College Happenings

My friend Liz and I were taking a walk the other day and starting talking about Indians. India Indians and whether or not they could be called Middle Easterners. I said I didn’t think so because they are from India. She said that is in the Middle East.

Then we started trying to figure out the difference in Islam and Muslim and Sunni’s and Shiites. I took a class called Multi-Cultural and Diversity. I had learned that people who were Muslim are Islam. And I knew that people from Iran are Persian. But I didn’t really know what that meant.

So I looked it up. I figure I am not the only one that is confused by it, so I thought I would share what I found.

Islam can be said to have been founded in the year 610 C.E. by Muhammad ibn Abd Allah in the city of Mecca (present day Saudi Arabia). Followers of Islam are called Muslims, but in some texts (especially older ones) you may find the alternate spelling “Moslem.”
The principle texts of Islam are the Qur’an and the Hadith. Islamic beliefs and practices are contained in the Shari’a, the Sunna, and the “Five Pillars.” The two major groups of Muslims are the Sunnis and the Shi’ites. Two minority, but important, groups are the Sufis and the Wahhabis.
Currently, Islam is the second largest religion in the world, with about 20% of the world’s population calling themselves Muslims (for comparison, about 33% of the world’s population calls themselves Christians). However, Islam is the fastest growing religion, and estimates suggest that they will outnumber Christians sometime around the year 2020.

This info is from the About website

Now, if you didn’t know this, you are smarter than you were before you read it.