Anthropax's Old Blog

Second exam over today - Islamic Doctrine. I had to do one question out of the following:

1. How does Islamic Theology affect the daily life of a Muslim? Discuss with examples both from text and history if possible.
2. What are the main tenants of Islamic faith?
3. Reality in Islam is of two generic kinds, God and Non-God. Highlight this statement within the tenants of Islamic faith.
4. Discuss the Islamic concept of God within the notion of Tawhid.

I went for 2, as it seemed I could just do a 'memory dump', and it seemed the most structured. I was going to just analyse the five pillars, but as that's only in the Sunni tradition, it's a bit problematic. In the end I quoted the phrase "lā ilāhā illā-llāhu; muhammadur-rasūlu-llāhi" or "There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his messinger", and used that to explain the centraliy of Tawhid, and its relation to religious tolerence, and then a big section of the Qu'ran, with a little bit on the five pillars (although I could only recall four, so just brushed over that), and a small part on the six articles of belief. I also included as much as I could from Karen Armstrongs History of Islam, mainly about religious toleration in Muslim countries. And I got to include the anecdote about Muslims telling off Protestant missionaries for not respecting the Virgin Mary enough, as well as the thing about Jesus (Isa) being mentioned more times in the Qu'ran than Mohammed.

After speaking to the others, it seems most did that, except the Polish lady who did 3. Wahima and John also did a similarly structured essay to me.

*Edit*

I drank three big mugs of coffee, and now am just a little bit hyper - and having that nosebleed feeling - I doubt I'll have a nosebleed, but i just feel like I may be about to have one - this is due perhaps to the small amount of blood in my caffeinestream.