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Islam 101
Weekend
October 20/21, 2001
The call to prayer is echoed five times a day in Muslim countries around the world. It's answered by more than a billion Muslims worldwide. More than six million Americans and one in every five people on earth calls himself Muslim. Yet the religion still exists under a veil of mystery and fear in the west. |
Omar Abunamous is the imam or spiritual head of the New York Islamic Center, the largest in the United States. He says anyone who commits a terrorist act cannot truly call himself a Muslim. Omar says, “If there are Muslim terrorists, they do not act in the name of Islam because Islam is anti-terrorism.”
It's a statement made by nearly every Muslim in the world. A statement Americans find difficult to believe after so many brutal acts have been committed in the name of Allah.
So what is Islam? The religion is built on a foundation of five pillars laid out in the holy book or Koran. The first: there is only one God. Muslims call him Allah, but this is the same God worshiped by Christians and Jews.
The second pillar is prayer five times a day. All devout Muslims stop what they are doing and face Mecca - the holy site in Saudi Arabia - while praying. Men and women do pray separately but Abunamous says its not because women are second class citizens. He says, “If there is a woman in front of you for example with tight clothes and you are looking at her body that would be a distraction to you.”
The third pillar is charitable giving. All Muslims are expected to support the needy.
The fourth is fasting during daylight hours of Ramadan - the holy month. It’s a method of self-purification both physically and spiritually.
The fifth pillar is the hajj or mandatory pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in your life.
Nearly two million Muslims make the sacred journey every march. So how did this religion become so closely associated with terrorism? Omar says, “Terrorism comes from oppression.”
Oppression, poverty, and frustration- they are feelings Bin Laden has successfully harnessed to recruit an army of suicide warriors for his jihad against the United States.
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