Islam
What does it mean?
Who is
Muhammad?
How did he
become a prophet?
Who are Muslims?
What do they
believe?
How does onebelieve Muslim?
Why does Islam often seem strange?
Does Islam and
Christianity have
different origins?
|
Islam is not a new
religion. It is the truth that God(Allah) revealed
through all
His Prophets to every people. Islam is both a religion
and a way of life for
one fifth of the world's population. For Muslims it is a
religion of peace,
mercy, and forgiveness. Majority of them are neither
terrorists nor Arabs.
What does it mean?
The Arabic word
Islam simply means submission, and derives from a word
meaning peace.
In a religious context it means complete submission to
the will of God.
Mohammedanism is thus a misnomer because it suggests that
Muslims
worship Muhammad, rather than God. Allah is the Arabic
name of God,
which is used by all Arabs, Muslims and Christians alike.
Who is Muhammad?
Born in Makkah in
570 AD, Muhammad became an orphan at an early age.
He was raised by his uncle. He became known for his
truthfulness and
sincerity. He was often asked to arbitrate disputes. He
was described as
calm and meditative by the historians.
Muhammad was deeply religious from the start, and
detested the decadence
of his society. Often to mediate he sought peace and
quiet in a cave.
How did he become a
Prophet?
At the age of 40,
while engaged in a meditative retreat, Muhammad received
his first revelation from the Angel Gabriel. He was
directed by God to
preach the updated and final version of Islam, the
religion of all the Prophets
since Adam. He continued to receive these revelations for
twenty-three
years. These revelations are known as the Qur-an.
As soon as he began to recite the words he heard from
Gabriel, and to
preach the truth which God had revealed to him, he and
his small group of
followers suffered bitter persecution, which grew so
fierce that in the year
622, God commanded him to emigrate. This event, the
Hijra, (migration)
in which they left Makkah for the city of Madinah some
260 miles to the
north, marks the beginning of the Muslim calendar.
After several years of struggle, Muhammad and his
followers were able to
return to Makkah. In victory Muhammad forgave his former
enemies and
established the supremacy of Islam.
By the time Muhammad died at the age of 63, the greater
part of Arabia was
Muslim, and within next 100 years Islam had spread from
Spain in the west
to China in the east.
Who are the
Muslims?
Over one billion
people from a vast range of races, nationalities and
cultures
across the globe in every continent of the world are
united by the common
Islamic faith. The world's largest Muslim community is in
Indonesia and some
Arab countries. Considerable parts of Asia and most of
Africa's population is
Muslim,
while significant minorities are to be found in the
Soviet Union, China, North
and South America, and Europe.
What do they
believe?
Muslims believe in
One God, in God's Prophets through whom God's
revelations were brought to mankind, in God's Angles, in
the Day of
Judgment and individual accountability for actions, in
God's complete
authority on human destiny and in life after death. To
Muslims God (Allah) in
one, Unique, Incomparable. To them god is not He, or She
and God has no
beginning and no end. Muslims believe in a chain of
Prophets starting with
Adam and including Noah, Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob,
Joseph, Job,
Moses, Aaron, David, Solomon, Elias, Jonah, John the
Baptist, and Jesus,
peace be upon them. God's final message to man, a
reconfirmation of the
eternal message to man, a reconfirmation of the eternal
message and a
summing-up of all that has gone before was revealed to
the Prophet
Muhammad (pbuh) through Angel Gabriel.
How does one become
a Muslim?
By believing and
simply declaring there is no God, but Allah, and
Muhammad is the Messenger of God.
By this declaration the believer announces his or her
faith in all of God's
Messengers and the scriptures they brought.
Why does Islam
often seem strange?
Islam may seem
exotic or even extreme in the modern world. Perhaps this
is
because today religion does not dominate everyday life in
the West. Where
as for Muslims religion dominates all their actions. They
make no division
between secular and sacred. They believe that the Divine
Law, the Shariah,
should be followed. For them issues related to religion
are still more
important than any thing else in their lives.
Does Islam and
Christianity have different origins?
No, not at all.
Together with Judaism, they go back to the Prophet
Abraham,
and their three Prophets are directly descended from his
sons- Muhammad
from Ishmael, and Moses and Jesus from Isaac, peace be
upon them.
Abraham (pbuh) established the settlement which today is
the city of
Makkah, and built the Kaba towards which all Muslims turn
when they pray.
|