Islam
Essay Preview: Islam
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There are few people on earth today who have not heard something about Islam. Islam is one of the most prominent religions in the world today with at least 750 million people practicing. Islam is a voluntary relationship between an individual and his creator. Islam emerged in Arabia during the early 7th century. Islam means “submission” in Arabic, which is the basis for the religion—submitting to the Will of God. Islamic religion is formed on the foundations of Islamic life, variety and unity is Islam, and Islam and its nonbelievers. The Islamic people had a new faith in their religion and kept their hopes high to conquer and spread the religion. They changed the society that was used across the lands and brought a new religion that would keep the people high in assurance that theyll always have a good spirit.
The foundations of Islamic life are based on a sacred text called the Quran. The Quran is a record of the exact words revealed by God through the Angel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad. The Quran is the prime source of every Muslims faith and practice. It deals with all the subjects which concern us as human beings: wisdom, doctrine, worship, and law, but its basic theme is the relationship between God and his creatures. At the same time it provides guidelines for a just society, proper human conduct and an equitable economic system. From the time the Quran was revealed, until this day there has always been a large number of Muslims who have memorized all of the Quran, letter by letter. Not one letter of the Quran has been changed over the centuries.
Another source for the basis of Islamic life is al-Hadith, or sunnah. This is a vast body of transmitted stories and sayings attributed to the Prophet and his comparisons. Unlike the Quran, these stories are not assembled in a single, absolutely accepted text. There are actually many collections of Hadith. Over time, during the first few centuries of Islam, it became obvious that many so-called hadith were in fact spurious sayings that had been fabricated for various motives, at best to encourage believers to act righteously and at worse to corrupt believers understanding of Islam and to lead them astray. Since Islamic legal scholars were utilizing hadith as an adjunct to the Quran in their development of the Islamic legal system, it became critically important to have reliable collections of hadith. While the early collections of hadith often contained hadith that were of questionable origin, gradually collections of authenticated hadith called sahih were compiled. Such collections were made possible by the development of the science of hadith criticism, a science at the basis of which