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What Everyone Should Know About Islam and Muslims

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What Everyone Should Know About Islam and Muslims WHAT EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT ISLAM AND MUSLIMS Suzanne Haneef TABLE OF CONTENTS To the Reader vii Part One: Beliefs and Acts of Worship 1 I. B e l i e f s 3 The Islamic Creed 3 The Islamic View of Reality 7 The Articles of Faith 13 God (Allah) 13 The Angels 18 The Revealed Scriptures 19 The Messengers of God 23 The Hereafter 39 The Divine Decree 45 II. Acts of Worship 49 1. Declaration of Faith (shahadah) 51 2. Prayer (salah) 52 3. Fasting (sawm) 56 4. Poor-due (zakah) 58 5. Pilgrimage (half) 61 Part Two: Values and Morals 71 III. Islamic Values and Qualities 73 The Islamic Personality 73 IV. Islamic Morals and Behavior 99 Part Three: The Collective Aspect 109 V. Islam in Society 111 VI. Islam and the Muslim World 127 Part Four: The Islamic Way of Life 137 VII. The Performance of the Acts of Worship 139 Prayer (salah) 139 Fasting (sawm) 145 Poor-Due (zakah) 148 vi What Everyone Should Know About Islam and Muslims VIII Islamic Festivals and Observances 149 The Festival Ending the Fast 150 The Festival of Sacrifice 151 IX. Family Life 153 Marriage and the Roles of Husband/Wife 153 Parent-Child Relations 160 Relations with Relatives 166 X. Relations Between the Sexes 169 XI. Daily Life 177 Work and Striving 178 Knowledge 180 Money and Possessions 182 Food and Eating 184 Dress 187 XII. Human Relationships 193 Relations with Jews 196 Relations with Christians 197 Part Five: Conclusion 209 Notes 213 Suggested Reading 221 Glossary 223 Index 227 To THE READER erhaps you have been hearing a lot about Islam and Muslims in the news and are interested in knowing, justifi- pably, just what this religion is all about. Or perhaps you know some Muslims and have been stirred to curiosity about the faith they profess. Or perhaps someone you know, maybe even someone in your own family, has decided to embrace Islam. If so, this book is meant for you. Its purpose is to set forth the Islamic concepts and beliefs in a clear, understandable manner and then to give you an idea about how Muslims are supposed to live. In short, it presents a summary of the Islamic beliefs, ways of wor- ship, qualities, values, morals, standards of conduct, and, in con- crete and practical terms, the Islamic way of life. I think you will agree with me that a religion which does not demand anything of its followers, or which leaves those who have newly entered into it more or less where they were before they embraced it, is an ineffective religion, a mere set of "beliefs" or rituals which does not affect the conduct of living. Islam does not fit this description. For Islam is not a mere belief-system, an ideology or a religion in the usual sense in which these words are understood. Rather it is a total way of life, a complete system governing all aspects of man's existence, both individual and collective. It is in fact a religion which, as I hope to demonstrate in the course of this book, frees the human being from domination by his material and animal aspects and makes him truly human. vii viii What Everyone Should Know About Islam and Muslims The meaning of the word Islam is "submission" and "peace." In the course of making an individual muslim — that is, one who is in a state of islam or submission to the One True God—Islam profoundly affects his thinking and behavior. Indeed, there is no aspect of a person's life, nor of the life of the society which is made up of such people, which it does not touch and transform in keeping with its basic concept, that of the Lordship and Sovereignty of God and the human being's responsibility to Him. Islam's first requirement is belief and its second action. Out of its concepts and beliefs, a certain attitude toward life, toward one's own self, toward other human beings, toward the universe; a cer- tain kind of personality; a distinctive type of human interaction; a particular mode of worship, of family life, manners, living habits and so on in relation to all aspects of life, develops. We live in an age of tremendous upheaval and uncertainty. People everywhere are groping anxiously for something that can save humanity, which has lost its way and is on the brink of unprecedented disaster. It may be true that today we live in an era of the ultimate in material civilization and progress, but in the realm of values and morals mankind appears to be close to bank- ruptcy. In the Islamic view, these problems are fundamentally of a spiritual nature, the result of the human being's having lost sight of who he is in relation to himself, to other human beings, and above all to God, in Whom being itself, and all human rela- tionships, originate. And until he is able to find meaningful and correct answers to the ultimate questions and solutions to his problems which are compatible with the fundamental realities of existence and his own nature, his life will remain adrift without a base and without a direction, his personality will be distorted and fragmented, his human nature abused by permitting its ani- mal part to dominate, and his societies full of overwhelming problems. Islam claims to provide such answers and solutions, ones which are compatible with reason, logic, the realities of the phys- ical universe, and with human nature itself. For Islam is, above all, a view of the total Reality, encompassing the existence and attributes of the Creator, the human being's relationship with known and understood correctly as a faith which increasingly has more and more relevance to the religious community of the Western world. I would like, therefore, to request the reader, for the sake of fairness and objectivity as he approaches this brief study of Islam, to try his best to clear his mind of any preconceptions he may have about Islam, whether these have been gathered from the news, movies or television programs, from newspaper or magazine articles, or simply the vague, piece-meal picture of Islam and Muslims which one somehow picks up from here and there, or any combination of these. As a rule such presentations do not constitute reliable or authoritative sources of information about either Islam or Muslims and are, in fact, often the propa- gators of misconceptions, fallacies and prejudices rather than of accurate information. If, therefore, the reader can set aside tem- porarily whatever he may have gleaned from such sources con- cerning the subject, hopefully when he has finished reading this book (and, if he is interested, others from among the titles listed at the end of this volume) he will be in a much better position to determine what part is accurate and what part is false and mis- leading. In writing this book I have been all too keenly aware that to present Islam as it should be presented is at once a great chal- lenge and an almost overwhelming responsibility. I have under- taken this responsibility with a great sense of inadequacy for the task, for there are countless other Muslims who are far better qualified for it both in terms of their knowledge and their prac- tice of Islam. Nonetheless, to do so has been felt as a duty. Many books about Islam are available, but virtually all of them are either by non-Muslim authors who invariably reflect many bla- tant distortions and prejudices against Islam or by Muslims whose writings, although they may portray Islam correctly and indeed often with great depth and meaningfulness, are not really geared to a non-Muslim, Western readership. Since I have myself, in the process of coming to an understanding of Islam, gone through the simultaneous process of asking and finding To the Reader ix xii What Everyone Should Know About Islam and Muslims answers to the questions which have been asked, and hopefully answered, in this volume, I have felt an obligation to share this understanding with others who may be interested in knowing what Islam is or what it can offer to mankind It is my earnest prayer that God will accept this small effort and make it useful for a better understanding of Islam, the path of peace and sub- mission to Him. The Author Him, his role and purpose in this world, and the relationship between this life and the life of the Hereafter, which puts all that exists into proper perspective and gives balance and direction to the life of human beings and their societies. However, Islam is so little known and understood in the Western world that to many people, especially in America, it is simply another strange religious cult or sect. Allah is some sort of a heathen deity, Muhammad is someone who is worshiped by hordes of pagans overseas, and Muslims are either militant sword-wielding bedouins mounted on camels, fanatical men of religion with long robes and beards, or rich, decadent playboys. Indeed, Islam has been so gravely misunderstood and misrepre- sented in the West that many people in America and Europe think of it as an enemy to any sort of stability, peace and progress; they mistrust it, fear it and regard it as a dire threat without as a rule knowing anything about it other than what the popular media convey, which almost invariably reflects grave inaccuracies and errors. As these lines are written, the media are full of such "news" and views about Islam and Muslims; daily one can hear or read item after item on the subject.
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