Islam

Overview

Islam is a monotheistic religion that arose in Arabia in the early 7th century CE. Its name is Arabic for "surrender": a Muslim submits to the will of the one God, Allah. Muslims believe God revealed the Qur'an to Muhammad, the last of a line of prophets that includes Abraham, Moses and Jesus, and they follow the Prophet's example, the Sunna. Shared practice rests on the Five Pillars: profession of faith, daily prayer, almsgiving, the Ramadan fast and pilgrimage to Mecca. With about two billion followers, roughly a quarter of humanity by Pew's 2020 estimate, Islam is the world's second-largest religion. Only about one Muslim in five lives in the Middle East and North Africa. Most Muslims are Sunni; the Shia are the largest minority branch.^[10–16]

History

The Prophet in Mecca and Medina c. 570–632

Muhammad was born in Mecca around 570 into the Quraysh, the town's leading merchant tribe. Orphaned young, he managed trading caravans for a wealthy widow, Khadīja, and later married her. Muslim tradition holds that in about 610, as he meditated on Mount Ḥirāʾ, the angel Gabriel brought him the first verses of the Qur'an. His preaching of one God angered Mecca's leaders, and in 622 he and his persecuted followers moved to Yathrib, later called Medina; this emigration, the hijra, marks year 1 of the Muslim calendar. Mecca surrendered to him in 630. By his death in 632, most of Arabia's tribes had at least nominally accepted his rule.^[17–20]

Caliphs and conquests 632–750

Leadership passed to caliphs ("successors"), beginning with Abū Bakr, the Prophet's closest companion, who crushed the tribal revolts that followed Muhammad's death. Arab armies then took Syria, Palestine and Egypt from Byzantium and overran Persia's Sasanian realm. ʿUthmān (r. 644–656) reportedly had a standard Qur'an text copied and sent to the main garrison towns. From 661 the Umayyad dynasty ruled from Damascus, and within a century of the Prophet's death Muslim rule reached from Spain to the borders of India. Jews and Christians, as "people of the Book", kept their religions but paid a poll tax, the jizya.^[21–24]

Sunni and Shia 632–680 and after

The community never fully agreed on who should lead it. Leading Muslims at Medina chose Abū Bakr, but some held that leadership belonged to the Prophet's family, above all his cousin and son-in-law ʿAlī. ʿAlī became fourth caliph in 656, amid civil war, and was killed at Kufa in 661. In 680 his son al-Ḥusayn, the Prophet's grandson, was killed with most of his small band by an Umayyad army at Karbala, a death the Shia still mourn each year. From these disputes grew the Sunni majority and the Shia minority, whose separate doctrines, schools of law and hadith collections took shape over the following centuries.^[25–27]

The classical age 750–1258

In 750 the Abbasid dynasty overthrew the Umayyads, and in 762 it founded a new capital at Baghdad. The early Abbasid caliphs sponsored translations of Greek science and philosophy into Arabic, and law, theology, literature and science flourished. In the 9th century Sunni scholars compiled the hadith collections they came to treat as most authoritative, and four schools of law, the Ḥanafī, Mālikī, Shāfiʿī and Ḥanbalī, won acceptance as orthodox. Sufi mystics formed brotherhoods that would later carry Islam into new lands. Abbasid power fragmented from the 10th century, and in 1258 the Mongols sacked Baghdad and put the caliph to death.^[28–31]

New empires and new frontiers c. 1000–1800

Much of Islam's later growth came through Sufi teachers, especially in India, Central Asia, Anatolia and sub-Saharan Africa, and through merchants who carried the faith to coastal India, the Malay world and China. In West Africa, Mansa Musa of Mali made a celebrated pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324–25, and Timbuktu became a centre of Islamic learning. From the 15th century three great empires dominated: the Ottomans, who took Constantinople in 1453 and made Hagia Sophia a mosque; the Safavids, who from 1501 made Twelver Shiʿism Iran's state religion; and the Mughals, masters of much of northern India from the early 1500s.^[32–34]

Colonial rule and the modern age 1800–today

In the 19th century European powers brought most Muslim societies under colonial rule, a blow many Muslims took to heart as a spiritual crisis, not only a political one. Responses ranged from Islamic modernism, which sought to reconcile faith with modern science, to activist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928. The caliphate, claimed by the Ottoman sultans, was abolished in 1924 as the Turkish Republic rose. Between 2010 and 2020, Pew found, Muslims were the world's fastest-growing major religious group, and the still small Muslim communities of Europe and North America grew especially fast.^[35–37]

Key moments

1. c. 610 CERevelation to Muhammad · Cave of Hira, near Mecca
2. 622 CEThe Hijra · Mecca to Medina
3. 632 CEThe Farewell Pilgrimage and the hajj · Mecca and the plain of ʿArafat
4. c. 650 CEThe Qur'an standardised · Medina
5. 691 CEDome of the Rock · Jerusalem
6. c. 785 CEThe Great Mosque of Córdoba · Córdoba, al-Andalus (Spain)
7. c. 830 CELearning across cultures · Baghdad
8. 1095 CEThe First Crusade · Clermont to Jerusalem
9. 1236 CEMuʿīn al-Dīn Chishtī of Ajmer · Ajmer, Rajasthan, India
10. 1324 CEMansa Musa's pilgrimage · Mali to Cairo and Mecca
11. c. 1400 CEIslam comes to Melaka · Melaka (Malacca), Malay Peninsula
12. c. 1450 CEKabīr the weaver · Varanasi (Banaras), northern India
13. c. 1500 CETimbuktu, city of scholars · Timbuktu, Mali
14. c. 1575 CEAkbar's House of Worship · Fatehpur Sikri, India
15. 1945 CEPancasila: Indonesia's five principles · Jakarta, Indonesia
16. 1947 CEPartition of India · Punjab and Bengal, India and Pakistan
17. 1992 CEThe Babri Masjid is demolished · Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, India

Beliefs

Tawḥīd · توحيد

oneness (of God)

The heart of Islam is the absolute oneness of God, who has no partner, equal or offspring, who alone creates and sustains everything, and who is both just and merciful. Associating anything with God (shirk) is the gravest sin, which is why Muslims reject the Christian Trinity while honouring Jesus as a prophet.^[38]

Malāʾika · ملائكة

angels

Muslims believe in angels, beings created from light who serve God as guardians, as recorders of human deeds and as messengers. Chief among them is Jibrīl (Gabriel), who in Muslim belief brought God's revelations to the prophets, the Qur'an to Muhammad among them.^[39]

Nubuwwa · نبوة

prophethood

God has sent prophets to every people, Muslims believe, all of them human, from Adam through Noah, Abraham and Moses to Jesus, and some brought scriptures such as the Torah and the Gospel. Muslims hold that those texts were later altered, and that the Qur'an, given to Muhammad, the "seal of the prophets", is God's final revelation.^[40–41]

Al-Ākhira · الآخرة

the hereafter

On the Last Day, Muslims believe, the dead will be raised and every person judged by God according to their deeds. The saved will enter paradise and the condemned hell, both described as bodily as well as spiritual, though God in his mercy may forgive those who repent.^[42]

Qadar · قدر

divine decree

Sunni creeds list six articles of faith: God, angels, scriptures, prophets, the Last Day and God's decree. Nothing happens unless God wills it, as the everyday phrase inshāʾAllāh, "if God wills", recalls. How this fits with human responsibility was long debated; al-Ashʿarī taught that God creates human acts and people "acquire" them.^[43–44]

Sharīʿa · شريعة

the path; God's law

Sharia is God's law for human life, covering worship and ethics as well as matters a modern state would call law. Scholars work out its details through jurisprudence (fiqh), drawing on the Qur'an, the Sunna, consensus and reasoning, so interpretations differ between schools and over time.^[45–46]

Practice

Profession of faith · الشهادة

The first pillar is the shahāda: "There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God." Saying it sincerely, with understanding and assent, makes a person a Muslim, and converts enter the community by reciting it before Muslim witnesses.^[47]

Prayer · صلاة

Muslims pray five times a day, from before sunrise to nightfall. After ritual washing they face the Kaʿba in Mecca and recite the Qur'an in Arabic through cycles of standing, bowing and prostration. Prayer may be said alone in any clean place, but at midday on Friday men gather in the mosque for congregational prayer and a sermon.^[48–49]

Almsgiving · زكاة

Zakāt, a word linked to "purity", is an obligatory yearly levy on wealth held for a full year, classically 2.5 percent on cash, given chiefly to the poor and needy. Once often collected by states, it is now in most countries paid at the believer's own discretion.^[50]

Fasting in Ramadan · صوم

During Ramadan, the ninth month of the lunar year, adult Muslims who are able go without food, drink and smoking from daybreak to sunset. The sick and travellers make up missed days later, and those who can never fast may feed a poor person instead.^[51]

Pilgrimage to Mecca · حج

Every Muslim whose health and means allow must make the hajj to Mecca once in a lifetime, in the month of Dhū al-Ḥijja. Pilgrims in simple consecrated dress (iḥrām) circle the Kaʿba seven times, pass between the hills of Ṣafā and Marwa, stand in prayer at ʿArafāt, stone the pillars at Minā and offer an animal sacrifice.^[52–53]

Permitted and forbidden food · حلال وحرام

Islamic law sorts acts and foods into the permitted (ḥalāl) and the forbidden (ḥarām). Pork, blood, carrion and wine are forbidden, and most jurists extend the ban to all intoxicants; meat is lawful when the animal is slaughtered with God's name invoked.^[54–55]

Holy days

Laylat al-Qadr · ليلة القدر

One of the last ten nights of Ramadan, often the 27th (moves through the year)

Muslims believe the Qur'an was first revealed during Ramadan, on the Night of Power. Its exact date is uncertain; many observe it on one of the month's last ten nights, most often the 27th, as the holiest night of the year.^[56]

Eid al-Fitr · عيد الفطر

1 Shawwāl, at the end of Ramadan (moves through the year)

The Festival of Breaking the Fast ends Ramadan and lasts up to three days. It opens with a communal morning prayer, before which Muslims must give alms, and continues with visits to family and friends, gifts and festive food.^[57]

Eid al-Adha · عيد الأضحى

10 Dhū al-Ḥijja, at the end of the hajj (moves through the year)

The Feast of Sacrifice, the greater of the two festivals, marks the climax of the hajj and is kept by Muslims everywhere. It recalls Abraham's readiness to sacrifice his son, whom Muslim tradition identifies as Ishmael, and families who can afford it sacrifice an animal.^[58]

Ashura · عاشوراء

10 Muḥarram (moves through the year)

For Shia Muslims, Ashura ends ten days of mourning for al-Ḥusayn, killed at Karbala in 680, kept with processions, sermons and passion plays. For Sunnis it is a day of blessing, often marked by voluntary fasting.^[59–60]

Mawlid al-Nabī · المولد النبوي

12 Rabīʿ al-Awwal in Sunni tradition (moves through the year)

The Prophet's birthday, widely celebrated from about the 13th century, is marked with gatherings, processions and poems in his praise. Some scholars have always condemned it as an innovation, and Wahhabi and Salafi Muslims still reject it.^[61–62]

People

Ibrāhīm (Abraham) · إبراهيم

prophet

Muslims honour Abraham as the model of pure faith in one God and an ancestor of their religion through his son Ismāʿīl (Ishmael). By tradition father and son built the Kaʿba, and both the hajj and the Feast of Sacrifice recall their story.^[63]

Muhammad · محمد

prophet · c. 570–632

Muslims revere Muhammad as God's final messenger, through whom the Qur'an was revealed, and as the model believer whose words and practice, the Sunna, guide daily life. In Medina he also led the first Muslim community as its lawgiver, judge and commander.^{[2, 13, 64]}

Khadīja · خديجة

other · d. 619

A Meccan merchant, Khadīja hired the young Muhammad to lead a caravan to Syria and later married him. Tradition remembers her as the first person to believe in his message and his firmest support until her death in 619, a few years before the hijra.^[65]

ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib · علي بن أبي طالب

ruler · c. 600–661

Muhammad's cousin, raised in his household, ʿAlī married the Prophet's daughter Fāṭima and was among the first to accept Islam. Sunnis count him the fourth rightly guided caliph (656–661); for Shia Muslims he is the first imam and the Prophet's rightful successor.^[66–67]

al-Ghazālī · الغزالي

scholar · 1058–1111

A Persian theologian and jurist, al-Ghazālī taught at the Niẓāmiyya college in Baghdad until a spiritual crisis led him to leave in 1095 for the life of a Sufi. His Revival of the Religious Sciences (Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn) did much to make Sufism an accepted part of Sunni Islam.^[68]

Scripture

The Qur'an · القرآن

c. 610–632 (revelation, by tradition)

Muslims regard the Qur'an, whose name means "recitation", as the literal speech of God, revealed to Muhammad over some two decades. Its 114 chapters (sūras) run roughly from longest to shortest after a brief opening chapter recited in every prayer. Many Muslims learn its Arabic text by heart.^[69–70]

The Forty Hadith of al-Nawawī · الأربعون النووية

13th century

A short anthology of about forty sayings of the Prophet, chosen to sum up the essentials of the faith by the Shāfiʿī jurist Yaḥyā al-Nawawī (1233–1277). It has long been one of the most popular hadith books among Sunni Muslims.^[71]

Places

The Kaʿba and the Sacred Mosque, Mecca

SAU

The Kaʿba, a cube-shaped shrine draped in black at the centre of the Sacred Mosque, is Islam's holiest place. Muslims everywhere face it in prayer and circle it on pilgrimage; tradition holds that Abraham built it.^[72]

The Prophet's Mosque, Medina

SAU

The mosque grew from Muhammad's own house and courtyard, the model for later mosques. It holds his tomb, and Muslims rank it second in holiness only to the Sacred Mosque in Mecca.^[73]

Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem

PSE · UNESCO World Heritage, 1981

Jerusalem is Islam's third holiest city, the first direction of prayer and, in Muslim belief, the goal of the Prophet's Night Journey. Its Noble Sanctuary holds al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock (c. 691–692), Islam's oldest surviving monument, within UNESCO's Old City of Jerusalem site.^[74–76]

Shrine of Imam al-Ḥusayn, Karbala

IRQ

Al-Ḥusayn's tomb at Karbala is one of the foremost Shia shrines, and in the pilgrimage seasons it draws vast crowds of pilgrims, many of them from Iran.^[77]

Where it spread

Art & objects

Public-domain objects from museum collections. Select one to see it at the museum.

Page from a Copy of The Qur'anMiddle East, 9th/10th centuryA folding Qur’an standJammu-Kashmir, 19th centuryEight Point Star Tile with Qur'anic InscriptionsIran, Ilkhanid dynasty (1256–1353), Mid-13th centuryAstrolabeIran, Qajar dynasty (1786–1925), Late 18th century with later additionsQur'an Manuscript Folio (Recto); Illuminated PageAfghanistan, Herat, Safavid period (1501–1722), 1500sQur'an Manuscript Folio (Verso); Right folio of Double-Page Illuminated FrontispieceAfghanistan, Herat, Safavid period (1501–1722), 1500sMosque LampTurkey, Iznik, Ottoman period (1299–1922), 1585–95Mosque Lamp Bearing the Name of the Mamluk Sultan al-Malik al-Nasirca. 1340"Marasali" Shirvan Prayer Rugdated 1223 AH/1808–9 CEMihrab (Prayer Niche)dated 755 AH/1354–55 CEFolio from the "Blue Qur'an"second half 9th–mid-10th century

Numbers

Muslims worldwide

c. 2.0 billion (2020)^[9]

Pew Research Center estimate for 2020. The World Christian Database (Gordon-Conwell) gives 1.90 billion for 2020 and 2.06 billion for 2025.

Share of the world's population

25.6% (2020)^[15]

Pew estimate; up from 23.9% in 2010.

Shia share of all Muslims

c. 10–13% (2009 estimate)^[10]

Pew's 2009 range; the Sunni share was 87–90%.

Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa

c. one in five (2020)^[16]

414 million of about 2 billion, by Pew's estimate.

National censuses

Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Census of Population and Housing 2021, 'Religious affiliation in Australia' (Table 4), CC BY 4.0. Source: Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India, Census of India 2011, Table C-01 Population by religious community and its appendix, under the Government Open Data License – India. Source: Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v.3.0 Adapted from Statistics Canada, Table 98-10-0342-01 Religion by visible minority and generation status: Canada, provinces and territories, census metropolitan areas and census agglomerations with parts, released 2022-10-26. This does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada of this product. Source: Stats NZ, 2018 Census, licensed by Stats NZ for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.

How we know

Sources for the Prophet's life

The Qur'an names Muhammad but gives few details of his life and no dates. Most of his story comes from biographies (sīra) and hadith written down in the 8th and 9th centuries, above all Ibn Isḥāq's life of the Prophet, known through Ibn Hishām's later edition, which historians read critically. A few non-Muslim texts from the following decades mention him, and most historians accept the traditional outline while doubting its exact chronology.^[78–80]

The text of the Qur'an

Muslim tradition says the Qur'an was gathered into writing soon after Muhammad's death and standardised under ʿUthmān around 650, fixing its consonantal text. In 2015 radiocarbon tests dated the parchment of two Qur'an leaves at the University of Birmingham to between 568 and 645. The test dates the skin rather than the writing, and scholars disagree about what it implies.^[81–82]

Common misconceptions

Glossary

Muslim · مسلم

One who submits to God. The word comes from the same Arabic root as islām, "surrender".^[11]

Sūra · سورة

A chapter of the Qur'an. There are 114, of very unequal length.^[70]

Sunna · سنة

"Established custom": the example of the Prophet's words and deeds, known through hadith reports and second only to the Qur'an as a guide.^[13]

Hadith · حديث

A report of something the Prophet said or did, handed down with a chain of named transmitters; also the whole body of such reports.^[86]

Fiqh · فقه

Islamic jurisprudence (literally "understanding"): the scholarly work of deriving the rules of sharia from its sources.^[46]

Madhhab · مذهب

A school of legal interpretation. Sunnis recognise four: the Ḥanafī, Mālikī, Shāfiʿī and Ḥanbalī.^[29]

Imam · إمام

Generally, the person who leads congregational prayer. In Shia Islam it is also the title of the divinely guided leaders descended from ʿAlī.^[87]

Caliph · خليفة

"Successor": the title of the leaders of the Muslim community after Muhammad, from Abū Bakr in 632 until the office was abolished in 1924.^{[21, 36]}

Sufism · تصوف

Islam's mystical tradition, which seeks a direct inner knowledge of God, often within brotherhoods led by a spiritual master.^[88]