Islam

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Islam is monoteistic religion of muslims, who believe that god
revelaed himself over archangel Gabriel to Mohamed. This reveleation is described in Koran, the holly book of islam.
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Word islam means obedience and peace with devotion to Alah’s will.
Members of this religion are called muslims, which means submissive.
There are around of billion of muslims worldwide; mainly on Middle
East, northern Africa and some part of Asia. Islam is second most
spreaded religion after christianity, number of it’s believers is
increasing very rapidly. Muslism have some view about God and
history same as Jews and Christians. Most important event in muslim
history is revelation of god’s word to Mohamed in beginning of
7. century.  Mohamed has earned a reputation as a divine messenger. .Islam is based on the monotheistic tradition of the biblical patriarch Abraham, and together with Judaism and Christianity is ranked among the Abrahamic religions. According to Muslim tradition, each of these religions give the same message of God to humanity, and Koran, the holy book of Islam, passes the last revelation of God.
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Most common islamic practice is that believers don’t need priest as broker for contact with god, and they read holly book of quran by themselves. Meaning of priesthood is that, with exception of shiits, smaller than with catolic church. Islam
comprises tri main branches of believing, which contraindicate regarding succession of Mohamed message; these are
sunit, shiit and haridz branch. Some approve sufism, mystic islam, as fourth branch of islam, but many sufistic orders, found
around islamic world from Senegal to Indian subcontient, are for sunist or are for siits.
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Koran is holly book of muslims, who believe it contains divine revelation to Mohamed at his last 22 years of his life. His
author is Alah, not Mohamed. Revelations have spread verbally, and soon they were also written, but they were collected
in a book after death of Mohamed.
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Koran teaches about unity and power of Alah and what must muslim believe in. It gives precious guidance for life. Because
Koran is known as divine word, many muslims strive to learn to read it in source language – arab, although it is not their
native language. Only one-sixth of all Muslims in the world are Arabs.
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Muslim do learn many surs or chapters of Kuran, some try to learn entire book. Every day they read choosen chapter
and in sign of respect they clean themselves, before they touch it. Group of writtings, called suna, contain report about
Mohamed teaching and actions. These writings interpretate Quran and give additional directions for religion, worshipping and behavior.
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Quran prohibits any imaging of Alah, Mohamed and other prophets, even people and animals. This is partly true,
because worshipping avatars is in islam prohibited, and partly because none artistic depiction can’t be
enough good to express properly mightiness of Alah’s creations.
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Because of that, islamic artists concentrated on creating wonderful geometric patterns and on caligraphy, because
writing is very improtant, especially in Quran.
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Numerous muslims divide their faith to six parts:
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1. Believe in Alah.
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2. Believe in angels.
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3. Believe in holly books.

Muslims believe that there are other prophets among Mohamed (look to bottom), who got written revelations from God,
and these are not sustained anymore in their original form. Muslims call Jews and Christians “people from book”, because they want to express respect to their religion, written in Tenaku and Bible.
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4. They believe in prophets of Tenaka and Bible, such as Adam, Ibrahim (Abraham), Musa (Mojzes) and Davud (David).
Muslims respect Iso (Jezus) as important prophet, but not God’s Son. Mohamed is labelled as last prohpet.
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5. They believe in afterlife and last judgement, where everyone will get payment for his doings. Those, whom good deeds will prevail, will be able to cross narrow road over hellfire and will safely reach heaven.
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6. Believing in fate. This is to believe, that God adjusts all happening. It is connected with obedience. Muslims in life try to act more in accordance with Alah’s will than with their own.
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Muslim ethics comes from belif, that Alah created all live things and he must be respected because of this. This principles
incorporate many social responsibilites, as are respect for parents, neighbours and society; also honesty, patience and
reliability. Killing of animals for fun is prohibited by Islam.
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Five pillars of islam show, how much must muslim faith be considered in daily life:
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1) Shahada iz enunciation of belonging to religion, it must be repeated many times per day: “There is no God except Alah and Mohamed is his prophet.”
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2) Salat. This means five prayers, that are performed in arab language at the dawn, immediately after noon, in the midst of afternoon, and immediately after sunset and when night comes. Prayers can be performed on every clean place, praying
can be done also with additional prayers at whichever time. They consist of sayings of Quran, which worship Alah, asking
him for his guidance. Because of cleanliness, muslims wash themselves manytimes and put their shoes off before prayer.
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3) Zakat. This is muslim obligation, especially for those, who are able to give poor people every year at least 2,5 % of savings and other values.
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4) Saum means fasting. Between nineth muslim month, ramadan, muslim don’t eat food or drink in daytime. It reminds them, that good things in life can be enjoyed, but not too excessive. As well, Saum indicates on the equality with the poor. Ramadan is time for learning Quran, self-discipline and charity.
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5) Hadz is pilgrimage. Muslims hope they will at least once in life pligrimage into Meka, to visit Kaabo. This is sanctuary, built by Ibrahim and one of his sons, Ismail. It was forgotten, but Mohamed restored it for worshipping Alah. Hadz is in
twelfth muslim month, when millions of pilgrims travel to Meka. They visit also other important places nearby. Noone
is permitted to pilgrimage, if he didn’t take care for his family, so that it would not suffer in his absence. The poor,
old, sick and incompetent, they are not obliged to go to MEKA.
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Islam is second most spread religion in the world (firs most spread is Christianity). Current numbers of believers is increasing rapidly in islam. Today there are over 1.3 billion of people belonging to this religion, and that accounts for
one-fifth of world population. Spreading of islam outside of traditional arabic-muslic circle can be today explained
especially with migrations to other countries. Largest muslim country is Indoneisa. Islam is the only religion, that is being
reffered to in official title of countries. Some refer to themselves as “islamic countries”, but these are not the only countries,
where sheriat law is in rule.