World Religions Quiz #7b

Mecca

Saudi Arabian city, the sacred center of the Muslim world, and the home of the Kaaba shrine around which the annual hajj revolves

Medina

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

Mosque

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

Muhammad

Founder, lawmaker, jurist, politician, general, family man, exemplary person, the source of the sayings and actions in the hadith, and the final prophet of Islam

Nation of Islam

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

Prophets

Human beings through whom God brings his revelations into the world, including Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and, finally, Muhammad, “the seal of the prophets”

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, the prophethood of Muhammad, the day of judgement, and afterlife rewards and punishments

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

Sharia (“path to water”)

Islamic law; more broadly, the Islamic way of life

Shia

Minority branch of Islam now dominant in Iran

Shirk

Idolatry; ascribing partners to God or otherwise bowing down to anyone or anything rather than the one true God

Sufis

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

Sunna

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

Sunni

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

Tawhid

Divine unity; God is not three but one, and God is unique, unequaled, and without partners; this is the central teaching in Islam

Wahhabism

Anti-modern theology emphasizing God’s unity and strictly opposing shirk; now the official theology of Saudi Arabia and the guding ideology of many radical Islamists groups