Word: islamic
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Because they accept the Bible, Jews and Christians have a special status in Islam as "People of the Book." Muslims also believe that the Bible in its present form is corrupt and that the true faith was revealed only to Muhammad. Those revelations are contained in the Koran, the Arabic word for recitation. Slightly shorter than the New Testament, the Koran has little narrative. There are evocations of divine grandeur in rhymed prose, florid descriptions of the harsh fate that awaits those who knowingly ignore God's will, and detailed instructions on specific ways that man must submit...
...basic spiritual duties of Islam are summed up in the so-called five pillars of faith. They are: 1) accepting the shahada; 2) the daily prayers to God while facing Mecca; 3) charitable giving; 4) fasting during the daylight hours of Ramadan, a 29-or 30-day month in Islam's lunar calendar;* and 5) making the hajj, or pilgrimage, to Mecca at least once in an individual's lifetime-if he or she is financially and physically able. Some Muslims argue that there is a sixth pillar of the faith, namely jihad. The word is frequently translated...
...Muslims accept the Koran as God's eternal word, but Islam to some extent is a house divided, although its divisions are not as extensive as those in Christianity. About 90% of all Muslims are Sunnis (from sunna, "the tradition of the Prophet"), who consider themselves Islam's orthodoxy. In Iran and Iraq, the majority of Muslims are Shi'ites ("partisans" of 'Ali), who differ from the Sunnis in some of their interpretations of the Shari'a and in their understanding of Muhammad's succession. The Prophet left no generally recognized instructions...
Both Sunni and Shi'ite Islam include Sufism, a mystical movement whose adherents seek to serve God not simply through obedience to the law but by striving for union with him through meditation and ritual. Sufism is considered suspect by fundamentalist Muslims like the puritanical Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia, because it allows for the veneration of awliya-roughly the equivalent of Christianity's saints. Islam also has spawned a number of heretical offshoots. One is the Alawi sect, a Shi'ite minority group to which most of Syria's leaders belong. The Alawis believe...
...Islam is not a collection of individual souls but a spiritual community; its sectarian divisions, as well as the man-made barriers of race and class that Islam opposes, dissolve dramatically at the hajj. Once a pilgrimage made mostly by Muslims of the Middle East and North Africa, the hajj has become a universal and unifying ritual. For those who have taken part in it, the hajj acts as a constant testament to Islam's vision of a divine power that transcends all human frailties...