One in every five people worldwide is a Muslim, some 1.3 billion believers. Islam is the world’s fastest growing religion and it has spread across the globe.

Muslims everywhere agree on the Shahadah, the profession of faith: “There is no God but Allah; Mohammed is the prophet of Allah.” But Islam is far from homogenous—the faith reflects the increasingly diverse areas in which it is practiced.

“Islam is a world religion,” said Ali Asani, a Harvard professor of Indo-Muslim Languages and Culture. “If you think about doctrine and theology, when these sets of religious ideas and concepts are transferred to different parts of the world—and Muslims live in many cultures and speak many different languages—the expressions of those doctrines and theology will necessarily be influenced by local culture.”

Sometimes such regional distinctions are obvious to even casual observers. Mosques, for example, all share common features—they face Mecca and have a mihrab, or niche, that indicates that direction. Yet they also boast unique architectural elements and décor that suggest whether their location is Iran, Africa, or China. The houses of worship provide what Asani calls “a visual reminder of cultural diversity.”

Other easily grasped regional distinctions have their origins at the level of language. While Arabic is Islam’s liturgical language, used for prayer, most Muslim’s understanding of their faith occurs in their local language.

“Languages are really windows into culture,” Asani explains. “So very often what you find is that theological Islamic concepts get translated into local idioms.”

Asani sees Islamic diversity as a multi-sided issue of doctrinal and cultural diversity. “It’s a very complex group of factors that influence and determine how the religion is practiced and understood in a particular region or part of the world,” he said.

Some Islamic fundamentalists might frown upon the diversity caused by local characteristics, but such are the predominant forms of Islam.

Well-Traveled Faith

“Rather than discussing Islam, we might more accurately talk about ‘Islams’ in different cultural contexts,” Asani said. “We have Muslim literature from China, for example, where Islamic concepts are understood within a Confucian framework.”

In the region of Bengal, now part of the nation of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal, a popular literary tradition created a context for the arrival of Islam. The concept of the avatar is important to the Hindu tradition, in which these deities become incarnate and descend to Earth to guide the righteous and fight evil.

source : news.nationalgeographic.com