Islam: The Essentials (Pelican Books)

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To manifest the testimony of faith, Muslims are required to perform a structured and formalized prayer five times throughout the day: fajr (dawn prayer), duhr (midday prayer), asr (afternoon prayer), maghrib (sunset prayer), and isha (night prayer). The established timings, based on the position of the sun, are meant to continuously remind Muslims throughout the day that their primary purpose in life is to worship and serve God – meaning to live a life devoted to fulfilling the teachings of God. Through salah, Muslims leave their worldly matters behind for a short period of time to thank and praise God throughout the day. The idea of testifying or bearing witness indicates that the shahadah is not so much simply a belief as it is an active and constant devotion in which the intellect, heart and limbs are all involved in realizing and actualizing the testimony of faith. Salah – Establishing Prayer The various answers to this question fall under a category known as “theodicy.” The search for theodicy is among the most difficult problems in theology, although for Muslims, the answer might be rather simple. God tells us in the Qur’an: “Do not regard with envy the worldly benefits We have given some of them, for with these we seek only to test them” (20:131). This divine promise of guidance plays out in the Qur’an through God-sent Messengers who, from time to time, bring with them divinely revealed scriptures or books to guide humanity, and Prophets who come in between the Messengers to reinforce the message of the Messengers and remind people of the message. Every Messenger is also a Prophet; not every Prophet is a Messenger. Most of the Prophets mentioned in the Qur’an are also mentioned by name in the Torah and Bible. In several passages, Muslims are taught that right belief consists of believing in all the Prophets and Messengers and the divine revelations that came with them, which the Qur’an readily admits only a selected number of whom are mentioned along with their stories. In a tradition from the Prophet Muhammad (hadith) there is the mention of over 124,000 or 250,000 Prophets who came between the Prophet Adam and the Prophet Muhmmad. The Qur’an insists that the original, unadulterated, core message of all the Prophets and Messengers were one: submit to God over your own whims and desires. The Prophet Muhammad is seen, then, not as the founder of a new religion, but rather as the confirmation, clarification and culmination of all previous Messengers. The notions of Muta marriage can be evidently seen in our country. In India, temporary marriage is not recognized, although there exists few who contract Muta marriage but such marriages are not enforceable in court. Hyderabad is considered to be the epicentre of the practice where marriage can be instituted for time span as short as one or two days. In a Hyderabad case it was held that there is no difference between muta for an unspecified period and a muta for life; a permanent nikah marriage for life can be contracted by the use of word muta also; specification of the period for which a muta marriage is contracted alone makes a marriage a temporary marriage for the period specified.

Islam and what do Muslims believe in? - BBC Bitesize What is Islam and what do Muslims believe in? - BBC Bitesize

Allah” is the Arabic word of God, and populations who have inherited the Arabic language or Arabic words call God, “Allah”. Even Jews and Christians in Arabic speaking countries refer to God as “Allah”. Is the God in Islam the same as the God in Judaism or Christianity? Muslims believe that Islam has always existed, but for practical purposes, date their religion from the time of the migration of Muhammad.

About Essential Islam

The pilgrimage is meant to celebrate the oneness of God as well as the oneness of humanity – all believers perform the same sacred rituals in the same kind of apparel. Today, you will see around 3 million Muslims come for the great pilgrimage every year from every corner of the world. The diversity that is seen at the Hajj is truly remarkable. The Hajj has been often described as the largest annual gathering of human beings. FURTHER RESOURCES The Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology (Cambridge Companions to Religion) , Tim Winter

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The legal verses of the Qur’an are to be applied through a sophisticated scholarly process known as fiqh with trained jurists and judges. They are not to be applied without due process of law. Can the Qur’an be translated? He was not satiated, even with barley-bread, for three consecutive days, until the day he met his Lord, not because of poverty, or avarice, but because he always preferred others over himself.Bumiller, Elisabeth. May You Be the Mother of a Hundred Sons: A Journey Among the Women of India. New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 1990. Carroll, Lucy.

Islam - What are the Five Pillars? | Islamic 5 Pillars of Islam - What are the Five Pillars? | Islamic

God is compassionate in ways that we may not even consider, as evident in the following verses from the Qur’an: “It is He who brought you into being, and made ears and eyes and hearts for you” (67:23) and “Have you not seen that God sends down water from the sky; guides it to form springs in the earth, and then, with it, brings forth vegetation of various colors, which later wither, turns yellow before your eyes, and then He makes it crumble away? There is truly a reminder in this for those who possess understanding” (39:21). There have been many cases in High courts and the supreme court, where the court invalidated the instant triple talaaq. In Shamim Ara V. State of U.P, the court observed that:But, it was, perhaps, his way with rude and hostile people that really exemplified the Prophet’s mercy. Early on in Muhammad’s advent as a Prophet, a woman would throw her garbage on him every time he would pass by her place. One day the woman did not come out, so the Prophet became concerned and inquired about her. Learning that she had become ill, he went to visit her and offered comforting words. Once a Bedouin entered the sacred precincts of the Prophet’s mosque when he was with some of his companions and began urinating and defiling the space. The companions immediately rose to physically confront the Bedouin, but the Prophet stood in their way and calmed them down. He asked his companions to wash the mess that was made and took the Bedouin aside to talk to him. He spoke of the sacredness of a worship space and spoke well to the Bedouin until the man exclaimed, “May God have mercy on you and I, and no one else!” The Prophet laughed upon hearing this, and replied, “You have limited something that is immeasurably vast,” teaching him that God’s mercy envelops all beings. In the West, the Prophet Muhammad is often portrayed only as a warrior who led and fought in battles. The Prophet was indeed a warrior who defended his community with the courage of a lion. But, it is also true that the Prophet practiced the highest ethics in war by avoiding the killing of innocents, prohibiting torture and mutilation, the poisoning of wells, cutting down fruit-bearing trees, and so on. Even on the battlefield, the Prophet practiced restraint and patience at every turn. And who shuns the creed of Abraham, but a foolish soul? We chose him in the world and in the Hereafter he shall be among the righteous. And when his Lord said unto him, “Submit!” he said, ‘I submit to the Lord of the worlds.” And Abraham enjoined the same upon his children, as did Jacob, “O my children, God has chosen for you the religion, so die not except in submission.” Or were you witnesses when death came to Jacob, when he said to his children, “What will you worship after I am gone?” They said, “We shall worship your God and the God of your fathers, Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac: one God, and unto Him we submit” (Qur’an 2:130—133). And, just a few verses later, the Prophet Muhammad and his followers are commanded to Say,

Islam Essentials | IslamFYI: An Educational Resource on Islam

God, or Allah in Arabic, and the relationship between human beings and the divine is clearly the primary focus of the Qur’an’s content. Surah al-Fatihah, the Opening Chapter of the Qur’an, sets the expectation of what is to follow. The Opening, which is only 7 verses short, is divided into three parts: The first is about who God is – the absolutely One and indivisible with many attributes; the second is about the utter dependency of God’s creation on God – the only one worthy of true worship and devotion – and the idea of a Day of Judgement where humanity stands before God. The third is a prayer seeking God’s guidance and putting forth the idea that there are two paths to choose from: the path of the guided and the path of the misguided. Islam is the second largest religion in the world with over 1 billion followers. The 2001 census recorded 1,591,000 Muslims in the UK, around 2.7% of the population. The children born out of a valid marriage are legitimate and they have right to inherit their parent’s properties. Divinely revealed scriptures were given to many prophets of God and their communities before the coming of the Prophet Muhammad. Muslims believe that all scriptures originate from a Heavenly Book and contain the same essential message - to worship One God, to live morally upright, and to know that the ultimate return is to the Originator.

Content of the Qur’an

The shahadah is a statement of conviction in the heart proclaimed on the tongue by a believer bearing witness to the reality of one God and accepting Muhammad as the final Messenger of God: Another major source of learning about the Prophet is through poetry and music in praise of Muhammad that is found in many different languages and most prominently in Arabic and Persian. These poems and songs draw from the Qur’an, seerah, shama’il and hadith but also take on a life of their own as art. This art form is often a celebration of the Prophet and a lament on how deeply the Prophet’s physical presence is missed. The pieces begin and end with sending prayers of peace and blessings on the Prophet ( salawat) and his family. The prayer is recited with a melodious chant that takes on its own art form altogether. From a Qur’anic perspective, this is covenant is not at all limited only to human beings. The sun, the moon, the clouds, the mountains, the trees, the entire heavens and earth are all described as being in a state of Islam or being Muslim.