The religion of Islam is the religion committed to God and his prophet Muhammad. Muhammad was orphaned at a young age and was raised by his uncle. When Muhammad got older he went into a career in trading. He married a wealthy widow who was said to be the love of his life, but he married other women throughout his life. Khadijah the women that he married had faith in her husband and when Muhammad had his first revelation and thought he was going crazy, his wife told him that he wasn’t. God was telling Muhammad to convert people and he felt like it was his duty to respond to God. Mohammed is said to have received his revelations over a period of 23 years from the angel Gabriel who was relaying the word of God. What I wonder is what would it be like to have God talk to you? I think I would think I was going crazy if I heard a voice in my head telling me to do something.
The Koran is the religion’s book of revelation, meditated by the prophet. The word Islam means “submission to God”. Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable. The Koran is widely regarded as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language. Muslims believe that the Koran is guidance and moral direction for mankind.
We read the call to prayer in class the other day and that got me to start thinking about what it would be like to be a practicing Muslim. The call to prayer is said multiple times a day and one of the times is very early in the morning. I can’t imagine waking up so early in the morning to pray. The call to prayer is only one of the traditions in the Muslim religion, but even though I can’t imagine taking part in this I also believe that having such strong faith would be an amazing thing. While we were reading in class it also sounded a lot like Hebrew to me, and I know that Muslims and people who practice Judaism have some of the same beliefs. It will be interesting to learn more about the Islam religion and then compare Judaism to it.
Rose,
ReplyDeleteYou spend the first couple of paragraphs mostly summarizing. In the last paragraph, you get into personal reflections and reactions. I would like to hear more of those. You have good questions to raise--what would you do if you thought God was talking to you? What would it mean (or take) to have the faith to wake up before dawn every day? And some other ideas are in there, too. Develop them! You have good ideas, that are worth thinking about.