Muslim Beliefs Today

Into the 21st Century, there is diversity among Muslims, including contempt by Muslim clerics for other Muslim clerics and contempt by non-clerics for clerics. There are Muslims who take the Koran seriously and Muslims who focus their lives around the Koran as little as some nominal Christians focus their lives around the Bible. There are Muslims who distance themselves from particular imams and ayatollahs just as there are Christians who have distanced themselves from a local priest or preacher-man. But Islam appears to be more of a part of the whole of the lives of Muslims than it is with the average Christian in the West.

The Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan, a European Muslim and Oxford University professor, proclaims the right of Muslims to interpret the word of God as they choose and to ignore those exhortations in the Koran that he believes should not be applied in today's world.

A young Muslim woman from Ohio, Zeba Khan, joins Tariq Ramadan in interpreting the Koran in accordance with her values. Speaking at a debate on October 6, 2010, she said of her parents: "They lived out the Koranic commandments that there is no compulsion in religion... what they both share is fundamental Islamic principles. First and foremost, seek knowledge. They urged their children, all three of us, to question, to have critical minds, and to doubt."

Her rival in debate was Ayaan Hirsi Al,i who admired Zeba as an American woman for her assimilation and respect for pluralism. Ayaan asked who is it that speaks for Islam? Is it those who ignore whatever passages in the Koran they wish? She points to those who are absolutists and see Islam as submission to God as expressed literally in the Koran.

Zeba Khan described the Muslim population as "one of the most diverse and eclectic in the world." Perhaps amid this diversity there is agreement at least that to be a Muslim one must believe in God (Allah) as the one and only god worthy of all worship.

Islam is an Arabic word that means submission to the will of God. Would Koranic fundamentalists be correct to describe Tariq Ramadan and Zeba Khan as not being truly Muslim? To choose to submit to the will of God one has to know what that will is. And the fundamentalists believe, of course, that they know.

Islam is different from Christianity in that Christians do not think of themselves as required to submit to Jesus Christ; one believes in Jesus Christ and his message that he loves you and has been sacrificed for your sins. Many are recognized as Christians who do not take the Bible simply as the word of God the way that the Koran is supposed to express the will of God.

Muslims in general appear to be more fatalistic than Christians, to believe more that whatever happens did so because God willed it -- an attitude that has declined among Christians over the passed couple of centuries or so.

Beyond the debate between Muslim "moderates" and "fundamentalists" is the widely accepted message in the Koran that a Muslim is supposed to believe in the Prophet Muhammad not as a god but as the last of the prophets conveying messages from God. All of this, Muslims call the Shabada (witness).

And, if a Muslim is diligent he will believe -- or is required to believe -- in the prophets who preceded Muhammad.

In her book Reconciliation, Benazir Bhutto described a few other points that are "the most basic requirements for life as a Muslim:"

Salat: Pray five times daily, facing Mecca.

Zakat: Give a certain percentage of their yearly income to the poor and needy.

Sawm: During the holy month of Ramadan, fast every day from sunrise to sunset.

Hajj: Make a pilgrimage to Mecca once in one's lifetime.

It is common for Muslims to believe that justice is a fundamental part of Islam. The Koran, 16:90, reads:

Allah commands justice, the doing of good, and liberality to kith and kin, and He forbids all shameful deeds, and injustice...

In the Koran (41:34) people are urged to respond to evil with kindness. It reads:

Nor can goodness and Evil be equal. Repel (Evil) with what is better: Then will he between whom and thee was hatred become as it were thy friend and intimate!

What is doing good and what is shameful and injustice might vary from person to person. It is common among Pakistanis, for example, to look upon the honor killings that occasionally occur there as a barbaric aberration.

Bhutto wrote:

Islam condones neither cruelty nor dictatorship. Beating, torturing, and humiliating women are inconsistent with its principles. Denying education to girls violates the very first word of the Holy Book: "Read." According to our religion, those who commit cruel acts are condemned to destruction. (Reconciliation, p. 18)

Getting back to what is supposed to be fundamental to Islam, the subject of angels requires inclusion. How many Muslims look upon a belief in angels as a relic from the Middle Ages is unknown. When Ayaan Hirsi Ali was struggling with her belief she asked a friend, Abshir,

All these angels and djinns -- I may be very underdeveloped in my understanding of the exact sciences, but I still see no proof of their existence. Abishir, looking at the paintings here in the West, are these the angels, beings in white dresses with chubby cheeks?

Abishir: No, Muslim angels are totally different. They don't have wings. (Infidel, p. 274)

Another ingredient in Islam is the belief in sin, but not original sin. Unlike Christians, Muslims view infants as having been born pure.

And as expressed in the Koran, there is the belief in Hell Fire. What percentage of Muslims across the world, or in the United States and Europe, believe in Hell Fire is unknown. It is, at any rate, a common belief among Muslims in contrast to its diminished belief among Christians.

Finally, there are the Prophet's prophesies -- revealed in the the Koran and described in the Hadiths, and too numerous to list here. Prophesies from the Koran Include the Day of Judgment -- on a date unknown -- and Resurrection.

A few of the signs forewarning the approach of the Last Day believed to have been prophesied by the Prophet, taken from the website www.answering-christianity.com, are:

e. The increase of the use of riba (usury/interest) so that no one will able to escape being tainted by it. This clearly the state of the world economy today.

f. The enemies of the Muslims dividing the Muslim's wealth and lands between them, the Muslims abandoning jihad, and concerning themselves only with the worldly matters.

g. The increase of literacy.

h. The decrease of religious knowledge due to the disappearance of scholars.

i. The increase of musical instruments, and the Muslims making it lawful even though the Prophet has forbidden them.

j. The increase of sexual promiscuity, and new diseases that people had not herd of before spreading amongst them as a consequence of that. This is clear, with the arrival of AIDS, and other previously unheard of viruses.

n. Shouting in the mosques and lack of unity.

o. The worst and most ignorant will become leaders and they will be oppressors. Bill Clinton, saddam Hussain and majority of world's Leaders are prime examples.

previous | Jim Jones and His People's Church