Understanding Islam

Islam is the fastest-growing faith community in the world. Some scholars speculate that by 2050 Islam will surpass Christianity as the largest faith community in the world.

Paul McKenna
April 1991

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Origins

The Prophet Muhammad (570-632 A.D.) was a minor clansman of the ruling tribe in his home city of Mecca in western Saudi Arabia. A merchant-trader by profession, he travelled throughout the Middle East and was thus exposed to Jew­ish and Christian communities. In the process, he became fascinated with the heritage and theology of both religions.

While still a young man, Muham­mad came to believe that there was only one god and he start­ed to practise private meditation. In 610 A.D., at the age of forty, during one of his many pri­vate retreats, he heard a voice which he later discerned to be that of the Angel Gabriel. The voice told Muhammad that he was ordained to be the prophet and messenger of God. Further revelations followed over the next twenty-three years. Recorded and compiled by the prophet's followers, these revelations became the Qur’an, Islam's sacred book.

The central revelation to the Prophet Muhammad was that “There is no god but Allah.” The Prophet Muhammad did not claim that this was a new revelation. Quite to the contrary, it was the same message which Allah had revealed to Adam and which Allah had repeated through subsequent prophets and messengers. Chief among these prophets and messengers were Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. The truth which God had revealed to the Jewish people through Moses and Jesus, the Prophet Muhammad now offered to the Arab people in their own language. The Prophet Muhammad claimed that Allah was none other than the God of Jews and Christians.

Muhammad began to enthusias­tically preach the revelations of Allah first in Mecca and then in other parts of Saudi Arabia. At first he encountered much opposition, some of it violent. Not only did his monotheism (the worship of only one god) call into question the prevalent polytheism (the worship of many gods) of seventh century Arabia, but his mes­sage also contained a profound challenge to the lifestyles of the rich and their oppression of the poor.

Eventually he emerged as a pow­erful political leader, a social reformer, and a spiritual guide. By the time of his death, virtually all of Arabia was Muslim.

Unlike Christianity which was the persecuted religion of a minority for the first three hundred years of its history, Islam quickly became powerful. One hundred years after the prophet's death, the Islamic empire stretched from Spain to Iran, an empire greater than Rome at its zenith. The new religion was spread by way of com­merce, human contact, conquest and the works of Islamic scholars and mystics.

The People of the Book

Muslims refer to themselves, to Jews, and to Christians as “the People of the Book.” But they believe that the Hebrew scriptures and the Christian scriptures contain errors. To correct these errors, Muslims believe, God has revealed the Qur’an through the Prophet Muhammad. Muslims believe that God dictated each word of the Qur’an – directly and infallibly – to the Prophet. Contained in its one hundred and fourteen chapters is God's full, final and definitive revelation.

The basic statements of the Qur’an can be summa­rized as follows:

  1. Allah has created the world;
  2. a person is absolutely subject to the will of Allah in all matters;
  3. a person must carry out the tasks which Allah assigns to her/him;
  4. after this life, Allah will reward or punish each person in the measure in which he/she has lived according to the will of Allah.

This sacred book enjoys a posi­tion of unrivalled esteem in the Muslim community. To understand and appreciate the sacredness of the Qur’an in the larger context of Islam­ic life, let us employ an analogy: the Qur’an is to Muslims what Jesus is to Christians, what the Torah is to Jews, what the natural environment is to Native Peoples.

The Five Pillars of Islam

The life of the faithful Muslim is based on the “Five Pillars of Islam”:

  1. The Shahada (Profession of Faith) : Several times a day Muslims repeat “there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger.”
  2. Salat (Prayer): Muslims pray five times a day – at sunrise, at noon, in the afternoon, at sunset, and after dark. Muslims pray facing Mecca. They may pray anywhere, but on Fridays they are encouraged to join other Muslims in prayer at the mosque.
  3. Sawm (Fasting): During the month of Ramadan, Muslims abstain from food and drink between sunrise and sunset. Fasting is meant to develop self-discipline and compassion for those who do not have enough to eat or to drink.
  4. Zakat (Almsgiving): Muslims donate 2.5% of their earnings to charity. Almsgiving is meant to restore the economic balance in society.
  5. Hajj (Pilgrimage): Health and wealth permitting, each Muslim makes a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in his or her lifetime. The focus of this pilgrimage is the Ka’ba, a large cube-shaped structure, the original of which Abraham is believed to have built.

In addition to observing the “Five Pillars of Islam,” the faithful Muslim practises jihad (struggle). The “big jihad” is the struggle against the evil within oneself. The “little jihad” is the struggle to establish God’s will on earth and, if necessary, to defend the Islamic community against aggression.

"God is One"

The heart of Islam is its declaration of the oneness of God. The power and grace of God encompass the whole of creation. Every page of the Qur’an exclaims with passionate intensity: "Your God is One God; there is no God but the Living, the Eternal." And this One God is the creator. He is immaterial, all-powerful, all-per­vading, all-just, compassionate, merciful and benevolent.

Muslims claim that Christians have compromised monotheism by worshiping Jesus as God. They cannot accept the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation because they do not believe that God can assume a human form. Furthermore, the Christian doc­trine of the Trinity is simply not reconcilable with the Islamic emphasis on the oneness of God.

Jesus is known in the Qur’an as Isa. The Qur’an refers to Jesus as a prophet and a messenger of God. He was sent by God to proclaim to the Jewish people that there is no god but Allah. The Qur’an refers to Jesus as a “word” of God, but denies that Jesus is divine. The Qur’an claims that Jesus is only a “servant” of God.

Muslims honour Mary as the mother of Jesus but not as the Mother of God. She is mentioned no less than thirty-four times in the Koran. Muslims believe that Mary conceived Jesus by God’s spirit.

Muslims do not believe that the Prophet Muhammad was divine nor do they worship him. He is perceived rather as a messenger of God – albeit as the final messenger of God – as the founder and legislator of Islam, and as the per­fect moral model for all who adhere to the Islamic faith.

Muslims believe in free will, in the resurrection of the dead, in the final judgement, and in heav­en and hell. The followers of Islam are forbidden to eat pork, drink alcohol, gamble or charge interest on money.

Unlike Christians, Mus­lims do not believe in original sin. There is no priesthood in Islam and, strictly speaking, any Muslim in good standing can lead others in prayer. Each Muslim has direct and personal access to God.

Shi'ites and Sunnites

Most Muslims are either Sunni or Shi'ite. Sunnites give supremacy to the divinely-revealed Shari'a (Islamic Law) which is based on the Qur’an and the sayings of the Prophet. Shi'ites, on the other hand, give supremacy to the divinely-inspired leader who interprets the Shari'a. For Shi'ites, the Light of the Prophet Muhammad is passed on to his descendants, and only a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad can be the leader of the Islamic community. For the Sunnites, on the other hand, the leader of the Islamic community is the one whom the community recognizes as its leader and who unifies the community.

Ninety per cent of Muslims are Sunni. But most Muslims in Yemen and in Iran are Shi'ite. The Shi'ite legal scholars are known as mullahs. The chief interpreter of the Shari'a for Shi'ites in Iran is the Ayatollah.

Islamic Revivalism and Islamicization

Over the past thirty years, Islamic revival­ism and Muslim fundamentalism have touched most Muslim commu­nities around the globe. This phe­nomenon is partly attributable to the political independence which many Arab and Muslim countries achieved after World War II. But to get a more profound grasp of this significant development within the Islamic world, one must examine Islam with a view to some of its unique qualities as a religion.

Islam plays a very determining role in the lives of its followers. There is a definiteness and a certainty to this religion. The Qur’an, for example, in addition to being a manual of spiri­tual discipline, also contains an immense body of moral, social and legal ordinances. An entire way of life is spelled out for the believer. Yet Islam is not a religion geared primarily to the individual or to individual salvation. It is, in fact, one of the most communal of the world's major faiths. Communal solidarity is its very cornerstone. The individual is anchored in the community of believers.

The Muslim faith calls its adher­ents to establish a social order which does not separate the sacred from the the secular, religion from society, or faith from politics. This order is established and governed by Islamic law which expresses the will of Allah.

Four themes characterize Islamic revivalism:

  1. a rejec­tion of Western moral and social values;
  2. a search for identity and authenticity and a desire to root society in Muslim rather than in Western values;
  3. economic and political discontent within Muslim countries;
  4. the reassertion of Islam as an ideology which will bring about political, cultural and reli­gious liberation as well as social justice.

Islamic revivalists maintain that modern Muslim soci­eties have failed because they have strayed from Islam. To remedy this situation, many Muslims worldwide are committing themselves to Islamicization – a process of renewal and reform that is meant to create a more moral and just society wherever Muslims find themselves. Islamicization is the reassertion of Islam in personal and social life.

Muslim revivalists claim that Islamicization will restore human dignity and a sense of identity. They argue from the life of the Prophet, from the experience of the early Muslim community, and from the Qur’an itself, that today’s Islamic community should be a religio­political entity ruled by God's will as expressed in Islamic law. In this vision of things, the chief function of government is to enable the individual to live a good Mus­lim life in the context of community. The Gulf War in 1991 and the current war in Iraq have reinforced the trend toward Islamicization and Islamic revivalism. Muslims in various parts of the world are inclined to be sympathetic to Iraq and opposed to the Western powers.

Muslim-Christian Relations

Due to immigration, there is a growing Muslim population in the West. At the time of the latest census (2001) there were over half a million Muslims in Canada. In the countries of Western Europe, the number of Muslims is also growing. Some observers see the growing size of the Muslim communities as a threat to Western values or to Christianity. They point to the lack of religious liberty for Christians and other non-Muslims in some Islamic countries.

Dialogue between Christians and Muslims is still in the initial phase but is growing on an international scale. Both parties are making an effort to understand each other's positions and to overcome the nega­tive stereotypes that they have about one other.

The Roman Catholic Church has committed itself to dialogue with Islam. In its Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, the Second Vatican Council spoke of the affinities between Christianity and Islam and called for a new era in Christian-Muslim relations:

“Upon the Moslems, too, the Church looks with esteem. They adore one God, living and enduring, merciful and all-powerful, Maker of heaven and earth and Speaker to men. They strive to submit wholeheartedly even to His inscrutable decrees, just as did Abraham, with whom the Islamic faith is pleased to associate itself. Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet. They also honor Mary, His virgin mother; at times they call on her, too, with devotion. In addition they await the day of judgment when God will give each man his due after raising him up. Consequently, they prize the moral life, and give worship to God especially through prayer, almsgiving, and fasting.

Although in the course of the centuries many quarrels and hostilities have arisen between Christians and Moslems, this most sacred Synod urges all to forget the past and to strive sincerely for mutual understanding. On behalf of all mankind, let them make common cause of safeguarding and fostering social justice, moral values, peace, and freedom.”

Additional Information

For more information about Muslim-Christian Dialogue, click on the following links to the Scarboro Missions magazine articles:

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