What is the shahada and its main meanings?
Islam and Muhammad
What were the main stages in Muhammad’s life and the history of Islam in his life?
The mantle of prophet only descended on him when he was 40 years old, it is commonly distinguished as “early revelation”, when the first revelation came to him during his walk in one of the caves outside Mecca. Khadijah (his wife) in fact played a key role in receiving the revelation: she was the first to believe in her husband’s integrity, when many others disbelieved, and so she is really the first person to become a Muslim. The next period is the Meccan, when he lived in the city where he was born, but people in Mecca did not accept Muhammad’s ideas (only after he tried to convert people into his religion, before Mecca was a tolerant city). After the death of Muhammad’s uncle, who covered him from Meccan’s leadership, Muhammad had to move to Medina (Hijra to Medina), his third stage of life, as he did not want to accept the coexistence of his and Meccan’s religion. This was the start of his fourth period of life. Medina was partly inhabitant with Jewish tribes, so after the arrival of Muhammad and his followers, he organized a so called Ummah (community): Meccan Muslims + local Jews + polytheists. The fifth stage started when they changed the direction of prayer (qiblah) to Mecca instead of Jerusalem, which made the relations with Jews worse. At the same time, Medinan Muslims began to raid Meccan’s caravans, so in response followers of Muhammad tried to conquer Medina (two battles). Later, after all these battles in Medina, Muhammad leads his followers back to Mecca, this is sometimes called Farewell Pilgrimage (6th period).
It can be said that Islam was founded by Muhammad as he is a “messenger of God” (Islam, the third great monotheistic religion, was founded by Muhammad ibn Abdulla (570-632 a.d.) in Arabia); also, Muhammad is sometimes called the “model” human, as his life is proclaimed to be the most righteous for an Islamist. Muhammad is a monotheistic messenger for the whole of humanity. Again, Muhammad's 'mission' here was not a question of law-giving, but of guiding his followers to a humane code of behavior, liberating their hearts, one might say.
2) What was the religious and political context of Arabia at the birth of Muhammad? What role might Jewish-Christianity (the Ebionites) have played in the shaping of Islam? (ЭТОГО ВОПРОСА НЕТ В ТЕМАХ 2017 ГОДА)
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Arabia at that time was rather a unique place: it lay almost completely outside the sphere of influence of the two warring super-powers of the day, Christian Byzantium and Zoroastrian Persia. That is, Arabia was not politically incorporated into either empire, although it did have strong trade and cultural links with both regions. Arabia consisted of a few bleak trading outposts, some enchanting poetry, and a lot of dusty desert. Inevitably, there was a process of feedback between the center and periphery: elements of imperial culture penetrated Arabia, and trade cities like Mecca were a cosmopolitan mixing-ground for various Arabian tribes, Persians, Syrians, Jews, Christians, and Abyssians (from East Africa just across the sea).
Yemen, in that sense was a cultural and religious exception in the desert-covered peninsula: religiously, the rest of the population of Arabia were for the most part pagans, following a similar Semitic polytheism to the Syrian tribes and city-dwellers outside of the peninsula. Among this sea of pagans, there were scattered populations of Jews and Christians. However, a final interesting category of religion in Arabia at this time were the Hanifs: they were individuals who looked down upon polytheism and, like Jews and Christians, worshiped only one God - without, however, fully adopting either Judaism or Christianity. Instead, they considered themselves to be spiritual descendants of Abraham.
НЕМНОГО ИНФОРМАЦИИ С САЙТА, КАК МНЕ ПОКАЗАЛОСЬ, ИНТЕРЕСНОГО, ПОСКОЛЬКУ В LECTURE NOTES БЫЛО МАЛО ДЕТАЛЕЙ ДЛЯ РАЗВЕРНУТОГО ОТВЕТА (слышала, что Рубин не всегда принимает информацию из других источников, так что это скорее просто для общего понимания)
The most remarkable feature of the political life of Arabia before Islam was the total absence of political organization in any form. With the exception of Yemen in the south-west, no part of the Arabian Peninsula had any government at any time, and the Arabs never acknowledged any authority other than the authority of the chiefs of their tribes. The authority of the tribal chiefs, however, rested, in most cases, on their character and personality, and was moral rather than political. Since there was no government, there was no law and no order (In the event a crime was committed, the injured party took law in its own hands, and tried to administer “justice” to the offender). War was a permanent institution of the Arabian society. The desert could support only a limited number of people, and the state of inter-tribal war maintained a rigid control over the growth of population. But the Arabs themselves did not see war in this light.
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The period in the Arabian history which preceded the birth of Islam is known as the Times of Ignorance. Most of the Arabs were idolaters. They worshipped numerous idols and each tribe had its own idol or idols and fetishes. There was a small group of monotheists present in Arabia on the eve of the rise of Islam. Its members did not worship idols, and they were the followers of the Prophet Abraham. The members of the families of Muhammad, the future prophet, and Ali ibn Abi Talib, the future caliph, and most members of their clan – the Banu Hashim – belonged to this group.
( https://www.al-islam.org/restatement-history-islam-and-muslims-sayyid-ali-ashgar-razwy/arabia-islam)
Jewish-Christians had a significant role in the shaping of Islam. Judaism Christianity and Islam are all monotheistic faiths that worship the God of Adam, Abraham, Moses-creator and lord of the universe. They share a common belief in the oneness of God (monotheism), sacred history (history as the theatre of God's activity and the encounter of God and humankind), prophets and divine revelation, angels, and Satan. All stress moral responsibility and accountability, Judgment Day, and eternal reward and punishment.
ЗДЕСЬ НАЧИНАЮТСЯ ЦИТАТЫ ИЗ LECTURE NOTES
“There’s something else too: the narrative recalls Jewish stories in the Talmud that demonstrate the relationship between a rabbi and his disciple: the disciple didn’t just study books and lessons from the rabbi; for him, his rabbinical master was a ‘living Torah’, so that he had to observe his etiquette and behavior and imitate that too.
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The mixing together of early and late material in the Qur’an hints at a solution: from the perspective of God there is no before or after (in fact this is also a principle of Jewish scriptural interpretation stated by the commentator Rashi);”
“The Jews are to form part of a more all-encompassing community that depends on belief in One God. It does not seem to matter whether the Jews believe in Muhammad or Moses; the minimal condition that they believe in One God is enough. Given this spiritual lowest common denominator, a spiritual-political nation can be formed.”
“Still, Jews would continue to play an important role in early Islam’s theological development.”
“Muhammad wished to exclude no groups from his new religion; it was to be a religion of all humanity, all types and classes and faiths, the final revelation that would synthesize all the best insights, the religion of Adam the first man, and the religion of Abraham, the prophet who preceded the split of monotheism into Judaism and Christianity. Therefore, he formed a single ummah with the Jews, joining them in their direction of prayer.”
“The new orientation towards Mecca was not crucial; it merely symbolized that the Islamic community needed a new center for its universal vision, one that would be more inclusive than that of the Jewish and Christian visions, which in a sense Islam had now outgrown”
What is the shahada and its main meanings?
The shahada is the ‘testimony’, ‘witness’, ‘creed’ = the phrase recited by a person wishing to become a Muslim. It is translated as “ I bear witness that there is no god but God (no ila but Allah) and I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God (Allah)”
It can be divided into three parts:
- There is no god (the Qur'an talks of 'man taking his own desire as a god': so lust, greed, pride are 'gods'. These gods have no ultimate reality => 'There is no god.' If god is conceived to be something material, something immanent to this world --> then 'there is no god'.)
- Except God (There is only one uncreated principle, utterly separate from the cosmos, the universe, the world. That is God. Everything else is unreal. God alone is the Real.)
- Muhammad is the messenger of God (The word here is 'messenger' rather than 'prophet' - the word is considered more universal. Prophets spoke to specific peoples; prophets before performed miracles, but they did not bring a universal message for all humanity. Muhammad is 'God's mercy to humanity', as he said of himself. The Qur’an addresses people often with: “O people/humanity…” – rather than, “O Israel” (one nation).
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