9781422281109

I SLAM C ORE B ELIEFS AND P RACTICES

Nasreen Mahdi

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on file at the Library of Congress ISBN: 978-1-4222-3672-7 (hc) ISBN: 978-1-4222-8110-9 (ebook)

Understanding Islam series ISBN: 978-1-4222-3670-3

Table of Contents

I NTRODUCTION ............................................................5 D R . Camille Pecastaing, Ph.D. 1. I SLAM ’ S R OLE IN THE W ORLD ....................................9 2. A LLAH ’ S F INAL P ROPHET ........................................13 3. C ENTRAL B ELIEFS ..................................................23 4. I SLAM D IVIDED : THE M AJOR AND M INOR S ECTS ......37 5. L AW AND P RACTICE ................................................59 6. I SLAMIC C ELEBRATIONS ..........................................69 7. I SSUES IN C ONTEMPORARY I SLAM ............................81 C HRONOLOGY ............................................................98 S ERIES G LOSSARY ....................................................102 F URTHER R EADING ..................................................104 I NTERNET R ESOURCES ..............................................105 I NDEX ......................................................................106 C ONTRIBUTORS ........................................................112

Islam: Core Beliefs and Practices Ideas & Daily Life in the MuslimWorld Today Islamism & Fundamentalism in the Modern World The Monotheistic Faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam Muslim Heroes and Holy Places Muslims in America An Overview: Who are the Muslims? The Struggle for Identity: Islam and the West

Introduction by Camille Pecastaing, Ph.D.

I slam needs no introduction. Everyone around the world old enough is likely to have a formed opinion of Islam and Muslims. The cause of this wide recognition is, sadly, the recur- rent eruptions of violence that have marred the recent—and not so recent—history of the Muslim world. A violence that has also selectively followed Muslim immigrants to foreign lands, and placed Islam at the front and center of global issues. Notoriety is why Islam needs no simple introduction, but far more than that. Islam needs a correction, an exposition, a full dis- cussion of its origins, its principles, its history, and of course of what it means to the 1.5 to 2 billion contemporaries associated with it, whether by origins, tradition, practice or belief. The challenge is that Islam has a long history, spread over fourteen centuries. Its principles have been contested from the beginning, the religion has known schism after schism, and politi- co-theological issues instructed all sorts of violent conflict. The history of Islam is epic, leaving Islam today as a mosaic of diverse sects and practices: Sunnism, Shi’ism, Sufism, Salafism, Wahhabism, and of course, Jihadism. The familiarity of those terms often masks ignorance of the distinctions between them.

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I SLAM : C ORE B ELIEFS AND P RACTICES

Islam is many things to many people, and while violent radi- cals occupy the headlines, what a Muslim is in the 21st century is practically indefinable. Islam is present on every continent; the religion of billionaires and of the poorest people in the world, the religion of kings and revolutionaries, of illiterate pastoralists and nuclear scientists, of fundamentalist theologians and avant-garde artists. Arabic is the language of Islam, the language of the Qur’an, but most Muslims only speak other tongues. Many Muslims indulge in moderate consumption of alcohol without feeling that they have renounced their faith. Boiled down to its simplest expression, being Muslim in the 21st century is an appre- ciation for one’s origins and a reluctance to eating pork. It is not only non-Muslims who have a partial view of Islam. Muslims, too, have a point of view limited by their own experi- ence. This tunnel vision is often blamed for the radicalization that takes place at the margins of Islam. It is because they do not fully apprehend the diversity and complexity of their faith that some follow the extremist views of preachers of doom and violence. Among those, many are converts, or secularized Muslims who knew and cared little about religion until they embraced radical- ism. Conversely, the foundation of deradicalization programs is education: teaching former militants about the complexity of the Islamic tradition, in particular the respect for the law and toler- ance of diversity that Prophet Muhammad showed when he was the ruler of Medinah. Islam in the 21st century is a political religion. There are four Islamic republics, and other states that have made Islam their offi- cial religion, bringing Islamic law (Shari’a) in varying degrees into their legal systems. Wherever multiparty elections are held, from Morocco to Indonesia, there are parties representing political Islam. Some blame Islam’s political claims for the relative decline of the Muslim world. Once a center of wealth and power and knowledge, it now lags behind its European and East Asian neigh- bors, still struggling to transition from a rural, agrarian way of life to the urban, now post-industrial age. But for others, only Islam

I NTRODUCTION

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will deliver a successful and indigenous modernization. Islam is also an economic actor. Shari’a instructs the practices of what is known as Islamic finance, a sector of the international financial system that oversees two trillion dollars worth of assets. For decades now, Islamist organizations have palliated the defi- ciencies of regional states in the provision of social services, from education to healthcare, counseling, emergency relief, and assis- tance to find employment. It is the reach of Islamist grassroots net- works that has insured the recent electoral success of Islamic par- ties. Where the Arab Spring brought liberalization and democrati- zation, Islam was given more space in society, not less. It should be clear to all by now that modernity, and post- modernity, is not absolute convergence toward a single model— call it the Western, secular, democratic model. Islam is not a lega- cy from a backward past that refuses to die, it is also a claim to shape the future in a new way. Post-communist China is making a similar claim, and there may be others to come, although today none is as forcefully and sometimes as brutally articulated as Islam’s. That only would justify the urgency to learn about Islam, deconstruct simplistic stereotypes and educate oneself to the diver- sity of the world.

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F ew images in world religion evoke as profound a sense of rev- erence as the sight of a Muslim who, upon hearing the call to prayer, stops whatever he or she is doing, rolls a prayer carpet on the floor or ground, and recites prayers to Allah (Allah is the Arabic word for God). This scene, which is repeated five times a day, is echoed in businesses, homes, schools, and in the calm of communi- ty mosques, where believers kneel side by side as they lower their foreheads to the floor and pray. But other images of Islam also abound. In the tangle of contem- porary international relations, non-Muslims with little exposure to Islam remain confused about who Muslims really are. What are their beliefs, and what values do they share in common with Jews and Christians? How do Muslims practice their faith in their everyday lives? Who are their leaders and what is the shape of their religious institutions? What beliefs and practices set the average Muslim apart from the militant extremists spoken of so often in the news? Islam’s Role in the World

Opposite: An Asian Muslim kneels to pray. Islam is one of the world’s three major monotheistic faiths, and followers of the religion, known as Muslims, can be found in every country.

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I SLAM : C ORE B ELIEFS AND P RACTICES

Muslims around the Globe These questions become all the more important as the number of Muslims continues to increase rapidly. Islam is the fastest-growing reli- gion in the world. Most estimates now put the worldwide Muslim pop- ulation at nearly 2 billion people, which means that almost 24 percent of all humans are Muslims. Islam has surpassed the older religions Hinduism and Buddhism to become the second-largest religion in the world; only Christianity, with about 33 percent of the global popula- tion, has more followers. The founder of Islam, the Prophet Muhammad (d. 632 C . E .), first reported his revelations from Allah in the early seventh century. Within just a few decades, Muhammad’s religious movement had attracted converts and consolidated power throughout his homeland, the Arabian Peninsula, which is located between Africa and Asia. Today, that heritage remains strong in the Arab countries of the Middle East, where 90 to 95 percent of citizens claim Islam as their faith. But Islam never knew borders and Muslims believed Allah had commanded them to spread their faith. Within a century of Muhammad’s death, Islam had spread into Europe, Africa, and Asia. Today most Muslims are not Arabs, and Islam is the dominant religion in many countries outside the Arabian Peninsula. The four countries with the highest numbers of Muslims among their citizens—Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India—are located in Asia, not the Middle East. In many countries of Africa and southern Asia, more than 50 per- cent of the population follows Islam. And millions of Muslims live in Western Europe and the United States, thanks to emigration from Muslim countries and increasing conversions among European and American citizens. In the United States, for example, the rate of con- version among African Americans has exploded since the 1960s. Islam among Other Religions The word Islam comes from the Arabic verb aslama , which means “submitted.” The word Muslim is also Arabic and refers to a person

I SLAM ’ S R OLE IN THE W ORLD

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who submits to the will of Allah. Devout Muslims everywhere submit themselves to Allah daily, both through their faith and by following Islamic law and the commandments in their holy text, the Qur’an, which was revealed by Allah to the Prophet Muhammad. Muslims believe that Allah’s will must be obeyed in every sphere of life, and that they will be eternally rewarded if they follow His commands. This ded- ication to Allah’s will is visible in daily acts—prayer, cleanliness in word and deed, commitment to family. Islam is the youngest of the major world religions, and its origins highlight the meshing of religions and cultures in that part of the world during the seventh century. Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad was sent as a messenger to humanity in order to affirm and develop Allah’s divine message, which had been partially revealed by earlier prophets. Muslims see Muhammad as the last prophet in a line that includes Abraham, a Biblical figure also revered by Jews and Christians, and such other patriarchs and prophets as Noah, Isaac, Ishmael, Moses, and Jesus. Islam, Judaism, and Christianity stand apart from other major religions because of their monotheism, or belief in a single god. As cultural and political tensions between Muslims and non- Muslims continue in the 21st century, the shared origins of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism lend a growing sense of urgency to Westerners’ task of learning more about Islam.

Text-Dependent Questions 1. How many times do Muslims pray each day? 2. What values do Muslims share with Christians and Jews?

Research Project The CIA World Factbook website (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook) has population and religious adherence figures for all nations. Print out a large map of the world, and note the number of Muslims living in each country. What countries have the largest number of Muslims? Why? Do research in your school library or the Internet to support your conclusions.

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Allah’s Final Prophet

A s he approached his fortieth birthday, in the year 610, a man named Muhammad ibn Abd Allah left his home in the oasis city of Makka (Mecca), on the Arabian Peninsula, and made his way north to Mount Hira. Every year, Muhammad spent time alone in a cave on Mount Hira, where he prayed and fasted. This year, however, Muhammad was troubled by the state of affairs on the Arabian Peninsula. Around him he saw growing spiritual confusion and an increasingly materialistic culture that dismissed moral values. Muhammad had been born in Mecca around the year 570. He was orphaned by the age of six and worked as a shepherd under the protection of his uncle. As a young man, Muhammad worked on car- avans following the trade routes between Arabia and Syria. During this time, he probably met Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians . The prophets and scriptures of these religions offered their believers a sta- bility and coherence that the polytheistic Arab cultures did not pos- sess. At age 25 Muhammad married Khadija, a wealthy widow for

Opposite: This Turkish illustration, circa 1594, pictures Muhammad being visited by an archangel. Because Muhammad received Allah’s final message for humanity, he is revered by Muslims as the last and greatest prophet.

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14 I SLAM : C ORE B ELIEFS AND P RACTICES

whom he had worked as a business agent. As the years passed, Muhammad’s reputation as a trustworthy man grew—he became known as al-Amin, “the trusted one”—but so did his doubts about the direction he saw his society taking. At this time on the Arabian Peninsula, the central unit of social organization was the tribe, which included smaller groupings of related families known as clans. (Although many Arabs were pagans, there were also quite a few Christians, whose values sup- ported the preservation of tribe and family but who also had a concept of a life after death.) In general, the values of Arabian society supported the preservation of tribe and family. The Arabs believed that proper behavior involved following the ways of their ancestors and preserving the honor of the tribe. Belonging to a tribe also provided protection; though vendettas were common, the threat of inter-tribal bloodshed helped hold together a society without a single government or set of laws. In the polytheistic religion of the peninsula, various gods and goddesses were viewed as guardians of individual tribes and were the objects of sacrifice, and prayer at local shrines. The nomadic Arabs carried small figurines representing gods and goddesses on their journeys, and they believed other helpful spirits lived in nat- ural features like trees and springs. The Arabs asked their deities for guidance on all kinds of matters, from marriage arrangements

Words to Understand in This Chapter

pilgrimage— a journey (often long and difficult) to a shrine or other place of religious significance. polytheism— belief in more than one god. Ramadan— the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar, which is a period of meditation and self- sacrifice for Muslims. Zoroastrianism— religious system founded by Zoroaster and set forth in a holy text (the Aveta), which teaches the worship of a single god in the context of a universal struggle between good and evil. This was at one time the national religion of Persia.