Notes

The Qur'an-- so what is the Qur'an?
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Well, during Muhammad's life, Muhammad is the one who starts the whole Islamic religion. And the story is that he went into the hills to pray and meditate, and he was spoke to, while he was there, by God through an angel who told him how to set up this new religion that he called Islam. And followers of Islam are Muslims. So anyway, during Muhammad's life, his followers, while
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he's going around preaching, memorize a lot of his messages and watch his actions very closely. When he dies, they decide to write down everything they can remember and everything he said, everything he did, et cetera. And they make a book, and this is the Qur'an. It basically is the beliefs of the Islamic religion, and Muslims believe it is the exact word of God, because
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they believe that throughout Muhammad's life, Muhammad continued to receive his messages from God. So they believe the Qur'an is the exact word of their god. They believe there's only one god, and they call him Allah, and Allah in Arabic means "the god," so they only believe there's one out there. And again, this is all according to the Islamic religion and the Qur'an.
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They believe Muhammad was the prophet, or God's only real prophet, and they belief that they must obey all of Allah's commands, which are essentially any commands that they find in the Qur'an, and any that thus they learned from Muhammad, who spoke directly to God. They also believe that the world has a beginning and an end, so they believe that their god created this world and that eventually He will end it.
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And on that day, all people will face his judgment. Now, they believe that when you are judged, if you followed Him and obeyed God's commands, then you will spend eternity in paradise. And to them, paradise they think of as a beautiful garden with food aplenty, and drink, and social pleasures. But if you didn't obey God, they believe you will spend an eternity--
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an eternity meaning forever-- suffering. The guidelines for behavior-- well, they spend a lot of time intensely studying the Qur'an. You can see in the picture, they memorize very large sections of the Qur'an. And the Qur'an describes how they should worship, and also explains the moral behaviors that they should exhibit or
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they should do, and also the rules for social life, so rules of how people should interact. And the Muslims use the Qur'an as their basic guideline for everything. Not only does it tell them how to act, but again, it also tells them how they should interact with other Muslims, as well as with non-believers or people who do not practice the Islamic faith.
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Just for some examples of things the Qur'an, it's very specific, such as it discourages owning slaves. It discourages women from just being in the home, actually. It actually encourages them to be educated. Now, some of these things have changed over time, but it's quite specific in what it tells. Another subject that is discussed is jihad. Now a jihad, it means a struggle or a great effort,
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and it first to specifically the inner struggle that people experience who practice the Islamic faith trying to obey God. And we all know how hard it can be sometimes not to always do the right thing, so this is the inner struggle, that conscience. You've probably heard when you watch Pinocchio when you're little, always let your conscience be your guide, and
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that's kind of what they're talking about. That inner struggle you have between good and evil that all people experience. And so, this is the jihad that they're talking about. They also use jihad to refer to the struggle that the Muslims face between themselves and non-Islamic people, and the struggle they'll experience defending their Muslim faith or their Islamic faith, as well as in
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converting people to the Islamic faith. Jihad has also been translated into meaning holy war, so this holy war refers to, again, Muslims rising up, and conquering others, and converting other people in the world. This Sunnah. Well, Muslims also study something called the Hadith, and it's a written record Muhammad's words and actions.
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And the Hadith is the basis for that Sunnah, Sunnah basically the term referring to the way Muhammad lived. And when I say that-- the actions that he took, the words he said, he was very much a model of what the perfect Muslim should be like. And so, this is what Sunnah is. It's a way of being. It's a guideline for behavior.
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And underneath this, they have the Five Pillars of Islam, and they're basically like duties. The first one is that there is only one god. The Five Pillars being the things that if you believe in the Islamic religion, you must believe these five things. Otherwise, you are not a true Muslim. So the first one is that there is only one god. You could only believe in Allah.
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And actually, when someone accepts the Islamic faith, they come before a leader, and they actually say, "There is no god but God, and Mohammad is his prophet." And they'll also say this during their daily prayers. They're very, very serious about this. They pray five times a day before sunset, mid-day. They pray late afternoon, after sunset, and again before bed.
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And they often pray together in a mosque for a couple of reasons. One reason that they pray together is that they believe that prayer shows that you've really accepted Allah as your one true god, and also just a reminder. So, it makes people make sure that they do pray. They're also expected to give a yearly donation to charity, and this money they pay to the religious officials.
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It's given to the poor, as well as it helps to build things like mosques and pay debts off that the religious organizations may owe. So all of that, but they're expected to give some of their money. They're also expected to fast during Ramadan, and fasting just basically means you go without food or drink. And during Ramadan, they will fast basically
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from sunrise to sunset. They do this because they want to emphasize that their belief in God and their faith in Him is more important than their body, and that they believe that God will help them get through any struggle. And also, they believe that it reminds them of the starving people in the world. And so, just reminding them to give again to the poor.
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The last thing that Islamic people believe is that once in your life, you must travel to Mecca on a hajj. And this is to the Kaaba, which is the most sacred place. They must do this one time in their life. If you're a true Muslim, you must do this journey, this pilgrimage. The Sunnah and daily life.
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Remember, Sunnah is just basically the way Muhammad lived, or basically Sunnah is the idea of how the perfect Muslim should live. It plays a role, obviously, in their daily life. There's very little separation in Muslims between their daily life and their religion. You can imagine praying five times a day. It's going to become the main focus of your entire life.
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So, there's not really this great separation like we might have. A lot of people in our American society, a religion is a very small part of our life. Maybe you just go to church once a week, and that's the only time you think about it, or maybe you don't even do that. But they're very different.
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They're very, very focused on their faith, and they treat the guidelines that are set in the Qur'an very, very seriously, and try very hard to follow the example that Muhammad set. They believe in treating others with generosity, and that showed when they conquered new lands and they allowed Christians and Jews to still practice their religions.
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They definitely believe in tolerance, and they believe in peace as a way to get through to people. They also believe that the government and the church have a specific relationship, and it's very important that that stays in close ties. It even teaches things like you shouldn't owe money, and obey your leaders, and things like that. So it's very, very specific as well.
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Islamic law is based on the Qur'an and the Sunnah, and they call the Islamic law Shariah. And basically, sure Shariah is like a scale that judges right from wrong. So, from the Qur'an and the Sunnah, they get this Islamic law, and then they have this scale that they call Shariah. And it is based on the Islamic teachings, as well as just human intelligence and reason.
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It judges the actions of not only the individual, but also of the community. The scale goes from accepted or approved all the way down to absolutely forbidden, and each action one could take in life fits somewhere on this scale. It may depend on who you are where it fits on that scale, so where your placement is in society. And again, they don't separate daily life from religion.
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And the other thing the Shariah sets is rewards, as well as punishments. So when you do good behavior, you get rewarded. Bad behavior, you get punished. You get the idea. It also describes limits of authority, so making sure that authority doesn't become too powerful in that it may change the Islamic teachings.
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Today, most Muslims combined Islamic law with the legal system that is in the country. The legal system's often much like the one we have here in the US. And Islamic law isn't really found in any one book specifically. It's mostly based on opinions and writings that have transpired throughout the growth of the Islamic faith,
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and thus it has actually changed over time depending on the situation, and new opinions, and new writings that have surfaced. All right. So today, we explained how the Qur'an guides Muslims' lives. We identified how the Sunnah tells Muslims of important duties expected of them, and we described how the Islamic law is based on the Qur'an and the Sunnah.
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Remember, the Qur'an is the holy book, the Holy Bible, of the Islamic faith. The Sunnah is the way that they are supposed to live.