Middle East - Anthony Ham [51]
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RELIGIONS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
The following graph shows the approximate distribution of Christians, Sunni and Shiite Muslims across the Middle East. For updates on this information, see www.populstat.info.
Jews make up around 80% of Israel’s and around 15% of the Palestinian Territories’ populations. Christians make up less than 10% of most Middle Eastern populations, except in Lebanon, where 39% of the population is Christian.
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Beyond this early dynastic rivalry, there’s little doctrinal difference between Shiite Islam and Sunni Islam, but the division remains to this day. Sunnis comprise some 90% of the world’s Muslims, but Shiites are believed to form a majority of the population in Iraq, Lebanon and Iran. There are also Shiite minorities in almost all Arab countries.
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The Story of the Qur’an: Its History and Place in Muslim Life, by Ingrid Mattson, is a landmark 2007 text that’s filled with insights into what it means to be a Muslim in the 21st century.
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The Quran
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Some people are excused from the rigours of Ramadan, including young children and those whose health will not permit fasting. Travellers on a journey are also excused, although they are expected to fast on alternative days instead.
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For Muslims the Quran is the word of God, directly communicated to Mohammed. It comprises 114 suras, or chapters, which govern all aspects of a Muslim’s life from a Muslim’s relationship to God to minute details about daily life.
It’s not known whether the revelations were written down during Mohammed’s lifetime, although Muslims believe that the Quran is the direct word of Allah as told to Mohammed. The third caliph, Uthman (644–56), gathered together everything written by the scribes (parchments, stone tablets, the memories of Mohammed’s followers) and gave them to a panel of editors under the caliph’s aegis. A Quran printed today is identical to that agreed upon by Uthman’s compilers 14 centuries ago.
Another important aspect of the Quran is the language in which it is written. Some Muslims believe that the Quran must be studied in its original classical Arabic form (‘an Arabic Quran, wherein there is no crookedness’; sura 39:25) and that translations dilute the holiness of its sacred texts. For Muslims, the language of the Quran is known as sihr halal (lawful magic). Apart from its religious significance, the Quran, lyrical and poetic, is also considered one of the finest literary masterpieces in history.
Five Pillars of Islam
In order to live a devout life, Muslims are expected to observe, as a minimum, the five pillars of Islam.
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The Things we share
Despite what you read in the papers, the differences between the three religions are fewer than you might think. As any Muslim will attest, the God invoked in Friday prayers across the Middle East is the same God worshipped in synagogues and churches around the globe. Where they differ is in their understanding of when God’s revelations ceased. While Judaism adheres to the Old Testament, Christianity adds the teachings of the New Testament, and Muslims claim that their holy book, the Quran, is the final expression of Allah’s will and the ultimate and definitive guide to his intentions for humankind.
The Quran never attempts to deny the debt it owes to the holy books that came before it and it’s replete with characters, tales, anecdotes, terminology and symbolism that would be immediately recognisable to Jewish and Christian readers. Indeed the Quran itself was revealed to Mohammed by the archangel Gabriel. As such, Muslims look upon the font of Jewish and Christian religious learning and tradition as a heritage to which they too are privy. Eid al-Adha, for example, the Muslim festival that marks the end of the hajj, is based on the biblical tale of Abraham offering up his son for sacrifice. Some of the Quran’s laws also closely resemble those of the other monotheistic faiths, particularly the doctrinal elements of