Islam

Westerners translate jihad as holy war--when it means only effort or exertion. The Koran never used the word in a military sense (in fact, only the verb jahad, "to apply effort," was used and never the noun jihad).

I. Allah:

Muslim means "those who submit"--a form of the word Islam which means "submission." Their conception of Allah is expressed in the exordium to the Koran (p. 1429), known as the Fatihah). God is eternal, omniscient, and omnipotent, and also unique. The human race was created from dust--Adam--and all are descended from him. Despite the early concord, the record of human conduct has not been good. Worst of all have been the frequent turns to polytheism. So God has had to send a series of prophets to direct mankind back to the true path.

II. The Five Pillars of Islam:

1. affirmation of faith: the shahada: There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is His Prophet.

2. prayer: morning, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset, before sleep. Before prayers, a Muslim had to perform certain ablutions and rituals to purify the body in the same way that prayer purified the soul.

3. alms for the poor [community, umma, is very important]

4. observation of Ramadan (when Muhammad began to receive the Koran).

5. pilgrimage [hajj] to Mecca for those who can manage it gave.

III. The Koran [al-qur'ân means "the recitation"]:

Muslims believe that the text of the revelations Gabriel gave to Muhammad--a text of oral recitations heard and memorized by his followers and then written down--is a complete record of God's revelations to Muhammad. A divine Koran exists in Paradise carved in figures of gold on marble tablets.

Because God spoke in Arabic, the Koran has a certain power when recited in Arabic. All Muslims are always called to prayer and make the shahada in Arabic. The shahada has a musical alliterative force in Arabic: La ilaha illa Allah; Muhammad rasul Allah.

IV. The Story of Joseph in the Koran vs. Genesis Account

In comparing the account in the sura on Joseph with the account in Genesis, the narrative strategies of these two versions alter both the "messages." Above all, Joseph in Sura 12 is a prophet--whereas he isn't in the Bible. His role as savior of the Hebrew nation is glossed over. He is tested by God through Zuleikha, Potiphar's wife, but succeeds because God enables him to through a sign. Joseph trusts God and is rewarded.

The essence of the story in Genesis is that Joseph is tested and becomes the leader who guides the Hebrews to prosperity in Egypt. As he tells his brothers at the end: "God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth." Thus his role as savior to the chosen people is primary. Also, the Genesis story emphasizes Joseph as a man of action who through native ability and divine protection turns injuries done to him to advantages--e.g., he resist's Potiphar's wife on moral grounds.

The story of Joseph in the Koran is basically the same: he ends up a slave, is accused of coveting his master's wife, is sent to jail, interprets Pharaoh's dreams, and is made an influential man. The differences are subtle, but important: he can withstand Zuleikha only because God gives him a sign, enabling him to resist; in jail he preaches to the other prisoners about monotheism; his role in the history of the Israelites (in taking them to Egypt) is not mentioned. Joseph is thus not a savior but rather an exemplary model of how Muslims should be submissive to the will and wisdom of God.

IV. People of the Book [ahl el-Kitb]:

Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses all play roles in the Koranic view of history that accords more or less with their biblical roles, though, each plays a primary role as messenger or warner for a monotheistic God. Jesus is styled the Messiah, is born of a virgin, works miracles, is rejected by the Jews, and eventually ascends to heaven, but is NOT regarded as God's son, still less God himself.

Abraham and his sons play a special role through his Egyptian wife Hagar, with whom he had a son, Ishmael. When Isaac was born, Hagar and Ishmael were cast into the wilderness where they would have perished without the intervention of an angel, who showed her a well and promised that a great nation would arise from her son, the twelve Ishmaelite tribes--the Arabs.

Where Muslim scholars differ from Jews and Christians about the course of sacred history running from Isaac to Moses and Jesus was in God's opening up a second line of sacred history through the revelations to Muhammad.

V. Mecca.

There are many traditions about Mecca. After the fall, Adam was thought to have collected a hollow pile of stones, shaped in a square, called Beit Allah, "the house of God"; every year he would return and walk around it seven times, solemnizing this first human creation. It was neglected and finally destroyed at the great flood. Abraham then rebuilt the Beit Allah with the stones Ishmael had found, which structure exists as the Ka'ba, inside of which is a mysterious black stone, now in twelve pieces held together by a silver band. The Ka'ba housed 360 statues of various gods.

VI. Muhammad

He was born about 570 A.D. into the Quraysh tribe of Mecca; trained as a merchant by his uncle and had a talent for commerce; but also had a very spiritual nature. In 610, the angel Gabriel appeared to him while in a cave outside Mecca on Mount Hira, and declared for him to "Recite" and then revealed the first verses of what became know as al-qur'ân or "the recitation."

Other verses followed and gradually a circle of believers gathered about him, whose growing numbers threatened the established order in Mecca and the revenue from pilgrims to the Ka'ba. In 621 he makes the so-called "Night Journey" to Jerusalem: from Mecca je journeys to the ruins of the Temple in Jerusalem, where he is met by Gabriel on a white stallion and ascends a staircase of light to the heavens. In 622, he and his community made a flight or migration (hijira or hegira in Arabic, from which the Muslim calendar is dated) to the oasis center at Medina with the invitation of the local citizens. In 624 Muhammad began a war with Mecca that ended with a complete Muslim victory in 630. In the century after his death Islam stretched from the Atlantic in the west to central Asia in the east, and from northern Syria to the southern shore of Arabia.

Muhammad has a crucial role in world history for Muslims: he was not just the most recent prophet, but also the last--the "seal of the prophets"--whose career was the last major event before the end of the world. Many Muslims believe (though the Koran does not confirm) that at the end, the faithful will break into many sects, but God will send a redeemer, the Mahdi, who will receive allegiance at Mecca, but his hijira will be to Jerusalem where he will rule in peace until the Antichrist will appear from Iraq. Jesus will then descend for a final battle and slay Antichrist at the gate of Lydda in Palestine. Jesus will then reign, breaking all the crosses of the Christians and exterminating the pig. Then finally all history will give way to the last judgment.

VII. The Rise of Islam as a Civilization.

A series of dynasties followed after the first caliphs, the Umayyads were overthrown by the Abbasids, who ruled Islam for five centuries (750-1258). They founded Baghdad as Islam's first great imperial city (c. 750) and cultural center.

Between the 9th and 14th centuries, Muslim chemists, physicians, astronomers, mathematicians, and geographers, not only kept alive the disciplines of Greek science, but made substantial contributions of their own. An early caliph of Baghdad (called Ma'mun, who ruled 813-833) created a center of learning, the House of Wisdom, that had a library, a translation bureau, and a school.

Medicine. Some of their greatest advances came in the field of medicine. Among the most celebrated physicians was a Persian named Razi (865-925), who has been compared to Hippocrates for his originality in describing disease. He enjoyed a European-wide reputation for many centuries for his more than 200 books. Avicenna (980-1037) produced the first encyclopedic Canon of Medicine. His fame was based on his commentaries on Aristotle and for his work on tuberculosis. Islamic physicians developed the science of surgery and administered anesthetics to patients (among them opium). They also had well developed pharmacies and even required licenses for physicians by the 9th century.

Chemistry. While Islamic scholars made major contributions to medicine, they made brilliant progress in laying the foundation for modern chemistry, especially through alchemy, which studied the secrets of transmuting metals. As a result of their work, we began to understand how substances combined to form compounds. They discovered new techniques for refining metals, dyeing cloths, distilling vinegar and alcohol, crystallizing some compounds to obtain pure forms, etc.

Mathematics. Islamic mathematicians learned geometry from the Greeks and the so-called "Arabic" numerals, the decimal system, and the concept of zero from the Hindus. With their love of abstraction and numbers, Islamic mathematicians developed elementary geometry significantly; discovered algebra and wrote the principal mathematical books that served Europe till the 16th century. They found many practical uses for mathematics in optics and astronomy.