Islam In America

Islam: Founded on Faith

Islam is claimed to be the youngest of the world’s major religions, has its roots starting in the 7th century. The creation of Islam is credit to Muhammad, once an ordinary man later becomes the prophet of Allah who have received the divine revelation. The divine revelation through Muhammad becomes the foundation and leads to the creation of the new monotheistic religion, Islam. Muhammad was born in Mecca, he lived during a time when the two major religions were practiced widely all around the world, both Christianity and Judaism. The Arabic countries only had a few Jews and Christians, all of the tribes worshipped their own analyst types of religion. Muhammad was 40 years old, he began to experience visions from God

Looking at the religious practices and politics, Muslims in America regard their identity and religion as very important. The five pillars of Islam is highly valued and followed by all the Muslims, and they believe that they have the responsibility be faithful and perform all of them. One of them is prayer, to Muslims prayer is not just spiritual attitude, and it involves a bodily response, not just staying still but bowing and bending. This is the reason why even mosques does not have any chairs, so that there will enough space for prostrations. The Muslims in America also tried to out their effort in practicing all the rituals as this one. The ritual prayer has to be done looking at the direction of Mecca, if building or the mosque has to be built in that certain and it is even practiced that way in western countries. The figure of the Prophet is very important and is highly valued by Muslims, and that’s the reason why many American Muslims pattern their own lives as closely as possible after the model Muhammad set for all succeeding generations. Some public school and work places in the United States face troubles regarding the ritual prayer "I told my teacher that if he wouldn't let me pray, I was going to walk out of class and do so anyway. Finally, they backed down and let us go (Smith 6). These kind of discriminations are often seen regrading such Muslim rituals. Another one is, testimony concerning the oneness of God, where those who wish to affiliate themselves can Shahada, or the statement for conversion three times and can be effectively and legally converted to Muslims. Building in western countries have been converted to mosques with calligraphic translation of the shahada, which portrays their new status. Almsgiving or charity is another widely practiced Muslim ritual, it instructs contribute one fourth of their income to the people in