Topics in Religion list

Religious lives together

The heritage of Hinduism

The heritage of Islam

Religious spaces

Devotionalism

The living dead

Domestic religion

Girls learn to recite the Quran in one of Arampur's Islamic primary schools, called a madarsa. According to Muslims, as a direct revelation from Allah the Quran represents the truest instruction and thus the prophet who relayed it, Muhammad, remains an exemplar of proper behavior and belief.

An Arampur resident stands at the decorated door of his house. The cresent and star have been symbols of Islam since about the fifteenth century. The door also hails in Urdu Muhammad and his son-in-law Ali.

Nearly one of every five people in the world identifies her- or himself as "Muslim." This word means "one who submits" and relates to the word Islam which literally means "surrender." Muhammad ibn Abdallah first introduced this religious term in Arabia during the seventh century C.E. as he claimed a series of revelations from a deity. These revelations referred to themselves collectively as the Quran ("recitation") which promoted a tenet central still for most Muslims globally: submission to the one true God -- Allah ("the One"). The prophet who delivered the Quran came to be understood as a paragon for the life of surrender and faith which it enjoined and, so, Muhammad's life became the topic of a collection of reports known individually and collectively as hadith ("tradition").

Although many Muslims, for whom a single undivided tradition is crucial, would insist on the uniformity of Islam, few would disagree with the vast diversity among Muslim cultures. Muslims worldwide praise Allah and revere the Prophet and Quran while recognizing the importance of daily prayer (salat), annual fasting (saum), charitable giving (zakat), and the pilgrimage to Mecca (haj) (though not perhaps practicing all of these). However, the forms of the mosques they pray in, the importance of shariah (Islamic law) to their everyday lives, and the role of Islam in their national societies varies immensely due to ethnic and cultural diversity. Even among the Muslims of Arampur, a panoply of divergent practices and beliefs can be found. For instance, some pray at the tombs of Muslim mystics called Sufis while others condemn the practice because prayer to Allah requires no intermediaries.

Christian European competition with and antagonism toward Muslim Middle Easterners in the last fourteen centuries has led to stereotypes of all Muslims as inflexible and backwards, despotic and draconian. The expansive success of Islam on almost every continent can be attributed to both its adaptability and its message of equality and justice. Had Muslims been intolerant and inflexible, Islamic traditions would have been unable to adapt to new cultures or historical conditions. Today, more than half of Muslims live east of Afghanistan and the countries with the largest populations of Muslims are (in descending order) Indonesia, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. Meanwhile Muslim groups in Europe and North America, long existent as minorities, are increasingly complemented by expanding immigrant communities.