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What I want to share today is the idea of Islam through a Muslims eyes.
There are plenty of people who are trying to spread Islam in the United States today, it is called Dawah. There are organizations that are dedicated to doing that, they have ads on buses and metro systems across the nation.
One of the biggest being WhyIslam.org
They define Islam as follows,
“Islam is the culmination of the universal message of God taught by all of His prophets. Muslims believe that a prophet was chosen for every nation at some point in their history, enjoining them to worship God alone and delivering guidance on how to live peacefully with others. Some of the prophets of God include Adam, Noah, Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad, peace be upon them all. The prophets all conveyed the consistent divine message of worshiping one God, along with specific societal laws for each nation’s circumstances.
However, after the prophets delivered the divine guidance to their people, their message was lost, abandoned, or changed over time, with only parts of the original message intact. God then sent another prophet to rectify their beliefs.”
This is how WhyIslam.org summarizes Islam, this is a modern summary of Islam. You won’t see this kind of summary in the past. You don’t see them create these bridges between the prophets and peace be upon them things, they don’t do that in the past.
To give you an understanding of how many are in the United States. In 2005 one of the official numbers we found was 3 Million (1% of the United States Population), currently estimates range any where from 5 – 12 Million, it’s not exactly sure how many Muslims are in the United States.
What I did find is world wide 1.5 Billion, that’s a big difference.
In the United States it’s about 1% where as worldwide 24% identify as Muslim.
Understand though that Islam is not monolithic there are many divisions.
If you talk about a Muslim, you’re probably talking about a Sunni Muslim because they are the vast majority of Muslims.
When you talk to a muslin more important to them than anything when describing their faith are the five pillars of Islam. These are the five duties that Muslims preform in order to maintain a right relationship before God. Again they preform duties in order for them to please God and be in a good relationship with him.
Allah will love those who do these things and Allah dose not love those who do not do these things.
You’ll find in the Koran that Allah’s love is not unconditional, he loves those who do these things.
1. Testimony of Faith (Shahadah)
The Shahadah is first foremost the pillar of Islam.
This is the proclamation to faith you see it on the flag.
“There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger.”
2. Ritual Prayer (Salaat)
The Salaat are the five daily prayers for Muslims.
So when you see Muslims praying these are prescribed prayers that they have memorized. There are portions of the Salaat that are variable and there are portions where you recite the Koran, which is also memorized. So these are not improvisational prayers there is nothing personal about them aside from what they might happen to feel from what they have memorized already.
3. Alms (Zakaat)
The third pillar of Islam is the Zakaat, this is the Muslim version of tithing.
About 2.5% of your total income is offered as mandatory Alms.
This can be used for a variety of purposes, it can be used to restore mosques, it can be used to help travelers, it can be used to give to orphans and widows. The Koran gives various ways you can use Zakaat, but it’s a whole industry these days, there are websites telling people how much Zakaat to give based on various rules.