For example, one modern writer has said, "Obedience to the commands of nature is obedience to God. The natural laws are a part of what is called angels. They are the executive principles for this world and the executive authorities through which the will of causation is realized.
But before we analyze these attempts to reconcile traditional religion with the needs of life in the modern world, let us examine the nature of Islam. I, as a Muslim, will try to sketch in as briefly and impartially as I can what all the schools of thinkers in Islam accept as its basic tenets. If it were not for the outward manifestations of unity in any religion such as churches, mosques, religious books, ceremonials, and the like, it would be permissible to say that each individual of any faith understands his religion in his own special way.
Therefore, there can be many definitions for religion; yet the definition nearest to truth is almost always to be found in the inspired books of the religion. The Koran is the Book of Islam. Revealed to Mohammed between and A.
If we read the Koran carefully, we find that "Islam" was attributed to those who believed in one sole God from the time of Abraham to that of Mohammed. So Abraham is the father of the belief in divine unity, is at the head of all prophets, and it was he who called the Muslims by the name "Muslims" Sura 22 verse 78 [References are to the Pickthall translation of the Koran, which is available in the Mentor Books series].
Secondly, it comprises doing of good. These basic principles—unity and good works—are so close they are almost one, but the Koran stresses: "Allah forgiveth not that a partner should be ascribed unto Him. He forgiveth all save that to whom he will. This is Islam, according to the statement of the Koran. It is evident that since the revelation to Mohammed the Muslims have passed through many stages and varied circumstances. Some individuals confined their practice to the uttering of the affirmation of faith.
Others elaborated the basis of religion by drawing upon the traditions of the prophet, his companions, and their followers. But the original idea of unity is dominant among the majority of Muslims, and is still the most important characteristic of Islam.
The special message of Islam is twofold. It first completes the message of the previous prophets—and we must not forget that Muslims recognize the Judaic prophets such as Isaiah and Jeremiah who have also been adopted by Christianity—by putting an end to the dispute between the Nestorians and Jacobites about the nature of Christ: Muslims believe that Christ is of the Spirit of God, not God Himself, because God "begetteth not nor was begotten.
In other words, Christ, for Islam, is a prophet, not part of the Godhead. Then the Koran goes on to support the message of Christ, and to reproach those who denied it: "And verily We gave unto Moses the Scripture and We caused a train of messengers to follow after him, and We gave unto Jesus, son of Mary, clear proofs of Allah's sovereignty and We supported him with the Holy Spirit.
Is it ever so, that, when there cometh unto you, a messenger from Allah with that which ye yourselves desire not, ye grow arrogant, and some ye disbelieve and some ye slay? Islam is thus seen as a continuation of the true spirit of religion as revealed by God to the earlier prophets: "Say O Mohammed , We believe in Allah and that which is revealed unto us and that which was revealed unto Abraham and Ismael and Isaac and Jacob and the tribes, and that which was vouchsafed unto Moses and Jesus and the prophets from their Lord.
Mohammed underlined the necessity of obedience to the orders of the earlier prophets: "Say: O people of the Scripture! In other words Islam had entered a house whose inmates were disagreed and whose furniture was disordered, desiring that peace and order be re-established.
The fundamental teachings of Islam differ little in their essence from those of the Bible. Prayer and fasting are originally found in Judaism and Christianity. They differ only in form. The Muslim prays five times a day, bowing and kneeling as did the ancient Semites, and he fasts during a whole month Ramadan from sunrise to sunset.
Pilgrimage to Mecca is similar to pilgrimage to the Holy City of Jerusalem. Legal alms is a kind of organized charity which Christ stressed, and it is similar to income tax in modern times in that its amount depends upon the income of the taxpayer.
Islam forbade the eating of carrion, blood and swine-flesh, and forbade gambling, drinking wine, committing adultery, and usury, actions also prohibited or condemned in the Old and New Testaments. Islam received the unique stamp of Mohammed's success. Unlike other prophets, he lived for some years as the head of a state of his own creation and to which he gave laws.
Mohammed shaped laws pertaining to marriage, divorce, inheritance, and similar matters, aiming at the reform of generally recognized customs. He restricted the number of wives a man might have to four—but on condition that equality be maintained among them. Women had no rights of inheritance; the new code granted them the right to half of men's share. Slavery was then widespread; Islam outlawed it except for captives taken in war, and for these it provided ways of regaining freedom.
Wine-drinking was gradually controlled and usury forbidden. The caste system, then in vogue, was abolished, as was the cruel practice of burying unwanted female babies alive. Kerr says. They tend to praise what they see as a clear sense of moral guidance and were unhappy with the answers of their own clergy. Jorgen Nielsen of the same center agrees: ''Figures are very hard to pin down ,'' he observes. In Denmark Muslims have claimed two conversions a week.
Many of these were Danish women marrying Muslim men: Whether the conversions were to satisfy their in-laws, or were genuine, is not known. Nielsen estimates that the number of mosques in Britain alone including those in ordinary houses , has risen to , but he says that the reasons are immigration, not conversion. Charles le Gai Eaton, a former British diplomat, a convert to Islam, and a spokesman for the Islamic Center in London, estimates some 25 million Muslims live between the Atlantic and the Ural mountains.
They include 3. The area where Islam has made new gains in the last 50 years is in sub-Sahara Africa, from Senegal and Nigeria in the west, to Uganda and Kenya in the east. In the US, Muslims are estimated to number between 2 million and 3 million, mostly immigrants, and many of them in the Detroit area, according to the National Council of Churches. See following stories on Islam in America. So the Islamic crescent lies across the globe in about the same places as it has for a century - stretching from Morocco in far western Africa across the top half of Africa, through Turkey and the Middle East, on through Iran, Afghanistan , and Pakistan, and down through northwest China and India to Malaysia and Indonesia.
Within the Islamic world, however, most Muslims contacted for this series agreed that signs of an awakening, or a revival, do exist.
Saad Eddin Ibrahim of the American University in Cairo says the growth is not just among young militants, but in ''establishment'' Islam: ''Religious broadcasting, and Islamic newspapers and books have at least tripled in the last decade,'' he explains.
He also sees growth in Sufi orders and brotherhoods - ''members gathering for annual feasts and celebrations have quadrupled in 15 years. Arabs remain locked in conflict with Israel, but is there much dialogue between Islam and Christianity?
Progress is limited. Discussions on ecumenism continue in Europe and the US, yet to a Muslim, his own faith is the ultimate revelation of God to mankind.
If he is devout, he believes that Jews and Christians were offered the ''true faith'' and misunderstood it, making Muhammad's reciting of the Koran inevitable. In Britain, there's dialogue in individual communities, by Christian ministers who find more and more Muslims moving into their areas,'' Dr. It confronts a Western world superior in science and technology, stronger economically, but largely secular in outlook and unattractive to many Muslims as a model of society. Modern Muslim thinkers welcome scientific progress and the Western values of equality and the rule of law.
More orthodox scholars stress the need to incorporate these within a strong ethical framework based on the Koran and the words and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad. You don't worry much anymore about what happens when you die. Meanwhile, another struggle of ideas takes place: Between the now-ruling Shia Muslims in Iran, with their passionate preaching of traditionalist protest and reform, and the Sunni Arabs of wealthy Saudi Arabia, who spend millions of dollars a year promulgating their own Islamic orthodoxy abroad.
Muslims in general think Christians are too unaware of Islam's achievements in the past: its contributions to mathematics, science, and medicine a thousand years ago, and its domination of much of the world until years ago. The West remembers mainly the medieval crusades against Islam, the decadence of the Ottoman Empire, and the Turkish effort at genocide against the Christian Armenians at the turn of this century.
It sees Iran and its war with Iraq as a constant threat to one-sixth of the world's oil supplies. The month of daylight fasting during Ramadan June this year costs the Muslim world an estimated 12 percent of its economic production, according to some estimates and has been banned in Muslim Tunisia as a result.
The treatment of women is thought to be paternal and conservative. Interest-free banking is held to be incompatible with today, as are some of the punishments of Islamic law. Islamic government is seen as leading to one-man rule. Muslims themselves remain deep in transition. Traditional values clash with modern economics and third-world poverty, hunger, and overcrowding. To Dr. Muhammad Zaki Badawi, founder of the Muslim College in London, both Western and Islamic worlds need to define their identities in the face of modern technology and science.
Badawi sees three main experiments today to establish a separate Islamic way: in Iran, in Saudi Arabia, and in Libya, ''where, despite all the headlines, most of the people still support the Qaddafi government. Although the numbers we use today were developed in India and were originally called "Hindu numerals," the symbolic system was spread across the Middle East by mathematician al-Khwarazmi and has come to be known as "Arabic numerals.
The transliteration of his name, in fact, is Algorithmi, which is the origin of the term "algorithm. Like most languages, Arabic has spread throughout the world by way of trade and conquest. The Moors of North Africa, who invaded Spain in and were not completely expelled until , left a distinct mark on the Spanish language.
Because the Muslim world was the center of philosophy, science, mathematics and other fields for most of the medieval period, many Arabic ideas and concepts were spread across Europe, and trade and travel through the region made understanding Arabic an essential skill for merchants and travelers alike.
As a result, modern English includes Arabic-based words such as "admiral" from "amir-ar-ahl," meaning chief of the transport; "sequin" derived from "sikkah," a die used for coinmaking; and "jar" from "jarrah," a large earthen vase. Because of the requirement to face Mecca during daily prayers, Muslims needed an accurate way to determine their exact geographic location, so Muslim scientists found a solution through astronomical research. Initially attacked as astrologers, false soothsayers who used the night sky to divine the future, astronomers eventually found favor when the religious establishment determined that science could demonstrate the complexity of Allah's God's creation.
Freed by this new perspective and aided by translations of Greek scientific works especially the writings of Ptolemy , Muslim astronomers made many important discoveries using various tools, including quadrants and even observatories. Ibn al-Shatir developed the planetary theory and studied the radius of Mercury's orbit, information that would be crucial to Copernicus' work years later. Planetary movements were closely charted, and Islam's Golden Age of science was so thorough in its findings that even today two-thirds of the known stars have Arabic names.
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