.نصح بقراءة هذا التعريف الوارد في دائرة معارف أو موسوعة
كولومبيا، الإصدار السادس لعام 2008، والذي يقدم معلومات وافية وفي نفس
الوقت مختصرة، كما يمكن حفظ بعض الجمل والمصطلحات وذلك للاستعانة بها في
النشاطات الدعوية والتعريفية لغير المسلمين... ويعكس سماحة الإسلام
واعترافه ببعض الرسل الذين يؤمن بهم أتباع الديانتين المسيحية واليهودية،
والمعاملة الخاصة التي يوليها الإسلام لأهل الكتاب.
وتقدم المقالة التعريفية معلومات هامة مثل أن تعداد المسلمين في العالم
يبلغ 1 بليون مسلم وان خمسهم عرب، ويوضح بالتفصيل الدول التي ينتشر فيها
الإسلام، ويذكر أن عدد المسلمين في دويلة صغيرة مثل سورينام يبلغ 20%.
وتعترف النبذة التعريفية ضمنيا بعظمة الإسلام، وتورد مراجع هامة يمكن
الرجوع إليها لمعرفة المزيد من التفاصيل.
Islam
The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition | 2008 | The Columbia
Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright 2008 Columbia University Press.
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Islam , [Arab.,=submission to God], world religion founded by the
Prophet Muhammad. Founded in the 7th cent., Islam is the youngest of the
three monotheistic world religions (with Judaism and Christianity). An
adherent to Islam is a Muslim [Arab.,=one who submits].
Believers Worldwide
There are more than 1 billion Muslims worldwide, fewer than one fifth of
whom are Arab. Islam is the principal religion of much of Asia,
including Indonesia (which has the world's largest Muslim population),
Malaysia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan,
Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Iran, Iraq, Syria,
Jordan, the Arabian Peninsula states, and Turkey. India also has one of
the world's largest Muslim populations, although Islam is not the
principal religion there. In Africa, Islam is the principal religion in
Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Djibouti, Gambia, Guinea, Libya, Mali,
Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Senegal, Somalia, and Sudan, with sizable
populations also in Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Tanzania (where the
island of Zanzibar is predominantly Muslim), and Nigeria.
In Europe, Albania is predominantly Muslim, and, historically, Bulgaria,
Bosnia, Macedonia, and Georgia have had Muslim populations. Elsewhere
in Europe, significant immigrant communities of Muslims from N Africa,
Turkey, and Asia exist in France, Germany, Great Britain, and other
nations. In the Americas the Islamic population has substantially
increased in recent years, both from conversions and the immigration of
adherents from other parts of the world. In the United States, the
number of Muslims has been variably estimated at 2-6 million; 20% of the
population of Suriname is Muslim.
Islamic Beliefs
At the core of Islam is the Qur'an , believed to be the final revelation
by a transcendent Allah [Arab.,=the God] to Muhammad , the Prophet of
Islam; since the Divine Word was revealed in Arabic, this language is
used in Islamic religious practice worldwide. Muslims believe in final
reward and punishment, and the unity of the umma, the "nation" of Islam.
Muslims submit to Allah through arkan ad-din, the five basic
requirements or "pillars" : shahadah, the affirmation that "there is no
god but God, and Muhammad is the Messenger of God" ; salah, the five
daily ritual prayers (see liturgy, Islamic ); zakat , the giving of
alms, also known as a religious tax; Sawm, the dawn-to-sunset fast
during the lunar month of Ramadan; and hajj , the pilgrimage to Mecca.
The importance of the hajj can hardly be overestimated: this great
annual pilgrimage unites Islam and its believers from around the world.
The ethos of Islam is in its attitude toward Allah: to His will Muslims
submit; Him they praise and glorify; and in Him alone they hope.
However, in popular or folk forms of Islam, Muslims ask intercession of
the saints, prophets, and angels, while preserving the distinction
between Creator and creature. Islam views the Message of Muhammad as the
continuation and the fulfillment of a lineage of Prophecy that includes
figures from the Hebrew ******ures and the New Testament, notably Adam,
Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and Jesus. Islamic law reserves a communal
entity status for the ahl al-kitab, People of the Book, i.e., those
with revealed religions, including Jews and Christians. Islam also
recognizes a number of extra-biblical prophets, such as Hud , Salih ,
Shuayb , and others of more obscure origin. The chief angels are Gabriel
and Michael; devils are the evil jinn.
Other Islamic obligations include the duty to "commend good and
reprimand evil," injunctions against usury and gambling, and
prohibitions of alcohol and pork. Meat is permitted if the animal was
ritually slaughtered; it is then called halal. Jihad, the exertion of
efforts for the cause of God, is a duty satisfied at the communal and
the individual level. At the individual level, it denotes the personal
struggle to be righteous and follow the path ordained by God.
Communally, it involves both encouraging what is good and correcting
what is not and waging war against enemies of Islam.
In Islam, religion and social membership are inseparable: the ruler of
the community (caliph; see caliphate ) has both a religious and a
political status. The unitary nature of Islam, as a system governing
relations between a person and God, and a person and society, has
contributed to the appeal and success of Islam.
The evolution of Islamic mysticism into organizational structures in the
form of Sufi orders was, from the 13th cent. onwards, one of the
driving forces in the spread of Islam (see Sufism ; fakir ). Sufi orders
were instrumental in expanding the realm of Islam to trans-Saharan
Africa, stabilizing its commercial and cultural links with the
Mediterranean and the Middle East, and to SE Asia.
Holidays and Honorifics
The original feasts of Islam are id al-fitr, corresponding to the
breaking of the fast of Ramadan, and id al-adha, coinciding with the
pilgrimage to Mecca. Shiite Islam also celebrates id al-ghadir, the
anniversary of Muhammad's declaration of Ali as his successor. Other
Islamic holidays include al-mawlid al-nabawwi, Muhammad's birthday, and
al-isra wa-l-miraj, the anniversary of his miraculous journey to
Jerusalem and ascension to Heaven. Among the Islamic religious
honorifics are shaykh, a generic term refering to a religious scholar or
a mystic master; qadi, a religious judge (handling particular cases);
mufti, a religious authority who issues general legal opinions; and
mullah, a synonym of shaykh used in the Persian-speaking world.
Interpretation of the Qur'an
The revealed word of Islam, the Qur'an, in a formal Arabic which became
more archaic with time, required explication. The Sunna, the spoken and
acted example of the Prophet, collected as hadith , is an important
traditional source that is used to supplement and explicate the Qu'ran.
The Sunna is almost as important to Islam as the Qur'an, for in it lie
the elaborations of Qur'anic teaching essential to the firm
establishment of a world religion. There are disagreements in the
hadith, and aspects of interpretations of the Qur'an and the Sunna have
varied so much as to be contradictory at times. These situations are
resolved by reference to one of the most important of the sayings
attributed to the Prophet, "My community will never agree in an error."
This leeway also allowed Islam to expand by incorporating social,
tribal, and ethnic traditions. For example, with the exception of
inheritance and witness laws, Islamic rights and obligations apply
equally to men and women. The actual situation of women is more a
function of particular social traditions predating Islam than of
theoretical positions. For more information on Islamic law, see sharia ;
for discussions of the major branches of Islamic theology, see Shiite ,
Sunni .
Bibliography
See F. Rahman, Islam (1966); M. Jameelah, Islam and Modernism (1968); P.
K. Hitti, History of the Arabs (10th ed. 1970); P. M. Holt, ed.,
Cambridge History of Islam (2 vol., 1970); M. G. S. Hodgson, The Venture
of Islam (3 vol., 1974); C. Glassé, Concise Encyclopedia of Islam
(1991); J. L. Esposito, Islam (rev. ed. 1992) and The Oxford Dictionary
of Islam (2003); A. Schimmel, Islam (1992); D. Waines, An Introduction
to Islam (1995); J. I. Smith, Islam in America (1999
