New to Islam

Allah is simply the Arabic word for God, the same word Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews use in their own scriptures. It is not the name of a separate or tribal deity. Muslims believe God is one, uncreated, without partner or offspring, and unlike anything He has made.

The Qur'an is the text Muslims believe was revealed to Muhammad (peace be upon him) over twenty-three years. It is about the length of the New Testament, arranged in 114 chapters, and has been preserved in Arabic and memorised in full by many people in every generation since.

Muslims hold Jesus (peace be upon him) to be one of the greatest prophets, born miraculously of the Virgin Mary, who performed miracles by God's permission and will return. Islam parts from Christianity in not regarding him as divine or as God's son. Mary is the only woman named in the Qur'an, and a chapter carries her name.

The five prayers are spread from before dawn to night so that no long stretch of the day passes without a pause. Each takes a few minutes. The effect is less about the total time than about the interruption: work, however urgent, is set down briefly and then picked back up.

Pork, blood, animals that died without being slaughtered, and intoxicants including alcohol. Meat should come from an animal slaughtered with the name of God pronounced over it. Everything else is permitted by default, and the list of prohibitions is short and specific.

The Qur'an instructs both men and women toward modesty in dress and conduct, and the majority scholarly reading holds that a woman covers her hair in front of men outside her family. In practice observance varies widely, and Islamic teaching gives no one the right to compel it.

By saying the testimony of faith, "There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the Messenger of God", sincerely and understanding what it means. There is no ceremony, no clergy to approve it and no register to sign. Many people say it with witnesses present, but that is custom rather than requirement.

Islam teaches that entering it wipes what came before. The Prophet (peace be upon him) told a man anxious about his past that Islam erases what preceded it. There is no penance to work through and no probation.

No. Most Muslims alive today are not native Arabic speakers. The prayer uses a small number of fixed Arabic phrases that are learned in days, and du'a, meaning personal supplication, may be made in any language at any time.

The Qur'an permits fighting in self-defence and against oppression, and sets limits: non-combatants, crops and places of worship are protected, and treaties must be honoured. Verses about fighting address specific historical conflicts and are routinely quoted without those next clauses. Groups that kill civilians are condemned by the overwhelming body of Muslim scholarship.

Islamic law gave women rights to own property, keep their own name and earnings, consent to marriage and inherit in their own right at a time when this was uncommon. Practices that deny women education or choice are widespread in some Muslim societies but are cultural, and the sources are frequently cited against them.

The Qur'an calls them People of the Book and states plainly that there is to be no compulsion in religion. Their prophets are Muslim prophets and their scriptures are affirmed as originally revealed. Disagreement about doctrine is real and is not treated as grounds for coercion.