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| Imam Omar Shakir of Masjid Bilal highlights the foundations of Islam and its branches in tri-faith evening at Oblate School of Theology.
Carol Baass Sowa | Today's Catholic |
This is the final in a three-part series on Oblate School of Theology’s (OST) fall Evening of World Faith, featuring as speakers Hazzan David Silverstein of Congregation Israel, Dr. Scott Woodward of OST and Imam Omar Shakir of Masjid Bilal.
BY CAROL BAASS SOWA
TODAY’S CATHOLIC
SAN ANTONIO • “A Muslim is as a Muslim does,” noted Imam Omar Shakir of Masjid Bilal, paraphrasing Forrest Gump, as he spoke to attendees at Oblate School of Theology’s (OST) Evening of World Faith on Oct. 29. Shakir was the final speaker on the joint subject, “Sons and Daughters of Abraham: Different Movements within Judaism, Christianity and Islam,” and began by explaining the basic foundations of Al-Islam or Islam, founded in 610 CE and one of the three Abrahamic religions.
“The point is,” he added, “you can’t just say you’re a Muslim. You have to possess the characteristics of a Muslim.” Some who call themselves Muslims today, he observed, are misrepresenting their faith.
To illustrate Islam’s tenets, Shakir told the story of the mysterious stranger in white who appeared to Prophet Mohammed and his follower Umar in the desert. The stranger began questioning the Prophet on his religion, with Mohammed answering that faith means belief in one God, the angels, the books (the Quran), the messengers, the final day of judgment and the preordination.
When asked the meaning of Islam, Mohammed replied: “Islam is to bear witness that there is no God but God and to bear witness that Mohammed is his messenger.” He went on to say that Islam meant praying five times a day, paying the two and a half percent tithe for the poor, fasting during the month of Ramadan and making the pilgrimage to the sacred house in Mecca (the Kaaba) at least once if one was able to do so.
To all Mohammed’s answers, the stranger said, “You have spoken rightly.” Then he vanished and Mohammed turned to his companion and said, “That was the Angel Gabriel, who came to teach you your religion.”
For Muslims, the holy book containing God’s words is the Quran. “History tells us,” said Shakir, “that the Quran, which was revealed in Arabic, has never changed. The Quran I have today is the same Quran that was revealed over 1400 years ago.” It is considered the “first authority” in Islam.
The second source of authority is the sunnah or traditions. The word sunnah means path and from it comes the term Sunni, which has been applied to an Islamic movement. Actually, said Shakir, being a Sunni Muslim can, in simpler terms, mean one who follows the Islamic traditions. One source of guidance regarding these traditions are the hadiths, sayings or words of wisdom from the Prophet Mohammed, which help in understanding and interpreting the Quran.
There are interpreters or commentators of the Scriptures, “but the first commentator of the Quran is God himself,” noted Shakir. Mohammed is considered the second “commentator,” and he spent 23 years as God’s messenger on earth, addressing issues of family, business and political life as they related to the Scriptures. He also established the first Islamic state in Medina, where he set up laws and guidelines that govern Muslims’ lives.
Shakir noted that the meaning of being a Sunni Muslim has changed somewhat over the years, having come to be considered a type of Islam that differs from that of the Shiites in certain beliefs. Notably, Sunni Muslims, depending what region or part of the world they are from, follow one of the four Muslim schools of thought put forth by the Four Imams — Hanbali, Maliki, Hanafi and Shafi’i.
The Shiite division came about within a hundred years of Mohammed’s death, Shakir related, when Ali, a relative of Mohammed, became the fourth caliph or leader. The third caliph had been murdered and there were some, including Mohammed’s widow, Aisha, who felt the new caliph had not properly investigated his predecessor’s death. A civil war ensued, with Muslim killing Muslim.
The Shiites held that only persons related to Mohammed could legitimately be leaders, while the Sunni sect believed in democratically electing leaders, based on qualifications and capability. The bloodshed between the two branches has continued into modern times. “You all know about the situation with Saddam Hussein and the so-called Sunnis in Iraq,” said Shakir, “who were a minority who kept the majority Shiite community under their grip and under their foot.”
While similar, the two groups have some differences in their religious practices, he noted, such as in the call to worship, the prayers and the Ramadan observances. There are also variations within them, an example being a branch of the Shiites who consider their religious leaders infallible.
An American Muslim school of thought has developed in the West. Its adherents, Shakir said, have sought to follow what is truly Islamic, while rejecting some of the Middle Eastern practices that are merely cultural in nature. “Simply put, we have our own ‘flavor’ as Americans,” said Shakir, “And we’re proud to be Americans, praise God!”
Of particular interest in America is the Nation of Islam, founded in the 1930s by Professor Fard Muhammad who turned over the leadership within a few years to Elijah Muhammad, under whose leadership such figures as Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali garnered public notice. “This movement was a strange type of Islam,” Shakir noted. “This movement had principles and teachings that are foreign to Islam and actually contradictory to Islam.”
This, however, was understandable, he said, given that African-Americans at that time were less than 100 years out of slavery and still suffering significant hardships, with the Jim Crow laws, lynchings and the like. The movement’s founder ultimately intended to lead its followers to “true Islam,” said Shakir, “but he knew that he couldn’t come at us directly because of our condition, so he first had to raise us up and change our esteem and change our mentality and then empty us out so that he could fill us back up.”
Among other things, the Nation of Islam taught nationalism at the exclusion of all other races — that “all white people are devils and all the black people are righteous gods,” he related. They also held that God had returned to earth in human form. “But again, the Quran refutes this,” Shakir added.
When Elijah Muhammad died in 1975, his son Wallace (W.D.) followed in his father’s footsteps, though at one time had left the sect, disagreeing with his father’s teachings. Before he died, however, Elijah Muhammad believed his son worthy to carry on the movement’s teachings and he was elected to succeed his father. “And he immediately started implementing changes that put us in line with our universal concepts of Islam,” said Shakir, uniting them with their 1.3 million Muslim brothers and sisters worldwide.
“He brought us to the point in time that we understand that man is not God,” he said. “We understand that white people are not devils — there’s some black devils, there’s some Asian devils, there’s all kind of devils. We understand that, and that God is one, Mohammed (the Prophet) is his messenger .... and we understand that we are one human family.”