ISLAM

Islam, the youngest of man’s great universal religions, is also in many ways the simplest and most clear cut. It honors a single, omnipotent God, who chose to speak through the prophet Mohammed. The Arabic name for God is Allah. He is the same God as the God of Judaism and Christianity. Mohammed is considered the last and greatest prophet of God, although Islam honors all the prophets from Abraham to Christ. The message of Mohammed, as preserved in the Koran and other writings, represent the final and absolute expression of the will of God.

The Koran (Reading) is the one sacred scripture of Islam. It discusses man’s fate after death with its last judgment and its reward in Paradise or punishment in Hell. But, more important, the Koran gives direction for his behavior in this world. The true believer must honor his parents, help the poor, protect orphans, be honorable and just in his affairs, avoid strong drink, pork and gambling and be humble before Allah.

The word “Islam” means “submission” (to the will of God). An adherent of Islam is designated by the corresponding adjective “Muslim” (one who submits). “Moslem” is a Western adaptation of “Muslim”. Modern Muslims do not use the terms Mohammedan and Mohammedanism which seems to them to carry the implication of worship of Mohammed. Mohammed himself often repeated that he himself was only a man, a servant of God, who was now doing God’s will as others had done before him.

The Creed of Islam is simple: “There is no god but Allah; Mohammed is His messenger.” If one is to enlarge upon the Islamic creed mainly on the basis of the “words” of Allah found in the Koran, he finds that it consists of six items:

1. Belief in Allah for whom the witness must be given; Allah who rules from afar, encompasses all, is personally near to every believer, dwells within men’s hearts as His own inner witness to Himself.

2. Belief in Angels, especially Gabriel, the angle revelation through whom Mohammad heard God’s words.

3. Belief in the Koran as the word of God.

4. Belief in prophets, especially Mohammad. There are 28 in all, but six are worthiest, each with a special name: Adam, the “chosen of God”; Noah, the “preacher of God”; Abraham, the “friend of God”; Moses, the “converser with God”; Jesus, the “spirit of God”; and Mohammad, the “apostle of God”, worthiest of praise.

5. Belief in the Judgment, whose issues mean Heaven for the worthy and Hell for the unworthy.

6. Belief in the Omnipotence and finality of Allah.

Mohammed was an Arab who was born in Mecca in 470 A.D. (traditional date) and died in 632 A.D. in Medina. At the time of Mohammed, Mecca was a prosperous junction point on the ancient route between India and Syria and also Southern Arabia and Damascus. It gained its livelihood from commerce and from the pilgrimage of people to the Kaaba. This was a cube of masonry surrounded by idols, into a corner of which was built a black stone (meteorite).

Mohammed’s family business was supplying drinking water to the pilgrims. As a boy he had plenty of opportunity to observe the religious practices of both pilgrims and traders - Jews and Christians included. Mohammed early developed a distaste for the idol worship of the desert Arabs as well as with the conditions in which he lived. At the same time he acquired a growing respect for Jewish and Christian worship of one God.

Mohammed married and seemed to have a happy home life, but often he wandered into the hills to fast and meditate upon religious and social questions. On one such night, when he was about 40 years of age, the Archangel Gabriel appeared to him in a vision and communicated the beginning verses of the Koran to him. The revelations from Gabriel continued with its command that Mohammed preach God’s will to the people.

The reactions to Mohammed’s message were hostile. The reasons can be reduced to three: Its uncompromising monotheism threatened the livelihood of people who catered to the pilgrims who came to Mecca to worship before the Kaaba and many other idolatrous shrines; its moral teachings demanded an end to unrestrained behavior which citizens were not so willing to give up; and its social content was outrageous for a society which was full of class distinction and unjust economic order. Mohammed was preaching a message purely democratic, saying that in the sight of Allah all men were equal.

What began as attacks of ridicule toward Mohammed eventually became open persecution. He and his followers were beaten, imprisoned and subjected to other tortures. However he was undaunted and very slowly he gained people who came to understand the truth of his message. The desperate Meccan nobility was about ready to have him murdered, when he and many of his followers took flight to Yathrib, 200 miles north of Mecca. This was 622 A.D. The migrations known in Arabic as Hijrah or Hegira is regarded as the turning point in history by Moslims and is the year from which they date their calendar. Yathrib soon changed its name to Medinat un-Nabi (the City of the prophet), or simply, Medina.

In Medina, Mohammed was immediately welcomed and elevated to a statesman. His administration exhibited an ideal blend of justice and mercy. His reputation spread and people from all parts of Arabia came to see him.

During this time there were periodic battles between Meccans and Medinese, which Mohammed’s followers finally won. When he returned to Mecca he had the idols removed from the famous Kaaba stone and rededicated it to Allah.

When Mohammed died in 632 A.D. virtually all of Arabia was under Moslim control. By the time a century had past, his followers had conquered Armenia, Persia, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Egypt, and Span and had gone into France. But for their defeat in France in 732 A.D., the entire Western World might today be Moslim.

Mohammed did not institute either an organized priesthood or any sacraments. He did prescribe several key observances which are known as the Five Pillars of Islam. They are:

1. Declaration of creed that there is no god by Allah and that Mohammed is His messenger.

2. Prayer: There are five prescribed and defined prayers. They are meant for praise and gratitude on one hand, and supplication on the other. Moslems turn toward Mecca when they pray.

3. Almsgiving: A share of each believer’s income should be given for the support of the mosque (house of worship) and the care of the poor, enslaven, and wayfarers. The figure Mohammed gave was two and a half percent of one’s holding per year.

4. Fasting during the daylight hours during the month of Ramaden, ninth month of the Moslem year (comes at different times each year on the Western calendar). The reason for the fasting is to make people less preoccupied with worldly matters and to teach self-discipline. It also makes them more compassionate toward the poor and needy.

5. Pilgrimage to Mecca: Each believer should, if at all possible, make a pilgrimage to Mecca once during his lifetime. It is not enough to merely visit Mecca. Certain prescribed places must be visited and certain rituals were to be followed.

The above represents the minimum requirements upon which all scholars of Islamic Law agree. Some have included “holy war”, making a list of six. But Mohammed did not clearly designate it, because it operated from a different motive. Each of the five applies primarily to individuals. “Holy war” represents Islam at war; it became a social obligation. Moslem ideology divides the world into two zones: the abode of Islam, where peace prevails; and the abode of war, which includes all the non-Moslim domain. It is considered obligatory on Moslems to keep on pressing the wall that separates the two zones. The Koranic passage in support of the holy war theory says as follows:

Warfare is ordained for you, though it is hateful unto you; but it may happen that you hate a thing which is good for you, and it may happen that you love a thing which is bad for you. Allah knoweth, ye know not…Persecution is worse than killing. And they will not cease from fighting against you till they have made you renegades from your religion, if they can. And whose becometh a renegade and dieth in his disbelief, such are they whose works have fallen both in the world and the Hereafter. Such are rightful owners of the Fire; they will abide therein…

Fight in the way of Allah, against those who fight against you, but do not begin hostilities. Allah loveth not aggressors. And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out… If they attach you, then slay them. Such is the reward of disbelievers.

In the western mind a clear distinction is drawn between the religious and secular lives. That is not the case with the Moslem. To him Islam embraces all departments of life, a kind of totalitarian system with control over all the different domains of human activity.

The following law or social therories arose as accomplishments of the followers of Mohammed:

1. Econimic Regulation

The main point of Moslem economics cluster around her concern that the wealth of her people should be widely shared. Islam does not oppose the profit motive or economic competition. It simply insists that business be balanced by fair play and compassion.

The Koran reversed the system of practice of those days when people restricted inheritance to the eldest son with nothing for the other children.

One verse of the Koran prohibits the taking of interest which up to the 19^th century was taken as binding for all loans.

Finally Islam lays down the principle that unearned money is not one’s own.

2. Status of Women

In the pre-Islamic days women were to be with as their fathers or husbands pleased. Daughters had no inheritance rights and were often buried alive in infancy. Mohammed’s reforms improved the status of women enormously. He forbade infanticide. He required that daughters be included in inheritance. In her rights as citizen, the Koran opens the way to women’s full equality with man in education, suffrage, and vocation. Islam sanctified marriage, it demands a women’s full consent before she is wed, and it tightened the marriage bond enormously. Divorce was only a last resort. There remains the question of polygamy or, more precisely, polygyny the number of wives a Moslem is permitted to marry. Opinion differs on this point, but the growing consensus is that the ideal toward which Koranic law pressures man is monogamy. Concerning the women’s practice of secluding herself generally and veiling her face when abroad, Mohammed perceived its advantage as a check on the widespread promiscuity of his day.

3. Race Relations

Islam stresses absolute racial equality. As the ultimate test of this is willingness to intermarry, the prophets have deliberately intermarried to demonstrate to mankind the unequivocal character of this ideal. According to Moslem view, Abraham’s second wife, Hagar, was a Negro. Mohammed himself was probably of the same coloring as Jesus-a sun-tanned white-but he married a Negro as one of this wives and gave his daughter in marriage to a Negro.

Unlike most religions, which have grown slowly from remote beginnings, Islam came into being and spread with hurricane speed. Within little more than a century after the death of Mohammed, its dominions extended from Gibraltar to the Himalayas. Today its followers number over 300 million, nearly one seventh of the population of the world. From Morocco to the Malayan strait, Moslems profess the same beliefs, utter the same prayers, turn their eyes toward the same holy city.