1.7.1. Islam in Context: The Prophet, the Qur'an and the Ummah
Arabia and the first revelation
Muslims trace Islam to revelations they believe Allah gave to the Prophet Muhammad in Arabia in the seventh century CE. The Arabic word Allah simply means God.
Islam means submission to the will of Allah, and a Muslim is one who submits. Muslims present their religion as a return to what earlier prophets taught rather than as something new.
Muhammad was born in Makkah around 570 CE, a trading city whose shrine, the Ka'bah, then held the idols of many tribes.
Muslims teach that at about forty, praying alone in a cave on Mount Hira, he received a first revelation through the angel Jibril (Gabriel), opening with the command iqra, meaning recite.
Revelations continued for some twenty-three years. Muslims call this message risalah, the message Allah reveals to humankind, and hold that it reached the Prophet in Arabic words he passed on exactly.
Definition
Islam means submission to the will of Allah.
The word shares a root with salam, peace.
A Muslim is a person who makes that submission.
Muslims treat it as something done, not only something believed.
Common Mistake
Allah is often taken to be the name of a separate Muslim god.
The word is ordinary Arabic for God.
Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews use it in their own prayers.
Muslims hold that they worship the God of Abraham, Moses and Jesus.
The Prophet and the Sunnah
Preaching one God brought opposition, and in 622 CE the Prophet and his followers moved to Yathrib, later called Madinah. Muslims call the move the hijrah, and the Islamic calendar counts its years from it.
In Madinah he led a community that was religious and political at once, settling disputes and leading prayer. Muslims therefore look to his life for guidance on public questions as well as private ones.
Makkah came under Muslim control in 630 CE, and Muslims teach that the Prophet cleared the idols from the Ka'bah and rededicated it to Allah alone.
He died in 632 CE. Muslims call him khatam an-nabiyyin, the seal of the prophets, meaning that the line beginning with Adam and running through Ibrahim (Abraham), Musa (Moses) and Isa (Jesus) closes with him.
What the Prophet said, did and approved is the Sunnah, and single reports of it are called hadith. Muslims copy small details of his practice and read the Qur'an through his example.
Definition
Sunnah means the example of the Prophet Muhammad.
It covers what he said, what he did and what he allowed.
Single reports of it are called hadith.
Sunni and Shi'ah Muslims draw on different collections of these reports.
Common Mistake
Islam is sometimes called Muhammadanism, by analogy with Christianity.
Muslims reject the word because they do not worship the Prophet.
They hold that he was a human messenger and nothing more.
Muslim tradition also avoids depicting him in any image.
The Qur'an as revelation
The Qur'an is the sacred text of Islam. Its name means recitation, and Muslims hold that the Arabic wording is the speech of Allah rather than the composition of the Prophet.
It has 114 chapters called surahs, made up of verses called ayahs, a word that also means signs. The surahs are ordered roughly by length rather than by when Muslims believe they were revealed.
Muslims memorise the text as well as read it. Someone who knows the whole Qur'an by heart is called a hafiz, and many are not native speakers of Arabic.
Because the revelation is held to be Arabic, translations count as explanations of the meaning rather than as the Qur'an itself.
Muslims teach that the revelations were written down and memorised in the Prophet's lifetime, then gathered into one official copy under the third khalifah (successor), Uthman.
Definition
Qur'an means recitation, and names the sacred text of Islam.
Muslims hold that it is the speech of Allah revealed in Arabic.
It contains 114 surahs (chapters) made of ayahs (verses).
Muslims treat translations as explanations rather than as the text.
Example
Many mosques hold the long night prayers called tarawih in Ramadan.
A hafiz leads them, reciting from memory.
About one thirtieth is covered each night, so the month takes in the whole text.
The ummah and its branches
Muslims call the worldwide community of believers the ummah, and membership rests on faith and practice rather than on descent or nation.
After the Prophet's death the community disagreed over who should lead it, and that disagreement produced the two largest branches of Islam, Sunni and Shi'ah.
Sunni Muslims, roughly nine tenths of Muslims worldwide, hold that leadership passed to khalifahs chosen by the community, beginning with Abu Bakr, and that religious authority now rests with the ulama (scholars).
Shi'ah Muslims hold that the Prophet designated his cousin and son in law Ali, and that authority belongs to a line of divinely guided imams descended from him. The largest group, the Twelvers, teaches that the twelfth imam is hidden and will return.
The difference shapes worship as well as authority. Shi'ah Muslims add the words and Ali is the friend of Allah to the testimony of faith, and they mark Ashura, the killing of the Prophet's grandson Husayn at Karbala, with public mourning.
Sufism runs across both branches. Sufis pursue the inward dimension of Islam through dhikr (remembrance of the names of Allah), often in an order gathered around a teacher called a shaykh.
Definition
Ummah means the worldwide community of Muslims.
Belonging rests on faith and practice, not on birth or nation.
Sunni, Shi'ah and Sufi Muslims all count themselves part of it.
Duties such as hajj (pilgrimage) gather it in one place.
Islam today
Islam is the second largest religion in the world, with roughly 1.9 billion adherents, and most Muslims are not Arabs.
Indonesia has the largest Muslim population of any country, followed by Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, so most Muslims live in Asia.
Muslims speak of reversion rather than conversion, holding that everyone is born already inclined to worship the one God, so that becoming a Muslim is a return.
A person reverts by saying the shahadah (testimony of faith) sincerely, usually before witnesses. There is no ordained priesthood to admit them.
Sunni Muslims follow one of four schools of law, the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali, while Twelver Shi'ah Muslims follow the Ja'fari school. The schools differ over details of practice rather than over the articles of faith.
Active recall
What do the words Islam and Muslim mean?
What was the hijrah, and why does the Islamic calendar start there?
Why do Muslims treat a translation of the Qur'an differently from the Arabic text?
What did Sunni and Shi'ah Muslims originally disagree about?
Why do Muslims speak of reversion rather than conversion?