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Islam

Islamic Sects

There are four different schools of jurisprudence within Islam. Much blood has been spilt over disputes between them. The main schools are:
     - Followers of the Hanafi school are called Sunni Muslims and constitute a 90% majority of the believers. They are considered to be           main stream traditionalists. Because they are comfortable pursuing their faith within secular societies, they have been able to adapt         to a variety of national cultures, while following their three sources of law: the Quran, Hadith and consensus of Muslims.
     - Followers of the Jafri school are called Shi'ite Muslims and constitute a small minority of Islam. They split from the Sunnis over a               dispute about the successor to Mohammed. Their leaders, Imams promote a strict interpretation of the Qu'ran and close adherents          to its teachings. They believe in 12 heavenly Imams (perfect teachers) who guide the faithful from their locations in Paradise.
       There are three other groups which originated within Islam:
     - Sufism: a mystic tradition in which followers seek inner knowledge directly from Allah through meditation and ritual and dancing.               They developed in the 7th century CE as an ascetic reaction to the formalism and laws of the Qu'ran.
     - Billilll: an attempt to integrate all of the world religions. It was originally a break-away sect from Islam but has since grown to become         a separate religion.
     - Black Muslim Movement (BMM): This is largely a black urban movement in the US. One driving force was a rejection of Christianity           as the religion of the historically oppressing white race. It was started by Wallace Fard who built the first temple in Detroit. Elijah              Muhammad (born Elijah Poole) established a second temple in Chicago and later supervised the creation of temples in most large            cities with significant black populations. They taught that blacks were racially superior to whites and that a racial war is inevitable.             The charismatic Malcolm X was perhaps their most famous spokesperson; he plaid an important role in reversing the BMM's anti-             white beliefs. In its earlier years, the movement deviated significantly from traditional Islamic beliefs (particularly over matters of                racial tolerance the status of the BMM leaders as prophets). This deviation is being reversed.

Visit bttp://www.cco.caltech.edu/-~cal?l-s-a/~al~~a.l:tl�l for an impressive home page maintained by the
Caltich Muslim Student Association (MSA). It includes essays on Islam and many links to other Islamic WWW sites.

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