The Handy Islam Answer Book. John Renard
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are Muslims?
Muslims comprise some 1.6 billion people living across the globe, representing scores of ethnicities, nationalities, and major language families.
What’s the basic meaning of the terms “Islam” and “Muslim”?
“Islam” means “surrender to God” and “Muslim” refers to an individual who “does Islam”—note the shared letters S-L-M, signifying a root that connotes a “peace that comes from having all one’s priorities in order.”
Where did Islam originate?
In the west-central Arabian Peninsula region known as the Hijaz, in the city of Mecca.
When did Islam begin?
In the early seventh century, officially beginning Islam’s lunar calendar in 622.
Why is that year significant?
An event called the Hijra (“emigration”), during which the small Muslim community left Mecca for a northwestern Arabian city now known as Medina.
Who is Islam’s central/foundational figure?
Muhammad (c. 570–632), son of a member of the Hashimi clan of the Quraysh tribe. Said to have received a commission as Prophet in 610 with his first auditory revelation. Muhammad is a preeminent example of humanity, but purely human.
Arabic is a Semitic language spoken by about three hundred million people today. It is also the sacred language of the Quran and Islam. This sample of written script reads “Muhammad the Prophet of Allah.”
What is Islam’s principal source?
The Quran (“recitation”), c. 6200 Arabic verses, 114 “chapters,” delivered orally by Muhammad over some twenty-three years (610–632) in the cities of Mecca and Medina.
What’s the language of the Quran?
Arabic, the most important surviving Semitic language, is the language of revelation, Islam’s “sacred” tongue.
Are there any other sacred texts?
Yes, the Hadith (tradition, saying), now many volumes in many authoritative collections enshrining the words and deeds of Muhammad.
What are some central beliefs?
Faith in one transcendent deity (Allah), creator of all things, revealer of divine truth through “signs”—on the “horizons” (creation), in the prophetic scripture, and within the individual soul—and who has communicated via angelic heralds to an unbroken line of “warners” (prophets/messengers) beginning with Adam, including many “Old Testament” figures as well as John the Baptist and Jesus, and culminating in the definitive message through Muhammad. All will be held personally accountable for their choices in judgment, leading either to reward or punishment, and there will be a bodily resurrection. God’s mercy always outweighs the divine wrath/justice.
Are there any core ritual practices?
The so-called Five Pillars—Profession of faith (Shahada), five daily ritual prayers (salat), pilgrimage once in lifetime to Mecca (Hajj), almsgiving (zakat), and fasting (sawm, during lunar month of Ramadan). Central emphasis in all these and other religious and devotional deeds is the priority of intention: without “presence of the heart,” all such acts are spiritually empty.
What country has the largest Muslim population?
Indonesia, a nation of some three thousand islands in Southeast Asia, with a population of over two hundred million people, about 90 percent Muslim.
What countries have the largest Muslim population after Indonesia?
The next three largest Muslim populations are in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India— with a combined total of nearly five hundred million.
Aren’t most Muslims Arabs?
Approximately one in five Muslims are Arabs, the remaining 80 percent represented by dozens of ethnicities, nationalities, cultural backgrounds, as well as scores of different languages.
Are all Middle Eastern Muslims Arabs?
Though Arabs do comprise the ethnic majority of the “Middle East” and North Africa, Turks, Kurds, and Iranians of varied ethnic origins represent important non-Semitic peoples whose languages are unrelated to Arabic.
Do all Muslims believe and express their faith in exactly the same ways?
There is considerable unity concerning the core beliefs and ritual practices but also some variation due to internal diversity. This includes, for example, majority Sunni and minority Shi’i communities, as well as a broad spectrum of attitudes to what additional rules are “essential” and how strictly religious law must be enforced, and considerable variety in the interaction of religion and cultures across the globe.
How did Islam begin?
Five hundred years after the Roman destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem dramatically altered the history of Judaism, an equally momentous event occurred in the Arabian Peninsula. According to tradition, Muhammad was born around 570 C.E. in the trading town of Mecca. When he was about twenty-five, Muhammad married a businesswoman named Khadija, fifteen years his senior. Muhammad developed the habit of seeking prayerful solitude in the hills and caves surrounding Mecca. One day around the year 610, he began to undergo some troubling auditory and visual experiences. Encouraged by Khadija not to dismiss the experiences, Muhammad came to understand them as divine revelations that he was meant to communicate to his fellow Meccans. He was to be a messenger of God, a prophet charged with delivering a message that would set straight misinterpretations of earlier revelations given through the prophets God had sent to the Jews and Christians.
What and where is Arabia?
The Arabian Peninsula is an enormous land mass that makes up the south-central portion of western Asia, also known as the Middle East. It is now home to the nations of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, and United Arab Emirates, and several other small so-called Gulf States. Arabia is bordered on the west by the Red Sea, on the south by the Arabian Sea, and on the east by the Persian Gulf. Mostly desert, the peninsula is larger than Iran and Iraq combined, twice the size of Egypt, and about 10 percent larger than Alaska. Total population today is just over twenty million. Riyadh is the capital of Saudi Arabia, the peninsula’s largest nation state. Jeddah is the Red Sea port that serves the holy city of Mecca, Muhammad’s home town. Medina, the second holy city, is about two hundred miles north of Mecca.
The Arabian Peninsula, just east of Africa, is where the holy city of Mecca is located and where Islam originated.
What was pre-Islamic religion like and did Islam retain any of its features?
Pre-Islamic Arabian tribes believed that the universe was animated by innumerable spirits, each inhabiting its own distinctive elements and natural features. They called each of these minor deities an ilah, “god,” but tribespeople in many regions singled out one particular local power as the chief spiritual force. That power they called the god, al-ilah, or allah (ah-LAH). Mecca was one of several major cultic sites over which such a chief deity ruled.
There, a peculiar cubic-shaped structure called the Ka’ba stood for perhaps centuries at the center of pilgrimage traffic associated with a lively caravan trade. Pre-Islamic beliefs also acknowledged the existence of numerous troublesome beings called jinns, as well as downright diabolical spiritual forces. Muhammad’s ancestors emphasized the importance of following the moral code of tribal custom unquestioningly and did not believe in an afterlife. In his early preaching the Prophet focused on the need to behave morally and justly in light of the coming judgment. He taught that a divine