The_Islamic_Faith_And_Violence

The Islamic Faith And Violence The Islamic Faith and Violence Islam is the second largest religion in the world, behind Christianity. There are over 1.1 Billion followers of Islam, and more than half of these Muslims live in South and South East Asia, even though the religion began in Arabia. Several million Muslims live here in the United States of America (Vincent J Cornell, 2001). The Holy Book of Islam is called the Qur’an. The Qur’an is said to be the very word of Allah (Ismail K. Poonawala, 2001). The word Allah is Arabic for God and the word Qur’an means recitation. Islam recognizes earlier prophets, e.g. Jesus, Moses, Abraham and David. This means that Muslims accept the teachings of both the Jewish Torah and the Christian Gospels. Muslims believe Muhammad is the “seal of the prophecy”, by which they mean he is the last in the series of prophets sent by God to mankind (PBS, 2001). The Five Pillars of Islam are formal acts of worship that Muslims follow. The five pillars are: 1. Shahada (an Arabic word meaning an act of bearing witness). It consists of two statements. The first, “I bear witness that there is no God but qur’an, muslims, violence, islam, word, god, violent, jihad, force, allah, witness, required, must, means, make, islamic, five, acts, war, vincent, times, strict, state, south, shall, several, second, said, rules, religion, prophets, promotes, pillars, pilgrimage