Islam

What is Islam?

According to Muslims, Islam is not a religion that began at any point in history — it is the one original faith God gave to humanity from the very beginning, and it has existed since the first human being. Muslims hold that Adam, the first man, was the first Muslim: from him onward, every prophet God sent (in total 124000) — like Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and finally Muhammad — taught the same single message, submission to the one God. Muhammad did not found a new religion; Muslims hold that he was given the final and complete, and unaltered restatement of that one original message, sealing the line of prophets that began with Adam — which is why Islamic tradition calls him "the Seal of the Prophets." The word "Islam" (Arabic transliteration: al-Islām) itself means "submission" — submission to the will of God (Allah, Arabic for "the God") — and a follower of Islam is called a Muslim, "one who submits", who submits in every aspect and decision of life to God`s decisions, he lives according to His system, His will.

Muslims trace Islam to the innate human disposition, Islamic teaching calls it fitrah: the belief that every human being is born already knowing, at the core of their nature, that there is one God — so that Islam, understood this way, requires no historical beginning to be proven true, since it is held to be built into human nature itself, prior to any particular time or place. The revelation (God`s words) given to Muhammad through Angel Gibril in the Arabian Peninsula, completed by 632 CE, is understood by Muslims as the final chapter of that same way of life, not its opening one.

The central claim: Tawhid

The foundation of Islamic belief is Tawhid — the oneness and indivisibility of God. Everything else in Islamic theology follows logically from this single premise: if God is truly one, unique, and without equal, then nothing else may be worshipped, compared to Him, or associated with Him as a partner, no other system, no other ideology. This is why the Quran repeatedly condemns shirk (associating partners with God) as the one unforgivable error in Islamic system— it directly contradicts the starting premise on which the whole belief system rests.

The Six Articles of Faith

Islamic belief (iman) is traditionally summarized in six articles:

1. Belief in the oneness of God (Tawhid).

2. Belief in angels as God's messengers and agents.

3. Belief in the revealed books — including the Torah, the Psalms, and the Gospel — with the Quran regarded as God's final and unaltered revelation.

4. Belief in the prophets, from Adam through Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, to Muhammad as the last of them.

5. Belief in the Day of Judgment, when every person is held accountable for their deeds.

6. Belief in divine decree (al-Qadar) — that God's knowledge and will encompass all things, while human beings remain morally responsible for their choices.

The Five Pillars of Islam

Where the Six Articles describe what a Muslim believes, the Five Pillars describe what a Muslim does. Each pillar is presented in Islamic teaching as a logical expression of Tawhid put into practice:

1. Shahada (testimony of faith): declaring "There is no god but God, and Muhammad is His messenger." This is the verbal foundation from which every other pillar follows — you cannot logically perform acts of submission to God without first affirming that God alone is worthy of them.

2. Salah (prayer): five ritual prayers performed daily, facing the Kaaba in Mecca. It functions as a repeated, physical renewal of the Shahada's declaration, structuring the day around remembrance of God.

3. Zakat (almsgiving): a fixed portion (typically 2.5%) of a Muslim's savings given annually to the poor. It is framed not as charity in the Western sense but as a duty — since everything ultimately belongs to God, wealth is held in trust, and a share of it is owed to those in need.

4. Sawm (fasting): abstaining from food, drink, and other physical needs from dawn to sunset during the month of Ramadan. It is intended to cultivate self-discipline and empathy with those who go without.

5. Hajj (pilgrimage): a journey to Mecca, required once in a lifetime for those who are physically and financially able. It reenacts events associated with Abraham and Ismail and gathers Muslims from every background as physical equals before God.

The sacred texts and why Muslims regard them as authoritative

The Quran is Islam's central scripture, believed by Muslims to be the literal word of God as revealed to the Prophet Muhammad through the angel Gabriel over approximately 23 years (610–632 CE). Muslims hold that its authority rests on a claimed chain of transmission: verses were recited by Muhammad, memorized and written down by his companions during his lifetime, and compiled into a single standardized text under the third caliph, Uthman, within about two decades of Muhammad's death — a comparatively short interval that traditional scholarship presents as grounds for confidence in the text's preservation.

Alongside the Quran stands the Hadith — records of what Muhammad said, did, or approved of, transmitted through chains of named narrators (isnad) and evaluated by later scholars for the reliability of each link in that chain. Together, the Quran and authenticated Hadith form the basis of the Sunnah (the Prophet's example), which supplements the Quran's guidance on matters of daily practice.

A brief history

Muhammad was born around 570 CE in Mecca. At about age 40, he reported receiving the first of his revelations and began preaching monotheism in a society that practiced polytheism. Facing opposition, he and his followers migrated to Medina in 622 CE — an event called the Hijra, which marks year one of the Islamic calendar. Over the following decade, the Muslim community grew, and by Muhammad's death in 632 CE, most of the Arabian Peninsula had come under Islamic rule.