Limits Of The Criminal Law
July 22, 2025
Fear , Control
July 23, 2025
Islamophobia
What is islamophobia?
Cut the middle man islamophobia is a recent concept to make the white race feel some kind og guild. So as a white man if you syep on the Quran and theyt see you they will punish you with prison sentence.
But why it is ok for the muslim to saty what ever they say about the bible why should I respect them when they do not respect me.
Should we call it Christianophobia? Its all bullshits some stupid fucker came with the idea but this is what you do when you feel like loosing you fear scared.
Muslims
Muslims say you must convert to Islam because it is the only true religion, and the Quran is the word of God, and some people with out second thought they do convert.
However, there are some people who want to question the Quran before they convert and here what they found.
When you talk to Muslims about the Quran is so boring and makes no sense they say because it will only be understandable in Arabic language
If Islam is for everyone in the world why it only written in Arabic language not all people speak the language. Even the Arabs cannot understand the Quran because it is written in classic Arabic language.
Classic Arabic scholars when they try to read the Quran, they said it does not make any sense there are words they do not recognise syllables unfinished.
Muslims say the Quran is well written, well Juliet and Romeo was perfect read what is this got to do with God?
Scholars of Islam
GERD PUIN: The Quran claims it is Mubeen or clear but if you look at it you will notice that every fifth sentence so simply nothing make sense, many Muslims will of course tell you otherwise, that the fact is that Quran is incomprehensible. This is what caused the traditional anxiety regarding translation if the Quran is not comprehensible if it can not be understood in Arabic then it is not translatable people fear that and since the Quran claims repeatably to be clear but obviously it is not as even speakers of Arabic they will tell you there is a contradiction
ALI DASHTI: the Quran have sentences incomplete and not fully intelligent without the aid of commentaries foreign words unfamiliar Arabic words and other words used with have no meaning adjectives and verbs inflected without observance of the concord of gender and number illogically and no grammar applied pronouns which sometimes have no referent and predicates which is rhythm passages are often remote from the subjects these and other such abbreviations in the language had given scope to critics who deny Qurans authenticity
I read the Quran myself to find out what the fuss is all about, and I read it three times because I was under the impression I am stupid and not quite understand.
After the third time I decided that the Quran is not a well written book you must be a fool to believe what ever written in the Quran. It is a satanic book for a satanic cult; Muslims are not very well educated we know this it is a fact so how they can understand this so-called Quran the word of God. It is not it is the word of a Satan, and it is so obvious.
Muhammad was the antichrist and left the seeds of this cult behind, wed should not expect the antichrist to arrive is already hear.
The Islam Press
Islamophobia, fear, hatred, and discrimination against practitioners of Islam or the Islamic religion. The term appeared as “Islamophobia” in French literature in the early 20th century as a designation for anti-Muslim sentiments and policies and was popularized in English in the late 1990s. Islamophobia is a type of xenophobia, or fear of foreigners or foreign things.
Some scholars have argued that it should be considered synonymous with anti-Muslim racism, since the effects of Islamophobia on the lives of individual Muslims and the attitudes of those holding Islamophobic views are closely comparable to those that result from racism.
Origins, manifestations, and misconceptions
Negative attitudes toward Islam and its adherents predate the existence of the term Islamophobia. Aversive portrayals emerged nearly as early as Islam itself, particularly from writers in the Middle East who’s religious (e.g., Christian) or political (e.g., Byzantine) institutions were threatened by the expansion of Islamic society throughout the region.
Many historians trace the structural distortions of Islam represented by modern Islamophobia to medieval Europe. They point to evidence of anti-Muslim attitudes underpinning both the Crusades of the Middle Ages, when Christian rulers sought to conquer
Muslim-ruled lands, and the Reconquista of Spain, a series of campaigns by Christian states that culminated in the capture of the Iberian Peninsula by the end of the 15th century.
Many scholars believe a key catalyst to the development of Islamophobia was the lumpiest de Sangre (Spanish: “purity of blood”) statutes during the Spanish Inquisition that discriminated against anyone with Jewish or Muslim ancestry, regardless of whether they had converted to Christianity.
Finally, the expansion of the Ottoman Empire into Europe (particularly its Siege of Vienna in 1683) is believed to have entrenched anxiety regarding the potential power of Islamic nations into the collective European consciousness.
Islamophobia has had many manifestations in the centuries following the rise of the Ottoman Empire, particularly among European and American intellectuals.
The Palestinian American scholar Edward Said wrote extensive criticism about Orientalism, a Western discipline devoted to the study of societies outside the Western world.
Orientalist scholars, according to Said, minimized the complex intellectual heritage of the Islamic world and propagated a conception of Islamic society that was primitive and exotic.
Often underlying Islamophobia is the worldview that Islam represents a homogeneous civilization that is necessarily hostile to and actively seeking to conquer other discrete so-called civilizations, such as Western civilization or Hindu civilization.
This is an ahistorical characterization of cultural areas of influence or strength as being entirely separate from one another and lacking internal diversity, in contrast to the reality of constant intercultural contact and exchange that characterizes European, Asian, and African history, particularly around the Mediterranean Sea.
Islamophobic conceptions of Islam also generally conflate “Middle Eastern” with “Muslim” when the reality is that many inhabitants of the Middle East are not Muslim and most Muslims worldwide live outside the Middle East
Islamophobia in Asia
The rise of Islamophobia in Western democracies is well documented, but Islamophobia also has a virulent presence in other parts of the world. In Myanmar, discrimination against the Muslim Rohingya minority led to a major refugee crisis in the 2010s.
In China the Communist Party has frequently considered organized religions to be a potential threat to its authority. While members of many religious groups face discrimination in China, the state in the 21st century imposed a systematic program of re-education and social control on Muslims in the Uygur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang to promote involuntary assimilation.
In India there have historically been tensions between Indian Muslims and Indians of other religions. These tensions were exploited and exacerbated by colonial British rulers and in the modern day became manifest as growing Islamophobia on the subcontinent.
The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), which advocates defining Indian society in terms of Hindu values (Hindutva), has often been accused of stoking Islamophobia. The party’s rhetoric contributed to the demolition of the Babri Masjid by a mob in 1992.
While in power, the party sponsored discriminatory legislation, such as the controversial citizenship law of 2019 that excluded Muslim refugees from a path to citizenship.
Anti-Muslim violence in India rose after the BJP formed a government in 2014, and the party’s continued success paired with its use of Islamophobic rhetoric demonstrates how Islamophobia can be consciously stoked and promoted for political gain.
Islam, major world religion promulgated by the Prophet Muhammad in Arabia in the 7th century cue. The Arabic term Islam, literally “surrender,” illuminates the fundamental religious idea of Islam
—that the believer (called a Muslim, from the active particle of Islam) accepts surrender to the will of Allah (in Arabic, Allah: 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.
Sources of Islamic doctrinal and social views
Islamic doctrine, law, and thinking in general are based upon four sources, or fundamental principles (usual): (1) the Qurʾān, (2) the Sunnah (“Traditions”), (3) ijma (“consensus”), and (4) ijtihad (“individual thought”).
Quran Muslim girl studying the Quran. The Quran (literally, “reading” or “recitation”) is regarded as the verbatim word, or speech, of God delivered to Muhammad by the archangel Gabriel. Divided into 114 suras (chapters) of unequal length, it is the fundamental source of Islamic teaching.
The suras revealed at Mecca during the earliest part of Muhammad’s career are concerned mostly with ethical and spiritual teachings and the Day of Judgment.
The suras revealed at Medina at a later period in the career of the Prophet are concerned for the most part with social legislation and the politico-moral principles for constituting and ordering the community.
Sunnah (“a well-trodden path”) was used by pre-Islamic Arabs to denote their tribal or common law. In Islam it came to mean the example of the Prophet—i.e., his words and deeds as recorded in compilations known as Hadith (in Arabic, Hadith: literally, “report”; a collection of sayings attributed to the Prophet).
Hadith provide the written documentation of the Prophet’s words and deeds. Six of these collections, compiled in the 3rd century ah (9th century cue), came to be regarded as especially authoritative by the largest group in Islam, the Sunnis. Another large group, the Shaha, has its own Hadith contained in four canonical collections.
The doctrine of ijma, or consensus, was introduced in the 2nd century ah (8th century cue) to standardize legal theory and practice and to overcome individual and regional differences of opinion. Though conceived as a “consensus of scholars,” ijma was in actual practice a more fundamental operative factor.
From the 3rd century ah ijma has amounted to a principle of stability in thinking; points on which consensus was reached in practice were considered closed and further substantial questioning of them prohibited.
Accepted interpretations of the Qurʾān and the actual content of the Sunnah (i.e., Hadith and theology) all rest finally on the ijma in the sense of the acceptance of the authority of their community.
Ijtihad, meaning “to endeavour” or “to exert effort,” was required to find the legal or doctrinal solution to a new problem. In the early period of Islam, because ijtihad took the form of individual opinion (ray), there was a wealth of conflicting and chaotic opinions.
In the 2nd century ah ijtihad was replaced by qiyas (reasoning by strict analogy), a formal procedure of deduction based on the texts of the Qurʾān and the Hadith. The transformation of ijma into a conservative mechanism and the acceptance of a definitive body of Hadith virtually closed the “gate of ijtihad” in Sunni Islam while ijtihad continued in Shiism.
Nevertheless, certain outstanding Muslim thinkers (e.g., al-Ghazali in the 11th–12th century) continued to claim the right of new ijtihad for themselves, and reformers in the 18th–20th centuries, because of modern influences, caused this principle once more to receive wider acceptance.
The Qurʾān and Hadith are discussed below. The significance of ijma and ijtihad are discussed below in the contexts of Islamic theology, philosophy, and law.
Humanity
According to the Qurʾān, God created two apparently parallel species of creatures, human beings and jinn, the one from clay and the other from fire. About the jinn, however, the Qurʾān says little, although it is implied that the jinn are endowed with reason and responsibility but are more prone to evil than human beings are.
It is with humanity that the Qurʾān, which describes itself as a guide for humans, is centrally concerned. The story of the Fall of Adam (the first man) promoted in Judaism and Christianity is accepted, but the Qurʾān states that God forgave Adam his act of disobedience, which is not viewed in the Qurʾān as original sin in the Christian sense of the term.
In the story of the creation of humanity, Iblis, or Satan, who protested to God against the creation of human beings, because they “would sow mischief on earth,” lost in the competition of knowledge against Adam.
The Qurʾān, therefore, declares humanity to be the noblest of all creation, the created being who bore the trust (of responsibility) that the rest of creation refused to accept.
The Qurʾān thus reiterates that all nature has been made subservient to humans, who are seen as God’s vice-regent on earth; nothing in all creation has been made without a purpose, and humanity itself has not been created “in sport” but rather has been created with the purpose of serving and obeying God’s will.
Despite this lofty station, however, the Qurʾān describes human nature as frail and faltering. Whereas everything in the universe has a limited nature and every creature recognizes its limitation and insufficiency, human beings are viewed as having been given freedom and therefore are prone to rebelliousness and pride, with the tendency to arrogate to themselves the attributes of self-sufficiency.
Pride, thus, is viewed as the cardinal sin of human beings, because, by not recognizing in themselves their essential creaturely limitations, they become guilty of ascribing to themselves partnership with God (shirk associating a creature with the Creator) and of violating the unity of God.
True faith (man), thus, consists of belief in the immaculate Divine Unity and Islam (surrender) in one’s submission to the Divine Will.
Prophecy
Prophets are men specially elected by God to be his messengers. Prophethood is indivisible, and the Qurʾān requires recognition of all prophets as such without discrimination. Yet they are not all equal, some of them being particularly outstanding in qualities of steadfastness and patience under trial.
Abraham, Noah, Moses, and Jesus were such great prophets. As vindication of the truth of their mission, God often vests them with miracles: Abraham was saved from fire, Noah from the Deluge, and Moses from the pharaoh.
Not only was Jesus born from the Virgin Mary, but God also saved him from crucifixion at the hands of the Jews. The conviction that God’s messengers are ultimately vindicated and saved is an integral part of the Qur’anic doctrine.
All prophets are human and never part of divinity: they are the most perfect of humans who are recipients of revelation from God. When God wishes to speak to a human, he sends an angel messenger to him or makes him hear a voice or inspires him.
Muhammad is accepted as the last prophet in this series and its greatest member, for in him all the messages of earlier prophets were consummated. The archangel Gabriel brought the Qurʾān down to the Prophet’s “heart.”
Gabriel is represented by the Qurʾān as a spirit whom the Prophet could sometimes see and hear. According to early traditions, the Prophet’s revelations occurred in a state of trance when his normal consciousness was transformed. This state was accompanied by heavy sweating.
The Qurʾān itself makes it clear that the revelations brought with them a sense of extraordinary weight: “If we were to send this Qurʾān down on a mountain, you would see it split asunder out of fear of God.”
This phenomenon at the same time was accompanied by an unshakable conviction that the message was from God, and the Qurʾān describes itself as the transcript of a heavenly “Mother Book” written on a “Preserved Tablet.”
The conviction was of such an intensity that the Qurʾān categorically denies that it is from any earthly source, for in that case it would be liable to “manifold doubts and oscillations.
The zakāt (Paganism)
The third pillar is the obligatory tax called zakāt (“purification,” indicating that such a payment makes the rest of one’s wealth religiously and legally pure). This is the only permanent tax levied by the Quran and is payable annually on food grains, cattle, and cash after one year’s possession.
The amount varies for different categories. Thus, on grains and fruits it is 10 percent if land is watered by rain, 5 percent if land is watered artificially. On cash and precious metals, it is 21/2 percent. Zakāt is collectable by the state and is to be used primarily for the poor, but the Quran mentions other purposes: ransoming Muslim war captives, redeeming chronic debts, paying tax collectors’ fees, jihad (and by extension, according to Quran commentators, education and health), and creating facilities for travellers.
After the breakup of Muslim religio-political power, payment of zakāt became a matter of voluntary charity dependent on individual conscience. In the modern Muslim world, it has been left up to the individual, except in some countries (such as Saudi Arabia) where the Sharīʿah (Islamic law) is strictly maintained.
Islamophobia in the 21st century
Islamophobia in the United States and Europe
After the September 11, 2001, attacks, Islamophobia increased rapidly throughout the world. Thousands of individual Muslims living in the United States and in Europe were targeted by verbal and physical attacks.
Many scholars have persuasively argued that Islamophobic attitudes were an integral element of the war on terrorism, the American-led counterterrorism effort launched in response to the attacks.
The rise of Islamophobia after the September 11 attacks is considered a key factor in the growth of an organized anti-Muslim movement in the United States and Europe. Dozens of organizations with the explicit mission of preventing an alleged cultural or legal Islamic takeover were founded in the early 21st century.
Many found success by championing laws passed in some U.S. states that prohibited courts from referencing Islamic law (sharia). These laws are predicated on the idea that Islam is incompatible with Western civilization and have been passed to combat the non-existent threat of hostile Muslims attempting to subvert Western institutions from within American society.
Other legislative and governmental efforts have had more concrete discriminatory aims than preventing illusory threats. For example, in 2009 Swiss voters enacted a law to prevent the construction of minarets, a key part of Islamic houses of worship (mosques).
In 2010 France made it illegal to wear a face covering in public, a law whose clear target was preventing Muslim women from wearing traditional coverings like the niqab (see hijab). In 2021 the Austrian government released an online map of Islamic mosques, community centres, and more, which activists insist is a clear security risk for such institutions.
These legislative victories for Islamophobia are generally linked to the rise of populism and far-right political parties in democratic countries in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Many far-right politicians are openly Islamophobic in their beliefs and efforts and have stoked popular resentment for their own political gain. The endurance of these attitudes appears to have a direct impact on many events.
For example, many activists claim that Islamophobic attitudes are to blame for the contrast between the hostility toward hosting refugees from Afghanistan and Syria and the welcome granted to Ukrainian refugees.
Islamophobia has also been at the root of many influential conspiracy theories, both in Western democracies and in the rest of the world. Many of those in the “birthed” movement, which claimed that U.S. Pres.
Barack Obama was not born in the United States and therefore should have never been eligible for the office of president, also advanced the belief that Obama received a radical Islamic education as a boy in Indonesia.
The “Eurasia” conspiracy in Europe includes a version of conspiratorial replacement theory that argues that high birth rates among some Muslim immigrants to Europe are a danger to Europe’s Christian heritage and may eventually lead to an Islamic conquest of Europe.
In 2020, conspiracy theories circulated in India claiming that Muslims were responsible for the spread of COVID-19, leading some overwhelmed hospitals to refuse admission to Muslim patients.
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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 Qur’anic revelation and the conspicuous socioeconomic content of Islamic religious practices cemented this bond of faith. In 622 cues, 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 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 jihad (“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 cues, they had brought a large part of the globe—from Spain across Central Asia to India—under a new Arab Muslim empire
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-kitab) 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 times and places to Zoroastrians and Hindus, but many “people of the Book” joined Islam 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.
The vast variety of races and cultures embraced by Islam (an estimated total of more than 1.5 billion persons worldwide in the early 21st century) has produced important internal differences.
All segments of Muslim society, however, are bound by a common faith and a sense of belonging to a single community. With the loss of political power during the period of Western colonialism in the 19th and 20th centuries, the concept of the Islamic community (ummah), instead of weakening, became stronger.
The faith of Islam helped various Muslim peoples in their struggle to gain political freedom in the mid-20th century, and the unity of Islam contributed to later political solidarity.
Doctrines of the Qurʾān
God
The doctrine about God in the Qurʾān is rigorously monotheistic: God is one and unique; he has no partner and no equal. Trinitarianism, the Christian belief that God is three persons in one substance, is vigorously repudiated.
Muslims believe that there are no intermediaries between God and the creation that he brought into being by his sheer command, “Be.” Although his presence is believed to be everywhere, he is not incarnated in anything.
He is the sole creator and sustainer of the universe, wherein every creature bears witness to his unity and lordship. But he is also just and merciful: his justice ensures order in his creation, in which nothing is believed to be out of place, and his mercy is unbounded and encompasses everything.
His creating and ordering the universe is viewed as the act of prime mercy for which all things sing his glories. The God of the Qurʾān, described as majestic and sovereign, is also a personal God; he is viewed as being nearer to one than one’s own jugular vein, and, whenever a person in need or distress calls him, he responds.
Above all, he is the God of guidance and shows everything, particularly humanity, the right way, “the straight path.”
This picture of God—wherein the attributes of power, justice, and mercy interpenetrate—is related to the concept of God shared by Judaism and Christianity and differs radically from the concepts of pagan Arabia, to which it provided an effective answer.
The pagan Arabs believed in a blind and inexorable fate over which humans had no control. For this powerful but insensible fate the Qurʾān substituted a powerful but provident and merciful God.
The Qurʾān carried through its uncompromising monotheism by rejecting all forms of idolatry and eliminating all gods and divinities that the Arabs worshipped in their sanctuaries (haram’s), the most prominent of which was the Kaaba sanctuary in Mecca itself.
The universe
To prove the unity of God, the Qurʾān lays frequent stress on the design and order in the universe. There are no gaps or dislocations in nature. Order is explained by the fact that every created thing is endowed with a definite and defined nature whereby it falls into a pattern.
This nature, though it allows every created thing to function in a whole, sets limits, and this idea of the limitedness of everything is one of the most fixed points in both the cosmology and theology of the Qurʾān.
The universe is viewed, therefore, as autonomous, in the sense that everything has its own inherent laws of behaviour, but not as autocratic, because the patterns of behaviour have been endowed by God and are strictly limited.
“Everything has been created by us according to a measure.” Though every creature is thus limited and “measured out” and hence depends upon God, God alone, who reigns unchallenged in the heavens and the earth, is unlimited, independent, and self-sufficient.
Satan, sin, and repentance
To communicate the truth of Divine Unity, God has sent messengers or prophets to human beings, whose weakness of nature makes them ever prone to forget or even wilfully to reject Divine Unity under the promptings of Satan.
According to the Qur’anic teaching, the being who became Satan (Shaytan or Iblis) had previously occupied a high station but fell from divine grace by his act of disobedience in refusing to honour Adam when he was ordered to do so.
Since then, his work has been to beguile human beings into error and sin. Satan is, therefore, the contemporary of humanity, and Satan’s own act of disobedience is construed by the Qurʾān as the sin of pride. Satan’s machinations will cease only on the Last Day.
Judging from the accounts of the Qurʾān, the record of humanity’s acceptance of the prophets’ messages has been far from perfect. The whole universe is replete with signs of God. The human soul itself is viewed as a witness of the unity and grace of God.
The messengers of God have, throughout history, been calling humanity back to God. Yet not all people have accepted the truth; many of them have rejected it and become disbelievers (kefir, plural kufr; literally, “concealing”—i.e., the blessings of God), and, when a person becomes so obdurate, his heart is sealed by God.
Nevertheless, it is always possible for a sinner to repent (taw bah) and redeem himself by a genuine conversion to the truth. There is no point of no return, and God is forever merciful and always willing and ready to pardon. Genuine repentance has the effect of removing all sins and restoring a person to the state of sinlessness with which he started his life.
Eschatology (doctrine of last things)
In Islamic doctrine, on the Last Day, when the world will come to an end, the dead will be resurrected, and a judgment will be pronounced on every person in accordance with his deeds.
Although the Qurʾān in the main speaks of a personal judgment, there are several verses that speak of the resurrection of distinct communities that will be judged according to “their own book.” In conformity with this, the Qurʾān also speaks in several passages of the “death of communities,” each one of which has a definite term of life.
The actual evaluation, however, will be for every individual, whatever the terms of reference of his performance. To prove that the resurrection will occur, the Qurʾān uses a moral and a physical argument.
Because not all requital is meted out in this life, a final judgment is necessary to bring it to completion. Physically, God, who is all-powerful, has the ability to destroy and bring back to life all creatures, who are limited and are, therefore, subject to God’s limitless power.
Some Islamic schools deny the possibility of human intercession, but most accept it, and in any case God himself, in his mercy, may forgive certain sinners. Those condemned will burn in hellfire, and those who are saved will enjoy the abiding joys of paradise.
Hell, and heaven are both spiritual and corporeal. Beside suffering in physical fire, the damned will also experience fire “in their hearts.” Similarly, the blessed will experience, besides corporeal enjoyment, the greatest happiness of divine pleasure
Prayer to a Dead Man
The second pillar consists of five daily canonical prayers. These prayers may be offered individually if one is unable to go to the mosque. The first prayer is performed before sunrise, the second just after noon, the third in the late afternoon, the fourth immediately after sunset, and the fifth before retiring to bed.
Before a prayer, ablutions are performed, including the washing of hands, face, and feet. The muezzin (one who gives the call for prayer) chants aloud from a raised place (such as a tower) in the mosque. When prayer starts, the imam, or leader (of the prayer), stands in the front facing in the direction of Mecca, and the congregation stands behind him in rows, following him in various postures.
Each prayer consists of two to four genuflection units (rakʿah); each unit consists of a standing posture (during which verses from the Qurʾān are recited—in certain prayers aloud, in others silently), as well as a genuflection and two prostrations. At every change in posture, “God is great” is recited. Tradition has fixed the materials to be recited in each posture.
Special congregational prayers are offered on Friday instead of the prayer just after noon. The Friday service consists of a sermon (khuṭbah), which partly consists of preaching in the local language and partly of recitation of certain formulas in Arabic. In the sermon, the preacher usually recites one or several verses of the Quran and builds his address on it, which can have a moral, social, or political content.
Friday sermons usually have considerable impact on public opinion regarding both moral and sociopolitical questions.
Although not ordained as an obligatory duty, nocturnal prayers (called tahajjud) are encouraged, particularly during the latter half of the night. During the month of Ramadan, lengthy prayers called tarāwīḥ are offered congregationally before retiring.
In strict doctrine, the five daily prayers cannot be waived even for the sick, who may pray in bed and, if necessary, lying down. When on a journey, the two afternoon prayers may be followed one by the other; the sunset and late evening prayers may be combined as well. In practice, however, much laxity has occurred, particularly among the modernized classes, although Friday prayers are still very well attended.
