Islam
Islam is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran and the teachings of Muhammad. The religion's adherents, called Muslims, are estimated to number 2 billion worldwide and are the world's second-largest religious population, after Christians.
File:FirstSurahKoran.jpg|thumb|200px|right|Surah al Fatiha, from the Quran.
Muslims believe that there is a primordial faith that was revealed many times through earlier prophets and messengers, including Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, and they believe that Islam is the universal and complete version of this faith. Muslims consider the Quran to be the verbatim word of God and the unaltered, final revelation. Alongside the Quran, Muslims also believe in previous revelations, such as the Tawrat, the Zabur, and the Injil. They believe that Muhammad is the main and final of God's prophets, through whom the religion was completed. The teachings and normative examples of Muhammad, called the Sunnah, documented in accounts called the hadith, provide a constitutional model for Muslims. Islam is based on the belief in the oneness and uniqueness of God, and belief in an afterlife with the Last Judgment—wherein the righteous will be rewarded in paradise and the unrighteous will be punished in hell. The Five Pillars, considered obligatory acts of worship, are the Islamic oath and creed, daily prayers, almsgiving, fasting in the month of Ramadan, and a pilgrimage to Mecca. Islamic law,, touches on virtually every aspect of life, from banking and finance and welfare to men's roles and women's roles and the environment. The two main religious festivals are Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. The three holiest sites in Islam are Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, Prophet's Mosque in Medina, and al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.
The religion of Islam originated in Mecca c. 610 CE. Muslims believe this is when Muhammad received his first revelation. By the time of his death, most of the Arabian Peninsula had converted to Islam. Muslim rule expanded outside Arabia under the Rashidun Caliphate and the subsequent Umayyad Caliphate ruled from the Iberian Peninsula to the Indus Valley. In the Islamic Golden Age, specifically during the reign of the Abbasid Caliphate, most of the Muslim world experienced a scientific, economic and cultural flourishing. The expansion of the Muslim world involved various states and caliphates as well as extensive trade and religious conversion as a result of Islamic missionary activities, as well as through conquests, imperialism, colonialism, and the Ottoman and Arab slave trades.
The two main Islamic branches are Sunni Islam and Shia Islam. While the Shia–Sunni divide initially arose from disagreements over the succession to Muhammad, they grew to cover a broader dimension, both theologically and juridically. The Sunni canonical hadith collection consists of the six books, while the Shia canonical hadith collection consists of the four books. Muslims make up a majority of the population in 53 countries. Approximately 12% of the world's Muslims live in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim-majority country; % live in South Asia; 20% live in the Middle East–North Africa; and 15% live in sub-Saharan Africa. Muslim communities are also present in the Americas, China, and Europe. Muslims are the world's fastest-growing major religious group, according to Pew Research. This is primarily due to a higher fertility rate and younger age structure compared to other major religions.
Etymology
In Arabic, Islam is the verbal noun of Form IV originating from the verb سلم, from the triliteral root س-ل-م, which forms a large class of words mostly relating to concepts of submission, safeness, and peace. In a religious context, it refers to the total surrender to the will of God. A Muslim, the word for a follower of Islam, is the active participle of the same verb form, and means "submitter " or "one who surrenders ". However, Quranic studies scholar Mohsen Goudarzi has argued that in the Quran the word dīn means "worship", the islām means "monotheism" and the muslim means "monotheist". In the Hadith of Gabriel, Islam is presented as one part of a triad that also includes , and .Islam itself was historically called Mohammedanism in the English-speaking world. This term has fallen out of use and is sometimes said to be offensive, as it suggests that a human being, rather than God, is central to Muslims' religion.
Articles of faith
The Islamic creed requires belief in six articles: God, angels, revelation, prophets, the Day of Resurrection, and the divine predestination.God
The central concept of Islam is tawḥīd, the oneness of God. It is usually thought of as a precise monotheism, but is also panentheistic in Islamic mystical teachings. God is seen as incomparable and without multiplicity of persons such as in the Christian Trinity, and associating multiplicity to God or attributing God's attributes to others is seen as idolatory, called shirk. Thus, Muslims are not iconodules and do not attribute forms to God. God is instead described and referred to by several names or attributes, the most common being Ar-Rahmān meaning "The Entirely Merciful", and Ar-Rahīm meaning "The Especially Merciful" which are invoked at the beginning of most chapters of the Quran.Islam teaches that the creation of everything in the universe was brought into being by God's command as expressed by the wording, "Be, and it is," and that the purpose of existence is to worship God. He is viewed as a personal god and there are no intermediaries, such as clergy, to contact God. Consciousness and awareness of God is referred to as Taqwa. Allāh is a term with no plural or gender being ascribed to it and is also used by Muslims and Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews in reference to God, whereas is a term used for a deity or a god in general.
Angels
Angels are beings described in the Quran and hadith. They are described as created to worship God and also to serve in other specific duties such as communicating revelations from God, recording every person's actions, and taking a person's soul at the time of death. They are described as being created variously from 'light' or 'fire'. Islamic angels are often represented in anthropomorphic forms combined with supernatural images, such as wings, being of great size or wearing heavenly articles. Common characteristics for angels include a lack of bodily needs and desires, such as eating and drinking. Some of them, such as Gabriel and Michael, are mentioned by name in the Quran. Angels play a significant role in literature about the Mi'raj, where Muhammad encounters several angels during his journey through the heavens. Further angels have often been featured in Islamic eschatology, theology and philosophy.Scriptures
The pre-eminent holy text of Islam is the Quran. Muslims believe that the verses of the Quran were revealed to Muhammad by God, through the archangel Gabriel, on multiple occasions between 610 CE and 632, the year Muhammad died. While Muhammad was alive, these revelations were written down by his companions, although the primary method of transmission was orally through memorization. The Quran is divided into 114 chapters which contain a combined 6,236 verses. The chronologically earlier chapters, revealed at Mecca, are concerned primarily with spiritual topics, while the later Medinan chapters discuss more social and legal issues relevant to the Muslim community. Muslim jurists consult the hadith, or the written record of Muhammad's life, to both supplement the Quran and assist with its interpretation. The science of Quranic commentary and exegesis is known as tafsir. In addition to its religious significance, the Quran is widely regarded as the finest work in Arabic literature, and has influenced art and the Arabic language.Islam also holds that God has sent revelations, called wahy, to different prophets numerous times throughout history. However, Islam teaches that parts of the previously revealed scriptures, such as the Tawrat and the Injil, have become distorted—either in interpretation, in text, or both, while the Quran is viewed as the final, verbatim and unaltered word of God.
Prophets
Prophets are believed to have been chosen by God to preach a divine message. Some of these prophets additionally deliver a new book and are called "messengers". Muslims believe prophets are human and not divine. All of the prophets are said to have preached the same basic message of Islam – submission to the will of God – to various nations in the past, and this is said to account for many similarities among religions. The Quran recounts the names of numerous figures considered prophets in Islam, including Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David and Jesus, among others. The stories associated with the prophets beyond the Quranic accounts are collected and explored in the Qisas al-Anbiya.Muslims believe that God sent Muhammad as the final prophet to convey the completed message of Islam. In Islam, the "normative" example of Muhammad's life is called the sunnah. Muslims are encouraged to emulate Muhammad's moral behaviors in their daily lives, and the sunnah is seen as crucial to guiding interpretation of the Quran. This example is preserved in traditions known as hadith, which are accounts of his words, actions, and personal characteristics. Hadith Qudsi is a sub-category of hadith, regarded as God's verbatim words quoted by Muhammad that are not part of the Quran. A hadith involves two elements: a chain of narrators, called sanad, and the actual wording, called matn. There are various methodologies to classify the authenticity of hadiths, with the commonly used grading scale being "authentic" or "correct" ; "good" ; or "weak", among others. The Kutub al-Sittah are a collection of six books, regarded as the most authentic reports in Sunni Islam. Among them is Sahih al-Bukhari, often considered by Sunnis to be one of the most authentic sources after the Quran. Another well-known source of hadiths is known as The Four Books, which Shias consider as the most authentic hadith reference.