after the death of his grandfather. Over the years Muhammad earned the name al-Amin—the honest—for his rare qualities of character.

The history of the Prophet, his deeds and sayings, were at first memorized by his companions and passed on as oral record. They were first comprehensively recorded by the historian Ishaq ibn Yasar (ca. 768). Later the deeds and sayings of the Prophet (the Hadith), the circumstances surrounding their occurrence, and the evidence of those who first witnessed and reported them to others were recorded by a number of scholars. The most authoritative is al-Bukhari. His text is still relied upon today.

Interior of the Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem. The uppermost inscription in the dome is a Qur'anic verse which begins, "God there is no god but He, the Living, the Self-Subsisting Eternal...." The lower inscription, above the windows, records the restoration of the building by Saladin in the late 12th century. (Aramco World Magazine, September-October 1996; photo Peter Sanders). The Spread of lslam

After discussing his message secretly with his wife, Khadijah, his cousin Ali, and his friend Abu Bakr, the Prophet decided in the year 622 to leave Mecca, where he had lived in some danger. He migrated to Yathrib (later Madina), whose inhabitants had invited him to come and spread his message. For this reason the history of the Islamic community is considered to have been formally born on the night of the hejira, the night of migration, when the Prophet departed Mecca for Madina. The city became the caliphate seat until Damascus replaced it in the year 661. The people of Madina embraced Islam, and gradually, through a series of both military engagements and acts of diplomacy, Muhammad was able to reenter Mecca and to spread the word of Islam throughout the Arabian Peninsula.

The beginning of the risala, the message from a transcendental perspective, might be said to have begun with Creation, which is when God ordained things to be. From a temporal perspective, however, it began with the first revelation of the Prophet.

After the death of the Prophet in 632 AD, his message spread north of the peninsula into Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine, and Persia. In 638, after the battle of Yarmouk against the Romans, the victorious Arab Muslims entered Palestine. The Romans, during their occupation of Palestine—particularly after their occupation of Jerusalem— had destroyed the Jewish temple and expelled the Jews from Jerusalem in 70 AD They had subsequently prevented freedom of religion for Jews and Christians in Palestine until Constantine officially recognized Christianity in the fourth century.

It must be noted that the official church of Byzantium (Eastern Roman Empire), at al-Roum, was equally oppressive as its pagan forebearers. In particular, it vigorously suppressed the Eastern Christian churches of Syria and the Coptic Church of Egypt. However, since Muslims were by the Qur'an's mandate obligated to respect the "People of the Book," their predecessors in receiving divine revelation, they established a covenant with Christians and Jews. Earlier, when the Prophet had migrated to Madina in 622, he had entered into an agreement with the Jewish tribes of Yathrib (later called Madina) when he had journeyed to that city. However, when they joined forces with the Meccans against him, he was forced to turn against them. This brief episode did not harm subsequent Muslim Jewish relations.

Umar ibn al-Khattab was the second elected khalifa or caliph (successor) after the death of the Prophet. He was the head of state of the Muslim nation at the time. About to enter Jerusalem in 638 after his forces had triumphed over the Romans at the Battle of Yarmouk, Umar descended from his horse and called at the gates of the city for all of the leaders of the Christian Church to meet him there. Addressing their elder, Bishop Sophronious, he made the historic Covenant of Umar, requiring all Muslims forever to guarantee Christians freedom of religion, use of their houses of worship, and the right of their followers and pilgrims to visit their holy places. Umar also rescinded the Roman decree banishing Jews from Jerusalem and pledged to protect their freedom of religious practice. The Covenant of Umar was, in effect, the first international guarantee of the protection of religious freedom.

Islam then spread to Egypt in 641 and to all of North Africa by 654. Until the Middle Ages, Islam was present from southern France to China—virtually the entire known world. The spread of Islam was due in part to the military prowess of the Muslim forces. But the message the Muslims were spreading and the manner in which they administered the conquered regions were their strongest asset. They brought with them not only a new and uplifting faith but a system of government which was honest and efficient. They established a civilization that was to flourish for hundreds of years.

Man reads the Qur'an atop an old fort in Hunza, a remote valley in the the Karakorum Mountains in northern Pakistan, possibly the highest outpost of Islam in the world. (Aramco World Magazine, January-February 1983; photo S. M. Amin).

By establishing freedom of religion and religious practice for Christians and Jews, they made the followers of these two faiths their principal allies in the countries they sought to enter. In Egypt, for example, it was the Archbishop of the Coptic Church who invited the Muslims to free Egypt from the Roman occupiers in 641. The Coptic Church had been established by St. Mark shortly after the death of Jesus. However, it had been persecuted on religious grounds by the Byzantine Church ever since the Council of Chalcedon had declared monophysitism a heresy in 451. Promises of Coptic support caused Umar ibn al-Khattab to send Amr ibn al-As, the leader of the Muslim forces, into Egypt. With less than 2,000 men, Amr defeated the 12 Roman legions stationed there. The support given the Muslims by the Copts of Egypt insured the success of the campaign.

Although the primary objective of Muslim administration in every new territory was the establishment and propagation of Islam. Muslims also brought to the conquered peoples more effective government administration with a high level of motivation, integrity, and service. Frequently they ended tyrannies that had long existed in many of these countries, liberating rather than subjugating the population.

Throughout the history of Muslim rule, relations between Muslims, Christians, and Jews varied. The Muslims as a rule used leaders drawn from the indigenous population in public administration and did not seek to destroy the local identity of the various areas in which they became implanted. This is why centuries later, notwithstanding the fact that much of the Arab portion of the Islamic nation had been absorbed into the Turkish Ottoman Empire, most of these areas continued to be separate regions with their own institutions, leaders, and particular characteristics. Thus, for example, Egypt and Morocco were entities administered most of the time by their own people. They enjoyed a territorial, administrative, and cultural identity distinct from other regions of Islam. The concept of Ummah or nation of Islam never precluded regional and local identity. Islam did not seek to impose radical cultural changes. In fact, because of the flexibility of Islam, it readily became part not only of the belief of the people but of the popular culture.

Islam was also spread by Muslim merchants throughout the known world along the ancient trade routes. People readily converted to a simple religion that appealed to individualism, dignity, logic, and reason. Moreover, it didn't require an organized clergy or the power of a state to propagate or enforce it.

The spread of Islam was halted in France in the year 732 at the battle of Poitiers, but it continued to expand into parts of Asia (e.g., into what is now India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, parts of the Soviet Union, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and China) and into Africa. After the eleventh century, a succession of power struggles among Muslim leaders, as well as regional jealousies and a resurgence of Christian power in the West and in Byzantium, caused the Islamic nation to weaken. The Christian crusades of the eleventh and twelfth centuries battered the Islamic nation, although they were finally brought to an end in 1187 by the famous Muslim general leader of the Ayyubi dynasty of Egypt, Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi. The Ottoman Turkish Empire's expansion was stopped at Vienna in 1683. By the fifteenth century, however, the Arab portion of the Islamic nation had become part of the Ottoman Turkish Empire, which in turn broke apart and was ultimately dismantled by the Western European allies after World War I. Thereafter, the Arab Muslim world fell under the colonial occupation of France and England. Each country in the Arab region obtained its independence from England and France between the years 1922 and 1965, except for Palestine.

A variety of factors brought about the decline of the Islamic state between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. But the spread of the faith continues even today. The clarity, simplicity, and logic of the faith embodied in its tenets and religious practices are its principal attractions. In addition, the emphasis on individual responsibility and personal commitment as well as the absence of an organized clergy, makes Islam readily transmittable. As the Qur'an states Allah is closer to each one than his own jugular vein.

An historical chronology of the Islamic state and its various rulers follows. It shows the temporal reach and geographic spread of Islamic influence. Islam is a complex political, historical, social, and economic phenomenon; it can be studied and interpreted from a variety of philosophical, historical, and social perspectives. As a faith, however, Islam continues to speak to the modern world irrespective of its other meanings. What constitutes the Ummah, the Community of Islam, is not the existence of a political structure but the conscious acceptance of its Muslim participants of Allah's will and their mission on earth.

Mosque at Panfilov, Kazakstan, near the Chinese border. The facade is typical of the austere Islamic architecture of Central Asia, while the minaret is shaped like an ornate Chinese pagoda. (Aramco World Magazine, July-August 1988; photo Tor Eigeland). We have honoured the sons of Adam; provided them with transport on land and sea; given them for sustenance things good and pure; and conferred on them special favours, above a great part of our Creation. Qur'an 17:70

It was We who created man, and We know that dark suggestions his soul makes to him: for We are nearer him than (his) jugular vein. Qur'an 50:16

Islam in Andalusia The history of Islam in Spain is the history of one of the most brilliant Islamic civilizations the world has known, the "Golden Caliphate" of the Umayyads. The caliphate was founded by Abd al-Rahman, the sole surviving member of the Umayyad dynasty of Damascus. He had been forced to flee for his life with a younger brother when the Abbasids of Baghdad overthrew the Umayyads as the ruling dynasty in 750. His brother was captured and killed. But, enduring great hardship and peril, Abd al-Rahman—a tall, red-haired, poet warrior was able to make his way to Spain and Cordoba, the leading city, to claim his rightful position as the surviving head of the Umayyad dynasty.

Islam had come to Spain or to "Al-Andalus" as it was known to its Moorish rulers a scant 40 years before when in 710 a raiding party led by a Berber officer, Tariq ibn Malik, crossed the narrow eight mile straight separating Africa from Europe. Less than a year later an invading force of 7,000 men led by Tariq ibn Ziyad landed at Gibraltar (in Arabic "Jabal Tariq" or the Mountain of Tariq). And by 718—despite some initial resistance from the Visigoth Christian rulers and their King, Roderick— nearly the whole of the Iberian peninsula was firmly under Muslim control.

So begins the story of the rise of a caliphate that was to become the cultural center of western Islam and seat of learning for Christian Europe. Abd al-Rahman was not able to consolidate his rule for 20 years, since his claim to rule did not go uncontested either in Baghdad or Cordoba. Thus Cordoba's era of splendor really began with his successors, principally Abd al-Rahman II. It was he who imported fashion and culture from the East and set the foundations for the later cultural flowering. He even recruited scholars from the East by offering handsome inducements to overcome their initial reluctance to live in so provincial a city.

By the time of Abd al-Rahman III (912-61), the culture and civilization of Islam in Al-Andalus were in full bloom. Cordoba was a large and vibrant metropolis with a population of roughly 500,000 persons (compared to 40,000 for Paris at the time). There was a university and some 70 libraries containing hundreds of thousands of volumes. Al-Hakim II's library alone contained some 400,000 books, whereas the library of the monastery of St. Gall, had only a few volumes. Science, philosophy, and the arts flourished. The greatest minds in every discipline and from all over Europe and the Levant journeyed to Cordoba to study and learn.

The greatest of these scholars made enduring contributions to science and letters. Many have become familiar to students in the west under their Latin names, men such as the philosopher Averroes (Ibn Rushd), the mathematicians Arzachel (al-Zarqali) and Alpetragius (al-Bitruji), and the physician Avenzoar (Ibn Zuhr) to name a few.

Perhaps the most notable of all contributions of Muslim scholars to science lay in the field of medicine. Muslim physicians made important additions to the body of knowledge which they inherited from the Greeks. Ibn al-Nafis, for example, discovered the lesser circulation of the blood hundreds of years before Harvey. Al-Zahrawi wrote a masterwork on anatomy and dissection, the Tasrif, which was translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona and became a standard text in European medical schools throughout the Middle Ages. Ibn Baitar wrote a famous work on drugs called Collection of Simple Drugs and Food. This work served for centuries as an invaluable reference guide to medicinal plants native to Spain and North Africa.

The greatest contribution of Muslim medicine—as it was in other fields—was to distinguish science from pseudo-science. Indeed, in an era of pervasive superstition and ignorance, the great achievement of Islamic scholars was to place the study of medicine and other subjects on a scientific footing. The West didn't achieve a comparable clarity of vision until the Enlightenment. The strongly rationalist orientation of Islamic scholars was especially pronounced in Andalusia, where new scientific developments and fashions coming from the East were often viewed with suspicion. Ibn Hazm, a prominent 11th century Andalusian scholar, put the matter this way. "Those," he said, "who advocate the use of talismans, alchemy, astrology, and other black arts are shameless liars." This pervasively rationalist attitude did much to recommend Islamic science to the rest of the world.

It is a quirk of history that, after periods of exceptional cultural brilliance, periods of decline and decay seem to come most quickly. So it was in Andalusia. With Abd al-Rahman III's successor, the effective but unpopular al-Mansur, the long decline of Muslim rule in Andalusia began. The vibrancy and energy of the culture was sapped by internal strife, as minor Muslim principalities revolted, and by the long and costly effort against the Christian reconquista. Muslim religious vigor was periodically renewed by successive Almoravid and Almohad invasions, but the culture was never again to attain the heights it had during the Golden Caliphate.

By 1248 the stronghold in Seville had fallen, and the area of Spain under Muslim control was reduced to the Kingdom of Granada. There, miraculously, Islamic culture survived and prospered for more than two and a half centuries. Ironically, however, it was most likely the Ottoman capture of Constantinople in 1453 that sealed Granada's fate. Soon after, fueled by the Christian fear of Islam, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile—the future patrons of Christopher Columbus—brought the curtain down on one of the most remarkable and glorious civilizations inspired by Islam. The date was January of 1492.

The Creator has periodically chosen human beings to reveal His messages to humankind. Indeed, the Qur'an refers to many Prophets such as Abraham, Noah, David, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and Jesus. These messages and revelations culminated in Islam and in Muhammed as the last Prophet. The historical evolution and incorporation of prior messages into Islam are clearly stated in the Qur'an. Thus Islam is not a new religion. The Qur'an refers to Islam as the religion of Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets. It is simply the last of the divine messages to reach humankind through Prophet Muhammad, who was chosen by the Creator as the bearer of his last and all-encompassing revelation. This explains why there exists a strong link between Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Christians and Jews are referred to in the Qur'an as the "People of the Book" because they are the recipients of the messages of the Creator through Moses and the Old Testament prophets and through Jesus, who is believed in Islam to be the fruit of a miracle birth by the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The Qur'an (literally, recitation) contains 114 chapters revealed to the Prophet during a period of 23 years from 609 to 632, the year of his death. The divine revelations were manifested in divine inspiration, which the Prophet sometimes uttered in the presence of his companions. His words were passed on in the oral tradition of his Arabic culture. Some forty years after his death they were transcribed in the written form that has been preserved to date without change. The 114 Suwar (plural of Surah) chapters were revealed to Muhammad in Mecca and Madina. They vary in length. The Qur'an is arranged not in the chronological order of its revelation but according to the length of each Surah. The longest is first, and the shortest last. No one throughout the history of Islam has challenged the accuracy of the Qur'an.

The Arabian peninsula had a long tradition of literary achievement: Prose and poetry of all types were widely cultivated. The original miracle of the Qur'an, however, is its enduring literary achievement. Many people refuse to believe that any human being, particularly an illiterate man, could have produced it. indeed, the belief that the message was revealed by God contributed to the early conversion to Islam of the pagan tribes in the Arabian peninsula. The fact that Prophet Muhammad was a trustworthy person and that his early followers were people whose rectitude was well- established and enduring among the various Arab tribes also contributed to early conversions.

The Qur'an is written in such a way that it evokes profound emotions in the reader. The analogies, maxims, and stories provide imagery of great "psychological moment." full of an elan which imparts an uplifting sense of great destiny in life and lasting fulfillment in heaven. The richness of its form and content invites constant rereading. Moral values are intertwined with history, and the details of daily life are based on a continuum with life in the hereafter. Its topics range from the most specific to the most general and include the past and future, life on earth, and existence of the soul after death. its topics cover all aspects of human interaction as well as relations between man and his Creator. It is, in short, a comprehensive and integrated guide to life.

A man studies a copy of the Qur'an as he sits by a carved column in the Upper Swat village of Bahrain, south of Kalam, Pakistan. (Aramco World Magazine, January-February 1997; photo Luke Powell).

Say, Oh Muslims, we believe in Alllah and that which is revealed unto Abraham and Isma'il and Isaac and Jacob and the tribes and that which Moses and Jesus received and that which the Prophet received from the Lord. We make no distinction between any of them and unto them we have surrendered. (We are Muslims.) Qur'an 2:136

The Three Fundamental Unities of Islam: God, Humankind, and Religion

Islam is a universal faith for all times, all places, and all peoples. It is predicated on the belief that there is but one God, Allah, the Creator of the universe and of humankind. The Qur'an opens with the words, "In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate." Mercy and compassion are his principal qualities. The relationship which exists between God and His creation is based on one religion. These fundamental unities are the foundation of faith.

The Qur'an refers to the creation of the earth and other celestial bodies out of the darkness of chaos. Scientific theories that hive evolved about the creation highlight the unity of the universe. If God created this unique universe and shaped humankind to inhabit it, it follows that God would also have communicated with humankind through a single religion, even though it be in successive revelations. Islam is the last and most all- encompassing message of God.

If one believes that there is but one humankind which is part of a single universe created by one God, then one believes in an interrelationship among all created things. Religion in this context is a set of rules that regulate the relationship between the Creator and the created and establish the basis of accountability in the hereafter. It also sets forth the framework for permissible economic, social and political systems and formulates the principles and rules through which people should deal with one another. In effect, it provides a variety of prescriptions and guidelines as well as inspiration.

In this respect, Islam is very much a law-oriented religion. It provides the guidelines and principles upon which laws and regulations can be established. The influence of Islam must not be viewed in a narrowly legalistic light but rather as providing a framework which guarantees basic fairness and justice to all.

Islam is holistic, requiring that its followers have iman (faith) to fulfill the requirements of its religious tenets. The Muslim is required to express his Ibada, service to Allah, through his deeds, conduct, and words. The Qur'an enjoins that Muslims do good and abjure evil. Life in this world is a passage, and the eternal soul shall be judged by the Almighty on Judgment Day by intentions as well as by deeds. Reward and punishment shall be meted out in heaven and hell, but Allah is merciful to those who repent and do good. Repentance and mercy are among Islam's great themes.

"Islam is built on five (pillars) testifying that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, performing the prayers, paying the zakat, making the pilgrimage to the House, and fasting in Ramadan." The Prophet's Hadith

Bearing Witness to the One and Only God (shehada)

Allah in Arabic implies the one and only true God, the beginning and the end of everything, neither born nor giving birth. The Qur'an states that He is beyond human description, but is referred to in the Qur'an by ninety-nine attributes, such as the merciful, the compassionate, the forgiving. Together with the command to bear witness and acknowledge the singularity, centrality, unity, and uniqueness of God, the believer is enjoined to confess that Muhammad is God's messenger and prophet.

Religious Tax (zakat)

Although required by the Qur'an, zakat is specified in detail only in the practice and teachings of the Prophet and in later interpretations. It is the payment of a certain percentage of one's income to support the needy and to fulfill other objectives of the community. While this can be rightly equated to a combination of taxation and charity, zakat is different from sadaqa, charity, which is equally mandated by the Qur'an but left to the discretion of the individual Muslim, depending upon circumstances. Sadaqa is both tangible and intangible a kind word, for example, may be a form of Sadaqa. But Zakat is tangible. It is paid at the end of the Ramadan fast. Non-Muslims, the people of the book (Christians and Jews), are not required to pay Zakat but another tax, called Jizyah.

Fasting during Ramadan (siyam)

Fasting from dawn to sunset during the month of Ramadan, the ninth month in the Islamic lunar calendar, is required of those whose health permits. (The Islamic lunar calendar is 11 days shorter than the Gregorian calendar, thus the annual shift of Ramadan's occurrence in relationship to the Gregorian calendar.) It is a complete fast, requiring that nothing be taken into the body but needed medication. During Ramadan there is an emphasis on piety and religious observances. Those who are ill or traveling do not have to fast during Ramadan but must compensate by fasting and by contributing to the Zakat.

Ye who believe! Fasting is prescribed to you as it was prescribed to those before you, That ye may (learn) self-restraint,... Qur'an 2:183

The Pilgrimage (hajj)

The pilgrimage to Mecca once in one's lifetime is required of all those who have the physical and financial ability to make the journey. The practice derives from the divine mandate given Muhammad to rebuild the first temple of worship to God in Mecca. The pilgrimage requirement makes this desert city a gathering place for people from all parts of the world once a year. The rituals of the hajj were established by the Prophet. They emphasize repentance, resulting in forgiveness by God. The practice also strengthens the bond among the faithful from all walks of life and regions of the world. It is performed during the Islamic lunar month of Dhu al-hijja.

Makkah al-Mukarramah—"Makkah the Honored"—was the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad in 570. Within today's city, at the center of the Sacred Mosque is the focal point of Islamic prayer worldwide—the Ka'ba. The 15-meter-high (48'), roughly cubical structure was first built as a place for worship of the one God by Ibrahim (Abraham) and Isma'il (Ishmael), and it is thus a physical reminder of the links between Islam and the dawn of monotheism, between the Qur'an and previous revelations, and between the Prophet Muhammad and earlier Messengers of God. (Aramco World Magazine, January-February 1999; photo Peter Sanders).

And remember Abraham and Isma'il raised the foundations of the House (With this prayer): "Our Lord! Accept (this service) from us: For Thou art the All-Hearing, the All-knowing. Qur'an 2:127

Prayers (salat)

The Qur'an does not state the number and manner of prayers; these were established by the Prophet. The required individual prayers are said five times a day: at dawn, noon (when the sun is at the center of the sky), afternoon (when the sun is halfway to sunset) sunset, and night (after sunset but before sunrise). The only required communal prayer is the Friday noon prayer. Like the Christians' Sunday or the Jews' Sabbath, Muslims consider Friday the last day of Creation.

Prayers can also be communal; that is, in fact, the preferred way. When so conducted, the prayers are led by an im am, who is usually either a person schooled in Islam or simply one among the group who is more knowledgeable, older, or recognized by the others as being especially pious.

Muslims stand shoulder to shoulder and kneel a number of times, depending on whether it is the morning prayer (twice) or the late-night prayer (four times). Standing shoulder to shoulder, irrespective of status in life, symbolizes equality before God. In Islam, as the Prophet said, no man is better than another save for his piety, which only Allah can judge. At each kneeling, the Muslim places his forehead on the ground, a symbol of the equality of all men, humility, worship of the Creator, and the fact that from earth we come and to earth we return. All praying Muslims face Mecca, where the Ka'ba is located. It is the qibla (the direction) which provides unity and uniformity for all Muslims. At an earlier time, it was the practice to face Jerusalem, the second holiest city in Islam. The Ka'ba holds the remnants of Abraham's temple.

In the only European nation with a Muslim majority, Albania's population again throngs to the mosques since the downfall of Communism in 1990. (Aramco World Magazine, July-August 1992; photo Larry Luxner). The imam does not necessarily have any special religious status in Sunni tradition just because he is the prayer leader However, he could be a person whose schooling or training conferred on him special status, as is the case with the ulema (or scholars, plural of alem). One attains this status after having pursued an extensive education in theology throughout secondary, college, and graduate study at a theological university.

Before prayers, Muslims are required to perform ablutions, which include washing the face, arms, and feet in a ritual prescribed by the Prophet. This is not only for the purposes of cleanliness, but to provide a break from prior activity. Before ablutions and prayers, a Muslim must confirm within himself his intention to pray.

The prayers are usually announced by means of a summons or call to prayer (the adhan) by the muadhin, who chants or intones it. There is no particular religious status conveyed by this responsibility; the muadhin is usually a pious member of the community who has a particularly strong or resonant voice. The call to prayer starts with "Allahu akbar" (God is great), words frequently used by Muslims either in prayers or in other contexts as a reaffirmation of the oneness and omnipotence of the Creator. The expression "al-hamdu lillah" (thanks be to God) is also among the phrases most commonly used by Muslims. They are used in any situation in which a grateful or thankful response is apposite. They are a reminder that God's will and bounty are everything.

The mosque is a symbol of the uncompromising nature of Islamic monotheism. It has a distinctive architecture, which includes a minaret for the call to prayer. It does not contain any images that might be associated with religious idolatry, which Islam forbids. The architecture of mosques built over fourteen centuries in various parts of the Muslim world is an unsurpassed artistic legacy. The floors of mosque are sometimes covered with straw mats or rugs. Muslims remove their shoes before entering so as not to soil the place where they touch their foreheads to the floor to pray.

Let there be no no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out clear from Error: whoever rejects evil and believes in God hath grasped the most trustworthy hand-hold, that never breaks. And God heareth and knoweth all things. Qur'an 2:256

"The best of you are those who have the most excellent morals." The Prophet's Hadith

The Qur'an is the principal source of Islamic law, the Sharia. It contains the rules by which the Muslim world is governed (or should govern itself) and forms the basis for relations between man and God, between individuals, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, as well as between man and things which are part of creation. The Sharia contains the rules by which a Muslim society is organized and governed, and it provides the means to resolve conflicts among individuals and between the individual and the state.

There is no dispute among Muslims that the Qur'an is the basis of the Sharia and that its specific provisions are to be scrupulously observed. The Hadith and Sunna are complementary sources to the Qur'an and consist of the sayings of the Prophet and accounts of his deeds. The Sunna helps to explain the Qur'an, but it may not be interpreted or applied in any way which is inconsistent with the Qur'an.

Copy-boards held safely out of view on their heads, students in Djenné, Mali recite a Qur'an passage from memory. (Aramco World Magazine, September-October, 1991; photo Brynn Bruijn). Though there are other sources of law—i.e., ijma', (consensus), qiyas, (analogy), ijtihad, (progressive reasoning by analogy)—the Qur'an is the first and foremost source, followed by the Hadith and Sunna. Other sources of law and rules of interpretation of the Qur'an and the Hadith and Sunna follow in accordance with a generally accepted jurisprudential scheme.

And nor shall we be punishing until we had sent them an Apostle. Qur'an 17:15

The Qur'an contains a variety of law-making provisions and legal proscriptions interspersed throughout its chapters (suwar) and verses (ayat). A number of rules exist for interpreting these provisions, such as the position of a given ayah within the context of the surah, which in turn is interpreted in accordance with its place in the sequence of revelations, its reference to other revelations, and its historical context in relation to particular conditions which existed at the time of the given revelation. These and other rules are known as the science of interpretation (ilm usul aI-fiqh). According to these rules, for example, one initially is to refer to a specific provision and then to a general provision dealing with a particular situation. No general provision can be interpreted to contradict a specific provision, and a specific rule will supersede a general proposition. A general provision, however, is always interpreted in the broadest manner, while a specific provision is interpreted in the narrowest manner. Reasoning by analogy is permitted, as are applications by analogy, except where expressly prohibited. Simplicity and clear language are always preferred. Similarly, the clear spirit of certain prescriptions cannot be altered by inconsistent interpretations. A policy-oriented interpretation within the confines of the rules of jurisprudence is permissible and even recommended, as is the case with the doctrine of ijtihad (progressive reasoning by analogy).

"Avoid condemning the Muslim to Hudud whenever you can, and when you can find a way out for the Muslim then release him for it. If the Imam errs it is better that he errs in favor of innocence (pardon) than in favor of guilt (punishment)." The Prophet's Hadith

"Were people to be given in accordance with their claim, men would claim the fortunes and lives of (other) people, but the onus of proof is on the claimant and the taking of an oath is incumbent upon him who denies." The Prophet's Hadith

Muslim scholars do not consider Islam to be an evolving religion, but rather a religion and legal system which applies to all times. It is, therefore, the application that is susceptible to evolution. Indeed, the provisions of the Qur'an are such that by their disciplined interpretation, with the aid of the Hadith and Sunna and other sources of interpretation, Islam can, as intended, provide the solution to contemporary social problems.

Fourteen centuries ago Islam was a spiritual, social, and legal revolution. Its potential for effecting progress remains unchanged. This is essentially the belief of enlightened fundamentalist Muslims. Islamic fundamentalism is not, therefore, a regressive view of history and contemporary reality. Islam at the height of its civilization, between the seventh and eleventh centuries, was neither repressive nor regressive. It was a progressive, humanistic, and legalistic force for reform and justice.

Lo! Allah commandeth you that ye restore deposits to their owners, and , if ye judge between mankind, that ye judge justly. Lo! comely is this which Allah admonisheth you. Lo! Allah is ever Hearer, Seer. Qur'an 4:58

Islamic jurisprudence has developed over fourteen centuries. Over that span of time, various schools of jurisprudence have emerged, each with its own interpretation and application of the Sharia. Many schools splintered farther, creating schools following different interpretive approaches and applications.

The flourishing abundance of ideas and views attests to the intellectual depth and breadth of Islamic jurisprudence. However, nothing precludes a given state from codifying the Sharia so as to provide for more certainty of the law and clarity and consistency in its application. Many Muslim states have done so, the most advanced being Egypt, where the presence of the thousand-year-old Al-Azhar University (originally devoted solely to Islamic studies but now to all disciplines) and centuries of legal tradition have converged to make Islamic law a source of inspiration for the entire Muslim world.

The interior of the Prophet's Mosque at Madinah with its qiblah, or prayer niche, which indicates the direction of Makkah. (Aramco World Magazine, November-December, 1991; photo Abdullah Dobais). The Sunni and the Shia

The Sunni tradition, which today comprises approximately 85-90 percent of all Muslims, differs from Shia tradition, which comprises the remainder of the Muslim world. The distinction between the two traditions essentially derives from different approaches to governance. The Sunni believe, based on specific provisions of the Qur'an and the Sunna, that the Muslim people are to be governed by consensus (ijma') through an elected head of state, the khalifa, according to democratic principles. The Shia, however, believe that the leader of Islam, whom they refer to as the imam rather than the khalifa, must be a descendant of the Prophet. The concept is the basis for a hereditary hierarchy in the Shia tradition.

The Shia movement dates from the period when a group of Muslims wanted Ali ibn abu Talib, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, to become the khalifa instead of Abu Bakr, who had been elected the first khalifa following the death of Muhammad in 632. They advanced his candidacy on the basis of heredity. However, they were out voted. Ali ultimately became the fourth khalifa, succeeding Uthman, who succeeded Umar, who succeeded Abu Bakr. But Ali was overthrown by the rebellion of Muawia, the governor of Syria, whose seat was in Damascus. Muawia rebelled against Ali because he attributed the assassination of his kinsman Uthman to Ali's followers. Ali was subsequently assassinated after losing the Tahkim (arbitration) to Muawia. His followers then constituted what would today be cal led a political party to reinstate him and to secure succession to the Khalifa.

In 680 Hussain, one of Ali's sons, led a number of Muslims who were then rebelling against the ruling khalifa to try to establish in the area between Iran and Iraq a caliphate based on heredity from the Prophet. However, Hussain was lured into Iraq, and there at a place called Karbala he and his followers were massacred. Hussain's martyrdom spurred the Shia movement in Iraq and Iran. The anniversary of Karbala is commemorated every year by the Shia population. In Iran, in particular, it is conducted by means of a large popular demonstration in which people publicly weep and flagellate themselves as a sign of their remorse.

The political rift between followers of the principle of election and those favoring descent from the Prophet generated some other differences between Sunni and Shia approaches to jurisprudence. For example, the Shia view the sayings of Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet, and his cousin Ali (Fatima's husband), the fourth khalifa of the Islam, as equally authoritative as the Sunna of the Prophet. The Sunni do not. There are other differences involving the structure of Islam, such as existence of an organized Shia clergy, which does not exist in the Sunni tradition. Among them the Shia allow the imam much wider latitude in government than the Sunni ever could in light of the principles of consensus and equality. The most important of all differences between Sunni and Shia relates to the interpretation of the Qur'an. The Sunni look more to the letter of the Qur'an; the Shia look more to its spirit. In Arabic the distinction is referred to as al-dhaher (the apparent) versus al-baten (the hidden) meaning of the Qur'an. Thus the Shia religious hierarchy plays a determining role in interpreting the Qur'an. This role reinforces their spiritual and temporal influence in Shia society.

O ye who believe! Be steadfast witness for Allah in equity, and let not hatred of any people seduce you that ye deal not justly. Deal justly, that is nearer to your duty. Observe your duty to Allah. Lo! Allah is informed of what we do. Qur'an 5:8

And hold fast, All together, by the rope which God (stretches out for you), and be not divided among yourselves; and remember with gratitude God's favour on you; For ye were enemies and He joined your hearts in love, so that by His grace, Ye became brethren; And ye were on the brink of the pit of fire, and He saved you from it. Thus doth God make His signs clear to you: that ye may be guided. Qur'an 3:103

Sunni Jurisprudence

The Sunni follow any one of four major schools on jurisprudence founded by imams ibn Hanbal, abu Hanifa, Malek, and el-Shafei, scholars of the ninth to eleventh centuries. These schools, referred to respectively as the Hanbali, Hanafi, Maliki, and Shafei, are followed by different Muslim states either entirely or in part. Egypt is traditionally Maliki. Saudi Arabia is traditionally Hanbali, although the country follows more closely the teachings of imam Muhammad Abdal-Wahab, a Hanbali reformer of the early 1800's. Even though there are differences in interpretation of the Sharia among these authorities, they are all recognized as valid.

In its most glorious period, from the seventh to the thirteenth centuries, Islam produced a legal system founded on scientific knowledge and nurtured by a faith that has endured the test of time. But during that period it was ijtihad (progressive reasoning by analogy) which produced the most far-reaching developments. Reformers like ibn Taymiyah (late 1200's) was one of many great jurist-philosophers who opened new horizons in the knowledge and understanding of Islam's application to the needs of society. But in the twelfth century, ijtihad was pronounced ended by some theologians of the time. They argued that all was to be known was known. Consequently, Islamic jurisprudence became somewhat stagnant until its contemporary resurgence under the aegis of Al-Azhar scholars and other modern reformers of the last two centuries, such as al-Ghazali, al-Afghani, and Muhammad Abdu. Contemporary jurisprudential developments continue the work begun in past ages, meeting individual requirements and collective demands for resolving the problems and conflicts of modern life, while remaining compatible with Islam.

Laila and Majnun from the famous poem by Jami, 1571. (Aramco World Magazine, March-April 1987; photo Ergun Çagatay) Sufism

The Sufi movement is a mystical strain in Islam which reflects the need of individuals to transcend formal religious practices in order to attain higher levels of spiritual fulfillment. The Sufis are represented in all schools of thought in Islam and found in all Muslim communities. Because of its mystical, spiritual character, Sufism appeals more to individuals and small groups. It does not constitute either a sect or a school of thought, but is rather a spiritual or transcendental practice which persists despite criticism from orthodox theologians. Sufis believe they follow the Prophet's mysticism, particularly during the Meccan period of the revelations. Thus, in their practices there is much meditation and solitary or group recitation of prayers and incantations of their own religious formulas. They seek a life of ascetic pietism, shunning worldly pleasures and seeking the inward purity of a relationship with God through love, patience, forgiveness, and other higher spiritual qualities.

The tomb in Lahore of Data Ganu Bakhsh, one of the many sufis who brought Islam to Asia by peaceful means. (Aramco World Magazine, November-December, 1991; photo Nik Wheeler). Their influence on the development of Islam is more significant than is usually recognized. Their ascetic piety and rigidly ethical conception of Islamic society have influenced generations of Muslims. They have also had from time to time strong political influence. What characterizes Sufis the most is their "inwardism" or belief that the Sharia only regulates external conduct, whereas inward feelings are matter strictly between each person and the Creator. Because of their emphasis on the love of God, they have developed the doctrine of Tawakul (reliance on God), which is central to the relationship between Man and God. Sufism also has had a significant impact on the practical aspects of administering a state.

An important Hadith (saying) of the Prophet is that religion is not what one formally or ritualistically practices but how one deals with others. It is therefore not sufficient to be pious without performing deeds which demonstrate one's beliefs. It is reported that the Prophet once entered a mosque and saw at prayer a venerable old man with a long white beard. He was told that the man was in the mosque all day long, worshipping and dispensing the words of Allah to others. The Prophet then asked how he earned his living and was told that a merchant, not known for his piety, supported him. The Prophet remarked that of the two, the merchant was indeed the more worthy.

Every Muslim is the recipient, guardian, and executor of God's will on earth; his responsibilities are all encompassing. A Muslim's duty to act in defense of what is right is as much part of his faith as is his duty to oppose wrong. The Prophet once said, "If someone among you sees wrong he must right it by his hand if he can (deed, conduct, action). If he cannot, then by his tongue (speak up, verbally oppose); if he cannot, then by his gaze (silent expression of disapproval); and if he cannot, then in his heart. The last is the minimum expression of his conviction (faith, courage)."

Living the faith is ibada, service to God through service to humankind.

A view inside the ninth-century Karaouine Mosque, Fez, Morocco. (Aramco World Magazine, May-June 1993; photo Nik Wheeler).

By no means shall ye attain righteousness unless ye give (freely) of that which ye love; and whatever ye give, of a truth God knoweth it well. Qur'an 3:92

The preservation of a social order depends on each and every member of that society freely adhering to the same moral principles and practices. Islam, founded on individual and collective morality and responsibility, introduced a social revolution in the context in which it was first revealed. Collective morality is expressed in the Qur'an in such terms as equality, justice, fairness, brotherhood, mercy, compassion, solidarity, and freedom of choice. Leaders are responsible for the application of these principles and are accountable to God and man for their administration. It is reported that a man went to Umar, the second khalifa, to talk to him. It was nighttime, and a candle burned on Umar's desk. Umar asked the man if what he wanted to discuss was personal. The man said that it was, and Umar extinguished the candle so as not burn public funds for a private purpose. Leaders in Islam, whether heads of state or heads of family or private enterprise, have a higher burden or responsibility than others.

There is a relation in Islam between individual responsibility and the rights and privileges derived from membership in the community. Individual obligations must be met before one can claim a portion from the community of which he is part. Each member of a society must fulfill his own obligations and rely on others to fulfill theirs before that society can acquire the necessary reservoir of social rights and privileges which can then be shared by all. The notions of brotherhood and solidarity not only impose upon the community the duty to care for' its members, but also require each person to use his initiative to carry out individual and social responsibilities according to his ability.

And to be firm and patient, in pain (or suffering) and adversity, And throughout all periods of panic. Such are the people of truth, the God-fearing. Qur'an 2:177

"Whosoever of you sees an evil action, let him change it with his hand; and if he is not able to do so, then with his tongue; and if he is not able to do so, then with his heart—and that is the weakest of faith." The Prophet's Hadith

The equality of all Muslims is emphasized repeatedly throughout the Qur'an. It is because of that concept that Islam under the Sunni tradition does not have an ordained clergy. There is a direct relationship between every man and his Creator, and there can be no intermediary. This particular closeness between the individual and God is paramount in belief as well as in practice.

It is frequently argued that Islam is not a religion that provides for full equity among Muslims. Indeed, because Islam makes distinctions between men and women; not all rights and privileges available to men are available to women. For example, a male Muslim inherits twice the share of the female, but then a male relative has the financial responsibility to care for a needy female relative. Also, a male Muslim has the right to unilaterally divorce his wife, while she can only divorce her husband through a judge's determination. Custody of children from a divorce is given the mother, boys till age 9 and girls till age 12. Thereafter custody reverts to the father, provided that he is fit. However, the fact that there is not absolute parity in all rights and privileges does not mean that women do not share an overall equality with men. It must also be noted that certain social practices in some Muslim countries are not required by Islam, but have simply evolved in the course of time as a result of indigenous cultural factors.

Islam differentiates between Muslims and non-Muslims and between the "People of the Book" (dhimmi) and others. Only Muslims have the right to elect the khalifa. In judicial matters the oath of the Muslim prevails over that of the non-Muslim. There are therefore some differences between males and females in Islam, between Muslims and Dhimmis, and Muslims and non-Dhimmis.

One of almost 300 mosques on the Tunisian island of Jerba. These glimmering, whitewashed structures dominate the landscape, their colors shift with the changing light, and their flights of architectural fantasy seem to come in an infinite variety. (Aramco World Magazine, July-August 1994; photo Nik Wheeler). Individual Responsibility

The search for justice is one of the continuing quests of humankind. It is the quest that is prescribed by the Qur'an for every Muslim. Social and individual justice are evolving concepts which depend largely upon a variety of external considerations. Above all, Islam seeks to inculcate within every Muslim the need to seek justice and to apply it to himself as well as to others. Because Muslims believe that God is the beginning and the end of everything, all is preordained by Qadar (divine will). Qadar does not imply inaction, but, rather, acceptance. It requires the strength to change what can be changed and the fortitude to accept what cannot.

Individual responsibility is a cornerstone of Islam. Every Muslim is accountable to his Creator for what he himself does or fails to do—as well as for others for whom he may be accountable—and for things that he has control over. As in Western legal codes, individual responsibility is predicated on the intent and motive of the actor in light of his ability to do good and to avoid evil or harm to others. Thus Islam believes in free will, and to the extent that this exists a person is responsible for its exercise in the framework of Islamic morality. But the relativity of human justice is not to be confused with the absoluteness of divine justice whose application every Muslim expects without fail on judgment day. Because of the Muslim's belief in accountability in the hereafter, his oath is valid evidence in any judicial or extra-judicial process.

Serve God, and join not any partners with Him; and do good—To parents, orphans, those in need, neighbours who are near, neighbours who are strangers; the companion by your side, the way-farer (ye meet), and what your right hands possess: For God loveth not the arrogant, the vainglorious;— Qur'an 4:36

"Actions are but by intention and every man shall have but that which he intended." The Prophet's Hadith

"None of you (truly) believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself." The Prophet's Hadith

Forbearance and Forgiveness

A Muslim is accountable for what he does and what he fails to do in accordance with not only the letter but also the spirit of the law. However, even though Islam imposes a number of very rigid requirements and appears formalistic and inflexible, one of the basic premises of the relationship among Muslims, and between Muslims and others, is derived from one of the basic premises of the relationship between a Muslim and his Creator, namely, forbearance and forgiveness.

In one of the Prophet's Hadiths it is stated that a person could do such evil during his lifetime that there might be between him and the doors to hell only one step and then he could repent and ask for God's forgiveness and do one good deed and enter heaven. By the same token, a person may during his life do so much good as to be one step removed from heaven and then do one evil deed that would be sufficient to earn him hell. The meaning of the Hadith is to emphasize that, even though a person may do good throughout his life, he should never be absolutely certain that the good he has done all along is sufficient to carry him through; he should not forget that one bad deed could overcome all the good ones. Conversely, a person who has done evil all his life may repent even at the last moment and with one good deed earn paradise.

The element of forbearance and forgiveness has to be predicated on knowledge, awareness, and truth. Forbearance and forgiveness depend on the believer's recognition and acceptance of what he has done and his genuine repentance with an intent not to repeat the misdeed. That is why Muslims are encouraged to forgive the bad deeds of others committed against them.

Allah is described in the Qur'an as the Forgiving and the Merciful. Everything is forgivable by Allah except Shirk (the negation of the existence of the Singularity, Uniqueness and Oneness of the Creator.) Even so the mercy of God is infinite. A man was once brought to the Prophet for trial because he denied the existence of God. Upon review of the facts, it appeared that the man was in despair over a personal tragedy. He had been found in the desert throwing his spear to the sky and screaming that he wanted to kill God for the injustice that he had suffered. The Prophet replied, "Is it not enough that he acknowledged the existence of God to want to kill him?." The man was set free.

Women in Islam

As in most of the nomadic tribes of the ancient world, women were deemed unimportant in pre-Islamic Arabia. Indeed, in a society shaped by the rigors of desert life, women were relegated to the margins of community life.

The advent of Islam fundamentally altered the status of women in several ways. First, and most importantly, it overturned tradition by according women equal status before Allah. No longer were women denied a human face. Their souls like the souls of men were precious to Allah. They, like men, were worthy of dignity and respect. As a result of this new status and the revolution it worked on Arab society—women became pillars of early Muslim society and were counted among its strongest supporters. Several women—notably Fatimah, daughter of the Prophet Muhammad and wife of Ali, the fourth caliph—even played important roles in the propagation of the faith. To the Shia, for example; Fatimah is an authoritative source of the Prophet's sayings and deeds.

Tibetan Muslim sisters in the doorway of their home in Lhasa. (Aramco World Magazine, January-February 1998; photo Kevin Bubriski). The status of women under Islam also altered as a consequence of the spread of the religion itself. As Islam became a world religion and its influence spread the character of Arab society changed, requiring that women take a larger role in society. As men hurriedly left their flocks and businesses to fight for Islam, women readily assumed the burdens and responsibilities of the home.

The Prophet set an example for the treatment of women in marriage through his relationship with his first wife Khadijah. Although fifteen years his elder, Muhammad remained a faithful and devoted husband for twenty-six years, contrary to the tradition of polygamy which prevailed at the time in Arabia. After her death Muhammad remarried, but he always remembered Khadijah with love and spoke of her with reverence. Khadijah was, in fact, Muhammad's first convert to Islam and his strongest supporter in the struggle to establish the new faith.

Aishah bint abu Bakr (613-678) was Muhammad's favorite wife of later years. Noted for her education and intelligence, in particular her ability to read and write, she was often consulted about the teachings of the Prophet after his death. She played an important role in the life of the early community, most famously by opposing the succession of Ali after the death of Uthman, the third khalifa.

Behold! the angels said: "O Mary! God giveth thee glad tidings of a word from Him: his name will be Christ Jesus, the son of Mary, held in honour in this world and the hereafter and of (the company of) those nearest to God;... Qur'an 3:45

The new, elevated status of women is apparent in numerous Qur'anic proscriptions which set out women's rights and obligations. On protecting the dignity and self-respect of women, for example, the Qur'an is emphatic and unequivocal: One of the seven hudud crimes is maligning a woman's reputation.

O Mankind: Be careful of your duty to your Lord who created its mate and from them twain hath spread abroad a multitude of men and women. Be careful of your duty toward Allah in who ye claim (your rights) of one another. Qur'an 4:1

O mankind! Lo! We have created you male and female and have made you nations and tribes that ye may know one another. Lo! The noblest of you in the sight of Allah is the best in conduct. Qur'an 49:13

"Jahimah came to the Prophet, said 'O Messenger of Allah! I intended that I should enlist in the fighting force and I have come to consult thee.' He said: 'Then stick to her, for paradise is beneath her two feet.'" The Prophet's Hadith

"The most perfect of the believers in faith is the best of them in moral excellence, and the best of you are the kindest of you to their wives." The Prophet's Hadith

The Qur'an, of course, acknowledges and makes provision for differences between men and women. Indeed, on these differences is erected an elaborate structure of individual and social rights and obligations. Some appear inequitable on the surface but on examination reveal a deeper logic and reasonableness. A man, for example, stands to inherit twice as much as a woman, but then he must provide for his own wife and family and relatives should the need arise.

The same holds true of traditional rules of dress and behavior. Women are enjoined to cover their bodies (except for the face and hands) and lower their gaze in the presence of men not related to them. Moreover, although women and men are subject to the same religious obligations—such as prayer, fasting, pilgrimage to Mecca—women pray separately from men. Nonetheless, these rules of dress and behavior—however restrictive they may appear to Western eyes—serve a social function. In societies which by tradition provide few protections outside the family, they insure a woman's integrity and dignity. For that reason, too, men are enjoined to lower their eyes before women and to be appropriately covered from above the chest to the knees.

In other areas, women enjoy a strict parity with men. A woman's right to own property is just as absolute as a man's. Male kin cannot handle a woman 5 financial interests without her permission. A woman must specifically consent to marriage and cannot be forced to accept a husband she does not approve of. In cases of divorce—in a prominent departure from traditional practice—women have exclusive guardianship rights over children up to early puberty. Although a husband has the right to divorce his wife unilaterally—a right not shared by women—a wife can divorce her husband on specific legal grounds by court order.

In education, too, women have the same rights as men. In contemporary Muslim society, in fact, women have attained the same levels of education as men and in many countries occupy positions of power and influence.

Nothing in Islam prevents a woman from accomplishing herself or attaining her goals. Societies may erect barriers, but nothing in the spirit of the Qur'an subjugates women to men. In time, of course, social barriers will disappear—as they are disappearing now—because Muslim women will expect and demand it. As a result, it can only be expected that women will play an increasingly larger role in Islamic society and surpass the contributions of early Muslim women.

The parties should either hold Together on equitable terms, Or separate with kindness. Qur'an 2:229

Lo! Allah enjoineth (orders) justice (or injustice) and kindness (or unkindness) and to give to (one's) kinsfolk... Qur'an 16:90

"What did the Prophet do when in his house? She said, 'He served his wife." The Prophet's Hadith

The Islamic Calendar

The Islamic calendar is unique among the major calendars of the world. Unlike the Gregorian calendar and others based on the astronomical solar year—the length of time it takes for the earth to revolve around the sun—the Islamic calendar is based on the lunar year.

The lunar calendar is comprised of 12 lunar months like the calendar based on the solar year. However, since each month begins and ends with the new moon—a period lasting 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, and 2.8 seconds—each lunar year contains only 354 days (or 355 on leap years) as opposed to 365 and 1/4 days for the astronomical year. There are 11 leap years in every cycle of 30 years, the intercalated day always being added to the last day of Dhu al-Hijjah, the last month of the year.

As a consequence of the fewer number of days in the lunar year, the lunar calendar is unrelated to the progression of the seasons. The month of Rajab, for example, could occur in summer in one year and the middle of winter 15 years later. Relative to the solar year, the lunar calendar progresses by 10 or 11 days each year so that 33 Muslim years are approximately equal to 32 Gregorian years.

The difference in the length of the lunar year accounts for some of the difficulty in converting dates from the Islamic (Hijri or "Hijrah") system to the Gregorian and vice versa. The following equation can be used to calculate the Hijrah year in which the corresponding Gregorian year began:

A.D. = 622 + (32/33 x A.H.)

The Islamic calendar was devised in the seventh century in response to the exigencies of governing the far-flung Abbasid empire. It also was created, not incidentally, to glorify the triumph of the new religion. Other calendars in use at the time were tied to other states and religions, and so, the historian al-Biruni tells us, the caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab decided to develop a new calendar based on the advent of Islam, taking July 16, 622 A.D., the date of the Hijrah or the Prophet's sojourn from Mecca to Madina, as the starting point of the calendar of the Muslim era.

The Muslim months are: Muharram Jumada al-Awwal Ramadan Safar Jumada al-Thani Shawwal Rabi' al-Awwal Rajab Dhu al-Qi'dah Rabi' al-Thani Sha'ban Dhu al-Hijjah

The following holidays are observed among Muslim communities throughout the world: 'Id al-Fitr, also known as the Little Feast, marks the end of the great fast of Ramadan. It occurs on the first day of the month of Shawwal. 'Id al-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice, also known as the Great Feast, falls seventy days after 'Id al-Fitr, on the 10th of the month of Dhu al-Hijjah. Ra's al-Sannah, New Year's Festival, falls on the first day of the month of Muharram. Mawlid an-Nabi, the Prophet's Birthday, is celebrated on the 12th day of the month of Rabi' al-Awwal. Lailat al Isra' wa al-Mi'raj, this festival commemorates the Prophet's miraculous journey, from Mecca to Jerusalem to heaven and then back to Mecca in the same night, is celebrated on the 27th day of the month of Rajab.

The Sharia contains prescriptions, proscriptions, recommendations, suggestions, general principles, and guidelines that may be considered the basis for an overall economic theory. It is important to remember, however, that such a theory must be part of the holistic vision of Islam and the integration of all aspects of human endeavor and interaction.

In one Hadith, the Prophet said that one should work in life as if one were going to live forever. This saying does not mean that there should be no sense of immediacy or urgency to action. Rather it suggests that there should be continuity in life. It also suggests that one should not be obsessed with attaining immediate results and worldly success. On the other hand, the Hadith goes on to state that one should act with respect to life in the hereafter as if one were to die tomorrow. In this, it conveys a sense of urgency about having one's conscience in good order. These correlative maxims rest on the ethical-moral prescription in the Qur'an to do good and abjure evil.

In antiquity, especially in Asia, the gates of a city were part of a larger structure that often had several levels, with towers and interior rooms. The connecting walls and arch above this gate have collapsed, and this is all that is left of one of the gates of Tashkurghan, a city that housed a thousand shops and a score of caravanserais when it was an important trading center on the many-branched Silk Roads. (Aramco World Magazine, May-June 1991; photo by Luke Powell). While there exist numerous economic theories consistent with the Qur'an, the ethical-moral basis of all of them must be the same. Because Islam is a way of life as well as a form of government, a social structure as well as a regulatory norm for interpersonal relationships, business is not something different and apart from all these other aspects of social life. It is a part of human life like any other. Islamic society preserves the notions of free enterprise and social solidarity, social responsibility and humanistic concern for all. It precedes self-interest, though that also is the object of many specific guarantees.

The Prophet, in another Hadith, once said that nine-tenths of all rizk (the bounty of God, which includes income) is derived from commerce. That, to a large extent, explains the drive of Muslims over the centuries to meet their economic needs through commerce, industry, agriculture and various forms of free enterprise. Profits are very much a part of such activities, provided they are lawfully obtained (halal). However, profits cannot overshadow the duties of brotherhood, solidarity, charity and they are, of course, subject to zakat.

It is not righteousness that ye turn your faces towards east or west; but it is righteousness—To believe in God and the Last Day, and the Angels, and the Book, and the Messengers; to spend of your substance, out of love for Him, for your kin, for orphans, for the needy, for the wayfarer, for those who ask, and for the ransom of slaves to be steadfast in prayer, and practice regular charity; to fulfill the contracts which ye have made; Qur'an 2:177

Legitimacy of Profit

Islam distinguishes between legitimate (halal) and illegitimate (haram) profit, of which usury (riba) is a part. To a large extent, the problem of defining usury has arisen over matters dealing with the practices of financial institutions in the West, namely the payment of interest which in the traditional Islamic view is considered a form of riba. By collecting a predetermined, fixed interest, the Muslim neither earns a profit from his work nor shares in risk of his capital. Speculation is prohibited, as is undue profiting from the need or misery of others. Nothing, however, proscribes income derived from what would be equivalent to mutual fund or special trust earnings or other contemporary forms of financing investments where the investor also bears the burden of potential loss. In fact, there exists in Islamic law a form of contract called muqaradah. Here a person entrusts capital to another person for commercial investment. The risk-taking elements justifies the profits, which are neither fixed nor predetermined.

The ethical-moral foundation of all economic relations is based on the distinction between halal and haram as set forth in the Sharia. The particular context of a given action, considering the interests of the community and the rights of all individuals involved, determines whether it may be deemed halal or haram. Although this may appear to be vague to the non-Muslim, it is nonetheless sufficiently clear to the Muslim because of his belief in the omniscience of God.

Fulfillment of Obligations

In all of his dealings, the Muslim is required to pay his debts as well as due compensation to those who work for him. He is to honor his obligations and stand by his word. Rectitude in business dealings and personal relations is as important to the Muslim as is any other tenet of faith. Religion must be lived. Thus ethics, morality, and religion are inseparable. That is why Muslims frequently do business by means of oral agreements or a handshake as opposed to a written contract. This also explains why there is usually a reluctance to adjudicate claims on an adversarial basis, where artful arguments may be found to rationalize or justify changing positions. Therefore, in cases of disagreement in business practices, Muslims frequently resort to arbitration. The practice is no different from that which has developed in non-Muslim societies: Each side selects an arbitrator who in turn selects a third person. It is common for both sides to agree on the arbitrator, usually a person whose faith, piety, and reputation for fairness is well-established in the community.

Because of the role of the individual in Islam as the recipient and bearer of God's will on earth, the sense of individual dignity, pride, and honor is very marked in the Muslim. Ideally, position in life and economic status should not be distinguishing factors in Islam, though in modern societies these distinctions have developed. Respect for the individual applies to form as well as substance and extends to all aspects of human interaction. A Muslim's word is still his bond, and his dignity is his most cherished attribute. An appeal to higher values is more convincing than an appeal to practicality and pragmatism. Human relations are more important than practical considerations Loyalty and fidelity are among the most highly regarded qualities. Rectitude is expected, and undue advantage is considered base. Fairness is both a means and an end, irrespective of the practical realities. Honesty is not a virtue but an expected trait in every Muslim. In today's world of business these values have eroded.

Role of Work

In Islam, work, intellectual as well as physical, is considered the basis of all richness and property. There is both a right to work and a right to the product of that work, as well as a right to benefit from the rewards of divine providence. Work must always have an ethical-moral component, either in itself or in its outcome (i.e., charity, contributing to the community, etc.). There is in the philosophical sense no intrinsic wealth, although the right of inheritance is protected and specifically prescribed under Sharia, which allows for the preservation of property, its devolution and accumulation. Nonetheless, there is the implied premise that wealth should be legitimized through work. In addition, wealth must also be used for good of others, such as the needy, and for the community as a whole. The greater one's wealth and power, the greater is the responsibility to use them properly. In many respects work is considered a form of piety.

Economic freedom extends to work, property, and the choice of how to use one's capabilities and resources. The individual has the freedom to choose the type of work he does, and he has the right to work in an environment that does not impinge upon his personal dignity. Only in freedom can an individual choose how to use the fruits of his labor, that is, to use his wealth for personal aggrandizement or for the benefit of the community. There is a prohibition against jah, the flaunting of one's achievement in the face of others, particularly the less fortunate. This reflects the values of equality and humility symbolically manifested in the five daily prayers, when people stand side by side, shoulder to shoulder, kneeling in unison and putting their foreheads to the ground.

O ye who believe do not eat up your property among yourselves in wrong. But there be amongst you trade in mutual good will. Qur'an 4:29

"The buyer and seller have the option (of cancelling the contract) as long as they have not separated, then if they both speak the truth and make manifest, their transaction shall be blessed, and if they conceal and tell lies, the blessing of their transaction shall be obliterated." The Prophet's Hadith

"The truthful, honest merchant is with the prophets and the truthful ones and the martyrs." The Prophet's Hadith

"Whoever cultivates land which is not the property of any one has a better title to it." The Prophet's Hadith

The Sharia recognizes the right to private property and its uses (provided it is halal), save for the right of the community to "eminent domain." The use of property in accordance with the best interests and dictates of the owner is safeguarded, provided the rights of others are protected. There is throughout the notion that the utilization of wealth must balance the rights of the owner against the rights and interests of the community, which extends to the preservation of the property itself. Use is permissible; abuse and destruction are forbidden.

Property of whatever sort is not considered merely the personal privilege of the one who owns it. Ownership brings with it a certain responsibility towards the property itself, its use and benefits. The relationship between man and his Creator and the social responsibilities of a Muslim require that property be used not only for one's personal advantage and benefit but also for the advantage and benefit of the community. This does not mean that every commercial, industrial, or agricultural enterprise must ultimately turn into a charitable activity, hut there must be human, ethical, and moral factors that relate to the use of property. Thus, if the choice is between an ethical-moral consideration and profit, the former prevails over the latter, other things being equal.

Members of the congregation shake hands and chat near the northern entrance of the Great Mosque in Djenné, Mali. (Aramco World Magazine, November-December 1990; photo Brynn Bruijn). Contracts

Because every Muslim is accountable before both Allah and his community, a great deal of faith is placed in a Muslim's word. Contractual freedom is required and implies the ability to make free choices without undue influence. The attempt to control certain segments of the market or certain phases of a given mechanism that may either control prices or affect the natural laws of a free economy is considered haram. Thus Islamic economic liberty is inherently similar to the notion of free enterprise and socially responsible capitalism. The principles of Islamic economic theory would invalidate transactions in which deceit or undue influence is used by one person against another.

Contracts of various types are regulated by the Sharia and are subject to the concepts of halal and haram. Contracts are essentially predicated on the free will of the parties and must manifest the true expression of their intent. Economic activities based on implied contracts are also balanced by a variety of what would now be called equitable principles to insure against undue influence and lack of fairness, which affect questions of competence, validity, rescission, and damages. Thus the theory of market observation (hisba) postulates that there is a notion of accountability for the market and responsibility for its supervision. The theory originally applied to the traditional agricultural markets and their related commercial markets in the period from the seventh to the twelfth century. It can be compared to market and control mechanisms such as the Federal Reserve Board's control of currency or the Securities and Exchange Commission's control of stock transactions.

Individual contracts, implied contracts, and contracts of adhesion are to be regulated in such a way as to enhance fairness, produce equity, protect the weak and the unwary, and promote social interests. The logical extension of these principles is that no one can enrich himself to the detriment of others. In such a case the injured party has a right to compensation for his loss, not to exceed the extent of profit of the one causing the unjust loss. All of these notions of equity, including protection of the public (consumers, users, etc.), have now emerged in the legal systems of the modern world.

Four-minaret mosque, Bukhara. (Aramco World Magazine, July-August 1988; photo Tor Eigeland). Modern Legal Systems

All Muslim states have legal systems with courts, laws and judges, like elsewhere in the world. There are, however, differences among Muslim states. In some countries, such as Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria ad Tunisia, there is a tradition of legal codification and jurisprudence. Structures for the administration of justice are also well-developed. There is a three-level judiciary comprising trial courts, appellate courts, and a supreme court. The practice of adjudication of claims with representation by counsel is well-established. In some countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf states, there is less of a tradition of codification and a greater reliance on the Sharia. But there are also in these countries a number of laws applying to contracts, commercial relations, agency and the like, in addition to a judicial system and a jurisprudence specific to commercial matters. In the last decade, moreover, many countries have enacted civil and commercial codes—Algeria, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, for example—which are mostly mostly modeled after the Egyptian Civil Code of 1948. The Egyptian code was taken in turn from the French Civil Code and adapted to the Sharia. In the 1980's, Pakistan and the Sudan, which have codified legal systems, have been in the process of changing their laws to conform to the Sharia.

And O my people! give just measure and weight, nor withhold from the people the things that are their due: Commit not evil in the land with intent to do mischief. Qur'an 11:85

It is We who have place you with authority on earth, and provided you therein with means for the fulfillment of your life: Small are the thanks that ye give! Qur'an 7:10

Because Islam originated and has developed in an Arab culture, other cultures which have adopted Islam have tended to be influenced by Arab customs. Thus Arab Muslim societies and other Muslims have cultural affinities, though every society has preserved its distinguishing characteristics. Islamic culture inherited an Arab culture born in the desert, simple but by no means simplistic. It has an oral tradition based on the transmission of culture through poetry and narrative. However, it has been the written record that has had the greatest impact on civilization. Islam civilization is based on the value of education, which both the Qur'an and the Prophet stressed.

This dark green jade pot, 14 cm. (5½"), once furnished the Safavid palace at Tabriz, and probably passed into Ottoman hands after the Battle of Çaldiran in 1514. Before that, the dragon-headed handle suggests it may have belonged to a Timurid ruler. (Aramco World Magazine, January-February 1995; photo Ergun Çagatay). Knowledge and Education

In the Pre-Islamic period, one of the traditions was that of the mu'allaquat (literally "the hangings"). In the city of Mecca, poets and writers would hang their writings on a certain wall in the city so that others could read about the virtues of their respective tribes. Their travels from city to city and tribe to tribe were the means by which news, legends, and exploits would become known. The tradition continued as the Qur'an was first memorized and transmitted by word of mouth and then recorded for following generations. This popular expression of the Arab Muslim peoples became an indelible part of Islamic culture. Even today Muslims quote the Qur'an as a way of expressing their views and refer to certain maxims and popular tales to make a point.

Great centers of religious learning were also centers of knowledge and scientific development. Such formal centers began during the Abbasid period (750-1258 A.D.) when thousands of mosque schools were established. In the tenth century Baghdad had some 300 schools. Alexandria in the fourteenth century had 12,000 students. It was in the tenth century that the formal concept of the Madrassah (school) was developed in Baghdad. The Madrassah had a curriculum and full-time and part-time teachers, many of whom were women. Rich and poor alike received free education. From there Maktabat (libraries) were developed and foreign books acquired. The two most famous are Bait al-Hikmah in Baghdad (ca. 820) and Dar al-Ilm in Cairo (ca. 998). Universities such as Al-Azhar (969 A.D.) were also established long before those in Europe.

Then exalted be Allah the True King! And hasten not (O Muhammad) with the Qur'an ere its revelation hath been perfected unto thee, and say: My Lord! Increase me in knowledge. Qur'an 20:114

Islamic history and culture can be traced through the written records: Pre-Islamic, early Islamic, Umayyad, the first and second Abbasid, the Hispano-Arabic, the Persian and the modern periods. The various influences of these different periods can be readily perceived, as can traces of the Greek, the Indian, and the Pre-Islamic Persian cultures. Throughout the first four centuries of Islam, one does not witness the synthesis or homogenization of different cultures but rather their transmittal through, and at times their absorption into, the Islamic framework of values. Islam has been a conduit for Western civilization of cultural forms which might otherwise have died out. Pre-Islamic poetry and prose, which was transmitted orally, was recorded mostly during the Umayyad period (661-750 A.D.) when the Arab way of life began shifting from the simple nomadic life prevalent in the peninsula to an urban and sophisticated one. Contacts with Greece and Persia gave a greater impulse to music, which frequently accompanied the recitation of prose and poetry. By the mid-800's in the Baghdad capital of Abbassids under Harun al-Rashid and al-Ma'mun, Islamic culture as well as commerce and contacts with many other parts of the world flourished.

In the fourth century B.C., when Alexander the Great conquered Asia Minor and founded Alexandria, he set the stage for the great migration of Greek philosophy and science to that part of the world. During the Ptolemaic period, Alexandria, Egypt, was the radiant center for the development and spread of Greek culture throughout the Mediterranean. That great center of learning continued after 641, when Egypt became part of the Muslim state. Thereafter Syria, Baghdad, and Persia became similar channels for the communication of essentially Greek, Syriac, pre-Islamic Persian and Indian cultural values. As a result, Islamic philosophy was influenced by the writings of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. The great Muslim philosophers such as Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406), Ibn Sina (Avicenna, d. 1037), Ibn Rushd (Averroes, d. 1198), al-Farabi and al-Ghazali translated the works of earlier Greek philosophers and added their own significant contributions. It was essentially through such works, intellectually faithful to the originals, that Western civilization was able to benefit from these earlier legacies. In fact, St. Thomas Aquinas, the founder of Catholic naturalism, developed his views of Aristotle through the translation of Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes). These great philosophers produced a wealth of new ideas that enriched civilization, particularly Western civilization which has depended so much on their works. The influence of Islam ultimately made possible the European Renaissance, which was generated by the ideas of the Greeks filtered through the Muslim philosophers. The same is true of early legal writings of Muslim scholars such as al-Shaybani, who in the seventh century started the case method of teaching Islamic international law that was subsequently put into writing in the twelfth century by a disciple in India. It was the basis for the writings of the legal canonists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries on certain aspects of international law, in particular the laws of war and peace.

The study of history held a particular fascination for Arab Muslims imbued with a sense of mission. Indeed, because Islam is a religion for all peoples and all times, and because the Qur'an states that God created the universe and caused it to be inhabited by men and women and peoples and tribes so that they may know each other, there was a quest for discovery and knowledge. As a result Muslims recorded their own history and that of others. But they added insight to facts and gave to events, people, and places a philosophical dimension expressed in the universal history written by al-Tabari of Baghdad (838-923). In the introduction to his multi-volume work he devoted an entire volume to the science of history and its implications. Al-Tabari also wrote an authoritative text on the history of prophets and kings which continues to be a most comprehensive record of the period from Abraham to the tenth century.

The West's fascination with Arabo-Islamic (culture can be seen in many ways. "The Thousand and One Nights" captured Western Europe's cultural and popular fancy in the 1700's (first translated into French by Galland in 1704, then into English). Dante's "Divine Comedy" contains reference to the Prophet's ascension to Heaven. Shakespeare in "Othello" and the "Merchant of Venice" describes Moorish subjects. Victor Hugo writes of Persians as do Boccaccio and (Chaucer. Even "Robinson Crusoe" and "Gulliver's Tales" are adaptations of "The Thousand and One Nights." Arabo-Islamic culture, knowledge, scholarship, and science fed the Western world's development for five hundred years between the tenth and fifteenth centuries.

The Sciences

From the second half of the eighth century to the end of the eleventh century, Islamic scientific developments were the basis of knowledge in the world. At a period of history when the scientific and philosophical heritage of the ancient world was about to be lost, Islamic scholars stepped in to preserve that heritage from destruction. Indeed, without the cultivation of science in these early centuries by Islamic scholars, it is probable that texts which later exercised a formative influence over Western culture would never have survived intact. It is certain, moreover, that the modern world would look much different than it does today. For the culture and civilization that were founded on Islam not only preserved the heritage of the ancient world but codified, systematized, explained, criticized, modified, and, finally, built on past contributions in the process of making distinctive contributions of their own.

The Wonders and Curiosities of Creation Iran or Iraq 14th c. (Aramco World Magazine, November-December 1995; photo courtesy of ARCH). The story of Islam's role in the preservation and transmission of ancient science, to say nothing of its own lasting contributions, is truly fascinating—and a bit of a puzzle. Why is it that so many ancient Greek texts survive only in Arabic translations? How did the Arabs, who had no direct contact with the science and learning of the Greeks, come to be the inheritors of the classical tradition?

The answers to these questions are to be found in a unique conjunction of historical forces. From the first, it appears, the Umayyad dynasty located in Damascus evinced an interest in things Greek, for they employed educated Greek-speaking civil servants extensively. Early friezes on mosques from the period show a familiarity with the astrological lore of late antiquity.

The theory of numbers, developed and expanded from the original Indian contribution, resulted in the "Arabic numbers" 1 through 9. Islamic scholars also used the concept of zero, which was a Hindu concept. Without the zero, neither mathematics, algebra, nor cybernetics would have developed. Algebra was essentially developed by the Arab Muslims; the very word derives from the Arabic al-jabr. Among the most prominent scholars is the Basra born Ibn al-Haytham (965-1030), who developed the "Alhazen problem," one of the basic algebraic problems, and who made great contributions to optics and physics. He had advanced long before Newton the thesis that extraterrestrial scientific phenomena governed the motion of the earth and stars. He also developed experiments on light which were nothing short of extraordinary at that time. He demonstrated the theory of parallels, based on the finding that light travels in straight lines, and the passing of light through glass. Astronomy, developed by the Babylonians, continued to flourish under Islam. It soon expanded beyond the science of observation into the design of measuring instruments. In addition, it gave rise to the development of planetary theory.

The Arabic alphabet developed from the ancient script used for Nabataean, a dialect of Aramaic, in a region now part of Jordan. The Arabic alphabet has 28 letters. However, additional letters have been added to serve the need of other languages using the Arabic script; such as Farsi, Dari, and Urdu, and Turkish until the early part of the 20th century. The Qur'an was revealed in Arabic.

Traditionally the Semites and the Greeks assigned numerical values to their letters and used them as numerals. But the Arabs developed the numbers now used in languages. The invention of the "zero" is credited to the Arabs though it has its origins in Hindu scholarship. The Arab scholars recognized the need for a sign representing "nothing," because the place of a sign gave as much information as its unitary value did. The Arabic zero proved indispensable as a basis for all modern science.

The medical sciences were largely developed throughout the works of Ibn Sina (Avicenna), al-Razzi, and Husayn bin Ishak al-Ibadi, who translated Hippocrates and other Greeks. Razi (860-940) is reported to have written 200 books on medicine, one of them on medical ethics, and the Hawi, a 25 volume practical encyclopedia. Ibn Sina (980-1037) became a famed physician at 18 who wrote 16 books and the Canoun, an encyclopedia on all known diseases in the world. It was translated into many languages. But medical science soon led into zoology, veterinary medicine, pharmacy, pharmacology and chemistry. Indeed the word "chemistry" derives from the Arabic word al-kemia or alchemy as it was later known. The most important medical school was that of Judishapur, Iran, which after 738 became part of the Muslim world. It was managed by Syrian Christians and became the center for most Muslim practical learning and the model for the hospitals built under the Abbasids (between 749-1258).

The Arabs clearly followed the Hadith of the Prophet urging them to pursue knowledge from birth to death, even if that search was to be in China (deemed the most remote place on the earth.)

The Abbasids, who displaced the Umayyads and moved the seat of government from Damascus to Baghdad, made the first serious effort to accommodate Greek science and philosophy to Islam. The Abbasid rulers, unlike the Umayyads who remained Arab in their tastes and customs, conceived an Islamic polity based on religious affiliation rather than nationality or race. This made it easier for people of differing cultural, racial, and intellectual heritages to mingle and exchange ideas as equals. Persian astronomers from Gandeshapur could work side by side with mathematicians from Alexandria in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of Baghdad.

Then, too, the success of the Islamic conquest had erased existing national boundaries which had worked to keep peoples linguistically, politically, and intellectually apart. For the first time since Alexander the Great former rivals could meet and exchange ideas under the protection of a single state. The rise of Arabic as the international language of science and government administration helped matters along. As the cultivation of the sciences intensified and the high civilization of the Abbasids blossomed, the expressive resources of Arabic blossomed as well, soon making Arabic the language of choice for international commerce and scholarship as well as divine revelation.

Most important of all, however, it was the attitude that developed within the Islamic state toward the suspect writings of the Greeks. Unlike the Christian communities of late antiquity, whose attitudes toward the pagan philosophers were shaped by the experience of Roman persecution, Muslims did not suffer—or at least to the same degree—the conflict between faith and reason. On the contrary, the Qur'an enjoined Muslims to seek knowledge all their lives, no matter what the source or where it might lead. As a result, Muslims of the Abbasid period quickly set about recovering the scientific and philosophical works of the classical past—lying neglected in the libraries of Byzantium—and translating them into Arabic.

The task was herculean and complicated by the fact that texts of the classical period could not be translated directly from Greek into Arabic. Rather, they had first to be rendered in Syriac, the language with which Christian translators were most familiar, and then translated into Arabic by native speakers. This circuitous route was made necessary by the fact that Christian communities, whose language was Syriac, tended to know Greek, whereas Muslims generally found it easier to learn Syriac, which is closer to Arabic.

A doctor and patient discuss vitrified lead poisoning on this page from the Materia Medica of Dioscorides. The Greek work, from the first century BC, was translated into Arabic in the ninth century; this is a 13th-century copy made in Iraq. (Aramco World Magazine, January-February 1989; photo Jeffrey Crespi). The translation effort began in earnest under the reign of the second Abbasid caliph, al-Mansur (754-75). He sent emissaries to the Byzantine emperor requesting mathematical texts and received in response a copy of Euclid's Elements. This single gift, more than any other perhaps, ignited a passion for learning that was to last throughout the golden age of Islam and beyond. The effort was subsequently systematized under al-Ma'mun, who founded an institution expressly for the purpose, called the Bait al-Hikmah or House of Wisdom, which was staffed with salaried Muslim and Christian scholars. The output of the House of Wisdom over the centuries was prodigious, encompassing as it did nearly the entire corpus of the Greek scientific and philosophical thought. Not only Euclid but Aristotle, Galen and Hippocrates, and Archimedes were among the authors to receive early treatment.

It would be wrong to suggest that the scholars of the House of Wisdom were occupied with task of translation only. Muslim scholars generally were concerned to understand, codify, correct, and, most importantly, assimilate the learning of the ancients to the conceptual framework of Islam. The greatest of these scholars were original and systematic thinkers of the first order, like the great Arab philosopher al-Farabi who died in 950. His Catalog of Sciences had a tremendous effect on the curricula of medieval universities.

Perhaps the most distinctive and noteworthy contributions occurred in the field of mathematics, where scholars from the House of Wisdom played a critical role in fusing the Indian and classical traditions, thus inaugurating the great age of Islamic mathematical speculation. The first great advance consisted in the introduction of Arabic numerals—which, as far as can be determined, were Indian in origin. They embody the "place-value" theory, which permits numbers to be expressed by nine figures plus zero. This development not only simplified calculation but paved the way for the development of an entirely new branch of mathematics, algebra.

The study of geometry was sustained by a remarkable series of scholars, the Banu Musa or "Sons of Musa," who were all, quite literally, sons of the al-Ma'mun's court astronomer, Musa ibn Shakir. Their activities were all the more noteworthy because they carried on their research and writing as private citizens, devoting their lives and expending their fortunes in the pursuit of knowledge. Not only did they sponsor the translation of numerous Greek works but contributed substantial works of their own. Al-Hasan, one of the sons, was perhaps the foremost geometrician of his time, translating six books of the Elements and working out the remainder of the proofs on his own.

Arabic Words That Entered the Western Vocabulary AL-JABR = ALGEBRA AL-KEMIA = CHEMISTRY AL-KUHL = ALCOHOL AL-MIRAL = ADMIRAL AL'UD = LUTE 'ANBAR = AMBER BAWRAQ = BORAX GHARBALA = GARBLE GHOL = GHOUL LAYMUN = LEMON MAKHZAN = MAGASIN (French) NARANJ = ORANGE QAHWAH = COFFEE, CAFE QANAH = CANE QITAR = GUITAR SAFARA = SAFARI SUKKAR = SUGAR = ASUKAR (Spanish) TAFRIK = TRAFFIC TA'RIF = TARIFF TUNBAR = TAMBOURINE (French) ZIRAFAH = GIRAFFE The enormous intellectual energy unleashed by the Abbasid dynasty left no field of knowledge and speculation untouched. In addition to mathematics and geometry, Abbasid scholars in the House of Wisdom made important and lasting contributions in astronomy, ethics, mechanics, music, medicine, physics, and philosophy to name a few. In the process men of enormous intellect and productivity rose to prominence. One of these was Thabit ibn Qurra. Recruited from the provinces—where he had worked in obscurity as a money changer—he came to the Bait al-Hikmah to work as a translator. There his exemplary grasp of Syriac, Creek, and Arabic made him invaluable. In addition to his translations of key works, such as Archimedes' Measurement of the Circle (later translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona in the 12th century), he also wrote over 70 original works on a wide range of subjects. His sons, too, were to found a dynasty of scholars that lasted until the 10th century.

But it wasn't only the pure or abstract sciences that received emphasis in these early years. The practical and technical arts made advances as well, medicine the first among them. Here several great scholars deserve mention. Hunain ibn lshaq not only translated the entire canon of Greek medical works into Arabic—including the Hippocratic oath, obligatory for doctors then as now—but wrote 29 works by his own pen, the most important a collection of ten essays on ophthalmology. The greatest of the 9th century physician-philosophers was perhaps Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi, known to the west as Rhazes. He wrote over 184 books and was an early advocate of experiment and observation in science.

Simultaneously, in far off Spain (al-Andalus), the social and natural sciences were being advanced by men such as Ibn Khaldun, the first historian to explicate the laws governing the rise and fall of civilizations. The brilliant flowering of Islamic science in Andalusia was directly stimulated by the renaissance in Baghdad. Scholars regularly traveled the length of the known world to sit and learn at the feet of a renowned teacher.

With the death of the philosopher al-Farabi in 950 the first and most brilliant period of Islamic scientific thought drew to a close. As the political empire fragmented over the next 300 years, leadership would pass to the provinces, principally Khorasan and Andalusia. Indeed, Spain was to serve as a conduit through which the learning of the ancient world, augmented and transformed by the Islamic experience, was to pass to medieval Europe and the modern world. At the very time that Baghdad fell to the Mongols in 1258, and the Abbasid caliphate came to an end, scribes in Europe were preserving the Muslim scientific tradition. This is why, just as many Greek texts now survive only in Arabic dress, many Arabic scientific works only survive in Latin.

The death of al-Farabi is perhaps a fitting event to mark the end of the golden age of Muslim science. His masterwork, The Perfect City, exemplifies the extent to which Greek culture and science had been successfully and productively assimilated and then impressed with the indelible stamp of Islam. The perfect city, in al-Farabi's view, is founded on moral and ethical principles; from these flow its perfect shape and physical infrastructure. Undoubtedly he had in mind the round city of Baghdad, The City of Peace.

Trade and Commerce as a Cultural Vehicle

Because Arabs historically had a tradition of trade and commerce, the Muslims continued that tradition. It was due to their superiority in navigation, shipbuilding, astronomy, and scientific measuring devices that Arab and Muslim commerce and trade developed and reached so many peoples throughout the world. The Arabs were at the crossroads of the ancient trade routes from the Mediterranean, the Gulf, East Africa, and the Indian subcontinent, all the way to China.

One of the interesting results of these trading relations occurred during the caliphate of Harun al-Rashid (786-809) when he exchanged envoys and gifts with Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Emperor. As a result, Harun al-Rashid established the Christian Pilgrims' Inn in Jerusalem, fulfilling Umar's pledge to Bishop Sophronious, when he first entered Jerusalem, to allow freedom of religion and access to Jerusalem to Christian religious pilgrims.

A number of Arabic words relating to the trade and commerce have found their way into modern Western languages. (See list of words.) Muslin cotton developed in Mosul (Iraq) became a favorite commodity and a new word in the Western vocabulary, as did damask fabric (from Damascus), fustain cloth (from Fustat, Egypt).

The most interesting accounts of other cultures encountered by Arab Muslims are contained in a book on the travels of Ibn Battutah of Tangier (1304-1377), who over a period of 25 years traveled to Asia Minor, Mongolia, Russia, China, the Maldives, Southeast Asia and Africa and recounted his travels and the influence of early Muslim traders in those regions. He was the precursor of Marco Polo, whose accounts contained detailed descriptions of various cultures with which Arab and Muslims traders had long been in contact. Islamic craftsmanship in bookmaking and bookbinding were items of trade which carried the message of Islamic civilization far and wide.

Architecture and music

The word "Arabesque" entered into the Western lexicon as a description of the intricate design that characterized Arab Muslim art. But the great mosques that were first built throughout the Islamic world were not only places of worship but places of learning which remained as great examples of architecture and design. Through them civilization was transmitted in an artistic environment that was at once intellectually inspiring and emotionally uplifting. The Haram Mosque of Mecca, the Mosque of Al-Aqsa in Jerusalem, the numerous mosques in Cairo—Al-Azhar, Amr, Sultan Hassan, Baybars—the Great Umayyad Mosque of Damascus, the Quairawan in Tunisia, the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, the Cordoba Mosque in Spain and the Kutubiyah in Marakesh are among the most noteworthy. In addition to distinctive architectural characteristics, such as magnificent geometric designs, many of these contain mosaics of rare beauty, frequently painted in the blue and green of the sea, sky, and vegetation. The wood carving (masharabiyah) in most mosques are equally distinctive and characteristic of Islamic art.

At times of prayer, individuals and congregations—indeed the entire Muslim world—face Mecca. The mosque is usually a domed structure with one or more minarets from which the muadhin gives the call to prayer five times a day. The direction of Mecca is clearly indicated by the mihrab, a decorated niche in the wall. The larger mosques have a minbar or pulpit. Since the worshipers should be in a pure state of mind and body before they begin to pray, a fountain is placed in the courtyard for ritual ablutions. Shoes are removed on entering the prayer hall, which is usually carpeted.

For Muslims the mosque is a place for worship and education, a refuge from the cares of the world. Its function is best described in the Prophet's own words, namely that the mosque should be a garden of paradise. Islam's greatest architect was Sinan, a 16th century Ottoman builder who was responsible for the Sulaimaniye mosque in Istanbul. His mosques visibly display the discipline, might, and splendor of Islam.

The most notable examples of masharabiyah are in the Mosque of Ibn Tulun in Cairo, the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, and the Mosque of Isfahan. After the Ka'ba in Mecca, the "Dome of the Rock" or Mosque of Umar in Jerusalem built in 685 is the oldest example of Muslim architectural genius. The technique of dome construction was perfected and passed on to the West. The technique of dome structural support was used in the Capella Palatine in Palermo (1132), while the campaniles or steeples of the Palazza Vecchio of Florence and of San Marco in Venice are inspired by the minaret which was first built in Qairawan, Tunisia (670). Similarly, the horseshoe arch, which was so prevalent in Islamic form and particularly well realized in the Great Mosque of Damascus (707), has since been copied all over the world. Probably the best known example of Islamic architecture is the Alhambra (meaning al-Harnra or the red one) palace built in 1230 in Granada, Spain.

But artistic contributions were not limited to architecture, construction, decoration, painting, mosaic, calligraphy, design, metalcraft and wood carving. They extended to music through the development of new instruments and new techniques of sound and rhythm. The Arab Muslims (al-Farabi in particular) were the first to develop a technique of musical harmony paralleling mathematical science. Arabic-Islamic music was characterized by the harmony of sound and evocative emotional expression. Musiqa is the Arabic word for music.

Islamic Fundamentalism

Many non-Muslims perceive Islamic Fundamentalism as a form of revolutionary ideology and associate it with groups and movements which engage in violent acts or advocate violence. This must be distinguished from Islamic revival which is a peaceful movement calling for the return to basic traditional values and practices. Adherents to and followers of such a movement believe that the best way to achieve the "true path of Islam" is to develop an integrated social and political system based on Islamic ideals and the teachings of the Qur'an and the Sunna. To that extent they are fundamentalists.

Reform ideas which derive from revival movements are not new to the history of Islam, nor do they advocate resorting to violence in order to achieve such a goal except where rebellion against unjust rule is legally justified. Examples of peaceful reform ideas are found in the learned teachings of the 13th century philosopher-scholar Ibn Taymiyya in Syria. In the 18th century the Wahabi reform movement developed in Saudi Arabia and its orthodox teachings continue to the present. Also in the 19th century the ideal of the "true path to justice" or al-salaf al-salih was eloquently propounded by Sheik Muhammad Abduh in Egypt, and his views continue to be studied by religious and secular scholars all over the world. These and other reform ideas have in common the search for Islamic truth and justice and their applicability to the solutions to Muslim societies' problems.

Because Islam is a holistic religion integrating all aspects of life, it follows that a reform movement predicated on religion necessarily confronts the social, economic, and political realities of the society in which it develops. Muslim societies, however, have emerged from colonialism and neo-colonialism and are seeking to develop free from certain western influences which may corrupt or subvert basic Islamic values. Furthermore in Islam there is no division or distinction between what in the West is called "Church and State". In fact westerners refer to the Islamic form of government as a theocracy. Thus contemporary political-religious groups focus on social, political, and economic aspects of Muslim societies. They oppose the secular state and instead call for the establishment of a "Muslim State".

A distinction must be made between Islamic reform and Islamic political activism conducted under the banner of Islam. The latter is sometimes characterized by extremism, fanaticism, and violence, which are contrary to Islamic precepts. But these manifestations of a socio-political nature must not be confused with the ideals and values of Islam.

Enlightened reform ideas continue to develop in the Muslim world. Institutions like Al-Azhar University in Cairo, which is the oldest university in the world, the Muslim World League in Mecca, and the Organization of the Islamic Conference headquartered in Jeddah are the examples of the contemporary, intellectual, educational, and diplomatic forces in the resurgence of Islam. The contributions they make toward a better understanding of Islam, as well as its peaceful propagation, are free from extremism and violence.

The resurgence of Islam is flourishing in every part of the world and dedicated Muslims are trying hard to meet the challenges of modern times while remaining faithful to the values of their past. This is enlightened Islamic Fundamentalism. Its continuation and growth are ongoing. But since all mass movements carry the risk of excess, extremism by some is likely to occur at times. However, one should not judge the higher values shared by the many on the basis of the extreme deeds committed by the few.

Muslims, irrespective of whether they come from the Arab world, Africa, Asia Minor, Central Asia, China, the Soviet Union or Western societies, still feel strongly united in their shared beliefs and values. Muslims believe that they have a contribution to make in this world, either as individuals or as a community, and that their behavior and demeanor can set an example to others. In Muslim countries the problems, dilemmas, and frustrations are numerous. With the gradual disintegration of the Muslim state, beginning in the twelfth century, many of the countries fell under foreign rule for extensive periods of time, Ottoman Turkish domination for some at first, and then European colonialism. They have had to make up for many years during which their economic, social, and cultural development was blunted by both external and internal causes. To do so they have to struggle not only against problems of underdevelopment but also forces of rapid change.

The search for an Islamic way is ongoing throughout the Muslim world. It is an uneasy search seeking to link the fundamentals of a glorious past with a future that offers only hopeful promises dimmed by present difficulties. Most Muslims as individuals are undaunted, for every Muslim believes that he has to act during his lifetime as if he will live forever. He has a sense of permanence and continuity, knowing that the work begun by one person will be carried on by another. There is a constant hope for a better tomorrow; but then, what counts is the hereafter. Ours is not to insure a result but to try our best to achieve it in the right way. However, the end does not justify the means. The moral-ethical dimension of conduct and method must always predominate.

Second-grader Samiya Rahman and her classmates in Morton Grove, Illinois can choose from more study and reading resources on Islamic subjects than American-born, English-speaking Muslim children could do just a few years ago. (Aramco World Magazine, January-February 1998; photo Kathleen Burke). The challenge of Islam is a challenge to all Muslim societies: to create the types of economic, social, and political institutions that will preserve the basic ethical and moral values of Islam together with the individual freedom of every Muslim. This involves achieving a delicate balance between the needs of the community and the right of the individual to the full attainment of freedom, equality, justice and what under the U.S. Constitution is called "the pursuit of happiness." This also is a legitimate goal in Islam, as set forth by the tenth century Muslim philosopher—the mathematician al-Farabi. A significant part of his major text on truth is devoted to the attainment of happiness.

"Everyone of you is a shepherd, and everyone of you will be questioned about those under his rule: The Amir is a shepherd and he will be questioned about his subjects, the man is a ruler in his family and he will be questioned about those under his care; and the woman is a ruler in the house of her husband and she will be questioned about those under her care." The Prophet's Hadith

O my son! Observe your prayers, order (enjoin or command) with what is just (right and fair) and admonish (forbid) what is wrong; and bear with patience on what befalls upon you; for this is determination of purpose. Qur'an 31:17

Professor of Law, DePaul University, since 1964; 1970 Fulbright-Hays Professor of International Criminal Law, The University of Freiburg, Germany; 1971 Visiting Professor of Law, N.Y.U.; 1972 Guest Scholar Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C. He is non-resident Dean of The International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Sciences (Siracusa, Italy) since 1976.

He studied law in the three major legal systems of the world: civil law, common law, and Islamic Sharia, at Dijon University, France, The University of Geneva Switzerland, and the University of Cairo, Egypt. His degrees are: J.D., Indiana University; LL.M., John Marshall Law School; S.J.D., George Washington University. In 1981 he was awarded the degree: Doctor of Law Honoris causa (Dottore in Giurisprudenza) from the University of Torino, Italy, and in 1988, the degree: Doctor of Law Honoris causa (Docteur d'Etat en Droit) conferred at The University of Pau, France.

He is the author of twenty-two books on U.S. Criminal Law and International and comparative Criminal Law and over 100 law review articles.

Active in several scholarly and professional organizations, he has served as the Secretary-General of the International Association of Penal Law since 1974; chairman of the International Law Section of the Illinois State Bar Association for several years, and chairman of several committees of the Chicago Bar and American Bar Associations.

A frequent lecturer at distinguished universities in the U.S. and abroad, he has also been a frequent U.N. consultant : Fifth U.N. Congress on Crime Prevention (1975) where he was elected Honorary Vice-President of the Congress; Sixth U.N. Congress (1980) where he presented a Draft International Criminal Code; U.N. Division of Human Rights in 1980-1981 for which he prepared a Draft Statute for the Creation of an International Criminal Court; Seventh U.N. Congress, for which he chaired two preparatory meetings of committees of experts in 1983-1984. He also served in 1978 as co-chairman of the committee of experts which prepared the U.N. Draft Convention of the Prevention and Suppression of Torture, and chairman of the committee of experts which prepared the U.N. Draft Convention on the Prevention of Unlawful Human Experimentation.

He was also a consultant to the Departments of State and Justice on projects relating to international traffic in drugs (1973) and control of terrorism (1975 and 1978) and the defense of the U.S. hostages in Iran (1979).

Among the distinctions and awards he received are: 1956, Order of Merit, Egypt; 1977, Order of Merit, Italy (Rank of Commendatore); 1978, Order of Merit, Italy, (Rank of Grand' Ufficiale); 1984, Order of Sciences, Egypt), (Rank of First Class). Also among others: 1967, Outstanding Citizen of the Year of Metropolitan Chicago; 1970, Outstanding Educator of America; 1973, Gold Medal of the Italian Press (Rome, Italy).

He has been admitted to practice in Illinois and Washington, D.C. and before the United States Supreme Court, the Second, Fifth, Seventh, and Eleventh Circuits of the U.S. Courts of Appeals, the United States Court of Military Appeals, and the United States Court of International Trade.

Since 1973 he has served as member of the Board and President of the MidAmerica Arab Chamber of Commerce.

The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the MidAmerica Arab Chamber of Commerce in connection with the cost of preparing the manuscript for publication, which was approved by its Board of Directors, and expresses his deep appreciation to Rand McNally Corporation of Chicago for publishing this book as a sign of their interest in the world of Islam.

Most of the illustrations contained in this book have been graciously provided by Aramco World Magazine and Rand McNally whose assistance in this respect was most useful.

In the selection of illustrations, their integration in the text and other ministerial functions, I was assisted by Olfat El-Mallakh of the MidAmerica Arab Chamber of Commerce to whom I express my appreciation as well as to Tom Malueg who edited an earlier version of the text, and appreciation to Alfred Polus for proofreading the final text. The design and layout of the book was done by John Wetzel whom I wish to thank, especially for his patience in redoing the layout repeatedly to produce this excellent result. My appreciation is also extended to Walid M. Shaar who did the calligraphy on the cover and the Qur'anic verse at the conclusion of the book, and to Dr. Shafiq Ismail who prepared the current map of the "Muslim world" (based on a map from the Chicago Tribune) and the "Distribution of the Shia" map. Specific acknowledgments for maps and illustrations appear in the text.

Finally, my appreciation to the American Arab Affairs Council (Washington, D.C.) for having published in 1985 an abbreviated text with the same title, which subsequently and with significant changes became this book.

The Middle East Institute (MEI) is an independent, non-partisan, non-for-profit, educational organization. It does not engage in advocacy and its scholars’ opinions are their own. MEI welcomes financial donations, but retains sole editorial control over its work and its publications reflect only the authors’ views. For a listing of MEI donors, please click her e .

The Prophet Muhammad and the Origins of Islam

The rise of Islam is intrinsically linked with the Prophet Muhammad, believed by Muslims to be the last in a long line of prophets that includes Moses and Jesus. Because Muhammad was the chosen recipient and messenger of the word of God through the divine revelations, Muslims from all walks of life strive to follow his example. After the holy Qur'an, the sayings of the Prophet ( hadith ) and descriptions of his way of life ( sunna ) are the most important Muslim texts.

Early Life Muhammad was born into the most powerful tribe in Mecca, the Quraish, around 570 A.D. The power of the Quraish derived from their role as successful merchants. Several trade routes intersected at Mecca, allowing the Quraish to control trade along the west coast of Arabia, north to Syria, and south to Yemen.

Mecca was home to two widely venerated polytheistic cults whose gods were thought to protect its lucrative trade. After working for several years as a merchant, Muhammad was hired by Khadija, a wealthy widow, to ensure the safe passage of her caravans to Syria. They eventually married.

Divine Revelations When he was roughly forty, Muhammad began having visions and hearing voices. Searching for clarity, he would sometimes meditate at Mount Hira, near Mecca. On one of these occasions, the Archangel Gabriel ( Jibra'il in Arabic) appeared to him and instructed him to recite "in the name of [your] lord." This was the first of many revelations that became the basis of the Qur'an, the holy book of Islam. These early revelations pointed to the existence of a single God, contradicting the polytheistic beliefs of the pre-Islamic Arabian Peninsula.

Initially overwhelmed by the significance of what was being revealed to him, Muhammad found unflinching support in his wife and slowly began to attract followers. His strong monotheistic message angered many of the Meccan merchants. They were afraid that trade, which they believed was protected by the pagan gods, would suffer. From that point forward, Muhammad was ostracized in Mecca. For a time, the influence and status of his wife and his uncle, Abu Talib, the chief of the clan, protected Muhammad from persecution. After they died, however, Muhammad's situation in Mecca became dire.

The Hijra Emigration became the only hope for Muhammad and his followers' survival. In 622, they headed to Medina, another oasis town, where they were promised freedom to practice their religion. The move from Mecca to Medina is known as the hijra —the flight—and marks year 1 of the Islamic, or hijri , calendar.

Spreading the Message of Islam In Medina, Muhammad continued to receive divine revelations and built an ever-expanding community around the new faith. The conflict with the Quraish continued, but after several years of violent clashes, Mecca surrendered. Muhammad and his followers soon returned and took over the city, destroying all its pagan idols and spreading their belief in one God.

The Night Journey and Ascension of the Prophet Accounts of the ascension ( mi'raj  ) of Muhammad have captured the imaginations of writers and painters for centuries. One night, while the Prophet was sleeping, the Archangel Gabriel came and led him on a journey. Mounted on the heavenly steed Buraq , Muhammad traveled from the Ka'ba in Mecca to the "Farthest Mosque," which Muslims believe to be the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. There he prayed with other prophets such as Moses, Abraham, and Jesus, and ascended to the skies, where he was led by Gabriel through Paradise and Hell, and finally came face to face with God. He then returned to earth to continue spreading the message of Islam. According to Islamic belief, Muhammad was the only person to see Heaven and Hell while still alive.

After the Prophet's Death: Emergence of Shi'i and Sunni Sects of Islam When Muhammad died in 632, he had not named a successor. One faction, the Shi'a, believed that only individuals with direct lineage to the Prophet could guide the Muslim community righteously. They thought that 'Ali, Muhammad's closest surviving blood male relative, should be their next leader ( caliph ). The other faction, the Sunnis, believed that the Prophet's successor should be determined by consensus and successively elected three of his most trusted companions, commonly referred to as the Rightly Guided Caliphs (Abu Bakr, 'Umar, and 'Uthman), as leaders of the Muslim community; 'Ali succeeded them as the fourth caliph.

Today the Islamic community remains divided into Sunni and Shi'i branches. Sunnis revere all four caliphs, while Shi'is regard 'Ali as the first spiritual leader. The rift between these two factions has resulted in differences in worship as well as political and religious views. Sunnis are in the majority and occupy most of the Muslim world, while Shi'i populations are concentrated in Iran and Iraq, with sizeable numbers in Bahrain, Lebanon, Kuwait, Turkey, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

Depictions of the Prophet Muhammad Featured in this unit are several depictions of the Prophet Muhammad. These portrayals, while somewhat rare, are not unheard of as there were (and still are) many different attitudes toward depicting the Prophet, and humans in general, in the Islamic world. These attitudes varied dramatically from region to region and throughout history; the societies that produced the works discussed here are among those that allowed the depiction of the Prophet. Commissioned by Muslims for Muslims, these images appear in biographies of the Prophet and his family, world and local histories, and accounts of Muhammad's celestial journey ( mi'raj ), as well as in literary texts. In each context, they serve a distinct purpose. They illustrate a narrative in biographies and histories, while in literary texts they serve as visual analogues to written praises of the Prophet. An image of the Prophet Muhammad at the beginning of a book endows the volume with the highest form of blessing and sanctity. Thus, illustration of him was a common practice, particularly in the eastern regions of the Islamic world (see also Frequently Asked Questions ).

Mystical Meditations and Other Miscellaneous Musings

• Sample Page
• Introductory Essay

Before taking this course, my knowledge of Islam had primarily been informed by the mainstream media. Unfortunately for the probable thousands of Americans who shared this in common with me, there are so many misconceived notions of Islam depicted by these media outlets that may never be rectified unless an active search for truth is realized. Much of what the younger generations have seen in their lifetimes regarding Islam has been shrouded by dialogues of terrorism, war, and fear. It is a very instinctually human phenomenon to form an opinion and stick to it for pride or vanity’s sake. These opinions once formed are rarely able to be transformed, unless genuine open-mindedness and empathy are present. But fortunately for me, I came into Harvard almost entirely set on concentrating in the Comparative Study of Religion. Coming from a tremendously devout Catholic family, I had attended parochial school my whole life. Though I fell in love with my Catholic faith from a young age, I knew that reserving my religious studies to Catholic theology alone was detrimental not only to my conception of Catholicism, but to my conception of religion as a whole. Taking a class on Islam was a top priority on my list as I was aware of my own ignorance of both the religion and the culture. But people are not stringently bound by their ignorance that perpetuates destructive stereotypes. Misconceptions and misunderstandings can be easily cured with knowledge. And that is something I learned this semester.

In his book Infidel of Love, Professor Asani says: “It is one of the great ironies of our times that peoples from different religious, cultural, racial, and ethnic backgrounds are in closer contact with each other than ever before, yet this closeness has not resulted in better understanding and appreciation for difference. Rather, our world is marked with greater misunderstandings and misconceptions, resulting in ever-escalating levels of tensions between cultures and nations.” (page 1) These tensions that arise between cultures hardly exist on account of reasons other than ignorance. Nobody could ever come to truly know or appreciate another person, community, or culture without truly understanding that person, community, or culture. Learning about Islam therefore becomes an undertaking that requires the study of the historic, social, and political contexts that envelop the religion, before diving into the study of the modern-day conflicts existing within and surrounding some Muslim nations. Throughout this class, not only did we look at these political and historical contexts, but we also, more uniquely, examined Islam through the lenses of art, literature, poetry, and music. Peering into our subject through these aesthetic lenses provided an experience unlike any other approach to learning I’ve yet encountered. I hope the viewer will catch a glimpse of this from my blog posts.

In this blog, I present my own personal interpretations of and responses to Islamic art, literature, poetry, architecture, music, and culture. Each entry presents a reflection of the corresponding lecture material or weekly readings beginning with Week Two’s “Constructions of Islam” and ending with Week Twelve’s reading of Persepolis and Sultana’s Dream. As I mention in some of my blog posts, my spiritual life was fairly established before taking this class; but with each coming week and its accompanying lectures, my eyes were opened to so many new possibilities of approaching faith and life as a whole. Though I came to this class with a limited knowledge of Islam and, moreover, a mistaken belief that the religion along with all it promoted had no place alongside my own convictions, I am now ending the semester, delighted to have been proven wrong. My deepest hope is that someone stumbling upon this assortment of “mystical meditations and other miscellaneous musings” might recognize the collective revelations that have allowed me modest glimpses into enlightenment over these past 13 weeks, and even better, might also be inspired to think differently themselves.

In my first blog post, “Constructions of Islam,” I focus on the distinction between the terms “Muslim” and “muslim.” This was perhaps one of my favorite units in the semester because it set the stage so perfectly for all of the other misconceptions I was subconsciously harboring that would be broken throughout the rest of the course. I think that the aforementioned villainization of Muslims that has been presented in the media post 9/11 has created a false notion that at the core of Islam, exists a claim to salvation that precludes any non-Muslim from God’s mercy. But, something I learned in week two, primarily through Professor Asani’s second chapter of Infidel of Love, is that True Islam values all human life and recognizes the fact that fundamental human rights are not only universal, but that belief in this is a principal tenet of the religion. Contrary to the misconception, True Islam emphasizes that inherent dignity of humanity is derived from the same creator and therefore, rejects any possibility of ethnic, racial, or religious supremacy. As a recently declared concentrator in the study of comparative religion, I find this pluralistic message all the more critical for the development and fostering of understanding. I am a firm believer that we should not be content with the end-goal of tolerance. Tolerance implies a certain degree of complacency towards a subject, when what we should be striving for is appreciation for difference, and an eagerness to learn more about viewpoints countering our own.

My second blog post turns towards a more aesthetic side of Islam. In week six, we discussed mosque architecture and heard from two guest lecturers who spoke about the fluidity and multidimensional nature of Islamic art. In Ismail R. Al-Faruqi’s Misconceptions on the Nature of Islamic Art, he prefaces the text by noting that “the Western scholars of Islamic art…have failed in the supreme effort of understanding the spirit of that art, of discerning and analyzing its Islamicness…they sought to bend Islamic art to its categories.” (page 29) This recurring phenomenon of Western societies misappropriating cultures outside of their own is one of, if not the singular, leading cause of the culture clash that Professor Asani references in the first excerpt from Infidel of Love. Not only are misrepresentations of these cultures counterproductive to the quest for understanding, they are simply erroneous and lazy assessments in which these Western scholars attempt to fit every other culture and society into the confines of their own constructed conventions. What I found so beautiful and unique about Islamic art is that despite the wildly varied modes of interpretation and expression, all “derive their theological aesthetic from the same principle, namely, tawhid, the acknowledgement and assertion of God’s uncompromised unity and transcendence.” (Rendard, Seven Doors to Islam , page 128) The artistic liberty afforded by this principle combined with the lack of a rigid architectural template for masjids leads to endless creative possibilities. I chose to follow up Week Two’s blog with Week Six because I think the plurality message tied into the first blog also comes through in this visual project. The incorporation of three cultures into the Spanish mosque architecture is a prime example of the productive relationship that can exist between nations, and the beauty that arises as a result of their cooperative effort.

The blog inspired by Week Five deals with the importance of historical contexts and the role history plays in shaping a culture. The relationship between the father, the son, and the grandfather in Elie Wiesel’s quote is one that helped me understand the importance of the Ta’ziyeh much more clearly. So much of history relies on story-telling and the passing on of customs, but many people undervalue the importance of preserving tradition. And yet, tradition is what so often lies at the heart of religion and group identity as a whole. Without tradition and a rich history, meaning can be entirely dissolved from a culture. I have seen firsthand the essentiality of this preservation within my own faith. It’s easy to question the Truths within your religion when you realize that you only subscribe to it because of your parents, and their parents, and their parents’ parents. But once you realize the weight of tradition, you grow to appreciate the history behind your own roots, and suddenly, there is so much more meaning underlying your convictions.

Transitioning into the second half of the course, my fourth blog revolves around Week Nine’s subject of Islamic poetry. This type of faith expression and the difficulty discussed in lecture of confining a spiritual experience to fit within the parameters of language is one that I was easily able to relate to. Throughout my life, I have had innumerable encounters with areligious people that lack even the slightest trace of faith. Trying to verbalize your own faith experience is almost an impossible feat, and anyone who has been in a similar place could likely attest. When the Transcendent is so infinitely above the worldly realm that we exist in, it would be a futile task to limit an encounter with It to time or space. This poem grapples with my inner battle between constantly seeking social validation and ultimately realizing that “the one who made the stars, for my heart freely yearns.” This sense of security of self that I find within my own faith is something that people in my life who have never experienced this may never understand. My sense of self is secure because it rests in the opinion of my creator, and I have realized more and more throughout this course that I do not stand alone in this conviction. I am convinced that the bond which exists between people of faith is unlike any other interpersonal connection that human beings could share. Not only does it transcend language and time, it automatically places you on an elevated state of understanding.

This sense of unity among the community of believers is exactly why I chose to shift into Week Ten’s Conference of the Birds. In choosing seven birds and seven languages denoting “God,” I hoped to encompass this theme that, despite possessing impossible differences, no single religion holds a monopoly over salvation. Like the Buddhist parable of the blind men and the elephant, I believe all religions strive towards the same understanding of the Divine and arrive at different interpretations. These differences, far from excluding any one faith from attaining the “other-worldly,” unite believers on a common journey of enlightenment. The lessons from this search for truth illustrated in The Conference of the Birds was one of my biggest takeaways from this course. I think people do themselves such a disservice in believing that their way contains the only Gospel Truth. There are so many different routes linking this world to the next. If a believer genuinely perceives the Divine as infinite, how would this not be the case?

This multiplicity of paths to the Divine is what inspired Week Twelve’s imitation of Persepolis. Though dealing more with my own spiritual journey, the comic strip template allowed me to depict the variety of examples necessary to highlight this theme. In high school, my sophomore year theology teacher taught us about Divine Revelation and the different ways in which God unveils Himself to humanity. There are so many areas of my life in which I see proof of this divinity so plainly. I’ve spoken with non-believers who are frustrated by the fact that if God exists, why shouldn’t He come down or show Himself to us? I find it so hard to stop myself in those moments and scream, “He’s right there! He’s in you, He’s in me! He’s in everything! Don’t you see it?” But evidently, the answer is ‘no.’ If I truly believe in an infinite, omnipotent God, shouldn’t it make sense from this conception that a direct revelation would be too much for my finite mind to comprehend? This thought helps me to search for the beauty and good in everything around me and recognize it as having its roots in the Divine. Whether that be reflected through love, through kindness, through nature, or even through suffering, all of these help me to appreciate my faith and broaden my own conception of my creator on a much grander scale. This past semester has only reinforced this belief. I was challenged, enlightened, wounded, healed, distressed, and relieved all at once and I could not be more thankful for this period of tremendous growth. It is my sincere wish that readers of this blog might experience the joy and hope offered by faith at some point in their lives, or if they already have, to hold onto it for as long as they live. Life is hard and suffering does not discriminate, but with faith, our burden is made much lighter.

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World history

Course: world history   >   unit 3.

• The spread of Islam
• The rise of Islamic empires and states
• Spread of Islamic Culture

The development and spread of Islamic cultures

• Key concepts: the spread of Islam
• Focus on continuity and change: the spread of Islam
• Towards the end of the Abbasid caliphate, the formerly vast and united Islamic empire became fragmented and decentralized.
• Many different groups ruled areas previously held by the Abbasids.
• Religious institutions became more defined during this period as state power waned.
• Trade contributed to the spread of Islamic culture and led to a growing feeling of internationalism.

Political decentralization and fragmentation

The formation of diverse religious and state institutions, want to join the conversation.

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United States Institute of Peace

Home ▶ Publications

Islam Is a Religion of Peace

Monday, November 9, 2015 / By: Manal Omar

Publication Type: Analysis

Can the wave of violence sweeping the Islamic world be traced back to the religion's core teachings? A USIP-FP Peace Channel debate about the roots of extremism.

There is a tempting logic that has gained prominence in the post-9/11 world that attributes violent extremism from Muslims to the core tenets of Islam. It is tempting, of course, because if there is one single driver of conflict, after all, then there is one solution. Trying to understand the complex roots of violence can seem overwhelming, and trying to find solutions to it can leave policymakers and civic leaders paralyzed. Yet the concept of one cause — and, therefore, one solution — can be very dangerous. In the best case, this oversimplification may waste financial and human efforts to solve problems because they are based on a faulty diagnosis. In the worst case, it can actually fuel the conflict.

The temptation toward simplicity is evident even in the question posed in this debate. The framing reveals a fundamental error: that violent extremism is fundamental to Islam rather than committed by individuals. The fact that there is violence emanating from parts of the Muslim world does not mean that violence is a product of the religion.

The complicated truth of the matter is that the extremist violence that has overtaken a majority of Muslim countries, including Iraq, Syria, and Pakistan, is the product of complex political and social circumstances. They include colonial legacies and more modern great power politics — and the artificial borders that they bequeathed the region. The violence is perpetrated by official structures that favor a few over the many, and the collapse of government institutions. Religion, certainly, is part of the mix, especially in fragile nations or under authoritarian regimes, but that comes into play not because of the nature of the faith but because of the way it is abused and manipulated.

To grasp this complexity, it is important to understand three areas: the role of global politics that have destabilized the region and inflamed tensions; how dysfunctional states create an opening for extremism; and finally, how religion fills the gaps created by international and domestic uncertainties.

Let’s start with the politics. In doing so, it’s important to note that Western states have played a significant role in the rise of extremist groups. Middle East experts such as Hassan Hassan, who co-authored the book  ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror , argue that the emergence of the self-styled Islamic State (another name for ISIS) has more to do with U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East — who it supports, how its military interventions have changed the region — than with the Quran. The U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority’s 2003 order to dissolve the Iraqi Armed Forces, for example, left hundreds of thousands of well-trained soldiers bitter and unemployed. Many of these officers  now provide the militants with the military expertise required to conquer territory as quickly as they have.

Another example of the United States’ role in stoking extremism is its support for the United Nations’ policies on Israel, which critics have attacked as a double standard. In 2003, John Austin, a former British Parliamentarian, wrote an  article  for the Palestinian NGO  Miftah  citing conflicts from Kosovo to East Timor to Iraq to Rwanda. In each of those cases the U.N. imposed enforcement measures such as arms embargos, and international tribunals to prosecute crimes against humanity. Yet on Israel’s illegal building of settlements, there has been no action despite numerous U.N. resolutions dating back to the late 1970s often because of U.S. intervention on its behalf.

As for state-level problems, domestic power struggles and government dysfunction across the Middle East have also opened the door for violent extremist groups. Robert I. Rotberg outlines in his  book,  When States Fail: Causes and Consequences,  that a state’s failure to provide citizens with basic rights and services allows violent nonstate actors to emerge and take control. Failures were not limited to economic needs; a lack of political inclusion, freedom of expression, and the right to live with dignity have been primary drivers of youth radicalization and violence. A more recent example can be seen in Iraq and Syria: the Islamic State and al-Nusra Front have offered services and material benefits to lure citizens into joining the fight.

A 2015  study  by Mercy Corps,  Youth & Consequences: Unemployment, Injustice and Violence , which examined conflicts in countries such as Afghanistan, Colombia, and Somalia, found that the principal drivers of political violence are not the high unemployment or lack of opportunities traditionally articulated by development agencies. Rather, the  study found that the political violence, which is often framed in religious terms, was linked to experiences of injustice: discrimination, corruption, and abuse by security forces.

In this context, religious spaces often become incredibly important — and powerful. Extremist groups don’t just offer services such as employment, they also proffer a utopian ideology that extends beyond the rhetoric of suicide and sacrifice to promise an ideal state built on strict principles of “justice” and order based on their twisted interpretation of Islam. Islam, in turn, becomes a tool for violent groups to attract support for their causes, much like the way nation-states have used nationalism and patriotic fervor. And the only venue often available for recruitment in otherwise repressive societies is the more radical religious institutions.

Under authoritarian rulers such as Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar al-Qaddafi, many countries in the Middle East and beyond eliminated media outlets, student unions, and professional associations that were not directly under the control of the state. For Muslims in these environments, the mosque became the sole channel for expressing opposition, and the weekly Friday sermon the only place for dissidents to reach the people.

Using Islam as a tool of political extremism has led to many different results. The circumstances that produced the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq are different from what shaped Boko Haram in Nigeria, though both claim to be genuine Islamic groups. In the latter case, the extremist organization evolved as a response to the Nigerian government’s heavy-handed approach and ultimate killing of the group’s founder, Muhammad Yusuf in 2009. Prior to that, the group mainly had waged low-level attacks, rather than the spectacular assaults they now conduct against civilians and the Nigerian military.

Boko Haram and its ilk have manipulated Islam as a powerful recruitment tool, in much the same way Western states use nationalism to mobilize support for wars. Confrontations such as the invasion of Iraq, or the Soviet Union’s incursion into Afghanistan, have sparked the creation of more extremist groups — by destroying civil society, for example — than religious belief ever could.

Those who claim Islam is an inherently violent religion ignore the overwhelming majority of adherents to the faith — there are more than 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide — who live peacefully. They would also ignore that using religion as a justification for violence is nothing new. There are countless examples of members of other religions invoking faith as they perpetrate violence — Buddhist nationalist movements in Sri Lanka and Myanmar instigating violent campaigns against Muslims, for instance. Most people are able to critically analyze these movements and not lay the blame on Buddhism or Christianity.

The most prominent Muslim academics agree extremist groups believe in a fringe version of Islam well outside the scholarly consensus. In 2014, more than 120 of the world’s top Muslim leaders and scholars wrote an  open letter to the Islamic State’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and his followers, using the  same religious texts  the militants cite and arguing the group’s practices are not legitimate in Islam. Signatories include the former and current Grand Muftis of Egypt and top Muslim clerics from Nigeria, the U.S., Canada, Pakistan, and Indonesia.

Muslims have taken grave risks to condemn violence, and some are on the front lines militarily too. Youth activists across the world regularly receive death threats as they offer alternative narratives to resolve conflict through nonviolence. Others have picked up arms to combat these extremist groups when condemnation is not enough. It is Muslims on the ground throughout Iraq and Syria who are leading the fight against the Islamic State. If the tenets of Islam could truly cause violence, all these Muslims would be joining the Islamic State instead of risking their lives to stop it.

Ironically, those who insist the Islamic State is a natural outgrowth of Islam share a similarly narrow conception of the religion as its followers.

Ironically, those who insist the Islamic State is a natural outgrowth of Islam share a similarly narrow conception of the religion as its followers. Despite the wealth of diversity and growth within Islam, they insist on defining it as monolithic.

Intisar Rabb, a professor of law and the director of the Islamic Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School, argued in an email exchange, “Sunni Islam’s most curious blessing and its curse is perhaps its radical legal pluralism: the ability to contemplate that any interpretation of the law, so long as it relates to and engages a sophisticated process of interpretation, is a good-faith effort to arrive at the ‘right answer,’ which may change over time.” Historically, this has allowed for change and reformulation of the law to fit times and places as disparate as 7th century China to 10th century Baghdad to 20th century America, Rabb said. This characteristic, however, can become a curse, because it speaks of no final authority and often leaves a vacuum that permits crude or hostile interpretations that hold sway with the unsuspecting.

Shiite Muslims, for their part, adhere to a broad norm of following a living expert interpreter of Islamic law (called a mujtahid), who can evaluate and refine Islamic values for contemporary circumstances. In the context of Iraq, that has proved a valuable asset in containing some violence. Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani’s statements and fatwas (religious rulings) even since the beginning of the conflict in 2003 directly prevented mass revenge killings on a number   of occasions . One of his  fatwas  this year called for restraint after Shiite-dominated Iraqi government troops and militias freed Tikrit and revealed mass grave sites that presented visceral evidence of June’s massacre of hundreds, possibly thousands, of Iraqi soldiers at the nearby Camp Speicher, when the Islamic State overran the military base. The revelation had heightened the potential of  revenge  attacks against Sunnis because the Islamic State claims to represent and defend all Sunnis.

Besides exacerbating conflict, oversimplifying the underlying causes by laying the blame at the door of an entire religion can mean billions of aid dollars wasted in chasing a false premise, and opportunities missed in the meantime. Seeking to use moderate Muslim clerics superficially to counter extremist messaging, for example, may have little impact if the root of the problem lies elsewhere.

Solving the problem of violent extremism demands embracing the complexity of the problem over the simplistic black-and-white narratives used by extremists on both sides of the debate. Scholarly analysis, and the lived experiences of more than 1 billion Muslims, including myself, makes clear that violence committed by Muslims is not because of the faith. Once this is understood, the world can stop focusing misguided attention on one ostensible factor that has been twisted unrecognizably. With a more balanced approach, it’s possible to demonstrate that violent extremism has no state or religion, and that all identities, ethnicities, and religions are part of the solution.

Read Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s piece  here.

Reposted with permission from  ForeignPolicy.com , Source: “ Islam Is a Religion of Peace "

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Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology

Overview Essay

Islam: Norms and Practices

Zainal Abidin Bagir and Najiyah Martiam

Originally published in the Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology

See also “ Islam and Ecology: Toward Retrieval and Reconstruction” by S. Nomanul Haq from the Fall 2001 issue of Daedalus

Contemporary Muslims’ concern about Islamic understandings of nature can be traced back to a series of lectures in 1966 delivered by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, linking environmental degradation to spiritual and moral crises of the modern world. Yet, four decades later Nasr said, “general indifference to the environmental crisis and apathy in seeking to find solutions to it based on Islamic principles continued until the 1980s and 1990s, when, gradually, voices began to be heard concerning this issue” (Nasr 2003, 86). This does not mean that nothing happened in the four decades. For example, in the mid 1980s Fazlun Khalid developed the Islamic Foundation For Ecology and Environmental Sciences ( http://www.ifees.org.uk/ ), which is now active in a number of Muslim countries. In terms of publications, the anthology Islam and Ecology (2003), which is part of the Harvard Series on World Religions and Ecology, has prominently marked the new development.

Locating this discourse in the broader landscape of contemporary Islamic thought, which consists mostly of responses to modernity), it is clear that the issue of ecology does not occupy an important place yet. After 9/11, political issues such as radicalism and terrorism (with the brutality of ISIS as its most recent and vivid manifestation), democracy, human rights, and the equality of women and religious others, have exhausted the energies of contemporary Muslim thinkers. 

As an illustration, it is instructive to see that in Progressive Muslims , a book attempting “to reflect critically on the heritage of Islamic thought and to adapt it to the modern world,” which was expected to mark “a new chapter in the rethinking of Islam in the twenty-first century” (Safi 2003, 5, 6), ecological concerns were completely absent. Its two main foci were gender justice and pluralism, which reflected the intention of the authors to offer alternative Islamic voices to counter negative portrayals of Islam in a freshly post-9/11 world. Another illustration is The Blackwell Companion to Contemporary Islamic Thought (Abu Rabi’, 2006), which featured writings on terrorism, political movements, and women, but not on environmental problems in Muslim countries. The entry on “Theology” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World (Morewedge 2013) summarizes main theological currents in Islam since its early history, but when it comes to challenges to theology in the twenty first century, it lists only political events: Israel-Palestine conflicts, post-9/11 terrorism and its aftermath, and the so-called “clash of civilizations.” The examples can be easily multiplied.

Identifying the environmental crisis as a particular problem of the modern world, as Nasr and many other scholars do, brings them quickly to two of its main components, i.e. modern science and the dominant modern economic system, both of which can legitimately be characterized to some extent as Western. Starting from the realization that at the root of the crisis is a modern metaphysics that desacralizes nature—expressed in both modern science and the capitalist economy that has led to the exploitation of nature—the solution offered is naturally an alternative metaphysics, manifested in some alternative science and economic system.

Nasr has argued for an alternative science since his first work on this issue (1969). One of the prominent arguments in the discourse of “Islamic science” that developed in the 1980s and 1990s had to do with attempts to provide an alternative mode of relation with the natural world. The “Islamic science” movement, including a variation expressed in the term “Islamization of knowledge,” was booming for some time, although it did not develop far enough toward the creation of a distinct system of science and technology as hoped for by its proponents. Furthermore, even in this more proximate, discourse of Islam and science, ecological concerns have not figured importantly.

The idea of Islamic economy developed around concerns related to the negative impacts of modern economy, especially its failure to deliver justice and its exploitation of nature. Despite the mushrooming of Islamic (or shari’a ) financial institutions, this trend too has seldom been taken up in a way that also considers its relation with environmental problems. Instead, its focus has been promoting shari’a -compliance, understood in very technical terms as avoiding usury.

While shari’a looms large in the Islam and ecology discourse, it is hardly connected to the broader discourse about the place of shari’a in the modern world. All this shows that, despite the rise in publication of works on Islam and ecology in the past decade, and despite the similarity of the structure of environmental and other contemporary problems as well as their methodological challenges, this issue has not been integrated with the wider issues of Muslim responses to the modern/contemporary world.

Turning to methodology, a popular strand in Islamic responses to environmental issues is defensive, if not apologetic. A major characteristic of the discourse consists of expositions of how Islam, as shown in its traditions (especially the two canonical sources, the Quran and hadith ), has actually been or has the potential to be a “green religion.” In communities in which religion still plays a central justificatory role, such a normative understanding should not and cannot be evaded, but this kind of overtly textual exposition does not go far enough to respond to new ecological knowledge and environmental problems.

It is anachronistic to think that a centuries-old tradition should be prepared with answers to any emergent question, especially questions that have not yet been asked, at least not in the magnitude of today’s environmental crisis. Considering the possibility and plurality of interpretations within Islam (an-Na’im 2008), the main issue is what kinds of interpretation can best respond to the problems at hand. What is urgent is a broader hermeneutic insight that focuses on solving the problems. At this point it becomes urgent to focus more attention on the practices of believers and not only to normative sources as means of justification.

This chapter shows some new developments in that direction, that is, studies which do not only look at the primary normative, textual sources of Islam, but also at the existing practices of Muslims as an alternative source of Islamic/Muslim normativity on ecological issues. Attention to practices, as illustrated in this chapter with examples from Muslims in Indonesia and the U.S., further serves as a reminder of the pluralism within Islam, which originated in different readings of Islamic textual sources, but also the practices of Muslims in different places. This suggestion signals some difficult epistemological challenges related to how we should understand Islamic normativity, which will be discussed later.

Challenges to the theological discourse

There has been a broad agreement in Qur’anic interpretation regarding the metaphysical framework around which the discourse of Islam and ecology has developed since the 1960s, expressed in a few central concepts. The existence of the one God ( tawhid ), the Creator, on whom the existence of the created world depends absolutely, forms the basis of Islamic belief. The natural world is understood as muslim , in the sense that it cannot but submit ( aslama , from which the name of the religion, islam , is derived) to God’s will (Ozdemir 2003, 16ff). Human beings, who received revelations from God, occupy a distinctive place in the order of nature.

The single most important concept in this framework,which almost always appears centrally in discussions of Islam and ecology, is khalifa , the idea that human beings are created as God’s vicegerents or stewards in the world. Inasmuch as it was a human being (Adam) who was taught the names of all things, humans occupy a special position in creation because, through God’s education (revelation), it is they who name all creation as objects. This unequal and asymmetrical relation between humans and the rest of creation may easily give the impression that it is human beings who make decisions about other creations, including to exploit them. There are also a number of Qur’anic verses which clearly state that the natural world exists for humans to take benefit from (Ozdemir 2003, 26). Following such an interpretation of the Qur’an, it is difficult to avoid the idea that human beings are special in the order of nature.

Some critics see such anthropocentrism as detrimental to environmental preservation. For example, such a concern was voiced strongly by Afrasiabi (1998), who pointed out the prevalence of anthropocentric images derived from Islamic sources, even by scholars engaging the environmental crisis. He argued that “an alternative Islamic theology that would be capable of integrating within its horizon the fundamental ecological precepts” is required to deconstruct such an image. For Afrasiabi, such a theology would present a non-anthropocentric conception of Islam, and a view of human beings not grounded in “the stereotypical monarchical connotation of vicegerency”; it would comprise a non-utilitarian “theology of the inorganic.” In a passing remark, Foltz has also mentioned that an eco-friendly interpretation of Islam should not be hierarchical (Foltz 2003, 249).

Those suggestions raise important questions. Acknowledging plurality of interpretations in Islam, one question is whether non-anthropocentric expectations are within the scope of possible interpretations of Islamic sources, especially given the strength and centrality of the notion of humankind’s role as khalifa . Does the concept of khalifa necessarily lead to anthropocentrism with all its negative implications for preservation of nature? The project of reconstructing Islamic ecotheology does not need to be an all-or-nothing affair; it is more realistic to see a variety of Islamic cosmologies presenting a spectrum in which non-human beings occupy different degrees of significance relative to humans. Taking a few chapters in Islam and Ecology (2003) as samples, we can already discern differences in how khalifa is understood despite apparent universal agreement on its centrality.

First of all, the so-called “Islamic anthropocentrism” is mitigated to the extent that it becomes a type of anthropocentrism that does not necessarily lead to unduly destructive exploitation of nature. In some interpretations, khalifa is effective only insofar as human beings remain the obedient servant ( ‘abd ) of God, to whom all human and non-human beings submit (Nasr 2003; Haq 2003). In this regard, human and non-human beings are equal, the only difference between them being that the latter are necessarily muslims , while the former has the choice to submit to God or not. Second, the relation between humankind as khalifa and non-human beings is not necessarily a straightforward relation of domination as implied by Afrasiabi. Ibrahim Ozdemir (2003) for example, affirms that indeed in Islam “human beings are at the top of the great chain of being,” but immediately qualifies this by saying that they are not “the owners of nature nor is the sole aim of nature is to serve human beings and their ends.” While in the Qur’an and hadith one may find texts with the view that non-human animals are valued mainly for the services they provide for humans, there are also texts with the understanding that animals have value of their own, apart from their usefulness to humans (Foltz 2006, 3, 4). A further position in the spectrum is given in Chisti’s account of khalifa , which goes so far as to say that “every life-form possesses intrinsic value independent of its resource worth to humanity” (Chisti 2003, 76). Within the genre of philosophical mysticism the significance of non-human beings is articulated even more strongly. A more recurrent theme in the Qur’an is nature as the object of spiritual contemplation rather than exploitation. A further position in this regard is a non-anthropocentric Muslim worldview in which humans and non-humans are regarded as equal persons, which is discussed below.

Sh ari’a as law and ethics

As with responses to other contemporary problems, shari’a features prominently in the Islam and ecology discourse. S hari’a has been deployed in a wide range of ways, from the narrowest of understandings in the form of fatwa (a non-binding religious edict) on particular issues, to fiqh (religious law or jurisprudence), to a methodology of ethical decision-making (Sachedina 2009, an-Na’im 2008).  The main problems discussed mostly concern how to derive laws or ethics from the Qur’an, hadith and other authoritative works, and how to implement them.

In the Islam and ecology literature, shari’a is generally conceived as a means to address environmental problems related to, among other things, the use of land, preservation of precious natural resources, and conservation. For this, scholars may draw from abundant sources in the literature of hadith , which includes chapters on explicitly environmental issues (Haq 2003, 141-143). Many scholars do propose making shari’a as the law to be enforced by the State (e.g. Mawil Izzi Dien; see Johnston 2012). For example, the tradition of hima (protected areas) is still kept alive in Saudi Arabia, though in recent decades these conservation areas have been dwindling rapidly (Johnston 2012, 235).

As law, only rarely is shari’a actually enforceable, that is, only in very rare situations when it is incorporated by a government. In most cases related to environmental issues, shari’a serves a different function, not as putatively enforceable laws, but as a rhetorical tool and strategy to advocate for “eco-justice” (Johnston 2012, 221). In a particular context of Indonesia, Gade argues that legal public reasoning of Islam and environmental law plays an important role as an engine of social change (Gade 2015, 162). In recent progressive discourse, the concept of the maqasid (the purpose of) shari’a , defined with public interest ( maslaha ) as one of its main principles, has come to play a central role as the legal/ethical framework (Johnston 2007; Hefner 2011). In the case of Indonesia, ecological concern has been given legal primacy that makes it the core aim of the law ( maqasid ) (Gade 2015, 164).

The enrichment of Islamic ethical discourse may be developed in a number of ways. Kecia Ali (2015) compares the domination of men over women to the domination of humans over animals in Islam, and argues that both originate from patriarchal-hierarchical cosmology. Showing the intertwined nature of the subjugation of women and of animals, Ali suggests that Muslim feminists should engage with non-religious feminist ethics because it can provide underutilized resources for Muslim thinking about food ethics in particular and ethics in general (Ali 2015, 269). “Engagement with non-Islamic (though not ‘un-Islamic’) ethics provides a model for productive dialogue among parties who disagree about basic presumptions but agree on desirable outcomes.” (Ali 2015, 269). She also makes a case for Muslim vegetarian ethics, despite the lawfulness of meat-eating, for animal welfare and ecological concerns.

At the same time, this illustration provides an insight into how Muslim thinking about food can be expanded beyond the dominant normative discussions of dietary laws such as defining foods as halal . While Ali probes deep into the underlying Muslim cosmology, Magfirah Dahlan-Taylor (2015) emphasizes the need to go beyond individual consumers’ interests in consuming halal foods, which display Muslim religious exclusivity, and connect it to political questions of food justice which also involve consideration of labor and wealth inequality. She argues that Islamic laws and ethics are not something that can be, quoting Muslim thinker Fazlur Rahman, “deduced from the Qur’an in abstracto” (Dahlan-Taylor 2015, 14-15). Dahlan-Taylor applies this principle to the politics of dietary laws, but it is also relevant to the discourse of Islam and ecology in general. Taken more generally, these insights illustrate how Muslim discourse on environmental ethics could be expanded beyond narrow legal categories (of halal and haram as applied to particular acts) in order to include broader categories and concerns of equality and justice, which are central in Islam.

In relation to this point, it is interesting to note the emergence of the notion of “eco- halal ”, which combines the Islamic dietary principle of halal meat and the sustainable-food movement (Barendregt 2013; Arumugam 2009). This may be another way to expand the strictly legal discourse about what foods and methods of food processing are lawful, but, inasmuch as large-scale food industries in the U.S., Malaysia, and Europe are marketing themselves as halal , Dahlan-Taylor’s concern for justice remains an issue of importance.

S tudies of practices

The increasing number of studies of ecological practices by Muslims, as individuals and as communities, constitutes another opportunity to enrich or even sidestep the discourse on theology and ethics as discussed above, which is mostly grounded in textual studies. Such practices may also give rise to further methodological debates in Islam and ecology, as will be discussed in the final section below.

A different response to the charge of Islam’s anthropocentrism may be found in Samsul Maarif’s (2014) portrayal of the seemingly animistic and eco-friendly practices of a small indigenous community in Sulawesi, Indonesia. This illustration at the same time shows a different way of doing Islam and ecology. The Ammatoans profess to be Muslims—and, as such, for Maarif, they are Muslims—but practice such indigenous rituals as chanting, sacrificing animals and giving offerings to the forest which involves the participation of a Muslim imam . While the rituals may be interpreted as being animistic in the conventional sense (worshipping and believing in spirits inhabiting natural objects), there is another way of understanding animism as constituting interpersonal relationships between human persons and natural objects, in which those objects are also understood as (non-human) persons. This latter understanding, argues Maarif, parallels Quranic depictions of natural objects (mountains, birds, stars, trees) as beings which glorify God (Q. 21:79, 38:18, 13:13, 55:6), which indicates their personhood as muslim . The Ammatoan cosmology regards and treats non-human beings as persons equal with humans. While Maarif admits that it is unlikely that those beliefs and practices are historically derived from their understanding of the Qur’an, he defends their “animistic” practices as Qur’anic and thus opens the possibility of “being a Muslim in animistic ways.”

The Ammatoan community is not the only example of Muslim “folk eco-theology”. Foltz mentions Shakeel Hossain’s discussion of rural Bengali Muslims’ traditional river festival, which was not welcomed by some Muslims who considered it shirk (polytheistic) (Foltz 2003, 252-253). While it is understandable that this kind of interpretation is controversial, there have always been a spectrum of interpretations, some of which are regarded as “non-mainstream” to differing degrees.

Another interesting example of Muslim practice is the Bumi Langit (literally, Earth Heaven) Farm in a village in Java, Indonesia. Founded by Iskandar Waworuntu, a Muslim convert, the Farm manifests a cosmology and ethics that blend inspiration from the Qur’an, Western and Eastern philosophies, and local practices (Rogers 2013). In developing a permaculture, Waworuntu seeks to work with, rather than against, nature in an Islamic paradigm. In his understanding, the paradigm realizes Islam as a blessing for the whole universe ( rahmatan lil ‘alamin ) by emphasizing harmonious relations between all God’s creatures—human and non-human, animate and inanimate—who are all praising and chanting toward God. Bypassing the anthropocentrism debate, he upholds the true khalifa as one who is not simply given the title by God but who earns it by the respect given by creation. For him, being an environmentalist is the most ethical way of being a Muslim, and it forms half of faith, the other half being tawhid (belief in God). In this worldview, halal (permissible) as a legal category is not sufficient, but needs to be supplemented with the ethical category of tayyib , meaning goodness or wholesomeness, which can be extended to the politics and ethics of food. He tries to make his farm embody Islamic teachings in all aspects. [1]

Ecological practices have also been developed by many ‘eco- pesantrens ’ (Islamic boarding school/community) in Indonesia (Mangunjaya 2012). Mangunjaya argues that this independent grassroots initiative, which combines Islamic principles of environmental protection with traditional methods of conservation, is more effective than the top-down approach, through enactment of laws initiated by the goverment.

Another important example of Muslim ecological practices is shown in Eleanor Finnegan’s work on three Sufi Muslim farms in the United States (Finnegan 2011a, Finnegan 2011b). Though not all are functional farms, all three cultivate gardens, plants for healing, herbs for cooking, and vegetables and fruit for the community. Farming has helped them to create and maintain religious identities, foster community, and nurture spirituality (Finnegan 2011a, 71-73). Here, theological affirmations—e.g. that non-human creatures are muslim , or the understanding of tawhid as creation’s interconnectedness—are lived in daily experiences (Finnegan 2011b, 260ff).

Finnegan contrasts the scholars who turn to textual tradition to reconstruct ethics and the people for whom everyday life experiences on the farm shape values or practices (Finnegan 2011b, 243). In a sense, however, the Javanese and American examples show that this is not only about different ways of reconstructing theology and ethics, but also about how ecological practices help believers to understand religion and be better religious (Muslim) persons. In these examples farming has become a way not (only) to implement what they understand about Islamic theology and ethics related to nature, but also a way to understand Islam itself. The concepts invoked (such as tawhid , khalifa , nature being muslim) are identical with what scholars derive from the Qur’an, but here they have become lived experiences. One important difference is that while scholars seeking universal ethical concepts derive their views from Islamic textual sources, the knowledge gained from lived experiences of the communities is particular to these individuals and communities.

This last characteristic may be regarded as problematic if what is “Islamic” cannot be local and has to be universal—an issue to be taken up below. By way of introduction, it has to be admitted that the question of what or which interpretations may be considered “Islamic” is contentious and has important implications for the development of Islam and ecology discourse. This is especially true when, as in the Ammatoan case, practices are taken into account. However, drawing from her own study of the practices of American sufi Muslim farmers, Eleanor Finnegan (2011a, 2011b) shows that much is lost when the field of Islam (and for that matter, religions in general) and ecology does not pay sufficient attention to practices.

Concluding methodological notes: what is “Islamic?”

The theological and ethical discourse of Islam and ecology has produced normative arguments deduced from the canonical sources of Islam. In order to go further, it needs to be supplemented by broader considerations (e.g. on food ethics), and should pay greater attention to practices. The issues discussed in this essay—indigenous Ammatoan rituals, the ethics and politics of food, and the ecological practices of individuals and religious communities—raise questions about how texts and practices function in the formation of “Islamic views of nature” and “Islamic environmental ethics.” They suggest that ecological practices not only implement the normative theories, but also as play roles in the formation of “Islamic” normativity.

One way to explain this difference is by drawing a distinction between what the texts say and what Muslims do. For Richard Foltz, this distinction marks the difference between Islamic and Muslim views of ecology or between Islamic and Muslim environmentalisms. Foltz argues that “the actual practices and attitudes of Muslims have always been shaped by Islamic sources in combination with extra-Islamic cultural ones” (Foltz 2006, 8) In another place, his statement is bolder: “For an idea to achieve anything approaching universal acceptance by Muslims as ‘Islamic’, it must be convincingly demonstrated that it derives from the Qur’an or … the example of the prophet Muhammad”. (Foltz 2003, 253) Moreover, “local or regional attitudes cannot form a basis for any kind of universal Islamic ethics.” But this clear-cut distinction between Islamic environmentalism and Muslim environmentalism may be misleading because it gives the false impression that there are culturally-neutral “pure” Islamic interpretations, or that there are universally accepted Islamic doctrines. As a matter of hermeneutic principle, it is impossible to claim that any interpretation of the Qur’an or hadith is derived purely from the canonical sources without any cultural influence. Besides, it is difficult, if not impossible, to point to any idea “approaching universal acceptance by Muslims as ‘Islamic’” except on very basic or trivial issues. [2]

Of course, not all cultural practices done by Muslims should be regarded as “Islamic.”, just as they do not have to be rejected as “un-Islamic”. Similarly, not all views supposedly derived from the Qur’an are good or even “Islamic”. Determining what is “Islamic” or “un-Islamic” involves more than justifications by reference to Qur’an and hadith or cultural practices. Further, as Kecia Ali argues, the defensive concern with religious authenticity and the primacy given to “Islamic” identity may constitute an obstacle for a productive ethical work. In the context of the discourse on Islam and ecology, a central criterion by which any Islamic view is to be evaluated may be the premise of the requirement of an ecologically sound way of life; such a criterion, as discussed above, may be and has been interpreted as one of the principles of maqasid al-shari’a .

The major argument here is that one of the important keys to furthering Islam and ecology discourse is to pay more attention to the empirical study of living traditions and practices. Such studies have long existed but are not yet widely accepted because of narrow normative criteria about what makes an idea or a practice “Islamic.” What needs to be explored is not (only) the consistency and coherence of an idea with canonical sources but how Muslim communities develop, justify and defend eco-friendly practices, and form their ideas about Islam and ecology through their practices.

Realizing that the field of Islam and ecology is not only an academic discourse but also carries practical aims of responding to environmental problems, another benefit in acknowledging local views and practices, like those of the Ammatoans and Bengalis, or the Javenese and American Sufi Muslim farmers, is in providing recognition and support for the continuation of such eco-friendly practices. This recognition may also open ways for local communities to learn from others. Of course, this possibility is necessarily limited. Ammatoan or Bengali Muslim practices cannot simply be exported to Saudi Arabia, for example; the Ammatoan way of life may not even be replicable in other areas of Indonesia. But the local is significant precisely because it is usually very deeply and uniquely rooted in its own land. It may resist universalizing, but it continues to promise operative and sustainable practices as well as to generate fresh ideas.

Acknowledgment: The authors wish to thank CRCS Resource Center team, Whitney Bauman and Siti Sarah Muwahidah for their help in providing resources for this chapter. They also thank Gregory Vanderbilt and the editors of this book who helped to make this chapter more readable.

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[1] Interview with Najiyah Martiam (May 15, 2015)

[2] Another note on this point is the fact that even a “universal acceptance” may not mean much. A case in point is the declarations made in Jordan by more than a hundred mainstream Muslim scholars from all around the world known as The Amman Message (2004) and The Common Word (2007). These two declarations were hailed as an unprecedented ijma’ (consensus) in terms of the number and diversity of scholars who approved them, and as such The Amman Message even claims that the document is legally binding upon all Muslims. (89) Yet they do not seem to have the effects intended: differences remain and there are criticisms of the documents by Muslims.

Header photo: Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, Turkey, ©John Grim

Why Is Islam the World’s Fastest-Growing Religion?

I n recent years, Islam has emerged as the fastest-growing religion globally. Projections done by the Pew Research Center suggest it will surpass Christianity as the world’s largest religion by the latter half of this century. By 2060, Muslims are projected to constitute 31% of the world’s population, nearing the Christian population’s share at 32%. This underscores the significant demographic shift towards Islam in the coming decades.

Why Is Islam the Fastest Growing Religion?

According to a 2017 report by the Pew Research Center, this phenomenon is rooted in a multitude of factors spanning demographics and historical context. Socio-political dynamics and modern-day influences also play a great role. Understanding these elements sheds light on the remarkable growth trajectory of Islam. Continue reading to learn about these factors in more detail.

Historical Expansion

BestDiplomats.org suggests that historical growth plays a major role. The historical spread of Islam, dating back to the 7th century, played a pivotal role in establishing its presence across vast territories. From the Arabian Peninsula to regions as far-reaching as Spain and the Indian subcontinent, Islam’s expansion was driven by a combination of peaceful propagation and military conquests. This historical legacy continues to shape Islam’s global influence and growth course.

Demographic Trends

According to the Pew Research Center, Muslims are projected to experience remarkable growth, with their population expected to increase by 70% between 2015 and 2060. This tops the overall global population growth rate, highlighting the rapid expansion of Islam.

Islam’s exponential growth is strongly linked with high birth rates among Muslim populations globally. Muslim women, on average, have 2.9 children. This is significantly higher than the global average of 2.4 children per woman, the Pew Research Center reports. This contributes significantly to the overall increase in the Muslim population. Moreover, Muslims have the youngest median age of all major religious groups, with a median age of 24 in 2015. The youthful demographic profile of Muslim communities further drives population growth, securing a continuous cycle of expansion.

Geopolitical Dynamics

The political landscape within countries with Muslim-majority populations significantly influences Islam’s portrayal and growth trajectory. Political stability fosters a helping environment for religious expression and growth, while geopolitical events shape global perceptions of Islam. Moreover, international relations and diplomatic ties impact the geopolitical expansion of Islam, spreading its influence beyond geographical boundaries.

Community Support and Social Media

According to BestDiplomats.org, community cohesion and social support networks within Muslim communities serve as catalysts for growth. Accordingly, mosques, educational programs, and charitable initiatives foster a sense of belonging and identity among Muslims. They contribute to the preservation and propagation of Islamic values. Additionally, social media platforms amplify the narrative surrounding Islam, easing global connectivity and dispelling misconceptions.

Religious Flexibility and Conversion Rates

Islam’s adaptability to diverse cultural contexts and its emphasis on core principles attract individuals seeking spiritual fulfillment. Conversion rates underscore Islam’s dynamic appeal. Factors such as community support, personal connections, and high-profile conversions are influencing individuals’ decisions to embrace the faith. Furthermore, Islam’s openness to interpretation and religious flexibility include varying degrees of religious agreements, nurturing inclusivity and growth.

Misconceptions and Islamophobia

In combating Islamophobia and misconceptions surrounding the faith, proactive measures are vital. Educational initiatives, interfaith dialogues, and social media platforms play a crucial role in debunking myths. Furthermore, they promote a nuanced understanding of Islam. By promoting open dialogue and promoting accurate portrayals, efforts to address misconceptions contribute to a more tolerant and informed global community.

The unmatched growth of Islam as the world’s fastest-growing religion reflects a number of demographic trends, historical legacies, socio-political dynamics, and modern influences. As Islam’s global print expands, understanding the multifaceted factors driving its growth remains crucial in appreciating its value on the world stage.

What do you think of these developments? Tell us in the comments.

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Muhammad was a prophet and founder of Islam.

Who Was Muhammad?

Muhammad was the prophet and founder of Islam. Most of his early life was spent as a merchant. At age 40, he began to have revelations from Allah that became the basis for the Koran and the foundation of Islam. By 630 he had unified most of Arabia under a single religion. As of 2015, there are over 1.8 billion Muslims in the world who profess, “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet.”

The Life of Muhammad

Muhammad was born around 570, AD in Mecca (now in Saudi Arabia). His father died before he was born and he was raised first by his grandfather and then his uncle. He belonged to a poor but respectable family of the Quraysh tribe. The family was active in Meccan politics and trade.

Many of the tribes living in the Arabian Peninsula at the time were nomadic, trading goods as they crisscrossed the desert. Most tribes were polytheistic, worshipping their own set of gods. The town of Mecca was an important trading and religious center, home to many temples and worship sites where the devoted prayed to the idols of these gods. The most famous site was the Kaaba (meaning cube in Arabic). It is believed to have been built by Abraham (Ibrahim to Muslims) and his son Ismail. Gradually the people of Mecca turned to polytheism and idolatry. Of all the gods worshipped, it is believed that Allah was considered the greatest and the only one without an idol.

In his early teens, Muhammad worked in a camel caravan, following in the footsteps of many people his age, born of meager wealth. Working for his uncle, he gained experience in commercial trade traveling to Syria and eventually from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean. In time, Muhammad earned a reputation as honest and sincere, acquiring the nickname “al-Amin” meaning faithful or trustworthy.

In his early 20s, Muhammad began working for a wealthy merchant woman named Khadijah, 15 years his senior. She soon became attracted to this young, accomplished man and proposed marriage. He accepted and over the years the happy union brought several children. Not all lived to adulthood, but one, Fatima, would marry Muhammad’s cousin, Ali ibn Abi Talib, whom Shi’ite Muslims regard as Muhammad’s successor.

The Prophet Muhammad

Muhammad was also very religious, occasionally taking journeys of devotion to sacred sites near Mecca. On one of his pilgrimages in 610, he was meditating in a cave on Mount Jabal aI-Nour. The Angel Gabriel appeared and relayed the word of God: “Recite in the name of your Lord who creates, creates man from a clot! Recite for your lord is most generous….” These words became the opening verses of sūrah (chapter) 96 of the Qur'an. Most Islamic historians believe Muhammad was initially disturbed by the revelations and that he didn’t reveal them publicly for several years. However, Shi’a tradition states he welcomed the message from the Angel Gabriel and was deeply inspired to share his experience with other potential believers.

Islamic tradition holds that the first persons to believe were his wife, Khadija and his close friend Abu Bakr (regarded as the successor to Muhammad by Sunni Muslims). Soon, Muhammad began to gather a small following, initially encountering no opposition. Most people in Mecca either ignored him or mocked him as just another prophet. However, when his message condemned idol worship and polytheism, many of Mecca’s tribal leaders began to see Muhammad and his message as a threat. Besides going against long standing beliefs, the condemnation of idol worship had economic consequences for merchants who catered to the thousands of pilgrims who came to Mecca every year. This was especially true for members of Muhammad’s own tribe, the Quraysh, who were the guardians of the Kaaba. Sensing a threat, Mecca’s merchants and leaders offered Muhammad incentives to abandon his preaching, but he refused.

Increasingly, the resistance to Muhammed and his followers grew and they were eventually forced to emigrate from Mecca to Medina, a city 260 miles to the north in 622. This event marks the beginning of the Muslim calendar. There Muhammad was instrumental in bringing an end to a civil war raging amongst several of the city’s tribes. Muhammad settled in Medina, building his Muslim community and gradually gathering acceptance and more followers.

Between 624 and 628, the Muslims were involved in a series of battles for their survival. In the final major confrontation, The Battle of the Trench and Siege of Medina, Muhammad and his followers prevailed and a treaty was signed. The treaty was broken by the Meccan allies a year later. By now, Muhammad had plenty of forces and the balance of power had shifted away from the Meccan leaders to him. In 630, the Muslim army marched into Mecca, taking the city with minimum casualties. Muhammad gave amnesty to many of the Meccan leaders who had opposed him and pardoned many others. Most of the Meccan population converted to Islam. Muhammad and his followers then proceeded to destroy all of the statues of pagan gods in and around the Kaaba.

The Death of Muhammad

After the conflict with Mecca was finally settled, Muhammad took his first true Islamic pilgrimage to that city and in March, 632, he delivered his last sermon at Mount Arafat. Upon his return to Medina to his wife’s home, he fell ill for several days. He died on June 8, 632, at the age of 62, and was buried at al-Masjid an-Nabawi (the Mosque of the Prophet) one of the first mosques built by Muhammad in Medina.

QUICK FACTS

• Birth Year: 570
• Birth City: Mecca
• Birth Country: Saudi Arabia
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Muhammad is the prophet and founder of Islam.
• Nacionalities
• Saudi Arabian (Saudi Arabia)
• Cultural Associations
• Arabic/Middle Eastern
• Death Year: 632
• Death date: June 8, 632
• Death City: Medina
• Death Country: Saudi Arabia

We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Muhammad Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/religious-figures/muhammad
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: April 6, 2020
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014

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