World religions. Рахимбергенова М.Х. - 52 стр.

ing to a series of battles from which Mohammed’s forces emerged the victors.                                          The Doctrines of Islam
He became the chief political power in Arabia.                                                The main doctrines of Islam are usually summed up under five headings.
     The return to Mecca (Arabic: Makka)                                                                                      One God
     In A.D. 630 Mohammed resolved to capture Mecca. He gathered together a                   The most basic belief of Islam is that there exists a single personal God.
large army and proceeded to the city, which surrendered to him. He transformed           This is a belief it shares with Judaism and Christianity. Perhaps even more
it into an Islamic city on the model of Medina, smashing the images of the               strongly than those religions, if possible, Islam emphasizes that there is only
gods, and setting the Ka’ba up as the central shrine of Islam. Two years later he        one God. It rejects polytheism with the utmost intensity.
died.                                                                                         This emphatic monotheism is expressed in the Witness, or Shahada, uttered
                                                                                         daily by devout Moslems: There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his
                             The expansion of Islam                                      prophet.
     After Mohammed’s death many Arab tribes began to withdraw their alle-                    The force of this belief is, first, to assert that all the other divinities that
giance to Islam. His successors, the Caliphs, declared them apostates, sent ar-          mankind has worshipped in the course of its history are mere myths, empty fig-
mies out against them, and quickly overcame them. Finding they were so easily            ments of the imagination.
victorious, the Moslem armies continued to advance into more remote territo-                  Second, the belief provides the true God with a definite historical identity.
ries subject to the Persian and Roman Empires. Both Empires were unpopular,              God is not a mere abstract idea. One of the gods men have worshipped is actu-
and the Moslem armies were welcomed. Within a few short years they were                  ally the true God, namely Allah, the god worshipped specifically in Mecca by
masters of an enormous empire stretching from Afghanistan to Egypt and as far            Mohammed’s tribesmen even before he was born. It was he, and no other, who
west as Spain.                                                                           revealed the Koran to Mohammed. (The Arabic language has no capital letters,
                                                                                         and so no way of distinguishing between “god" and “God”.)
                             The status of Mohammed                                           Third, the belief implies the absolute supremacy of Allah. He is in com-
     Moslems do not regard Mohammed as divine, or as a savior, but as a mere             plete control of the universe. Whatever happens, happens only by his will. He is
man. Although a mere man, however, he is the Prophet, the man through whom               unique. Nothing can be compared to him or put in the same category with him.
God has made His final revelation to mankind. This is expressed by his title             The Moslem theologian Al-Ghazali says:
“the Seal of the Prophets”, that is, the last and decisive prophet. There are no              He in His essence is one without any partner, single without any similar,
more prophets after him, for there are no revelations from God after the Koran.          eternal without any opposite, separate without any like. He is One: prior with
     Although not divine, Islamic tradition regards Mohammed as sinless, and             nothing before Him, from eternity, without any beginning, abiding in existence
takes him as the highest model of behavior. The strongest argument on behalf             with none after Him, to eternity without an end, subsisting without ending,
of any belief or action is that it follows Mohammed’s example.                           abiding without termination… Measure does not bind him and boundaries do
                                 Sunna and Hadith                                        not contain Him.
      Because of Mohammed’s immense prestige, the Koran is not the only au-                   (Quoted in Duncan B. Macdonald, Development of Muslim Theology, Ju-
thority in Islam. Everything that Mohammed said or did is authoritative, and             risprudence and Constitution Theory, New York, 1903, p. 303; see also Cragg,
constitutes a sunna, an approved custom or tradition. As a result, a large body          House of Islam, 1975, p. 14)
of literature has developed tracing various actions and sayings to him and his                To place any created thing on the same level as God is to commit the sin of
companions. A report attibuting some saying or action to Mohammed or his                 shirk, tantamount to blasphemy. This is why polytheism is so strongly detested,
companions is called a “hadith”, or “statement”, and in practice they play as            because it is felt to insult the unique dignity of God by associating imaginary
large a role in Islamic life as the Koran itself. The hadith is a special Islamic lit-   beings with him. In the Moslem view, Christians also commit this sin by believ-
erary form. Typically it begins by giving the chain of witnesses, called an isnad,       ing in Jesus as the Son of God, for God cannot have a son, that is, another being
who have handed the report on to one another: A told B, who told C, who told             of the same nature as himself.
D, etc., that Mohammed did or said such and such. (The proper plural of hadith                                                 Angels
in Arabic is ahadith; however, hadith seems to be widely used in English for                  The Koran was revealed to Mohammed not directly by God, but by the
both singular and plural.)                                                               Angel Gabriel speaking on behalf of God. It is therefore a doctrine of Islam that

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