ALLAH IS GREAT

MOHAMMAD HIS LAST PROPHET AND KORAN HIS LAST BOOK

ISLAM

Islam, major world religion. The Arabic word Islam literally means “surrender” or “submission”. As the name of the religion it is understood to mean “surrender or submission to God”. One who has thus surrendered is a Muslim. In theory, all that is necessary for one to become a Muslim is to recite sincerely the short statement of faith known as the shahadah: I witness that there is no god but God [Allah] and that Muhammad is the Messenger of God.

Although in an historical sense Muslims regard their religion as dating from the time of Muhammad in the early 7th century AD, in a religious sense they see it as identical with the true monotheism which prophets before Muhammad, such as Abraham (Ibrahim), Moses (Musa), and Jesus (Isa), had taught. In the Koran, Abraham is referred to as a Muslim. The followers of these and other prophets are held to have corrupted their teachings, but God in His mercy sent Muhammad to call mankind yet again to the truth.

Traditionally, Islam has been regarded by its followers as extending over all areas of life, not merely those (such as faith and worship) which are commonly viewed as the sphere of religion today. Thus many Muslims prefer to call Islam a way of life rather than a religion. It is for this reason too that the word Islam, especially when referring to the past, is often used to refer to a society, culture or civilization, as well as to a religion. While a history of Christianity will usually cover only matters relating to religion in a narrow sense, a history of Islam may discuss, for example, political developments, literary and artistic life, taxation and landholding, tribal and ethnic migrations, etc. In this wider sense Islam is the equivalent not only of Christianity but also of what is often called Christendom.

Adherents of a religion may differ among themselves regarding what constitutes the essence of the religion, what is more important or less important, what is right belief and what heresy, etc. Modern students of religions, when attempting to describe a particular religion, may attempt to get around this problem by accepting the definitions given by some authoritative body or individual such as a Church council or the pope in Roman Catholicism. Such an expedient is not really possible for someone wishing to discuss Islam, however, since, at least before the modern period, there has been no body claiming to be the central authority for all Muslims. Instead, religious authority and power has been diffused at a local level among countless scholars and religious officials who lack a clearly defined hierarchy or organization. An individual obtains religious authority as a result of a consensus regarding his learning and piety. In theory, at least, most positions of such authority are open to all.

In modern times there have been attempts to promote the idea that particular bodies or individuals have a special authority in Islam. In Sunni Islam, for example, the council of the Azhar university in Cairo is sometimes regarded as having a special authority while among the Shiites of Iran a hierarchy of religious scholars has developed and been recognized by the state. Even so, no body or individual has managed to establish itself as authoritative for all Muslims, and claims to be so are always contested.

It is not possible, therefore, to make many general statements about what Islam is or is not, without their being open to contest by groups or individuals with a different view of the religion. Certain ideas and especially practices have become so widely accepted among Muslims in general that they might be viewed as distinguishing features of Islam but even then there will be groups or individuals who reject them but still regard themselves as Muslims. In general, one should avoid terms like “orthodoxy” and “heresy” when discussing Islam.

The Emergence and Early Expansion of Islam

Traditional accounts of the emergence of Islam stress the role of Muhammad, who lived in western Arabia (Al Aijaz) at the beginning of the 7th century AD. Muhammad experienced a series of verbal revelations from God. Among other things, these revelations stressed the oneness of God, called mankind to worship Him, and promised that God would reward or punish men according to their behavior in this world. Muhammad was to proclaim God's message to the people among whom he lived, most of whom practiced polytheism.

After an initial period in which he was rejected in his home town of Mecca, Muhammad was able to found a community and a state with himself as its head in the town which soon came to be called Medina. By the time of his death in 632, several of the Arab tribes and a number of towns, including Mecca, had submitted to Muhammad and accepted Islam. Following his death the caliphate was established to provide for succession to Muhammad in his role as the head of the community, although prophecy, in the form of immediate verbal revelations from God, ceased with Muhammad.

Shortly after his death the process of collecting together all the revelations which he had received in his lifetime began. The tradition is not unanimous, but it is widely accepted that this work was completed under Uthman (caliph 644-656) and that it was in his time that the revelations were put together to form the text of the Koran as we know it.

The most important beliefs, institutions, and ritual practices of Islam are traditionally seen as originating in the time of Muhammad, and frequently they are understood to be the result of divine revelation. Sometimes a Koranic passage is seen as the source or justification of a practice or belief. Not all of them, however, can be associated with a relevant Koranic text and often they are seen to have originated in the practice of the prophet Muhammad himself. Since he was a prophet, much of what he said and did is understood not as merely the result of personal and arbitrary decisions but as a result of divine guidance. Thus the practice of Muhammad, which came to be known as the Sunna, serves as an example and a source of guidance for Muslims alongside the Koran, especially for Sunnis.

Under the caliphs who governed the community and state following Muhammad, a period of territorial expansion began, first in Arabia and then beyond its borders. By about 650 Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and the western parts of Persia had been conquered by Arab forces which acknowledged the leadership of the caliphs in Medina. In about 660 the caliphate passed into the control of the Umayyad dynasty which was based in Syria. Under the Umayyads a second wave of expansion took place. By the time that dynasty was overthrown in it controlled territories extending from Spain and Morocco in the west to Afghanistan and central Asia in the east.

Modern scholarship has tended to show the emergence and expansion of Islam as a more gradual and complex process than is apparent from the traditional accounts. By emphasizing the relative lateness of the Muslim accounts of the early history of Islam (there is little which can be dated in the form in which we have it to before about 800), it has raised the possibility that the traditional accounts should be understood as reflecting rather late views. It has suggested that the period when Islam was developing outside Arabia following the Arab conquest of the Middle East is of crucial importance. It has emphasized, as is clear from the traditional sources themselves, that the Arab conquests may have expanded the area under the control of the caliphs but that the spread of Islam at a personal level was much slower. The conquerors did not force the people they conquered to become Muslims and probably did not even intend that they should do so. The acceptance of Islam as a religion by the non-Arab peoples under the rule of the caliphs was a slow, uneven, and never-completed process, motivated by many things, some of which are not properly understood. It is also now better understood that these non-Arab peoples, gradually accepting Islam (and identifying themselves as Arabs at the same time), had much to do with the emergence of Islam as we know it.

Main Beliefs

Muslims believe that there is one God, Allah; that Muhammad was a prophet sent by God to mankind; and that the Koran is the collection of the revelations which God made to Muhammad. The Koran thus contains the words of God in a literal sense and is often referred to as the Speech of God (kalam Allah).

The vast majority of Muslims accept that Muhammad was the last in a series of prophets sent by God and that there can be no other after him. The Koranic phrase “the seal of the prophets” is understood by them in this sense. Some groups have regarded themselves as Muslims while recognizing prophets, or something like prophets, after Muhammad, but their status as Muslims has been contested by the majority of the community.

The concept of “prophet” in Islam shares much with the idea as it had developed in Judaism and Christianity by the early centuries of the Christian era. The Arabic word nabi, which is one of the two most frequent words for “prophet” in Islam, is related to the Hebrew nebi, the most usual word for “prophet” in the Old Testament. The basic idea is of someone who is given a message by God to deliver either to mankind as a whole or to a specific group. Muslim tradition recognizes numerous prophets sent by God before Muhammad, and most of them are known in Jewish and Christian tradition from the Bible and other writings.

In Muslim belief, it came to be commonly held that some of the earlier prophets had been entrusted with a revelation just as Muhammad had been sent with the Koran, and in essence these revelations were identical with one another. The revelation of Moses was the Torah and that of Jesus the Gospel (injil in Arabic, ultimately from Greek evaggelion). According to this concept, there is only one Gospel and it is the book of revelation entrusted to Jesus. It is not the same as any one of the four gospels preserved in the New Testament, which are different accounts of the life of Jesus. In the Koran and other writings Jesus is referred to as the Messiah (Masih) and as the Word of God. He was miraculously born of the Virgin Mary and his life was associated with many miracles. Nevertheless he was not the “Son of God”, a concept which Islam rejects as a physical and logical impossibility. He did not die on the Cross, even though it seemed so to those who were present. Instead someone else died in his place and God raised Jesus up to Himself.

Some of the Muslim ideas about prophets and prophet hood, and about Jesus, are similar to those associated with Judaeo-Christian groups whose existence is attested in the early centuries of the Christian era. Some scholars have suggested that descendants of those groups had an influence on the emergence of Islam.

In addition to the physical world, God has also created angels and spirits. The angels have various roles, among them the conveyance of God's revelation to the prophets. The spirits are usually known as the jinni. They inhabit this world and may affect human beings in various ways. Some are good and capable of obtaining salvation, others are evil and sometimes known as satans. The chief satan, the Devil, known as Satan or Iblis, is sometimes thought of as a disobedient angel, sometimes as a jinni. He has been allowed by God to roam the world and do evil deeds.

The world will end, and Islam has a rich body of eschatological and apocalyptic tradition. Before the world ends the Mahdi, a sort of Messiah figure, will appear to inaugurate a short period in which the world will be filled with justice and righteousness. The idea of the Mahdi is more prominent in Shiite Islam (see below) but is not limited to the Shiite tradition. After death, each human being will be judged and will either achieve salvation or be consigned to damnation according to his or her beliefs and deeds while alive.

Islamic Law

Although the essence of Islam is acceptance of the one God and of the prophet hood of Muhammad, in practice adherence to Islam has traditionally been manifested by living a life according to Islamic law within an Islamic community. The law is regarded as of divine origin: although it is administered and interpreted by human beings (and, as in most religions, that means men rather than women), it is understood as the law of God. The law is known as the Shari'ah. To obey the law is to obey God. One should not underestimate the importance of questions of belief and dogma in Islam, but generally speaking for Muslims, Islam has been more a matter of right behavior than of concern with the niceties of belief.

Traditionally, Muslims have held that the law was revealed by God in the Koran and in the Sunna. In addition to those two theoretical sources, different groups within Sunni and Shiite Islam accept that law may be derived from certain subsidiary sources such as the consensus of the Muslims (usually called ijmaa), the informed reasoning of individual scholars (often called ijtihad), and various more specific and limited forms of these.

Many modern scholars have accepted the views of Joseph Schacht, who argued that the idea of the Sunna and the theory of the sources of Islamic law did not really develop until the 9th century and that Islamic law is not really derived from the Koran and the Sunna. Rather, according to this view, it has evolved gradually from a variety of sources (such as earlier legal systems and ad hoc decisions made by early Arab rulers), and the classical Muslim theory of the sources of Islamic law was developed by the early Muslim scholars (culminating in the work of al-Shafii) in order to put the positive law which had evolved in the first centuries of Islam on a proper Islamic basis. These scholars, it is argued, looked at the law as it existed in their own day; reformed, rejected or accepted it; and then sought to portray it as deriving from the Koran, the Sunna or one of the other classical sources. Since there was a limit to what could be attributed to the Koran (which is relatively short and only partly concerned with establishing legal rules on a few questions), it was the Sunna (as reported in the hadiths) which was in practice most important. Since there was virtually no limit to the way in which hadiths could be interpreted or reworded, and new ones put into circulation, it was usually easier to find a hadith to support a particular legal rule than it was a Koranic text.

After the classical theory of the sources of law had come to be accepted, many and voluminous law books and hadith collections were produced, and law became the predominant expression of Islam. Islamic law concerns itself with far wider areas of public and private life than does a modern secular legal system. Economics, politics, matters of diet and dress, penal and civil law, warfare, and many other aspects of social and private life are, in theory at least, regulated by Islamic law. To live a life according to the law has probably been the main religious ideal for most Muslims, although one should not conclude that Islam is merely a legalistic religion.

Modern Islamic states have frequently adopted legal codes based on those of the West and have limited the sphere governed by Islamic law to personal and family matters: inheritance, marriage and divorce, etc. Even in these areas reforms have been made to traditional Islamic law, but these reforms are usually justified by reference to the traditional doctrine of the sources.

The Practices of Islam

Five duties have traditionally been seen as obligatory for all Muslims, although some mystics (Sufis) have allegorized them and many Muslims observe them only partially. These duties are the so-called five pillars of Islam: bearing witness to the unity and uniqueness of God and to the prophet hood of Muhammad (shahadah); prayer at the prescribed times each day (salat); fasting during the month of Ramadan (sawm); pilgrimage to Mecca, and the performance of certain prescribed rituals in and around Mecca at a specified time of the year (hajj); and paying a certain amount out of one's wealth as alms for the poor and some other categories of Muslims (zakat). The first of these pillars balances external action (the recitation of the shahadah) with internal conviction (although different groups within Islam have held different views about the relative importance of recitation and belief in the shahadah); the other four, although they take belief for granted, consist predominantly of external acts.

There are other duties and practices regarded as obligatory. As in Judaism, the eating of pork is prohibited and male circumcision is the norm (the latter is not mentioned in the Koran). Consumption of alcohol is forbidden. Meat must be slaughtered according to an approved ritual or else it is not halal.

In some Muslim communities practices which are essentially local customs have come to be identified as Islamic: the wearing of a sari, for example. There are variant practices concerning the covering of the head or face of a woman in public. A Koranic text is interpreted by some to mean that the entire head and face of a woman should be covered, by others as indicating that some sort of veil or head scarf should be worn. Others argue that the Koran does not require any such covering.

Sacred Places

The center of Muslim life, apart from the home, is the mosque or masjid (Arabic, “place of prostration in prayer”) where the prescribed prayers are performed five times daily (in some Shiite groups only three times daily). The prayers are performed while facing Mecca, the site of the Kaaba and the birthplace of Muhammad, and the mosque wall which is closest to Mecca has a niche known as the mihrab built into it to show the direction of the holy city.

The Kaaba at Mecca, a simple and relatively small cubical building, is often referred to as the “house of God”, although without any implication that He is present there more than anywhere else. It is explained as having been built by Abraham at the command of God. At the time when he built it, Abraham called all peoples at all times to come there and perform the ceremonies of the hajj. In the south-east corner of the Kaaba on the outside wall is fixed a black stone which receives special reverence and is often said to have originated from Paradise. It was sent down to comfort Adam in his grief when he was expelled from there. By the time of Muhammad the pure monotheism which, according to Muslim belief, had been instituted at Mecca by Abraham, had become corrupted by idolatry and polytheism, and it was the task of Muhammad to restore the pure religion and re-establish monotheistic worship at the Kaaba. Around the Kaaba there has grown up a huge mosque known as al-Masjid al-Haram (“the sacred mosque”).

In addition to Mecca various other places have a special status in Islam. At Medina, the town to which Muhammad moved when his preaching in Mecca had aroused opposition, the second holiest mosque in Islam grew up around his tomb. Jerusalem is the third most revered sanctuary, in part because of its association with prophets before Muhammad, in part because of the tradition that Muhammad was miraculously taken there from Mecca by night. From there he is said to have been taken up to heaven before being returned on the same night to the place where he had been sleeping in Mecca. Above the huge rock in Jerusalem which is regarded as the very place from which Muhammad's ascension began, the Dome of the Rock was built. This is one of the earliest and most beautiful buildings of Islam, first constructed around 690 on the orders of the caliph Abd al-Malik.

For Shiite Muslims other cities, often associated with their Imams, achieved a special status: An Najaf and Karbala in Iraq, and Mashhad and Qom in Iran, are the most important.

The Islamic Year and Festivals

The Islamic era is known as that of that of the hijra (sometimes Latinized and Anglicized as Hegira) since its starting point is the year in which Muhammad moved from Mecca to Medina (AD 622), an event known in Muslim tradition as the hijra (variously translated as “flight”, “emigration” or “exodus”). The calendar is based on the Moon rather than the Sun, a year consisting of 12 months, each counted as the time between the appearance of one new moon and that of the next. The year thus lasts for about 354 days, approximately 11 days less than the solar year used in the common calendar. Since intercalation is forbidden in the law, the Islamic year bears no fixed relationship to the seasons. Relative to the solar year, each day in the Muslim year falls 11 days earlier each year. Thus the festivals and major events of the Muslim year eventually circulate through all the seasons.

The Hijri year begins with the month of Muharram, but no special significance is attached to the new year's day. The ninth month of the year, Ramadan, is the obligatory month of fasting, and every Muslim who has the duty to fast (there are some who are relieved of it because of illness or another reason) should abstain from food, drink, and sexual pleasure during the hours of daylight. The first day of the tenth month, Shawwal, marks the end of the fast and is a day of great rejoicing. It is the major festival of the year and is variously known as “the great festival”, “the festival of the breaking of the fast” or simply “the festival” (al-eed). The last month of the year is Dhul-Hijjah, and the first half of it is the time for the annual ceremonies connected with the hajj at Mecca. The core of the hajj, when all the pilgrims take part together, occurs between the eighth and tenth of the month. On the tenth the pilgrims sacrifice a great number of animals at Mina, close to Mecca, and in many parts of the Islamic world sacrifices are also performed on this day. This is known as “the lesser festival” (al-eed al-sagheer) or “the festival of the sacrifice” (eed al-qurban or eed al-adha).

The tenth day of the first month, Muharram, is called Ashura (an Aramaic word meaning “tenth”). This has a special importance for Shiite Muslims. On it they commemorate what in their view was the martyrdom of their third Imam, Husain, the son of Ali ibn Abu Talib. He was killed on Ashura day in 680 at Karbala in Iraq, fighting against a Muslim ruler whom the Shiites regard as a usurper and tyrant. For Shiites the day is a sad one, marked in some places by processions, public weeping, and even sometimes self-flagellation.

Other events and festivals occur at various times during the year but do not have the official religious significance of those just mentioned. For example, the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad (mawlid al-nabee) is widely celebrated in the fifth month of the year and in some places is marked by the recitation of poems in his honour. This festival, however, seems to be quite late in origin. Since the precise date of Muhammad's birth is not known, the month was probably chosen because it is the most widely accepted date for his death and a symmetry between birth and death was assumed. For the Shiites the birthdays of Ali and his wife Fatima are also celebrated.

One of the odd-numbered days towards the end of Ramadan (the precise day is disputed) is marked with reverence as the “night of power” (lailat al-qadr) when, it is widely believed, God makes His decrees concerning everything which is to occur in the following year.

Friday is sometimes referred to as the Muslim sabbath, like Saturday for Jews and Sunday for Christians. It is not officially a day of rest, but the midday prayer service on Friday is the most important of the week, should be observed, if possible, in a large congregational mosque, and has a more elaborate form than that of the normal prayer service. The ritual contains a special sermon (khutba) delivered by a preacher who stands on a minbar, a sort of pulpit which is a prominent part of the furniture of a mosque.

The Main Groups of Islam

In the period of its early development Islam developed three main divisions: Sunni, Shiite, and Kharijii. Historically, the division between them is said to go back to a civil war between the Arabs between AD 656 and 661, following their conquest of the heartlands of the Middle East. As religious groups in the form in which we know them, however, the three traditions took considerably longer than that to emerge. The two most important of them, the Sunni and the Shiite, did not really crystallize before the 3rd to 9th centuries. The fundamental issue which divides the three groups is that of authority—who should be the source of authority in Islam and what sort of authority they should have.

Muslim Mysticism

From an early period in the development of Islam some individuals and groups began to feel that it was not enough simply to live according to the law and hope to achieve salvation in that way. They desired a stronger religious experience and sought to become closer to God through a variety of devotional and meditational practices, and sometimes through an austere ascetic way of life. Those who engaged in such practices came to be called Sufis. The characteristic aim of Sufism was to obtain a direct experience of God. This is a form of spirituality which has similarities in religions other than Islam and is usually referred to as mysticism. It has often been viewed with suspicion by non-mystical religious authorities who see it as a threat to institutional religion. The practices and beliefs of the Sufis came to be feared as possible rivals to those followed by the majority of ordinary Muslims.

In 922 a leading Muslim mystic, al-Hallaj, was executed by the ruling authorities for claiming, so it was alleged, that his experience of God had been so immediate that he had become completely united with the divinity. This was described as a form of polytheism by his opponents. Nevertheless, Sufi ideas remained attractive to many. It is al-Ghazali, one of the pivotal figures in the history of Sunni Islam, who is credited with bringing about the compromise which made it possible henceforth for Sufism to be regarded as a legitimate and important expression of Islam. Al-Ghazali argued that it is important to understand the deeper meaning of the law and not just to adhere to it blindly.

In the centuries following al-Ghazali the influence of Sufism in Islam became more widespread as various orders or “paths” (tariqas) came into existence. These are brotherhoods of Sufis which are distinguished by the allegiance they owe to a particular Sufi master. They involve a process of initiation and they appeal to various social classes. Some of them have a local basis, others cover large areas of the Islamic world. They provide not only an important means for the expression of spirituality in Islam but also a focus of loyalty within a Universalist religion.

Islam in the Modern World

From the end of the 18th century onwards the Islamic world began to experience the increasing pressure of the military and political power and technological advances of the modern West. After centuries of Islamic political and cultural strength and self-confidence, it became clear that at the economic and technical level at least the world of Islam had fallen behind. Part of the shock came from the fact that the Western countries were at least nominally Christian, and yet Muslims regarded Islam as the final revelation which had supplanted Christianity.

In the 20th century the creation of the state of Israel in an area which was regarded as one of the heartlands of Islam strengthened the feeling of many Muslims that there was a crisis facing them which involved their religion.

One response was to argue that Islam needed to be modernized and reformed. This point of view has been held by a number of intellectuals, and various proposals for reforming the religion in what is understood as a modernist direction have been made.

Islamic Fundamentalism

The second half of the 20th century has seen the rise and domination of what may be seen as the opposite approach to discovering a solution to the perceived “crisis of Islam”. It has been argued by many that the crisis facing the Muslims was a result of the willingness of many Muslims to follow the false ideas and values of the modern secular West. What is needed, it is argued, is a reassertion of traditional values. From this point of view, the crisis of Islam is seen as the result of the corruption of nominally Muslim governments and the creeping growth of secularism and Western influence in the Muslim world. Frequently, but not always, those who argue in this way espouse the use of violence in the cause of overthrowing unjust and corrupt governments. This approach is often referred to as Islamic fundamentalism.

The validity of this expression is open to question and is frequently rejected by Muslims themselves. The ideas of religious “fundamentalism” seems to have originated in discussions of Christianity, where it is usually used with reference to those groups of Christians who insist that the Bible is literally the word of God and that it alone should be regarded as authoritative by Christians. In this context “tradition” is usually regarded negatively as something which has corrupted the original true form of Christianity taught by Jesus.

Many Muslims do not like the use of the expression with regard to Islam since, they say, all Muslims accept that the Koran is the word of God in a very literal sense and so all Muslims are fundamentalist. Furthermore, although some “fundamentalists” try to argue that only the Koran is the true source of Islam, most accept many parts of non-Koranic tradition even though they may reject other parts. Muslim groups which are often lumped together under the heading of “fundamentalist” in fact have many differences between them.

Modern proponents of this style of Islam can find their precursors in earlier centuries. Ibn Taymiyya is often cited by them since he argued for a purification of Islam from what he considered to be accretions and corruptions which had entered it by his own day. Ibn Taymiyya influenced later figures such as Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the father of Wahhabi, and it is perhaps ironic that the Saudi kingdom which came to power as a result of the strength of Wahhabi in Arabia is now one of the most prominent targets of the charge of corruption and of serving as a vehicle for Western influence in the Islamic world.

Among the Sunni Muslims one of the oldest of the modern “fundamentalist” movements is that of the Muslim Brothers, which was founded in 1929. Its most influential theorist was Sayyid Qutb who was executed by the Egyptian government in 1966. More recently groups such as Hamas in Gaza and Palestine, Gamaat al-Islamiyya in Egypt, and the Fronte Islamique de Salvation (FIS) in Algeria have emerged with individual local aims but with the common objective of installing what they see as a proper Islamic government, running a state based on Islamic law, in the country where they are active. In Europe the Hizb ut-Tahrir has attracted some following, and in Malaysia the Arqam movement.

Among Shiite Muslims this form of Islam achieved its greatest success with the overthrow of the ruling dynasty in Iran (Persia) and the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979. The Islamic Republic governed by Ayatollah Khomeini and his successors then offered support to groups such as Hizbollah in Lebanon as well as to Sunni movements like Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

The ability of such groups to capture the headlines, and the difficulties they have posed for governments, Muslim and non-Muslim, in many parts of the world, has sometimes led to the claim that Islam is of its very nature fundamentalist (which in this context usually means aggressive and expansionist). This claim is sometimes supported by reference to the importance of the doctrine of jihad (holy war) in traditional Islam and the importance of the Arab conquests in the earliest stages of the emergence of Islam.

In reality, however, Muslims, like followers of other religions, have behaved in a variety of ways and presented various images of their religion according to differing historical contexts. While it would be wrong to underestimate the strength of movements such as those named above, or their ability to attract the sympathy of other Muslims, it would equally be wrong to overestimate the degree of unity between the various manifestations of “Islamic fundamentalism” or to fall into the trap of thinking that each religion is characterized by a particular spirit or quality which is unchanging and always dominant.

Islam as a World Religion

There are no exact figures for the number of Muslims in the world today. It seems clear, however, that in terms of numbers Islam at least matches those of Christianity, the other most widespread religion today.

From its heartlands in the Middle East and North Africa the religion spread before the modern period to many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, to central Asia, to the Indian subcontinent, and to East and South East Asia. In Europe, Sicily and most of Spain were part of the Islamic world during the Middle Ages, and most of the Balkans came to be ruled by the Muslim Ottoman Empire, with its capital at IIstanbul, at various times between about 1300 and the end of World War I. In modern times Islam has spread as a result of emigration so that there are now large Muslim communities in parts of western Europe, North America, South Africa, and Australia.

The Sunni form of the religion is dominant in most countries apart from Iran, but there are large Shiite populations in Iraq and Lebanon, in Bahrain and eastern Saudi Arabia, and, to a lesser extent, in Central and South Asia.

It is a mistake to think that Islam has always been spread by warfare. Although, as has been noted above, its birth was associated with the Arab conquest of the Middle East and North Africa in the 7th century, and although it entered the Balkans as a result of the Ottoman expansion from 1300 onwards and spread in west Africa following a jihad in the 18th century, the religion of Islam has not generally been forced upon people by the sword. Periods of military conquest have usually been aimed at expanding the territories under Muslim rule rather than at forcing the conversion of non-Muslims to Islam.

Conversion to Islam has usually followed quite slowly, sometimes against the wishes of the Muslim rulers, after a territory has come under Muslim rule. The adoption of Islam as their religion has usually resulted from the wishes and actions of people wanting to become Muslim, not because it was forced upon them against their will. Why some people have been attracted to Islam and others not is a complex question involving many different religious, social, political, and economic factors. In some parts of the world, trade and the cultural attraction of Islamic civilization have been as important as preaching in the spread of the religion. Sufi brotherhoods have also done much to spread the religion in particular areas.

Like Christianity (and like Buddhism) Islam is a universal religion open to all irrespective of nationality, gender or social status. Of course, normal ethnic and social divisions exist among Muslims, but one of the attractions of Islam is its insistence on the fundamental equality of all Muslims before God. One of its greatest strengths has been the way in which various peoples have been able to find a sense of their own identity in Islam.

ALLAH

Allah, name in Islam for God. Concepts of the deity in Islam have much in common with those in Judaism and Christianity. God is seen as one, perfect, uncreated, eternal, omnipotent, and as the creator (or for some medieval philosophers the source) of the cosmos. Muslims have customarily emphasized the unity and uniqueness of God above all. In polemics between groups within Islam, and in those directed by Muslims against other monotheistic religions, the charge has often been made that the opponents hold doctrines which are incompatible with the oneness of God.

Conflicting explanations of the origins of the Arabic word Allah, which is related to the name for God in other Semitic languages, have been put forward. The most widely accepted is that it is a contraction of al-ilah, “the god”. It is suggested that the pagan Arabs of pre-Islamic Arabia, although they worshipped many gods, had come to accept that one of them was superior to the others. This god was especially associated with the Kaaba in Mecca, was often referred to simply as “the god”, and the name al-ilah was thus used so often that it developed into the name Allah. Muhammad then used this already existing name to refer to the one and only God whose prophet he was. Attempts by some scholars to explain the name as a borrowing from the Aramaic language or some other language have not been widely accepted.

Other names for God are frequently used in Islam. These are usually expressive of particular qualities or attributes which are predicated of God. Among the best known are al-Rahman (“the Merciful”) and al-Rahim (“the Compassionate”). Traditionally it has been held that there are 99 such names, which together are referred to as “the most beautiful names” Commonly, Muslims are given a personal name which is formed by prefacing one of the names of God with the word abd (“servant of”): Abd Allah, Abd al-Rahman, Abd al-Rahim, etc.

The elaboration of a developed and sophisticated theology, that is, a body of literature which explores problems concerning the nature of God and His relationship with the world, was one of the major achievements of the formative period of Islam. Our earliest securely datable works of Muslim theology come from the 9th century AD (3rd century AH). The discipline of theology in Islam is usually known as kalam (literally “debate” or “argument”) and the concepts, terminology and topics of kalam came to influence Jewish and Christian theology as they developed in Arabic in the Islamic world.

One of the main problems discussed in kalam is whether human acts are freely willed by men or predetermined by God. On the one hand God is seen as the cause and creator of everything, knowing everything and foreseeing everything. On the other hand, it is taught that God will hold men responsible for their acts and reward or punish them accordingly. These two propositions are to some extent contradictory. If one stresses absolutely the power of God, there is the risk of portraying Him as an arbitrary tyrant who torments men merely for His own pleasure. If one stresses human responsibility for actions, there is the risk of denying God's omnipotence.

Some Muslim theologians, notably those belonging to the school known as the Mutazila, which flourished in the 9th century, stressed human free will. They argued that justice is a necessary feature of any definition of God and that, since God must be just, human beings must be free in their choice between good and evil. The opponents of the Mutazila argued that that view placed unacceptable limits on the power of God, and they held that justice is not an abstraction independent of God's will. If God wished, He could have established a moral order which is the opposite of the one which actually exists. The duty of human beings is to obey God's law as He has revealed it through the Prophet, without seeking to understand the reasons for God's decisions.

Various compromise positions seeking to maintain both the omnipotence of God and the responsibility of humans for their own acts developed. The best known, and one which was adopted by many Sunni Muslims, is associated with the school of al-Ashari. According to this, God is the creator of everything and therefore the ultimate source of human acts, but the individual human being has responsibility for its acts because he or she “acquires” them. It is the concept of “acquisition” which is the main characteristic of the Ashari approach to the problem of how divine omnipotence is to be reconciled with human free will.

Another problem which occupied Muslim theologians was whether God may be said to have “attributes” and, if so, how they are related to the divine nature or essence. Kalam emerged in an intellectual atmosphere heavily influenced by the philosophical ideas of ancient Greece and the development of them in later antiquity. The distinction between essence and attributes in entities was a characteristic of these ideas. With regard to God, the problem was whether one can talk, for example, of His sight, hearing or speech without implying that He is more than one. If we consider God to have sight as an uncreated attribute distinct from His essence, some claimed, we are in effect saying that there is more than one uncreated entity existing. Since being uncreated is a characteristic only of God, we would be saying that there is more than one god.

The Muslim theologians knew of the doctrine of Christian theology according to which Jesus is the uncreated Word of God, and those who rejected the possibility of uncreated attributes distinct from the divine essence may have been influenced by the wish to avoid what they saw as the polytheism involved in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Once again the theological school of the Mutazila, which emphasized divine unity as well as divine justice, was foremost in rejecting the possibility of God's having uncreated attributes separable from His essence.

The dispute about attributes had a number of aspects. It was associated with an argument about whether the Koran is created or uncreated. The Koran is regarded in Islam as the speech of God (kalam Allah). Since speech is an attribute, the Mutazila and others insisted that the Koran cannot be uncreated but must have been created in time. The traditionalists refused to accept that, and were led to counter the Mutazila by insisting that the Koran is uncreated. The traditionalists were eventually victorious, and their view was accepted into the theology of Sunni Islam. Some other groups of Muslims accept the view that the Koran was created in time.

Another aspect of the dispute concerned the sort of language in which one may talk of God. Traditionally monotheists have been happy to talk of God anthropomorphic ally. In the Bible and the Koran God is described as sitting on a throne, stretching forth His hand, having a face, etc. The Mutazila and those who shared their views regarded this sort of language as inappropriate and unacceptable. It both implies that God has attributes and, since it compares Him to His creation, leads to a conception of the divinity which is too limited. Some argued, like the Christian adherents of the via negativa, that one cannot say anything positive about God but only what He is not. Connected with this argument about anthropomorphic language was a dispute about whether the believer will see God after death. The traditional view, which refers to a Koranic verse as a proof, is that he will; the Mutazila again thought that this doctrine involved a misconception of the nature of God and sought to explain the Koranic verse as a sort of metaphor.

As in the case of the dispute about divine predetermination and human free will, the initial stark contrast between the Mutazila and their traditionalist opponents eventually led to various compromise traditions. The traditionalists had insisted on the reality of the attributes, but without asking how and without implying any comparison between God and His creatures. The followers of al-Ashari later formulated a doctrine which accepted their reality within the divine essence and insisted that they are not identical with God but also not distinct from Him.

These disputes were not carried on at a purely intellectual and theoretical level. They were connected with political struggles which concerned the fundamental problem of the nature and source of religious authority in Islam. In the first half of the 9th century the Mutazila were supported by the caliphate, and their theological views were upheld as orthodoxy. Eventually, however, their traditionalist opponents, who also opposed the claims of the caliphs to have religious authority in Islam, triumphed. The views of the traditionalists then became dominant in Sunni Islam, where they continued to be developed and systematized in an increasingly sophisticated manner. Many of the views of the Mutazila passed into Shiism and other groups opposed to the Sunnis.

In the early centuries of Islam the existence of God was simply assumed as a self evident fact. By about the 11th century (5th century of the Hegira), however, the development of philosophy by some Muslim thinkers seemed to make a defence of the existence of God necessary. Philosophical thinking had by this time been significantly influenced by Aristotelianism, and Aristotle was understood to have taught that the world was uncreated and eternal. It was probably to combat this doctrine that various arguments for the existence of God came to be formulated. These are very similar to some of those found in Christian theology: arguments stressing the need for a first cause, arguments from the design of the universe, arguments based on the entirely contingent (that is not logically necessary) character of the universe, etc.

There is some truth in the view that theology does not have the same prominence in Islam that it does in Christianity but it would be wrong to underestimate the extent to which Muslims have explored various questions arising from the fundamental tenet that “there is no god but God”.

MUHMMAD

Muhammad (c. 570-632), chief prophet of Islam. He is sometimes described as the founder of Islam but that is an oversimplification from both a religious and an historical point of view. In a religious perspective, Islam is understood by Muslims as the original pure monotheism which Allah (God) has made known to mankind since the Creation and which was revealed through many prophets before Muhammad. Historically, Islam as we know it is a complex religion which should not be seen as the creation of one man.

Our sources for the life of Muhammad are texts written in Arabic by Muslim scholars. The earliest of them date, in the form in which we have them, from more than 100 years after his death (632). The earliest account of his life to have survived is that compiled by Ibn Ishaq, who died in 768. All the versions of this work we have come from a generation or so later than Ibn Ishaq.

The accounts given in such works are not always consistent or uniform. They often contain different accounts of the same event, sometimes contradicting one another. Any attempt to summarize the life of Muhammad as it is given in Muslim tradition, is in effect a selection from the mass of available details.

The Traditional Life of Muhammad

In Mecca

Muhammad is said to have been born in Mecca in western Arabia (the region known as Al ijaz). The date of his birth is given variously. A commonly accepted tradition places it in “the year of the Elephant”, which is understood as a reference to the year in which an Abyssinian ruler of the Yemen sent an expedition to destroy the Kaaba at Mecca. The expedition, which was a disastrous failure, is said in Muslim tradition to have included an elephant. Modern scholars have suggested that this took place around AD 570.

Muhammad's family belonged to the clan of Hashim, part of the tribe of Quraysh. Quraysh dominated Mecca and made up most of its population. Hashim was not one of its more important clans but had some religious prestige derived from its hereditary right to certain offices attached to the Kaaba. Muhammad's father, Abdallah, died before he was born, and his mother, Amina, died while he was still a young child.

The traditional lives of Muhammad report certain supernatural signs and portents in connexion with his conception and birth. The name Muhammad is said to have been given to him as a result of a dream his grandfather had. He is also said to have had other names, such as Abul-Qasim, Ahmad, and Mustafa.

As a young man he is reported to have visited Syria as part of a caravan from Mecca for purposes of trade. While there, he was recognized by Jewish and Christian holy men and scholars as a prophet whose coming had been foretold in their own scriptures. His future prophetic status was indicated by certain marks on his body and by miraculous signs in nature.

The people of Mecca, the tribe of Quraysh, have a reputation as great traders. One of them, a widow called Khadija, recruited the young Muhammad to manage her affairs and, impressed with his honesty and acumen, then offered him marriage. Muhammad is said to have been about 25 when he married Khadija, and so long as she lived he had no other wife. After her death he had several others, perhaps the best known of whom was the young Aisha.

Muhammad is said to have been about 40 when he had his first prophetic experience. It is not always described in the same way, but one of the most widespread traditions is that it occurred while he was in a state of solitary withdrawal in a cave on Mount Hira outside Mecca. Here he had a vision of the angel Gabriel and an experience of great pain and pressure, so that he thought he was going to die. Commanded to “recite” (iqra), he felt incapable and did not know what to recite. Eventually he was told to recite what is now the beginning of Chapter 96 of the Koran:

Recite in the name of your Lord who created,

created man from blood congealed.

Recite! Your Lord is the most beneficent,

who taught by the pen,

taught men that which they did not know.

After a short period during which he received no further revelations, they then began again and continued until the end of his life.

In order to understand the development of Muhammad's teaching it is necessary to have some idea of the order in which the revelations came to him. When the revelations were collected together after his death to form the Koran, they were not organized according to any order of revelation: revelations thought to come from different times in his life were placed together to form the chapters of the Koran. Traditional Muslim scholars and some modern ones developed various ideas about the relationship of particular parts of the Koran to Muhammad's life, but, generally speaking, it is widely accepted that the first revelations were short, marked by vigorous semi-poetic language, and concerned with warnings that men would inevitably be judged by God for their behaviour in this world and severely punished if they did not mend their ways. As time passed, and especially as Muhammad established himself in authority over the first Muslim community in Medina, it is judged that the revelations became longer, less urgent in tone, and more concerned with the solution of practical problems facing him and his followers.

There are two stories which, in the traditional accounts, are placed after the beginning of Muhammad's career as a prophet but which some modern scholars have seen as typical narratives about the beginning of prophethood. One concerns the visit to the sleeping Muhammad by two angels who opened his breast and removed all traces of unbelief or sin which they found. The second reports how Muhammad was taken by night from the place in Mecca where he was sleeping, through the heavens to the throne of God. In the morning he found himself again back in Mecca. This is the famous story of the Night Journey (Isra) which provided the theme for much allegory in mystical (Sufi) Islam and which may have influenced the story of Dante's Divine Comedy.

Traditions about who were Muhammad's first followers in Mecca other than his wife Khadija vary. All agree, however, that Muhammad's supporters were not numerous or powerful and that he was opposed by the majority of the Meccans, who accused him of subverting the religion of their forefathers.

One controversial episode which is reported in some of the traditional sources but which many Muslims reject as a fabrication is that of the “Satanic Verses” (a name coined by modern scholars and not used in the traditional accounts). The story is that Muhammad, despairing of winning over the Meccans to his preaching, was tempted by Satan to proclaim as divine revelation certain verses which were in fact a perversion of the truth. These verses recognized three goddesses whom the Meccans worshipped and gave them a place in Islam as intermediaries between men and God. Upon hearing this, the Meccans were overjoyed and all accepted Islam. Subsequently, however, Gabriel came to Muhammad, told him that the alleged revelation came from Satan and not from God, and revealed the true wording (which we now find in the Koran). In the correct version the goddesses were dismissed as “mere names” without power or reality. When the true verses were revealed to the Meccans they abandoned Islam and relapsed to their old pagan religion.

In Medina

Opposition to Muhammad and his followers in Mecca was so strong that, after sending many of his followers to seek refuge across the Red Sea in Christian Abyssinia (Ethiopia), and after an unsuccessful attempt to find support in the neighbouring mountain town of At Ta'if, he was persuaded to move with some followers to the predominantly agricultural settlement of Yathrib, about 200 miles to the north. This was in 622. The event, which is known as the Hijra (or Hegira), was a turning point in the fortunes of Muhammad. It was followed by the establishment of the first Muslim community (umma) in Yathrib, and later was seen as the start of the Muslim calendar, which is known as the era of the Hijra. Yathrib soon came to be known as Medina.

Muhammad, according to some traditions, had been invited to come to Medina by some of its inhabitants to act as a peacemaker between various factions. That is the most common explanation of why he was accepted as a figure of authority there so quickly. The community which he headed contained at first pagans as well as Muslims, together with a large Jewish population which lived in the settlement. In the years following the Hijra the community became more and more Muslim, although it is understood that many of its members did not accept Islam by conviction. In tradition they are often referred to as “hypocrites” (munafiqun). A few of the Jews accepted Islam, but most of them were eventually expelled or executed on Muhammad's orders as his relationship with them soured. They were believed to have sided with his enemies.

One reason for the growing acceptance of Muhammad's authority in Medina was his military success. Attacks on Meccan caravans led to a major victory over a large Meccan force at Badr in 624. Meccan attacks on Medina were narrowly repulsed at the battle of Uhud (625) and that of the Ditch (627). As Muhammad's prestige increased, tribes in the neighbourhood began to enter into agreements with him and accept Islam, and by 628 he was able to conclude the treaty of al-Hudaybiyya with the Meccans. Although this treaty involved some concessions on his part, in effect it made the status of his community equal to that of Mecca. By 630 he was able to take over control of Mecca virtually unopposed. Those Meccans who thus far had held out against him now accepted Islam. The Meccan Kaaba, which had already become central to the ideas of Islam, was now at last physically accessible to the Muslims.

Following his conquest of Mecca, Muhammad's prestige and authority continued to expand in Arabia and Muslim forces reached southern Syria. In 632 Muhammad came to Mecca from Medina for the last time to perform the pilgrimage (hajj) ceremonies. This is known as the Pilgrimage of Farewell for, not long afterwards, having returned to Medina, he died. He was buried in his house in Medina, and the second most important mosque in Islam grew up there around his tomb.

Modern Views

Many modern scholars have been willing to accept the traditional accounts of Muhammad's life as basically accurate (allowing for a certain amount of legendary material, and discounting miraculous and supernatural elements). They have tried to explain his emergence as a prophet and his success in terms acceptable to modern historians by isolating relevant economic, political, social, and psychological factors. Non-Muslim scholars have particularly stressed the importance of trade routes in western Arabia for creating social conditions conducive to the rise of a new religion, and for allowing Jewish and Christian influences to penetrate the region. Some, however, have argued that the evidence is not suitable for a recreation of events and conditions in western Arabia at the beginning of the 7th century. Instead, it is suggested that before the historical accuracy of the traditional accounts can be assessed it is necessary to understand more about how, when and why the traditional material on Muhammad's life came into existence.

KORAN

Koran (Arabic, al-Qur’an), the chief sacred text of Islam. The Arabic name indicates something “read” or “recited”. It may be an Arabicized form of a Syriac word. It is applied to the book which contains what Muslims believe are a series of revelations made by Allah (God) to Muhammad during his career as a prophet in Mecca and Medina in the first decades of the 7th century.

The Collection and Composition of the Koran

The revelations were in Arabic and, according to the most usual Muslim view, were made through the angel Gabriel (Jibrail). Traditionally it has been held that when Muhammad proclaimed the revelations to his followers they were remembered by heart or sometimes written down on such things as palm leaves, fragments of bone, and animal hides. After Muhammad’s death in AD 632 his followers began to collect these revelations and they were finally put together, to form the Koran as we know it, around 650 in the caliphate of Uthman. Written Arabic usually shows consonants only, not vowels, and the tradition is that the vowels were introduced into the text later. By the 4th century of Islam (10th century) various systems of “reading” (that is, adding vowels to) the accepted consonantal text had developed, and seven of these came to be accepted as of equal validity.

These accepted “readings” should not be confused with the variant texts of certain Koranic passages which Muslim tradition has preserved. The variants are said to have come from versions of the Koran which some of the companions of Muhammad had kept but which differed from, and were supplanted by, the “Uthmanic” version. These variants are often inconsequential and unimportant although sometimes they offer support for a particular view on a legal or religious question which is disputed among Muslims.

Most modern non-Muslim scholars have accepted the traditional accounts of how the text of the Koran as we know it came to be composed. Recently, however, some have put forward different ideas, applying to the Koran theories and methods which have proved fruitful in the analysis of the Bible.

Form and Content

The Koran is divided into 114 chapters (suras), each known by a different title. The chapters are divided into verses (ayas). The verse divisions are later than the chapter divisions and are not always the same in different editions of the text. In length the Koran is roughly equivalent to the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It is not arranged in the order in which it is believed to have been revealed to Muhammad, but according to the length of the chapters. Generally speaking, the chapters become shorter from the beginning of the book to its end. The only exception to this principle is Chapter 1 (the Fatiha) which is relatively short. Chapter 2 is then the longest (286 verses in the most common edition) while Chapter 114 (6 verses) is the shortest.

The Arabic of the Koran is distinctive in comparison with other forms of Arabic. It is a mixture of prose and poetry without metre. Its style is allusive and elliptical and its grammar and vocabulary often difficult. Like many scriptures it is subject to different interpretations, in places is hard to understand, and is usually learned within a Muslim community together with a tradition of interpretation. Traditionally it has been seen as the most perfect example of Arabic, and no human being could produce anything to match it. Since it is generally accepted by Muslims that the Prophet was illiterate, it is seen as a miracle that such a work should have been produced through him.

In content it consists mainly of moral and ethical commands and recommendations, warnings about the coming last day and final judgement, stories about prophets before Muhammad and the peoples to whom they were sent, and rules regarding religious life and such things as marriage, divorce and inheritance. Its fundamental message is that there is only one God, the creator of everything, who alone must be served by correct worship and behaviour. This God is constantly merciful and has continuously called mankind to worship him through a series of prophets whom he has sent. These prophets have been rejected over and over again by sinful peoples whom God has therefore punished. The general themes of the Koran and many of its illustrative stories are shared with Jewish and Christian scripture, but they are often developed in a distinctive way. Many details of the stories about previous prophets are closer to the versions found in Jewish and Christian apocrypha and similar writings than to the versions found in the Bible.

The Koran’s Importance and Interpretation

The Koran has been accepted by most Muslims as the word of God in a literal sense. It is, therefore, at the centre of Islam and is comparable to the Torah for Jews or the figure of Jesus for Christians. The obligatory daily prayers include the recitation of passages from the Koran, and traditional education involved learning it by heart. It is regarded by Muslims as one of the two main sources of Islamic law (the other being the Sunna, the divinely guided behaviour and practice of the prophet and, for the Shiites, of the Imams).

Nevertheless, it should not be thought that the Koran is the whole of Islam, even though some Muslims have claimed so. It is also difficult to accept the claim sometimes made that the Koran represents “true Islam” as distinct from what are seen as the accretions or even corruptions of human origin contained within traditional Muslim teaching. Without the tradition of interpretation which accompanies it, much of it would be difficult to understand. Even the view that it contains a series of revelations made to Muhammad depends on the tradition, for that teaching is not stated unambiguously in the text of the Koran itself.

The interpretation of the Koran (traditionally known as tafsir) is a field of Muslim scholarship which has continued from the time when the text first established itself as scripture for Muslims down to modern times. Numerous books have been produced on the subject. We have a few commentaries attributed to scholars of the first three centuries of Islam but the earliest major work of tafsir is that by al-Tabari (died 923). This work goes through the Koran verse by verse and offers a variety of the opinions of earlier and contemporary scholars regarding such things as vocalization, grammar, lexicography, ethical and moral interpretation, and the relationship of the text to the life of Muhammad. The various views are reported without comment although al-Tabari often indicates which of them he prefers.

Many later commentaries follow the procedure used by al-Tabari but others become simpler and shorter by selecting only certain verses for commentary, limiting themselves to only one or a few selected interpretations, or specialising on one topic, such as the Koranic vocabulary which was regarded as especially difficult.

Much of the work of interpretation is concerned with the “occasions of revelation”. The individual verses and groups of verses are related to the life of Muhammad and are understood as having been revealed in connection with specific incidents in his life or to solve particular problems which he faced. Thus the text is understood as having an immediate context in the life of Muhammad as well as a more universal and timeless significance.

Some modern non-Muslim scholars have felt that elements in the life of Muhammad have been created by the elaboration of certain Koranic verses. The process has been described as midrashic because of its similarity to the way in which Jewish tradition created the Midrash stories about biblical figures, by creative elaboration of the text of the Bible. If this is so, then to explain the Koran by reference to the biography of the Prophet would involve a circular method of reasoning.

The tradition of tafsir has often reflected divergences and trends within Islam. Shiite interpretation of particular verses has often differed radically from that of the Sunnis, finding, for instance, references to the special status of Ali ibn Abi Talib and the Imams in the Koranic verses. In recent times both reforming “modernists” and “fundamentalists” have interpreted the text in ways which conform with their own viewpoints. Some have sought to show that the Koran is not only in conformity with many of the ideas of modern science but actually prefigures them. It is the often opaque nature of the Koranic text itself which makes such divergent approaches possible.

The Koran in Muslim Theology

One of the major theological disputes of early Islam concerned the question whether the Koran should be understoood as something created in time or as something uncreated and eternal. The background of the dispute (see Allah; Sunni) was complicated, involving various theological questions as well as an argument about the relative authority of the caliphs and the religious scholars (ulema). The view that it was uncreated became dominant but was opposed by substantial groups within Islam, notably the Shiites.

Translations

Whether the Koran may be translated from its original Arabic into another language, and, if so, under what circumstances a translation may be used, has also been a matter of dispute. Nevertheless, it has been translated by Muslims and non-Muslims into a variety of languages. The first translation into a European language was the Latin version made in 1143 by the English scholar Robert of Ketton on the orders of Peter the Venerable. The first English version, in 1649 was made on the basis of an earlier French translation. The first English version directly from the Arabic was by George Sale and appeared originally in 1734. Today there are many versions available in English and the other major languages of the world.