One In Five Is A Muslim
World's Fastest Growing
Religion Dominates Many
By BARBARA S. MOFFET
National Geographic News Service
Of the three religions that spring from the Middle
East, Islam dominates there today. But Islam is not
limited to the Middle East. It is the principal belief
in some 40 nations in Asia and Africa. Here is a
primer on Islam—the world's fastest growing
religion.
whu IHhY ARE—Almost one of every five
people on Earth is a Muslim (or Moslem), some 800
million people. Most Middle Eastern countries such
as Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Libya, and
Yemen are heavily Muslim, yet the countries with
the most Muslims are outside the Mideast: In
donesia (135 million), Bangladesh (80 million),
Pakistan (75 million), India (60 million), the Soviet
Union (45 million), and China (30 million). There
are two million Muslims in the United States.
The Muslims' faith is called Islam, an Arabic
word meaning submission—submission to God's
will. Islam is considered more than a religion. It is
a total way of life. Yet within Islam is rich diversity.
Most Muslims are not Arabs; Muslim states vary as
much as Sweden and El Salvador in the Christian
world. Muslim leaders differ sharply in style: The
late Anwar Sadat was a devout Muslim, as is the
Avatollah Khomeini of Iran.
TWO BRANCHES— The most conspicuous dif
ference among Muslims is their division into two
major branches—the Sunnis and the Shiis
(sometimes called Shias or Shiites). More than 85
percent of today's Muslims are Sunnis; some of the
leaders of the Palestine liberation Organization,
for example, are Sunni Muslims.
The Islamic Republic of Iran, whose people are
not Arabs, has the greatest percentage of Shiis,
about 93 percent of its population. Its battlefield foe,
the Republic of Iraq, is more than half Shia Muslim,
yet the Iraqi government is controlled by Sunnis.
Shiis also are significant in Lebanon, Bahrain, the
Yemen, Pakistan, and India.
The split occurred in the seventh century when
Islam's founder, Muhammad, died and a dispute
arose over his successor. One branch, the Sunnis
(derived from the Arabic word for tradition)
preferred to elect or select a successor. Another
group maintained that the new leader should be
Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law, Ali. This group
formed the nucleus of the early Shia movement,
whose name derives from a word meaning "par
tisans or followers of Ali."
In A.D. 680 Ali's son Hussein led a band of rebels
against the Sunnis; the band was massacred,
Hussein beheaded. The dehacle left the Muslim
community divided into two branches—the Shia and
those who later were to be called the Sunnis.
Remorse for failing to aid Hussein became central
to the Shia movement.
Within each major branch are many minor
groups, such as the Wahhabi in Saudi Arabia and
the Shia-related Alawite in Syria and Turkey. The
Islamic mystics, known as the Sufis, are sprinkled
throughout the Muslim world.
Shiis believe that Ali and his descendants were
imams, divinely guided leaders and interpreters of
God's will. Yet they disagree about the identity of
the imam at any certain point and on how many
imams there have been. The largest group,
sometimes known as Twelvers and concentrated in
Iran, contends there were 12, the last of whom
disappeared in A.D. 874, is in hiding, and will return
someday to establish a purified Islamic govern
ment. Other Shiis, among them some of the
Ismailis of Africa and India, believe that imam is
still alive, in the form of the Agha Khan, who lives in
Pakistan.
How do a Sunni and Shia nation differ? In most
Sunni countries religious activities are regulated by
the state but treated as an appendage of the political
system. In today's Iran, the world's only Shia state,
I'. .omeini's authority as a spokesman of the hidden
imam of the Twelver Shiis is supreme. As such, the
state exists to serve Islam.
ISI.AMIC CIVIIJZATION—Muhammad was born
in Mecca, in present-day Saudi Arabia, about A.D.
570. While meditating in a cave, Muhammad said,
he heard revelations from the Angel Gabriel, words
that eventually formed the Koran. Tradition holds
that he later was transported from Mecca to
Jerusalem and then to heaven for a preview of the
afterlife.
Muhammad preached the message he had
received, but he was persecuted, and he emigrated
to Medina in present-day Saudi Arabia. There he
gained more followers, created a Muslim com
munity, and returned victorious to Mecca, where he
smashed idols at the pagan shrine of the Kaaba.
Today the Kaaba is the most holy place in Islam;
Muslims face it when they bow in prayer five times
daily. Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem are Islam's
holiest cities because of their association with the
revelations to Muhammad.
Muhammad died in A.D. 632, and the message of
Islam inspired an extraordinary expansion of Arabs
out of the Arabian peninsula into North Africa,
Spain, Central Asia, and the Indus River valley. The
expansion, aided by the weakness of empires that
opposed it, laid the groundwork for the remarkable
synthesis of Islamic civilization.
v rom me ninui 10 uie win centuries, isuuiuc
civilization was at its peak in such centers as Bagh
dad, Cordoba, and Bukhara. Here in a complex
r.ocess of synthesis, the artistic and scientific
legacies of the Greek, Indian, Persian, and
Aramaean worlds were Islamicized and carried to
new levels of sophistication. In a different vein, the
luxury of the Abbassid court became the basis of
"The Arabian Nights" legends.
Muhammad, who preached restraint and
discipline, would hardly have recognized the
Islamic civilization of this period and would surely
have condemned the lifestyle of the courtiers. The
vast extent of the Abbassid empire, the virulent
political rivalries, and the strain of extravagance on
limited resources fragmented and weakened
Islam's domain.
In such a condition, the Islamic world was slow to
respond to the Crusades of the 11th century and
unable to stem the Mongol invasion that swept out of
the Asian steppes in the 13th century. The Mongols
put an end to Baghdad's glory. But the faith sur
vived conquest by these non-Muslims; within a half
century the Mongols were absorbed by Islam.
In succeeding centuries Islamic civilization
assumed a variety of forms as it blended with di
verse cultures: Indonesian, Indian, Turkish, Moroc
can, and Sub-Saharan African. Then all confronted
Western civilization in its mercantile, colonial, im
Afghan refugees in Pakistan bow for afternoon prayers,
one of five said daily by Muslims. Most Mideastem na
uy jwnn l natmK
c National Olographic Society
tions are heavily Muslim, but there also are large numbers
in Indonesia, India, China, and the Soviet Union.
By Mehmet Biber
©National Geographic Society
Pilgrims kneel before the Sacred Mosque at Mecca, goal of all Muslims at least
once in their lives. The mosque, in an arid Saudi Arabian valley near the birth
place of Muhammad, has seven minarets.
perial, and technological phases. Yet through all its
diversity and different responses to challenge from
the West, Islam has preserved a central core of
beliefs.
MAIN BELIEFS—Like Christianity and
Judaism, Islam arose in the Middle East. The three
faiths share concepts of good and evil, and their
codes of law are rooted in the Ten Commandments.
Islam teaches that God revealed his message to a
series of prophets through the ages—Adam, Noah,
Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. God's final and com
plete revelation, Muslims believe, was made to
Muhammad.
The Muslim believes that man, as the special
creation of God born free of sin, should show his
gratitude by obedience to God's will, by fear of his
fate on the Last Day, and by a pious, modest, and
restrained comportment in his daily life. There is
no priesthood in Islam; no rite elevates a man into
special relationship with God, so Islam has no
Vatican. Because of this, divergence of opinion is
almost guaranteed.
What is agreed is that a Muslim has five duties:
Oral declaration that there is no deity but God, and
Muhammad is his messenger; prayer five times a
day (missed prayers must be made up); fasting
during the 30 days of Ramadan from daybreak to
sunset; paying alms (2.5 percent of one's yearly
savings); and a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once
in the life of every physically and financially able
Muslim. All Muslims come together on the annual
pilgrimage—Turks, Berbers, Arabs, Indians,
peasants, generals, Iranian Shiis, and Iraqi Sunnis.
Shiis also trek to Najaf, a venerable Iraqi city that
holds the tomb of All, as well as Karbala, where
Ali's son Hussein is buried. And Shiis mark the first
10 days of the Muslim month of Muharram with
guilt-ridden self-punishment for their abandonment
of Hussein. Although it is outlawed in most places,
men in some countries, such as Iran, Iraq, and
Bahrain, still strip to the waist and march through
the streets slashing themselves with knives and
beating themselves with chains.
Muslims are forbidden to consume intoxicants,
pork,'blood, and anything harmful. An animal must
be ritually slaughtered and drained of blood before
it can be eaten.
The Koran and the laws derived from it consider
men and women equal but not alike. Both men and
women, it teaches, must dress modestly. The strict
veiling practiced by some Muslim women today is
not enforced everywhere, however.
The Koran prescribes punishments for crimes,
petty and serious. After three warnings, a thief is to
lose four fingers (not the whole hand, which is
needed for prayer). Thus he becomes an example
for society. Anyone threatening the security of the
state can be deported or executed. Executions that
have taken place in Iran, for example, may or may
not be justified by events but certainly have Islamic
precedent. But the Islamic rules of evidence are
very precise and make criminal convictions rather
difficult, if fully applied.
Islam has resurged in several countries in recent
years, especially those struggling against foreign
domination and what is viewed as the evils of
Western ideologies. In the absence or disrepute of
such means of expression as political parties and
balloting, a religious movement may be the only
vehicle for change. To these Muslims, a return to
the ways set forth in the Koran is the true path to
self-determination, the way of life that has been the
islamic ideal for 14 centuries.