What is essential to Islam

[Ibrahim]

As this is a relevant issue in modern politics but seldom addressed in a positive way, I thought it might be of some interest to talk about things that are essential to Islam, rather than only ever pointing out what Islam is not. Practical applications of this would be what beliefs can be attributed to "Muslims" collectively.


To begin, the elements I believe are essential to Islam:

1. Monotheism. Pretty simple, I think.

2. Prophets. You have to believe that God historically communicated with mankind through certain individuals, culminating with Muhammad. What makes someone a prophet (profound insight or actual dialogue with God) can perhaps be debated, but some recognition of prophets is required.

These two combine to form the famous Shahada: There is no god but God, and Muhammad is his prophet.

3. Quran. You have to view the Quran as a holy text. Literalism is by no means essential, and it can even be held that certain rules or axioms in the Quran are meant to be broken (Sufi thought has a great deal about this), but you have to view the Quran as more than just another book.

4. Ethics or Justice. The idea that there is an objective morality derived from God is also important. The same holds for this as for point 3 above. Fundamentalists view every traditional practice detailed in the Quran and Hadiths as essential commands, or again Sufis and other mystics view the problem of ethics as organic and instinctive, with all points in between.


There are other things that other lists may claim more things as essential, and I'm one short of even the famous Five Pillars, but these are the things I think are essential. I don't claim to be an authority on the subject, but these are my views on the matter. I'll answer any serious questions to the best of my ability.

[Endovelico]

I have no problems with that, but I wonder what percentage of Muslims sees it that way. Also I feel that many of our objections to Muslims have nothing to do with religion, but with cultural traits. I wonder whether Middle Easterners in general would be more appealing to us if they followed another religion. Sometimes I doubt it.

[AzariLoveIran]

[Ibrahim]

[Caskhades]

How about (spiritual) Jihad? Not essential?

[Rhapsody]

What moves people emotionally to be a Muslim. How do these emotions and behaviors relate to Islamic tradition and dogma. I mean a goldfish does not get very excited about the Qu'ran, even if it could read. So why do human beings get excited and start to wear that particular hat? There must be some trade and pay off.

[Ibrahim]

[Ibrahim]

[Torchwood]

[Apollonius]

Most Westerners are unfamiliar with the structure of the Qur'an and part of its inherent difficulty is that it is not put together according to chronology, but rather length, reading from the longest suras (chapters), which come first and ending with the shortest.

Most Muslims are unacquainted with its mathematical structure. The Perpetual Miracle of Muhammad (1976 - and with further revisions under different titles) by Rashad Khalifa outlines this. Khalifa was at first enthusiastically hailed throughout the Muslim world as modern revealer of the truth of Islam because of his astonishing work but was eventually declared a heretic because he rejected those who follow the sunna and hadith as idolaters. Sheikh 'Abdullah ibn 'Abdul Aziz ibn Baz of Saudi Arabia eventually issued a fatwa against him and Khalifa was found dead in suspicious circumstances in his office in Tuscon, Arizona, on January 31, 1990.

Khalifa's findings rely on counting letters, words, and verses to find patterns and symmetries in the Qur'an. In particular his work with computers revealed the importance of the number nineteen in the structure of the book. For example, the opening statement of the Qur'an, the basmillah, consists of nineteen letters; the first Quranic revelation (Q:96:1-5) consists of nineteen words; the last Quranic revelation (Q:110) consists of nineteen words; the Qur'an consists of 114 (19 x 6) suras; the first chapter revealed (Q:96) consists of 285 alphabet letters (19 x 5); and so on, with nineteen like correspondences having been found.

In addition there are fourteen "mysterious" alphabet letters which prefix 29 chapters in the Qur'an. Fourteen alphabet letters, exactly half of the Arabic alphabet, participate in the make-up of fourteen different sets of Quranic initials, and the 14 sets of initials are found in 29 chapters (14 + 14 + 29 = 57 = 19 x 3). These fourteen Quranic initials are explicitly termed "miracles of the Qur'an" in eight Quranic suras.What emerges is that apologists for Islam claim that this mathematical structure is proof that the book is indeed the word of God.

Some have an entirely different view. They see the book as having been put together well over two centuries after the death of the Prophet in a deliberate attempt to provide a numerological structure to a collection of thousands of recitations attributed to Muhammad. On further examination it turns out that the numerical correspondences are close but not perfect, demonstrating errors in composition and transmission, and the exact numbers produced by Khalifa's study are not entirely accurate with many near misses.


The Qur'an and Hadith are based entirely on exactly the same material, which is what the so-called companions remembered of what Muhammad had to say. Ibn al Jawzi gave a list, amounting to 1,060 names, of all the companions who related traditions, together with the number transmitted by each. From this information it is apparent that the great mass of traditions were transmitted by less than three hundred companions, and of these fifty-five related one hundred or more traditions, and of these eleven were responsible for more than five hundred traditions each. Seven of these reported more than one thousand tradtions each and are known as the mukathirun. The seven are:

Abu Hurayra (5,374)
Abd Allah b. Umar al Khattab (2,630)
Anas b. Malik (2,286)
Aisha, wife of Muhammad (2,210)
Abd Allah b. Abbas (1,660)
Jabir b. Abd Allah (1,540)
Abu Said al Khudri (1,170)


Because in the early days of Islam, the advocacy of any particular belief, attitude, or action required an authoritative source to make it effective, false hadiths were fabricated on a large scale by divergent parties in order to further their various causes. To counter this situation, methods were devised to sift authentic from inauthentic hadiths, chief among which was the institution of the isnad, or chain of transmission. Eventually a body of what were agreed to be authentic hadiths emerged in the form of the six canonical collections of sound hadiths (sunan). The most important of these are the sound collections (sahihan) of

Muhammad al Bukhari (d. 256/870)
Muslim b. al Hajjaj (d. 261/875)


Soon after Bukhari and Muslim four other collections achieved almost as much respect, namely those of :

Abu Dawud al Sijistani (d. 275/875)
al Tirmidhi (d. 279/892)
al Nasali (d. 303/915)
Ibn Maja al Qazwani (d. 273/887)


The earliest biography of Muhammad is the Sirat Rasul Allah by Ibn Ishaq who was born in 717 C.E. and wrote his book about 150 years after the arrival of Muhammad at Medina. We do not possess this biography in its original form but it has come down to us in a redaction of Ibn Hisham (d. 833 C.E.), who edited it so as to omit "things which it is disgraceful to discuss; matters which would distress certain people; and such reports as al-Bakka'i told me he could not accept as trustworthy."

[Ibrahim]

[Ibrahim]

[Torchwood]

[Ibrahim]

[AzariLoveIran]

[Hans Bulvai]

[Torchwood]

[AzariLoveIran]

[Hans Bulvai]

[Hans Bulvai]

[Torchwood]

[Hans Bulvai]

[Rhapsody]

Coercion

[Sparky]

[Rhapsody]