Sharia is an Arabic word originally meaning "the path leading to the source of water. Is derived from the Quran and the life of the Prophet Muhammad and his followers. Is a system of morals, religious observance, ethics, and politics that covers both religious and non-religious aspects of life. Many Muslim countries use Sharia law as a basis for their laws. Differs from Western legal systems in that the scope of Sharia law is much larger and the Islamic concept of law results from the expression of the divine will.
Other Facts. According to a report by the Pew Research Center, there were 1. That number is projected to increase to 2. Islam is the second-largest religion in the world , following Christianity. They worry that Muslim authorities may interpret more of their activities as a threat to peace and harmony. Tan Kong Beng, a Protestant leader and executive secretary of the Christian Federation of Malaysia, blames the situation on political parties that are trying to manipulate religion for power.
Father Andrew has been questioned repeatedly by police and has received death threats. The group is traveling from Washington, DC to Nashville and then on to Honolulu, Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, and finally Lahore and Islamabad in Pakistan for meetings with government, religious, media, and cultural leaders and activists. Islamic Political Movements Both Shiite and Sunni Muslim political movements have as a primary objective the establishment of Islamic law as the sole basis of government.
They reject secularism as an imported western idea, and are opposed to several kinds of social change that use the west as a model, such as changes in the status of women. Political movements with a religious message have a popular appeal in many Muslim countries. This is partly because of the religious outlook of the people. But it is also because the leaders of these movements are addressing the political issues of the day.
One of the reasons for the fall of the Shah of Iran was that his secularizing policies alienated the religious establishment. In contrast, the monarchs of oil-rich Sunni Muslim countries have made a greater effort to keep their policies in line with religious sensitivities.
Another very important reason for the fall of the Shah was the widespread discontent with his development policies favoring rich and westernized groups. The Shah spent a great deal of the country's oil wealth on military and civilian projects thought by many to be poorly conceived. Iran was a more populous country than other oil-rich Middle Eastern states, so its oil wealth spread less widely among the people.
The effect of the Shah's westernizing development policies was to produce a new bourgeois class that was a target of hatred and resentment for poor people. In addition, like nationalist and leftist Iranian parties, the clergy vehemently attacked the Shah's ties to the West. In spite of their religious orientation, many of the issues addressed by the Islamic movements are the same political or social issues that concern secular politicians.
The movements attack government corruption and the gulf between rich and poor. In Iraq and Lebanon, where Shiite communities are poorer than the Sunni and Christian communities, resentment at perceived discrimination has also allowed Shiite movements to mobilize grassroots support.
Problems of corruption and poverty are also invoked by Sunni movements in countries such as Egypt and Algeria, though these movements have so far not been able to obtain support from high-level religious leaders of a stature comparable to the Ayatollah Khomeini before the Iranian revolution.
The opposition to the West is derived from historic resentment in many parts of the Muslim world at western colonialism earlier this century. In addition to problems arising from that period, a number of more recent American and western policies are often cited by Muslim movements: western attempts to incorporate Muslim countries in alliances against the Soviet Union during the Cold War; political interventions such as the CIA-backed coup d'etat of that restored the Shah after a nationalist government led by Mohammed Mossadegh had taken power in Iran; western military and political support for Israel against the Arab world; and western military and political support for unrepresentative governments.
Some of the most dramatic anti-western acts have been carried out by Shiite political groups in Lebanon, where the central government collapsed following the outbreak of civil war in The fighting led to foreign intervention by Syrian, Israeli, and American forces.
Radical Shiite movements such as the Hizballah "Party of God" flourished in the period following the dramatic western military intervention in Lebanon in , when Israeli troops expelled the PLO from Beirut, and American peace-keeping forces were sent to Lebanon to be withdrawn in Militant Shiites taking advantage of the lack of a central authority in the country attacked western and Israeli targets, and took hostages, some of whom were killed.
Sunni opposition movements in Egypt and Algeria have also recently been increasingly violent in their anti-government, anti-western tactics. These tactics have caused a major debate in the Islamic world. There is no justification in Islamic scriptures and jurisprudence for indiscriminate killings or assassinations of local or foreign citizens by either Sunni or Shiite Muslims. Many intellectuals, however, cite the shortcomings of governments as a reason for these acts.
Violent anti-civilian acts are not Islamic in origin. In fact, radical violence seems to be a worldwide phenomenon. Radical groups, whether religious or not, often flourish in non-democratic environments where injustice, repression, and inappropriate foreign influence are widely believed to be dominant characteristics of the existing order.
Notes 1. The majority of the Iraqi population consists of Arab Shiites, but Sunni Arabs form a large minority group in the country. According to the well-known jurist, Al-Shaf'i, Ijma is the third source of Islamic jurisprudence.
References Bayat, M. Mysticism and Dissent. Donaldson, M. Ismaeel, S. Khateeb, M. Broad Aspects of Shi'ite Religion. Riyadh: National Offset Printing Press, He was not happy with the people around him because of superstitions and social and economic injustice. The people were worshipping many gods and had forgotten the message of prophet Abraham to worship one God. Muhammad loved to pray and meditate in the mountains.
On one of those occasions, in the year CE, when he was about 40 years old, he received a revelation from God through the angel Jibril Gabriel.
He continued to receive messages from God throughout his life and he began preaching to others what he had learned. His main message is that there was no other God but Allah and that people should lead their lives in a way that was pleasing to Allah. Islam spread quickly first throughout Arabia and surrounding countries and then throughout the world. There are 1. The countries with the largest Muslim populations are Indonesia and India. Although they share the same basic beliefs, they disagree on who was the rightful leader of Islam after Muhammad's death.
Islam is an Arabic word which means "surrender, submission, commitment and peace. He is the same universal God worshipped by people of all faiths. The word "Allah" is sometimes preferred over God because it is neither masculine nor feminine.
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