This week in class we started learning about Islam. We only had one class this week, but in that class, we had an introduction to Islam and looked at Mohammed’s last sermon.

The word Islam means “surrender to God,” and the word Muslim means “one who surrenders.” The holy book of Islam is called the Koran (also spelled Qur’an). Like Judaism and Christianity, Islam is a monotheistic religion. Muslims worship one God named Allah. Muslims also believe that Mohammed was the greatest prophet as well as the last prophet.

Mohammed’s last sermon was a message of Mohammed’s teachings and instructions to spread those teachings to others. We spent time learning about the Five Pillars of Islam that are in Mohammed’s last sermon. The Five Pillars of Islam are (1) worship Allah, (2) pray five times each day, (3) fast during Ramadan, (4) give 8% of earnings to charity, and (5) perform Hajj if affordable. These are the things that are essential for Muslims to do.

We also discussed how Muslims are not allowed to charge interest. Charging interest is a sin in Islam. The thought process behind this is that God creates time, so people should not charge for and profit off of time that they did not create. This means that banking in Muslim countries is significantly different than the banks we are familiar with in the United States. That is an interesting concept that I might take a look at later.

Also interesting is the Hajj, the Muslim religious journey to the city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Mecca is the holiest site in Islam, and every Muslim who can afford to travel to Mecca is supposed to go there at least once. Only Muslims are allowed to enter Mecca. When Muslims pray, they pray in the direction of Mecca. In this way, Mecca seems to be the spiritual center of Islam. From what I can tell, the journey of Hajj is for Muslims to connect with this Islamic spiritual center. The fact that only Muslims can visit Mecca shows how sacred it is to Islam. It makes it clear that Mecca is the holiest place in Islam, not a tourist attraction.

Here are other things that stood out to me from Mohammed’s last sermon:

The text says “All mankind is from Adam and Eve,” something that Jews and Christians also believe. This shows some relationship between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Race and ethnicity do not give one person superiority over another person. The examples given are Arabs to non-Arabs and white people to black people.

“Learn that every Muslim is a brother to every Muslim and that the Muslims constitute one brotherhood.” This line is about how all Muslims are to view and treat each other as family. This also speaks to how Muslims are supposed to be unified. There may be disagreements, but based on this, Muslims are not supposed to let disagreements divide and weaken each other.

Mohammed’s last sermon covers a lot of things. I look forward to comparing and contrasting Islam with Judaism, Christianity, and other religions that we have already studied.

This week in class we learned about Christianity.

The core belief of Christianity is that Jesus is the Son of God and that He died on the cross for the sins of humanity and was resurrected three days later so that people may be saved. One thing that is central to Christianity is the Holy Trinity. Christians believe that there is one God, but God has three different figures. There is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

One thing that caught my attention about what we learned this week was the persecution of Christians in Rome. For the Romans, Christianity represented a loss of power from the Roman Empire, and the Romans wanted to stop the spread of Christianity. This, however, is a direct tie back to the Sermon on the Mount which we read parts of this week. Jesus said: “Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.” People who were Christian at the time could remember this and be confident and encouraged in staying true to Christianity and to Jesus. People in power want to keep their power, as it seems to be with the persecution of Christians in Rome. We read the letters between Pliny and Trajan together in class. We noticed that while the Romans were concerned with the fact that people were Christians, they were not concerned with Christians’ morals.

Another thing I found interesting was the Council of Nicaea and the Nicaean Creed. The purpose of the Council of Nicaea was for the Roman emperor Constantine to unify Christians in the Roman Empire under one common set of beliefs. The Nicaean Creed was made by the Council of Nicaea to set a clear statement of belief for Christians. In the Nicaean Creed, there are sections about the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and the Christian church. The reading also informs that the Council of Nicaea chose which texts would be used as official Christian documents. Some gospels besides Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were written, but they were not included in the Christian Bible. I wonder how the official Christian texts and the Nicaean Creed were decided upon. If many people brought their differing views of Christianity to the Council of Nicaea, how was it decided which beliefs would become standard Christian beliefs? How long did the Council of Nicaea meet before everyone agreed on a creed and the texts that would become part of the Christian religion?

The history of early Christianity is something that people do not learn much about very often. Although many Christian churches reference the formation of the early Christian church, Christian religious services may not go into much specific detail about it. I might read about the formation of the early Christian church outside of school, and I would be interested to learn about how Christian churches started in places other than the Western world. I imagine that it may be much less acceptable to be a Christian in places like the Middle East where Islam is the dominant religion.

Speaking of Islam, that is the next religion we are going to be learning about in the coming weeks!

We have started to study monotheistic religions in class. This week we learned about Judaism. We looked at an overview of Judaism, the rules of kosher, and the Ten Commandments found in Exodus.

In the overview of Judaism, it was interesting that monotheism starts with Abraham’s covenant with God. God promised that if Abraham and his descendants would always serve and worship God, God would forever protect Abraham and his descendants. I wonder how that must have felt for Abraham to make a covenant with God. I imagine that it made him nervous and afraid, but also humbled and grateful that God chose him to be the father of God’s people. We learned about how the first five books of the Bible are collectively called the Torah. The story of Abraham is in Genesis, the first book of the Bible. The totality of Hebrew scriptures are called the TaNaKh.

In the rules of kosher, we looked at some of the general rules for preparing and eating food. Some of the rules include not eating dairy with meat, not eating pork, and not letting utensils that have been used with non-kosher food be used with kosher food. Sometimes I see food labeled as kosher, and now I have a better understanding of what that means. We talked about how these are rules that not everyone is obligated to follow. These rules are for Jewish as part of their religion, and they do not necessarily affect how other groups of people prepare and eat their food.

Moses and the Ten Commandments show how God created rules for his people to follow. God chose Moses to lead the Jews out of slavery in Egypt. Then, Moses goes onto Mount Sinai, and God gives Moses the Ten Commandments. They are the code for God’s people to live by, and they are important because they are rules that come straight from God.

Before this week, I did not know too much about Judaism. I had heard about how Jews were exiled from their homeland, but I did not know when that was or who exiled them. Now I know that the exile that had the greatest impact was done by the Romans in the year 135 C.E., and it spread Jewish people around the world. Also, it was new information to me that the country Israel has not been established for as long as I thought. Jewish people only started living there again in the late 1940s.

At the end of the week, we looked at the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. I knew the two religions were connected by Jesus, but I had not thought about it much before. Christians incorporate the TaNaKh into the Christian Bible as the Old Testament. We talked about how Jesus was Jewish, so Christianity comes out of Judaism. (This is similar to how Buddhism comes out of Hinduism because Siddhartha was Hindu.) We used that as our transition into Christianity, and I am looking forward to learning more about Christianity next week!

This week in class the idea came up about why it is difficult to understand the mindset of people from different time periods in the past. In modern society, we have different views and understandings of the world, so some thought processes from people in the past do not make much sense to us. We have a hard time figuring out why certain things were done because it seems very strange and unusual today.

In modern society, we have much more knowledge of science than people did hundreds of years ago. Through science we can understand chemistry and how all matter is made up of atoms. We have insight into the structure of cells and organisms. People can calculate the motion and trajectory of objects using physics. Information is being gathered about the Earth and space to help people get a bigger picture of the Universe. We take this information for granted in our society today. Even if we do not know something for ourselves, the Internet enables us to quickly type something in the search bar and get millions of results in less than a second. People long ago did not have the knowledge or technology that we have today that allows us to be able to have a much more scientific approach to our view of the world.

An example of this is eclipses, particularly solar eclipses. People who did not have the information about the solar system that we have now would have been very concerned by solar eclipses. They could have been just minding their own business when suddenly the sun got blocked out and everything got quiet. When we hear that they thought the world was going to end, we think of it as an absurd idea. But back then, with little to no knowledge of space or the relationships between the Sun and the Moon, people may not have come up with a more reasonable conclusion. Now when we have eclipses, people get excited. They buy special eclipse glasses and travel into the path of totality to see it. The eclipse gets put on TV for people to see who aren’t in the path of totality. Scientists are glad for the opportunity to study parts of the Sun that are only visible during solar eclipses, and lasting memories are made of the times when the Moon blocks the Sun.

Also, people’s social views have changed over time, and some topics are becoming more acceptable to talk about than they have been in the past. In general, I think the world is becoming more open-minded to things that have been rejected in the past. This may be because people are becoming more aware of the imperfections in the world or just because newer generations are more willing to bring them up in discussions. An example of this is what is considered a typical family unit. Before, the traditional family was a husband, wife, and children. Now family units may be blended or have extended family members.

In conclusion, people’s modern outlooks on the world are very different from those of people from hundreds of years ago. We are unable to relate to the lack of information about many topics that we consider basic knowledge today. Our knowledge has expanded greatly, and compared to people in the past, we are able to have a much more logical approach to situations that may seem confusing at first.