[english]Main Beliefs in Islam
Muslims believe that there is one God, Allah; that Muhammad was a prophet sent by God to mankind; and that the Koran is the collection of the revelations which God made to Muhammad. The Koran thus contains the words of God in a literal sense and is often referred to as the Speech of God (kalam Allah).
The vast majority of Muslims accept that Muhammad was the last in a series of prophets sent by God and that there can be no other after him. The Koranic phrase “the seal of the prophets” is understood by them in this sense. Some groups have regarded themselves as Muslims while recognizing prophets, or something like prophets, after Muhammad, but their status as Muslims has been contested by the majority of the community.
The concept of “prophet” in Islam shares much with the idea as it had developed in Judaism and Christianity by the early centuries of the Christian era. The Arabic word nabi, which is one of the two most frequent words for “prophet” in Islam, is related to the Hebrew nebi, the most usual word for “prophet” in the Old Testament. The basic idea is of someone who is given a message by God to deliver either to mankind as a whole or to a specific group. Muslim tradition recognizes numerous prophets sent by God before Muhammad, and most of them are known in Jewish and Christian tradition from the Bible and other writings.
In Muslim belief, it came to be commonly held that some of the earlier prophets had been entrusted with a revelation just as Muhammad had been sent with the Koran, and in essence these revelations were identical with one another. The revelation of Moses was the Torah and that of Jesus the Gospel (injil in Arabic, ultimately from Greek evaggelion). According to this concept, there is only one Gospel and it is the book of revelation entrusted to Jesus. It is not the same as any one of the four gospels preserved in the New Testament, which are different accounts of the life of Jesus. In the Koran and other writings Jesus is referred to as the Messiah (Masih) and as the Word of God. He was miraculously born of the Virgin Mary and his life was asociated with many miracles. Nevertheless he was not the “Son of God”, a concept which Islam rejects as a physical and logical impossibility. He did not die on the Cross, even though it seemed so to those who were present. Instead someone else died in his place and God raised Jesus up to Himself.
Some of the Muslim ideas about prophets and prophethood, and about Jesus, are similar to those associated with Judaeo-Christian groups whose existence is attested in the early centuries of the Christian era. Some scholars have suggested that descendants of those groups had an influence on the emergence of Islam.
In addition to the physical world, God has also created angels and spirits. The angels have various roles, among them the conveyance of God's revelation to the prophets. The spirits are usually known as the jinni. They inhabit this world and may affect human beings in various ways. Some are good and capable of obtaining salvation, others are evil and sometimes known as satans. The chief satan, the Devil, known as Satan or Iblis, is sometimes thought of as a disobedient angel, sometimes as a jinni. He has been allowed by God to roam the world and do evil deeds.
The world will end, and Islam has a rich body of eschatological and apocalyptic tradition. Before the world ends the Mahdi, a sort of Messiah figure, will appear to inaugurate a short period in which the world will be filled with justice and righteousness. The idea of the Mahdi is more prominent in Shiite Islam , but is not limited to the Shiite tradition. After death, each human being will be judged and will either achieve salvation or be consigned to damnation according to his or her beliefs and deeds while alive.
May Allah accept our good deeds
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