Islam

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Islam, a world religion founded by the Arabian apostle, or prophet, Muhammad in the 7th century AD and emphasizing an uncompromising monotheism and a strict adherence to certain religious practices. Although there have been many sects and movements within the religion, and although there are striking cultural and religious differences among the regions of the Islamic world, all followers of Islam are bound by a common faith and a sense of belonging to a single community.

Islam is treated in a number of articles in the MACROPAEDIA. For full treatment of the religion, see Islam, Muhammad and the Religion of . For full coverage of Islamic arts, see Islamic Arts . For a broad discussion of the prehistory and history of the Muslim community, see Islamic World, The .

The word Islam is used repeatedly in the Quran, the Islamic scripture, in the sense of "surrender to the will of Allah (God)." For Muslims, as adherents of Islam are called, the Qur`an is the Word of God, confirming and consummating earlier revealed books and thereby replacing them. The Word's instrument or agent of revelation is the Prophet Muhammad, the last and most perfect of a series of messengers of God to mankind--from Adam through Abraham to Moses and Jesus, the Christian claims for whose divinity are strongly rejected. Although Muhammad is only a human creature of God, he has nevertheless an unequaled importance in the Qur`an itself, which sets him next only to God as deserving of moral and legal obedience. Hence, his sayings and deeds (sunnah) served as a second basis, besides the Qur`an, of the belief and practice of Islam.

The Qur`anic theology is rigorously monotheistic: God is absolutely unique, omnipotent, omniscient, and merciful. Men are exhorted to obey his will (i.e., to be Muslim), and special responsibility is laid on man. The Muslim creed consists of five articles of faith: (1) belief in one God; (2) in angels; (3) in the revealed books; (4) in the prophets; and (5) in the Day of Judgment. To these was added, during the early development of the dogma, the belief in God's predetermination of good and evil. The profession of the faith (shahada) is: "There is no God but God, and Muhammad is the prophet of God."

All Muslims are enjoined to practice the Five Pillars of Islam: (1) to recite the profession of faith at least once in one's lifetime; (2) to observe the five daily public and collective prayers; (3) to pay the zakat ("purification") tax for the support of the poor; (4) to fast from daybreak to sunset during the entirety of the month of Ramadan; and (5) to perform if physically and financially possible the hajj, or pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca.

The most important and fundamental religious concept of Islam is that of the Shari'ah (q.v.), or the Law, which embraces the total way of life as explicitly or implicitly commanded by God. The Shari'ah, as formulated by Muslim religious teachers in the 2nd and 3rd centuries of the Muslim era (8th-9th century AD), includes both the doctrine, or belief, and practice, or the law. Historically, the formulation and systemization of the law took place earlier than the crystallization of the formal theology.

Despite the notion of a unified and consolidated community, as taught by the Prophet, violent differences arose among Muslims within a few years after his death. The Kharajis, for example, responding to what they regarded as the nepotism and misrule of the third caliph (deputy or successor of Muhammad), interpreted the Qur`an as enjoining jihad, or holy militancy, and thus as justifying the caliph's assassination. The group incessantly resorted to rebellion and, as a result, were virtually wiped out during the first two centuries of Islam.

In the increasing world-consciousness of 8th- and 9th-century Arabia, a powerful movement of rational theology emerged; its representatives, known as the Mu'tazilah (Seceders), held that human reason, independent of revelation, was capable of discovering what is good and what is evil, and viewed God as pure Essence, without eternal attributes. Thus the Qur`an, regarded by other Muslims as the immutable record of God's attribute of speech, was seen by the Mu'tazilah as created in time and not eternal. Mu'tazilism became the state creed of the caliphate in the 9th century, but in the century following, reaction against it culminated in the formulation and general acceptance of what came to be called Sunni, or "orthodox," theology.

While Sunni orthodoxy, the central community of Islam, condemned schisms and branded dissent as heretical, it developed at the same time the opposite trend of accommodation, catholicity, and synthesis. A broad theological platform was adopted that saved the integrity of the community at the expense of moral strictness and doctrinal uniformity.

Shi'ite Islam, the only important surviving sect outside orthodoxy, arose from a purely political conflict in the late 7th century. Gradually, however, the group's political stand acquired a theological content. Probably under Gnostic and old Iranian dualistic influences, Shi'ism developed a doctrine of esoteric knowledge, centred upon the figure of the imam, or exemplary "leader," through whom the truths of the Qur`an are revealed. Such a doctrine was adopted also by the Sufis, an ascetic movement that arose, largely within orthodoxy, in reaction to the worldliness of the early Muslim dynasties. Five centuries after the initial spread of Islam under the banner of jihad, the Sufis inaugurated a much more massive expansion that was mainly responsible for the establishment of the faith in India, Central Asia, Turkey, and sub-Saharan Africa. Muslim traders also contributed significantly to the enlargement of the Muslim world.

Despite the loss of political power during the period of Western colonialism in the 19th and 20th centuries, the concept of the Islamic community became stronger and helped various Muslim peoples in their struggle to gain political independence and sovereignty in the mid-20th century.