Islam
religion
Ask the Chatbot a Question
More Actions
Also known as: Al-Islām
Written by
Fazlur Rahman,
Annemarie Schimmel•All
Fact-checked by
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Last Updated: Jan 8, 2025 • Article History
Key People:
Muhammad
Ibn Taymiyyah
Muḥammad I Askia
Aurangzeb
Maḥmūd Ghāzān
Related Topics:
Islamic arts
Islamic world
Sufism
sharia
Shiʿi
See all related content
News •
Scarves over headscarves, Muslim women’s outdoors group tackles snow tubing in
Minnesota • Jan. 8, 2025, 8:23 AM ET (AP) ...(Show more)
Islam, major world religion promulgated by the
Prophet Muhammad in Arabia in the 7th century CE. The Arabic term islām,
literally “surrender,” illuminates the fundamental religious idea of Islam—
that the believer (called a Muslim, from the active particle of islām) accepts
surrender to the will of Allah (in Arabic, Allāh: God). Allah is viewed as the
sole God—creator, sustainer, and restorer of the world. The will of Allah, to
which human beings must submit, is made known through
the sacred scriptures, the Qurʾān (often spelled Koran in English), which
Allah revealed to his messenger, Muhammad. In Islam Muhammad is
considered the last of a series of prophets
(including Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Solomon, and Jesus), and his
message simultaneously consummates and completes the “revelations”
attributed to earlier prophets.
Retaining its emphasis on an uncompromising monotheism and a
strict adherence to certain essential religious practices, the religion taught
by Muhammad to a small group of followers spread rapidly through
the Middle East to Africa, Europe, the Indian subcontinent, the Malay
Peninsula, and China. By the early 21st century there were more than 1.5
billion Muslims worldwide. Although many sectarian movements have
arisen within Islam, all Muslims are bound by a common faith and a sense of
belonging to a single community.
This article deals with the fundamental beliefs and practices of Islam and
with the connection of religion and society in the Islamic world. The history
of the various peoples who embraced Islam is covered in the article Islamic
world.
The foundations of Islam
The legacy of Muhammad
From the very beginning of Islam, Muhammad had inculcated a sense of
brotherhood and a bond of faith among his followers, both of which helped
to develop among them a feeling of close relationship that was accentuated
by their experiences of persecution as a nascent community in Mecca. The
strong attachment to the tenets of the Qurʾānic revelation and
the conspicuous socioeconomic content of Islamic religious practices
cemented this bond of faith. In 622 CE, when the Prophet migrated
to Medina, his preaching was soon accepted, and the community-state of
Islam emerged. During this early period, Islam acquired its
characteristic ethos as a religion uniting in itself both the spiritual and
temporal aspects of life and seeking to regulate not only the individual’s
relationship to God (through conscience) but human relationships in a social
setting as well. Thus, there is not only an Islamic religious institution but
also an Islamic law, state, and other institutions governing society. Not until
the 20th century were the religious (private) and the secular (public)
distinguished by some Muslim thinkers and separated formally in certain
places such as Turkey.
This dual religious and social character of Islam, expressing itself in one
way as a religious community commissioned by God to bring its own value
system to the world through the jihād (“exertion,” commonly translated as
“holy war” or “holy struggle”), explains the astonishing success of the early
generations of Muslims. Within a century after the Prophet’s death in
632 CE, they had brought a large part of the globe—from Spain
across Central Asia to India—under a new Arab Muslim empire.
Britannica Quiz
Islam
The period of Islamic conquests and empire building marks the first phase
of the expansion of Islam as a religion. Islam’s
essential egalitarianism within the community of the faithful and its
official discrimination against the followers of other religions won rapid
converts. Jews and Christians were assigned a special status
as communities possessing scriptures and were called the “people of the
Book” (ahl al-kitāb) and, therefore, were allowed religious autonomy. They
were, however, required to pay a per capita tax called jizyah, as opposed to
pagans, who were required to either accept Islam or die. The same status of
the “people of the Book” was later extended in particular times and places
to Zoroastrians and Hindus, but many “people of the Book” joined Islam in
order to escape the disability of the jizyah. A much more massive expansion
of Islam after the 12th century was inaugurated by the Sufis (Muslim
mystics), who were mainly responsible for the spread of Islam in India,
Central Asia, Turkey, and sub-Saharan Africa (see below).
Beside the jihad and Sufi missionary activity, another factor in the spread of
Islam was the far-ranging influence of Muslim traders, who not only
introduced Islam quite early to the Indian east coast and South India but
also proved to be the main catalytic agents (beside the Sufis) in converting
people to Islam in Indonesia, Malaya, and China. Islam was introduced to
Indonesia in the 14th century, hardly having time to consolidate itself there
politically before the region came under Dutch hegemony.
