Why Islam is different as a "religion"

(Allah in Kufic Arabic script)

The first history essay I wrote in sophomore year in high school was on the Five Pillars of Islam. I have had a lifelong interest in world religions and that has included Islam, long before 9/11. Back in 1989-90, along with reading A History of the Arab Peoples, I read the Koran, whole thing, beginning to end. After all, I thought, many hundreds of millions of people consider this book God's final revelation. It may be poetically beautiful in Arabic, --and in illuminated manuscripts--but in English it was no easy task to get through.

Although descended both from Judaism and Christianity, Muhammad's religion combines some of their elements into a quite new synthesis. A few things, important but hardly exhaustive, that make Islam unique and quite different what what we in the West nowadays understand as "religion":

The Koran. The Koran is not like the Bible, either Old or New Testament, both of which are collections of various documents by various writers inspired by God. The Koran was spoken entirely by one man, Muhammad, repeated from memory by him and others, and written down from memories of his hearers, edited and collected into a final version about 20 years after his death, all other copies being destroyed.

Most importantly, the Koran is considered by mainstream Islam to be the direct voice of God in Arabic, flawless and unchangeable. To make an analogy, in Christianity God the Word takes on human flesh and becomes man in Jesus; in Islam, the sole God takes on human words and becomes text in the Koran. Muhammad is not the Christ of Islam; it is truer to say that the Koran is.

Muhammad, although only a man and not an incarnation of God--There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is God's Messenger--, was the final and highest prophet of God and is considered the perfect and sinless man. Hence, his life and behavior constitute a detailed unchanging standard of Muslim religion and ethics: from prayer, to marriage, to business, to war and personal hygiene.

Sunna and Hadith. Information about him is called the Sunna, customary practice or habit, and consists of large collections of sayings and incidents collected from witnesses, hadith or reports, and assessed for levels of authenticity. There are a half dozen accepted collections; earliest texts of these hadith, which number in the thousands, come from about a century after Muhammad's 632 AD death. The most religiously respected collection is by the Uzbek Persian, Bukhari, written around 850 or so.

Sacred Code of Law. Islamic theology, that is, doctrine, ideas about God, etc. is pretty thin and simple. Islam's major interest and energy is about behavior. Like Judaism, and unlike Christianity, it is a religion of sacred law and regulation. Hence, the centrality of Sharia, meaning The Path, the code of Muslim law which regulates every aspect of human life in tremendous detail. One of the most authoritative manuals is the 800 page Reliance of the Traveler. Sharia is created out of the vast enterprise of Muslim jurisprudence, based on the Koran and the Sunna. The now famous fatwas are binding legal opinions given by trained Muslim scholars of Sharia.

Land and Power. Islam is an essentially territorial religion. The last ten years of Muhammad's life included his role as a warlord engaged in gaining control of the city of Mecca through military force. Rule by Islam over territory and peoples, taken by the sword if need be, is at the heart of this faith. This is part of the Sunna of Muhammad, the perfect and sinless man. When he died, he was the political/religious ruler of most of the Arabian peninsula. Within just a century, Islamic territory ranged from the borders of India to northern Spain. All by military conquest.

Church and State. Islam may tolerate but does not recognize or condone the distinction between God and the State, between divine law and civil law.

Islam is inherently, and not by accident of history or opportunity, an expansionist (aka globally missionary) theocracy. This makes it unique among world religions.

PS. A weird example of Muslim religious legal issues: killing geckos. This raises the issue about whether Muslims can use Geico....