islam vocab terms

Hajj

annual pilgrimage to Mecca and one of the Five Pillars of Islam

Mecca

Saudi Arabian city

Mosque

place of community prayer that includes a niche in the wall marking the direction to Mecca

Martyr

literally a “witness” (shahid); someone who dies in the struggle for Islam

Kaaba

cubic House of God in Mecca toward which observant Muslims pray every day and around which pilgrims walk during the hajj; typically covered in an ornate black cloth

Abraham (or Ibrahim)

major Islamic prophet and champion of monotheism

Hadit

Islamic scripture

Medina

Islam’s second holiest city; the place Muhammad and his followers migrated in 622 and established their community and calendar

Prophets

human beings through whom God brings his revelations into the world

Muhammad

founder

Quran

Arabic words of God brought into the world through the prophet Muhammad; a short book of 114 chapters; its teachings include the unity of God

Sunni

majority branch of Islam that predominates in most Muslim-majority countries

imam/Imam

among Sunnis

Shia

minority branch of Islam now dominant in Iran

Sharia (“path to water”)

Islamic law; more broadly

Five Pillars

five key Islamic practices; Shahada

Tawhid

divine unity: God is not three but one

Allah (“The God”)

Arabic term for the singular divine and the central symbol in the Islamic tradition

Shirk

idolatry; ascribing partners to God or otherwise bowing down to anyone or anything other than the one

Sunna

authoritative custom and a key source of Islamic law; rooted in the Quran and hadith

Mary

mother of Jesus and the subject of a full sura in the Quran

Ali

son-in-law of Muhammad

Caliph

“successor” to Muhammad who governs the Muslim community

Husain

early Shia figure martyred in 680 on the Karbala battlefield and remembered especially on Ashura

Sufis

members of Islamic mystical tradition intent on direct personal experience of the love of God

Wahhabism

antimodern theology emphasizing God’s unity and strictly opposing shirk; now the official theology of Saudi Arabia and the guiding ideology of many radical Islamist groups

Salafis

members of a Sunni movement calling Muslims back to the allegedly pure Islam of their “pious forebears”; Salafis reject as illicit “innovations” not only Islam’s legal schools but also Shiism and Sufism

Nation of Islam

religious movement drawing on both Black separatism and Islam; established in 1930 in Detroit and later popularized by Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali

al-Qaeda (“the base”)

organization

jihad (“struggle”)

external struggle against enemies of Islam and internal struggle to submit to the divine

Eid

Muslim holiday feast

Hijab

head covering for Muslim women