Confusion, Confusion

Hey everybody, real life Muslim here! Nowadays on the internets (all three of them), there seems to be a lot of discussions, well debates really, no, actually more like migraine inducing flamewars, about what the heck Islam actually is. Scary sounding words like Shariah law, jihad, infidel, falafel, and taqiyya are thrown around to various effect while people try to prove what Islam really is. Many a verse of the Qur'an or hadith is quoted to prove whatever point these people try to make, but there always seems to be one thing missing from the conversation: actual Muslims. It seems to me that nobody has really bothered to ask us what we believe, which kind of strikes me as odd. After all, a religion is defined by it's followers when it comes down to things. I can read the Bible and come to my own conclusions about it, but I can't really say what Christianity is or isn't. That's up to the Christians. Same goes for any religion, really, and if one is to reject a religion, he/she ought to reject it for what it really is, not for what he/she imagines it to be or wants it to be. So, I've decided to write a few mini-articles about what Muslims actually believe, according to them. This isn't meant to be an attempt to convert Steemit to Islam; I really just want to give the world a bit of solid information when we're surrounded by so much disinformation (just try google searching anything about Islam and see what comes up!) But enough talk, have at you! Let's just dive into the thick of it and do some learning!

I really couldn't resist a stock photo of a confused man looking at a computer. Sorry. Not really.

The Six Articles of Faith

Anybody who has ever sat through a high school class on Islam has probably heard the term "Five pillars of Islam" before. Pretty much all introductions to Islam start with these words, in one form or another. Those who weren't sleeping through class or cared enough to remember what their social studies teacher had to say might even remember that those five pillars are the declaration of faith, the prayer, the charity tax, the pilgrimage to Mecca, and fasting during Ramadan. But when it comes down to things, those are all external actions, and tell us little about what Muslims actually believe. So I'm going to start this whole thing by putting the five pillars on hold and going through what is called the six articles of faith, which are found in the Qur'an, as well as a really important hadith (saying of Muhammad, peace be upon him) called the hadith of Jibril, which we'll go through in detail later once we've covered the basics. I'll quote the scripture here, so you don't think I just made these up to spite history teachers and implicitly tell them their pedagogy is horrible when it comes to Islam:

"O you who have believed, believe in Allah and His Messenger and the Book that He sent down upon His Messenger and the Scripture which He sent down before. And whoever disbelieves in Allah, His angels, His books, His messengers, and the Last Day has certainly gone far astray." - Surah Nisa, 136

And here's the relevant portion of the hadith of Jibril. The full text is linked here, but this bit is all we need to focus on for now:

[The man] went on to say, "Inform me about iman (faith)." He (the Messenger of Allah) answered, "It is that you believe in Allah and His angels and His Books and His Messengers and in the Last Day, and in qadr (fate/providence), both in its good and in its evil aspects." He said, "You have spoken truly."

So, there are six key articles of faith which make up the belief system of Islam. Each of them will get a mini-article/story thingy posted on steemit, and I'll go through them in this order:

1. Belief in Allah
2. Belief in His Messengers
3. Belief in the Books of Allah
4. Belief in His Angels
5. Belief in the Last Day/Day of Judgement
6. Belief in Qadr (Fate/Predestination)

So, all that introductory stuff out of the way, let's cut to the chase and start exploring what Islam really is! We'll start with a question humans have been thinking over in their heads since the dawn of time: Who, or what, is God?

Belief in Allah

"Theology is the quest for the least silly definition of God." - Sheikh Abdul Hakim Murad

It's not exactly the easiest thing to define what God is, and some people nowadays, seem to think of God as some sort of angry old man in the sky who looks down upon humanity and thoroughly enjoys throwing them in the hellfire for his own amusement. Others seem to think God wants us to get the highest kill count possible and collect as many chopped-off hands as we can. If this was what God was, I'd be disbelieving with Dawkins, A.A. Lewis, and the rest of the new atheists. And I can understand why people nowadays are angry at religion and religious people, really. If that's what Allah was, then I would be in the same boat as you. However, the declarative statement of Islam, the Shahada states otherwise:

There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.

Anything that we think God is, is not God. The Shahada is not simply a rejection of Odin, Ra, Thor, and all other false gods; it's a rejection of all false ideas about what God is. In the Christian tradition, there is an idea of theologia via negativa, that God is best defined by negation, or by saying what he is not. In Islam, we would say that Allah is not anything except what He says He is. This naturally leads to the question "What then, is God?" In light of His transcendence and being totally unlike anything we can relate to, Muslims believe that Allah is known through how He describes himself in the Qur'an, which we believe is a direct communication between God and mankind with no intermediaries acting as writers or editors. Sources in the hadith (collection of sayings of Muhammd, peace be upon him) also expound upon the nature of God. In a famous and significant hadith, it is said:

Narrated Abu Huraira: Prophet Muhammad SAW said, “Allah has ninety-nine names, i.e. one-hundred minus one, and whoever knows them will go to Paradise.” (Sahih Al-Bukhari 50:894)

99 Names of God

Allah, in the Islamic tradition, is a perfect synthesis of these 99 names, many of which have a dualistic nature or are paired a name of Allah which implies the opposite meaning. For example, Allah is al-Mu'izz, He who bestows honor, but likewise is al-Muzil, He who abases. Allah is al-Muhyi, the Giver of Life, but is also al-Mumeet, the Bringer of Death. There are names of gentleness and mercy; Allah is ar-Rahmanir Raheem, the most Beneficent, the most Merciful. Likewise, there are names of rigor and firmness; Allah is al-'Adl and al-Muntaqim, the Just and the Avenger of Wrongs. In regards to this duality between divine softness and divine firmness, that the hadith state: "When Allah decreed the creation, he wrote in his book with him on his throne: My mercy prevails over my wrath.” Muslims of the Sufi tradition place a great deal of emphasis on becoming perpetually conscious of these names, and it is not uncommon for them to spend hours repeating these names and reflecting upon them. To know these names is to know God.

Reading this, one may come to think that Islam holds a conception of God that is entirely transcendent and removed from mankind, and this is indeed a common criticism of Islam by Christians, who say that there is no room for divine immanence. Yet, knowing these names is not a practice in abstraction; rather, these names are mechanisms through which we understand Allah through the events of lives. We directly interact with Ar-Razzaq, the Provider, when we are fed a meal or when we are hired for a job. The mercy of Allah is visible in almost every moment, and indeed we could never imagine all the ways in which God's mercy touches all creation; the beauty of Allah is visible in the rising sun casting its rays upon a mountain, or in life teeming in a coral reef. We know Al-Baari, the Evolver, as we watch our children grow from wrinkly infants to adults. Faith is the ability to see these things and look past the apparent realities of life and gaze upon the works of God. Sh. Abdul Hakim Murad once related an interesting story from Rumi about this idea:

There is a story which Sayyidina Jalaluddin Rumi tells of an ant that’s creeping across the carpet in a mosque, and the ant complains to God saying: “what is this, these bumps, and strange colours, and patterns, this must have been created just as a meaningless obstacle course, what a futile thing to have made.” But of course the carpet maker, looking at it from above can see the patterns and the purpose of it, and can see that the whole thing is perfect and is good. And Allah is often like that. We often can’t make sense of the misfortunes because we are too dimensional, we are at ground level, we can’t see what it all means, but the khalifa (vicegerent) of Allah subhanahu wa’tala knows even if he can’t always see that this is a manifestation of Allah’s will which is always good and always perfect and always beautiful.

Rather confusing thing from an ant's perspective, isn't it?

Conclusion

Well, I hope I didn't make things too confusing. These are all big ideas, and when it comes down to things, I'm not exactly a philosopher. I'm just a normal guy trying to explain things as a normal guy does, albeit from a Muslim perspective. If you have any questions about what I've written, please feel free to comment below. That being said, do try to keep the comments related to what was discussed in the article. I know there are a lot of burning questions about Islam out there, like "Why do you guys want to stone people and chop their hands off?" and "Why do Muslim women have to dress like ninjas?" and I do promise I'll get to that, in sha Allah but for now, I'd really appreciate it if comments and questions were kept relevant to the topic of each post.

**Next lesson, we'll be going into a bit more depth as to what God is to Muslims by looking into the single most important attribute of Allah, that being, his Oneness. We'll learn about what Tawheed, or Monotheism, means to Muslims and on the flip side, what Muslims see as idolatry. After that, we'll move on to the second article faith, belief in Allah's Messengers, which should be fun!

Peace be with you all, and I hope you benefitted from my post!