Read along with the three podcasts, or open the full dictionary entry for Islam for the definition, Arabic meaning, synonyms and example sentences.
Narrator: Islam. A proper noun. Pronounced /ˈɪz.lɑːm/.
Narrator: Islam comes from the Arabic islām, meaning submission or resignation — the verbal noun of aslama, to resign oneself or submit, from the root s-l-m, which is also the root of salām, meaning peace, and of Muslim — one who submits. Islam is thus, in its own name, defined as submission to God — to Allah — the monotheistic deity of the Abrahamic tradition. The word entered English in the early seventeenth century as European knowledge of the religion and its civilisation grew.
Narrator: Islam is the world's second-largest religion, with approximately 1.9 billion adherents. It was founded in the early seventh century CE in the Arabian Peninsula through the prophethood of Muhammad, born in Mecca around 570 CE, whose revelations over twenty-three years are contained in the Quran — the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be the verbatim word of God transmitted through the Angel Gabriel.
Narrator: The Five Pillars of Islam define the practice of the faith: the Shahada — the declaration of faith that there is no god but God and Muhammad is his messenger; Salah — the five daily prayers; Zakat — charitable giving; Sawm — fasting during the month of Ramadan; and Hajj — the pilgrimage to Mecca performed at least once in a lifetime by those able to do so.
Narrator: Islam encompasses enormous internal diversity across its Sunni and Shia traditions, and many schools of law, theology, and mysticism — Sufism representing the mystical dimension of Islamic spirituality. The Islamic civilisation of the medieval period preserved and extended classical learning in mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and philosophy at a time when this tradition was in decline elsewhere.
Narrator: Islam. The word that means submission — a religion of peace, practice, and extraordinary intellectual and cultural richness spanning fourteen centuries and nearly two billion lives.
Speaker A: The misconception that Islam is a monolith is significant. The diversity within Islam — theologically, culturally, politically — is enormous.
Speaker B: The gap between Sunni Islam and Shia Islam alone is vast, and within each there are multiple schools of jurisprudence and theological tradition.
Speaker A: Indonesian Islam looks very different from Saudi Islam, which looks different from Moroccan Islam, which looks different from British Muslim practice.
Speaker B: The same text — the Quran — read through different cultural and interpretive lenses producing very different ways of living the faith.
Speaker A: Sufism is an example — the mystical tradition within Islam that emphasises direct spiritual experience and has produced extraordinary poetry and music.
Speaker B: Rumi's poetry, which is enormously popular in the West, often without people realising they're reading Islamic mystical verse.
Speaker A: The Islamic contribution to medieval mathematics and science is undersold in standard Western accounts. Algebra itself is from the Arabic al-jabr.
Speaker B: Al-Khwarizmi's name is the origin of algorithm. The Islamic Golden Age was a period of remarkable intellectual productivity that the West has not always acknowledged.
Speaker A: Understanding Islam requires engaging with its actual historical and intellectual complexity rather than a simplified version shaped by contemporary politics.
Speaker B: Which is true of all major religious traditions. The gap between the religion as lived and practised and the political caricature is always significant.
Speaker B: Build a Next.js the Five Pillars of Islam and Islamic practice for a religion teacher — documenting the Five Pillars and their meaning in Muslim life, reviewing Shahada, Salah, Zakat, Sawm, and Hajj, generating an Islam Five Pillars religion framework, and producing an Islam Five Pillars practice guide.
Speaker A: Islamic Five Pillars documented with religious studies analysis so teachers explain both the theological foundations — how each pillar expresses the submission to God that islām names, with Shahada as the verbal declaration, Salah as the embodied orientation five times daily, Zakat as the social responsibility, Sawm as the spiritual discipline, and Hajj as the global community made visible — and the diversity: how the pillars are practised differently across the range of Muslim traditions and how Muslims themselves debate their proper performance.
Speaker B: Design a Django Islamic Golden Age and its contribution to science for a history of science researcher — documenting the intellectual achievements of the Islamic Golden Age, reviewing al-Khwarizmi, Ibn Sina, and medieval Islamic scholarship, generating an Islam Golden Age science framework, and producing an Islam Islamic Golden Age science history guide.
Speaker A: Islamic Golden Age documented with history of science analysis so researchers explain both the translation movement — how the Abbasid caliphate's systematic translation of Greek, Persian, and Indian scientific texts into Arabic created the foundation for Islamic scholars to extend, correct, and transmit knowledge across mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and optics — and the specific contributions: how al-Khwarizmi's algebra, Ibn al-Haytham's optics, and Ibn Sina's Canon of Medicine shaped European science after the reciprocal translation movement.
Speaker B: Create a Svelte Sunni and Shia Islam and the historic schism for a religious historian — documenting the origin and theological significance of the Sunni-Shia split, reviewing the succession crisis, Karbala, and the two traditions, generating an Islam Sunni Shia history framework, and producing an Islam Sunni Shia religious history guide.
Speaker A: Sunni-Shia split documented with religious history analysis so scholars explain both the succession crisis — how the question of who should lead the Muslim community after Muhammad's death in 632 CE produced the initial schism between those who accepted Abu Bakr as caliph and those who believed the succession should pass to Ali ibn Abi Talib — and the Karbala moment: how the killing of Husayn ibn Ali at Karbala in 680 CE became the defining trauma of Shia Islam, shaping its theology of martyrdom and redemptive suffering.
Speaker B: Build a Vue Islamic law and the schools of jurisprudence for a comparative law scholar — documenting how Islamic law works and how the major schools of jurisprudence differ, reviewing Sharia, fiqh, and the four Sunni madhabs, generating an Islam Sharia law framework, and producing an Islam Islamic jurisprudence law guide.
Speaker A: Islamic law documented with comparative law analysis so scholars explain both the sources — how Islamic jurisprudence derives from the Quran as primary source, the Hadith and Sunnah as prophetic precedent, ijma as scholarly consensus, and qiyas as analogical reasoning — and the school differences: how the four Sunni madhabs of Hanafi, Maliki, Shafii, and Hanbali differ in their methodological approaches to deriving legal rulings, with practical implications for family law, contracts, and ritual practice.
Speaker B: Develop a React Native Sufism and Islamic mysticism for a religious studies scholar — documenting Sufi mysticism within Islam, reviewing Rumi, dhikr, and the Sufi orders, generating an Islam Sufism mysticism framework, and producing an Islam Sufi mysticism religious guide.
Speaker A: Sufism documented with religious studies analysis so scholars explain both the mystical path — how Sufism describes the inner spiritual dimensions of Islam through concepts of the heart's purification, stages of spiritual development, and direct experience of divine presence that complement rather than replace the exoteric pillars — and the tradition's literary achievement: how Rumi's Masnavi, Ibn Arabi's Fusus al-Hikam, and Al-Ghazali's Ihya Ulum al-Din represent the intellectual depth of Islamic mysticism.
Islam — meaning in Arabic & definition More I courses GL Dictionary