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Islam in Brief

A short introduction to what Muslims believe and how they practise their faith.

What the word “Islam” means

The Arabic word islām comes from the root silm (or salm), whose meanings include being saved, yielding, submitting and making peace.1 A Muslim is someone who submits to the one God.

According to Islam, every messenger from Adam to Muhammad preached the same faith in one God. For this reason Islam does not see itself as a new religion.1 The Qur’an says it in these words.

And We sent not before you any messenger except We revealed to him that, “There is no deity except Me, so worship Me.”
(Qur’an 21:25)2

Belief in one God

The foundation of Islam is tawhid, the conviction in mind and heart that God is one. He is unique in His essence and His attributes, and He alone deserves to be worshipped.3 Without tawhid, nothing else in the faith makes sense.

Say, “He is Allah, [who is] One, Allah, the Eternal Refuge. He neither begets nor is born, nor is there to Him any equivalent.”
(Qur’an 112:1–4)2

The opposite of tawhid is shirk, which means giving God partners.3 Worshipping something God has created is shirk. So is asking God for forgiveness through an intermediary, or attributing God’s qualities to a person or an object.

Who is Allah?

Allah is the name of the one God, the Creator who sustains everything that exists.4 One widely held explanation is that the word is made up of the Arabic article al and ilāh, “god”, so that it means “the God”. It has no plural, either in Arabic or in the languages of the other Muslim peoples who use it.4

Allah has no partner, no equal and no rival. He has no father or mother, no sons, daughters or wife. People turn to Him directly, without anyone in between. He does not need anyone’s worship, and He depends on no one and nothing.

There is nothing like unto Him, and He is the Hearing, the Seeing.
(Qur’an 42:11)2

The six pillars of faith

The Messenger has believed in what was revealed to him from his Lord, and [so have] the believers. All of them have believed in Allah and His angels and His books and His messengers, [saying], “We make no distinction between any of His messengers.”
(Qur’an 2:285)2

In a well-known hadith the angel Gabriel (Jibril) asks the Prophet what faith is, and the answer names six things a believer holds to be true.56

  1. Allah, the only Creator and the only one to be worshipped.
  2. His angels.
  3. The books He revealed, which are the Torah, the Psalms (Zabur) and the Gospel in their original form, and the Qur’an.
  4. All His messengers, from Adam through Noah, Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and Jesus to the last of them, Muhammad (peace be upon them all). Every one of them called people to worship the Creator alone.
  5. The Day of Judgement.
  6. Divine decree, meaning that both good and bad happen within Allah’s knowledge and will.

The five pillars of Islam

The Prophet said that Islam is built on five foundations.7

  1. The shahada, bearing witness that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is His servant and messenger.8
  2. The salah, the prayer said five times a day.9
  3. The zakat, an obligatory alms paid once a year out of one’s wealth.10
  4. The sawm, fasting during the month of Ramadan.11
  5. The hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, which every Muslim who is able to must make once in their life.12

No compulsion in religion

There shall be no compulsion in [acceptance of] the religion.
(Qur’an 2:256)2

O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you.
(Qur’an 49:13)2

If you would like to read more, our library has free books about Islam in English and many other languages.

Footnotes

  1. Mustafa Sinanoğlu, Ömer Faruk Harman et al., “İslâm”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 23, pp. 1–15. https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/islam ↩ ↩2

  2. Qur’an quotations are from the Saheeh International translation of the meanings. https://quranenc.com/en/browse/english_saheeh ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  3. Mevlüt Özler et al., “Tevhid”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 41, pp. 18–24. https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/tevhid ↩ ↩2

  4. Bekir Topaloğlu, “Allah”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 2, pp. 471–498. https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/allah ↩ ↩2

  5. al-Bukhari, “Iman”, 37; Muslim, “Iman”, 1–7. ↩

  6. Mustafa Sinanoğlu et al., “İman”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 22, pp. 212–219. https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/iman ↩

  7. al-Bukhari, “Iman”, 1–2; Muslim, “Iman”, 19–22. ↩

  8. İlyas Çelebi, “Kelime-i Şehâdet”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, suppl. vol. 2, pp. 36–37. https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/kelime-i-sehadet ↩

  9. M. Kâmil Yaşaroğlu, “Namaz”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 32, pp. 350–357. https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/namaz ↩

  10. Mehmet Erkal, “Zekât”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 44, pp. 197–207. https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/zekat ↩

  11. Ali İhsan Yitik, İbrahim Kâfi Dönmez, “Oruç”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 33, pp. 414–425. https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/oruc ↩

  12. Ömer Faruk Harman et al., “Hac”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 14, pp. 382–397. https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/hac ↩