ISLAMIC CREED & RITUALS
RIGHT BELIEF: THE FIVE ITEMS OF FAITH
The Prophet taught that right belief consists of five items of faith (iman):
1. A firm belief in God, that God is one, single, unique, beyond likeness to anything in creation.
Although God in His essence is unknowable, He is described by some ninety-nine "Beautiful Names of God," which are descriptive attributes of God. Among these names, which Muslims are invited to call upon Him with, are the Merciful, the Compassionate, the King, the Holy, the Almighty, the Omnipotent, the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing, the All-Knowing, the Kind, the Loving and Tender to Creation, the Generous, the Forgiver, the Glorious, Owner of the Day of Judgment, the Avenger of wrongs. These divine names describe how God relates to humankind and the rest of creation.
The upshot of this is that we have to maintain a proper regard for God. Thinking wrongly about or attributing falsehood to God is a sin. To say that God is weak, unable to do such and such a thing, is considered by Muslims deeply sacrilegious. God is absolute, infinite. As the Creator, Originator, and Sustainer of the universe, God upholds all that exists; anything not sustained by God cannot continue to exist. Natural laws are merely the courses set by God for the operation of the material world. The series of causes that operate the world, and operate on the world, are finite in time and place. God is eternal, the prime cause, the true cause, the cause of causes. He acts but is not acted upon, sees but is not seen, causes movement but does not move, creates time and space but is beyond time and space. And yet God can be "perceived" and "known."
We are often surprised when we get to know a co-worker on the job and after some time get invited to his or her home to meet the family. We see a different person relating to spouse and children and wonder whether that was the same person we've worked with all those years. When a human is confronted with an attribute of God, say the All-Compassionate, and then with another, say the Avenger, it is hard for the human soul to recognize that these are aspects of the same God. Many humans have refused to see that and are convinced that they are dealing with a different God. A hadith suggests that on Judgment Day God will display all His attributes, and people will submit to those attributes they recognized and submitted to during their lives on earth and be unable to bow before those they had not submitted to; the most blessed would be those who submitted in this life to all the attributes of God. A common mistake we make in this life is to make separate gods out of God's different attributes and not see the One Who interacts with creation in multiple ways.
2. Belief in the existence of the angels.
Angels are beings created of light for the express purpose of fulfilling divine commands, the most important being Gabriel (Jibril in Arabic), whose task was to communicate between God and the Prophet-Messengers. It was Gabriel who announced to Mary that she would have a son without having been intimate with a man,6 who embraced Muhammad and announced to him that he would be a Prophet, and who spoke to him the first verses of the Quran. Other angels are 'Azra'il, the angel of death, whose task is to collect all souls at the moment of death, and Mika'il (Michael), whose task will be to blow the trumpet that will arouse the souls from their death stupor on the Day of Resurrection. We have mentioned the countless angels eternally worshiping God in the various positions of standing, bowing, prostrating, and sitting, which became the model of the Islamic choreography of prayer, and others who see to the smooth functioning of the universe.
There are angels who watch over us and record our good and bad deeds and angels who interrogate us after our death and accompany us to where we will be. Finally, there are the angels who watch over Paradise and Hell, admitting human souls into these places and executing God's command in them.
3. Belief that God has communicated to humankind through scriptures, sent through several messengers.
The four scriptures the Quran mentions are the Torah, sent through Moses; the Psalms, revealed to David; the Evangel, revealed to Jesus; and the Quran, revealed to Muhammad. Also mentioned are the scrolls of Abraham and Moses (Quran 87:19). Muslims believe these books were authored by God and revealed through a particular prophet. Muslims believe that the similarities found in these scriptures and the Quran's references to the others are due to the fact that they all had the same author. Because some secular scholars of religion entirely reject the idea of God and some Jewish and Christian scholars of Islam reject the idea of Muhammad, they are forced to conclude that Jesus copied ideas from the Old Testament or that Muhammad copied ideas from the Old and New Testaments. Such positions have contributed to the animosity between the Abrahamic faith communities. The Muslim position is that the Quran confirms the truths revealed in all the scriptures and that although they were revealed to each messenger in the language of his people, and some variations in details of worship exist, God sent these scriptures for one broad theme: right belief regarding God and right ethics for the benefit of humankind.
4. Belief in the Prophet-Messengers.
The Quran names twenty-five Messengers, beginning with Adam and including Noah, Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, David, Solomon, Moses, Aaron, Job, Jonah, John the Baptist, Jesus Christ, and ending with Muhammad. The Quran states that although some of the Messengers have been named, many have not been named (Quran 4:163-64, 40:78), also that God sent to every community a Messenger.7 Prophets are windows through whom people get a powerful sense of God's presence and exemplars whose pattern of behavior ordinary folk can emulate. Prophets are human, and they do err, although Muslims believe that their prophethood is protected (ma'sum) by God from their errors. Their errors enable us to relate to them and give us hope that we too can achieve the highest spiritual status.
Islamic theology differentiates between a prophet and a messenger. A prophet is one to whom God sent a revelation; a messenger is a prophet who was mandated to preach to his community. Thus some scholars regard Mary, mother of Jesus, as a prophet since Gabriel visited her and revealed to her that she would have a son, but she was not a messenger since she was not mandated to preach. Her son Jesus did preach and is regarded by Muslims as a prophet and a messenger, and one of the very greatest messengers of all time.
5. Belief in the hereafter, sometimes called by Muslims the Last Day.
The hereafter is a compound concept for Muslims. It means that creation will come to an end (a kind of reverse of the Big Bang idea of creation—a big implosion), followed by a Day of Resurrection when all souls will be resurrected, followed by a Day of Judgment when souls will be judged. This is the moment when we are held accountable for our ethical actions. Those who lived a righteous life will gain divine approval and enter the bliss of Paradise while those who lived unethically will gain divine disapproval and taste the burn of their evil actions in Hell. We experience hell on earth when those we love and respect (especially our spouses, our parents, or our bosses) are upset with us, and heaven when those we love and respect are happy with us. It stands to reason that when the Creator of the universe, who is the Absolute, is pleased with us, we experience eternal Heaven, and Hell is just what we naturally experience when the Creator is disappointed with us. The philosophical underpinning of the idea of the Last Day is human accountability. We will be held accountable for our actions and will experience pleasure at our good deeds, deeds of kindness and mercy, and experience enormous pain at our evil deeds, deeds of oppression and unkindness.
These events are potently described in several places in the Quran, of which the following is one example:
When the heavens split
When the stars disperse
When the rivers overflow
When the graves scatter
Reaps every soul its sowings and restraints
O man! What deceived you from your generous Lord—
Who created you, completed you, set you aright—
Cast you in any shape He pleased?
Yet you deny Judgment
While upon you are keepers—
Honorable recorders—
Alert to what you do
The righteous are in bliss
The wicked in Fire
Burning in it on Judgment Day
Not from it withdrawn
How will you recognize Judgment Day?
Again, how will you recognize Judgment Day?
That day when a soul controls nothing of another
And the command is God's (alone).
(Quran 82:1-19)
"Righteousness," the Quran adds, "is not that you turn your faces east or west [following the details of worship without an inner ethical sense]; but righteous are those secure in their belief in God, the Hereafter, the angels, the Scripture and the Prophets; who give wealth lovingly for the love of God to relatives, orphans, the poor, travelers, petitioners, and who set slaves free; who keep the prayer and pay the (Zakah); who fulfill their promises when they make a promise, who are patiently constant during distress and affliction and in times of conflict. These are the truthful; these are the pious" (Quran 2:177). The Quran differentiates between outer expression of belief (called islam) and inner faith (iman), instructing the Prophet to "inform those of the Arabs who assert 'we believe' that they had not yet believed, but to say 'we submit' [aslamna, we have become muslim], for belief has not yet penetrated your hearts" (Quran 49:14).8 This suggests that faith is also an act of the heart.
The Prophet taught that right belief consists of five items of faith (iman):
1. A firm belief in God, that God is one, single, unique, beyond likeness to anything in creation.
Although God in His essence is unknowable, He is described by some ninety-nine "Beautiful Names of God," which are descriptive attributes of God. Among these names, which Muslims are invited to call upon Him with, are the Merciful, the Compassionate, the King, the Holy, the Almighty, the Omnipotent, the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing, the All-Knowing, the Kind, the Loving and Tender to Creation, the Generous, the Forgiver, the Glorious, Owner of the Day of Judgment, the Avenger of wrongs. These divine names describe how God relates to humankind and the rest of creation.
The upshot of this is that we have to maintain a proper regard for God. Thinking wrongly about or attributing falsehood to God is a sin. To say that God is weak, unable to do such and such a thing, is considered by Muslims deeply sacrilegious. God is absolute, infinite. As the Creator, Originator, and Sustainer of the universe, God upholds all that exists; anything not sustained by God cannot continue to exist. Natural laws are merely the courses set by God for the operation of the material world. The series of causes that operate the world, and operate on the world, are finite in time and place. God is eternal, the prime cause, the true cause, the cause of causes. He acts but is not acted upon, sees but is not seen, causes movement but does not move, creates time and space but is beyond time and space. And yet God can be "perceived" and "known."
We are often surprised when we get to know a co-worker on the job and after some time get invited to his or her home to meet the family. We see a different person relating to spouse and children and wonder whether that was the same person we've worked with all those years. When a human is confronted with an attribute of God, say the All-Compassionate, and then with another, say the Avenger, it is hard for the human soul to recognize that these are aspects of the same God. Many humans have refused to see that and are convinced that they are dealing with a different God. A hadith suggests that on Judgment Day God will display all His attributes, and people will submit to those attributes they recognized and submitted to during their lives on earth and be unable to bow before those they had not submitted to; the most blessed would be those who submitted in this life to all the attributes of God. A common mistake we make in this life is to make separate gods out of God's different attributes and not see the One Who interacts with creation in multiple ways.
2. Belief in the existence of the angels.
Angels are beings created of light for the express purpose of fulfilling divine commands, the most important being Gabriel (Jibril in Arabic), whose task was to communicate between God and the Prophet-Messengers. It was Gabriel who announced to Mary that she would have a son without having been intimate with a man,6 who embraced Muhammad and announced to him that he would be a Prophet, and who spoke to him the first verses of the Quran. Other angels are 'Azra'il, the angel of death, whose task is to collect all souls at the moment of death, and Mika'il (Michael), whose task will be to blow the trumpet that will arouse the souls from their death stupor on the Day of Resurrection. We have mentioned the countless angels eternally worshiping God in the various positions of standing, bowing, prostrating, and sitting, which became the model of the Islamic choreography of prayer, and others who see to the smooth functioning of the universe.
There are angels who watch over us and record our good and bad deeds and angels who interrogate us after our death and accompany us to where we will be. Finally, there are the angels who watch over Paradise and Hell, admitting human souls into these places and executing God's command in them.
3. Belief that God has communicated to humankind through scriptures, sent through several messengers.
The four scriptures the Quran mentions are the Torah, sent through Moses; the Psalms, revealed to David; the Evangel, revealed to Jesus; and the Quran, revealed to Muhammad. Also mentioned are the scrolls of Abraham and Moses (Quran 87:19). Muslims believe these books were authored by God and revealed through a particular prophet. Muslims believe that the similarities found in these scriptures and the Quran's references to the others are due to the fact that they all had the same author. Because some secular scholars of religion entirely reject the idea of God and some Jewish and Christian scholars of Islam reject the idea of Muhammad, they are forced to conclude that Jesus copied ideas from the Old Testament or that Muhammad copied ideas from the Old and New Testaments. Such positions have contributed to the animosity between the Abrahamic faith communities. The Muslim position is that the Quran confirms the truths revealed in all the scriptures and that although they were revealed to each messenger in the language of his people, and some variations in details of worship exist, God sent these scriptures for one broad theme: right belief regarding God and right ethics for the benefit of humankind.
4. Belief in the Prophet-Messengers.
The Quran names twenty-five Messengers, beginning with Adam and including Noah, Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, David, Solomon, Moses, Aaron, Job, Jonah, John the Baptist, Jesus Christ, and ending with Muhammad. The Quran states that although some of the Messengers have been named, many have not been named (Quran 4:163-64, 40:78), also that God sent to every community a Messenger.7 Prophets are windows through whom people get a powerful sense of God's presence and exemplars whose pattern of behavior ordinary folk can emulate. Prophets are human, and they do err, although Muslims believe that their prophethood is protected (ma'sum) by God from their errors. Their errors enable us to relate to them and give us hope that we too can achieve the highest spiritual status.
Islamic theology differentiates between a prophet and a messenger. A prophet is one to whom God sent a revelation; a messenger is a prophet who was mandated to preach to his community. Thus some scholars regard Mary, mother of Jesus, as a prophet since Gabriel visited her and revealed to her that she would have a son, but she was not a messenger since she was not mandated to preach. Her son Jesus did preach and is regarded by Muslims as a prophet and a messenger, and one of the very greatest messengers of all time.
5. Belief in the hereafter, sometimes called by Muslims the Last Day.
The hereafter is a compound concept for Muslims. It means that creation will come to an end (a kind of reverse of the Big Bang idea of creation—a big implosion), followed by a Day of Resurrection when all souls will be resurrected, followed by a Day of Judgment when souls will be judged. This is the moment when we are held accountable for our ethical actions. Those who lived a righteous life will gain divine approval and enter the bliss of Paradise while those who lived unethically will gain divine disapproval and taste the burn of their evil actions in Hell. We experience hell on earth when those we love and respect (especially our spouses, our parents, or our bosses) are upset with us, and heaven when those we love and respect are happy with us. It stands to reason that when the Creator of the universe, who is the Absolute, is pleased with us, we experience eternal Heaven, and Hell is just what we naturally experience when the Creator is disappointed with us. The philosophical underpinning of the idea of the Last Day is human accountability. We will be held accountable for our actions and will experience pleasure at our good deeds, deeds of kindness and mercy, and experience enormous pain at our evil deeds, deeds of oppression and unkindness.
These events are potently described in several places in the Quran, of which the following is one example:
When the heavens split
When the stars disperse
When the rivers overflow
When the graves scatter
Reaps every soul its sowings and restraints
O man! What deceived you from your generous Lord—
Who created you, completed you, set you aright—
Cast you in any shape He pleased?
Yet you deny Judgment
While upon you are keepers—
Honorable recorders—
Alert to what you do
The righteous are in bliss
The wicked in Fire
Burning in it on Judgment Day
Not from it withdrawn
How will you recognize Judgment Day?
Again, how will you recognize Judgment Day?
That day when a soul controls nothing of another
And the command is God's (alone).
(Quran 82:1-19)
"Righteousness," the Quran adds, "is not that you turn your faces east or west [following the details of worship without an inner ethical sense]; but righteous are those secure in their belief in God, the Hereafter, the angels, the Scripture and the Prophets; who give wealth lovingly for the love of God to relatives, orphans, the poor, travelers, petitioners, and who set slaves free; who keep the prayer and pay the (Zakah); who fulfill their promises when they make a promise, who are patiently constant during distress and affliction and in times of conflict. These are the truthful; these are the pious" (Quran 2:177). The Quran differentiates between outer expression of belief (called islam) and inner faith (iman), instructing the Prophet to "inform those of the Arabs who assert 'we believe' that they had not yet believed, but to say 'we submit' [aslamna, we have become muslim], for belief has not yet penetrated your hearts" (Quran 49:14).8 This suggests that faith is also an act of the heart.
ISLAMIC CREED & RITUALS
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