
#redirect Islam
#REDIRECT Islam
Islam ( ''al-islām'') "the submission to God" is a monotheistic faith, one of the Abrahamic religions, and the world's second largest religion. == Etymology == In Arabic, ''Islām'' means "submission" (understood as submission to God) and is described as a ''Dīn'' or Deen, meaning "way of life" and/or "religion." Etymology, it is derived from the same root as, for example, ''Salām'' meaning "peace" (also a common salutation). The word ''Muslim'' is also related to the word ''Islām'' and means one who "surrenders" or "submits" to God. == Beliefs == Followers of Islam, known as Muslims, believe that God (or, in Arabic, ''Allah'') revealed his direct word for mankind to Muhammad (c. 570–632) and other Prophets of Islam, including Adam, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. Muslims assert that the main written record of revelation to humankind is the Qur'an, which they believe to be flawless, immutable, and the final revelation of God. Muslims believe that parts of the Bible and the Torah have been forgotten, misinterpreted, or distorted by their followers. With that perspective they view the Qur'an as corrective of Jewish and Christian scriptures. Muslims hold that Islam is essentially the same belief as that of all the messengers sent by God to mankind since Adam, with the ''Qur'ān'' (the one definitive text of the Muslim faith) codifying the final revelation of God. Islamic teaching sees Judaism and Christianity as derivations of the teachings of certain of these prophets - notably Abraham - and therefore acknowledges their Abrahamic religion roots, whilst the Qur'an calls them People of the Book. Islam has three primary branches of belief, based largely on a historical disagreement over the succession of authority after Muhammad's death; these are known as Sunni Islam , Shi'a Islam and Kharijite. The basis of Muslim belief is found in the ''shahada'' ("two testimonies"): ''lā ilāhā illā-llāhu; muhammadur-rasūlu-llāhi'' — "There is no god but God; Muhammad is the messenger of God." In order to become a Muslim, one needs to recite and believe these statements. All Muslims agree to this, although Sunnis further regard this as one of the five pillars of Islam. [[Image:Faisal_mosque2.jpg|right|thumb|275px|Faisal Mosque, located in Islamabad, the capital city of Pakistan, was built in 1986. It is one of the largest mosques in Asia.]] ===Six articles of belief=== There are six basic beliefs shared by all Muslims: #Belief in God, the one and only one worthy of all worship. #Belief in all the Prophets and Messengers (sent by God). #Belief in the Books sent by God. #Belief in the Angels. #Belief in the Day of Judgment (''Qiyamah'') and in the Resurrection. #Belief in Destiny (Fate) (''Qadaa'' and ''Qadar'' in Arabic). (Note that this does not mean one is predeterminded to act or live a certain life. God has given the free will to do and make decisions.) The Muslim creed in English language: :"I believe in God; and in His Angels; and in His Scriptures; and in His Messengers; and in The Final Day; and in Fate, that Good and Evil are from God, and Resurrection after death be Truth. :"I testify that there is nothing worthy of worship but God; and I testify that Muhammad is His Messenger." === God === The fundamental concept in Islam is the oneness of God (''tawhid''). This monotheism is absolute, not relative or pluralistic in any sense of the word. God is described in Sura al-Ikhlas, (chapter 112) as follows: Say "He is God, the one, the Self-Sufficient master. He never begot, nor was begotten. There is none comparable to Him." In Arabic, God is called Allah, a contraction of ''al-ilah'' or "the only god". ''Allāh'' thus translates to "God" in English. The implicit usage of the definite article in ''Allah'' linguistically indicates the divine unity. In spite of the different name used for God, Muslims believe in the same deity as the Judeo-Christian religions. However, Muslims completely disagree with the Christian theology concerning the unity of God (the doctrine of the Trinity which sees Jesus as the eternal Son of God), seeing it as akin to polytheism. As it says in the Qur'an, ''"O People of the Scripture! Do not exaggerate in your religion nor utter aught concerning Allah save the truth . The Messiah , Jesus son of Mary , was only a messenger of Allah , and His word which He conveyed unto Mary , and a spirit from Him . So believe in Allah and His messengers , and say not "three" . Cease! ( it is ) better for you! Allah is only One God . Far is it removed from His transcendent majesty that he should have a son . His is all that is in the heavens and all that is in the earth . And Allah is sufficient as its defender."'' [Chapter 4 : Surah 171] No Muslim visual images or depictions of God exist because such artistic depictions may lead to idolatry and are thus prohibited. Moreover, many Muslims believe that God is incorporeal, rendering any two or three dimensional depictions impossible. Instead, Muslims describe God by the many divine attributes mentioned in the Qur'an, and also with the 99 names of Allah. All but one Surah (chapter) of the Qur'an begins with the phrase "In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful". These are consequently the most important divine attributes in the sense that Muslims repeat them most frequently during their ritual prayers (called salah in Arabic, and in India, Pakistan and Turkey called "namaaz" (a Persian word)). === The Tenets of Islam === Sunni Islam's most fundamental tenets are referred to as the Five Pillars of Islam#Notes, while Shia Islam has a slightly different terminology, encompassing five core beliefs (the "roots of religion") and ten core practices (the "branches of religion".) All Muslims agree on the following statements, which Sunnis term the Five Pillars of Islam, and Shia would consider two of the Roots of Religion and four of the Branches of Religion: [[Image:Mecca.jpg|frame|right|The Pilgrimage to Kaaba, Masjid al Haram, Mecca is one of the five pillars of Islam.]] *"Shahadah": The Testimony that there is none worthy of worship except God and that Muhammad is his messenger. *"Salah": Establishing of the five daily Prayers (''salah''). *"Zakat": The Giving of ''Zakaah'' (charity), which is one fortieth (2.5%) of the net worth of savings kept for more than a year, with few exemptions, for every Muslim whose wealth exceeds the nisab, and 10% or 20% of the produce from agriculture. This money or produce is distributed among the poor. *"Ramadhan": Fasting from dawn to dusk in the month of Ramadan (''sawm''). *"Hajj": The Pilgrimage (Hajj) to Mecca during the month of ''Dhul Hijjah'', which is compulsory once in a lifetime for one who has the ability to do it. All Muslims further agree on two of what the Shia call the Roots of Religion: * The Justice of God ('''Adl''). * The Resurrection (''Me'ad''). and four of what the Shia call the Branches of Religion: * Enjoining what is good (''Amr-bil-Ma'roof''). * Forbidding what is evil (''Nahi-anil-Munkar''). * Striving to seek God's approval (''Jihad''). * Paying the tax on profit (''Khums''). while two "branches", and one "root", are specifically Shia: * The belief in the divinely appointed and guided imamate of Ali and some of his descendants (''Imamah''). * To love the Ahl-ul-Bayt and their followers (''Tawalla''). * To hate the enemies of the Ahl-ul-Bayt (''Tabarra''). === The Qur'an === The Qur'an is the sacred book of Islam. It has also been called, in English, the Koran and the Quran. Qur'an is the currently preferred English transliteration of the Arabic original (قرآن); it means “recitation”. Muslims believe that the Qur'an was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad by the Angel Gabriel on numerous occasions between the years 610 and Muhammad's death in 632. In addition to memorizing his revelations, his followers are said to have written them down on parchments, stones, bones, sticks, and leaves. Muslims believe that the Qur'an available today is the same as that revealed to Prophet Muhammad and by him to his followers, who memorized his words. Scholars accept that the version of the Qur'an used today was first compiled in writing by the third Caliph, Uthman ibn Affan, sometime between 650 and 656. He sent copies of his version to the various provinces of the new Muslim empire, and directed that all variant copies be destroyed. However, some skeptics doubt the recorded oral traditions (hadith) on which the account is based and will say only that the Qur'an must have been compiled before 750. There are also numerous traditions, and many conflicting academic theories, as to the provenance of the verses later assembled into the Qur'an. (This is covered in greater detail in the article on the Qur'an.) Most Muslims accept the account recorded in several hadith, which state that Abu Bakr, the first caliph, ordered Zayd ibn Thabit to collect and record all the authentic verses of the Qur'an, as preserved in written form or oral tradition. Zayd's written collection, privately treasured by Muhammad's widow Hafsa bint Umar, was used by Uthman and is the basis of today's Qur'an. Uthman's version organized the revelations, or suras, roughly in order of length, with the longest suras at the start of the Qur'an and the shortest ones at the end. More conservative views state that the order of most suras was divinely set. Later scholars have struggled to put the suras in chronological order, and among Muslim commentators at least there is a rough consensus as to which suras were revealed in Makkan sura and which at Medinan sura. Some suras (eg surat Iqra) were revealed in parts at separate times. Because the Qur'an was first written [date uncertain] in the Hijazi, Mashq, Ma'il, and Kufic scripts, which write consonants only and do not supply the vowels, and because there were differing oral traditions of recitation, as non-native Arabic speakers converted to Islam, there was some disagreement as to the exact reading of many verses. Eventually, scripts were developed that used "points" to indicate vowels. For hundreds of years after Uthman's recension, Muslim scholars argued as to the correct pointing and reading of Uthman's unpointed official text, (the rasm). Eventually, most commentators accepted seven variant readings (qira'at) of the Qur'an as canonical, while agreeing that the differences are minor and do not affect the meaning of the text. The form of the Qur'an most used today is the Al-Azhar text of 1923, prepared by a committee at the prestigious Cairo university of Al-Azhar. The Qur'an early became a focus of Muslim devotion and eventually a subject of theological controversy. In the 8th century, the Mu'tazilis claimed that the Qur'an was created in time and was not eternal. Their opponents, of various schools, claimed that the Qur'an was eternal and perfect, existing in heaven before it was revealed to Muhammad. The Mu'tazili position was supported by caliph Al-Ma'mun. The caliph persecuted, tortured, and killed the anti-Mu'tazilis, but their belief eventually triumphed and is held by most Muslims of today. However, modern liberal movements within Islam are apt to take something approaching the Mu'tazili position. Most Muslims regard the Qur'an with extreme veneration, wrapping it in a clean cloth, keeping it on a high shelf, and washing as for prayers before reading the Qur'an. Old Qur'ans are not destroyed as wastepaper, but deposited in Qur'an graveyards. The Qur'an is regarded as an infallible guide to personal piety and community life, and completely true in its history and science. From the beginning of the faith, most Muslims believed that the Qur'an was perfect only as revealed in Arabic. Translations were the result of human effort and human fallibility, as well as lacking the inspired poetry believers find in the Qur'an. Translations are therefore only commentaries on the Qur'an, or "translations of its meaning", not the Qur'an itself. === Prophets === [[Image:Masjidnabawi.jpg|right|thumb|275px|Masjid al-Nabawi in Medina. The mosque also has a tomb of prophet Muhammad and the first two caliphs, Abu Bakr and Umar ibn al-Khattab]] The Qur'an speaks of God appointing two classes of human servants: messengers (''rasul'' in Arabic), and prophets (''nabi'' in Arabic and Hebrew). In general, messengers are the more elevated rank, but Muslims consider all prophets and messengers equal. All prophets are said to have spoken with divine authority; but only those who have been given a major revelation or message are called messenger. Notable messengers include Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses(Musa), Jesus(Isa), and Muhammad, all belonging to a succession of men guided by God. Islam demands that a believer accept most of the Judeo-Christian prophets, making no distinction between them. In the Qur'an, Prophets of Islam are mentioned. Mainstream Muslims regard Muhammad as the 'Last Messenger' or the 'Seal of the Prophets' based on the canon. However, there have been a number of sects whose leaders have proclaimed themselves the successors of Muhammad, perfecting and extending Islam, or, whose devotees have made such claims for their leaders. However, most Muslims remain unaffected by those claims and simply regard those said groups to be deviant from Islam. === Islamic eschatology === Islamic eschatology is concerned with the ''Qiyamah'' (End of the world (religion)) and the final judgement of humanity. Like Christianity and some sects of modern Judaism, Islam teaches the bodily resurrection of the dead, the fulfillment of a divine plan for creation, and the immortality of the human soul; the righteous are rewarded with the pleasures of ''Jannah'' (Paradise), while the unrighteous are punished in ''Jahannam'' (a fiery Hell, from the Hebrew ''ge-hinnom'' or "valley of Hinnom"; usually rendered in English as Gehenna). A significant fraction of the Qur'an deals with these beliefs, with many ''hadith'' elaborating on the themes and details. ===Other beliefs=== Other beliefs include the Angels, the Genie (a species of beings not composed of solid matter, but of fire), and the existence of magic (paranormal) (the practice of which is strictly forbidden). ==Organization== === Religious authority === There is no official authority who decides whether a person is accepted to, or dismissed from, the community of believers, known as the ''Ummah'' ("Family"). Islam is open to all, regardless of race, age, gender, or previous beliefs. It is enough to believe in the central beliefs of Islam. This is formally done by reciting the ''shahada'', the statement of belief of Islam, without which a person cannot be classed a Muslim. It is enough to believe and say that one is a Muslim, and behave in a manner befitting a Muslim to be accepted into the community of Islam. === Islamic law === Muslims in Islamic societies have traditionally viewed Islamic law as essential to their religious outlook. For Muslims living in secular Western countries ''sharia'' ceases to be relevant as law, but remains a source of personal ethics (for example, the avoidance of pork and alcohol, and the use of Sharia-compliant banking services). The Qur'an is the foremost source of fiqh; the second is the Sunnah (the practices of the Prophet, as narrated in reports of his life). The Sunnah is not itself a text like the Qur'an, but is extracted by analysis of the Hadith (Arabic for "report") texts, which contain narrations of the Prophet's sayings, deeds, and actions of his companions he approved. One hadith of special importance for Islamic contracts should be mentioned here. A merchant named Hakim ibn Hizam reported, "I asked the Prophet: O Messenger of Allah! A man comes to me and asks me to sell him what is not with me, so I sell him and then buy the goods for him in the market. And the Prophet said: sell not what is not with you." This hadith has rendered controversial within the Muslim world much of what is considered routine finance outside of it, including the sale of futures and options, both of which might be characterized as the sale of 'what is not with you.' In recent times, traditional Islamic law has often been questioned by liberal movements within Islam. In a related development, Mohammad Hashim Kamali has questioned the reliability and contemporary relevance of the above quoted hadith of Hakim ibn Hizam. === Apostasy and blasphemy === Islamic communities, as well as Christianity and Judaism ones, often exclude apostasy and blasphemy from the community of believers. In orthodox Islamic theology, conversion out of Islam is forbidden and punishable by death. Apostasy is public disloyalty towards Islam by any one who had previously professed the Islamic faith. Blasphemy is showing disrespect or speaking ill of any of the essential principles of Islam. There can be no sharp distinction between these concepts, as many believers feel that there can be no blasphemy without apostasy. In the period of Islamic empire, apostasy was considered treason, and was accordingly treated as a capital offense; death penalties were carried out under the authority of the Caliph. Today apostasy is punishable by death in the countries of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Yemen, Iran, Sudan, Pakistan, and Mauritania. Blasphemy is also an offence in many of these countries. In most of these countries, such laws are invoked only sporadically and selectively; convictions tend to be reversed at a higher level, or if not reversed, those convicted may be allowed to leave the country. However, some countries, notably Iran under the Islamic Republic, Afghanistan under the Taliban, and Sudan, have been less reluctant to enforce the laws on the books. In each of these countries Islamist regimes are estimated to have executed, flogged, and imprisoned hundreds or thousands of people believed to be apostates or blasphemers. Other punishments prescribed by sharia (depending on interpretation) may include the annulment of marriage with a Muslim spouse, the removal of children, the loss of property and inheritance rights, or other sanctions. Here as elsewhere in Islam, scholars disagree on specific applications of core principles, with some prominently advocating a punitive approach to "exclusionary" issues and others tending to de-emphasize such questions. == Schools (Branches)== There are a number of Islamic religious denominations, each of which has significant theological and legal differences from each other. The major branches are Sunni Islam and Shi'a, with Sufism often considered as an extension of either Sunni Islam or Shi'a thought. All denominations, however, follow the five pillars of Islam and believe in the six pillars of faith (mentioned earlier). The Sunni sect of Islam comprises the majority of all Muslims (about 95%). It consists of four similar schools of thought (madhabs) which interpret specific pieces of Islamic practice. They are named after their founders Maliki, Shafi'i, Hanafi, and Hanbali. On some issues, each school of thought differs slightly on fiqh (thoughts on how to practise Islam) although all accept the fundamentals contained within the Holy Quran. All four accept the validity of the others and a muslim can choose any one that he thinks is agreeable to his ideas. Shi'a Muslims are those that are not Sunni. The Shi'a consist of one major school of thought known as the Ithna Ashariyya or the "Twelvers", and a few minor schools of thought, as the "Seveners" or the "Fivers" referring to the number of infallible leaders they recognise after the death of Muhammad. The term Shi'a is usually taken to be synonymous with the Ithna Ashariyya/Twelvers. The main Shi'ites areas are Iran, Iraq and Lebanon. Sufism occupies a place between the various schools of Islam, with practitioners falling into either Sunni or Shi'a. However, some consider Sufism a separate mystical school. Instead of focusing on the legal aspects of Islam (fiqh) as other madhab do, Sufism focuses on the internal aspects of Islam, such as perfecting the aspect of sincerity of faith and fighting one's own ego. There are also some very large groups or sects of Sufism that are not easily categorised as either Sunni or Shi'a, such as the Bektashi. Sufism is found more or less across the Islamic world, though bearing distinctive regional variations, from Senegal to Indonesia. According to Shaikh Mahmood Shaltoot, Head of the al-Azhar University in the middle part of the 20th Century, "the Ja'fari school of thought, which is also known as "al-Shi'a al- Imamiyyah al-Ithna Ashariyyah" (i.e., The Twelver Imami Shi'ites) is a school of thought that is religiously correct to follow in worship as are other Sunni schools of thought". This position is not generally accepted by mainstream Sunni scholarship, and al-Azhar itself distanced itself from this position. Another denomination which dates back to the early days of Islam are the Kharijites. Members of this group in the present day are more commonly known as Ibadis. A large number of Ibadhi Muslims today live in Oman. Another more recent group are the "Wahhabis", though some classify them as the conservative branch of the Hanbali school of Sunni Islam. "Wahhabism" is a movement founded by Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab in the 18th century in what is present-day Saudi Arabia. Another recent group is the Ijtihadists, which represents a wide variety of views alternatively known as progressive, liberal or secular Muslims. They may be either Sunni or Shi'ite, and generally favour the development of personal interpretations of Qur'an and Hadith. ''See'': Liberal Islam Recently, with the usage of the Internet, and access to information, another part of Islam is begnning to emerge. These are the youngest genearation of muslim children, who for the first time can get answers to their questions from sources that are not biased in any way. This group does not necessarily mean to join themselves with any other group listed above. They are those who wish to follow the Q'uran only, not using other forms or papers such as the Hadith to augment the religion. These followers believe that when GOD says in the Q'uran: "Shall I seek other than God as a source of law, when He has revealed to you this book fully detailed?" 6:114. Also, there are other bold statements in the Q'uran such as : "These are God's revelations that We recite to you truthfully. In which Hadith other than God and His revelations do they believe?" 45:6 Using these statements as a basis to believe in the Q'uran as their only source of guidance, they are a group that puts themselves apart from all the other sects. Upon all the other sects (mentioned above), each has things that believe are theirs, and are the right way. Also, in some form on another, the sects use interpretations and decisions from people who are not looked upon as messengers or prophets. This new part of Islam is typically called just "muslims". They don't wish to label themselves as any particular sect, but just as followers of GOD and his will. See also: Imam -- Islamic philosophy -- Zaiddiyah === Religions based on Islam === The following groups consider themselves to be Muslims, but are not considered Islamic by the majority of Muslims or Muslim authorities: * The Druze * The Nation of Islam * The Zikris * The Qadianis (or Ahmadis) The following religions are said by some to have evolved or borrowed from Islam, but consider themselves independent religions with distinct laws and institutions: * Babism * Bahá'í Faith * Yazidi The claim of the adherents of the Bahá'í Faith that it represents an independent religion was upheld by the Muslim ecclesiastical courts in Egypt during the 1920's. As of January 1926, their final ruling on the matter of the origins of the Bahá'í Faith and its relationship to Islam was that the Bahá'í Faith was neither a sect of Islam, nor a religion based on Islam, but a clearly-defined, independently-founded, Faith. Some see Sikhism as a syncretism mix of Hinduism and Islam. However, its history lies in the social strife between local Hindu and Muslim communities, during which Sikhs were seen as the "sword arm" of Hinduism. The philosophical basis of the Sikhs is deeply-rooted in Hindu metaphysics and certain philosophical practices. Sikhism also rejects image-worship and believes in one God, just like the Bhakti reform movement in Hinduism and also like Islam does. However, Sikhs are forbidden from practices such as eating ritually prepared meat (halal) that are central in Islam. The following religions might have been said to have evolved from Islam, but are not considered part of Islam, and no longer exist: * The religion of the medieval Berghouata * The religion of Ha-Mim == Islam and other religions == The Qur'an contains both injunctions to respect other religions, and to fight and subdue unbelievers. Some Muslims have respected Jews and Christians as fellow "peoples of the book" (monotheists following Abrahamic religions) and also have reviled them as having abandoned monotheism and corrupted their scriptures. At different times and places, Islamic communities have been both intolerant and tolerant. There are Quranic grounds for both attitudes. Earlier passages of the Qur'an are more tolerant towards Jews and Christians. Later passages of the Qur'an speak more disparaging of them. Sura 5:51 commands Muslims not to take Jews and Christians as friends. Sura 9:29 commands Muslims to fight against Jews and Christians until they either submit to Allah or else agree to pay a special tax. The classical Islamic solution was a limited tolerance -- Jews and Christians were to be allowed to privately practice their faith and follow their own family law. In Islamic territories, they were not to bear arms or proselytize, and they were to pay the aforementioned special tax, the jizyah. They were second-class citizens, or dhimmis. As many have pointed out, the classic Islamic state, while deficient by modern standards, was more tolerant than the Christian states of the time, which insisted on complete comformity to a state religion. Now most Christians embrace tolerance and freedom of religion -- as do most religions. Conversely, some modern Muslim states are far less tolerant towards non-Muslims than they were during the Golden Age of Islam. == History == Islamic history begins in Arabia in the 7th century with the emergence of the prophet Muhammad. Within a century of his death, an Islamic state stretched from the Atlantic ocean in the west to central Asia in the east, which however was soon torn by Fitnas. After this, there would always be rival dynasties claiming the caliphate, or leadership of the Muslim world, and many Islamic states or empires offering only token obedience to an increasingly powerless caliph. Nonetheless, the later empires of the Abbasid caliphs and the Seljuk Turk were among the largest and most powerful in the world. After the disastrous defeat of the Byzantines at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, Christian Europe launched a series of Crusades and for a time captured Jerusalem. Saladin however restored unity and defeated the Shiite Fatimids. In the 18th century there were three great Muslim empires: the Ottoman empire in Turkey, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean; the Safavid in Iran; and the Mogul in India. By the 19th century, these realms had fallen under the sway of European political and economic power. Following WWI, the remnants of the Ottoman empire were parcelled out as European protectorates or sphere of influence. Islam and Islamic political power have revived in the 20th century. However, the relationship between the West and the Islamic world remains uneasy. === Contemporary Islam === [[Image:Distribution of Islam.jpg|thumb|right|275px|Map showing Muslim Distribution, by the CIA (1996).]] Although the most visible movement in Islam in recent times has been fundamentalism Islamism, there are a number of liberal movements within Islam which seek alternative ways to reconcile the Islamic faith with the modern world. Early shariah had a much more flexible character than is currently associated with Islamic jurisprudence, and many modern Muslim scholars believe that it should be renewed, and the classical jurists should lose their special status. This would require formulating a new fiqh suitable for the modern world, e.g. as proposed by advocates of the Islamization of knowledge, and would deal with the modern context. One vehicle proposed for such a change has been the revival of the principle of ijtihad, or independent reasoning by a qualified Islamic scholar, which has lain dormant for centuries. This movement does not aim to challenge the fundamentals of Islam; rather, it seeks to clear away misinterpretations and to free the way for the renewal of the previous status of the Islamic world as a center of modern thought and freedom. See Modern Islamic philosophy for more on this subject. The claim that only "liberalisation" of the Islamic Shariah law can lead to distinguishing between tradition and true Islam is countered by many Muslims with the argument that any meaningful "fundamentalism" will, by definition, reject non-Islamic cultural inventions -- by, for instance, acknowledging and implementing Muhammad's insistence that women have God-given rights that no human being may legally infringe upon. Proponents of modern Islamic philosophy sometimes respond to this by arguing that, as a practical matter, "fundamentalism" in popular discourse about Islam may actually refer, not to core precepts of the faith, but to various systems of cultural traditionalism. === The demographics of Islam today === Based on the percentages published in the 2003 CIA factbook, Islam is the second largest religion in the world. According to the [http://www.wnrf.org/news/trends.html World Network of Religious Futurists], the [http://www.religioustolerance.org/growth_isl_chr.htm U.S. Center for World Mission], and the controversial Samuel P. Huntington, Islam is growing faster numerically than any of the other major world religions. [http://www.religioustolerance.org/isl_numb.htm Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance] estimate that it is growing at about 2.9% annually, as opposed to 2.3% per year global population growth. This is mainly due to the higher birth rates in many Islamic countries while a high conversion rate is also a noted factor. According to "The Almanac Book of Facts", the overall population increased 137% within the past decade, Christianity increased 46%, while Islam increased 235%. Commonly cited estimates of the Muslim population today range between 900 million and 1.4 billion people (cf. [http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html Adherents.com]); estimates of Islam by country based on US State Department figures yield a total of 1.48 billion, 22.82% of the world's population (see Islam by country.) Only 18% of Muslim live in the Arab world; a fifth is found in Sub-Saharan Africa, about 30% in the Indian subcontinental region of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, and the world's largest single Muslim community (within the bounds of one nation) is in Indonesia. There are also significant Muslim populations in China, Europe, Central Asia, and Russia. The number of Muslims in North America is variously estimated as anywhere from 1.8 to 7 million, depending on which source is used. == See also == * Adhan (also called azan or aazan) * Apostasy in Islam * Christo-Islamic * Dawah * Islamic economics * Islamophobia * Islamism * Islamic science * Jihad * Liberal movements within Islam * List of Islamic and Muslim related topics * List of Muslims * Slavery#Slavery under Islam * Sex segregation#Segregation of the Sexes in Islam * Syariaat Islam * Timeline of Islamic history == Notes == #Shi'a muslims do not believe in absolute predestination (Qadar), since they consider it incompatible with Divine Justice. Neither do they believe in absolute free will since that contradicts God's Omniscience and Omnipotence. Rather they believe in "a way between the two ways" (amr bayn al‑'amrayn) believing in free will, but within the boundaries set for it by God and exercised with His permission. #The Egyptian Islamic Jihad group claims, as did a few long-extinct early medieval Kharijite sects, that Jihad is the "sixth pillar of Islam." Some Ismaili groups consider "Allegiance to the Imam" to be the so-called sixth pillar of Islam. For more information, see the article entitled Sixth pillar of Islam. == References == * Encyclopedia of Islam * The Koran Interpreted: a translation by A. J. Arberry, ISBN 0684825074 * Islam, by Fazlur Rahman, University of Chicago Press; 2nd edition (1979). ISBN 0226702812 * The Islamism Debate, Martin Kramer, University Press, 1997 * Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook, Charles Kurzman, Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 0195116224 * Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender and Pluralism Omid Safi, Oneworld Publications, Oxford, 2003. ISBN 1-85168-316-X * The Challenge of Fundamentalism: Political Islam and the New World Disorder, Bassam Tibi, Univ. of California Press, 1998 == External links == === Online academic sources === *[http://www.encislam.demo.brill.nl/ ''Encyclopedia of Islam'' (Brill) Online Demo Page] *[http://philtar.ucsm.ac.uk/encyclopedia/islam/ Encyclopedia of Islam (Overview of World Religions)] *[http://www.arches.uga.edu/~godlas/home.html Resources for Studying Islam] (Department of Islamic Studies, University of Georgia) *[http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ Islamic Philosophy] (Journal of Islamic Philosophy, University of Michigan) === Directories === *Links: [http://omnibus.uni-freiburg.de/~riexinge/euroislam.html Islam in Western Europe], [http://omnibus.uni-freiburg.de/~riexinge/UKIslam.html Islam in the United Kingdom] *Links: [http://omnibus.uni-freiburg.de/~riexinge/sasislam.html Islam in South Asia] *[http://dmoz.org/Society/Religion_and_Spirituality/Islam/ Open Directory Project: Islam] *[http://dmoz.org/Society/Religion_and_Spirituality/Opposing_Views/Islam/ dmoz.org Open Directory Project: Contra Islam] (a list of links critical of Islam) ===Islam and the Arts and Sciences === *[http://users.telerama.com/~jdehullu/islam/frames.htm Islamic Architecture] *[http://www.lacma.org/islamic_art/intro.htm Islamic Art] (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) *[http://www.muslimheritage.com/ Muslim Heritage] (Foundation for Science Technology and Civilisation, UK) *[http://www.islamicarchitecture.org/ Islamic Architecture (IAORG)] illustrated descriptions and reviews of a large number of mosques, palaces, and monuments. *[http://www.muslimmuseum.org/ The International Museum of Muslim Cultures], Jackson, MS. Features exhibits on Islamic Moorish Spain and the Timbuktu Manuscripts. Islam bn:ইসলাম fa:اسلام haw:Hoʻomana Mohameka jbo:musyjda kw:Islam sw:Uislamu li:Islam ms:Islam simple:Islam su:Islam th:ศาสนาอิสลาม
Archives of older discussions may be found here: *Talk:Islam/Archive 1
*Talk:Islam/Archive 2
*Talk:Islam/Archive 3
*Talk:Islam/Archive 4
*Talk:Islam/Archive 5
----- == Statements without citing sources == Statements without citing sources #The form of the Qur'an most used today is the Al-Azhar text of 1923, prepared by a committee at the prestigious Cairo university of Al-Azhar. #*This statement never shows that who believe it. Many others but I think we should go one statement at a time. User:Zain engineer 12:53, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC) The first statement is true. See :''THE QUR'AN IN PRINT'' :http://www.ymofmd.com/books/uaq/ch3s4.htm :''The Qur'anic text in printed form now used widely in the Muslim world and developing into a 'standard version', is the so-called 'Egyptian' edition, also known as the King Fu'ad edition, since it was introduced in Egypt under King Fu'ad. This edition is based on the reading of Hafs, as reported by 'Asim, and was first printed in Cairo in 1925/1344H. Numerous copies have since been printed.'' User:OneGuy 20:13, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC) Don't you think that some mention must be made of the shahada as recited by Shi'as. The article ends the Kalima at mohammed ur rasul allah. The Shi'as add 'aliyun wali allah' to that. --User:Notquiteauden 19:57, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC) == Scapula's edits == Someone recently added a rambling and discursive para to the article that was not only marginally literate, it was wrong in many cases. The statement that put my teeth on edge was that Judaism and Chrisianity were the only religions of that time and place that weren't didn't worship idols. Um, Zoroastrianism doesn't worship idols, so far as I know, and Buddhism doesn't unless it's mixed with folk religion. Not to mention the fact that Eastern Orthodoxy was riven with conflict between those who venerated icons, and those who didn't (iconoclasts). I reverted the article to the pre-addition version. I don't want to discourage Scapula from editing Wikipedia, but I'd suggest that he/she start on less contentious articles that are closer to his/her areas of expertise. User:Zora 20:44, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC) == Problematic statement == The article states "Unlike Christianity, Islam has not undergone any period of reformation...". This phrase makes it seem like Islam is a monolithic unchanging entity, and smacks of outdated viewpoints (i wont use the O. word dont worry!). What do you think about removal? : I've occasionally thought that this should be rewritten. The wording assumes that every religion needs a period of reformation, just like Christianity. Hmmm. I'm a Buddhist and I don't think Buddhism has ever had a period of reformation. It just keeps changing all the time. : Now if I were a Muslim I'd probably be a reformist and believe that many Islamic religious professionals were medieval in their viewpoints, and that the gates of ijtihad should be opened again -- but that shouldn't be an assumption underlying the article. User:Zora 08:17, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC) : I agree completely that, like any tradition that spans the globe, Islamic traditions are not monolithic, encompass a wide range of cultures from N. America to the Philippines, and have undergone many changes, a number of which can intelligibly be referred to as reformist. For example, in the tenth century, the great scholar and lecturer on Islamic law, Muhammad al-Ghazzali, right in the middle of his regular lectures, interrupted his lecture could speak no more. While those near him thought he had suffered from some sort of physical attack, he had, according to his own autobiography, undergone a profound crisis of conscience. He found an emptiness beneath the impressive body of legal precepts, and left his secure position as teacher of law, and went on a seven-year physical and philosophical journey that led to a major reform of the tradition that could be compared to that of Martin Luther. Ghazzali focused on an inner dimension to the legal traditions, by focusing, for example, on the intention of the person behind the performance of ritual and the precepts of legal rules. Moreover, he contributed to integration of Sunni Islam and Sufism, which by his time become a movement of interior spirituality that criticised the superficiality of legalism and what they considered the moral decline that came with the enormous wealth and power in the Middle East and Central Asia. In fact, Ghazzali was called "mujadded" that is, someone who brought something new, or fresh. His interpretation of the Verse of Light (Sura Noor) of the Qur'an, written after his journey, gives a whiff of that freshness. His autobiography, which covers his crisis, and illustrates his searching, sharp mind, his poignant honesty and is as lucid and self-revelatory as the writing of any a reformer. What is the likely origin of the view that Islam never went through reform? It is probably the conception that Islam is essentially a pre-modern, medieval tradition. However, between the ninth and thirteenth centuries could arguably qualify as "Classical" rather than medieval, as is commonly understood. Why? This period was formative in several senses: individuals asked fundamental questions about the human condition, there was much diversity of opinion, there was significant dialog between reason and spiritual experience, individuality was respected, and there was a profound and general respect for the validity of one's experience, observation and powers of reason, and finally, a healthy suspicion of received knowledge or tradition. Another example from that period is an encyclopedia call the "Treatise of the Brethren of Purity", written about 700 years before Diderot, by a group of individuals in many walks of life, in the city of Basra, in present-day Iraq. This massive work covered the knowledge of the day from music to mathematics, from physiology (which included knowledge of the human circulatory system) to natural history, as well as narratives that would today be called precursors of fiction. One of these narratives is called "Trial of the Animals Versus Humanity", in which a group of animals revolt against the domination of human beings, and question the assumption that human beings make that they are superior to animals. These animals do not trust human courts, so resort to the court of Genies (Jinn). This segment of the encycopedia covers probably one percent of the total work, and has recently been called the first example of deep ecology in human history. My next submission will be a summary of several such texts, and believe that these texts should fall under a new heading in the sidebar "Islam": Literature and Science. I am new to this encyclopedia, and would like someone's assistance in this. -- Just to add to the evidence for reform in Islam: "Throughout its long history, the community [of Islam] has had to respond to internal and external threats to its continued life and vitality. As a result, Islam has a long tradition of religious renewal and reform, extending from its earliest history to the present." -- Islam: The Straight Path, John L. Esposito, p. xv "Dissatisfaction with Umayyad rule also resulted in the development of nonrevolutionary reform movements within society....In addition to the disaffected Kharijite and Alids, a host of other critics sprang up....This gave rise, in particular, to the growth of two Islamic movements or institutions, the ulama (religious scholars) and the Sufism (mystics)." -- Islam: The Straight Path, John L. Esposito, p. 48 Furthermore, the Protestant Reformation is somewhat of a misnomer. "Reformation" implies a change from within. Regardless of Luther's intent (reformation of the Catholic Church or the advent of Protestantism), the result was a schism. From this perspective, Islam has had many "reformations." With two civil wars and a slew of offshoot movements, Islam is no stranger to reform/schism. -User:Dws == Appreciation == Sorry to interrupt your work with this, but I have just been reading the article on Islam and your talk page, and I have to express to you all how impressive it is to see such consummate civility and mutual respect in your discussions. --User:Jmenon == Article requests == For a list of requested article topics regarding Islam, Islamic culture, and the Muslim world, see Wikipedia:Requested articles/Culture and fine arts#Islam. -- User:Karada 13:10, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC) == Islam POV == It is my point of view that the entry for islam and the talk page associated is very far from npov it is apparant that it is muslim point of view. there is nothing that I have found, (although I don't have more than a couple of hours to read this one article) about how women are repressed and abused. You all have created a wonderful recruiting page for islam, good for you. Furthermore, you edit out what people put in that disagrees with what you think islam should be, not what it is in reality. I may have missed it, but all of the various sects are not delved into, only what would be pristine islam. God is the only God, and he said 'thou shalt not kill'. May His light open your eyes. :I agree that Islamism is not as clearly separable from Islam as suggested in this article. There should be a section briefly outlining the history of radical interpretations of Islam, rather than simply the plain link under 'see also'. User:Dbachmann User_talk:Dbachmann 12:43, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC) ::But this is also true for some other religious articles on Wikipedia, especially Hinduism. I don't see Hindutva even mentioned (even in see also section) in Hinduism article User:OneGuy 22:42, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC) :::hm, in my opinion Hindutva should definitely be linked from Hinduism. I'm not saying we need a long paragraph about Islamism. One sentence is enough, just making it part of the article text rather than linking it without comment. Also, the Islamism article makes it sound like it's a 20th century phenomenon. Afaik, there were similar discussions in medieval Persia, contrasting fundamentalist/strict interpretations with more 'Persian'/mystic ideas (origins of Sufism?). But I'm not knowledgeable about this. Do we have an article where these controversies are explained? User:Dbachmann User_talk:Dbachmann 16:24, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC) ==Creed "translations"== also, can people please stop messing with the translation of the "creed"? ''la ilaha illa-llahu'' means "[There is] no god but God". End of story. It does ''not'' mean "no god is rightfully worshipped" or anything similar. These are theological interpretations/implications, not translationss. User:Dbachmann User_talk:Dbachmann 14:48, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC) The correct translation is as follows: 'ilaah' is from the root word 'alaha' which means 'to adore'. ilaah does not literally mean 'God'. ilaah is anything that is adored or is worshipped or craved after etc, such as money, wine, women, ancestor worship, God. Therefore, 'ilaah' refers to many objects including God but the word 'Allah' refers only to God. So in Arabic, the Creed really does mean "There is nothing worthy of worship/adoration except God". This IS the correct translation! :arguably, a periphrase. except that brevity and the etymological connection are lost. How about "there is nothing godly but God"? After all "god" simply means "to be worshipped (''gheu-to-'')" too. User:Dbachmann User_talk:Dbachmann 12:06, 30 May 2005 (UTC) :: "There is no God but God" is the usual English translation -- I don't think we need to come up with a new version. Or, if this is a matter of such importance, what about a breakout article? English translations of the Islamic confession of faith or some such thing. Do different mosques or Islamic confederations in English-speaking countries use different versions? Do Salafis and Sufis use different versions? This ''can'' be a big thing in some contexts. Consider the fuss over different versions of the Anglican services/prayerbook/whatever (I'm blanking on the correct term). User:Zora 12:37, 30 May 2005 (UTC) :::I agree the difference may be impoortant. We don't need an "English translations" article, though, it can all be detailed on shahada. Just keep the most common translation here. User:Dbachmann User_talk:Dbachmann 14:50, 30 May 2005 (UTC) == Reason I removed links in "academic sources" == Another anon editor inserted four links to various websites and publications of Al-Mawrid Institute in Pakistan. That's a little much! I thought that I might narrow the links to one, and looked through them for academic content. But there wasn't any, really. Those sites are directed at devout Muslims who want to deepen their faith; there really is no academic content. I found one paper on a Christian gospel, which started out with a note to the effect that "I'm busy, I didn't have a chance to finish this term paper, but here it is." Unfinished undergraduate papers are not the stuff of a peer-reviewed academic journal. I would suggest that the anon editor make sure that all those links are included in the Open Directory listings. We link to the Open Directory, so an interested reader could follow the links to the Al-Mawrid site. User:Zora 11:05, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC) == Prophets == Since you asked, the hadith giving 124,000 is in Musnad Ibn Hanbal. It may not be significant enough to mention on the main page, though. - User:Mustafaa 22:15, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC) == Environmentalism and religion == I have added a section "Environmentalism and religion" to the Environmentalism article. Perhaps someone familiar with Islamic theology could add to it. --User:Erauch 19:24, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC) == "Sect" problem == The sidebar on this and (presumably) every other major article relating to Islam lists articles on Maliki, Hanbali, etc. among "sects." This is not accurate, they are complementary schools of jurisprudence. Note that they are insistent on that point, inasmuch as Qur'an pronounces breaking the religion into sects as a sin. In any given Sunni masjid in US, one may encounter practitioners of all four of these schools of thought, or madhabs. They're better understood as distinct scholarly approaches to how best to perform the same obligations; they're not sects in the sense of competing subgroups. May I suggest we retitle heading as "Schools of Thought" wherever it appears? User:BrandonYusufToropov 14:02, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC) : How about just using ''madhab'' and then defining it? Any attempt to coin an English phrase ends up being as long as a definition anyway. User:Zora 19:24, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC) I don't know. You will notice that it is not the madhhabs that are defined as sects; but Sunni and Shia, with the schools of thought within them listed after those two with a colon. And though not exactly the same as, say, Christian sects, Sunni, Shia, Mutaza'ila, etc. are close to what a sect is. What say?User:IFaqeer—User:IFaqeer User talk:IFaqeer 19:33, Feb 14, 2005 (UTC) : Having taken another look at the sidebar, I'd say that it is misleading, and that the decision to present it that way may have been due to a perceived need to balance the list of Shi'a sects with a list of Sunni "sects" and make a visually balanced presentation. It would seem to be clearest to introduce another category, Madhab or Legal Tradition, and rework the sect list. It wouldn't look as pretty, having Sunni all by itself on one line, but it would be more rational. User:Zora 22:10, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC) : I can try to add another category, but I'm afraid I don't know how to edit a template. Where exactly is the text I would change? User:BrandonYusufToropov 11:27, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC) :: D'oh. I don't know where templates are stored. User:Zora 12:04, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC) ::Okay, I found it (with help from User:OneGuy. It was here: template:Islam, and I made the edit without totally messing up the graphics, which was a concern. What do people think? User:BrandonYusufToropov 18:02, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC) ::: Looks good. Thanks Brandon. User:Zora 19:16, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC) : Misleading. Why are Sunni madhabs in separate section while Shi'a ones are in sect section? Ithna Asharia, Ismailiyah, Zaiddiyah, are all Shi'a User:OneGuy 19:28, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC) I've tried to fix that and other issues - tell me what you think. - User:Mustafaa 19:47, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC) == Does anyone have any good sources? == Hello. I'm trying to find some information on why the Abbasid Dynasty in Baghdad weakened and lost to the Mongols. I'm trying to find some good books/cites/articles on the reasons why the caliphate weakened and not just what happened. Does anyone have any good suggestions? Thanks! : Given that the Mongols trounced everyone for thousands of miles (Central Asians, Chinese, Russians, AND the Abbasids), I'm not sure that it's necessary to conclude that the Abbasids were WEAK. Would the outcome have been any different if the Mongols had arrived earlier, when the Caliphate was still "strong"? Could the Mongols have beaten the Arab warriors of Uthman? : I'm reminded of sf fans and discussions such as "Could the Starship Enterprise beat the Death Star?" User:Zora 08:06, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC) : Good point. However, during the Umayyad dynasty, the empire was very large. After the Abbasids overthrew them and moved the capital, the empire gradually became smaller until it was just the area around Baghdad. I'm looked for the reasons why the empire became smaller. User:Green789 15:26, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC) == Was the link that bad? == OneGuy, you reverted the addition of a link to arabic-islamic.org -- or something like that. I had already taken one look at the link and decided that it might actually add to the article. Could you share your thought processes in deciding that it was part of a link spam? User:Zora 18:10, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC) :Most of the site is in Spanish. Put in Spanish Wikipedia if you like the site User:OneGuy 19:18, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC) == Removed forum sites == Fansher, I removed the forum sites you added. Those are proselytizing sites, and if we allow them, out of the hundreds or even thousands of proselytizing sites on the web, we'd have to allow them all. Just make sure that those sites are in the open directory (to which we link) and then people can find them if they look. User:Zora 09:24, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC) == FA status == Hello all, I just want to say that I found this article to be an excellent article to Islam. It is clear, ''seems'' NPOV (I can't say - I'm a Christian) and well written. It uses summary sections well (though I'm not so crash hot on a section that has no summary form and refers to another article on Wikipedia) and the infobox is pretty cool. If only the Christianity article was so good! Anyway, I'd like to know what we need to do to get this to FA status. What do people think? - User:Ta bu shi da yu 05:27, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC) Simply go here and follow the instructions. Wikipedia:Featured article candidates --User:Christofurio 00:31, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC) ::I agree -- it would be a nice feature article. No idea how to nominate, though.User:BrandonYusufToropov 11:47, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC) ::I agree, it's quite an acheivement considering the amount of vandalism and well-meaning spamming. I think the sections containing nothing but a "main article" link should just be moved to "see also". The "English version of the creed" needs some work (can we get the original Arabic?) what is the difference between Angels (which means, Messengers), and "Messengers"? What is the term translated by "Angel"? Maybe include some stuff from Angels#Islamic_views? User:Dbachmann User_talk:Dbachmann 12:11, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC) ::: ''malak'' means "messenger" in Hebrew; in Arabic, it has no meaning but "angel", as far as I know. - User:Mustafaa 23:22, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC) :::With an eye toward nomination, I have cut-and-pasted a key paragraph from the "Islam and other religions" article to fill in that blank spot, and copyedited what seemed to me a few unclear spots in "Islam in the Modern World" -- thoughts? User:BrandonYusufToropov 11:54, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC) == Proper name of Shi'a == Hi, I'm no expert on Islam, so I'm not exactly sure what the proper way to refer to Shi'as is. What should wikipedia use? I've seen the following on various pages: *Shiites *Shi'ites *Shiite Muslims *Shi'ite Muslims *Shia *Shias *Shia Muslims *Shi'a *Shi'as *Shi'a Muslims *Shi'i Also I am confused whether to use: *Shiism *Shi'ism *Shia Islam *Shi'a Islam *Shiaism This problem is illustrated by [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=Shi%27a_Islam What links to Shi'a Islam]. Needless to say, all of this variety is a bit confusing. I think it would be useful for Wikipedia to adopt one standard, and stick to it on all articles. The problem is that it takes quite a while to change existing articles to match that standard. I am willing to do a hundred of the articles linking to Shi'a Islam via redirects, but no more than that (There are just too many). If anyone else would like to help out, just click the above link, find a page, and change the references to Shi'a to be in whatever form is thought best. Let me know what you think at my talk page, or we can have a discussion here. --User:Jacobolus 07:02, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC) :some are more common than other spellings, but it's a matter of convention I suppose, and uniformityu will be difficult to impose on WP. Myself I would opt for ''Shi'ites'', ''Shi'a'', only if because the apostrophe makes it looks less similar to ''shite'' :o) User:Dbachmann User_talk:Dbachmann 13:32, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC) == System problem == During a recent reversion, the final third of the article simply evaporated, and attempts to resave from the same version resulted in the same missing text. I cut and pasted from the article page to restore the missing text, but I know there are some ugly spots and missing internal links. At least the text is now current, and Godwilling I will fix the links later on. User:BrandonYusufToropov 14:47, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC) == Okay, I've used up my three reverts for the day ... == ... and the vandalism of this page continues. Help, please. User:BrandonYusufToropov 19:20, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC) :I've got it. For future reference, though, 3RR doesn't apply to simple and obvious vandalism, so feel free to revert that as much as you like. —User:MirvUser talk:MirvSpecial:Emailuser/Mirv 19:35, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC) ==atheism== could somebody check out Atheism#In_Islam, please? I was under the impression that shirk and kafir were not overlapping concepts, and that kafir was more or less equivalent to atheist. The article now claims "the concept does not exist", I am not sure who inserted that. User:Dbachmann User_talk:Dbachmann 11:57, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC) == Pronunciation == I added a pronunciation of "islam" in Arabic. I'm not a native speaker, though, so please remove if it's too crappy. - User:Karmosin 08:23, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC) :wtf? and then you replaces ''islam'' with ''muhammad'' with the edit summary ::"And then he crapped up the name of the Lord, and the Lord was wrathful..." : -- is this some sort of surreal vandalism? And why is the file called "ar-islam"? I suppose the audio file should include the article, ''al-islam'', and if it is to be at all useful, be spoken by a native arab (Saudi? Bedouin?) User:Dbachmann User_talk:Dbachmann 09:26, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC) ::Sheesh... Sorry! I can't read Arabic, so I must've accidently gone to Muhammad and copied the text there. I was looking at both pages at once. And I was trying to make a joke with the description because I thought I had messed up the Arabic text while editing and thought i set it right. ::And the file name is "ar-islam.ogg" because that's the standard for naming soundfiles on Commons. "Ar-" is the 2-letter ISO 639 code for Arabic and those instructions are clearly stated at Commons if you just look around. Also, try not to assume the worst because of one mistake. I don't enjoy having "wtf"s thrown at me for no good reason. ::Now I know I'm not a native. But since no one has uploaded any samples of Arabic, is the pronunciation bad enough to merit no pronunciation at all? - User:Karmosin 09:53, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC) :::sorry for the "wtf", no offence intended -- I just couldn't figure out what was going on :o) I understand the "ar-" now, I was confused because the file should properly say "al-islam" (and be named "ar-al-islam", I suppose, then). I am obviously no native either, but your file seemed to get the accent wrong, it said íslam, while it should be islám (with a long ''a''), the ''i-'' being just a prothetic vowel (to the root ''slm'', "peace etc.". regards, User:Dbachmann User_talk:Dbachmann 10:27, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC) ::::Ok, then. Thanks for the feedback. I'd like to love to learn some Arabic, but I have my hands (or rather my mouth) tied with Chinese, German and Spanish. Is the word "islam" usually refered to in everyday speech as "the islam"? For example: if someone answered the question "What religion are you studying ?", would the proper answer be "al islam", and not just "islam"? Let me try one more recording and if I still don't get it right I'll leave it to the Arabs. ::::Btw, does the prothetic vowel become a sort of schwa or does it simply not occur on its own at the start of a clause? - User:Karmosin 14:35, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC) :::::I ''think'' it's almost invariably used with the article, i.e. "''the'' submission" as opposed to some submission of someone to somebody, just as the koran always has the article, "''the'' lecture", as opposed to some unspecified lecture. The prothetic vowel is necessary before any cluster of two consonants, see arabic grammar. it is an ''i''-sound (but I suppose dialects will vary). I strongly believe that if we're going to have sound files to illustrate pronunciation, they should be recordings of native speakers (Arabic has how many? a quarter of a billion? shouldn't be too difficult to find one :) User:Dbachmann User_talk:Dbachmann 15:22, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC) Apparantly not enough of them know that there's even an option of uploading sound files since there are no sound files in Arabic at Commons nor here (to my knowledge). Now unless this second attempt really is horribly substandard, how about we try to be Wikipedia:Be_bold? I mean, what's the worst scenario, really? An upset Arab replacing it with a native pronunciation? :-) This, if anything, is a good way of letting people know there's the possibility of creating sound files on wikipedia. Here's the second attempt: - User:Karmosin 21:15, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC) :well, it sounds like "al ísslam" to me, but I am open to other opinions. User:Dbachmann User_talk:Dbachmann 10:18, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC) :If you can be bothered, you could extract the word from a qur'anic recitation. It occurs e.g. 3:19 or 61:7, you could rip it from a recitation on [http://www.aswatalislam.net/CategorySelectionMadeP.aspx?CatID=1001] (the faq says the files are freely redistributable). In [http://server1.aswatalislam.net/Audios/Quran%5CQuran%20-%20Abdul%20Aziz%20AlAhmed%20-%20mp3%5C/Quran%20-%20Abdul%20Aziz%20AlAhmed%20-%20Surah061%20-%20As%20-%20Saff(TheRow)(www.aswatalislam.net).mp3 this mp3 file], the word occurs at ca. 1:42–1:45 (but it is chanted, not spoken in a natural voice). User:Dbachmann User_talk:Dbachmann 10:41, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC) ::To be honest, I can't hear any difference at all between the chanter's and my own "i". I'm also definetly not stressing it; that much I know about phonetics. The chanter's "a" is more closed, though. Almost on the brink of becoming a Swedish [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Sv-ek.ogg e:]. Is that due to dialect or the chant? ::In any case, I modeled my pronunciation on sound files from Nationalencyklopedin, which are cleary pronounced by a native speaker who clearly pronounces the "i". Incidentally, he also doesn't use an article, but I'l trust your syntactic judgement on that one. ::Eventhough I really like that chant, the extremly low quality and clearity make it pretty useless as a guide to pronunciation. I suggest we use what we've got and hope some native speaker will come along and be urged to do a proper recording. I mean, it's not like I'm pronouncing it ... - User:Karmosin 12:09, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC) :::(*lol*) fair enough, let's see what the natives say :o) User:Dbachmann User_talk:Dbachmann 12:30, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC) ::::Now that's Wikipedia:Be bold! :-D ==Islamic Civilizations== I am new to this encyclopedia, and would like someone's assistance in this. I would like to suggest an additional heading under the category "Islam" which so far, understandably focuses mainly on doctrine and religious communities, schools and orientations, but also has architecture. I would like to suggest a heading that contains architecture, as well as a wide range of other phenomena. Islamic Civilizations is in the plural because as a world tradition, the faith has interacted with a wide range of cultures: pre-Islamic Arabian, African, Iranian, Turkic, Indian, South-East Asian, Chinese, etc. This category of knowledge goes beyond theology and practice to encompass culture, scientific knowledge, medicine, technology, the meaningful relationship different Muslims have with their natural environment, with different cultural traditions, as well as the understandings and practices that are hybrid and creative integration of different traditions and cultural practices. Islamic Civilizations covers various works from around the world such as poetic literature, stories, philosophical and scientific treatises, travel accounts, maps, and encyclopedias. This section would thus embody the pluralism and breadth of concern that is to be found in any tradition that encompasses about one billion people spanning the globe, over a period of one thousand four hundred years. I shall start in a small way by describing texts that demonstrate a small piece of knowledge that would fall in such a category. Between the ninth and thirteenth centuries was a period of scientific and cultural development among Muslims and others who shared a cultural space that could arguably qualify as "Classical" rather than medieval, as is commonly understood. Why? Despite some degree of political turbulence, this period was formative in several senses: individuals often asked fundamental questions about the human condition, there was much diversity of opinion, there was significant dialog between reason and spiritual experience, individuality was generally respected, and there was a profound and general respect for the validity of one's experience, one's own powers of observation and reason, and finally, a healthy suspicion of received knowledge or tradition. During this period, many texts developed, mainly in Arabic, some of which are in English translation. For example, in the tenth century, the great scholar and lecturer on Islamic law, Muhammad al-Ghazzali, who lived in in Baghdad, which was then in the middle of a period of creative ferment. Right in the middle of his regular lectures, al-Ghazzali stopped his lecture and could speak no more. While those near him thought he had suffered from some sort of physical ailment, he had, according to his own autobiography, undergone a profound crisis of conscience. He found an emptiness beneath the impressive body of legal precepts, and soon left his secure position as teacher of law, and went on a seven-year physical and philosophical journey that led to a major reform of the tradition that could in some respects be compared to that of Martin Luther. Ghazzali focused on an inner dimension to the legal traditions, by focusing, for example, on the intention of the person behind the performance of ritual and the precepts of legal rules. Moreover, he contributed to integration of Sunni Islam and Sufism, which by his time become a movement of interior spirituality that, for the most part from the "outside" criticised the superficiality of legalism and what they considered the moral decline that came with the enormous wealth and power in North Africa, Western, Central and South Asia. In fact, Ghazzali was called "mujadded" that is, someone who brought something new, or fresh. He could be critiqued for being conservative, and hermetically sealing his innovative synthesis. Nevertheless, his interpretation of the Verse of Light (Sura Noor) of the Qur'an, written after his journey, gives a whiff of his respect for the inner life and his freshness of mind. His autobiography, which covers his crisis, and illustrates his searching, sharp mind, his poignant honesty and is as lucid and self-revelatory as the writing of any a reformer. Both his interpretation of that famous verse and his autobiography have been translated into English. Another example from that period is an encyclopedia call the "Treatise of the Brethren of Purity", written about 700 years before Diderot, by a group of individuals in many walks of life, in the city of Basra, in present-day Iraq. This massive work covered the knowledge of the day from music to mathematics, from physiology (which included knowledge of the human circulatory system) to natural history, as well as narratives that would today be called precursors of fiction. One of these narratives is called "Trial of the Animals Versus Humanity", in which a group of animals revolt against the domination of human beings, and question the assumption that human beings make that they are superior to animals. These animals do not trust human courts, so resort to the court of Genies (Jinn). This segment of the encycopedia covers probably one percent of the total work, and although it is not ecology in the modern sense, and represents a rudimentary but genuine observation of animals and insects, has recently been called the first example of deep ecology in human history. I will obtain the references to the above texts and post them ASAP. My next submission will be a summary of several such texts, which should, hopefully, encourage others who know other such texts to summarize and reference them. ~saffroncoconut ---- You don't need anyone's permission to start an article. It needn't be linked to Islam at first. If you want to start writing articles about Islamic scholars, jurisprudence, literature, just go ahead. Just do a ''search'' first to make sure that it's not covered already. Note: search on various terms to make sure you've looked everywhere the subject might be filed. As a newbie, I set up several pages that I later discovered already existed, under slightly different names. Once you start accumulating the little bits, it will be clear how things should be organized into categories (note that they can belong to more than one category). Also, there IS Islamic material in Wikipedia that's NOT linked to the Islam article. Frex, there's hijab and Islam and clothing, which need to be combined, really, and Sufism, Islamic music, Arab music, etc. If you want to set up some categories that don't already exist and start cross-linking things, that's fine too. I don't think it should ALL go to the Islam article -- we'd end up with ten zillion links. But we could link the Islam article to a few link-collection pages. Starting with the major categories and working down may not be the best approach. I'd also be somewhat concerned about the idea of an "Islamic" civilization. While Islam may have provided the framework, a lot was contributed by the Christian and Jewish dhimmis. Whenever you start with a huge, vague conception, you end up with vapid generalities and lots of arguments. When you start with the bits and work up, I think you're going to have an easier time getting consensus on how existing bits should be classified and organized. Welcome! Write lots! Explain what you're doing on talk pages! User:Zora 01:59, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC) == A round of edits by non-communicating editors == Several editors went to work on the article without any explanation of what they were doing, or why. I reverted, and I invite those editors to come here and talk to the rest of us about changes. This article is a result of a long period of consultation and negotiation. It is better to work collaboratively in such cases. Skywalker added a link to a Russian website that doesn't appear useful to people searching for general knowledge about Islam. Xbla (or some such name) was busy simplifying and deleting -- edits that in some cases I thought made sense, as stripping away an aura of Muslim religiosity that has gradually accreted -- but such edits are bound to be controversial, and I think should be done gradually and carefully. User:Zora 18:21, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC) Yes, article "[http://www.religiousbook.net/Lectures/Islamic_ethics.html Fundamentals of the Islamic Ethics]" is one of independence view, but it may be very interesting becouse author have a good spiritual practice. Excuse me for my bed english. Best regards, Skywalker. == regarding a round of edits by non-communicating editors == As it been remarked in earlier discussions, the text, as it stood after Grenavitar 's 01:05, 14 Mar 2005 reversion, was tainted with religious proselytization and bias while masquerading itself as an objective presentation of facts. Though parts of the article could be informative and helpful to the reader, there was also present, a noticeable religious slant. More precisely points in contention are: A) The article was salted with assertions one would expect in a religious sermon, B) It presented disingenuous misrepresentations about actual beliefs and practices. C) It made a shrewd attempt to draw legitimacy by portraying belief of a relationship or camaraderie to Christianity and Judaism, which clearly does not exist anywhere in the world today. D) It makes deliberate omissions of important facts and qualifiers such as relating to the true nature of dhimitude in Islam, E) It makes subtle condescensions towards non-Muslims faiths. F) It lists blatant distortions of population statistical information. It seems like a far cry from the honest scholarship that one would expect from encyclopedic researchers. I have attempted to correct this by eliminating the some of faulty sections, which fit in the four types of categories above. Hope this helps :You may have a case regarding the population facts (I do not know about this) however I don't believe you do with the rest of your edit. You show no basis for removing the etymology of the word "Islam". You change "fellow Abrahamic religions" to "competing Abrahamic religions" which if anything adds the opposite bias. You change God to Allah making him different although God is a concept and Allah is a name for that concept therefore Allah can always be called God. It is Muslim belief that God gave his message to many of the Jewish prophets, John the baptist and Jesus and their followers distorted the message. The reason it was revealed to Muhammad is supposed to be because his predecessors communities bastardized the words. These are the beliefs of Islam and removing them so that it sounds harsher is wrong. The Qur'an compares itself to the other religions and tries to make itself look better and it is the obligation of an encyclopedia to report on the traditions of the people and what the text states. The text is an historical document and if it asserts these things then we report them. Christianity assert Jesus is God and we report that so I fail to see how this is any more biased. It is considered to be final revelation and your removal of that more or less asserts that we should remove Seal of the Prophets article too for bias. Your edits are leaving out beliefs of the people who follow Islam which is bias in itself. User:Grenavitar 06:22, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC) === I still stand by the points I made==== I am afraid, Grenavitar, that your statement reflects your personal opinion which you have allowed to color your actions when trying to suppress the restoration of the NPOV. Essentially , your version of the article presents a sanitized face that is meant to be favorable to Islam and demeaning to other faiths. You, yourself could not help blurting out your true opinion of other faiths which you evidently regard as inferior and not as a fellow faith. This being one of my points above. I hope you can take a moment to regain your NPOV on this topic. Try to consider carefully the points I made above and see if you cannot recover an NPOV on this. Your attempt to label my changes as vandalism is ridiculous and a pretty uncalled for tactic. : X, not everyone working on this article is Muslim. The article as it stands (now that I've reverted it) is the result of many months of work by editors of various faiths. The non-Muslim editors (such as myself) have tried hard to include everything that the Muslims think is noteworthy about their religion, but state it so carefully that Muslim belief is described as belief and not stated as fact. : If your experience on Wikipedia has been of working on derelict or abandoned articles, then it hasn't prepared you for dealing with an article watched by a large community of editors. You can't just come in swinging. You can either approach your edits one by one, gradually, and argue for accepting them on the talk page, or you can write an alternate version, put it up on your user talk page or a subsidiary page attached thereto, and then call for comments. : Wikipedia is rather bad at teaching editors HOW to work with the community, such as it is. You have to learn by banging your head against the wall, as I've done too many time. Please accept this advice from a veteran wallbanger. User:Zora 18:34, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
:your edit was also bad in other respects than npov. Don't expect people to clean up after you. You broke the formatting of boldface Islam. You removed information for no good reason. Your tearing into the first section of the article makes it clear you have not read the entire article: You just seem to have read the introduction and decided to make it less "Islamophile" as a kneejerk reaction. It is true that some points of the present article could still be npoved. For example, the assertive "as it is, after all, the direct word of God to mankind." of the introduction is redundant, and you could politely argue for its removal. It is conceivable that the less attractive sides of Islam should be mentioned here, rather than stashed away in Islamism. To that effect, you could suggest a balanced "Islamism" section (this would be the ''Islam in the modern world: What is "fundamental'?'' section which, unlike the intro, is pretty recent, and could still be substantially improved. Have you even got so far as to notice that section?). Just tearing through a half-read article like that, however, will simply get you nowhere. User:Dbachmann User_talk:Dbachmann 18:55, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
::I agree with your removal of that redundant line. It made it seem like you were repeating it to convince the reader and now it is less preachy. User:Grenavitar 20:05, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
:Xl... an article of a religious nature will always have a sense of bias that a scientific one can more easily remove. It is a Muslim belief that their revelations have been kept perfect whereas Christian and Jewish ones have not been and they therefore surpass Christianity and Judaism in terms of truth. This is their belief and we are obliged to report this even if we do not agree. When you write an article about religion you must first report what the general mass of adherents to the religion assert as the basis for your article and this will inherently sound biased towards their beliefs. However, any educated reader should realize that we are reporting the beliefs of a group biased in their own favor and they should look further to see critiques of the religion. As for my bias, I am not Muslim either but I do have a great sympathy for the religion as I do for Christianity as well and POV is added through means of trying to remove the reporting of beliefs of any religion and I see it I will try to stop it. User:Grenavitar 19:38, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
==Women in Islam==
After four years, not a single contributor to Wikipedia has had created an article (even a stub!) on the role of Women in Islam. One must wonder why, especially since people have repeatedly brought this subject up for years. I do understand why many people might be frightened. For several years I have read many articles in newspaper about death threats towars those who openly discuss this subject. (Unless, of course, the article is limited to presenting traditional apologetics.) Frankly, it is about time that this changes. Wikipedia has articles on Christian views of women, the Role of women in Judaism, Feminism in the western world, and in many other areas. I thus will create a short article on this subject, and request that others unafraid of writing in our NPOV style help out. User:RK 21:06, Mar 19, 2005 (UTC)
::Well, be bold and create the article. --User:Samuel J. Howard 12:38, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)
Death threats for writing a Wikipedia article on Women in Islam, huh? What newspapers do you find those in? Anyway, back to the real world... The idea of woman imams has recently become a topical issue, which may interest editors of this article. - User:Mustafaa 05:25, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
:You misread my words and point, Mustafaa. The death threats are being made to Muslim authors and journalists, and to women imams, and to anyone involved in promoting a liberal version of Islam. These death threats have been reported in both American and European newspapers for years. User:RK 18:46, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC)
::Your statement implies that there is something inherently wrong with a 'conversative' version of Islam, and certainly there are many people, particularly in the West, who have such a disdain for conversativism or fundamentalism in Islam. IMHO, however, the people and behaviours that you are referring to have absolutely nothing to do with liberalism versus conversativism or whatever. They are violent fanatics, pure and simple, and unfortunately there are many of these in the Islamic world at the moment (let us forget that such fanaticism is relatively recent in the history of Islam).
Evangelical Christians and Orthodox Jews are certainly conservative, and there are many amongst both groups who are fundamentalists, but the Wesetern media never confuses even the most conversative, fundamentalist Christian or Jew with those who would commit violence in the name of the aforementioned religions. When Baruch Goldstein committed his act of terrorism, nobody condemned conservative or fundamentalist strains of Judaism, and rightly so, since such an act had nothing to do whatsoever with religion or religious conservatism. But it had everything to do with fanaticism, and there are those in Israel who support the actions of such an individual, and they, in turn, are considered lunatics. But certainly not religious conversatives.
Point is, you may not agree with conservative Muslims, but their conservatism does not automatically make them violent zealots ready to send someone to their death for speaking out in favour of women's rights, just as the conversativism of an Orthodox Jew does not automatically make him an extremist with a violent hatred for Palestinians.
To give yet another example, the Ayatollah Khomeini, prior to the Iranian Revolution, was considered by most Iranian Islamic theologians to be a far-left liberal (I kid you not). Most of the conservative Ayatollahs were on the side of the Shah, and opposed Khomeini's so-called "reforms." Most Western liberals (including such leftist luminaries as Michel Foucault and former President Jimmy Carter) supported Khomeini as well. And we've all seen how "successful" that revolution has been, yes? The problem is not conservativism or even fundamentalism, since most religious people of any creed, no matter how conservative they are, are not inclined towards violence. It is that vocal and violent minority found in all socities who choose to wrap themselves in whatever religion or secular ideology most convenient and available, and then go off on some killing spree to justify their insanities. And they do just love seeing their names in all the papers, don't they? User:Ghostintheshell 03:43, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC) ::::By the way, and this is a bit off-topic but I feel is something consistently overlooked by those critical of Islam (and Eastern traditions in general), is the fact that when we are talking about pure Islam, we are ultimately talking about the Qur'an and nothing else. The Qur'an, by it's own account, is the only authoritative book of scripture. And this is common in Eastern traditions where personal interpretation is held above all else - and certainly in the case of Islam personal interpretation of the Qur'an is the only authorititative method. Again, this is all illustrated by the book itself.
All these so-called Islamist groups with their self-styled madrassas and lunatic mullahs advocating all manner of filth and rubbish and calling for death threats against those they perceive as heretics or whatever - these are all not only a bunch of (usually) uneducated idiots (the Taliban for example were notoriously uneducated, especially in all matters Islamic), but from a theological perspective, they have no spiritual authority whatsoever. Nowhere in the Qur'an can there be found any support for organised clergy or special schools or anything like this.
The Saudi's, the Pakistani extremists, Hamas, the Taliban types, al-Qaeda, and so forth, these are all widely reviled (even in the Arab world, especially in Lebanon, Egypt, and Morocco) and for good reason, because they are against Islam, as their very actions not only work against the faith, but there is no Qur'anic justification for their murderous actions. And again, this has nothing to do with conservatism or fundamentalism.
Islam is essentially a traditionalist faith, and thus like Orthodox Judaism and traditional Catholicism/Orthodoxy is conservative. In some ways more so, in others less so. After all, from a historical POV, Islam itself can be seen as an attempt to return to a pure, back-to-the-basics Judaism. But unlike the others, Islam has no organised body which represents the whole, and thus it is very easy for someone or some group to pick up a Qur'an and attempt to speak for everyone else. This tactic, of course, never works, but they do end up cultivating a group, always cult-like and dedicated to spreading violence to both Muslim and non-Muslim alike.
Again, to say that these types are fundamentalist is highly prejudical since this implies that Islam advocates senseless killing and terrorism, which it does not. A terrorist is a terrorist, just as a criminal is a criminal. If someone is a Muslim fundamentalist, then they cannot be a terrorist since a literal interpretation of Qur'an will not lead someone to fly planes into buildings or beat or kill a woman because she is an imam. To say that Islam needs more "moderates" or liberals implies that Islam inherently is a dangerous religion. And that is pure bigotry. User:Ghostintheshell 06:33, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC) Mustafaa, I don't know which country/continent you operate on, but death threats for things that the extreme right finds inconvenient are not something to be trivialized. For three generations, we have dealt with that. One groups of students I worked with had to stare down the barrel of an AK-47 (one of us literally, at one point) for having the temerity to organized an evening that included musical entertainment (just music; sung by people standing very stiffly and very modestly dressed) for students of a major engineering school in Pakistan in 1984. It drives me nuts to have the student organization that did that (the pointing of the gun) and it's parent political party mentioned as one of the more "moderate" Islamist groups. (One of the largest in the MMA.User:IFaqeer—User:IFaqeer User talk:IFaqeer 19:51, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC) : Having been busy with Algerian Civil War for some time (not to mention Abdelkader Alloula), I know full well that death threats for things that the extreme right finds inconvenient are a serious problem. However, I find RK's suggestion that people might be "frightened" to write a ''Wikipedia article'' about women in Islam appallingly unrealistic and rather condescending. It suggests at once that every Wikipedian's name and address are publicly available, that some radical "Islamist" group somewhere is tracking Wikipedia for people whose writing they dislike, and that such an article will in itself, no matter how NPOV, drive such people (whoever they may be) into a murderous frenzy - and that every contributor to Islam-related topics must believe all this! It would have been more polite to Wikipedia:Assume good faith reasons for the article's nonexistence, such as the most obvious possibility - no one had gotten around to it yet. - User:Mustafaa 23:17, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC) Now, now, now. One doesn't have to be actually threatened to be stifled. Self-censorship--or, over about a generation or so, the complete disappearance of alternative points of view in all but the fringes of a body of opinion--can happen without clear and present threats. As an example, just consider the dominance of the Zionist POV in modern Jewish society, especially in the US.User:IFaqeer—User:IFaqeer User talk:IFaqeer 00:21, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC) : Well, that's certainly true; every culture has topics in which alternative POVs are virtually unknown, and sometimes this is a good thing (as, for instance, the near-complete absence in most societies of multiple POVs on cannibalism.) But that's a rather broader and more complicated issue. - User:Mustafaa 01:03, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC) == Islam growth today == ''"In the U.S., more people convert to Islam than any other faith, especially amongst African Americans."'' This is unsubstantiated , where are the statistics on this? What about people who convert out of Islam ? ''"There are approximately 5 million Muslims in North America."'' This is also unsubstantiated , considering that there is not statistical count of muslims in North America. Where do these numbers come from ? Xlaba22 --- The [http://www.pluralism.org Pluralism Project] (a Harvard associated project run by Diana Eck) [http://pluralism.org/resources/statistics/tradition.php#Islam estimates] between 2.56M and 6M Muslims in America. A perhaps less reliable [http://www.colostate.edu/Orgs/MSA/find_more/iia.html source]: "At present, the number of Muslims in the United States is estimated to be on the order of between 5 to 8 million. It is the fastest growing faith in this country." --Colorado State University Muslim Students Association. No citations in article (They due mention several books, the last of which published in 1993, in the article...one can infer from this that the article, and the statistic, is from 1993 or later.) Muslim population of North America (Canada and the US) is put at 323.1 by [http://www.islamicpopulation.com/america_islam.html IslamicPopulation.com]. If you define North America geographically (as opposed to the general European conception) and include Mexico, the population stands at 428M (according to the same source, with Mexico having 104.9M Muslims). I accidentally thought growth stats were needed, and I dug up the following up before I realized it was unneccessary, but here it is anyway: As for growth, [http://www.religioustolerance.org ReligiousTolerance.org] has an [http://www.religioustolerance.org/growth_isl_chr.htm article] with multiple sources with most pointing to Islam being the fastest growing world religion. The Islam scholar John L. Esposito also says "that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the United States..." [http://www.renaissance.com.pk/octbore2y1.html source] : User:Dws 11:33, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC) == Unsubstantiated references in the article == I have removed the references to other prophets which are not mentioned in the Qu'ran. If the article is to reflect the beliefs of Islam it must not introduce extraneous interpretations by editors. The statements "including Adam, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus" implies acknowledgement of these names in the Qu'ran yet these names are no where to be found in the Qu'ran so why is it made ? Should we also include all other self appointed prophets of the world who also are perceived by their followers to speak the words of God? If you wish to reinsert those names please make your case and provide references. Xlaba22 : Muslims believe and follow many things which are not spelled out in the Qur'an -- just as most Christians believe in doctrines, such as the Trinity, which are not spelled out in the New Testament. Most Muslims (except the Salafis) accept the authority of the hadith (traditions), and especially the sahih hadith of Bukhari and Muslim. By insisting that the Islam article be "Qur'an only" you are in fact imposing an extremist version of Islam. Please do some research on Islam! User:Zora 18:52, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC) :: Irregardles then you should provide actual references to substantiate your claims . I realize you may not have been the originator of those particular references to other prophets's name but since you chose to defend this , please provide us with quotes from the hadith that support those claims. The purpose of the article will be better served with direct quotes than a vague " this is what they believe" Xlaba22 ::: I did put the names as well their Quranic references in Prophets of Islam, please check all verses. I think now those names shall be returned back. Adam, Ibrahim, Musa, Isa, and so on are indeed mentioned in the Quran. The names Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and so on are derived from Biblical characters based on similarities in their story. User:DiN 19:52, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC) :Hadith (all Bukhari) *[Vol. 1, Book 6, Hadith 293] "This is a thing which Allah has ordained for the daughters of Adam." *[Vol. 6, Book 60, Hadith 003] "Then Adam will remember his Sin and feel ashamed thereof." :Books that mention them *''What Everyone Should Know About Islam and Muslims'' by Suzanne Haneef *''Islam: Beliefs and Teachings'' by Ghulam Sarwar *''Muhammad: Man and Prophet'' by Adil Salahi I picked up three rudimentary books on Islam I have in my possession at the moment and they all mention Adam and Abraham. The Hadith collections (a ''major'' source of Islamic teaching) mention them often. It just comes down to you being wrong, there are countless examples if you would take any effort to search. Add them in as footnoots to the article if you want references. To make this extra easy go to [http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/reference/searchhadith.html Hadith search from USC] and search for the names and see the references. Or [http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/reference/searchquran.html search the Qur'an] for that matter... ~_~ User:Grenavitar 19:41, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC) ---- Thanks Gren. I should have just checked one of my own translations of the Qu'ran. The index to the Arberry translation has MANY references to Abraham, Adam, Moses, and Jesus in the text of the Qur'an. Plus ten references to Prophets. D'oh User:Zora 20:00, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
----
==Reformation==
Is this comment regarding 'reformation' in the introduction necessary? I've changed it from "Unlike Christianity ..." to "Unlike other Abrahamic traditions ..." but that seems just as prejudicial and biased. This line makes the Eurocentric assumption that Islam *needs* to be reformed - in other words, there is something inherently wrong and dangerous about Islam (see my comments made above in response to RK), and that it needs to be made "liberal," whatever that is meant to imply.
Just to make things clear to everyone, Islam is not Catholicism, nor is it Reform Judaism, both of which are Westernized Abrahamic religions. Whether Islam can be Westernized is open to debate, but I do not believe that it should be implied that such a Westernization would be proper and required. Does Tibetan Buddhism need to be reformed (i.e. Westernized) as well? What about Hinduism? Honestly, I simply do not understand this Western obsession with destroying other peoples' traditions and forcing them to reconcile their belief systems with the Western world. Not even the Japanese have forced their Shinto faith to become Westernized or liberalized or whatever.
At any rate, 'liberal (or reform) movements in Islam' is all very good and well, but I do not believe it should be linked to the Christian Reformation or whatever. User:Ghostintheshell 23:55, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC) : Well, I'd agree with you, at least in part. There's no reason for Islam to repeat the same process that Christianity underwent. I would say that any venerable tradition has the challenge of facing and absorbing what's NEW, whether it's textual criticism or evolution, especially when what's new contradicts things that people previously took for granted. The pace of change has accelerated enormously in the last few centuries, but it's the same problem every believer faces at every moment: how do I interpret the teachings NOW? The difficulty of doing this is radically increased when the guardians of the tradition refuse to admit that there's any difficulty at all. IMHO, they've fossilized -- and hence are no longer alive. User:Zora 00:40, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC) :: The earlier statement drew attention to aspects of Islam which is widely viewed as in need of change, particularly in the area of ''Freedom of other religions to practice freely and in the open, including both monotheistic and non'',''The emancipacipation of women'',''Tolerance of apostates and freedom to leave Islam'',''Freedom of speech and freedom of thought.'',''Freedom to disbelieve without stigma or punishment''.The comparison to Christian reformation is a much softer way of of making the point than listing the above points directly. --User:4r2emi 14:20, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC) ::: Your obvious prejudice against Islam aside, the issues you are referring to are all political, and have nothing to do with Islam itself. There are many Muslim countries in this world, and most of them are not like Saudia Arabia or the Taliban. Perhaps you would like to think that, just many other anti-Muslim bigots, but that's your problem. Plus, the Christian reformation is just a bad example, plain and simple. It didn't really "reform" anything, and it's primary result was a schism between the Protestants and Rome. But the Protestants were just as conservative and "hardline" as the Catholics, if not more so, as evidenced by the extreme austerities of groups like the Puritans and the zealousness of modern Evangelicals. User:Ghostintheshell 04:09, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC) :::: I am not the originator of the original section regarding reformation, but I do think it made a good point. Reformation is discussed extensively in a wide array of books dealing with Islam and modernity, some of which you may want to read directly. Mentioning it in the article seems quite appropriate as it is reflective of current public discourse on the topic of Islam. On the subject of the listed issues, I am afraid that a great deal of Muslims do not share your POV ,indeed we would like to see you stand on any street in the Muslim world with a sign promoting those freedoms.--User:4r2emi 05:20, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC) :::::As I've stated before, there have been a number of reform movements in Islam - Wahabism, for example, which originated out of Saudia Arabia and which heavily influenced the Taliban. But that obviously is not the same type of reform we are talking about, since the Wahabi's are eerily similar to those Puritanical Christians who first settled New England. And you will recall that the Puritans were Christian reformers, which is why they left England for the New World.
Now, as to your statement that the "majority of Muslims" do not share my POV - you really cannot expect to be taken seriously with a statement like that, do you? Do you know how many Muslims there are in this world, and how diverse a community it is we are talking about here? Do you honestly think that the vast majority of Muslims, or even any large percentage of Muslims agree with the sott of religious tyranny to be found in Saudia Arabia?
It might surprise to find out that most Muslims are very much against the Saudi regime, most especially Saudi Muslims (particularly those who are not part of the Wahabist cult, i.e. the majority) themselves. Did you know that most Muslim-majority nations are secular? Do you know anything about (or better yet, ever been to) Malaysia, Indonesia, Turkey, Bosnia, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco - to name a few prominent examples? Did you know that in those Muslim-majority countries like Iran where self-styled Islamist regimes are in power, that such regimes are extremely unpopular and despised by those nation's population? Do you know anything about how the majority of Afghans (majority of them very religious) felt about the Taliban?
Your statements are so illogical and ignorant, that I should even bother to reply, but unfortunately attitudes such as yours are common in the West, as evidenced by the popularity of commentators such as Daniel Pipes and the like, anti-Islam this, anti-Islam that, ad nauseum. You can be a bigot if you like, just don't hide behind all this innuendo of "reform" and "modernity."
There is plenty of modernity in the Muslim world, and there is plenty of political reform underway. Of course, does the West really want secularism (which is the most popular form of gove
ISLAM
#redirect Islam
IsLam
#REDIRECT Islam
Islam
Islam ( ''al-islām'') "the submission to God" is a monotheistic faith, one of the Abrahamic religions, and the world's second largest religion. == Etymology == In Arabic, ''Islām'' means "submission" (understood as submission to God) and is described as a ''Dīn'' or Deen, meaning "way of life" and/or "religion." Etymology, it is derived from the same root as, for example, ''Salām'' meaning "peace" (also a common salutation). The word ''Muslim'' is also related to the word ''Islām'' and means one who "surrenders" or "submits" to God. == Beliefs == Followers of Islam, known as Muslims, believe that God (or, in Arabic, ''Allah'') revealed his direct word for mankind to Muhammad (c. 570–632) and other Prophets of Islam, including Adam, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. Muslims assert that the main written record of revelation to humankind is the Qur'an, which they believe to be flawless, immutable, and the final revelation of God. Muslims believe that parts of the Bible and the Torah have been forgotten, misinterpreted, or distorted by their followers. With that perspective they view the Qur'an as corrective of Jewish and Christian scriptures. Muslims hold that Islam is essentially the same belief as that of all the messengers sent by God to mankind since Adam, with the ''Qur'ān'' (the one definitive text of the Muslim faith) codifying the final revelation of God. Islamic teaching sees Judaism and Christianity as derivations of the teachings of certain of these prophets - notably Abraham - and therefore acknowledges their Abrahamic religion roots, whilst the Qur'an calls them People of the Book. Islam has three primary branches of belief, based largely on a historical disagreement over the succession of authority after Muhammad's death; these are known as Sunni Islam , Shi'a Islam and Kharijite. The basis of Muslim belief is found in the ''shahada'' ("two testimonies"): ''lā ilāhā illā-llāhu; muhammadur-rasūlu-llāhi'' — "There is no god but God; Muhammad is the messenger of God." In order to become a Muslim, one needs to recite and believe these statements. All Muslims agree to this, although Sunnis further regard this as one of the five pillars of Islam. [[Image:Faisal_mosque2.jpg|right|thumb|275px|Faisal Mosque, located in Islamabad, the capital city of Pakistan, was built in 1986. It is one of the largest mosques in Asia.]] ===Six articles of belief=== There are six basic beliefs shared by all Muslims: #Belief in God, the one and only one worthy of all worship. #Belief in all the Prophets and Messengers (sent by God). #Belief in the Books sent by God. #Belief in the Angels. #Belief in the Day of Judgment (''Qiyamah'') and in the Resurrection. #Belief in Destiny (Fate) (''Qadaa'' and ''Qadar'' in Arabic). (Note that this does not mean one is predeterminded to act or live a certain life. God has given the free will to do and make decisions.) The Muslim creed in English language: :"I believe in God; and in His Angels; and in His Scriptures; and in His Messengers; and in The Final Day; and in Fate, that Good and Evil are from God, and Resurrection after death be Truth. :"I testify that there is nothing worthy of worship but God; and I testify that Muhammad is His Messenger." === God === The fundamental concept in Islam is the oneness of God (''tawhid''). This monotheism is absolute, not relative or pluralistic in any sense of the word. God is described in Sura al-Ikhlas, (chapter 112) as follows: Say "He is God, the one, the Self-Sufficient master. He never begot, nor was begotten. There is none comparable to Him." In Arabic, God is called Allah, a contraction of ''al-ilah'' or "the only god". ''Allāh'' thus translates to "God" in English. The implicit usage of the definite article in ''Allah'' linguistically indicates the divine unity. In spite of the different name used for God, Muslims believe in the same deity as the Judeo-Christian religions. However, Muslims completely disagree with the Christian theology concerning the unity of God (the doctrine of the Trinity which sees Jesus as the eternal Son of God), seeing it as akin to polytheism. As it says in the Qur'an, ''"O People of the Scripture! Do not exaggerate in your religion nor utter aught concerning Allah save the truth . The Messiah , Jesus son of Mary , was only a messenger of Allah , and His word which He conveyed unto Mary , and a spirit from Him . So believe in Allah and His messengers , and say not "three" . Cease! ( it is ) better for you! Allah is only One God . Far is it removed from His transcendent majesty that he should have a son . His is all that is in the heavens and all that is in the earth . And Allah is sufficient as its defender."'' [Chapter 4 : Surah 171] No Muslim visual images or depictions of God exist because such artistic depictions may lead to idolatry and are thus prohibited. Moreover, many Muslims believe that God is incorporeal, rendering any two or three dimensional depictions impossible. Instead, Muslims describe God by the many divine attributes mentioned in the Qur'an, and also with the 99 names of Allah. All but one Surah (chapter) of the Qur'an begins with the phrase "In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful". These are consequently the most important divine attributes in the sense that Muslims repeat them most frequently during their ritual prayers (called salah in Arabic, and in India, Pakistan and Turkey called "namaaz" (a Persian word)). === The Tenets of Islam === Sunni Islam's most fundamental tenets are referred to as the Five Pillars of Islam#Notes, while Shia Islam has a slightly different terminology, encompassing five core beliefs (the "roots of religion") and ten core practices (the "branches of religion".) All Muslims agree on the following statements, which Sunnis term the Five Pillars of Islam, and Shia would consider two of the Roots of Religion and four of the Branches of Religion: [[Image:Mecca.jpg|frame|right|The Pilgrimage to Kaaba, Masjid al Haram, Mecca is one of the five pillars of Islam.]] *"Shahadah": The Testimony that there is none worthy of worship except God and that Muhammad is his messenger. *"Salah": Establishing of the five daily Prayers (''salah''). *"Zakat": The Giving of ''Zakaah'' (charity), which is one fortieth (2.5%) of the net worth of savings kept for more than a year, with few exemptions, for every Muslim whose wealth exceeds the nisab, and 10% or 20% of the produce from agriculture. This money or produce is distributed among the poor. *"Ramadhan": Fasting from dawn to dusk in the month of Ramadan (''sawm''). *"Hajj": The Pilgrimage (Hajj) to Mecca during the month of ''Dhul Hijjah'', which is compulsory once in a lifetime for one who has the ability to do it. All Muslims further agree on two of what the Shia call the Roots of Religion: * The Justice of God ('''Adl''). * The Resurrection (''Me'ad''). and four of what the Shia call the Branches of Religion: * Enjoining what is good (''Amr-bil-Ma'roof''). * Forbidding what is evil (''Nahi-anil-Munkar''). * Striving to seek God's approval (''Jihad''). * Paying the tax on profit (''Khums''). while two "branches", and one "root", are specifically Shia: * The belief in the divinely appointed and guided imamate of Ali and some of his descendants (''Imamah''). * To love the Ahl-ul-Bayt and their followers (''Tawalla''). * To hate the enemies of the Ahl-ul-Bayt (''Tabarra''). === The Qur'an === The Qur'an is the sacred book of Islam. It has also been called, in English, the Koran and the Quran. Qur'an is the currently preferred English transliteration of the Arabic original (قرآن); it means “recitation”. Muslims believe that the Qur'an was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad by the Angel Gabriel on numerous occasions between the years 610 and Muhammad's death in 632. In addition to memorizing his revelations, his followers are said to have written them down on parchments, stones, bones, sticks, and leaves. Muslims believe that the Qur'an available today is the same as that revealed to Prophet Muhammad and by him to his followers, who memorized his words. Scholars accept that the version of the Qur'an used today was first compiled in writing by the third Caliph, Uthman ibn Affan, sometime between 650 and 656. He sent copies of his version to the various provinces of the new Muslim empire, and directed that all variant copies be destroyed. However, some skeptics doubt the recorded oral traditions (hadith) on which the account is based and will say only that the Qur'an must have been compiled before 750. There are also numerous traditions, and many conflicting academic theories, as to the provenance of the verses later assembled into the Qur'an. (This is covered in greater detail in the article on the Qur'an.) Most Muslims accept the account recorded in several hadith, which state that Abu Bakr, the first caliph, ordered Zayd ibn Thabit to collect and record all the authentic verses of the Qur'an, as preserved in written form or oral tradition. Zayd's written collection, privately treasured by Muhammad's widow Hafsa bint Umar, was used by Uthman and is the basis of today's Qur'an. Uthman's version organized the revelations, or suras, roughly in order of length, with the longest suras at the start of the Qur'an and the shortest ones at the end. More conservative views state that the order of most suras was divinely set. Later scholars have struggled to put the suras in chronological order, and among Muslim commentators at least there is a rough consensus as to which suras were revealed in Makkan sura and which at Medinan sura. Some suras (eg surat Iqra) were revealed in parts at separate times. Because the Qur'an was first written [date uncertain] in the Hijazi, Mashq, Ma'il, and Kufic scripts, which write consonants only and do not supply the vowels, and because there were differing oral traditions of recitation, as non-native Arabic speakers converted to Islam, there was some disagreement as to the exact reading of many verses. Eventually, scripts were developed that used "points" to indicate vowels. For hundreds of years after Uthman's recension, Muslim scholars argued as to the correct pointing and reading of Uthman's unpointed official text, (the rasm). Eventually, most commentators accepted seven variant readings (qira'at) of the Qur'an as canonical, while agreeing that the differences are minor and do not affect the meaning of the text. The form of the Qur'an most used today is the Al-Azhar text of 1923, prepared by a committee at the prestigious Cairo university of Al-Azhar. The Qur'an early became a focus of Muslim devotion and eventually a subject of theological controversy. In the 8th century, the Mu'tazilis claimed that the Qur'an was created in time and was not eternal. Their opponents, of various schools, claimed that the Qur'an was eternal and perfect, existing in heaven before it was revealed to Muhammad. The Mu'tazili position was supported by caliph Al-Ma'mun. The caliph persecuted, tortured, and killed the anti-Mu'tazilis, but their belief eventually triumphed and is held by most Muslims of today. However, modern liberal movements within Islam are apt to take something approaching the Mu'tazili position. Most Muslims regard the Qur'an with extreme veneration, wrapping it in a clean cloth, keeping it on a high shelf, and washing as for prayers before reading the Qur'an. Old Qur'ans are not destroyed as wastepaper, but deposited in Qur'an graveyards. The Qur'an is regarded as an infallible guide to personal piety and community life, and completely true in its history and science. From the beginning of the faith, most Muslims believed that the Qur'an was perfect only as revealed in Arabic. Translations were the result of human effort and human fallibility, as well as lacking the inspired poetry believers find in the Qur'an. Translations are therefore only commentaries on the Qur'an, or "translations of its meaning", not the Qur'an itself. === Prophets === [[Image:Masjidnabawi.jpg|right|thumb|275px|Masjid al-Nabawi in Medina. The mosque also has a tomb of prophet Muhammad and the first two caliphs, Abu Bakr and Umar ibn al-Khattab]] The Qur'an speaks of God appointing two classes of human servants: messengers (''rasul'' in Arabic), and prophets (''nabi'' in Arabic and Hebrew). In general, messengers are the more elevated rank, but Muslims consider all prophets and messengers equal. All prophets are said to have spoken with divine authority; but only those who have been given a major revelation or message are called messenger. Notable messengers include Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses(Musa), Jesus(Isa), and Muhammad, all belonging to a succession of men guided by God. Islam demands that a believer accept most of the Judeo-Christian prophets, making no distinction between them. In the Qur'an, Prophets of Islam are mentioned. Mainstream Muslims regard Muhammad as the 'Last Messenger' or the 'Seal of the Prophets' based on the canon. However, there have been a number of sects whose leaders have proclaimed themselves the successors of Muhammad, perfecting and extending Islam, or, whose devotees have made such claims for their leaders. However, most Muslims remain unaffected by those claims and simply regard those said groups to be deviant from Islam. === Islamic eschatology === Islamic eschatology is concerned with the ''Qiyamah'' (End of the world (religion)) and the final judgement of humanity. Like Christianity and some sects of modern Judaism, Islam teaches the bodily resurrection of the dead, the fulfillment of a divine plan for creation, and the immortality of the human soul; the righteous are rewarded with the pleasures of ''Jannah'' (Paradise), while the unrighteous are punished in ''Jahannam'' (a fiery Hell, from the Hebrew ''ge-hinnom'' or "valley of Hinnom"; usually rendered in English as Gehenna). A significant fraction of the Qur'an deals with these beliefs, with many ''hadith'' elaborating on the themes and details. ===Other beliefs=== Other beliefs include the Angels, the Genie (a species of beings not composed of solid matter, but of fire), and the existence of magic (paranormal) (the practice of which is strictly forbidden). ==Organization== === Religious authority === There is no official authority who decides whether a person is accepted to, or dismissed from, the community of believers, known as the ''Ummah'' ("Family"). Islam is open to all, regardless of race, age, gender, or previous beliefs. It is enough to believe in the central beliefs of Islam. This is formally done by reciting the ''shahada'', the statement of belief of Islam, without which a person cannot be classed a Muslim. It is enough to believe and say that one is a Muslim, and behave in a manner befitting a Muslim to be accepted into the community of Islam. === Islamic law === Muslims in Islamic societies have traditionally viewed Islamic law as essential to their religious outlook. For Muslims living in secular Western countries ''sharia'' ceases to be relevant as law, but remains a source of personal ethics (for example, the avoidance of pork and alcohol, and the use of Sharia-compliant banking services). The Qur'an is the foremost source of fiqh; the second is the Sunnah (the practices of the Prophet, as narrated in reports of his life). The Sunnah is not itself a text like the Qur'an, but is extracted by analysis of the Hadith (Arabic for "report") texts, which contain narrations of the Prophet's sayings, deeds, and actions of his companions he approved. One hadith of special importance for Islamic contracts should be mentioned here. A merchant named Hakim ibn Hizam reported, "I asked the Prophet: O Messenger of Allah! A man comes to me and asks me to sell him what is not with me, so I sell him and then buy the goods for him in the market. And the Prophet said: sell not what is not with you." This hadith has rendered controversial within the Muslim world much of what is considered routine finance outside of it, including the sale of futures and options, both of which might be characterized as the sale of 'what is not with you.' In recent times, traditional Islamic law has often been questioned by liberal movements within Islam. In a related development, Mohammad Hashim Kamali has questioned the reliability and contemporary relevance of the above quoted hadith of Hakim ibn Hizam. === Apostasy and blasphemy === Islamic communities, as well as Christianity and Judaism ones, often exclude apostasy and blasphemy from the community of believers. In orthodox Islamic theology, conversion out of Islam is forbidden and punishable by death. Apostasy is public disloyalty towards Islam by any one who had previously professed the Islamic faith. Blasphemy is showing disrespect or speaking ill of any of the essential principles of Islam. There can be no sharp distinction between these concepts, as many believers feel that there can be no blasphemy without apostasy. In the period of Islamic empire, apostasy was considered treason, and was accordingly treated as a capital offense; death penalties were carried out under the authority of the Caliph. Today apostasy is punishable by death in the countries of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Yemen, Iran, Sudan, Pakistan, and Mauritania. Blasphemy is also an offence in many of these countries. In most of these countries, such laws are invoked only sporadically and selectively; convictions tend to be reversed at a higher level, or if not reversed, those convicted may be allowed to leave the country. However, some countries, notably Iran under the Islamic Republic, Afghanistan under the Taliban, and Sudan, have been less reluctant to enforce the laws on the books. In each of these countries Islamist regimes are estimated to have executed, flogged, and imprisoned hundreds or thousands of people believed to be apostates or blasphemers. Other punishments prescribed by sharia (depending on interpretation) may include the annulment of marriage with a Muslim spouse, the removal of children, the loss of property and inheritance rights, or other sanctions. Here as elsewhere in Islam, scholars disagree on specific applications of core principles, with some prominently advocating a punitive approach to "exclusionary" issues and others tending to de-emphasize such questions. == Schools (Branches)== There are a number of Islamic religious denominations, each of which has significant theological and legal differences from each other. The major branches are Sunni Islam and Shi'a, with Sufism often considered as an extension of either Sunni Islam or Shi'a thought. All denominations, however, follow the five pillars of Islam and believe in the six pillars of faith (mentioned earlier). The Sunni sect of Islam comprises the majority of all Muslims (about 95%). It consists of four similar schools of thought (madhabs) which interpret specific pieces of Islamic practice. They are named after their founders Maliki, Shafi'i, Hanafi, and Hanbali. On some issues, each school of thought differs slightly on fiqh (thoughts on how to practise Islam) although all accept the fundamentals contained within the Holy Quran. All four accept the validity of the others and a muslim can choose any one that he thinks is agreeable to his ideas. Shi'a Muslims are those that are not Sunni. The Shi'a consist of one major school of thought known as the Ithna Ashariyya or the "Twelvers", and a few minor schools of thought, as the "Seveners" or the "Fivers" referring to the number of infallible leaders they recognise after the death of Muhammad. The term Shi'a is usually taken to be synonymous with the Ithna Ashariyya/Twelvers. The main Shi'ites areas are Iran, Iraq and Lebanon. Sufism occupies a place between the various schools of Islam, with practitioners falling into either Sunni or Shi'a. However, some consider Sufism a separate mystical school. Instead of focusing on the legal aspects of Islam (fiqh) as other madhab do, Sufism focuses on the internal aspects of Islam, such as perfecting the aspect of sincerity of faith and fighting one's own ego. There are also some very large groups or sects of Sufism that are not easily categorised as either Sunni or Shi'a, such as the Bektashi. Sufism is found more or less across the Islamic world, though bearing distinctive regional variations, from Senegal to Indonesia. According to Shaikh Mahmood Shaltoot, Head of the al-Azhar University in the middle part of the 20th Century, "the Ja'fari school of thought, which is also known as "al-Shi'a al- Imamiyyah al-Ithna Ashariyyah" (i.e., The Twelver Imami Shi'ites) is a school of thought that is religiously correct to follow in worship as are other Sunni schools of thought". This position is not generally accepted by mainstream Sunni scholarship, and al-Azhar itself distanced itself from this position. Another denomination which dates back to the early days of Islam are the Kharijites. Members of this group in the present day are more commonly known as Ibadis. A large number of Ibadhi Muslims today live in Oman. Another more recent group are the "Wahhabis", though some classify them as the conservative branch of the Hanbali school of Sunni Islam. "Wahhabism" is a movement founded by Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab in the 18th century in what is present-day Saudi Arabia. Another recent group is the Ijtihadists, which represents a wide variety of views alternatively known as progressive, liberal or secular Muslims. They may be either Sunni or Shi'ite, and generally favour the development of personal interpretations of Qur'an and Hadith. ''See'': Liberal Islam Recently, with the usage of the Internet, and access to information, another part of Islam is begnning to emerge. These are the youngest genearation of muslim children, who for the first time can get answers to their questions from sources that are not biased in any way. This group does not necessarily mean to join themselves with any other group listed above. They are those who wish to follow the Q'uran only, not using other forms or papers such as the Hadith to augment the religion. These followers believe that when GOD says in the Q'uran: "Shall I seek other than God as a source of law, when He has revealed to you this book fully detailed?" 6:114. Also, there are other bold statements in the Q'uran such as : "These are God's revelations that We recite to you truthfully. In which Hadith other than God and His revelations do they believe?" 45:6 Using these statements as a basis to believe in the Q'uran as their only source of guidance, they are a group that puts themselves apart from all the other sects. Upon all the other sects (mentioned above), each has things that believe are theirs, and are the right way. Also, in some form on another, the sects use interpretations and decisions from people who are not looked upon as messengers or prophets. This new part of Islam is typically called just "muslims". They don't wish to label themselves as any particular sect, but just as followers of GOD and his will. See also: Imam -- Islamic philosophy -- Zaiddiyah === Religions based on Islam === The following groups consider themselves to be Muslims, but are not considered Islamic by the majority of Muslims or Muslim authorities: * The Druze * The Nation of Islam * The Zikris * The Qadianis (or Ahmadis) The following religions are said by some to have evolved or borrowed from Islam, but consider themselves independent religions with distinct laws and institutions: * Babism * Bahá'í Faith * Yazidi The claim of the adherents of the Bahá'í Faith that it represents an independent religion was upheld by the Muslim ecclesiastical courts in Egypt during the 1920's. As of January 1926, their final ruling on the matter of the origins of the Bahá'í Faith and its relationship to Islam was that the Bahá'í Faith was neither a sect of Islam, nor a religion based on Islam, but a clearly-defined, independently-founded, Faith. Some see Sikhism as a syncretism mix of Hinduism and Islam. However, its history lies in the social strife between local Hindu and Muslim communities, during which Sikhs were seen as the "sword arm" of Hinduism. The philosophical basis of the Sikhs is deeply-rooted in Hindu metaphysics and certain philosophical practices. Sikhism also rejects image-worship and believes in one God, just like the Bhakti reform movement in Hinduism and also like Islam does. However, Sikhs are forbidden from practices such as eating ritually prepared meat (halal) that are central in Islam. The following religions might have been said to have evolved from Islam, but are not considered part of Islam, and no longer exist: * The religion of the medieval Berghouata * The religion of Ha-Mim == Islam and other religions == The Qur'an contains both injunctions to respect other religions, and to fight and subdue unbelievers. Some Muslims have respected Jews and Christians as fellow "peoples of the book" (monotheists following Abrahamic religions) and also have reviled them as having abandoned monotheism and corrupted their scriptures. At different times and places, Islamic communities have been both intolerant and tolerant. There are Quranic grounds for both attitudes. Earlier passages of the Qur'an are more tolerant towards Jews and Christians. Later passages of the Qur'an speak more disparaging of them. Sura 5:51 commands Muslims not to take Jews and Christians as friends. Sura 9:29 commands Muslims to fight against Jews and Christians until they either submit to Allah or else agree to pay a special tax. The classical Islamic solution was a limited tolerance -- Jews and Christians were to be allowed to privately practice their faith and follow their own family law. In Islamic territories, they were not to bear arms or proselytize, and they were to pay the aforementioned special tax, the jizyah. They were second-class citizens, or dhimmis. As many have pointed out, the classic Islamic state, while deficient by modern standards, was more tolerant than the Christian states of the time, which insisted on complete comformity to a state religion. Now most Christians embrace tolerance and freedom of religion -- as do most religions. Conversely, some modern Muslim states are far less tolerant towards non-Muslims than they were during the Golden Age of Islam. == History == Islamic history begins in Arabia in the 7th century with the emergence of the prophet Muhammad. Within a century of his death, an Islamic state stretched from the Atlantic ocean in the west to central Asia in the east, which however was soon torn by Fitnas. After this, there would always be rival dynasties claiming the caliphate, or leadership of the Muslim world, and many Islamic states or empires offering only token obedience to an increasingly powerless caliph. Nonetheless, the later empires of the Abbasid caliphs and the Seljuk Turk were among the largest and most powerful in the world. After the disastrous defeat of the Byzantines at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, Christian Europe launched a series of Crusades and for a time captured Jerusalem. Saladin however restored unity and defeated the Shiite Fatimids. In the 18th century there were three great Muslim empires: the Ottoman empire in Turkey, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean; the Safavid in Iran; and the Mogul in India. By the 19th century, these realms had fallen under the sway of European political and economic power. Following WWI, the remnants of the Ottoman empire were parcelled out as European protectorates or sphere of influence. Islam and Islamic political power have revived in the 20th century. However, the relationship between the West and the Islamic world remains uneasy. === Contemporary Islam === [[Image:Distribution of Islam.jpg|thumb|right|275px|Map showing Muslim Distribution, by the CIA (1996).]] Although the most visible movement in Islam in recent times has been fundamentalism Islamism, there are a number of liberal movements within Islam which seek alternative ways to reconcile the Islamic faith with the modern world. Early shariah had a much more flexible character than is currently associated with Islamic jurisprudence, and many modern Muslim scholars believe that it should be renewed, and the classical jurists should lose their special status. This would require formulating a new fiqh suitable for the modern world, e.g. as proposed by advocates of the Islamization of knowledge, and would deal with the modern context. One vehicle proposed for such a change has been the revival of the principle of ijtihad, or independent reasoning by a qualified Islamic scholar, which has lain dormant for centuries. This movement does not aim to challenge the fundamentals of Islam; rather, it seeks to clear away misinterpretations and to free the way for the renewal of the previous status of the Islamic world as a center of modern thought and freedom. See Modern Islamic philosophy for more on this subject. The claim that only "liberalisation" of the Islamic Shariah law can lead to distinguishing between tradition and true Islam is countered by many Muslims with the argument that any meaningful "fundamentalism" will, by definition, reject non-Islamic cultural inventions -- by, for instance, acknowledging and implementing Muhammad's insistence that women have God-given rights that no human being may legally infringe upon. Proponents of modern Islamic philosophy sometimes respond to this by arguing that, as a practical matter, "fundamentalism" in popular discourse about Islam may actually refer, not to core precepts of the faith, but to various systems of cultural traditionalism. === The demographics of Islam today === Based on the percentages published in the 2003 CIA factbook, Islam is the second largest religion in the world. According to the [http://www.wnrf.org/news/trends.html World Network of Religious Futurists], the [http://www.religioustolerance.org/growth_isl_chr.htm U.S. Center for World Mission], and the controversial Samuel P. Huntington, Islam is growing faster numerically than any of the other major world religions. [http://www.religioustolerance.org/isl_numb.htm Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance] estimate that it is growing at about 2.9% annually, as opposed to 2.3% per year global population growth. This is mainly due to the higher birth rates in many Islamic countries while a high conversion rate is also a noted factor. According to "The Almanac Book of Facts", the overall population increased 137% within the past decade, Christianity increased 46%, while Islam increased 235%. Commonly cited estimates of the Muslim population today range between 900 million and 1.4 billion people (cf. [http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html Adherents.com]); estimates of Islam by country based on US State Department figures yield a total of 1.48 billion, 22.82% of the world's population (see Islam by country.) Only 18% of Muslim live in the Arab world; a fifth is found in Sub-Saharan Africa, about 30% in the Indian subcontinental region of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, and the world's largest single Muslim community (within the bounds of one nation) is in Indonesia. There are also significant Muslim populations in China, Europe, Central Asia, and Russia. The number of Muslims in North America is variously estimated as anywhere from 1.8 to 7 million, depending on which source is used. == See also == * Adhan (also called azan or aazan) * Apostasy in Islam * Christo-Islamic * Dawah * Islamic economics * Islamophobia * Islamism * Islamic science * Jihad * Liberal movements within Islam * List of Islamic and Muslim related topics * List of Muslims * Slavery#Slavery under Islam * Sex segregation#Segregation of the Sexes in Islam * Syariaat Islam * Timeline of Islamic history == Notes == #Shi'a muslims do not believe in absolute predestination (Qadar), since they consider it incompatible with Divine Justice. Neither do they believe in absolute free will since that contradicts God's Omniscience and Omnipotence. Rather they believe in "a way between the two ways" (amr bayn al‑'amrayn) believing in free will, but within the boundaries set for it by God and exercised with His permission. #The Egyptian Islamic Jihad group claims, as did a few long-extinct early medieval Kharijite sects, that Jihad is the "sixth pillar of Islam." Some Ismaili groups consider "Allegiance to the Imam" to be the so-called sixth pillar of Islam. For more information, see the article entitled Sixth pillar of Islam. == References == * Encyclopedia of Islam * The Koran Interpreted: a translation by A. J. Arberry, ISBN 0684825074 * Islam, by Fazlur Rahman, University of Chicago Press; 2nd edition (1979). ISBN 0226702812 * The Islamism Debate, Martin Kramer, University Press, 1997 * Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook, Charles Kurzman, Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 0195116224 * Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender and Pluralism Omid Safi, Oneworld Publications, Oxford, 2003. ISBN 1-85168-316-X * The Challenge of Fundamentalism: Political Islam and the New World Disorder, Bassam Tibi, Univ. of California Press, 1998 == External links == === Online academic sources === *[http://www.encislam.demo.brill.nl/ ''Encyclopedia of Islam'' (Brill) Online Demo Page] *[http://philtar.ucsm.ac.uk/encyclopedia/islam/ Encyclopedia of Islam (Overview of World Religions)] *[http://www.arches.uga.edu/~godlas/home.html Resources for Studying Islam] (Department of Islamic Studies, University of Georgia) *[http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ Islamic Philosophy] (Journal of Islamic Philosophy, University of Michigan) === Directories === *Links: [http://omnibus.uni-freiburg.de/~riexinge/euroislam.html Islam in Western Europe], [http://omnibus.uni-freiburg.de/~riexinge/UKIslam.html Islam in the United Kingdom] *Links: [http://omnibus.uni-freiburg.de/~riexinge/sasislam.html Islam in South Asia] *[http://dmoz.org/Society/Religion_and_Spirituality/Islam/ Open Directory Project: Islam] *[http://dmoz.org/Society/Religion_and_Spirituality/Opposing_Views/Islam/ dmoz.org Open Directory Project: Contra Islam] (a list of links critical of Islam) ===Islam and the Arts and Sciences === *[http://users.telerama.com/~jdehullu/islam/frames.htm Islamic Architecture] *[http://www.lacma.org/islamic_art/intro.htm Islamic Art] (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) *[http://www.muslimheritage.com/ Muslim Heritage] (Foundation for Science Technology and Civilisation, UK) *[http://www.islamicarchitecture.org/ Islamic Architecture (IAORG)] illustrated descriptions and reviews of a large number of mosques, palaces, and monuments. *[http://www.muslimmuseum.org/ The International Museum of Muslim Cultures], Jackson, MS. Features exhibits on Islamic Moorish Spain and the Timbuktu Manuscripts. Islam bn:ইসলাম fa:اسلام haw:Hoʻomana Mohameka jbo:musyjda kw:Islam sw:Uislamu li:Islam ms:Islam simple:Islam su:Islam th:ศาสนาอิสลาม
Islam
Archives of older discussions may be found here: *Talk:Islam/Archive 1
*Talk:Islam/Archive 2
*Talk:Islam/Archive 3
*Talk:Islam/Archive 4
*Talk:Islam/Archive 5
----- == Statements without citing sources == Statements without citing sources #The form of the Qur'an most used today is the Al-Azhar text of 1923, prepared by a committee at the prestigious Cairo university of Al-Azhar. #*This statement never shows that who believe it. Many others but I think we should go one statement at a time. User:Zain engineer 12:53, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC) The first statement is true. See :''THE QUR'AN IN PRINT'' :http://www.ymofmd.com/books/uaq/ch3s4.htm :''The Qur'anic text in printed form now used widely in the Muslim world and developing into a 'standard version', is the so-called 'Egyptian' edition, also known as the King Fu'ad edition, since it was introduced in Egypt under King Fu'ad. This edition is based on the reading of Hafs, as reported by 'Asim, and was first printed in Cairo in 1925/1344H. Numerous copies have since been printed.'' User:OneGuy 20:13, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC) Don't you think that some mention must be made of the shahada as recited by Shi'as. The article ends the Kalima at mohammed ur rasul allah. The Shi'as add 'aliyun wali allah' to that. --User:Notquiteauden 19:57, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC) == Scapula's edits == Someone recently added a rambling and discursive para to the article that was not only marginally literate, it was wrong in many cases. The statement that put my teeth on edge was that Judaism and Chrisianity were the only religions of that time and place that weren't didn't worship idols. Um, Zoroastrianism doesn't worship idols, so far as I know, and Buddhism doesn't unless it's mixed with folk religion. Not to mention the fact that Eastern Orthodoxy was riven with conflict between those who venerated icons, and those who didn't (iconoclasts). I reverted the article to the pre-addition version. I don't want to discourage Scapula from editing Wikipedia, but I'd suggest that he/she start on less contentious articles that are closer to his/her areas of expertise. User:Zora 20:44, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC) == Problematic statement == The article states "Unlike Christianity, Islam has not undergone any period of reformation...". This phrase makes it seem like Islam is a monolithic unchanging entity, and smacks of outdated viewpoints (i wont use the O. word dont worry!). What do you think about removal? : I've occasionally thought that this should be rewritten. The wording assumes that every religion needs a period of reformation, just like Christianity. Hmmm. I'm a Buddhist and I don't think Buddhism has ever had a period of reformation. It just keeps changing all the time. : Now if I were a Muslim I'd probably be a reformist and believe that many Islamic religious professionals were medieval in their viewpoints, and that the gates of ijtihad should be opened again -- but that shouldn't be an assumption underlying the article. User:Zora 08:17, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC) : I agree completely that, like any tradition that spans the globe, Islamic traditions are not monolithic, encompass a wide range of cultures from N. America to the Philippines, and have undergone many changes, a number of which can intelligibly be referred to as reformist. For example, in the tenth century, the great scholar and lecturer on Islamic law, Muhammad al-Ghazzali, right in the middle of his regular lectures, interrupted his lecture could speak no more. While those near him thought he had suffered from some sort of physical attack, he had, according to his own autobiography, undergone a profound crisis of conscience. He found an emptiness beneath the impressive body of legal precepts, and left his secure position as teacher of law, and went on a seven-year physical and philosophical journey that led to a major reform of the tradition that could be compared to that of Martin Luther. Ghazzali focused on an inner dimension to the legal traditions, by focusing, for example, on the intention of the person behind the performance of ritual and the precepts of legal rules. Moreover, he contributed to integration of Sunni Islam and Sufism, which by his time become a movement of interior spirituality that criticised the superficiality of legalism and what they considered the moral decline that came with the enormous wealth and power in the Middle East and Central Asia. In fact, Ghazzali was called "mujadded" that is, someone who brought something new, or fresh. His interpretation of the Verse of Light (Sura Noor) of the Qur'an, written after his journey, gives a whiff of that freshness. His autobiography, which covers his crisis, and illustrates his searching, sharp mind, his poignant honesty and is as lucid and self-revelatory as the writing of any a reformer. What is the likely origin of the view that Islam never went through reform? It is probably the conception that Islam is essentially a pre-modern, medieval tradition. However, between the ninth and thirteenth centuries could arguably qualify as "Classical" rather than medieval, as is commonly understood. Why? This period was formative in several senses: individuals asked fundamental questions about the human condition, there was much diversity of opinion, there was significant dialog between reason and spiritual experience, individuality was respected, and there was a profound and general respect for the validity of one's experience, observation and powers of reason, and finally, a healthy suspicion of received knowledge or tradition. Another example from that period is an encyclopedia call the "Treatise of the Brethren of Purity", written about 700 years before Diderot, by a group of individuals in many walks of life, in the city of Basra, in present-day Iraq. This massive work covered the knowledge of the day from music to mathematics, from physiology (which included knowledge of the human circulatory system) to natural history, as well as narratives that would today be called precursors of fiction. One of these narratives is called "Trial of the Animals Versus Humanity", in which a group of animals revolt against the domination of human beings, and question the assumption that human beings make that they are superior to animals. These animals do not trust human courts, so resort to the court of Genies (Jinn). This segment of the encycopedia covers probably one percent of the total work, and has recently been called the first example of deep ecology in human history. My next submission will be a summary of several such texts, and believe that these texts should fall under a new heading in the sidebar "Islam": Literature and Science. I am new to this encyclopedia, and would like someone's assistance in this. -- Just to add to the evidence for reform in Islam: "Throughout its long history, the community [of Islam] has had to respond to internal and external threats to its continued life and vitality. As a result, Islam has a long tradition of religious renewal and reform, extending from its earliest history to the present." -- Islam: The Straight Path, John L. Esposito, p. xv "Dissatisfaction with Umayyad rule also resulted in the development of nonrevolutionary reform movements within society....In addition to the disaffected Kharijite and Alids, a host of other critics sprang up....This gave rise, in particular, to the growth of two Islamic movements or institutions, the ulama (religious scholars) and the Sufism (mystics)." -- Islam: The Straight Path, John L. Esposito, p. 48 Furthermore, the Protestant Reformation is somewhat of a misnomer. "Reformation" implies a change from within. Regardless of Luther's intent (reformation of the Catholic Church or the advent of Protestantism), the result was a schism. From this perspective, Islam has had many "reformations." With two civil wars and a slew of offshoot movements, Islam is no stranger to reform/schism. -User:Dws == Appreciation == Sorry to interrupt your work with this, but I have just been reading the article on Islam and your talk page, and I have to express to you all how impressive it is to see such consummate civility and mutual respect in your discussions. --User:Jmenon == Article requests == For a list of requested article topics regarding Islam, Islamic culture, and the Muslim world, see Wikipedia:Requested articles/Culture and fine arts#Islam. -- User:Karada 13:10, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC) == Islam POV == It is my point of view that the entry for islam and the talk page associated is very far from npov it is apparant that it is muslim point of view. there is nothing that I have found, (although I don't have more than a couple of hours to read this one article) about how women are repressed and abused. You all have created a wonderful recruiting page for islam, good for you. Furthermore, you edit out what people put in that disagrees with what you think islam should be, not what it is in reality. I may have missed it, but all of the various sects are not delved into, only what would be pristine islam. God is the only God, and he said 'thou shalt not kill'. May His light open your eyes. :I agree that Islamism is not as clearly separable from Islam as suggested in this article. There should be a section briefly outlining the history of radical interpretations of Islam, rather than simply the plain link under 'see also'. User:Dbachmann User_talk:Dbachmann 12:43, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC) ::But this is also true for some other religious articles on Wikipedia, especially Hinduism. I don't see Hindutva even mentioned (even in see also section) in Hinduism article User:OneGuy 22:42, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC) :::hm, in my opinion Hindutva should definitely be linked from Hinduism. I'm not saying we need a long paragraph about Islamism. One sentence is enough, just making it part of the article text rather than linking it without comment. Also, the Islamism article makes it sound like it's a 20th century phenomenon. Afaik, there were similar discussions in medieval Persia, contrasting fundamentalist/strict interpretations with more 'Persian'/mystic ideas (origins of Sufism?). But I'm not knowledgeable about this. Do we have an article where these controversies are explained? User:Dbachmann User_talk:Dbachmann 16:24, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC) ==Creed "translations"== also, can people please stop messing with the translation of the "creed"? ''la ilaha illa-llahu'' means "[There is] no god but God". End of story. It does ''not'' mean "no god is rightfully worshipped" or anything similar. These are theological interpretations/implications, not translationss. User:Dbachmann User_talk:Dbachmann 14:48, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC) The correct translation is as follows: 'ilaah' is from the root word 'alaha' which means 'to adore'. ilaah does not literally mean 'God'. ilaah is anything that is adored or is worshipped or craved after etc, such as money, wine, women, ancestor worship, God. Therefore, 'ilaah' refers to many objects including God but the word 'Allah' refers only to God. So in Arabic, the Creed really does mean "There is nothing worthy of worship/adoration except God". This IS the correct translation! :arguably, a periphrase. except that brevity and the etymological connection are lost. How about "there is nothing godly but God"? After all "god" simply means "to be worshipped (''gheu-to-'')" too. User:Dbachmann User_talk:Dbachmann 12:06, 30 May 2005 (UTC) :: "There is no God but God" is the usual English translation -- I don't think we need to come up with a new version. Or, if this is a matter of such importance, what about a breakout article? English translations of the Islamic confession of faith or some such thing. Do different mosques or Islamic confederations in English-speaking countries use different versions? Do Salafis and Sufis use different versions? This ''can'' be a big thing in some contexts. Consider the fuss over different versions of the Anglican services/prayerbook/whatever (I'm blanking on the correct term). User:Zora 12:37, 30 May 2005 (UTC) :::I agree the difference may be impoortant. We don't need an "English translations" article, though, it can all be detailed on shahada. Just keep the most common translation here. User:Dbachmann User_talk:Dbachmann 14:50, 30 May 2005 (UTC) == Reason I removed links in "academic sources" == Another anon editor inserted four links to various websites and publications of Al-Mawrid Institute in Pakistan. That's a little much! I thought that I might narrow the links to one, and looked through them for academic content. But there wasn't any, really. Those sites are directed at devout Muslims who want to deepen their faith; there really is no academic content. I found one paper on a Christian gospel, which started out with a note to the effect that "I'm busy, I didn't have a chance to finish this term paper, but here it is." Unfinished undergraduate papers are not the stuff of a peer-reviewed academic journal. I would suggest that the anon editor make sure that all those links are included in the Open Directory listings. We link to the Open Directory, so an interested reader could follow the links to the Al-Mawrid site. User:Zora 11:05, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC) == Prophets == Since you asked, the hadith giving 124,000 is in Musnad Ibn Hanbal. It may not be significant enough to mention on the main page, though. - User:Mustafaa 22:15, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC) == Environmentalism and religion == I have added a section "Environmentalism and religion" to the Environmentalism article. Perhaps someone familiar with Islamic theology could add to it. --User:Erauch 19:24, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC) == "Sect" problem == The sidebar on this and (presumably) every other major article relating to Islam lists articles on Maliki, Hanbali, etc. among "sects." This is not accurate, they are complementary schools of jurisprudence. Note that they are insistent on that point, inasmuch as Qur'an pronounces breaking the religion into sects as a sin. In any given Sunni masjid in US, one may encounter practitioners of all four of these schools of thought, or madhabs. They're better understood as distinct scholarly approaches to how best to perform the same obligations; they're not sects in the sense of competing subgroups. May I suggest we retitle heading as "Schools of Thought" wherever it appears? User:BrandonYusufToropov 14:02, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC) : How about just using ''madhab'' and then defining it? Any attempt to coin an English phrase ends up being as long as a definition anyway. User:Zora 19:24, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC) I don't know. You will notice that it is not the madhhabs that are defined as sects; but Sunni and Shia, with the schools of thought within them listed after those two with a colon. And though not exactly the same as, say, Christian sects, Sunni, Shia, Mutaza'ila, etc. are close to what a sect is. What say?User:IFaqeer—User:IFaqeer User talk:IFaqeer 19:33, Feb 14, 2005 (UTC) : Having taken another look at the sidebar, I'd say that it is misleading, and that the decision to present it that way may have been due to a perceived need to balance the list of Shi'a sects with a list of Sunni "sects" and make a visually balanced presentation. It would seem to be clearest to introduce another category, Madhab or Legal Tradition, and rework the sect list. It wouldn't look as pretty, having Sunni all by itself on one line, but it would be more rational. User:Zora 22:10, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC) : I can try to add another category, but I'm afraid I don't know how to edit a template. Where exactly is the text I would change? User:BrandonYusufToropov 11:27, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC) :: D'oh. I don't know where templates are stored. User:Zora 12:04, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC) ::Okay, I found it (with help from User:OneGuy. It was here: template:Islam, and I made the edit without totally messing up the graphics, which was a concern. What do people think? User:BrandonYusufToropov 18:02, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC) ::: Looks good. Thanks Brandon. User:Zora 19:16, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC) : Misleading. Why are Sunni madhabs in separate section while Shi'a ones are in sect section? Ithna Asharia, Ismailiyah, Zaiddiyah, are all Shi'a User:OneGuy 19:28, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC) I've tried to fix that and other issues - tell me what you think. - User:Mustafaa 19:47, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC) == Does anyone have any good sources? == Hello. I'm trying to find some information on why the Abbasid Dynasty in Baghdad weakened and lost to the Mongols. I'm trying to find some good books/cites/articles on the reasons why the caliphate weakened and not just what happened. Does anyone have any good suggestions? Thanks! : Given that the Mongols trounced everyone for thousands of miles (Central Asians, Chinese, Russians, AND the Abbasids), I'm not sure that it's necessary to conclude that the Abbasids were WEAK. Would the outcome have been any different if the Mongols had arrived earlier, when the Caliphate was still "strong"? Could the Mongols have beaten the Arab warriors of Uthman? : I'm reminded of sf fans and discussions such as "Could the Starship Enterprise beat the Death Star?" User:Zora 08:06, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC) : Good point. However, during the Umayyad dynasty, the empire was very large. After the Abbasids overthrew them and moved the capital, the empire gradually became smaller until it was just the area around Baghdad. I'm looked for the reasons why the empire became smaller. User:Green789 15:26, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC) == Was the link that bad? == OneGuy, you reverted the addition of a link to arabic-islamic.org -- or something like that. I had already taken one look at the link and decided that it might actually add to the article. Could you share your thought processes in deciding that it was part of a link spam? User:Zora 18:10, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC) :Most of the site is in Spanish. Put in Spanish Wikipedia if you like the site User:OneGuy 19:18, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC) == Removed forum sites == Fansher, I removed the forum sites you added. Those are proselytizing sites, and if we allow them, out of the hundreds or even thousands of proselytizing sites on the web, we'd have to allow them all. Just make sure that those sites are in the open directory (to which we link) and then people can find them if they look. User:Zora 09:24, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC) == FA status == Hello all, I just want to say that I found this article to be an excellent article to Islam. It is clear, ''seems'' NPOV (I can't say - I'm a Christian) and well written. It uses summary sections well (though I'm not so crash hot on a section that has no summary form and refers to another article on Wikipedia) and the infobox is pretty cool. If only the Christianity article was so good! Anyway, I'd like to know what we need to do to get this to FA status. What do people think? - User:Ta bu shi da yu 05:27, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC) Simply go here and follow the instructions. Wikipedia:Featured article candidates --User:Christofurio 00:31, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC) ::I agree -- it would be a nice feature article. No idea how to nominate, though.User:BrandonYusufToropov 11:47, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC) ::I agree, it's quite an acheivement considering the amount of vandalism and well-meaning spamming. I think the sections containing nothing but a "main article" link should just be moved to "see also". The "English version of the creed" needs some work (can we get the original Arabic?) what is the difference between Angels (which means, Messengers), and "Messengers"? What is the term translated by "Angel"? Maybe include some stuff from Angels#Islamic_views? User:Dbachmann User_talk:Dbachmann 12:11, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC) ::: ''malak'' means "messenger" in Hebrew; in Arabic, it has no meaning but "angel", as far as I know. - User:Mustafaa 23:22, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC) :::With an eye toward nomination, I have cut-and-pasted a key paragraph from the "Islam and other religions" article to fill in that blank spot, and copyedited what seemed to me a few unclear spots in "Islam in the Modern World" -- thoughts? User:BrandonYusufToropov 11:54, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC) == Proper name of Shi'a == Hi, I'm no expert on Islam, so I'm not exactly sure what the proper way to refer to Shi'as is. What should wikipedia use? I've seen the following on various pages: *Shiites *Shi'ites *Shiite Muslims *Shi'ite Muslims *Shia *Shias *Shia Muslims *Shi'a *Shi'as *Shi'a Muslims *Shi'i Also I am confused whether to use: *Shiism *Shi'ism *Shia Islam *Shi'a Islam *Shiaism This problem is illustrated by [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=Shi%27a_Islam What links to Shi'a Islam]. Needless to say, all of this variety is a bit confusing. I think it would be useful for Wikipedia to adopt one standard, and stick to it on all articles. The problem is that it takes quite a while to change existing articles to match that standard. I am willing to do a hundred of the articles linking to Shi'a Islam via redirects, but no more than that (There are just too many). If anyone else would like to help out, just click the above link, find a page, and change the references to Shi'a to be in whatever form is thought best. Let me know what you think at my talk page, or we can have a discussion here. --User:Jacobolus 07:02, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC) :some are more common than other spellings, but it's a matter of convention I suppose, and uniformityu will be difficult to impose on WP. Myself I would opt for ''Shi'ites'', ''Shi'a'', only if because the apostrophe makes it looks less similar to ''shite'' :o) User:Dbachmann User_talk:Dbachmann 13:32, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC) == System problem == During a recent reversion, the final third of the article simply evaporated, and attempts to resave from the same version resulted in the same missing text. I cut and pasted from the article page to restore the missing text, but I know there are some ugly spots and missing internal links. At least the text is now current, and Godwilling I will fix the links later on. User:BrandonYusufToropov 14:47, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC) == Okay, I've used up my three reverts for the day ... == ... and the vandalism of this page continues. Help, please. User:BrandonYusufToropov 19:20, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC) :I've got it. For future reference, though, 3RR doesn't apply to simple and obvious vandalism, so feel free to revert that as much as you like. —User:MirvUser talk:MirvSpecial:Emailuser/Mirv 19:35, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC) ==atheism== could somebody check out Atheism#In_Islam, please? I was under the impression that shirk and kafir were not overlapping concepts, and that kafir was more or less equivalent to atheist. The article now claims "the concept does not exist", I am not sure who inserted that. User:Dbachmann User_talk:Dbachmann 11:57, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC) == Pronunciation == I added a pronunciation of "islam" in Arabic. I'm not a native speaker, though, so please remove if it's too crappy. - User:Karmosin 08:23, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC) :wtf? and then you replaces ''islam'' with ''muhammad'' with the edit summary ::"And then he crapped up the name of the Lord, and the Lord was wrathful..." : -- is this some sort of surreal vandalism? And why is the file called "ar-islam"? I suppose the audio file should include the article, ''al-islam'', and if it is to be at all useful, be spoken by a native arab (Saudi? Bedouin?) User:Dbachmann User_talk:Dbachmann 09:26, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC) ::Sheesh... Sorry! I can't read Arabic, so I must've accidently gone to Muhammad and copied the text there. I was looking at both pages at once. And I was trying to make a joke with the description because I thought I had messed up the Arabic text while editing and thought i set it right. ::And the file name is "ar-islam.ogg" because that's the standard for naming soundfiles on Commons. "Ar-" is the 2-letter ISO 639 code for Arabic and those instructions are clearly stated at Commons if you just look around. Also, try not to assume the worst because of one mistake. I don't enjoy having "wtf"s thrown at me for no good reason. ::Now I know I'm not a native. But since no one has uploaded any samples of Arabic, is the pronunciation bad enough to merit no pronunciation at all? - User:Karmosin 09:53, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC) :::sorry for the "wtf", no offence intended -- I just couldn't figure out what was going on :o) I understand the "ar-" now, I was confused because the file should properly say "al-islam" (and be named "ar-al-islam", I suppose, then). I am obviously no native either, but your file seemed to get the accent wrong, it said íslam, while it should be islám (with a long ''a''), the ''i-'' being just a prothetic vowel (to the root ''slm'', "peace etc.". regards, User:Dbachmann User_talk:Dbachmann 10:27, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC) ::::Ok, then. Thanks for the feedback. I'd like to love to learn some Arabic, but I have my hands (or rather my mouth) tied with Chinese, German and Spanish. Is the word "islam" usually refered to in everyday speech as "the islam"? For example: if someone answered the question "What religion are you studying ?", would the proper answer be "al islam", and not just "islam"? Let me try one more recording and if I still don't get it right I'll leave it to the Arabs. ::::Btw, does the prothetic vowel become a sort of schwa or does it simply not occur on its own at the start of a clause? - User:Karmosin 14:35, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC) :::::I ''think'' it's almost invariably used with the article, i.e. "''the'' submission" as opposed to some submission of someone to somebody, just as the koran always has the article, "''the'' lecture", as opposed to some unspecified lecture. The prothetic vowel is necessary before any cluster of two consonants, see arabic grammar. it is an ''i''-sound (but I suppose dialects will vary). I strongly believe that if we're going to have sound files to illustrate pronunciation, they should be recordings of native speakers (Arabic has how many? a quarter of a billion? shouldn't be too difficult to find one :) User:Dbachmann User_talk:Dbachmann 15:22, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC) Apparantly not enough of them know that there's even an option of uploading sound files since there are no sound files in Arabic at Commons nor here (to my knowledge). Now unless this second attempt really is horribly substandard, how about we try to be Wikipedia:Be_bold? I mean, what's the worst scenario, really? An upset Arab replacing it with a native pronunciation? :-) This, if anything, is a good way of letting people know there's the possibility of creating sound files on wikipedia. Here's the second attempt: - User:Karmosin 21:15, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC) :well, it sounds like "al ísslam" to me, but I am open to other opinions. User:Dbachmann User_talk:Dbachmann 10:18, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC) :If you can be bothered, you could extract the word from a qur'anic recitation. It occurs e.g. 3:19 or 61:7, you could rip it from a recitation on [http://www.aswatalislam.net/CategorySelectionMadeP.aspx?CatID=1001] (the faq says the files are freely redistributable). In [http://server1.aswatalislam.net/Audios/Quran%5CQuran%20-%20Abdul%20Aziz%20AlAhmed%20-%20mp3%5C/Quran%20-%20Abdul%20Aziz%20AlAhmed%20-%20Surah061%20-%20As%20-%20Saff(TheRow)(www.aswatalislam.net).mp3 this mp3 file], the word occurs at ca. 1:42–1:45 (but it is chanted, not spoken in a natural voice). User:Dbachmann User_talk:Dbachmann 10:41, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC) ::To be honest, I can't hear any difference at all between the chanter's and my own "i". I'm also definetly not stressing it; that much I know about phonetics. The chanter's "a" is more closed, though. Almost on the brink of becoming a Swedish [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Sv-ek.ogg e:]. Is that due to dialect or the chant? ::In any case, I modeled my pronunciation on sound files from Nationalencyklopedin, which are cleary pronounced by a native speaker who clearly pronounces the "i". Incidentally, he also doesn't use an article, but I'l trust your syntactic judgement on that one. ::Eventhough I really like that chant, the extremly low quality and clearity make it pretty useless as a guide to pronunciation. I suggest we use what we've got and hope some native speaker will come along and be urged to do a proper recording. I mean, it's not like I'm pronouncing it ... - User:Karmosin 12:09, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC) :::(*lol*) fair enough, let's see what the natives say :o) User:Dbachmann User_talk:Dbachmann 12:30, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC) ::::Now that's Wikipedia:Be bold! :-D ==Islamic Civilizations== I am new to this encyclopedia, and would like someone's assistance in this. I would like to suggest an additional heading under the category "Islam" which so far, understandably focuses mainly on doctrine and religious communities, schools and orientations, but also has architecture. I would like to suggest a heading that contains architecture, as well as a wide range of other phenomena. Islamic Civilizations is in the plural because as a world tradition, the faith has interacted with a wide range of cultures: pre-Islamic Arabian, African, Iranian, Turkic, Indian, South-East Asian, Chinese, etc. This category of knowledge goes beyond theology and practice to encompass culture, scientific knowledge, medicine, technology, the meaningful relationship different Muslims have with their natural environment, with different cultural traditions, as well as the understandings and practices that are hybrid and creative integration of different traditions and cultural practices. Islamic Civilizations covers various works from around the world such as poetic literature, stories, philosophical and scientific treatises, travel accounts, maps, and encyclopedias. This section would thus embody the pluralism and breadth of concern that is to be found in any tradition that encompasses about one billion people spanning the globe, over a period of one thousand four hundred years. I shall start in a small way by describing texts that demonstrate a small piece of knowledge that would fall in such a category. Between the ninth and thirteenth centuries was a period of scientific and cultural development among Muslims and others who shared a cultural space that could arguably qualify as "Classical" rather than medieval, as is commonly understood. Why? Despite some degree of political turbulence, this period was formative in several senses: individuals often asked fundamental questions about the human condition, there was much diversity of opinion, there was significant dialog between reason and spiritual experience, individuality was generally respected, and there was a profound and general respect for the validity of one's experience, one's own powers of observation and reason, and finally, a healthy suspicion of received knowledge or tradition. During this period, many texts developed, mainly in Arabic, some of which are in English translation. For example, in the tenth century, the great scholar and lecturer on Islamic law, Muhammad al-Ghazzali, who lived in in Baghdad, which was then in the middle of a period of creative ferment. Right in the middle of his regular lectures, al-Ghazzali stopped his lecture and could speak no more. While those near him thought he had suffered from some sort of physical ailment, he had, according to his own autobiography, undergone a profound crisis of conscience. He found an emptiness beneath the impressive body of legal precepts, and soon left his secure position as teacher of law, and went on a seven-year physical and philosophical journey that led to a major reform of the tradition that could in some respects be compared to that of Martin Luther. Ghazzali focused on an inner dimension to the legal traditions, by focusing, for example, on the intention of the person behind the performance of ritual and the precepts of legal rules. Moreover, he contributed to integration of Sunni Islam and Sufism, which by his time become a movement of interior spirituality that, for the most part from the "outside" criticised the superficiality of legalism and what they considered the moral decline that came with the enormous wealth and power in North Africa, Western, Central and South Asia. In fact, Ghazzali was called "mujadded" that is, someone who brought something new, or fresh. He could be critiqued for being conservative, and hermetically sealing his innovative synthesis. Nevertheless, his interpretation of the Verse of Light (Sura Noor) of the Qur'an, written after his journey, gives a whiff of his respect for the inner life and his freshness of mind. His autobiography, which covers his crisis, and illustrates his searching, sharp mind, his poignant honesty and is as lucid and self-revelatory as the writing of any a reformer. Both his interpretation of that famous verse and his autobiography have been translated into English. Another example from that period is an encyclopedia call the "Treatise of the Brethren of Purity", written about 700 years before Diderot, by a group of individuals in many walks of life, in the city of Basra, in present-day Iraq. This massive work covered the knowledge of the day from music to mathematics, from physiology (which included knowledge of the human circulatory system) to natural history, as well as narratives that would today be called precursors of fiction. One of these narratives is called "Trial of the Animals Versus Humanity", in which a group of animals revolt against the domination of human beings, and question the assumption that human beings make that they are superior to animals. These animals do not trust human courts, so resort to the court of Genies (Jinn). This segment of the encycopedia covers probably one percent of the total work, and although it is not ecology in the modern sense, and represents a rudimentary but genuine observation of animals and insects, has recently been called the first example of deep ecology in human history. I will obtain the references to the above texts and post them ASAP. My next submission will be a summary of several such texts, which should, hopefully, encourage others who know other such texts to summarize and reference them. ~saffroncoconut ---- You don't need anyone's permission to start an article. It needn't be linked to Islam at first. If you want to start writing articles about Islamic scholars, jurisprudence, literature, just go ahead. Just do a ''search'' first to make sure that it's not covered already. Note: search on various terms to make sure you've looked everywhere the subject might be filed. As a newbie, I set up several pages that I later discovered already existed, under slightly different names. Once you start accumulating the little bits, it will be clear how things should be organized into categories (note that they can belong to more than one category). Also, there IS Islamic material in Wikipedia that's NOT linked to the Islam article. Frex, there's hijab and Islam and clothing, which need to be combined, really, and Sufism, Islamic music, Arab music, etc. If you want to set up some categories that don't already exist and start cross-linking things, that's fine too. I don't think it should ALL go to the Islam article -- we'd end up with ten zillion links. But we could link the Islam article to a few link-collection pages. Starting with the major categories and working down may not be the best approach. I'd also be somewhat concerned about the idea of an "Islamic" civilization. While Islam may have provided the framework, a lot was contributed by the Christian and Jewish dhimmis. Whenever you start with a huge, vague conception, you end up with vapid generalities and lots of arguments. When you start with the bits and work up, I think you're going to have an easier time getting consensus on how existing bits should be classified and organized. Welcome! Write lots! Explain what you're doing on talk pages! User:Zora 01:59, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC) == A round of edits by non-communicating editors == Several editors went to work on the article without any explanation of what they were doing, or why. I reverted, and I invite those editors to come here and talk to the rest of us about changes. This article is a result of a long period of consultation and negotiation. It is better to work collaboratively in such cases. Skywalker added a link to a Russian website that doesn't appear useful to people searching for general knowledge about Islam. Xbla (or some such name) was busy simplifying and deleting -- edits that in some cases I thought made sense, as stripping away an aura of Muslim religiosity that has gradually accreted -- but such edits are bound to be controversial, and I think should be done gradually and carefully. User:Zora 18:21, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC) Yes, article "[http://www.religiousbook.net/Lectures/Islamic_ethics.html Fundamentals of the Islamic Ethics]" is one of independence view, but it may be very interesting becouse author have a good spiritual practice. Excuse me for my bed english. Best regards, Skywalker. == regarding a round of edits by non-communicating editors == As it been remarked in earlier discussions, the text, as it stood after Grenavitar 's 01:05, 14 Mar 2005 reversion, was tainted with religious proselytization and bias while masquerading itself as an objective presentation of facts. Though parts of the article could be informative and helpful to the reader, there was also present, a noticeable religious slant. More precisely points in contention are: A) The article was salted with assertions one would expect in a religious sermon, B) It presented disingenuous misrepresentations about actual beliefs and practices. C) It made a shrewd attempt to draw legitimacy by portraying belief of a relationship or camaraderie to Christianity and Judaism, which clearly does not exist anywhere in the world today. D) It makes deliberate omissions of important facts and qualifiers such as relating to the true nature of dhimitude in Islam, E) It makes subtle condescensions towards non-Muslims faiths. F) It lists blatant distortions of population statistical information. It seems like a far cry from the honest scholarship that one would expect from encyclopedic researchers. I have attempted to correct this by eliminating the some of faulty sections, which fit in the four types of categories above. Hope this helps :You may have a case regarding the population facts (I do not know about this) however I don't believe you do with the rest of your edit. You show no basis for removing the etymology of the word "Islam". You change "fellow Abrahamic religions" to "competing Abrahamic religions" which if anything adds the opposite bias. You change God to Allah making him different although God is a concept and Allah is a name for that concept therefore Allah can always be called God. It is Muslim belief that God gave his message to many of the Jewish prophets, John the baptist and Jesus and their followers distorted the message. The reason it was revealed to Muhammad is supposed to be because his predecessors communities bastardized the words. These are the beliefs of Islam and removing them so that it sounds harsher is wrong. The Qur'an compares itself to the other religions and tries to make itself look better and it is the obligation of an encyclopedia to report on the traditions of the people and what the text states. The text is an historical document and if it asserts these things then we report them. Christianity assert Jesus is God and we report that so I fail to see how this is any more biased. It is considered to be final revelation and your removal of that more or less asserts that we should remove Seal of the Prophets article too for bias. Your edits are leaving out beliefs of the people who follow Islam which is bias in itself. User:Grenavitar 06:22, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC) === I still stand by the points I made==== I am afraid, Grenavitar, that your statement reflects your personal opinion which you have allowed to color your actions when trying to suppress the restoration of the NPOV. Essentially , your version of the article presents a sanitized face that is meant to be favorable to Islam and demeaning to other faiths. You, yourself could not help blurting out your true opinion of other faiths which you evidently regard as inferior and not as a fellow faith. This being one of my points above. I hope you can take a moment to regain your NPOV on this topic. Try to consider carefully the points I made above and see if you cannot recover an NPOV on this. Your attempt to label my changes as vandalism is ridiculous and a pretty uncalled for tactic. : X, not everyone working on this article is Muslim. The article as it stands (now that I've reverted it) is the result of many months of work by editors of various faiths. The non-Muslim editors (such as myself) have tried hard to include everything that the Muslims think is noteworthy about their religion, but state it so carefully that Muslim belief is described as belief and not stated as fact. : If your experience on Wikipedia has been of working on derelict or abandoned articles, then it hasn't prepared you for dealing with an article watched by a large community of editors. You can't just come in swinging. You can either approach your edits one by one, gradually, and argue for accepting them on the talk page, or you can write an alternate version, put it up on your user talk page or a subsidiary page attached thereto, and then call for comments. : Wikipedia is rather bad at teaching editors HOW to work with the community, such as it is. You have to learn by banging your head against the wall, as I've done too many time
Evangelical Christians and Orthodox Jews are certainly conservative, and there are many amongst both groups who are fundamentalists, but the Wesetern media never confuses even the most conversative, fundamentalist Christian or Jew with those who would commit violence in the name of the aforementioned religions. When Baruch Goldstein committed his act of terrorism, nobody condemned conservative or fundamentalist strains of Judaism, and rightly so, since such an act had nothing to do whatsoever with religion or religious conservatism. But it had everything to do with fanaticism, and there are those in Israel who support the actions of such an individual, and they, in turn, are considered lunatics. But certainly not religious conversatives.
Point is, you may not agree with conservative Muslims, but their conservatism does not automatically make them violent zealots ready to send someone to their death for speaking out in favour of women's rights, just as the conversativism of an Orthodox Jew does not automatically make him an extremist with a violent hatred for Palestinians.
To give yet another example, the Ayatollah Khomeini, prior to the Iranian Revolution, was considered by most Iranian Islamic theologians to be a far-left liberal (I kid you not). Most of the conservative Ayatollahs were on the side of the Shah, and opposed Khomeini's so-called "reforms." Most Western liberals (including such leftist luminaries as Michel Foucault and former President Jimmy Carter) supported Khomeini as well. And we've all seen how "successful" that revolution has been, yes? The problem is not conservativism or even fundamentalism, since most religious people of any creed, no matter how conservative they are, are not inclined towards violence. It is that vocal and violent minority found in all socities who choose to wrap themselves in whatever religion or secular ideology most convenient and available, and then go off on some killing spree to justify their insanities. And they do just love seeing their names in all the papers, don't they? User:Ghostintheshell 03:43, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC) ::::By the way, and this is a bit off-topic but I feel is something consistently overlooked by those critical of Islam (and Eastern traditions in general), is the fact that when we are talking about pure Islam, we are ultimately talking about the Qur'an and nothing else. The Qur'an, by it's own account, is the only authoritative book of scripture. And this is common in Eastern traditions where personal interpretation is held above all else - and certainly in the case of Islam personal interpretation of the Qur'an is the only authorititative method. Again, this is all illustrated by the book itself.
All these so-called Islamist groups with their self-styled madrassas and lunatic mullahs advocating all manner of filth and rubbish and calling for death threats against those they perceive as heretics or whatever - these are all not only a bunch of (usually) uneducated idiots (the Taliban for example were notoriously uneducated, especially in all matters Islamic), but from a theological perspective, they have no spiritual authority whatsoever. Nowhere in the Qur'an can there be found any support for organised clergy or special schools or anything like this.
The Saudi's, the Pakistani extremists, Hamas, the Taliban types, al-Qaeda, and so forth, these are all widely reviled (even in the Arab world, especially in Lebanon, Egypt, and Morocco) and for good reason, because they are against Islam, as their very actions not only work against the faith, but there is no Qur'anic justification for their murderous actions. And again, this has nothing to do with conservatism or fundamentalism.
Islam is essentially a traditionalist faith, and thus like Orthodox Judaism and traditional Catholicism/Orthodoxy is conservative. In some ways more so, in others less so. After all, from a historical POV, Islam itself can be seen as an attempt to return to a pure, back-to-the-basics Judaism. But unlike the others, Islam has no organised body which represents the whole, and thus it is very easy for someone or some group to pick up a Qur'an and attempt to speak for everyone else. This tactic, of course, never works, but they do end up cultivating a group, always cult-like and dedicated to spreading violence to both Muslim and non-Muslim alike.
Again, to say that these types are fundamentalist is highly prejudical since this implies that Islam advocates senseless killing and terrorism, which it does not. A terrorist is a terrorist, just as a criminal is a criminal. If someone is a Muslim fundamentalist, then they cannot be a terrorist since a literal interpretation of Qur'an will not lead someone to fly planes into buildings or beat or kill a woman because she is an imam. To say that Islam needs more "moderates" or liberals implies that Islam inherently is a dangerous religion. And that is pure bigotry. User:Ghostintheshell 06:33, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC) Mustafaa, I don't know which country/continent you operate on, but death threats for things that the extreme right finds inconvenient are not something to be trivialized. For three generations, we have dealt with that. One groups of students I worked with had to stare down the barrel of an AK-47 (one of us literally, at one point) for having the temerity to organized an evening that included musical entertainment (just music; sung by people standing very stiffly and very modestly dressed) for students of a major engineering school in Pakistan in 1984. It drives me nuts to have the student organization that did that (the pointing of the gun) and it's parent political party mentioned as one of the more "moderate" Islamist groups. (One of the largest in the MMA.User:IFaqeer—User:IFaqeer User talk:IFaqeer 19:51, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC) : Having been busy with Algerian Civil War for some time (not to mention Abdelkader Alloula), I know full well that death threats for things that the extreme right finds inconvenient are a serious problem. However, I find RK's suggestion that people might be "frightened" to write a ''Wikipedia article'' about women in Islam appallingly unrealistic and rather condescending. It suggests at once that every Wikipedian's name and address are publicly available, that some radical "Islamist" group somewhere is tracking Wikipedia for people whose writing they dislike, and that such an article will in itself, no matter how NPOV, drive such people (whoever they may be) into a murderous frenzy - and that every contributor to Islam-related topics must believe all this! It would have been more polite to Wikipedia:Assume good faith reasons for the article's nonexistence, such as the most obvious possibility - no one had gotten around to it yet. - User:Mustafaa 23:17, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC) Now, now, now. One doesn't have to be actually threatened to be stifled. Self-censorship--or, over about a generation or so, the complete disappearance of alternative points of view in all but the fringes of a body of opinion--can happen without clear and present threats. As an example, just consider the dominance of the Zionist POV in modern Jewish society, especially in the US.User:IFaqeer—User:IFaqeer User talk:IFaqeer 00:21, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC) : Well, that's certainly true; every culture has topics in which alternative POVs are virtually unknown, and sometimes this is a good thing (as, for instance, the near-complete absence in most societies of multiple POVs on cannibalism.) But that's a rather broader and more complicated issue. - User:Mustafaa 01:03, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC) == Islam growth today == ''"In the U.S., more people convert to Islam than any other faith, especially amongst African Americans."'' This is unsubstantiated , where are the statistics on this? What about people who convert out of Islam ? ''"There are approximately 5 million Muslims in North America."'' This is also unsubstantiated , considering that there is not statistical count of muslims in North America. Where do these numbers come from ? Xlaba22 --- The [http://www.pluralism.org Pluralism Project] (a Harvard associated project run by Diana Eck) [http://pluralism.org/resources/statistics/tradition.php#Islam estimates] between 2.56M and 6M Muslims in America. A perhaps less reliable [http://www.colostate.edu/Orgs/MSA/find_more/iia.html source]: "At present, the number of Muslims in the United States is estimated to be on the order of between 5 to 8 million. It is the fastest growing faith in this country." --Colorado State University Muslim Students Association. No citations in article (They due mention several books, the last of which published in 1993, in the article...one can infer from this that the article, and the statistic, is from 1993 or later.) Muslim population of North America (Canada and the US) is put at 323.1 by [http://www.islamicpopulation.com/america_islam.html IslamicPopulation.com]. If you define North America geographically (as opposed to the general European conception) and include Mexico, the population stands at 428M (according to the same source, with Mexico having 104.9M Muslims). I accidentally thought growth stats were needed, and I dug up the following up before I realized it was unneccessary, but here it is anyway: As for growth, [http://www.religioustolerance.org ReligiousTolerance.org] has an [http://www.religioustolerance.org/growth_isl_chr.htm article] with multiple sources with most pointing to Islam being the fastest growing world religion. The Islam scholar John L. Esposito also says "that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the United States..." [http://www.renaissance.com.pk/octbore2y1.html source] : User:Dws 11:33, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC) == Unsubstantiated references in the article == I have removed the references to other prophets which are not mentioned in the Qu'ran. If the article is to reflect the beliefs of Islam it must not introduce extraneous interpretations by editors. The statements "including Adam, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus" implies acknowledgement of these names in the Qu'ran yet these names are no where to be found in the Qu'ran so why is it made ? Should we also include all other self appointed prophets of the world who also are perceived by their followers to speak the words of God? If you wish to reinsert those names please make your case and provide references. Xlaba22 : Muslims believe and follow many things which are not spelled out in the Qur'an -- just as most Christians believe in doctrines, such as the Trinity, which are not spelled out in the New Testament. Most Muslims (except the Salafis) accept the authority of the hadith (traditions), and especially the sahih hadith of Bukhari and Muslim. By insisting that the Islam article be "Qur'an only" you are in fact imposing an extremist version of Islam. Please do some research on Islam! User:Zora 18:52, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC) :: Irregardles then you should provide actual references to substantiate your claims . I realize you may not have been the originator of those particular references to other prophets's name but since you chose to defend this , please provide us with quotes from the hadith that support those claims. The purpose of the article will be better served with direct quotes than a vague " this is what they believe" Xlaba22 ::: I did put the names as well their Quranic references in Prophets of Islam, please check all verses. I think now those names shall be returned back. Adam, Ibrahim, Musa, Isa, and so on are indeed mentioned in the Quran. The names Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and so on are derived from Biblical characters based on similarities in their story. User:DiN 19:52, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC) :Hadith (all Bukhari) *[Vol. 1, Book 6, Hadith 293] "This is a thing which Allah has ordained for the daughters of Adam." *[Vol. 6, Book 60, Hadith 003] "Then Adam will remember his Sin and feel ashamed thereof." :Books that mention them *''What Everyone Should Know About Islam and Muslims'' by Suzanne Haneef *''Islam: Beliefs and Teachings'' by Ghulam Sarwar *''Muhammad: Man and Prophet'' by Adil Salahi I picked up three rudimentary books on Islam I have in my possession at the moment and they all mention Adam and Abraham. The Hadith collections (a ''major'' source of Islamic teaching) mention them often. It just comes down to you being wrong, there are countless examples if you would take any effort to search. Add them in as footnoots to the article if you want references. To make this extra easy go to [http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/reference/searchhadith.html Hadith search from USC] and search for the names and see the references. Or [http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/reference/searchquran.html search the Qur'an] for that matter... ~_~ User:Grenavitar 19:41, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC) ---- Thanks Gren. I should have just checked one of my own translations of the Qu'ran. The index to the Arberry translation has MANY references to Abraham, Adam, Moses, and Jesus in the text of the Qur'an. Plus ten references to Prophets. D'oh
Just to make things clear to everyone, Islam is not Catholicism, nor is it Reform Judaism, both of which are Westernized Abrahamic religions. Whether Islam can be Westernized is open to debate, but I do not believe that it should be implied that such a Westernization would be proper and required. Does Tibetan Buddhism need to be reformed (i.e. Westernized) as well? What about Hinduism? Honestly, I simply do not understand this Western obsession with destroying other peoples' traditions and forcing them to reconcile their belief systems with the Western world. Not even the Japanese have forced their Shinto faith to become Westernized or liberalized or whatever.
At any rate, 'liberal (or reform) movements in Islam' is all very good and well, but I do not believe it should be linked to the Christian Reformation or whatever. User:Ghostintheshell 23:55, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC) : Well, I'd agree with you, at least in part. There's no reason for Islam to repeat the same process that Christianity underwent. I would say that any venerable tradition has the challenge of facing and absorbing what's NEW, whether it's textual criticism or evolution, especially when what's new contradicts things that people previously took for granted. The pace of change has accelerated enormously in the last few centuries, but it's the same problem every believer faces at every moment: how do I interpret the teachings NOW? The difficulty of doing this is radically increased when the guardians of the tradition refuse to admit that there's any difficulty at all. IMHO, they've fossilized -- and hence are no longer alive. User:Zora 00:40, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC) :: The earlier statement drew attention to aspects of Islam which is widely viewed as in need of change, particularly in the area of ''Freedom of other religions to practice freely and in the open, including both monotheistic and non'',''The emancipacipation of women'',''Tolerance of apostates and freedom to leave Islam'',''Freedom of speech and freedom of thought.'',''Freedom to disbelieve without stigma or punishment''.The comparison to Christian reformation is a much softer way of of making the point than listing the above points directly. --User:4r2emi 14:20, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC) ::: Your obvious prejudice against Islam aside, the issues you are referring to are all political, and have nothing to do with Islam itself. There are many Muslim countries in this world, and most of them are not like Saudia Arabia or the Taliban. Perhaps you would like to think that, just many other anti-Muslim bigots, but that's your problem. Plus, the Christian reformation is just a bad example, plain and simple. It didn't really "reform" anything, and it's primary result was a schism between the Protestants and Rome. But the Protestants were just as conservative and "hardline" as the Catholics, if not more so, as evidenced by the extreme austerities of groups like the Puritans and the zealousness of modern Evangelicals. User:Ghostintheshell 04:09, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC) :::: I am not the originator of the original section regarding reformation, but I do think it made a good point. Reformation is discussed extensively in a wide array of books dealing with Islam and modernity, some of which you may want to read directly. Mentioning it in the article seems quite appropriate as it is reflective of current public discourse on the topic of Islam. On the subject of the listed issues, I am afraid that a great deal of Muslims do not share your POV ,indeed we would like to see you stand on any street in the Muslim world with a sign promoting those freedoms.--User:4r2emi 05:20, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC) :::::As I've stated before, there have been a number of reform movements in Islam - Wahabism, for example, which originated out of Saudia Arabia and which heavily influenced the Taliban. But that obviously is not the same type of reform we are talking about, since the Wahabi's are eerily similar to those Puritanical Christians who first settled New England. And you will recall that the Puritans were Christian reformers, which is why they left England for the New World.
Now, as to your statement that the "majority of Muslims" do not share my POV - you really cannot expect to be taken seriously with a statement like that, do you? Do you know how many Muslims there are in this world, and how diverse a community it is we are talking about here? Do you honestly think that the vast majority of Muslims, or even any large percentage of Muslims agree with the sott of religious tyranny to be found in Saudia Arabia?
It might surprise to find out that most Muslims are very much against the Saudi regime, most especially Saudi Muslims (particularly those who are not part of the Wahabist cult, i.e. the majority) themselves. Did you know that most Muslim-majority nations are secular? Do you know anything about (or better yet, ever been to) Malaysia, Indonesia, Turkey, Bosnia, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco - to name a few prominent examples? Did you know that in those Muslim-majority countries like Iran where self-styled Islamist regimes are in power, that such regimes are extremely unpopular and despised by those nation's population? Do you know anything about how the majority of Afghans (majority of them very religious) felt about the Taliban?
Your statements are so illogical and ignorant, that I should even bother to reply, but unfortunately attitudes such as yours are common in the West, as evidenced by the popularity of commentators such as Daniel Pipes and the like, anti-Islam this, anti-Islam that, ad nauseum. You can be a bigot if you like, just don't hide behind all this innuendo of "reform" and "modernity."
There is plenty of modernity in the Muslim world, and there is plenty of political reform underway. Of course, does the West really want secularism (which is the most popular form of gove