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“Allahu akbar! / God is most great! / I testify that there is no God but Allah. / I testify that Mohammed is the prophet of Allah. / Arise and pray; arise and pray. / God is great; / There is no God but Allah!” The haunting cry of the muezzin, sounded of old from the minaret, in latter days from loudspeaker or radio, symbolizes Islam to the world. The Muslim religion was born in the Arabian desert over 1350 years ago and now claims as many faithful as the Catholic Church, roughly one billion. In bursts of conquest and through peaceful means, Muslims have evangelized an equatorial belt of lands circling the globe, from Morocco in the west to Indonesia in the east. Though Islam has experienced periods of decline, it has rarely been forced into retreat and today is expanding with renewed energy in Africa, Asia, and even the Americas. In Muslim belief, the Prophet Mohammed (also spelled Muhammad) began receiving ecstatic revelations from God on Mount Hira near Mecca about A.D. 610. These revelations, which continued periodically until his death in 632, were later gathered into the Koran, the sacred book that forms the basis for Muslim theology, spirituality, and piety. While Islam later developed a considerable body of law, tradition, and theology and a vibrant mysticism (Sufism), the Koran remains the ultimate moral authority, the centerpiece of Muslim life. Muslims consider themselves “People of the Book” and Mohammed the “Seal of the Prophets.” These phrases capture the relationship that Islam bears to Judaism and Christianity. Mohammed saw himself not as the founder of a new religion but as the last in a line of prophets to which God had progressively revealed himself. This line, drawn in part from the Old and New Testaments, includes Abraham, Moses, David, and Jesus of Nazareth. But as Islam sees it, while Judaism went astray by worshiping the law or reverting to idol worship (the Golden Calf of Sinai), and Christianity erred by deifying Christ, Islam has retained its pure faith in the one true God. The Five Pillars • This uncompromising monotheism is the first and most fundamental of the Five Pillars of Islam. The Muslim’s confession of faith is simple: “There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his Prophet.” This famous assertion, echoing the Jewish sh’ma (“Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is One”), simultaneously rejects the animist religions popular in the Arabian peninsula in Mohammed’s day and proclaims the prophet’s unique place in salvation history. Mohammed gave the world the Koran, calling it his “standing miracle.” The word koran means “something to be recited”; to the believer, its 114 surahs are quite literally divine wisdom that Mohammed, the chosen link between God and man, recorded and made known. The second of the Five Pillars is prayer. Five times daily, in a mosque or anywhere else they happen to be, devout Muslims are to face Mecca and prostrate themselves before God, reciting traditional prayers and verses from the Koran. Typically, the content of Muslim prayer is gratitude to God for his gifts and supplication for growth in virtue: “O Lord, grant me firmness in faith and direction. Assist me in being grateful to you and in adoring you in every good way. I ask you for an innocent heart, which shall not incline to wickedness.” Punctuating the routine of everyday life with public acts of worship keeps men and women consciously in God’s shadow so that they do not neglect the duty they owe him and one another. This duty in its social aspect forms the third Pillar of Islam. Mohammed specified that all Muslims must pay zakat, an alms equivalent to one-fortieth their worth, for support of the poor each year. While the system has broken down in many modern Muslim states, charity remains a serious religious obligation. Fasting during the holy month of Ramadan is the fourth Pillar. With some exceptions (travelers, the ill, etc.), good Muslims at that time abstain entirely from food and drink from daybreak to sundown, taking nourishment in moderation at night. Since the Muslim calendar (which begins in the year 622, marking Mohammed’s flight [Hegira] from Mecca to Medina) is based on the lunar cycle, Ramadan moves through the seasons. When it falls in the blazing tropical summer, fasting from water requires courage and a steadfast faith. Yet Islam finds many virtues in the practice: It teaches self-discipline, forges a sympathetic bond with the needy, and reminds all of their utter dependence on God. Finally, every Muslim physically and economically able to do so must make a pilgrimage (haji) to the Kaaba, the ancient shrine in Mecca attributed to Abraham. Once they arrive in the holy city, pilgrims don identical garments, so that all approach the shrine radically equal before God. They walk around the Kaaba shoulder to shoulder, venerate the black stone set in one of its walls, and perform a number of other rituals over a period of days. The haji has a sacramental quality, in that it forges, even as it symbolizes, a solidarity among Muslims in the worldwide brotherhood of Islam. Despite the Arabs’ historic reputation as fierce warriors, the ideal of Islam is indeed brotherly love, expressed in the zakat, the pilgrimage, and in the prayer and fasting that Muslims practice in common. Obviously, all these find echoes in Judaism and Christianity, giving weight to the Muslim insistence that all three religions belong to the same prophetic tradition. Muslims and Catholics also share many other articles of faith, including a belief in free will, sin and punishment, the Last Judgment, and an afterlife. To these may be added faith in reason. It was the Muslims, after all, who preserved and transmitted the science and philosophy of ancient Greece, bridging Europe’s Dark Ages. Differences From Catholicism • Nevertheless, the differences between Islam and Catholicism are profound. While Muslims recognize religious leaders, especially in the Sufi tradition, there is no hierarchy analogous to the Pope and bishops. Thus Islam has no mechanism for the authoritative development of doctrine and relies more strongly on law and tradition than Christianity does. Moreover, many Muslims do not separate religion from politics as Western Christians do, and favor ordering public life through some form of the sharia, Islamic law. Most importantly, Islam is not an incarnational religion; Mohammed was a man with a divine message, not God’s own Son sent for our salvation. It lacks a formal sacramental system crowned by the Eucharist and fails to recognize Jesus as the definitive revelation of God in human history. The wide disparity among the world’s great religions makes it hard to imagine a final reconciliation. However, the Second Vatican Council firmly taught that, while the Church is the ordinary means of salvation, “the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims” (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, 16). Pope John Paul II is tireless in his efforts to promote interreligious dialogue, inspired by the words of the Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions: “Over the centuries many quarrels and dissensions have arisen between Christians and Muslims. The sacred Council now pleads with all to forget the past, and urges that a sincere effort be made to achieve mutual understanding; for the benefit of all men, let them together preserve and promote peace, liberty, social justice and moral values” (Nostra Aetate, 3).
See: Buddhism; Ecumenism; Evangelization; Hinduism; Judaism; Missionary Activity; Religion, Virtue of.
Suggested Readings: CCC 839-856. Vatican Council II, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, 16-17; Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, Nostra Aetate. John Paul II, On the Permanent Validity of the Church’s Missionary Mandate, Redemptoris Missio, 94-99. “Islam,” in G. Parrinder, ed., World Religions. H. Smith, “Islam,” The Religions of Man. David M. Byers
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