Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that answer the question.
Query: What are priests called in Islam?
It is commonly used to refer to the official that leads the prayers at the mosques. Meanwhile, in Brunei, Singapore and Malaysia, those who lead any prayers in any places such as at home, are also called imam.
Periyar was generally regarded as a pragmatic propagandist who attacked the evils of religious influence on society, mainly what he regarded as Brahmin domination. At a young age, he felt that some people used religion only as a mask to deceive innocent people and considered it as his life's mission to warn people against superstitions and priests. Anita Diehl explains that Periyar cannot be called an atheist philosopher. Periyar, however, qualified for the definition of what the term 'atheist' implies in his address on philosophy. He repudiated the term as without real sense: "…the talk of the atheist should be considered thoughtless and erroneous. The thing I call god... that makes all people equal and free, the god that does not stop free thinking and research, the god that does not ask for money, flattery and temples can certainly be an object of worship. For saying this much I have been called an atheist, a term that has no meaning". EVR Periyar, a born Hindu, was vehemently opposed to Hinduism and Christianity. He did not criticize Islam.
Ihsan, meaning "to do beautiful things", is one of the three dimensions of the Islamic religion (Ara. "ad-din"): islam, iman and ihsan. In contrast to the emphases of "islam" (what one should do) and "iman" (why one should do), the concept of ihsan is primarily associated with intention. One who "does what is beautiful" is called a "muhsin". It is generally held that a person can only achieve true ihsan with the help and guidance of God, who governs all things. While traditionally Islamic jurists have concentrated on Islam and theologians on Iman, the Sufis have focused their attention on Ihsan.
Perhaps the most well-known Islamic scholar who wrote about economics issues was Ibn Khaldun, who has been call "the father of modern economics" by I.M. Oweiss. Ibn Khaldun wrote on what is now called economic and political theory in the introduction, or "Muqaddimah" ("Prolegomena"), of his "History of the World" ("Kitab al-Ibar"). He discussed what he called "asabiyya" (social cohesion), which he cited as the cause of some civilizations becoming great and others not. Ibn Khaldun felt that many social forces are cyclic, although there could be sudden sharp turns that break the pattern.
The story goes that once, when the Rana of Mewar was on a hunt, he came to the temple where he was offered refreshment by the priest. The priest offered him the Prasad of the Lord, and the Rana was amused to find a strand of white hair in the Prasad, which must have fallen from the priest’s head. As a joke, the Rana asked the priest "what! Does your Lord have a moustache?" the scared priest, without realizing what he was saying, replied in the affirmative. Carrying the joke further, the Rana refused to pay his respects to the Lord that day, and told the priest that he would return after three days, and wanted to see the moustache of the lord. The priest didn’t know what to do and spent the next two days in prayer. When he did not see any results, he decided to commit suicide rather than be killed by the king. When he picked up the dagger of Bhairon at the temple to kill himself, the Lord appeared before him and advised him to cover the face of the idol with a piece of cloth and ask the king to remove the cloth himself after offering prayers. When the king arrived the next day, the priest welcomed him warmly and asked the king to have a bath and offer prayers to the Lord himself. Seeing the cloth covering the face of the idol, the king became angry and demanded an explanation. The priest repeated to the king what he had been ordered to do by the Lord. The king agreed and offered his prayers to the Lord, and when he opened the cloth, Lo and Behold! The idol of Mahavir not only had moustaches, but also a beard. The king repented for having made such a joke and asked forgiveness from the priest. He was forgiven, and the beard and moustache disappeared, but the name has stuck. The Lord has, since then, been called ‘Mucchal Mahavir’, or the Mahavir who had a moustache.
At the end of the 19th century, Muslim luminaries such as Muhammad Abduh, Rashid Rida and Jamal al-Din al-Afghani sought to reconsile Islam with social and intellectuel ideas of the Age of Enlightenment by purging Islam from alleged alterings and adhering to the basic tenets during the Rashidun. Due to their adherence to the "Salafs" they called themselves "Salafiyya". However, they differ from the Salafi-movement flourishing in the second half of the 20th century, what roots in the Wahhabi-movement, thus the former are also called Islamic modernists. They rejected the Sunni schools of law and allowed Ijtihad.
Islam, like Judaism, has no clergy in the sacerdotal sense, such as priests who mediate between God and people. However, there are many terms in Islam to refer to religiously sanctioned positions of Islam. In the broadest sense, the term "ulema" () is used to describe the body of Muslim scholars who have completed several years of training and study of Islamic sciences. A jurist who interprets Islamic law is called a mufti () and often issues legal opinions, called fatwas. A scholar of jurisprudence is called a faqih (). Someone who studies the science of hadith is called a muhaddith. A qadi is a judge in an Islamic court. Honorific titles given to scholars include sheikh, mullah and mawlawi. Imam () is a leadership position, often used in the context of conducting Islamic worship services.
The Islamic Thinkers Society (abbreviated ITS) is an Islamist group based in New York City that seeks the goal of restoring the Islamic Caliphate to create what it calls "an ideal Islamic society." Its members are located mainly in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York City, United States. The ITS is an offshoot of Al-Muhajiroun, a pro Al-Qaeda British Islamic extremist group.
Cesari talks of the secularization of individual Islamic practices and of Islamic institutions, as well as the efforts Muslims are making to maintain the relevancy of Islamic legal systems and what she calls the "gender jihad" She thinks that Islam should be merged into European culture and that Islamic culture should be added to Europe's educational curricula.
Those measures, however, did not satisfy everyone. As early as 1964, a militant Islamic movement, called Al Qiyam (values), emerged and became the precursor of the Islamic Salvation Front of the 1990s. Al Qiyam called for a more dominant role for Islam in Algeria's legal and political systems and opposed what it saw as Western practices in the social and cultural life of Algerians.[5]This proved to be the most difficult challenge for the immediate post-independent regimes as they tried to incorporate an Islamic national identity alongside socialist policies. Whereas the new leaders of Algeria saw Islam and Socialism as both compatible and features of Algerian culture and society; radical Islamists saw Islam as the only defining characteristic and in fact incompatible.[6]
Middlebury Institute professor and terrorism expert Jeffrey M. Bale refers to Warner as an example of writers he calls "Islam-Bashers" due to their identification of Islam with Islamism. According to Bale, these writers relate all the negative characteristics associated with Islamism with Islam as a whole, alleging that "such characteristics are intrinsic to Islam itself, and therefore that Islamism and jihadism are simply logical extensions - or simple applications in practice - of the authentic tenets and core values of Islam." He argues that, what they "fail to acknowledge is that these particular interpretations are by no means the only possible interpretations of core Islamic doctrines, traditions, and values, nor are they necessarily the most authentic, valid, or widely shared interpretations." This he says, is like claiming that Christian Reconstructionism is identical to Christianity.
Islam and Protestantism share a common vitality in the modern world: "The two most dynamic religious movements in the contemporary world are what can loosely be called popular Protestantism and resurgent Islam", although their approach to civil society is different.
Muhammad Qutb, brother and promoter of the famous Sayyid Qutb, vigorously defended Islamic slavery from Western criticism, telling his audience that "Islam gave spiritual enfranchisement to slaves" and "in the early period of Islam the slave was exalted to such a noble state of humanity as was never before witnessed in any other part of the world." He contrasted the adultery, prostitution, and (what he called) "that most odious form of animalism" casual sex, found in Europe, with (what he called) "that clean and spiritual bond that ties a maid [i.e. slave girl] to her master in Islam."In recent years, according to some scholars, there has been a "reopening" of the issue of slavery by some conservative Salafi Islamic scholars after its "closing" earlier in the 20th century when Muslim countries banned slavery.
During the reign of the seventh Abbasid caliph, Al-Ma'mun, Imam Ali al-Ridha, the great grandson of Muhammad and a prominent Islamic scholar of his time, was summoned in court to debate with the high priests, scholars, philosophers, and theologians to test his knowledge on religion and jurisprudence. Among the summoned scholars was a Zoroastrian High Priest. Al-Ridha questioned the priest on his beliefs saying,“Tell me about Zoroaster, whom you claim is a prophet; what is your evidence for his Prophethood?” to which the response was “We did not see him, but the tales of our ancestors informed us that he had legalized for us what no other person before had made legal.” Imam Al-Ridha responded “This is the case with all other nations. Tales had come to them about what the prophets had accomplished, what Moses, Jesus and Muhammad had all brought them, so why did you not believe in any of these prophets, having believed in Zoroaster, through the tales that came to you about him, informing that he brought forth what others did not?”
Historically, Iranian epic poems such as this one were composed and sung by travelling minstrels, who in pre-Islamic times were a fixture of Iranian society. Although heroic tales such as the "Memorial of Zarer" were collected by Zoroastrian priests for the now-lost Sassanid-era "Book of Kings", (the "Khwaday-Namag", a 5th/6th-century collection of heroic legends), other minstrel compositions were either never written down (and have thus been lost), or are only known of from later translations into Islamic-era languages such as Arabic or Persian. While the Sassanid-era "Book of Kings" has also been lost, a copy of the "Memorial of Zarer" was preserved by Zoroastrian priests in Zoroastrian Middle Persian (so-called "Pahlavi", an exclusively written late form of Middle Persian used only by Zoroastrian priests), and it is the only surviving specimen of Iranian epic poetry in that Middle Iranian language.
Mohamed Najeeb Bannan, an Islamic Front Sharia Court judge in Aleppo, stated, "The legal reference is the Islamic Sharia. The cases are different, from robberies to drug use, to moral crimes. It's our duty to look at any crime that comes to us. ... After the regime has fallen, we believe that the Muslim majority in Syria will ask for an Islamic state. Of course, it's very important to point out that some say the Islamic Sharia will cut off people's hands and heads, but it only applies to criminals. And to start off by killing, crucifying etc. That is not correct at all." In response to being asked what the difference between the Islamic Front's and the Islamic State's version of sharia would be, he said "One of their mistakes is before the regime has fallen, and before they've established what in Sharia is called Tamkeen [having a stable state], they started applying Sharia, thinking God gave them permission to control the land and establish a Caliphate. This goes against the beliefs of religious scholars around the world. This is what [ISIL] did wrong. This is going to cause a lot of trouble. Anyone who opposes [ISIL] will be considered against Sharia and will be severely punished."
There are some major differences between Christian fundamentalism and what is called Islamic fundamentalism. According to Bernard Lewis:
On the Sunday following the bombings, Coptic parishioners at the bombed church of Saint Mark and Pope Peter expressed anger, and protested discrimination that Christians in Egypt are facing. One of the parishioners declared "in this country, we cannot even pray in churches." Another blamed the anti-Coptic sentiments spread by the Islamic mosques. The priest of the church blamed "Islamic fanaticism" and "Islamic extremism". He called upon the Egyptian government to ensure the rights of the Christians in "life, prayer and work".
However, along with these guarantees the constitution includes what one scholar calls "ominous Catch-22s", such as "All laws and regulations must conform to the principles of Islam." The rights of women, of expression, of communication and association, of the press – are followed by modifiers such as "within the limits of the law", "within the precepts of Islam", "unless they attack the principles of Islam", "unless the Law states otherwise", "as long as it does not interfere with the precepts of Islam."
Those measures, however, did not satisfy everyone. As early as 1964 a militant Islamic movement, called Al Qiyam (values), emerged and became the precursor of the Islamic Salvation Front (Islamist party) of the 1990s. Al Qiyam called for a more dominant role for Islam in Algeria's legal and political systems and opposed what it saw as Western practices in the social and cultural life of Algerians. This proved to be the most difficult challenge for the immediate post-independent regimes as they tried to incorporate an Islamic national identity alongside socialist policies. Whereas the new leaders of Algeria saw Islam and Socialism as both compatible and features of Algerian culture and society; radical Islamists saw Islam as the only defining characteristic and in fact incompatible.
John Esposito has written a number of introductory texts on Islam and the Islamic world. He has addressed issues including the rise of militant Islam, the veiling of women, and democracy. Esposito emphatically argues against what he calls the "pan-Islamic myth". He thinks that "too often coverage of Islam and the Muslim world assumes the existence of a monolithic Islam in which all Muslims are the same." To him, such a view is naive and unjustifiably obscures important divisions and differences in the Muslim world.
Sayyid Qutb, a leading scholar of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood wrote in his "tafsir" (commentary of the Quran) that slavery was a way of handling prisoners-of-war and it "was necessary for Islam to adopt a similar line of practise until the world devised a new code of practise during war other than enslavement". Qutb's brother and promoter, Muhammad Qutb, vigorously defended Islamic slavery, telling his audience that "Islam gave spiritual enfranchisement to slaves" and "in the early period of Islam the slave was exalted to such a noble state of humanity as was never before witnessed in any other part of the world." He contrasted the adultery, prostitution, and (what he called) "that most odious form of animalism" casual sex that are found in Europe, with (what he called) "that clean and spiritual bond that ties a maid [i.e. slave girl] to her master in Islam."
Arkoun advocated a radical paradigm shift that would allow for the rethinking of Islam as a cultural and religious system and subvert ideological and dogmatic constructs with hegemonic claims. He was committed to contribute to an archaeology of the hidden, repressed, and marginalised elements of Islam, in order to uncover, and set free, what he called, 'the exhaustive tradition' of Islam. Most of his work is written in French rather than Arabic. In order to counter-act the philological and historical bias of traditional Islamic studies, he advocated what he called “applied Islamology”—following Roger Bastide’s concept of “applied anthropology.” Applied Islamology aims to establish a “disciplinary space between political and historical sciences” (Arkoun, The answers, 25), taking into consideration elements of the courte and longue durée, as well as contemporary social factors. Arkoun has developed an inclusive approach which seeks to deal with Islamic tradition in its entirety, including elements characterised by the representatives of orthodoxy (or official religion) as heterodox, and therefore marginalised and repressed. He has adopted a multifaceted and holistic approach which looks between traditional dogma and axioms. Arkoun’s critique of Islamic reason serves as the unifying theme, or leitmotif for the different concepts he elaborated over the course of time.
What in most English-speaking countries is termed the "parish priest" is referred to as the "pastor" in the United States, where the term "parish priest" is used of any priest assigned to a parish even in a subordinate capacity. These are called "assistant priests", "parochial vicars", "curates", or, in the United States, "associate pastors" and "assistant pastors".
In Islam there is no specific time of day to which making du'a is restricted. In Islam, if something more important comes up than du'a, then that takes precedence. What is more important than du'a is defined by the Quran and Sunnah. Some examples include the call to prayer. If the "adhan" is called, in Islam one must respond to it. Another example is if a person is making du'a, and his or her parents call him or her for assistance, then responding to his or her parents takes precedence over du'a. This means a person must stop making du'a when he or she hears the adhan or the parents calling him or her, to respond. In Islam, the rights of the parents are great and are emphasized greatly in the Quran and Hadiths.