10 Interesting Facts about Islam and Muslims
Time for Islamic Fun facts!
Religion has always played quite important a role in the history of the human species. No wonder the founders of all major world religions have made it into most lists of the greatest and the most influential personalities ever born. Islam is the second largest religion in the world today, founded some fifteen centuries ago by Muhammad, whom Muslims regard as the final apostle of God on earth. A long time has passed since the Arabian Prophet used to preach the importance of monotheism and value of morality in the streets of his native town.
Muslims started as a meager resistance group members persecuted by mighty tribal lords; now they exist in huge numbers and, with few exceptions, there is a mosque in every single state in the world. But we don't need to go deeper into the histories of this creed and its adherents. We are here to learn some interesting, amusing and informative stuff about the faith that wasn't even named correctly in the Middles Ages!
Vladimir the Great, the ruler of Ukraine from 980-1015 AD, was the first Christian to reign over Kiev. He sent envoys all over the world to gather study materials about different faith systems. He preferred Christianity over Islam because of the latter's taboo against pork and alcohol. Vladimir is considered by his current coreligionists to be a saint and the Roman Catholic Church celebrates his feast day on 15th of July. This Prince allegedly refused to incline towards Judaism because he believed that Jerusalem being usurped from the Jews was a sign of God's dislike of the Hebrew race.
During the reign of Ali ibn Abu Talib, the fourth Caliph of Islam (656-661 AD), there emerged in Islam a group known historically as Kharijite. These guys were soldiers of Ali who disputed with their master on a religious-political matter, accused him of heresy and split from the mainstream community of Muslims. These Kharijites were notable preferably for the extremity in their views regarding the implementation of religious penalties. A group of Kharijites even rejected outright the Chapter of Joseph, the twelfth surah in Qur'an, as a later addition, insisting that such colorful a story could never be the part of the sacred scripture.
The famous Al-Azhar University located at Cairo, Egypt, is 1,000 years old. The four basic schools of thoughts in the mainstream Islam - Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali - were once taught at the same place and at the same time in this great center of Islamic culture and learning. But did you know that the Al-Azhar was actually founded by the Fatimid rulers of Egypt who belonged to the Shia denomination of Islam? Admiral Jauhar of Sicily ordered its construction on the behalf of Caliph Mu'iz. He (Mu'iz) was also the Imam of the Ismailiyah branch of Shias. Today the followers of these Imams are divided into two separate groups - Agakhanis and Bohras.
Everybody knows that Ka'bah is the central sanctuary of Muslims and the followers of Muhammad's religion are obliged to say their Five Daily Prayers while directing their faces towards the House of the Lord situated at Mecca. But the five prayers can never be said if you are standing inside Ka'bah or on its roof. It is forbidden to say them that way. Did you know that the building we call Ka'bah today got damaged and was rebuilt multiple times during the course of history? Once it happened when the Prophet of Islam was still alive (before he received his call to preach). The sacred walls had been erected back in 1629 AD during the reign of the Ottoman emperor Murad IV. Ka'bah hasn't been renovated much since.
And, yeah! The Black Stone, much revered by Muslims as a blessed object fallen down from the heavens, was seized and taken away in 930 AD by the Qarmatians, a deviant group of Muslims. It was returned 22 years later on the instructions of the Fatimids whom the Qarmatians venerated as saints.
King Amanullah Khan, who ruled Afghanistan from 1919 AD to 1929 AD once publicly stated:
When the speech reached its conclusion, Queen Soraya Tarzi took off her veil and tore it before the public. We seldom get to see such gestures today, don't we?
Dr. Abdus Salam was the first Pakistani to be awarded the esteemed Nobel Prize. He received that honor in 1979 along with Glashow and Weinberg for their contributions in the field of subatomic physics. Salam is also considered to be the first Muslim Nobel Laureate in the field of science. But Muslims don't consider him one of the faithful because he belonged to the Ahmadiyah Muslim Community, a religious denomination that has been denounced as an organization of non-believers because Ahmadis consider Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Qadiani (1835-1908 AD) to be an apostle of God.
In USA, Nation of Islam is treated just like that. Ahmadis have just issues with the prophecy, Nation of Islam believes that God descended upon earth as Wallace Fard Muhammad (man in the left-hand picture) and appointed Muhammad Elijah (1897-1975 AD) as a prophet. Many prominent Black Muslims such as Muhammad Ali Clay and Malcolm X first joined Nation of Islam before entering the folds of Sunni Islam.
Islam is a large religious body and, just like Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism and other great creeds, the Muslim faith too has a large number of schools and factions related to it. Islam is commonly divided into two separate branches i.e. Sunni and Shia. There are other small schools in existence like Ibadi Kharijites. Sunnis and Shias are further branched into many more subsects. Sunnis have Barelwi and Deobandi schools among them while Shias can show Twelvers and Seveners.
But many sects used to exist in Islam that have gone extinct because people lacked interest in them and they weren't followed as enthusiastically as the founders of those schools have imagined. This is a short list of those such schools:
Shocked to here that? No, I'm not talking about any post-Islamic mass murder of innocent Christians by a group of nasty terrorists. I'm speaking of those Christians who were brutally massacred because of their faith in God, before the arrival of Muslims.
Many people in Islam have claimed divinity for themselves or others have called them equal to God. Starting from Ali ibn Abu Talib, the fourth Caliph of Islam - whom some dissidents from Islam began labeling as a deity, we can name many Muslims who were somehow thought to be immortal. There was a sect called Rawandiyah that worshiped the second Abbasid caliph al-Mansur as their creator (no matter how hard Mansur tried to talk reason with those loonies!). Similarly, we had bunch of Persian Muslims thinking some of their leaders had "godly" traits in them. Concept of transmigration of souls also helped them claiming that God's soul began traveling from Adam, passed through Muhammad and was now resting in their commander's body. Others believe in reincarnation of the Lord. I have just mentioned Wallace Fard Muhammad, if you remember who he was.
But Muhammad, the man who founded Islam, never claimed divinity for himself nor anyone ever claimed he was a god or something!
Birmingham Qur'an, located at the University of Birmingham, is reportedly the oldest Qur'an in existence. It is not a complete manuscript rather just a parchment containing some portions of the 19th and 20th surahs of Qur'an. It was radiocarbon dated in 2015 and the scientists found out that these verses were written down not after 645 AD (when Uthman, the third Caliph, was reigning). These facts make it the oldest-surviving Qur'an yet. Sana'a Manuscript is also quite ancient. Some of its portions were written down before 671 AD, the beginning of the Umayyad Dynasty.
Muslims started as a meager resistance group members persecuted by mighty tribal lords; now they exist in huge numbers and, with few exceptions, there is a mosque in every single state in the world. But we don't need to go deeper into the histories of this creed and its adherents. We are here to learn some interesting, amusing and informative stuff about the faith that wasn't even named correctly in the Middles Ages!
1) Vladimir's Conversion
Vladimir the Great, the ruler of Ukraine from 980-1015 AD, was the first Christian to reign over Kiev. He sent envoys all over the world to gather study materials about different faith systems. He preferred Christianity over Islam because of the latter's taboo against pork and alcohol. Vladimir is considered by his current coreligionists to be a saint and the Roman Catholic Church celebrates his feast day on 15th of July. This Prince allegedly refused to incline towards Judaism because he believed that Jerusalem being usurped from the Jews was a sign of God's dislike of the Hebrew race.
2) Story of Joseph
During the reign of Ali ibn Abu Talib, the fourth Caliph of Islam (656-661 AD), there emerged in Islam a group known historically as Kharijite. These guys were soldiers of Ali who disputed with their master on a religious-political matter, accused him of heresy and split from the mainstream community of Muslims. These Kharijites were notable preferably for the extremity in their views regarding the implementation of religious penalties. A group of Kharijites even rejected outright the Chapter of Joseph, the twelfth surah in Qur'an, as a later addition, insisting that such colorful a story could never be the part of the sacred scripture.
3) Al-Azhar's Origins
The famous Al-Azhar University located at Cairo, Egypt, is 1,000 years old. The four basic schools of thoughts in the mainstream Islam - Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali - were once taught at the same place and at the same time in this great center of Islamic culture and learning. But did you know that the Al-Azhar was actually founded by the Fatimid rulers of Egypt who belonged to the Shia denomination of Islam? Admiral Jauhar of Sicily ordered its construction on the behalf of Caliph Mu'iz. He (Mu'iz) was also the Imam of the Ismailiyah branch of Shias. Today the followers of these Imams are divided into two separate groups - Agakhanis and Bohras.
4) Ka'bah and the Black Stone
Everybody knows that Ka'bah is the central sanctuary of Muslims and the followers of Muhammad's religion are obliged to say their Five Daily Prayers while directing their faces towards the House of the Lord situated at Mecca. But the five prayers can never be said if you are standing inside Ka'bah or on its roof. It is forbidden to say them that way. Did you know that the building we call Ka'bah today got damaged and was rebuilt multiple times during the course of history? Once it happened when the Prophet of Islam was still alive (before he received his call to preach). The sacred walls had been erected back in 1629 AD during the reign of the Ottoman emperor Murad IV. Ka'bah hasn't been renovated much since.
And, yeah! The Black Stone, much revered by Muslims as a blessed object fallen down from the heavens, was seized and taken away in 930 AD by the Qarmatians, a deviant group of Muslims. It was returned 22 years later on the instructions of the Fatimids whom the Qarmatians venerated as saints.
5) King Amanullah
King Amanullah Khan, who ruled Afghanistan from 1919 AD to 1929 AD once publicly stated:
“Islam does not require women to cover their bodies or wear any special kind of veil.”
When the speech reached its conclusion, Queen Soraya Tarzi took off her veil and tore it before the public. We seldom get to see such gestures today, don't we?
6) Muslims or Not?
Dr. Abdus Salam was the first Pakistani to be awarded the esteemed Nobel Prize. He received that honor in 1979 along with Glashow and Weinberg for their contributions in the field of subatomic physics. Salam is also considered to be the first Muslim Nobel Laureate in the field of science. But Muslims don't consider him one of the faithful because he belonged to the Ahmadiyah Muslim Community, a religious denomination that has been denounced as an organization of non-believers because Ahmadis consider Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Qadiani (1835-1908 AD) to be an apostle of God.
In USA, Nation of Islam is treated just like that. Ahmadis have just issues with the prophecy, Nation of Islam believes that God descended upon earth as Wallace Fard Muhammad (man in the left-hand picture) and appointed Muhammad Elijah (1897-1975 AD) as a prophet. Many prominent Black Muslims such as Muhammad Ali Clay and Malcolm X first joined Nation of Islam before entering the folds of Sunni Islam.
7) Lost Sects in Islam
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| Courtesy of Erik Torstensson |
Islam is a large religious body and, just like Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism and other great creeds, the Muslim faith too has a large number of schools and factions related to it. Islam is commonly divided into two separate branches i.e. Sunni and Shia. There are other small schools in existence like Ibadi Kharijites. Sunnis and Shias are further branched into many more subsects. Sunnis have Barelwi and Deobandi schools among them while Shias can show Twelvers and Seveners.
But many sects used to exist in Islam that have gone extinct because people lacked interest in them and they weren't followed as enthusiastically as the founders of those schools have imagined. This is a short list of those such schools:
- Jurayriyah - after the renowned historian Ibn Jurayr al-Tabari
- Laythi - after the great lawmaker Layth ibn S'ad
- Thawri - after the hadith-scholar Sufyan al-Thawri
8) Christian Martyrs in Qur'an!
Shocked to here that? No, I'm not talking about any post-Islamic mass murder of innocent Christians by a group of nasty terrorists. I'm speaking of those Christians who were brutally massacred because of their faith in God, before the arrival of Muslims.
Or have you thought that the companions of the cave and the inscription were, among Our signs, a wonder?
- The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus are mentioned in the Chapter of Cave of Qur'an, or its eighteenth surah. They were supposed to be seven young and well-off Roman guys who turned Christian and fled the city of Ephesus to avoid the wrath of their monster of an emperor. Christians believe it was Decius (died in 251 AD) whom Arabs call Daqyanus. Legend says that they slept for hundreds of years and then finally opened their eyes in the fifth century. Muslims call them "People of the Cave".
- The Najran Massacre finds its place in the Chapter of Zodiacs or the 85th surah of the Muslim holy book. The story goes as how Dhu Nuwas, the Jewish king of Yemen got some Christians burn in ditches because of his religious intolerance. Qur'an severely condemns the incident of Christian mass genocide and actively warns the terrorists from their terrible end. Qur'an calls the martyrs "People of the Ditches".
9) Who's Divine?
Many people in Islam have claimed divinity for themselves or others have called them equal to God. Starting from Ali ibn Abu Talib, the fourth Caliph of Islam - whom some dissidents from Islam began labeling as a deity, we can name many Muslims who were somehow thought to be immortal. There was a sect called Rawandiyah that worshiped the second Abbasid caliph al-Mansur as their creator (no matter how hard Mansur tried to talk reason with those loonies!). Similarly, we had bunch of Persian Muslims thinking some of their leaders had "godly" traits in them. Concept of transmigration of souls also helped them claiming that God's soul began traveling from Adam, passed through Muhammad and was now resting in their commander's body. Others believe in reincarnation of the Lord. I have just mentioned Wallace Fard Muhammad, if you remember who he was.
But Muhammad, the man who founded Islam, never claimed divinity for himself nor anyone ever claimed he was a god or something!
10) Oldest Qur'an
Birmingham Qur'an, located at the University of Birmingham, is reportedly the oldest Qur'an in existence. It is not a complete manuscript rather just a parchment containing some portions of the 19th and 20th surahs of Qur'an. It was radiocarbon dated in 2015 and the scientists found out that these verses were written down not after 645 AD (when Uthman, the third Caliph, was reigning). These facts make it the oldest-surviving Qur'an yet. Sana'a Manuscript is also quite ancient. Some of its portions were written down before 671 AD, the beginning of the Umayyad Dynasty.
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