Islam Way of Life

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The Arabic word: الإسلام‎ (al-’islām) means "to accept, surrender or submit" to what is essentially a scriptural discipline. Most people believe that Islam is a religion. Even some of the followers of Islam believe it is indeed a religion and just started 1,5 millennium ago (around 600 years after a Christian scholar 'Dennis the Short' miscalculate the birth of Christ and accidentally established what is now called the Common Epoch, or CE)

This book discusses Islam as a way of life behind the religion. This way of life was broadly followed by people all around the world many millennia before the reformation initiated by 'the recitation'. This is generally known by its Arabic name: القرآن‎ al-qur’ān,” (also sometimes transliterated as Qur’ān, Koran, Alcoran or Al-Qur’ān) This scriptural text is still today studied and revered as the authentic Word of God by many people around the world.

Most Muslims today regard their religion as the completed and universal version of a monotheistic faith revealed to many times and places before, including, notably, to the prophets Abraham, Moses and Jesus. Islamic tradition holds that previous messages and revelations have been changed and distorted over time, so that the path Islam was and still is eternal, and the Holy Prophet merely corrected an aberration. For this reason, the faithful when mentioning the name of the prophet Muhammad usually add "Peace be upon him" as a reminder of his central theme.

[edit] Historical context

This correct understanding, perversely, first led first to war which united Arab tribes into a nation and later initiated the Islamic Empire and The Golden Age of Islam. This period extended from the second to the ninth century of the Muslim calender which is the 7th to 13th century after the common epoch (ACE). At this time Islamic scholars evolved new legal, philosophical, and religious understandings. Artists, engineers, scholars, poets, philosophers, geographers and traders in the Islamic world contributed to the arts, agriculture, economics, industry, law, literature, navigation, philosophy, sciences, sociology, and technology, both by preserving and building upon earlier traditions and by adding inventions and innovations of their own. Historian Howard Turner notes that: "Muslim artists and scientists, princes and laborers together made a unique culture that has directly and indirectly influenced societies on every continent".

Eventually, the Mongols and Turks that conquered and settled in parts of Persia, Central Asia, Russia and Anatolia converted to Islam, and formal, inflexible state religions emerged which dictated that there could be no further development of human understanding of God's intent for mankind, and further, prohibited any artistic representation of God's handiwork, thus effectively suppressing inquiry into the natural world.

Elsewhere much of Islam retreated into traditionalism and the huge technical innovations of the Islamic Golden Age were frequently rejected, except by the medieval Christian invaders of the Iberian Peninsula, who merged Muslim and Byzantine traditions at the beginning of the 13th century ACE. The end of the medieval period marked the beginning of the transformation of European higher education that would eventually result in the modern research universities from which emerged religious reformation and schism (16th - 17th century ACE), academic enlightenment (18 Century ACE) and eventually the hydrocarbon and electronic economy of the 19th and 20th Century ACE.

Islamic orthodoxy was widely imposed by brutal state force from about the 14th century until quite recently, and external developments by Christians and Buddhists were often rejected as 'un-Islamic'. Yet many Muslims continued to evolve new interpretations of their traditional teachings. One of the most controversial of these is the Bah'i Faith, a monotheistic religion founded by Bahá'u'lláh in nineteenth-century Persia. Baha'i claims to emphasize the spiritual unity and teaches the integration of all religions of all humankind by claiming that God's messengers have included Krishna, Buddha, and others, including the Abraham and Christ which were canonized by the author of the the central religious text of Islam,

In classical Arabic, Islam is not a proper noun, but a reference to peace. Therefore, this book uses The Peace to refer to Islam as a way of Life and Islam to refer it as a religion. Similarly, The Peacefuls refers to the followers of the way of life, while Moslems refers to the followers of the religion. The title of this book uses the word Islam instead of Islamic to further emphasize its descriptive use rather than a proper noun.

[edit] About this book

The Peace as a message has many ideals but also has challenges. As in any discipline, there are a variety of interpretations, which can be confusing. The first three chapters of this book talk about those underlying and common ideals in practical way. The second two chapters after those will talk about the challenges, and hopefully bring new understanding both to those who already practice the discipline in one way or another, but also reduce the fear of people who reject the idea of an Islam way of life as something strange and terrifying.

• Straight Path is about how to become a peaceful, a natural human being.
• Spirituality is about how to become a real believer, a high ranking peaceful.
• Limits is about how to build a progressive nation, for better use of its potentials.
• Guidance is about how to learn and not to learn from Islamic sources.
• Success is about how to win and its challenges.
• Muslim Life is a step-by-step implementation of the religion.
• Legislation compares legislation amongst Islamic and secular countries around the world.
• Appendix discusses why certain keywords are used in this book and the debates around them.
• Bibliography contains the sources used to compile this book.