Essential Islam: A Comprehensive Guide to Belief and Practice

297 Pages·2009·3.26 MB·English

by  Diane Morgan

Essential Islam

Essential Islam
s
A Comprehensive Guide
to Belief and Practice
DIANE MORGAN
PRAEGER
An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC
Copyright 2010 by Diane Morgan
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion
of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the
publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Morgan, Diane.
Essential Islam : a comprehensive guide to belief
and practice / Diane Morgan.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-313-36025-1 (alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-313-36026-8
(ebook) 1. Islam. 2. Islam—Doctrines. 3. Islam—Customs
and practices. I. Title.
BP174.M67 2010
297—dc22 2009030397
14 13 12 11 10 1 2 3 4 5
This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook.
Visit www.abc-clio.com for details.
ABC-CLIO, LLC
130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911
Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911
This book is printed on acid-free paper
Manufactured in the United States of America
Contents
Notes on Language and Orthography vii
Author’s Note ix
Introduction and Background xi
Chapter 1 s What Muslims Believe: Essential Articles
of Faith 1
Chapter 2 sEssential Elements of Islamic Practice 57
Chapter 3 sMuhammad 97
Chapter 4 sIslamic Law and Cultural Practices 165
Chapter 5 sThe Many Faces of Islam 221
Glossary 247
Selected Bibliography 257
Index 261

Notes on Language
and Orthography
• The words “God” and “Allah” are exact synonyms. Allah is simply
the Arabic word for God. Some English-speaking Muslims prefer
“God,” and some prefer “Allah.” Because “Allah” is mutually un-
derstandable to Muslims all around the world even if their native
language is not Arabic, I have chosen to retain it in these pages.
• This book employs standard Western dates rather than Islamic ones.
The Islamic calendar begins in 621, the year of the Muslim immi-
gration to Medina. Because the Muslim calendar is lunar-based, it
is about 11 days shorter than the solar one more commonly in use
around the world.
• In Arab culture, a person may go by various names. I bn, sometimes
shortened to b ., means “son of.” When a man’s first son was born, he
might also take an honorary title called the kunya, which is created
by adding the word abu (“father of ”) after his name. For women, the
corollary titles are b int (“daughter of ”) and umm (“mother of ”).
• Arabic terms are in italics, and their definitions are given in the
glossary, as well as in the text when the term is first explained.
Quotations from the Quran, Islam’s holy book, are printed in
italics; those from the hadith, or reports about Muhammad’s
words and deeds, are enclosed in quotation marks. All quotations
from the Prophet come from various authenticated hadith, most
of which have multiple attestations. Unless otherwise stated, the
hadith quoted are categorized as good or authentic.
• Arabic can be transliterated in a number of ways. “Amin,” for
instance, a name that means “trusted one,” can also appear as
viii Notes on Language and Orthography
“Ameen.” Many words and names such as “surah” or “Khadijah”
may be spelled with or without an “h” at the end. I have used my
own judgment in these matters, in general using the most familiar
form, sometimes, perhaps, at the cost of consistency.
• In this text I have chosen to omit diacritical marks (writing Quran,
for instance, rather than Qur’an) because they represent sounds
not readily conveyed in the Roman alphabet (such as those em-
ployed to render the glottal stop hamzah and the gutteral char-
acter ayn ) and are not helpful in pronunciation for the average
English-speaking reader. I have likewise omitted the macron (a bar
over a vowel), which serves to lengthen a vowel sound, and the
underdot used to make certain consonants emphatic.
• Although “Islam” is sometimes translated “peace” and does de-
rive from the same Semitic root as its Hebrew cognate s halom ,
the correct meaning of the word Islam is “surrender,” interpreted
to mean surrender or submission to Allah. The word “Muslim”
refers to one who has “submitted” to the will of Allah. (In Ara-
bic, adding the prefix m u to a root indicates one is referring to a
person, someone who performs the action indicated.) Some Mus-
lims also distinguish between a mere “muslim,” that is one who
submits to the laws of Allah (even if he does not understand them
or possibly not even believe in them) and the deeper belief of a
believer (m umin) , that is, one who not only acts on Allah’s word,
but also has a deep and abiding faith in it.
• The older term “Mohammadan” is incorrect and offensive to
Muslims, for it implies that Muslims worship Muhammad, which
they do not. Muslims believe that the name “Islam” was given to
Muslims by Allah himself. Muhammad was only a prophet in a
long line of prophets, not a divine figure.
• The word “Muslim” generally applies to people; when speaking
of countries or cultures, it is more proper to use “Islamic.”
• In the Quran and in this book, Allah is referred as “He,” the tra-
ditional pronoun. Muslims maintain, however, that Allah has no
gender. ( In Arabic, however, all words are assigned a masculine
or feminine gender; there is no neuter.) In this text the pronouns
referring to various deities are not capitalized unless they begin a
sentence.
• It is the author’s opinion that the Quran, like the Bible, is a human
work, not a divine revelation, an assumption that is clearly evident
throughout these pages.
Author’s Note
This book is written from a purely secular viewpoint. I am not a
Muslim, Christian, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, or member of any other
religion. Although I believe all religions impart important values to
their believers, I also believe none of them is literally true.
This book is intended to be neither an attack upon nor a defense of
Islam; its only goal is to shed a clearer light on the foundations of this
faith. Some readers may end up with a renewed respect for this world-
wide tradition; others may decide that they like it less than before.
I hope that both groups will understand it a little better.