Aqidah
Aqidah is an Islamic term of Arabic origin that means "creed". It is also called Islamic creed or Islamic theology.
Aqidah goes beyond concise statements of faith and may not be part of an ordinary Muslim's religious instruction. It has been distinguished from iman in "taking the aspects of Iman and extending it to a detail level" often using "human interpretation or sources". Also, in contrast with iman, the word aqidah is not explicitly mentioned in the Quran.
Many schools of Islamic theology expressing different aqidah exist. However, this term has taken a significant technical usage in the Islamic theology, and is a branch of Islamic studies describing the beliefs of Islam.
Etymology
Aqidah comes from the Semitic root ʿ-q-d, which means "to tie; knot".Introduction
According to Muslim scholar Cyril Glasse, "systematic statements of belief became necessary, from early Islam, initially to refute heresies, and later to distinguish points of view and to present them, as the divergences of schools of theology or opinion increased."The "first" creed written as "a short answer to the pressing heresies of the time" is known as Fiqh Akbar and ascribed to Abu Hanifa. Two creeds were the Fiqh Akbar II "representative" of the Ash'ari, and Fiqh Akbar III, "representative" of the Shafi'i. Al-Ghazali also had an aqidah.
According to Malcolm Clark, while Islam "is not a creedal religion", it has produced some detailed creeds, "some containing 100 or more belief statements" that summarized "the theological position of a particular scholar or school."
Six articles of belief
The six articles of faith or belief derived from the Quran and Sunnah, are accepted by all Muslims. While there are differences between Shia and Sunni Islam and other schools or sects concerning issues such as the attributes of God and the purpose of angels, the six articles are not disputed.The six Sunni articles of belief are:
- Belief in God and tawhid
- Belief in the angels
- Belief in the Islamic holy books
- Belief in the prophets and messengers
- Belief in the Last Judgment and Resurrection
- Belief in predestination
The sixth point was included in the creed because of the first theological controversy in Islam. Although not connected with the Sunni-Shiʿi controversy about the succession, the majority of Twelver Shiʿites do not stress God's limitless power, but rather His boundless justice as the sixth point of belief – this does not mean that Sunnis deny His justice, or Shiʿites negate His power, just that the emphasis is different.
In Sunni and Shia views, having Iman literally means believing in the six articles.
Tawhid
Tawhid is the religion's most fundamental concept and holds that Allah is one, unique, and the only being worthy of worship. The Quran teaches the existence of a single, absolute truth that transcends the world—a unique, independent, and indivisible being, independent of the entire creation. God, according to Islam, is a universal God, rather than a local, tribal, or parochial one, and is an absolute who integrates all affirmative values.Iman
Iman, in Islamic theology, denotes a believer's faith in the metaphysical aspects of Islam. Its most simple definition is the belief in the six articles of faith, known as arkān al-īmān.Hadith of Gabriel
The Hadith of Gabriel includes the Five Pillars of Islam in answer to the question, "O messenger of God, what is Islam?" This hadith is sometimes called the "truly first and most fundamental creed."Image:Prayer in Cairo 1865.jpg|thumb|left|An Imam leading prayers in Cairo, Egypt, in 1865
File:Aurangzeb 27.jpg|thumb|260px|The Mughal emperor Aurangzeb performing Salat
Salat
is an act of worship. Salat means to call to the Lord Who created and gives life to the worshipper in Islam. This call realizes one to surrender caller's will, obeying his God. It is one of the Five Pillars of Islam. Islam gives concession conditionally if it is difficult to pray Salat in formal ways. People who find it physically difficult can perform Salat in a way suitable to them. To perform valid Salat, Muslims must be in a state of ritual purity, which is mainly achieved by ritual wash ups,, as per prescribed procedures. Salat consists of "standing" intending to call God, bow at knees meaning to ready to obey, prostrate willing to surrender worshipper's will to God's, then to sit asserting evidence of the oneness of God and the finality of God's apostle.Sawm
In the terminology of Islamic law, sawm means to abstain from eating, drinking and sexual intercourse from dawn until dusk. The observance of sawm during the holy month of Ramadan is one of the Five Pillars of Islam, but is not confined to that month.Zakat
is the practice of charitable giving by Muslims based on accumulated wealth and is obligatory for all who are able to do so. It is considered to be a personal responsibility for Muslims to ease economic hardship for others and eliminate inequality.Hajj
The Hajj is an Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca and the largest gathering of Muslims in the world every year. It is one of the five pillars of Islam, and a religious duty which must be carried out by every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to do so at least once in his or her lifetime.Other tenets
In addition, some Muslims include Jihad and Dawah as part of aqidah.Jihad
and literally means to endeavor, strive, labor to apply oneself, to concentrate, to work hard, to accomplish. It could be used to refer to those who physically, mentally or militarily serve in the way of God.In the religious context, it is the struggle against disbelief and non-muslim life to establish, propagate and spread the faith and its principles on individualistic and societal levels.
Dawah
means the preaching of Islam. Da‘wah literally means "issuing a summon" or "making an invitation", being an active participle of a verb meaning variously "to summon" or "to invite." A Muslim who practices da‘wah, either as a religious worker or in a volunteer community effort, is called a dā‘ī.A dā‘ī is thus a person who invites people to understand Islam through dialogue, not unlike the Islamic equivalent of a missionary inviting people to the faith, prayer and manner of Islamic life.
Eschatology
is literally understood as the last things or ultimate things and in Muslim theology, eschatology refers to the end of this world and what will happen in the next world or hereafter. Eschatology covers the death of human beings, their souls after their bodily death, the total destruction of this world, the resurrection of humans, the Last Judgment of human deeds by God after the resurrection, and the rewards and punishments for the believers and non-believers respectively. The places for the believers in the hereafter are known as Paradise and for the non-believers as Hell.Schools of theology
The contents of Muslim theology can be divided into theology proper such as theodicy, eschatology, anthropology, apophatic theology, and comparative religion. In the history of Sunni Muslim theology, there have been theological schools among Muslims displaying both similarities and differences with each other in regard to beliefs.Kalam
Kalām is an "Islamic scholastic theology" of seeking theological principles through dialectic. In Arabic, the word literally means "speech/words." A scholar of kalām is referred to as a mutakallim. There are many schools of Kalam, the main ones being the Ash'ari and Maturidi schools in Sunni Islam, and the Mu'tazilis. Traditionalist theology rejects the use of kalam, regarding human reason as sinful in unseen matters.Usul al-din
Usul al-din, "the principles of religion", is used by scholars in different meanings. In the ordinary sense, it represents the aqidah, articles of faith, "truths which must be believed". In this sense, the scientific discussion about usul al-din constitute the ilm al-kalam.There is a difference in the use of the word usul in usul al-din when compared with usul al-fiqh where the term refers to the sources underlying the sharia, as usul al-din represents not the sources, but the theological judgement itself.
Usul al-din is frequently used in titles of many works by Islamic scholars, including the kalam ones.
Western scholars, like George Makdisi, occasionally use usul al-din to designate the traditionalist theology as opposed to the rationalist kalam.
Usul al-din can also designate a theological discipline that is studied at the Islamic universities. For example, from 1950, the al-Azhar University included three faculties: Islamic law, usul al-din, and Arabic language.
Mu'tazilis
In terms of the relationship between human beings and their creator, the Muʿtazila emphasize human free will over predestination. They also reduced the divine attributes to the divine essence. The Mu'tazilites are considered heretics by all the traditional Sunni Islamic schools of theology.Sunni schools
Sunni Muslim theology is the theology and interpretation of creed that derived from the Qur'an and Hadith.Ash'aris
The eponymous founder of this school is Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari, one of the first to study under but then quit the Mu'tazilis. He then towards the end of his life became an Ashari. It was the historic foe of the Mu'tazili school, the "rationalists" in terms of speculative theology.Ash'arism accepts reason as a witness to the evidence in the scripture. What God does or commands—as revealed in the Quran and ahadith—is by definition just. What He prohibits is by definition unjust. Right and wrong are objective realities. The Quran is the uncreated word of God in essence, however, it is created when it takes on a form in letters or sound.
Some scholars, especially those of the Hanbali school, such as Ibn Qudamah spoke harshly against the Ash'aris, saying "It is obligatory to abandon the people of innovation and misguidance.", going on to list deviant groups, in which he mentioned the Asha'ris. Other scholars outside of the Hanbali madhhab such as Shafi’i, Maliki, and Hanafi scholars, and some of the later Hanbali scholars accepted them into Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jamaah and did not view them as deviants.