ISLAM

ORİGİN AND CORNERSTONE OF THE WORLD RELİGİON

"Allahu Akbar - God is great!" For Muslims, the call to prayer begins with these words. Well over a billion people worldwide follow him and pray to Allah as their only god. Their faith, Islam, is a religion with a long history: its origin dates back almost 1400 years

THE PROPHET MUHAMMAD

Gossips! Stargazers! Crazy poet! "That's what some of the Muslim citizens of Mecca call him, but Mohammed was a respected man in the Arab trading city, a merchant known as" the trustworthy. "And now that: Mohammed had an apparition he said that he was a prophet, a messenger of God, and that is why Muhammad now wants to divert people from their selfish life, from their belief in idols and spirits, or even holy dates.

All Muslim believers should only pray to one God: to "Allah". That does not like the Meccans at all. Because they worship many different gods, and some families even have their own house god.

But Mohammed preaches tirelessly until he leaves his homeland twelve years after his enlightenment, when hardly anyone wants to hear his teachings. The Muslim inhabitants of the oasis Jathrib, many days' march away, are currently seeking a mediator to end the war between two hostile tribes.

And indeed: He, the stranger, manages to end the dispute. The former opponents merge into a community. With the departure of Muhammad to Jathrib on July 16, 622 according to the Christian era, a new era began for the Muslims: the year "1" of Islam.

THE EMERGENCE OF ISLAM

Islam? This is the name of the faith that Mohammed preaches. "Devotion to God" means translated. And "submitting to God" is the translation for the word Muslim. As in Christianity, Islam does not believe in many gods, but only in one, Allah alone. But unlike Christians in Christianity, Muslims in their religion do not worship a holy spirit or a savior like Jesus Christ.

Muhammad is a simple, mortal man to the faithful. His teaching promises everyone who follows the laws of Allah a happy, peaceful life. And after death? Muslims believe that God will judge every man: whoever obeys the laws of Allah will go to paradise, but unbelievers and hypocrites will sink into hell.

Muhammad's God is the same one who is spoken of in the Christian Bible. Muhammad's followers believe that Allah has repeatedly sent prophets like Abraham, Moses and Jesus to proclaim the true faith.

THE TEACHING OF ISLAM

Muhammad is for them the last and most important of these messengers of God. And Islam for believers more than a religion. It is the set of rules for everyday life: How to pay your debts? How to clean your hands after eating? How is a thief to punish? For all this, Mohammed answers. For 22 years he receives news from Allah. He is said to shudder every time Allah reveals Himself.

In any case, most of Jathrib's residents become Muslim, and Muhammad becomes their leader. The oasis is now called Medina: "City of the Prophet". In the year 630 Mohammed marched with 10,000 men into Mecca, his hometown.

Here stands the Kaaba, a cube-shaped building in the courtyard of the Holy Mosque, where the Arab inhabitants worship their idols. The Prophet lets the idols destroy and consecrates the building to Allah. Since then, the Kaaba has been the most important sanctuary of religion. Muhammad shows mercy to the vanquished, and many Meccans join Islam.

But then the Prophet dies, presumably on June 8, 632. His doctrine of religion, however, remains: Many followers have written down on parchment, leather scraps and bleached pieces of bone, which Mohammed has delivered to them as the Word of God. Later, all this is summed up in one book: the Koran.

THE FAITHS OF ISLAM

A successor Mohammed has not determined. And so the Muslim community falls apart soon after his death. One group, the so-called Sunnis, follows Abu Bekr, who becomes their supreme politician and judge, their caliph. Another group, the Shiites, wants to elect Mohammed's cousin Ali to be caliph. When Ali was assassinated in 661, Sunnis and Shiites separated - a split that continues today.

With the death of the Prophet Muhammad and the disagreement over his succession begins the separation of the two faith groups. The Shiites, followers of the Shia, today constitute only about one-tenth of the faithful Muslims. Many Shiites live in Iran, Iraq and Azerbaijan. The majority of Muslims are Sunnis, a belief group that believes in the Sunna. The Sunnah indicates all that Mohammed has said and decided according to the tradition of the Koran.

In 1924, finally, the caliphate was abolished, which there is no recognized religious leader since this year among the Sunnis. For the Shiites, the imam plays an important role. As a spiritual leader, the imam is the religious authority. The imam also possesses much worldly power.

THE SPREAD OF ISLAM

Despite the conflict within the community - the influence of Muslims worldwide is growing. They conquer Damascus, Jerusalem, Egypt, southern Spain and parts of Afghanistan. When they occupy Byzantium, today's Istanbul in Turkey, they choose their coat of arms as their symbol: the crescent called Hilal.

The conquerors take an example from the Prophet Muhammad and show tolerance for those of different faiths: Jews and Christians are allowed to keep their faith against payment of a sum of money, because their religious writings (the Torah and the Bible) are also sacred works for the Muslims.

Muslim books, the knowledge of the earth and the universe - they help, according to the followers of Allah, to better understand God and the world he created. For this reason, Islamic researchers build observatories, draw world maps, discover medicines and mathematical formulas.

Words such as algebra, numeral or alcohol are creations of Muslim scientists. "The ink of Muslim scholars is more precious than the blood of the martyr (a man who dies for his beliefs)," Mohammed is reported to have said.

ISLAM IN THE WORLD TODAY

The religion continues to spread over the centuries: today, around 1.3 billion people live according to the rules of Allah - that is about one fifth of the world's population - most of them in North Africa and Asia. But also in states like the USA, Germany, Russia or France.

For most Muslims, Islam is simply their peaceful private faith. Others, however, want to apply their whole life, even all laws, to religion and forbid other opinions and beliefs. This happened until recently, for example in Afghanistan, where the laws of Islam were cruelly abused to suppress women, to persecute people with different views, to ban music and dance, cinema and photography.

But one should not generalize this: in Oman, for example, a small state in the east of the Arabian Peninsula, Islam is the state religion, and a sultan rules. Women and girls wear headscarves but are not discriminated against and strict Muslim laws are used only in a few cases. Yes, the Christians and Hindus living there are even allowed to build churches and temples. Everyone is allowed to pray to his god and live out his religion.

THE FIVE PILLARS OF ISLAM

The five most important duties in the life of a Muslim are called "pillars of Islam".

The first pillar is the confession to Allah and His Prophet, Shahada: "There is no deity but God, and Muhammad is the prophet of God." In order to accept Islam as a faith, it is sufficient to say this sentence with honest intention.

The prayer, five times a day, is the second pillar - called salad. For this, Muslims do not need to go to a mosque, the Islamic house of worship. They can pray and bow to Mecca wherever they are.

The poor tax, Sakat, is the third pillar: Once a year, Muslims - if they are not themselves poor - should give 2.5 percent of their income to needy people.

The fourth pillar is Saum, the fast during Ramadan, the ninth month in the Islamic calendar. During this time, Muslims are not allowed to eat, drink, smoke, or have intercourse while the sun is in the sky. The elderly, the sick, children, pregnant women and travelers are exempted from fasting. The fifth pillar, the Hajj, is the pilgrimage to Mecca. Every Muslim should travel to this sacred city in Saudi Arabia at least once in their lifetime and circle the Kaaba seven times in the mosque. The Kaaba stands in the middle of the "Al-Haram Mosque". In this mosque, the pilgrims speak prayers and touch a sacred stone set in the Kaaba.

THE KORAN - THE HOLY BOOK

For Muslims it is clear: not Muhammad wrote the Qur'an, but the holy book comes directly from God. In a cave, the angel Gabriel is said to have appeared to the Prophet for the first time. He showed Muhammad a snippet of the Koran and told him to read the text aloud - that's what the Muslims believe.

These were the first of a total of 6236 verses of the Koran. Even today, the texts of the holy book are loudly recited in the mosque. The Prophet spoke it in Arabic: So it happens that for Muslims only the Arabic Koran represents the true words of Allah.

The Koran is divided into 114 chapters, the suras. They are ordered by length: the long ones are in front, the short ones in the back. Only the first and especially short Sura titled "The Opening" makes an exception. And what is in the Koran? In many suras, Allah's uniqueness is praised. In others, the Last Judgment is described: the day on which everyone is judged, whether he is going to Paradise or to hell.

But also rules for the everyday life of Muslims are written down in the Koran, such as that and how to wash before praying, or how to dress. So the Koran is a book about God, but also a collection of rules.

Since the book of the Koran does not answer all the questions of life, the deeds and Arabic sayings of Mohammed are considered as a kind of supplement to the Koran - summarized in six volumes. The content of these books is called Hadith or Sunnah.

The Qur'an and the Sunna together form the Islamic law: Sharia law.

ISLAMIST TERRORISM: KILLING FOR ALLAH

In the name of every religion injustice has already been committed. And so Islam is abused by some people. In newspapers and in the news one hears of them: Muslims who blow themselves up with bombs or kill people, just because they have a different opinion or religion.

In Egypt, for example, there are Muslims who demand that only the rules of the Koran apply in their Arab country. They are often referred to as "Islamists", as "fundamentalists" or "Islamic extremists".

There are several reasons why these people use violence: some of them believe that the world has fallen back to the time of godlessness, and feel it is a religious duty to fight against all those who think differently. For them, this fight is a "holy war" - or "jihad", as some Islamists call it. Actually, this word has nothing to do with war, but simply means "strive". It describes the effort to educate oneself. Some Islamists are threatened by progress, they are afraid of losing their Arab culture and Muslim religion. Others are desperate, feel unfree and oppressed in their countries. Out of their anger and sorrow hatred arises.

And finally, some even have the hope that a death for Islam will immediately take them to paradise. A false belief, say many Islam experts. And most Muslims also want to have nothing to do with violence. They want to follow the laws of Allah - and just live in peace.