09 August 2009

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Know About Quran And Prophet Muhammad –

Know About Quran And Prophet Muhammad –
What is Quran?
Quran is the religious, Holy Scripture book of the Muslim people, who follow religion Islam. Islamic laws are based, derived from Quran. It is the primary source of the Islamic law and way of life for people who follow Islam.

Muslims believe that it is the direct word of God.

Allah is the Arabic word for the Supreme Being, God; it simply means
‘The God’. It was used during the time of the Prophet Muhammad by pre- Islamic Arabs in Mecca to refer to a high God, above the idols that many Arabs worshipped. In Islam, this name came to be used for the one and only God. Muslims believe this God is the God of Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad.


Muslims believe that Muhammad was the final prophet of God.
Muslim tradition holds that Muhammad was orphaned at a very young age.
He started his career as Merchant.


At the age of 25 he married his employer a wealthy Meccan woman Khadija who was older than Muhammad.
She died before him . Together, they had four daughters and two sons, although their sons
died in infancy.


When Muhammad was 40 years old, he received a ‘revelation’ while
meditating in a cave near Mecca.


In the beginning he do not understand what was happening to him but later he understood that he was a prophet of God, entrusted with communicating God’s Word to his people.
First he told this to his family and friends who joined his teachings ,later disadvantaged people from Meccan society started to join him.


Muhammad’s message emphasized the Oneness of God.
He told the rich and powerful people to take care of poor or needy.
He warned them that on a Day of Reckoning when all would be judged according
to their actions.


As his followers grew the tension in the society increased and he told his followers to take the protection from Christian ruler of Abyssinia.


After that there is incident of famous travel which he made , and few followers joined him.
As conflict was rising he told the people to migrate and from this time Islamic calendar was started which remains the base date for the Islamic calendar – the hijri calendar – used by Muslims today.


The Islamic calendar-
The Islamic calendar is a luna calendar with 12 months having 29 and 30 days in each month. The calendar is based on the cycles of moon.
Gregorian calendar is based on the solar cycle.
Gregorian calendar has 11 more days than Islamic calendar.


Prophet Muhammad stayed in the Medina until his death in the year 632.
In Medina Jewish tribes also lived who did not convert ,but slowly they left the medina and went to some other place. Muhammad becomes the spiritual as well as political leader.


After that Muhammad started the Friday prayers.
Muhammad started introduced reforms in the society he gave more rights to females related to inheritance, marriage and divorce.
After that the tribal wars started who opposed the Muhammad , and at Badr Meccans were defeated who opposed him .
These wars continued but later Meccans were fully defeated and Muhammad entered to Mecca and he died there after 2 years in the year 632.


Quran gave female evidence a half value than male evidence so it gave lower status to females.
Sometimes it gives equal status to female and sometimes it gives lower status to the females.
After Muhammad’s death conflict arose and there were divided into the 3 groups
Shi‘a, Sunnis and Khariji.
Sunnis were responsible for many of the early hadith collections and the recording of early Islamic history. Once developed, Sunni Islam came to be seen as orthodoxy and still represents the majority of Muslims today.
Sufism, or Islamic mysticism, emerged in the 8th century.

Muslims believe that the God reveals His Will to humanity through chosen prophets.
Muhammad is the last prophet, the words, will of god which Muhammad received is known as Quran.
Reciting the Qur’an in Arabic is believed to allow the reader to, in a sense, com-
municate directly with the divine and hence experience revelation itself.
Muslims refer Muhammad as Prophet Muhammad ,Allah’s Messenger ,Allah’s Apostle , The Prophet and The Messenger.
After the death of the Prophet, God’s revelations ‘were closed’, prophet received revelations until his death.
Quran is referred as the Revelation (tanzil), the Reminder (dhikr), and the Criterion (furqan)
and the Scripture (kitab).

In the year 656 Quran was compiled as a book it is beloved that it was Abu Bakr the first caliph ordered compilation of the Quran.

The Quran is consisted of 114 chapters and each chapter contains verses or ayas.
Some verses are short phrase or single word and some verses are several sentences.

Mecca and Medina these are the 2 places where Prophet received the revelations .
Muslims believe that while the Qur’an was being revealed between 610 and 632 CE, the Prophet reportedly instructed his followers to memorize the verses.

Year and Revelation

610: First verses of the Qur’an revealed.

620: Five daily prayers are made obligatory and the Prophet experiences his Night Journey to Jerusalem and Ascension to Heaven.

624: Verses revealed which make zakat (giving in charity) and fasting in
Ramadan compulsory and which change the direction of prayer
to Mecca.

625: Verses revealed which prohibit drinking wine.

631: Verses revealed which make Hajj obligatory, and prohibit riba
(understood to mean usury or interest).

632: The final Qur’anic revelation occurs, the Prophet Muhammad dies
and Abu Bakr becomes the caliph.

633: The first collection of the Qur’an is completed under Abu Bakr.

634: Abu Bakr dies and Umar ibn al-Khattab becomes the caliph;

Umar is entrusted with the collected texts of the Qur’an which he
later entrusts to his daughter Hafsa.

644: Umar dies and Uthman ibn Affan becomes the caliph.

645: Uthman commissions Zayd and his committee to create an official
codex of the Qur’an to be circulated through the Muslim
provinces. The Uthmanic Codex is finalized and disseminated throughout the
Muslim lands; any variants are destroyed.
656: Uthman dies and Ali ibn Abi Talib (Muhammad’s son-in-law)
becomes the caliph.

total number of Qur’anic verses may range from 6,212
to 6,250 because of numbering system.
Few people claim that Quran consist of bigbang theory also, they claim that
the following verse refers to the Big Bang: ‘Are the disbelievers not aware that the heavens and
the earth used to be joined together and that We ripped them apart, that We
made every living thing from water?’50


Quran is very important in the Muslim world as well as second important work is
Hadith. Hadith refers to the reports by the Prophet’s contemporaries about the Prophet’s
speech and conduct. 


the Prophet is often referred to in Muslim tradition as the ‘walking Qur’an’, and his sunna, or his ways of doing things, was regarded as a practical commentary on the Qur’an.
A Muslim’s knowledge of the Prophet’s sunna comes from the hadith.


The collection made by Bukhri is called as Sahih meaning The Authentic is considered by Sunni Muslims to be most authentic collection of Hadith.


An example of Hadith –
An example of a hadith related to the Qur’anic injunction to pray is as
follows:

A man entered the mosque and started praying while the Messenger of
God was sitting somewhere in the mosque. Then (after finishing the
prayer) the man came to the Prophet and greeted him. 


The Prophet said to him, ‘Go back and pray, for you have not prayed.’ The man went
back, and having prayed, he came and greeted the Prophet. The Prophet
after returning his greetings said, ‘Go back and pray, for you did not
pray.’ On the third time the man said, ‘(O Messenger of God!) teach me
(how to pray).’ 


The Prophet said, ‘When you get up for the prayer,
perform the ablution properly and then face the Qibla [direction of
prayer] and say “God is the Greatest”, and then recite of what you know
of the Qur’an, and then bow, and remain in this state till you feel at rest
in bowing, and then raise your head and stand straight; and then
prostrate till you feel at rest in prostration, and then sit up till you feel
at rest while sitting; and then prostrate again till you feel at rest in
prostration; and then get up and stand straight, and do all this in all your
prayers.’52

But the Qur’an does not provide any details as to how a Muslim should perform the prayer. These practical details are found in hadith.
Reports of the Prophet’s sayings and deeds, known as hadith, are an important component of the Islamic textual tradition.

During the Prophet Muhammad’s time many Arabs in Mecca believed that there is one god
And there are other gods who are link between main gods, but Quran rejected this and it introduced the concept of One God.


Quran states that God has many names like 


1. Lord of Mercy 


2. Creator 


3. Tremendous 


4. Giver of Mercy 


5. Forgiver 


6. Eternal 


7. True King 


8. Ever Giving 


9. Ever Living 


10. Holy One 


11. All Knowing 


12. Self-Subsistent 


13. Source of Peace 


14. All Seeing 


15. Truth 


16. Guardian 


17. Most Forbearing 


18. Giver of Life 


19. Almighty 


20. Most Loving


. Ninety-nine of God’s ‘most beautiful names’ are known, although the most common one, which encompasses all His attributes, is simply ‘Allah’.

The Qur’an also states that God has no sons or daughters: ‘He fathered no one nor was He fathered. God has full knowledge of everything.


In another verse, the Qur’an says: He is God: there is no other god but Him. It is He who knows what is hidden as well as what is in the open, He is the Lord of Mercy, the Giver of Mercy. He is God: there is no other god but Him, the Controller, the Holy One, Source of Peace, Granter of Security, Guardian overall, the Almighty, the Compeller, to whom all greatness belongs; God is far above anything they consider to be His partner.


Quran talks about angels also and they have names also, such as Gabriel and Michael.
The belief in angels is such that it is one of six pillars of faith in Islam.


Angels are obedient to God. Quran talks about Jinn it says that they have free will and may or may not be obedient to God;


The Qur’anic symbol of evil and disobedience to God is Satan (Shaytan), also called Iblis. Iblis is a creature described in the Qur’an as being of the jinn in origin, who somehow came to be regarded as an angel.


God created first Human Adam and then told angels to bow to the Adam.


All the angels obey, but Iblis objects to God’s command and argues that
he is superior to Adam because he is created from fire, while Adam is a
creature of clay.


Quran speaks about the creation of the sun, the moon, the stars, life on earth ,water, changing seasons, and creation of trees, fruits and grains and tells that these are the signs of God.
After creating Adam ,he created Eve and tested them through the means of the forbidden tree, but Adam and Eve both failed in the Gods test after this God told them to live on the earth and thus Adam become the first human , teacher, guide and prophet.


God promised to the Adam that time to time he will send his messengers to earth to guide his children. 


The Qur’an mentions the names of 25 prophets. 


Many Muslims also believe that there are more prophets may well be over a hundred thousand.
Names of prophets mentioned in the Qur’an


1. Adam 


2. Harun (Aaron) 


3. Idris (Enoch) 


4. Da’ud (David) 


5. Nuh (Noah) 


6. Sulayman (Solomon) 


7. Hud 


8. Dhu’l-Kifl (probably Ezekiel) 


9. Salih (Shelah) 


10. al-Yasa‘ (Elisha) 


11. Lut (Lot) 


12. Ayyub (Job) 


13. Ibrahim (Abraham) 


14. Yunus (Jonah) 


15. Isma‘il (Ishmael) 


16. Zakariyya (Zechariah) 


17. Ishaq (Isaac) 


18. Yahya (John) 


19. Ya‘qub (Jacob) 


20. Ilyas (Elijah) 


21. Yusuf (Joseph) 


22. Isa (Jesus) 


23. Shu‘ayb (probably Jethro) 


24. Musa (Moses)


25. Muhammad 


Mary is described in another verse of the Qur’an as being chosen by God above all other women, and is known to Muslims as the essence of virtue and a model for all people to aspire to.
Muslims believe that Mary’s con- ception of Jesus was by divine miracle.
Mary gave birth to the Jesus out of wedlock.


Quran says that complete record is kept of every human and accordingly he will be punished or rewarded on the day of Judgement.

Quran says that people who do not follow the path of prophet will go to Hell ,hell is a
Place where these people will be punished, its place of fire and torment.


Quran says the people who will follow the path of God will go to Paradise.


Quran says that paradise is the place where there is no sadness , is a garden full of comfort and luxury.


There are five pillers of Islam or Commandments those are 


1. Muslims to believe in one God


2. pray regularly


3. give generously to support the poor, needy and disadvantaged


4. fast in the month of Ramadan


5. possible, perform the pilgrimage to Mecca.


Quran contains many prohibitions like


1. drinking wine


2. theft


3. adultery


4. fornication


5. murder 


6. causing injury to others.


7. misappropriation of property


8. gambling


9. giving false testimony


10. usury or interest (riba)

Jews and Christians are referred to in the Qur’an as ‘People of the Book’ because they have received scriptures from God. Muslim belief in the afterlife and accountability for our own actions are both important messages of the Qur’an.


A Muslim is obliged to pray at least five times a day: once before sunrise; at noon; once in the afternoon; at sunset and once at night.


Watch Islamic Prayer Video with English subtitles.

4 comments:

Anonymous,  August 10, 2009  

@ sm,

nice blogpost to learn about islam.

when there is prohibition on muslims for "murder" ... i wonder why some muslims are "murdering people" ... mumbai attacks style ... or 9/11 attacks style ... in the name of jihad !

cheers !

sm,  August 11, 2009  

Vamsi thanks yes you have correctly said if is forbidden then why murdering and doing terror acts.

Tejaswy September 13, 2009  

Why not mention a word or two about the concept of Jihad...and you know "Kafir "...

Hey, that's a part of Quran and Islam too.

sm,  September 21, 2009  

Tejaswy,
Thanks I will try to get more details on the Jihad and Kafir then I will write about it and will inform you about that.
Thanks for feedback and suggestion.