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85 Muslim thinkers organize the basic religious doctrines of Islam under five headings that are referred to collectively as īmān, or “faith.” . Belief in the Unity of God The core out of which everything is derived in Islam is the unity of God. God has no partners (Q.6:63). God is not born, nor does God give birth (Q.2:3). This core of Islamic faith is formalized in the first and core section of the “witness” of faith, the shahāda: “There is no god but God.” The full creed is: “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is prophet of God.” According to Muslim jurists, the free and sincere utterance of this statement is all that is required in order to become a Muslim.2 According to the interpretive tradition, Muhammad was commanded by God to proclaim the following creed early on in his mission: “Say, ‘My Lord guides me to a straight path, an upright religion, the creed of Abraham the upright, who was no idolater.’ Say: ‘My prayer and my devotion, my life and my death, are for God Lord of the worlds. He has no partners. That is what I am commanded, the first to surrender’” (Q.6:6–63). 2. Belief in Angels The Qur’an often refers to angels (sing. malak). In the qur’anic story of CHAPTER  The Five Doctrines or “Pillars of Faith” 86 A N I N T R O D U C T I O N T O I S L A M F O R J E W S the Garden, God created Adam to a status that is in some ways higher than the angels, who were commanded to bow before him (Q.7:–28). The one that refused was Iblis, who was a genie according to Q.8:50, thereby becoming an evil being who, in post-qur’anic interpretive literature, brought along with him a host of evil followers called “satans” (shayāt .īn), who also originated as angels. Some good angels are named in the Qur’an, such as Gabriel (jibrīl) and Michael (mīkāl) (Q.2:97–98, 66:4), though these seem to be differentiated in some way from other angels, perhaps because they had special roles or are of a different rank. Two other fallen angels are also mentioned in the Qur’an, Hārūt and Mārūt, along with other “satans” (Q.2:02). While humanity was created from clay (or mud), Islamic tradition understands that the angels were created from light, with the exception of Iblis, who was created from fire (Q.7:2). Another supernatural creature mentioned in the Qur’an is the genie, also created from fire. Genies are beings that can possess a person, and in the pre-Islamic period they were understood to possess poets, giving them an extraordinary power of creativity. Muhammad himself was accused by his detractors of being possessed by a genie (Q.5:6) and spouting poetry (Q.36:69), probably because of the beauty and complexity of his qur’anic recital . Genies are dangerous troublemakers and associated in the Qur’an with the “satans,” but have less power. Genies have limited life spans and are to be judged by God like humans. In fact, they are often associated with humans in the Qur’an (Q.6:2,28,30, 7:38,79). Chapter 72 of the Qur’an is even called “The Genies,” and it relates a story of a righteous group of genies that accepts the truth of monotheism and the Qur’an. Because they appear in the Qur’an, genies are subsumed under the more general expectation of “belief in angels.” 3. Belief in Prior Revelations and Prophets This is a particularly important issue for Jews to understand. Muslims are expected to accept the divine origin of prior revelation and the holy status of the ancient prophets, but many Muslims feel that Jews (and Christians) do not reciprocate because they deny the divine nature of the Qur’an and the prophecy of Muhammad. According to the Qur’an (and therefore all subsequent Islamic tradition), Muhammad was the last in a long line of divinely inspired prophets. “Say: We believe in God and in what was brought down to us and what was brought down to Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the Tribes and what was given to Moses and Jesus and what was given to the prophets from...

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