World religions. Рахимбергенова М.Х. - 51 стр.

                           The Moslem View of Life                                   ing that Mohammed was to be the messenger of God. On subsequent occasions
     The heart of the Moslem view of life is the duty of obedience to God. God       and throughout the rest of his life, Gabriel made many revelations to him,
is most great, and deserves our complete and total submission. That submission       which Mohammed was able afterwards to remember exactly. These revelations
in turn will bring us eternal salvation.                                             were couched in an exalted poetic language, which speakers of Arabic consider
                                                                                     of unsurpassed beauty. They were committed to memory by his followers and
                             The Emergence of Islam                                  eventually written down. Collected after Mohammed’s death, they make up the
      The Arab peoples before Mohammed worshipped numerous gods and spir-            Koran, the Sacred Scripture of Islam.
its. Sacred stones, trees, and springs were venerated, and spirits were believed          Koran (Arabic: Qur’an)
to inhabit the desert. The inhabitants of Mohammed’s native city, Mecca, wor-             The chief message of the Koran is the absolute supremacy of God. There
shipped a high god named Allah together with other divinities, including three       exists only one God, and His power is unlimited. He is in complete control of
goddesses known as the “Daughters of Allah”. The name Allah is a combina-            the universe, and human beings owe Him total obedience.
tion of “al”, which is the definite article “the”, and “ilah”, the usual word for         The Arabic word for obedience is “islam”. The word “Koran” or “Qur’an”,
“God”, and thus means “the God”. An important center of this worship was a           meaning “recitation”, comes from the command of the Angel Gabriel to Mo-
cubical structure called the Ka’ba, containing a sacred Black Stone, which re-       hammed. The Koran is organized in chapters, called Suras, of various length,
mains a center of pilgrimage in Islam.                                               some very short, some quite long. With a few exceptions, the statements of the
      There were also Jews and Christians in Arabia. Furthermore, according to       Koran are all placed on the lips of God and are addressed to Mohammed.
Islamic tradition, there were native Arab monotheists called hanifs, neither Jews         To Moslems (Arabic: Muslims) the Koran is a miracle of beauty and inspi-
nor Christians, whose belief in the one and only God had descended in an inde-       ration, the only miracle to which Islam lays claim.
pendent tradition from Abraham (whom the Koran views as a Moslem).                        The Hegira (Arabic: Hijra)
      Mohammed (Arabic: Muhammad)                                                         In his native city, Mecca, Mohammed made little headway. His revelations
      Mohammed was born in Mecca, a member of the dominant tribe there               aroused violent opposition from the merchants, who feared for their trade,
known as the Koraish (Quraish), probably around A.D. 570. His father, whose          which depended on the traditional religion. He made few converts. In the city of
name was Abdullah, or “slave of Allah”, died before he was born, and his mother      Medina, some 300 miles to the north, however, he was regarded much more fa-
Aminah died when he was six. He was brought up first by his grandfather, who         vorably. The city was torn by strife, and leading citizens of Medina secretly in-
made a modest living by providing pilgrims with water from a well sacred to Al-      vited Mohammed to move there and serve as religious leader and arbitrator,
lah, so that the boy was early associated with the religious life. When his grand-   promising to become Moslems and obey him. This he did. In the year 622 of
father died, after only two years, Mohammed was transferred to the care of his       the Christian era, under cover of darkness, he left Mecca and traveled to Me-
uncle, Abu Talib, also a religious man, and later one of his strongest personal      dina. This event is called the Hegira (or Hijra), “emigration”.
supporters (though Abu Talib never embraced Islam).                                       It is considered the founding event of Islam as a religion. The year in
      In his twenties Mohammed came to be employed by a wealthy widow,               which it took place was adopted as the first year of the Islamic calendar.
Khadija, as overseer of her camel caravans, and journeyed with them to Syria.             Mohammed in Medina (Arabic: Madina)
      When he was twenty-five, and she forty, they married, and she bore him              Gradually Mohammed became the sole ruler of Medina, and transformed it
six children.                                                                        into an Islamic society. The worship of all other gods but Allah was eliminated,
      In time Mohammed became more and more contemplative. He associated             the forms of public prayer were established, with Friday as the weekly day of
with the hanifs, and would go off into the hills for several days at a time in or-   prayer, and the mosque was created as the place of prayer. The brotherhood of
der to pray and meditate.                                                            all Moslems was stressed, and an official system of almsgiving was organized
                                                                                     to help the poor.
                                 Revelation                                               In addition, Mohammed organized armed raids on the caravans traversing
    During these excursions Mohammed began to have a series of extraordi-            the desert. The owners of the caravans, who were especially Meccans, replied
nary experiences. One night while he was asleep a spiritual being of great           by sending guards to defend them. The armed forces on both sides grew, lead-
power appeared to him, identifying himself as the Angel Gabriel, and announc-

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