Word: islam
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...found superior to Judaism "in that it did not restrict God's concern to any one group of people." But one thing put him off: "The distinction it made between the soul and the body, the world of faith and the world of practical affairs." Not so Islam. "Nowhere in the Koran could I find any reference to a need for 'salvation.' No original, inherited sin stood between the individual and his destiny ... No asceticism was required to open a hidden gate to purity: for purity was man's birthright, and sin meant no more than...
...Center. It was this sinless monism, Asad claims, this "new creed that gave them to understand that man was God's vicar on earth," that brought about the mass conversions to Islam during the great Moslem expansion that reached as far as Spain. It was "not a legendary 'conversion at the point of the sword.' " But Asad does not ignore the centuries of stagnation that overcame a vigorous society: "As soon as their faith became habit and ceased to be a program of life . . . the creative impulse . . . gradually gave way to indolence, sterility and cultural decay...
...duties of the Moslem on a had (pilgrimage) is to walk seven times around the Kaaba, the great black cube in Mecca that is the center of Islam and the symbol of God's oneness. Pilgrim Asad "walked on and on, the minutes passed, all that had been small and bitter in my heart began to leave my heart. I became part of a circular stream-oh, was this the meaning of what we were doing: to become aware that one is part of a movement in an orbit? Was this, perhaps, all confusion...
...Islam lived through its first three centuries without any clergy at all, for each man is responsible for his own obedience to Allah. But increasingly the Friday service became a time when the imam discoursed on morals, freely relating the Koran to any contemporary subject, including politics. The opportunity was made to order for Egypt's fanatic and xenophobic Moslem Brotherhood, now driven underground by Egypt's military junta. One recent Friday an imam who belongs to the Brotherhood preached that the government had sold out to the British. He paused dramatically, then he called attention...
...morning of Islam's greatest feast day, Aid el Kebir. On that day, by sacrificing a ram. the faithful learn whether the year to come is to be peaceful and prosperous-or disastrous...