Identity
Islam is a monotheistic religion that claims Allah as their one and only God, Muhammad as the messenger for that God, and the Qur’an as their holy book of scripture. In order to follow the Islam faith a person must be willing to first surrender to the” rites, rituals, and practices of the Islam religion”.
The Islam religion begins with five basic fundamental beliefs which consist of the following:
- That there is only one God and He is Allah
- The existence of angels
- The prophets
- The holy books
- The day of judgment
After a person “surrenders” to the above listed belief’s they are then obligated to follow the five obligations of Islam, also referred to as “deen or din” of Islam which are:
- To recite the shahadah with sincerity
- To pray 5 times a day (3 for the Shi’ites)
- To fast during the month of Ramadhan
- To give alms to the poor
- To make pilgrimage to Mecca
According to our Hindson and Caner textbook on page 278 the message of Muhammad is relatively “straight forward” in its content:
- All religions on earth were now corrupt.
- He was to proclaim the worship of the one true God named Allah.
- He was to receive the true words of Allah, record them, and bring people back to the strait path.
Morality
With the above worldview in place the Muslim now believes that the problem with all of mankind is that they are all misled because they don’t follow the guidance of their personal God Allah as found in their holy book the Qur’an. Here would be a great place to mention that Islam impacts All aspects of the follower’s life i.e. beliefs, dress code, diet, politics, etc… and therefore is completely theocratic. In other words, “Islam and democracy are mutually contradictory; they cannot coexist.”
I mention this because it sets the stage for a fundamental belief of the Islamist which is that any unbeliever of their faith should be considered as “second- class inhabitants”. In fact in Islamic lands these unbelievers couldn’t hold public office and were made to pay additional taxes. And even more troubling was that a male unbeliever couldn’t date a Muslim woman, however, if he by chance he had a daughter he had to allow her to date Muslim men. Call me crazy but, this to me sounds like the very definition of hypocrisy.
Destiny
According to Islam all of our deeds, both good and bad, are being recorded and will be weighed on a balance on the Day of Judgment by Allah. If you have done more good than bad in your lifetime then you get to go to paradise. However, if the balance shows that you have done more bad than good… then it’s off to hell with you.
