Religion, Muslim

MUSLIMS ARE THE followers of Muhammad. He died in 632 in the city of Medina, where he had been the leader of the Islamic community. The religion that he founded views the problem of the human condition to be one of ignorance. Therefore, what people need is not a savior but guidance. It is guidance that enables people to walk on the path that leads to paradise. Guidance, he taught, was provided by Allah.

For Muslims, Muhammad is a prophet who received revelations from Allah. These were compiled into the Koran after his death by his successors. Muhammad said that the revelations in the Koran were revealed to him by an angel in a cave in Mecca. Later, he had more revelations in Mecca and then more after the Muslims moved to the city of Medina, where he became the emir of the Islamic community. The verses in the Koran are believed by Muslims to have been recitations of the original Koran, which is carved on the throne of Allah in Arabic.

Following the death of Muhammad, the Caliphates (Khalifa) or successors to Muhammad's leadership of the Muslim community, encouraged the growth of Islamic law. Later, Islamic lawyers developed Islam into a religion of law. The basis of Islamic law is both the Koran and the Hadith. The Hadith is the collection of the sayings and doings of Muhammad during his lifetime. The Hadith sayings and deeds are given equal weight with the Koran in the development of Sharia, or Islamic law. In addition, two other sources for Islamic law are the tradition of the community and reason.

What Muslims since Muhammad have expected above all from religion is guidance in the form of a series of specific directions for how to conduct one's life. This means that in every situation, guidance is given so that there can be no doubt about exactly how to act—instructions are provided by Islamic law.

There are two words for the law used among Muslims. Sharia originally meant pathway. The pathway is the one which people should walk to please Allah. Sharia provides knowledge of the way of life ordained by Allah. Among Sharia's characteristics is its comprehensiveness. It seeks to provide an all—inclusive measure for human conduct. No human action, without exception, falls outside the purview of the law as something belonging to another sphere; rather, the entirety of life is judged from the standpoint of the divine pattern.

The second Arabic word used for law is fiqk. Coming from the word for understanding, it refers to the human effort to translate the transcendental [Page 466]will of God into specific rules. In the context of Islamic law, it means both the science of jurisprudence, which derives rules of law from the source materials, and also the end product of that science, as written down in numerous thick volumes.

In the comprehensive system of Islamic law, all human actions fall into one of five categories. These are obligations to be performed (fard), recommended actions (mandub), permitted behavior (mubab), reprehensive behavior that is to be discouraged but not punished (makrub), and forbidden behavior (baram), which is to be punished. This system creates a moral order that rules all individual and social behaviors.

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