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Islam” in Arabic means “submission or surrender,” specifically in relation to the will of Allah (the word for God in Arabic). It is derived from the same root word as “salaam,” which is Arabic for “peace.”
A Muslim is a person who submits to the will of Allah—hence, an individual practitioner or follower of Islam.
Muhammad (570-632 A.D.) was the founder of Islam, based on his claim to have been the person to whom Allah revealed the Qur’an, the holiest book of Islam, by means of the archangel Gabriel. He is not worshiped by Muslims but rather is regarded as the last and greatest of the Prophets and Messengers, a select group that includes Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. The fact that Muhammad was illiterate is cited by Muslims as evidence that the Qur’an was indeed a divine rather than a human revelation.
The Hijra, or “migration,” which took place in 622 A.D., represented such a pivotal turning point in the early history of Islam that it came to mark the year 1 on the Muslim calendar. Prior to that time, in his early days of preaching in Mecca, Muhammad had received an overwhelmingly negative response to the preaching he had done based on the revelations he was allegedly receiving. His relocation to the city of Medina met with a much more favorable response, thereby giving rise to the Muslim umma, or community.
The overwhelming majority of Muslims worldwide (more than 80%) are Sunnis. This means that they pertain to the Sunna tendency within Islam, which recognizes elected caliphs (“deputies”) as Muhammad’s legitimate successors. Sunnis dominate numerically and politically in most predominantly Muslim countries. The most important minority tendency within Islam is Shi’a, which comprises nearly 15% of Muslims worldwide. Shi’ites recognize imams, direct descendants of Muhammad’s son-in-law Ali, as their founder’s legitimate successors. Historically and at present Shi’ites have been the dominant force in Iran.
Shar’ia is Islamic religious law that governs all aspects of life. It is based primarily upon the Qur’an as well as upon various traditions regarding what Muhammad said and did during the years that he spent in Medina (622-630). To a considerable degree, the resurgence of radical Islamic fundamentalism in many countries during recent decades has been driven by an insistence upon the adoption of Shar’ia as the basic for civil law codes in predominantly Muslim countries.
Fatwas are opinions handed down by Muslim legal authorities for specific situations. They are not considered authoritative for all Muslims. The best-known fatwas in recent memory were the death warrant issued by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1989 death warrant against Nobel laureate novelist Salman Rushdie and Saudi Arabian terrorist Osama bin Laden’s call in February of 1998 for death to all enemies of Islam, particularly Americans.
The term “Jihad” has frequently been translated in the news media as “holy war” but should more accurately be translated as “struggle.” Jihad can refer to an individual Muslim’s struggle against sin, but it has also frequently been invoked by specific Islamic groups and organizations in the sense of armed conflict with non-Muslims in order to defend the Islamic faith.
The Taliban (literally “God’s Students”) is an Islamic fundamentalist movement in Afghanistan that arose in 1994 and has controlled 80% of the territory in that country, including the capital of Kabul, since late 1996. In its strict application of Shar’ia, the Taliban has been particularly noteworthy its discriminatory treatment of women, such as forbidding them to work outside the home or go to school.
