- [Voiceover] The world Islam can best be translated into English
as meaning surrender, and the context of the Islamic faith is referring to a surrender
to the will of God. Now, a Muslim is someone
who practices Islam, one who submits to the will of God, and the central text
in Islam is the Quran, which Muslims believe is
the revealed knowledge or the revealed words of God
through the messenger Muhammad. Now, it's very important, sometimes, especially in older
texts, older western texts, you might see Islam
referred to as Muhammadism the same way that
Christianity refers to Christ. Now, Muslims are very sensitive to this, because they don't view
Muhammad as a divine figure the way that Christians view Christ. They view Muhammad as a human, a human whose practices
and whose life they view, they revere, but they don't
view him as a divine figure. They view him as the messenger who revealed God's
words through the Quran, and they take this so seriously
in most Muslim traditions, they don't create images of Muhammad for fear that people would start to worship it as some type of an idol. Now, on this timeline, you see other significant
Judeo-Christian figures, and that's because according to Muslims, they are following in the same
tradition of these figures. They view these other figures as people who have submitted to the will of God, and Moses and Jesus in particular are the most frequently
mentioned prophets in the Quran. Now, Muslims also believe that the Quran isn't the first book that
God had revealed to mankind. They also believe that the Torah, which is the first five
books of the Hebrew bible, and also the first five books of the Christian Old Testament, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus,
Numbers, and Deuteronomy, they believe that to be
a revealed text from God through the prophet Moses. They also believe that Psalms
is a revealed text from God through King David, so
through the prophet David, who lived around 1000 BCE, and they think that the Gospel is a revealed message through Jesus. Now, above and beyond
these revealed texts, another significant part of
the Muslim tradition or faith are the notions of Sunnah and Hadith, and Sunnah are the practices and life and sayings of Muhammad, and many of them are
accounted for in the Hadith. Hadith are second hand
accounts of other people who lived at the time of Muhammad, although many of them were written decades or sometimes hundreds of years later, and so it is a debate
in the Muslim community on which Hadiths are considered more trustworthy than others. The one commonality, regardless of sect, is a centrality of the Quran and viewing that as
the actual word of God. To see this a little bit more concretely in terms of how much
Muslims view themselves as the same tradition that we see from the Old and New Testament, here are some Quranic quotes, and the first one essentially speaks to this core idea of being
in that same tradition. "He has ordained for you of religion "what He enjoined upon Noah "and that which we have
revealed to you, O Muhammad, "and what we enjoined upon
Abraham and Moses and Jesus, "to establish the religion
and not be divided therein." And this is speaking to
the importance of Abraham. "And who is better in religion than "one who submits himself to
God while being a doer of good "and follows the religion of Abraham, "inclining toward truth? "And God took Abraham as a friend." And Abraham in particular
plays a very central role. The Kaaba, which Muslims
view as the house of God, based in Mecca, right over here, is viewed as being built
by Abraham and Ishmael, and so Medina, which is
where in future videos we'll talk more about, where the early Muslims sought
exile to escape persecution, that's often viewed as
the city of Muhammad, but Mecca, which is the direction that all Muslims pray in during their ritual five times a day prayer, which we'll talk about in a little bit, that's often referred to
as the city of Abraham. And now here is reference to Moses. "And before it was the scripture of Moses "to lead and as a mercy. "And this is a confirming book
in an Arabic tongue, so this" this being the Quran. This is a quote from the Quran. "And this is a confirming
book in an Arabic tongue "to warn those who have wronged "and as good tidings
to the doers of good." So once again, a very clear message, in at least the Islamic tradition, that this is the same faith
or tradition as that of Moses. And now here's reference to Jesus. "Then we caused our messengers
to follow in their footsteps "and we caused Jesus, son of Mary, "to follow and gave him the Gospel "and placed compassion and mercy "in the hearts of those who followed him." The key difference between
Muslims and Christians in terms of the life of Jesus, is that Muslims do not believe in the crucifixion and the resurrection, and they do not believe that Jesus was God or the son of God. They believe him to be a
very significant prophet, the prophet before Muhammad
came to reveal to the Quran. Now, for a practicing Muslim, there are often considered
to be five pillars, and this is especially the case for the majority of
Muslims, for Sunni Muslims. Shia Muslims have a slightly different combination of pillars, but
there's a lot of commonality. So the five pillars, the
first is this notion of faith, which is referred to Shahadah. Shadahah can also be interpreted
as testifying or testimony, and it's this notion that a
Muslim needs to believe and say that there is no God but God. Muhammad is God's messenger. And in fact, to convert to Islam, you need to say this,
and you have to say it in the presence of at least two witnesses, and that's all that's
necessary in order to convert. Now, the other key element of Islam, the second you could
say of the five pillars, is this notion of prayer. So Muslims pray five times a day at dawn, noon, in the
afternoon, evening, and night, and they face in the
direction of the Kaaba, which is based in Mecca, which once again, they believe that Abraham
constructed with his son Ishmael, who they believe that the Arab
people are descendant from. Now, what's interesting about this, this has a lot of parallels with the five times a day
prayer of the Zoroastrians, including the ritual washing of your body before each prayer. Now, the third pillar is
charity, and it's called Zakat, and this is customarily two
and half percent of wealth. Now, two and half percent
might not sound like a lot, but this isn't of income,
this is of wealth. The fourth pillar is the
notion of fasting dawn to dusk during the ninth month
of the Islamic calender, and that month is Ramadan, and it's fasting without food or water, once again, from dawk to dusk, and the Islamic calender
is a lunar calender, and the notion of a month, in fact in English, it
comes from the word moon, because it's referring to
a full cycle of the moon. Now, the end of this month
ends with the Eid-al-Fitr, which is the Festival
of Breaking the Fast, which is considered one of the
two major holidays in Islam. Now, the fifth pillar of Islam is the notion of pilgrimage to the
Kaaba during the 12th month, and it's during a certain
period in that 12th month, and then also in that 12th month, you have the second
major holiday in Islam, and that's Eid-al-Adha, the
Festival of the Sacrifice, and that once again is
making reference to Abraham and his willingness to sacrifice his son before God stops him. So this is the general idea of Islam. In other videos, we're going
to go into much more detail in terms of how it started, the life of the Muslim prophet
Muhammad in Mecca and Medina, and then how it spread through the world shortly after or even
during the life of Muhammad in the sixth and seventh
centuries of the common era.