Islam – Basic Beliefs

 

    Islam is neither the spiritual nor moral equivalent of Christianity. But before I can show this, we need a basic understanding of what Muslims believe. It is the world's 2^nd largest religion, behind Christianity. My source for most of this information is from 'Answering Islam' – by Norman Geisller (1995).

 

Basic Tenets of Islam. Islam is the religion – Muslims are its believers.

 

1. Islam is a religion of the sword, teaching its followers to spread its religion by violence and force.
   
2. Islam Claims to be an extension of Judaism and Christianity. First came the Old Testament, then the New Testament, then the Qur'an, which supersedes both earlier revelations of God.
   

• Muhammad Abduh: The Bible, the New Testament and the Qur'an are three concordant Books. Religious men study all three and respect them equally. Thus, the divine teaching is completed and the true religion shines across the centuries.
  
• "Judaism lays stress on Justice and right, Christianity on love and charity, Islam on brotherhood and peace."
  

1. Islam is strictly Monotheistic – 1 God, creator of everything. Muslims name their God "Allah". Muslims have a difficult time in understanding Christianity's belief in the Trinity. Allah is viewed as impersonal and even capricious.
   
2. "There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet." This is the prayer Muslims are to say at least 5 times a day as they kneel toward Mecca.
   
3. Muhammad as the final prophet of Allah. 25-28 earlier prophets noted in the Qur'an. These include Jesus, Moses, David, Solomon, Isaac, Jacob, and Abraham. They claim that the Arab world is descendants of Abraham, and his son Ishmael. And that they are the heirs of God's promise of making Abraham's descendant's as numerous as the stars in heaven. See Gen. 15:5. While Israel is descended from Abraham's son Isaac.
   

• Muhammad is not viewed as being divine, or a Son of God. He is not likened to Christ, which explains the Muslims aversion to a term such as 'Muhammadans'.
  
• But Muslims are more devoted to Muhammad than even to God. Remember God is viewed as being impersonal, and even capricious. "Love of the Prophet runs like blood in the veins of the community…You can deny God, but you cannot deny the Prophet!" – Schimmel.
  
• "Muslims will allow attacks on Allah: there are atheists and atheistic publications, and rationalistic societies: but to disparage Muhammad will provoke from even the most 'liberal' sections of the community a fanaticism of blazing vehemence." – Wilfred Cantwell Smith
  

  
   

1. 5 Highest Prophets: Muhammad, Abraham, Noah, Moses, and Jesus (possibly also Adam). But none compares to Muhammad. All prophets are men, and nothing more.
   
2. Belief in angels, and Jinn (who have free will with some being good and some evil).
   
3. Muslims believe that Jesus had a virgin birth, and in the Qur'an He is given honorific titles such as "Messiah", "Word of God", and "Speech of Truth". But they do not believe He died, or was resurrected, part of the Trinity, or the equivalent of God. Instead, He is claimed to be merely a prophet, and only a man.
   
4. Muslims claim Islam is unique in being the only universal religion. They claim that Jesus was a prophet only to the Jews.
   
5. Abrogation – progressive revelation. Muslims claim that truths came to Muhammad in stages, such as the world 1^st received God's message in the OT, then the NT, then the Qur'an. Each more truthful than the earlier, and each replacing the earlier. But this doctrine makes the Qur'an difficult to read, as the suras are not in chronological order, but instead arranged generally by length. E.g. adultery originally was to be punished by stoning and later changed to being whipped 100 times. The prohibition against adultery still stands, just the punishment has changed.
   
6. Tahrif – Islamic doctrine that the original teachings of the Bible, and of all other world religions, have been corrupted. Only the Qur'an is not corrupted.
   
7. 5 Pillars of Islam – confession, prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and pilgrimage to Mecca (some also include a 6^th Pillar of Jihad, or holy war).
   
8. Islam believes in Paradise and Hell. Paradise is filled with sexual pleasures. One commentator suggests 2 angels question those who recently died (Munkar & Nakir). 3 questions are asked of the recently dead: Who is your Lord? What is your religion? and who is the Prophet. The answers claimed needed for entrance into Paradise: Allah, Islam, & Muhammad. Islam is a works based religion even to the end.
   

 

*** Big problem – no one is ever assured of a place in Paradise. Not even Muhammad knew he was going to paradise when he died. Must keep striving to earn your place in paradise.

1. Under orthodox Islam, there is no free will for man, Allah predestines everything. Allah alone is active, everything else is passive.
   
2. Hadith – Muhammad's sayings. 2^nd only to the Qur'an and the previous Scriptures in importance. Complementary to the Qur'an, which purports to explain and clarify it. There are hundreds of thousands of claimed Hadiths, with each sect relying on different hadiths. Greatest collector is Bukhari: He collected over 300,000 hadith, yet he considered only 100,000 might be true. And of these, only 3,000 are original stories (not repetitions) which are credible.
   
3. Sunnah – Muhammad's actions.
   
4. Islamic Law – is based on the Qur'an, the hadith, consensus of the community (ijma), and application of reasoning by analogy to the other three sources (qiyas).
   
5. Friday
   is holy day for Muslims. Will Western nations one day have a three day weekend?