Questions tagged [islam]

Questions about the religion of the Muslims; a monotheistic faith regarded as revealed through Muhammad as the Prophet of Allah.

Islam

  1. the religious faith of Muslims, based on the words and religious system founded by the Prophet Muhammad and taught by the Koran, the basic principle of which is absolute submission to a unique and personal god, Allah.

  2. the whole body of Muslim believers, their civilization, and the countries in which theirs is the dominant religion.


Islam (Arabic: الإسلام‎) is a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion articulated by the Qur'an, a religious text considered by its adherents to be the verbatim word of God (Allāh), and, for the vast majority of adherents, by the teachings and normative example (called the sunnah, composed of accounts called hadith) of Muhammad (c. 570–8 June 632 CE), considered by most of them to be the last prophet of God. An adherent of Islam is called a Muslim (sometimes spelled "Moslem").

Muslims also believe that God is one and incomparable and that the purpose of existence is to worship God. Muslims also believe that Islam is the complete and universal version of a primordial faith that was revealed many times before through prophets including Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. Although a large majority of Muslims do maintain that the previous messages and revelations have been partially misinterpreted over time, they are nevertheless all obliged, according to the Qur'an, to treat the older scriptures with the utmost respect. As for the Qur'an, Muslims consider it to be both the unaltered and the final revelation of God. Religious concepts and practices include the five pillars of Islam, which are basic concepts and obligatory acts of worship, and following Islamic law, which touches on virtually every aspect of life and society, providing guidance on multifarious topics from banking and welfare, to family life and the environment.

Most Muslims are of two denominations: Sunni (75–90%) or Shia (10–20%). About 13% of Muslims live in Indonesia, the largest Muslim-majority country, 25% in outh Asia, 20% in the Middle East, and 15% in Sub-Saharan Africa. Sizable Muslim communities are also found in Europe, China, Russia, and the Americas. Converts and immigrant communities are found in almost every part of the world. With about 1.62 billion followers or 23% of the global population, Islam is the second-largest religion by number of adherents and, according to many sources, the fastest-growing major religion in the world.

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Have multiple intelligence services estimated that 15-25% of the Muslim population are "radical"?

In her recent response to a Muslim student (Saba Ahmed), Brigitte Gabriel has stated: There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world today. Of course not all of them are radicals. The majority of them are peaceful people. The radicals are estimated to…
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Did Saudi Grand Mufti Abdul Aziz claim the earth is flat?

According to various social media posts (eg one and two and google search shows many results with the meme), Ibn Baz said the following in 1993: Transcript: "The earth is flat. Whoever claims it is round is an atheis deserving of punishment" -…
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Is there any evidence of Dr. Zakir Naik paying people to convert to Islam?

India Today wrote in this article: During their conversation with the SIT, Mufti made startling claims that Dr Naik extended benefits to converts. "They were formally paid and got converted," the cleric alleged when a reporter asked whether a…
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Did Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, The Supreme Leader of Iran, say this about pedophilia?

In an article on FaithFreedom.org, Jennifer King claims: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, The Supreme Leader of Iran, the Shia Grand Ayatollah, 1979-89 said in his official statements: "A man can quench his sexual lusts with a child as young as a…
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Do 42% of young muslims in France support suicide bombings?

In this youtube video, in the minute 2:20, the narrator gives some absurd-sounding statistics. After claiming that "21% of syrian migrants support ISIS", he says that "22% of young muslim migrants living in germany support suicide bombings". This…
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Are five million Muslims marching on to Europe?

This article claims that five million Muslims are attempting to move to European countries. Apparently the numbers that they’ve been selling to their unsuspecting populations are wrong by at least four million. The latest invasion reflects a truer…
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Did Canadian children sing the Islamic song "Tala'al badru" to welcome Syrian refugees?

Saw this video being shared around in the social media, ostensibly a performance by Canadian children to welcome Syrian refugees' arrival to Canada. I recognized the song as the Islamic song Tala' al Badru 'Alayna. According to Wikipedia it was…
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Are Muslims allowed to deceive non-Muslims through a practice called Taqiyya?

This is a pretty notable claim. Examples (the sites are, predictably, pretty anti-Islamic to put it mildly, so the language at the links may be harsh to extreme) Taqiyya ("al Taqiyya") is the Muslims' license to lie to infidels in order to…
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Did Khamenei issue a fatwa banning development of nuclear weapons?

According to Obama: Iran’s Supreme Leader has issued a fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons. However, according to a Middle East Media Research Institute report entitled Renewed Iran-West Nuclear Talks – Part II: Tehran Attempts to…
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Does putative Islam convert, Robert Guilham, exist?

A widely broadcast story on Islamic sites claims that a Jewish genetics expert from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine converted to Islam as a result of scientific evidence supporting the Quran. His name is listed variously as Robert Guilham,…
user4951
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Does dipping a fly into food/drink prevent food poisoning?

It's a common knowledge that if a fly falls into your food or drink, you probably shouldn't drink it because it might cause food poisoning. This might be a myth itself but that is not what I'm sceptical about. According to Islamic teachings, if a…
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Do Islamic countries have a higher than average porn consumption despite porn being banned in them?

In the first place, I'm linking this wikipedia web page to show that, as a general rule, pornography seems to be banned in Islamic countries (although it doesn't show data for all of them, it looks like a reasonable guess). Pornography laws by…
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Is women wearing burqas or veils ubiquitously in Islamic countries a recent happening?

I ran into an unsourced claim form one of the commenters of the Economist where the user makes a claim about the frequency of women wearing burqas and veil two generations ago (how much time spans a generation? 20 years?). In a rare instance, KAL…
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Has Angola destroyed all its mosques and banned Islam itself?

I'm seeing a few reports, which appear to primarily stem from this report on a site called onislam.net, which claim that Angola has destroyed (or is set to destroy) all its mosques and has banned the religion of Islam. “This is the final end of…
user7920
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Were Nezamiyeh (precursors to madrasas) responsible for stifling science [development] in the Islamic world?

An article in The National, while correctly rejecting the Orientalist view that Al-Ghazali was the lynchpin of the Islamic turn from science, nevertheless proposes an alternative that may not be as indisputable as the article claims: It is…
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