ISLAMIC BELIEFS AND PRACTICES

Calgold
May 28, 2002

While researching the Qur'an (Koran) for insights into the intellectual thinking and behaviors of the Islamic people, the author of this article had numerous occasions to converse with individual Americans concerning Islamic religious beliefs. Soon, it became obvious that most Americans appeared to know very little about religions in general. Rather, they entertained awareness and knowledge about some specific Christian cult only. That knowledge was quite obviously held as Christian Biblical truth, probably imbedded on their minds during childhood and youth. Therefore, the purpose of this dissertation is to provide a thumbprint outlining some of the basic beliefs and practices of Moslems. Regardless of beliefs, if the reader is interested in enriching personal perceptions concerning the faith of hundreds of millions of Islamic people world-wide, then it is essential to read on.

THE FRAME OF ISLAM

Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism and Christianity are reputed to be the greatest among the hundreds of religious faiths existing worldwide today. Islam is the newest and simplest of these five religions. Like most religions which hold forth during the beginning of the twenty-first century, the foundations and beliefs of Islam are anchored in legend, mysticism, spirituality and superstition, and are in fact created largely by human imagination. At the same time, Islamic believers (called Moslems) know that every word from their God, Allah, and from their holy book, the Qur'an, is truth. Moslems claim to be True Believers because they exercise extraordinary powers of knowledge through the mechanism of faith. At the same time, followers of hundreds of other spirit-world beliefs today make the same claims concerning their faiths, even though their notions of religious truth may differ widely.

All the while, no religious individual has broken bread with his or her god, nor has anyone observed human bones being dug from the earth and then being given flesh and new life, nor has mankind visited places such as heaven or hell. On the other hand, such mythical perceptions as these are known to be "reality" through the spiritual convenience of "faith."

Christian, Jewish and Islamic beliefs entertain the same beginnings in terms of time, place, religious origins and early family linkages. Each of these religious branches grew from the same seed--the seed of a common human father who was Abraham. Abraham was the tap root held in common by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike. Yet, scholars frequently find great difficulty when attempting to classify and to categorize current Islamic beliefs and practices when juxtaposed with the viewpoints of Jews and Christians.

FAITH

Islamic history began in Mecca with the birth of Kutam Muhammed in about 570 A.D. Mecca was the Pompeii of Arabia; a holy village steeped in superstition, idolatry, lust of the flesh and social decadence. Yet, according to Moslem scribes, it was in Mecca where a new faith was born. The Islamic faith. A belief in one and only one god.

One can scarcely study religions without repeatedly confronting the term" faith." To Christians, "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen." (Hebrews 11:1) In essence, religious faith is a magic concept which allows believers in many faiths to accept as true and factual that for which there is no valid evidence. Faith seems to be a supernatural phenomenon which engages language and mind. It is a psychological marvel which opens the door for many religions to teach beliefs anchored in fantastic happenings, places and events. Islamic teachings in the Qur'an rely heavily upon the anomaly of faith. The very belief in the existence of any and all gods rests upon acceptance of the unknown and unseen using the mechanism of faith.

By the way, this author found no specific definition in the Qur'an for the term FAITH. Yet, by analyzing a multitude of applications of the word "faith" in the Qur'an, the Islamic world obviously accepts non-argumentatively any and all words placed in the mouth of Allah by Muhammed. The Qur'an is accepted and believed by faith. Furthermore, it is by raw faith that the existence of Allah is accepted. No faith, then no gods. No religious visions. No holy books.

VISIONS

The Islamic god is neither seen, heard, felt nor smelled. Nevertheless, prophetic individuals have emerged who claim to have been in direct communications with their gods. This extrasensory mystical link to the gods often relies on a magical experience called the vision. A vision is a dream. A hallucination. A religious vision is apparently the imaginative function of an active mind which is half asleep-half asleep while seeking the existence of that which cannot be validated using human observation while fully awake . Visions seem usually to be perceived at night, but sometimes visionary events occur in the full light of the sun. Thus, "God came to me and proclaimed . . ." The major prophet in the Islamic world was Muhammed. His visions were nocturnal. More about him later.

Do not mistake the intent of the author concerning matters cited above. Indeed, the words of the Qur'an and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammed are highly respected and even revered because of their contributions to the betterment of human societal behavior. If the author were forced to accept one of the world's great religions, it would have to be Islam.

Readers who desire to research the vast regions of thought in the Qur'an may obtain an English translation by Abdullah Yusuf Ali, especially the sixth edition prepared in the year 2000. This version, published by Tahrike Tarsile Qur'an, Inc. in New York, is considered by most religious American scholars to be the best among many English translations. The index in this translation provides the reader with instant access to Islamic applications of words such as Adam, adultery, mercy, angels, patience, prayer, and on and on.

HISTORY

Now, let us return to the beliefs and practices of Islam in light of the visions of the Prophet Muhammed. All that we know about Muhammed to this day was written by his followers and admirers after his death. His mother was from an aristocratic family of the Koreish tribe. His father had died before his mother gave birth. At an alter at Kaaba, the child was named Kutam Muhammed. The single name which has carried forward to this day was Muhammed, meaning the Praised one.

By the age of six, Muhammed's mother and grandfather had both passed on. So, as an orphan, he lived with his uncle Abu Talib who was a desert guide and camel trader. Muhammed never went to school. Never learned to read or write. Rather, he traveled with his uncle and assisted in the care and driving of camel caravans. He visited Abyssinia, Syria, Yemen, Egypt and Persia, all the while mingling with Jewish and Christian merchants. Thus, Muhammed learned the beliefs of Judaism and Christianity.

Year after year, Muhammed observed idolatrous practices among Arab populations. He became increasingly concerned about how to convert his people away from idolatry. When he reached twenty years, he left his uncle's protection, and became a practicing merchant in his own right. Alas, he fell into the graces of a stunning woman named Khadija. At the age of twenty-five, Muhammed married the forty year old widow, and became rich while devoting his talents to his wife's merchant businesses.

Yearly during Ramadan (now an Islamic holy month), Muhammed went into meditative seclusion with his family in a desert cave. One night while sleeping, he envisioned a commanding voice telling him to read. The voice said, "Read: In the name of Allah, the Beneficient and Merciful. Read: In the name of Allah who created man of a clot. Read: And your Lord is most bounteous, and he teaches man by the pen. He teaches what man does not know."

After awakening, the voice continued to haunt Muhammed. It said, "O Muhammed, you are Allah's messenger and I am Gabriel." Spiritual revelations continued to be envisioned. Eventually, he began to preach the substance of Gabriel's revelations. However, his teaching was believed by very few. Then, when he began preaching sermons which denied belief in idols, certain angry listeners began to make threats. The only souls to be convinced by his pejorative sermons were his wife, children and relatives.

Visions continued to emerge in Muhammed's mind. All were recorded by his scribe, Abu Bekr. Each vision ultimately became the core of a sermon. In spite of the anger of irate merchants and idolaters, his dedicated followers gradually increased in numbers.

After twenty-three years of marriage, Muhammed's wife, Khadijah, died. However, his preaching continued. The citizens of Mecca began to take serious notice. When he began railing against the corruption of powerful merchants and community pooh-bahs, they coercively planned for Muhammed's assassination. After hearing of the murderous plan, Muhammed left Mecca under the cover of darkness. The date was 20 June 622 A.D. That date became the most notorious in Islam, and was recorded as the Night of the Flight, Anno Hegira. Mohammedans, now called Moslems, counted their religious calendar from the year of that Flight.

Where did Muhammed go? He fled from his birthplace, Mecca, to Yathrib, which was some two hundred miles northward. Yathrib soon changed its name to Medina al Nabu -- the city of the kingdom of the Prophet. Later, the name was shortened to Madena, and the new faith was called Islam, which means "submission to God."

Eight years after the Flight, Muhammed returned to Mecca in broad daylight while leading a following of thousands of "soldiers." His first task was to smash some three hundred sixty idols while protecting all other sacred artifacts in the Temple. This iconoclastic act caused the citizens to accept the prophet's beliefs. Within only two years, Muhammed had converted almost all Arabians. Finally, at age sixty-two, Muhammed expired, leaving his scribe, Abu Bekr, as his successor--the Caliph.

THE QUR'AN

Abu Bekr collected the Prophet's teachings, and placed them into a book called the Qur'an, or "The Reading." Furthermore, he organized armed forces to find and to convert tribes which had languished into idolatry. All the while, Holy Wars were incited with countries and with tribes of nonbelievers. Before a century passed, Islam dominated Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Egypt and the Persian Empire. Today, there are hundreds of millions of Muslims all over the world.

The Qur'an is in fact a book of Islamic beliefs with 114 divisions called Suras. To a Muslim, every word in the Qur'an is the word of God as revealed to the Prophet Muhammed by the Angel Gabriel. Both Christians and Jews claim that the Qur'an holds almost nothing that cannot be found in the writings of Judaism and Christianity. Like the Bible of the Christians and the Torah of the Jews, the Qur'an is targeted toward the downtrodden, the hopeless and poor, and toward the ignorant and outcast, regardless of nationality, skin color and language. The enduring appeal of the Qur'an has been its concern for the equality of men before God. Its primary doctrines are straight forward and simple: pure monotheism, and the upcoming final holy judgment of humans on earth.

PRAYER

Islam placed each individual face-to-face with God without intermediaries. This face-to-faceness is demonstrated five times daily regardless of where a Muslim may be. A prayer-rug is carried by a Muslim to be placed upon the ground or floor facing Mecca. The rug itself defines holy ground. That ground is where a Muslim prostates himself upon his knees, while bending forward with his hands and forehead resting upon the rug. Thus, a Moslem humbles himself before the face of Allah. No temple or mosque is needed. God is everywhere. The earth beneath a Muslim's feet is holy whenever he pauses to pray. Incidentally, Friday is the Islamic Sabbath, and on that day Muslims may seek a mosque in which to pray in the company of brethren.

ISLAMIC WOMEN

In this article, the author has used the male pronoun as if to exclude women. On the other hand, as dictated in the Qur'an, Islamic men and women are to be treated equally and are to be respected as peers. Even so, when photographs of Muslims in mosques and at prayer gatherings are analyzed, the faces seem almost always to be male. Women pray mostly at home, except after Ramadan when rejoicing and prayer are exercised publicly by men and women alike.

The Qur'an does not denigrate Muslim women. Rather, it is Islamic law which subjugates women. It is Islamic law which veils their faces and restricts them to the home. It is Islamic law which deprives them of education and of travel, as observed in Afghanistan and elsewhere world-wide. After centuries of oppression and seclusion, Muslim women are today moving against violation of their freedoms and rights.

ISLAMIC DUTIES

Their are five religious duties exacted of each Islamic True Believer. These duties are called the Five Pillars of Islamic faith:

1. The duty to recite the creed: There is no God but Allah, and Muhammed is his prophet.
2. The duty to worship One God and pray to Him five times a day.
3. The duty to practice charity and to help the needy.
4. The duty to fast during the month of Ramadan.
5. The duty to make a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in a lifetime.

ISLAMIC RUDIMENTS

There seem to be ten fundamentals or rudiments which form the foundation of the Islamic faith. Here they are:

1. There is only one God.
2. All the earth belongs to Allah.
3. No man needs an intercessor before Allah.
4. Mans physical body dies, but his soul lives forever.
5. Alcoholic drinks are the mother of all evil.
6. God commands mankind to tell the truth at all times.
7. Allah abhors nothing more than adultery.
8. Charity is to be practiced.
9. Kindness must be extended even to animals.
10. A man is limited to no more than four wives.

MODERNIZATION

Almost nothing is stagnant or unchanging when human behaviors are concerned. Beliefs, tools, punishments, rewards, and performance methodologies are dynamic factors requiring adaptation if tribe, race and species are to survive in the modern world. Therefore, it is not surprising to learn that all religions and faiths have responded in one way or another to modernization of the world.

Some adaptations rely upon radical extremism, especially when interpretations of the meanings of religious doctrine are involved. Religious fundamentalism at its roots is at first nothing more than an attempt to create a marriage between deep-seated traditions and the modernization of cultures. When such attempts fail, then extreme measures are attempted--measures such as witnessed during the past decade of Taliban rule in Afghanistan.

Democracy and secularism are frequently the targets of religious fundamentalists. Women and children often bear the major burden of religious zealots. Fundamental religious extremes in America are sometimes highlighted by citing the widely known Scopes Trial of 1925 in Tennessee where Protestant fundamentalists opposed the teaching of Darwin's theories of evolution in public schools. This fissure in societal beliefs brought the concept of Godly creation face-to-face with the natural processes of evolution. The trial was one of God against nature. Fiction versus fact.

RESOURCES

An excellent chronology of the Islamic people is found in Karen Armstrong's short book titled ISLAM. To assist readers in the task of grasping the peculiarities of Islamic religiosity, Armstrong has devoted a dozen pages to describe religious "fundamentalism."

Another rich source of knowledge concerning Islam is Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of World Religions, 1999. This encyclopedia describes briefly and with clarity the major Islamic doctrines. Also, a multitude of other books about Islam are available on the Internet.

Regardless of what sources are researched, the Qur'an is the primary book of truths influencing Muslim thought and behaviors. It respects God's design and his order of the universe. It accepts that every created thing participates in the world as an element of the whole. It recognizes that prophets are messengers of God. Abraham, Noah, Moses, Muhammed and Jesus are examples because they are direct recipients of truth and knowledge from God.

TERRORISM

A Muslim governmental state is essentially a state controlled by religion. Islamic religion and governmental laws are homogenous. The Prophet Muhammed was both the founder of the Islamic religion and the creator of autocratic sovereign Islamic states. Islam and Islamic nations are not democratic in practice. Islam does not subscribe to the concept of freedom for all citizens. Allah rules gently with a mighty fist.

The geographic origin of anti-western Islamic extremism materialized squarely within the borders of the Islamic kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The economic power motivating Islamic fundamentalism appeared when oil was discovered. Monetary revenue created by the oil industry in the Arabic world continues to be the primary source of wealth. Arabic colleges arose which, one way or another, sponsored fanaticism. The time of origin of wealth, power and fanaticism was the 1950s. Muslim fanaticism continues to plague the world today in the form of terrorism. In fact, the financial coffers of the world's prime terrorist, Osama bin Laden, have been regularly filled because of the flow of black gold from the desert sands of Arabia.

Islamic terrorism is not anchored in the Qur'an, nor is it supported by most Moslems. Rather, it is the product of extremists who have taken it upon themselves to reinterpret the teaching of the Qur'an in radical ways-ways which violate the very ideologies upon which Islam rests.

Another basic requisite to Islam is marriage. The Qur'an suggests that celibacy is unusual. On the other hand, married adulterers are to be stoned to death. Furthermore, the Qur'an acknowledges that, on the final day on earth, the dead will be resurrected and all mankind will be judged. The condemned will burn in hellfire, while the saved will live in paradise for eternity. Obviously, much Islamic belief is similar in many ways to Christian and Jewish faiths. This commonality of beliefs does indeed trace its origins back to ancient times and to the family of Abraham.

CALGOLD Says . . .