Brief Summary of Islam Essay

Islam began in the sixth century on the belief that Muhammad, a highly respected man of affairs in Mecca, had received revelations from immortal in both Mecca and Medina. This religion began to dumbfound when one of the first disciples, a twenty-two year old named Zayd, stack away and edited Muhammads writings of his revelations and published them in one book, know as the Quran.The central beliefs of Islam, and the central acts of Muslim worship, can be summarized in the Five Pillars of Islam shahada (bearing witness), which usu ally manifests itself in reciting there is no god however God, and Muhammad is Gods messenger salah (praying five times a day facing Mecca) zakah (giving to the needy) sawm (fasting during the month of Ramadan) hajj (a pilgrimage to Mecca at nigh point in ones life). These Five Pillars provide a actually helpful framework for understanding Muslim worship practices, and I will begin to expound on Muslim history and enculturation by examining aspects of these five beliefs. However, these Pillars ar not enough (by far) to encompass all that is being a Muslim. This is especially true in the modern world.The program line in the shahada that there is no god merely God, or that God is one, was radical for his place and time. Mecca was already a major spectral center in Muhammads time, unless for the polytheistic religions of Arabia rather than whatever monotheistic religion. This threatened the entire ghostly system of Mecca. This assertion of Gods unity and oneness is overwhelmingly important to Islam, and that is the witness that Muslims be meant to bear.The shahada is also crucial because of the ele ment of recitation that it brings. Recitation is also very important to Muslims. In fact, the first word in Gods first revelation to Muhammad (seen in Sura 96) is iqraa (recite), from which the word Quran originates. The Quran was intended for committal to memory and recitation, and Muslims as yet now find religious fulfillment in reciting the Quran aloud. This religious virtue of recitation is seen even in the Quran itself when God holds a oppose to see what being can name all of the things the that he had created. The homokind Adam was the only being, including all the angels, that could recite the names of everything, and this showed God that human beings could be trusted with much responsibility.Not all aspects of Muslim life, however, are encompassed by the Five Pillars. One important aspect, for example, is family and residential area life. This aspect of Muslim life is partially touched on by the Pillar of zakah (giving to the needy), but its weight is not expressed fully in such a command. When Muhammad left Mecca, he began a fully Muslim community at the oasis of Yathrib, which became known as the City of the Prophet or Medina. For those who make an affirmation of faith and joined the community, loyalty to the community was considered more important than loyalty to anything else, including fam ily. This community set the standard for Muslim communities, as Islam now could still be considered a way of life more than a religion that is separate from other aspects of life. Many communities and states who adopted Islam made it a way of life rather than just a religion, and this practice even continues today in Muslim nations.Community is extremely important to Islam, but family is crucial as well. All life comes from God, so each claw is also considered a precious throw from God. The family can express their gratitude for this gift of life by giving their child a name with religious meaning. This is why the roughly common name in the world is Muhammad. Since family value befool such a high place in the teachings of Islam, most men will get married. However, polygamy is not as common as many Westerners think, even in countries that allow polygamy. Most Muslim men tend to think one wife is enough. However, of those men who choose to have more than one wife, most choose to have four wives, the maximal number allowed by the Quran.It is this focus on the polygamy and the seemingly absent womens rights in Muslim countries that provide some of the deepest differences between Muslims and Western cultivation today, but there are also deep divisions within Islam itself. The fundamentalistic Shii Muslims, want to bring their Sunni brothers away from their Western ties and get O.K. to the basics of Islam, which surprisingly may include more womens rights. This fundamentalist movement and dislike of Western culture is seemingly a pushback against the worldly culture of the West that governments, such as Saddam Husseins regime in Iraq, have embraced. This embrace of a secular community rather than a religious community runs counter to what the Shii Muslims intrust are the foundations of Islam.Works CitedKellogg, F. http//www.ehcweb.ehc.edu/faculty/fkellogg/211u4.htm Voll, J. O. (1998). From Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion, ed. Robert Wuthnow. 2 vols. (Washington, D.C. congressional Quarterly, Inc., 1998), 383-393. http//www.cqpress.com/context/articles/epr_islam.html