Muslims in Europe: - International Institute - University of Michigan

Reviewing the basics of Islam
At the start of the unit you may wish to review some basic information on Islamic belief and
practice.
I. Have your students divide into groups of three to four with a large sheet of paper at
each desk. (11” x 17” copy paper works very well for this exercise.)
II.
III.
Instruct each group to list on their large sheet of paper five things they were taught or
think they know about Islam. The charts should also be illustrated with symbols they
believe represent Islam.
Have each group present to the class. While students are displaying their posters and
explaining their symbols, quietly correct the stereotypes that will inevitably surface
and praise accurate information.
Examples of common student errors:
Muhammad founded Islam.
Islam conceives of itself as those who submit to the will of God, as it has been historically
related to different peoples by the 25 prophets listed in the Qur’an, beginning with Adam. In a
more direct sense, both Jews and Muslims in the Middle East believe themselves to be both the
physical and spiritual descendants of the Prophet Abraham. Abraham’s covenant with God, then,
forms the basis of both the religious identity of Jews and Muslims and in that regard Muhammad
(as the final prophet according to Muslims), is not the founder of Islam. He is the founder of the
Islamic community.
Muslims worship Allah.
Muslims worship God and Allah is merely the Arabic word for God and is the same word used
by Arabic speaking Jews and Christians. Since the students wrote a sentence in English they
should use an English word to complete the sentence.
Islam forces people to convert.
The second sura or chapter of the Qur’an, expressly states that religious conversion cannot be
forced (“there is no compulsion in religion”). Historically this has meant that Muslims were
absolutely forbidden to forcibly convert other monotheists, Jews and Christians, although those
not considered monotheists did not receive the same protection. Islamic law allowed Jewish and
Christian communities to operate houses of worship and to run their own affairs. They were
assigned a special tax and this had the effect of providing an economic incentive not to coerce
Jews and Christians into converting. The first Islamic empire, under the Umayyad dynasty based
in Damascus, believed that Islam should retain an exclusive Arabic character and they actually
discouraged non-Arab conversion. In most parts of the Islamic empire outside of the Arabian
Peninsula the transition to a majority Islamic population took many years. In Persia the process
took some three centuries before most people had become Muslim.
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