In the seventh century a religious movement was born in the interior of what is now Saudi Arabia. Within two decades,
surprising for that time in particular, the fledgling movement gathered momentum and rapidly grew out of the Arabic peninsula until it held social and political dominance over the sur-rounding regions of the contemporary Middle East.
This paper will deal with that movement, known as Islam, from its historical beginnings to its relevance to the contem-porary world. The paper will being by giving an overview of both basic Islamic history and belief, and will then turn to an analysis of contemporary Muslim society, with particular emphasis on Islam's view of both Judaism and Christianity. The paper will then conclude with some of the contemporary issues that surround the Islamic world, and the projected concerns that face the Muslim world as a whole.
The prophet Mohammed founded the religious movement known as Islam. The word "Islam" is an Arabic world that means "acceptance," "surrender," "submission," or "commitment." The word itself expresses the attitude of Mohammed, and the tradi-tions of Islam in that each member of the religion commits to an overriding external power, or God (Parrinder 462). However, Islam is more than a religious term, it is a social term of community that is both intrinsically nationalistic and
philosophic in that it exemplifies an inner attitude of humble recognition of the variety of human obligations to both the State and to God (Parrinder 462).
Islam is practiced by approximately one-sixth of the world's population; by the mid-1980s over seven hundred million people. The majority are concentrated in a geographical belt on both sides of the equator in Africa and Asia, but there are Muslims living in almost every corner of the world. The
principle Islamic groups are the Arabic, Turkish, and Persian-speaking peoples of the Near East, and a large percentage of the inhabitants ...