ISLAM

major world religion belonging to the Semitic family; it was promulgated by the Prophet Muhammad in Arabia in the 7th century AD. The Arabic term islam, literally surrender, illuminates the fundamental religious idea of Islamthat the believer (called a Muslim, from the active particle of islam) accepts surrender to the will of Allah (Arabic: God). Allah is viewed as the sole Godcreator, sustainer, and restorer of the world. The will of Allah, to which man must submit, is made known through the sacred scriptures, the Qur'an (Koran), which Allah revealed to his messenger, Muhammad. In Islam Muhammad is considered the last of a series of prophets (including Adam, Noah, Jesus, and others), and his message simultaneously consummates and abrogates the revelations attributed to earlier prophets. Retaining its emphasis on an uncompromisng monotheism and a strict adherence to certain essential religious practices, the religion taught by Muhammad to a small group of followers spread rapidly through the Middle East to Africa, Europe, the Indian subcontinent, the Malay Peninsula, and China. Although many sectarian movements have arisen within Islam, all Muslims are bound by a common faith and a sense of belonging to a single community. This article deals with the fundamental beliefs and practices of Islam and with the connection of religion and society in the Islamic world. The history of the various peoples who embraced Islam is covered in the article Islamic world. 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 Qur'an, 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 mankindfrom 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 (8th9th 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. Additional reading General works Cambridge History of Islam, (1970, vol. 2, pt. 8; reissued 1977, vol. 2B), an excellent survey; Marshall G.S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, 3 vol. (1974), a major and influential study of the religion and civilization; R.M. Savory (ed.), Introduction to Islamic Civilization (1976), a collection of scholarly articles on Islamic history, religion, literature, language, and other topics; Bernard Lewis (ed.), The World of Islam: Faith, People, Culture (U.S. title, Islam and the Arab World, 1976), a collection of articles on various aspects of Islamic culture, and Islam: From the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople, 2 vol. (1974), a history composed of translations of original sources; W. Montgomery Watt, The Majesty That Was Islam: The Islamic World, 6611100 (1974), a concise introductory history of the rise and decline of the Islamic Empire; Hamilton A.R. Gibb, Mohammedanism, 2nd ed. (1953, reissued with revisions 1969), a penetrating and concise account of the development of Islam; Louis Gardet, Mohammedanism, trans. by William Burridge (1961), a systematic presentation of Islam, with religious insight; Fazlur Rahman, Islam, 2nd ed. (1979), a historical and systematic interpretation of Islam, and Islamic Methodology in History (1965), a critical appraisal of the development of sunnah, ijma', and ijtihad; Reubin Levy, An Introduction to the Sociology of Islam (1930 ), useful account of the development of Islamic society and institutions. John W. Bagnole, Cultures of the Islamic Middle East (1978), an annotated guide to 402 English-language readings for the nonspecialist. Education Arthur S. Tritton, Materials on Muslim Education in the Middle Ages (1957), an informative, useful compilation; Bayard Dodge, Muslim Education in Medieval Times (1962), a useful sketch. Political theory and institutions Erwin I.J. Rosenthal, Political Thought in Medieval Islam (1958), a good general survey of the subject. Islamic arts In view of the wealth of descriptive treatments, rather than theory, it is difficult to point to a single source. K.A.C. Creswell, A Bibliography of the Architecture, Arts and Crafts of Islam to 1st Jan. 1960 (1961), and Supplement, Jan. 1960 to Jan. 1972 (1973), contain all the necessary references. See also his Early Muslim Architecture, 2nd ed. (1969), and American University at Cairo, Center for Arabic Studies, Studies in Islamic Art and Architecture in Honor of Professor K.A.C. Creswell (1965); Hamilton A.R. Gibb, Arabic Literature: An Introduction, 2nd ed. (1974), a probing survey of 1,500 years of literature; Salih J. Altoma, Modern Arabic Literature (1975), a bibliography of 850 general and scholarly works covering 18001970. Theology and philosophy Franz Rosenthal (ed.), The Classical Heritage in Islam, trans. from the German by Emile Marmorstein and Jenny Marmorstein (1975); and Richard Walzer, Greek into Arabic: Essays on Islamic Philosophy (1962, reissued 1970), deal with the Greek and Hellenistic background and its appropriation. Parviz Morewedge (ed.), Islamic Philosophical Theology (1979), is a major contribution by nine internationally known authorities written for advanced students; W. Montgomery Watt, The Formative Period of Islamic Thought (1973), is a study of the evolution of theological thought in the 300 years after Muhammad's death, and his Free Will and Predestination in Early Islam (1948, reissued 1972), is an excellent treatment of the formative period of Islamic theology; Asaf A.A. Fyzee (ed. and trans.), . . . a Shi'ite Creed (1942), is an annotated translation of a standard Shi'ite creed by Ibn Babawayh; Louis Gardet and M.-M. Anawati, Introduction la thologie musulmane, 2nd ed. (1970), is a comprehensive handbook on Sunni theology; and A.J. Wensinck, The Muslim Creed (1932, reprinted 1965), discusses the background and development of Sunni doctrines. The theology of the Shi'ah is given a prominent place in Henry Corbin, Histoire de la philosophie islamique (1964 ); and its early development is discussed by Wilferd Madelung in both Der Imam al-Qasim ibn Ibrahim und die Glaubenslehre der Zaiditen (1965), and Imamism and Mu'tazilite Theology, in Le Sh'isme immite, pp. 1330 (1970). M.M. Sharif (ed.), A History of Muslim Philosophy, 2 vol. (196366), is a comprehensive collective work on the history of Islamic philosophy and related subjects; it is especially useful for the later medieval and modern periods. Majid Fakhry, A History of Islamic Philosophy (1970), is a general history. Fazlur Rahman discusses the development of the later synthesis between mysticism and philosophy in Dream, Imagination, and 'Alam al-Mithal, Islamic Studies, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 167180 (June 1964), in the introduction to Selected Letters of Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi (1968), and in The Eternity of the World and the Heavenly Bodies in Post-Avicennan Philosophy, in George F. Hourani (ed.), Essays on Islamic Philosophy and Science (1975), a collection representing recent trends in interpreting Islamic philosophy. Islamic myth and legend Tor Andrae, Die Person Muhammeds in Lehre und Glauben seiner Gemeinde (1917), on the development of Muhammad-mysticism; Israel Friedlnder, Die Chadhirlegende und der Alexander-Roman (1913), on the relation between the Alexander romance and the figure of Khidr; Max J.H. Horten, Die religise Gedankenwelt der gebildeten Muslime in heutigen Islam (1916), an account of popular Islam, and Die religise Gedankenwelt des Volkes im heutigen Islam, 2 pt. (191718), an account of the ideas of educated people in Islam; A.J. Wensinck, The Ocean in the Literature of the Western Semites, Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen, vol. 19, no. 2 (1918), and The Ideas of the Western Semites Concerning the Navel of the Earth, ibid., vol. 17, no. 1 (1916); Seyyed H. Nasr, Three Muslim Sages (1964, reissued 1976), an account of the theories of Suhrawardi al-Maqtul and Ibn 'Arabi; Joseph Horowitz, The Growth of the Mohammed Legend, Moslem World, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 4958 (January 1920), stresses the haggadic influences; Walther Eickmann, Angelologie und Dmonologie des Korans . . . (1908), a study of the Qur'anic concepts of angels and demons; Ernst A. Zbinden, Die Djinn des Islam und der altorientalische Geisterglaube (1953), a study of the different types of spirits in Islamic folklore and tradition; Rudolf Kriss and Hubert Kriss-Heinrich, Volksglaube im Bereich des Islam, 2 vol. (196062), useful studies in Islamic folklore, with extensive bibliographies; Taufic Canaan, Mohammedan Saints and Sanctuaries in Palestine (1927), on Palestinian folklore; articles in the Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam (1953), an authoritative collection of information, each article furnished with an extensive bibliography.