20 world religions and faith practices 101

Robyn Lebron Basic Doctrine According to Islamic doctrine, Islam is the primordial religion of mankind professed by Adam At some point, a religious split occurred, and God began sending prophets to bring his revelations to the people In this view, Abraham, Moses, the Hebrew prophets, and Jesus were all prophets in Islam, but their message and the texts of the Torah and the Gospels were misinterpreted by Jews and Christians The idea of Islamic supremacy is encapsulated in the formula, “Islam is exalted, and nothing is exalted above it.” Muslims believe that Allāh revealed his final message to humanity through the Islamic prophet Muhammad via the angel Gabriel For them, Muhammad is God’s final prophet, and the Qur’an is the revelations he received over a period of more than two decades They not regard Muhammad as the founder of a new religion but as the restorer of the original monotheistic faith of Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets Prophets are considered to be the closest to perfection of all humans and are uniquely the recipients of divine revelation—either directly from God or through angels The Qur’an mentions the names of numerous figures considered prophets in Islam, including Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, among others Islamic theology says that all of God’s messengers since Adam preached the message of Islam—submission to the will of God Many Muslims believe that the prophet foretold of in Deuteronomy was not Jesus, but Muhammad Islam consists of a number of religious denominations that are essentially similar in belief but which have significant theological and legal differences The primary division is between the Sunni and the Shi’a, with Sufism generally considered to be a mystical inflection of Islam rather than a distinct sect According to most sources, approximately 85 percent of the world’s Muslims are Sunni, and approximately 15 percent are Shi’a, with a small minority who are members of other Islamic sects The Shi’a, which constitute the second-largest branch of Islam, believe in the political and religious leadership of infallible imāms from the progeny of Ali ibn Abi Talib (fourth successor of Muhammad) They believe that he, as the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, was ~ 100 ~