Islam, founded to the VII ^E century in Arabia by the Muhammad prophet (in French Mahomet), puts back on a revelation, transmitted sky via the Gabriel angel or divine Spirit; the substance of these fragmentary revelations delivered to the prophet was gathered in Coran or word of God. The fundamental dogma of Islam is a strict monotheism.

Practiced by more than one billion faithful throughout the world, the religion founded in Arabia by the Mahomet prophet was diffused initially in all Middle East, then it extended its influence to many areas of Asia and Africa. For fourteen centuries, the community of the Moslems has perpetuated a lifestyle, a moral code, a culture, but also a certain design of the State and legal system.

The name even of the religion - Islam means into Arab “tender” - implies that the Moslems keep the faith and confidence as Allah, God one and single, and that they are committed obeying to him. In Coran, the crowned book of Islam, this one is defined like the religion of Abraham, patriarch who broke with the worship of the idols, “came towards his Lord the pure heart”, obeys God blindly when this one required of him to immolate his/her son and served it without reserve. Also the Moslems reject the terms of “mahometism” and “Mohammedan”, because these names spread in Occident up to one recent time suggest that there exists a worship of Mahomet, similar to that of Jesus-Christ among Christians, which would go against the Koranic thesis according to which only God must be venerated.

In the spirit of Islam, the religion does not include only individual piety and the faith as well as the dogma and the worship of the community of the believers, but it defines also the guiding lines and the rules concerning all the aspects and all dimensions of the human existence. Thus, it is the charia - the canonical law - which has to govern the religious practices as well as the civil life and all the social behavior: it must constitute the base of the civil law, commercial and penal. According to the Moslem lawyers, the charia has four sources: Coran; the sunna (“habit”), which indicates the acts and the exemplary judgments of the Prophet; the qiyas (“analogy”), which is the principle of application of the laws stated in the two preceding sources to problems that they had not treated; and the idjmaa (“consensus”), the agreement established within the community of the believers, which, according to a word of the Prophet, can never be erroneous.

The Islam goes up historically at the time where the prophet Mahomet (570-632) accepted the revelations transcribed in Coran. However, the Moslems do not go back the birth to their religion to the VII ^E century, because they do not regard it an innovation but as the re-establishment of the true religion of Abraham. For them, Islam is a timeless religion, not only because she professes the “eternal truth”, but also because she should be the religion of all the men.

The Prophet

Mahomet was born towards 570, in the tribe of Qoraïchites, with Mecque, turntable commercial in Western Arabia. Towards 610, it had the first series of revelations which persuaded it that it had been selected as messenger of God. It started to bring the message which had been entrusted to him, namely that there existed one God, to which very whole humanity was to be subjected. Being attracted the animosity of its fellow-citizens by its attacks against the polytheism, Mahomet ends up emigrating in Médine with some disciples. This exile, called the hégire (will hidjra), took place into 622; the Moslems fixed at the beginning of this year the starting point of their lunar calendar (Anno Hegirae, or AH).

In Médine, Mahomet was recognized as religious leader and soldier. In the space of a few years, the area of Médine passed under its control, and, in 630, it conquered finally Mecque. Kaaba, sanctuary which had sheltered the idols of pagan of this city, was then devoted to the worship of Allah and became a place of pilgrimage for all the Moslems. With its death, in 632, Mahomet had rejoined most Arab tribes with Islam. It had provided the foundations of a community (umma) governed by the laws of God.

According to Coran, Mahomet is the Seal of the prophets, the last of a line of messengers of God who starts with Adam and understands Abraham, Noah, Moïse and Jesus. For the construction of the generations to come, it transmitted the word of God who had been revealed to him and was consigned in Coran, like his judgments and his decisions (sunna) such as they are brought back by the hadith (“accounts”).

The rise of the Moslem empire

With the death of Mahomet, a caliph (“successor”) was selected to replace it. Abou Bakr (caliph from 632 to 634), father-in-law of the Prophet, succeeded to him like first caliph; it launched an expansionist movement which made considerable great strides under the two following caliphs, Omar Ier (caliph from 634 to 644) and Othman (caliph from 644 to 656). In 656, the caliphate extended on all the peninsula Arabique, Palestine and Syria, Egypt and Libya, Mésopotamie, like on an important part of Arménie and Persia. Following the assassination of Othman, the dissensions between the followers of the two branches of the family of Mahomet - descendants of Hachim and those of Omayya - led to the schism between the Shiites and the Sunnits, which, at present, still divides the Muslim community. After the assassination of Ali (caliph from 656 to 661), the son-in-law of the Prophet, who belonged to the branch hachémite, the Shiites refused to recognize Moawiyya Ier, the Syrian governor who reached the power then.

Moawiyya establishes for nearly ninety years the caliphate omeyyade (661-750), which took Damas for capital. It followed one second expansionist wave. After the conquest of Tunisia, in 670, the Moslem troops reached, into 710, the north-western end of North Africa, and the following year they crossed the Straits of Gibraltar, conquered Spain quickly and penetrated in France to Poitiers, where they were driven back into 732. On the northern border, on several occasions they besieged without Constantinople success, before reaching is of Indus. The Moslem empire extended consequently at the borders from China and India, with some colonies in Pendjab.

Rival dynasties and concurrent cities

In 750, the Omeyyade dynasty was ousted in Damas by the Abbasids, which transferred to Baghdad the capital from the caliphate. A period more marked by a spiritual development that by a geographical expansion began then. As works testify some to the philosophers Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi and Ibn Sina (Avicenne), the Moslem scholars at that time played a paramount role in the field of the literature, sciences and philosophy.

The Abbasid political power was shaken by several rival dynasties: a dynasty omeyyade of Cordoue was essential in Spain (756-1031); Fatimides, allied dynasty with the ismaéliens (Shiite minority current), were established in Tunisia (909) before controlling Egypt (969-1171); Almoravides and Almohades, Berber Moslem dynasties, reigned successively on North Africa and Spain of the medium of XIe century in the middle of the XIII ^E century; Seldjoukides, Moslem Turkish dynasty, took Baghdad in 1055, and their victory over the Byzantines in 1071 involved, indirectly, the Christian crusades (1096-1254) against the Muslim world; Ayyoubides succeeded, in 1171, Fatimides in Egypt and played a big role thereafter, vis-a-vis the crusaders. The Abbasids were finally reversed in 1258, in Baghdad, by the Mogul ones. A member of the dynasty flees in Egypt, where he was recognized as caliph. Whereas the community of faith remained an undeniable reality, the political unit of the Muslim world was broken forever.

Ottoman Empire and the Mogul dynasty

In Turkey, the Othoman dynasty, which had been founded around 1300 by Osman I, became a dominant world power to the XV ^E century and continued to play a very important part throughout the XVI ^E and XVII ^E centuries. The Byzantine Empire, against which the Moslem armies warred since the beginnings of Islam, fell when the Othoman sultan Mehmet II conquered Constantinople, in 1453, and made the capital of the Ottoman Empire of it.

During first half of the XVI ^E century, the Ottoman Empire, which was already firmly established through all it Anatolia and in the major part of Balkans, conquered Syria, Egypt (the sultans took the title of caliph after having deposited the last Abbasid in Cairo) and North Africa. Extending also considerably to the North-West, it penetrated in Europe, besieging Vienna in 1529. The defeat of the Othoman fleet to the battle of Lépante, in 1571, did not mark, as many Europeans hoped for it, the beginning of a fast dislocation of the Ottoman Empire: more than one century later, in 1683, the Othoman troops again reflect the seat in front of Vienna. The decline of the Empire became more visible starting from the end of the XVII ^E century, and he did not survive the First World War . Turkey became a republic, at the instigation of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, in 1923, and the caliphate was abolished in 1924.

TheMogul ones, a Moslem dynasty of Mongolian origin, conquered the north of India in 1526. The Mogul Empire reached the apogee of its power between the end of the XVI ^E century and the beginning of the XVIIIe century. Under the emperors Akbar, Jahangir, Jahan Shah and Aurangzeb, the Mogul domination extended to the major part of the sub-continent, where the Islamic culture, marked of a deep print Persian, was established. The splendor of Large-Mogul finds an expression particular in their architecture. To the XVIII ^E century, the Mogul Empire started to decline. He survived, at least through his name, until 1858, when the last sultan was deposited by the British.

The Islamic influence in Indonesia and Africa

So Moslem merchants undoubtedly had sporadic contacts in Indonesia starting from X ^E century, it is only in XIIIe century that Islam is established in Sumatra, where small Moslem States constituted themselves on the north-eastern coast. Islam ends up gaining Java to the XVI ^E century, then was diffused, generally in a peaceful way, coastal areas towards the interior of the grounds, in all the points of the Indonesian archipelago. At the XIXe century, it had reached the North-East and had gained Philippines. Nowadays, the Moslems represent approximately 85 % of the Indonesian population.

Islam penetrated Western Africa in three principal phases. From X ^E century, it extended in the Arab and Berber caravaneers. Then one period of progressive Islamization of certain course followed royal, in particular that of famous king Kankan Moussa, which reigned of 1312 to 1337 in Mali. Lastly, to the XVI ^E century, the sects Sufi, of the brotherhoods of mystics such as Qadiriyya, Tidjaniyya, Muridiyya, as well as saints and scholars, started to play a big role. The XIX ^E century knew several holy wars (Djihad), intended to remove Islam from the pagan influences, and, at the end of the XIX ^E century and during first half of the XX ^E century, the Moslems took an active share with resistance against the colonial powers. Islam plays a big role in Africa postcoloniale, in particular in Nigeria, in Senegal, in Guinea, in Mali and Niger; more modest Islamic communities are installed in the other States of Western Africa.

The forwarding led by Bonaparte in Egypt, in 1798, followed three years later by the expulsion of the French troops by combined British and Othomans, is often regarded as the beginning of the modern period of Islam. Come to power of Méhémet-Ali, which undertook to reform Egypt, from which he was the viceroy of 1805 to 1849, marked indeed the beginning of the long fight of a Muslim world eager to be released from the colonial supervisions and to establish independent States. Resistance against the foreign domination as well as the effort to return to the Muslim community the place which she wished to occupy in the modern world characterize the currents as well panislamic, such that carried out by Aldine Djamal Al-Afghani, which nationalist movements of the XX ^E century.

The political, social and economic evolution of the many countries with Moslem majority presents considerable differences. Turkey as of many Arab countries became laic republics, whereas Saudi Arabia remains an absolute monarchy, controlled in the name of the Islamic law more tricte (wahhabism).

From 1925 to 1979, Iran was directed by Pahlavi sovereigns, whose policy supported the laicization and the occidentalization of the country. The increasing resistance of the Muslim community, in great Shiite majority, led to the forced departure of the shah and the establishment of an Islamic Republic under the aegis of the ayatollah Khomeyni. Since 1979, Pakistan, Sudan and Afghanistan became also Islamic States, whose Constitution envisages the application by the State of the Islamic law (charia).

Often taught by means of a “catechism”, by the means of questions and answers, the Islamic dogmas are generally treated according to six main categories: God, angels, Writings, prophets, the last Judgment and predestination. The Moslem design of God is determining for all the other elements of the faith. Among the angels (which all are servants of Allah and subjected to his power), some are supposed to play a particularly important part in the daily life of the Moslems: in particular the guardian angels, which note the acts of the men and whose the latter will have to answer the day of the last Judgment, as well as the angel of death and those which question deaths in their tombs. Djibrail (Gabriel), whose name is mentioned in Coran, which is that transmitted the divine revelation to the Prophet.

Promise or threat, the last Judgment occupies an important place in Coran, the thought and piety Moslem women. The day of the Judgment last Aldine Yom that only God can know, each heart will have to answer of its acts. One of the fundamental questions which are in the middle of the theological discussions on the last Judgment, and more generally on the concept of God, is to know if descriptions that Coran of the paradise and the hell gives as of the appearances of God must be interpreted in a literal or allegorical way. The dominant design adopts the principle of literal interpretation (God sat on the throne, it has hands), but it introduces nuances by affirming that the men do not have faculty to judge and that they must avoid wondering about Allah, because God is incomparable.

The question of predestination testifies to the same theocentrism. Referring to the divine absolute power which only can guide the men towards the faith (“If God had not guided us, we would surely never have been guided”), many were those which concluded from it that God also decides not to guide certain men, letting them be mislaid or even mislaying deliberately them. In the later theological debates, the detractors of predestination were worried less human freedom and dignity that defense of the honor of God.

According to the mutazilites, followers of a theological current appeared to the VIII ^E century, and qadirites, founded religious brotherhood to the XII ^E century, the Koranic message of the divine justice “which does not injure the men” (“They injure themselves”) excludes the concept of God punishing the men for the sins and the unbelief, for which they are not really responsible. Their adversaries defended on the contrary the doctrines of the sovereign freedom of God: they affirmed that divine freedom does not suffer any restriction and does not even obey the obligation “to make what is best for its creatures”.

With X ^E century, two famous theologists, Al-Achari and Al-Maturidi, answers proposed which will influence the Sunni position: the human acts are wanted and created by God, but, to endorse them, the man must adapt them. Consequently, the design of God as Creator, Only and the Single one, went hand in hand with the assertion of the human responsibility.

Another debate was done day around the concept of the divine unit, about the gasoline and of the attributes of God. It related to the question of knowing if Coran, i.e. the divine word, is created or incréé. The defenders of the first design affirmed that if Coran is incréé it is necessary to suppose a second eternal principle of reality; however God alone is eternal and one cannot conceive eternity apart from God. According to their contradictors, to support that Coran is created amounts attacking the divine nature of the crowned book. According to the Sunnits, Coran as a writing or collection of prayers is created, but it is the manifestation of the eternal “interior speech” divine, which precedes any oral or written expression.

Deeply anchored in the context sociopolitic which saw them being born, the theological quarrels divided Islam as of its beginnings. The Shiites supported that only “the family members” (Hachémites or, in a direction more limited, descendants of the Prophet by its Fatima daughter and its Ali husband) could claim with the caliphate. Another group, the kharidjites, (literally, “those which made secession”), separated from Ali (assassinated by a follower of the sect) and from Omeyyades. According to their doctrines, the confession or the faith does not make the believer alone, and whoever makes a serious sin is an unbeliever dedicated to the hell. They applied this argument even to the chiefs of the community by affirming that the caliphs who had seriously sinned could not claim the allegiance of the faithful ones.

The majority of the Moslems accepted the principle of an agreement between the faith and the acts, but, while insisting on the fact that God alone can judge if a man is believer or unbelieving, rejected the ideal kharidjite which consisted in here below establishing a pure community of believers. On the basis of the principle that in waiting of the last Judgment it is advisable to give up judging others, the Moslems recognize any person as member of the community of the believers provided that it accepts the “five pillars of the faith”. To give up judging others also implies the respect of the Moslem political power, even if those which exert it deliver to condemnable practices.

The traditional elementary duties of any Moslem reveal at which point the faith and the acts are dependant in this religion.

Religious duties

The “five pillars” of Islam are: the chahada, the profession of faith as a God and the mission of Mahomet; the salaat, accomplished ritual prayer five times per day while turning to Mecque; the zakaat, gift of alms in prescribed proportions; the sawm, fast practiced in the day at the time of the month of the Ramadan; the hadj, pilgrimage with Mecque, obligatory for each able believer financially and physically to achieve it.

The profession of faith as a God is at the same level as the interest carried to the poor, and which appears alms in practice. The personal engagement of the believer, expressed very clearly in the formulation even of the chahada (“I profess that God alone is God and that Mahomet is its prophet”), doubles of a major conscience, transmitted by the ritual prayers and the pilgrimage, of the force which represent the communion in the faith and the community of all the believers.

The religious practice is not reduced to the words and the gestures specified by the salaat; it is also concretized in many personal prayers and the meetings of the congregation in the central mosque Friday like in the celebration of the two principal festivals: id Al-fitr, festival which marks the end of the fast of the Ramadan, and the id Al-adha, festival of the sacrifice, devoted in memory of Abraham who agreed to immolate his son. The latter is celebrated, the tenth day of the month of the pilgrimage, by the pilgrims and those which remain on their premises.

The holy war, or Djihad (literally, “effort” to approach God), also constitute an obligation for the men of adulthood, called to propagate Islam in territories not yet acquired with the Islamic religion or to protect Islam when it is threatened by not-Moslems and that the believers can reasonably hope to inflict a defeat to them.

A syncretic religion

Islam is without any doubt a syncretic religion: he recognizes that God sent his prophets all to the people and that he granted “the Writings and the quality of prophet” to Abraham and his descendants. It follows that the Moslems are conscious of the very close link which exists between the partisans of Islam, the Judaism and Christianity, all children of Abraham. During the history, certain believers distinguished the divine truth and went back from there to it only: among these “Moslems of before Mahomet”, Coran mentions in particular Abraham and his sons, Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, the disciples of Jesus. This syncretism is also expressed in the fact that the Moslems recognize the first Writings, namely Taurat (Torah), prescribed in Moïse, Mazamir (Psalms) of David and Indjil (Gospel) of Jesus.

The Moslems took again with the Judaism the prohibition of the human representation. The terms used by Mahomet are often translatable by “idols” or “images” in the context of then; if they undoubtedly referred rather to the idols, they will be interpreted thereafter like indicating images.

This recognition of other prophets that Mahomet and other Scriptures that Coran is accompanied by the firm conviction that the revelation of the divine word, the sending of the Mahomet prophet and the foundation of Islam is the achievement of divine kindness. According to Islam, those which recognize the message of Coran as the ultimate truth are consequently of true believers, while those which reject it are unbelievers, whatever the name which they give each other.