What is Islam?

Islamic (Muslim) doctrine was established by Muhammad between 610 and 620 AD. Islam is an Abrahamic religion, as are both Christianity (Christians) and Judaism (Jews).

Estimates on the global Muslim population range between 700 million to 1.2 billion (between 11% and 18% of the world's population). The number of Muslims in the United States is estimated between 2 million and 7 million.

Islamic doctrine holds that Muhammad became Allah's messenger to the world, on a divine mission to heal the corruption of Allah's truth which had led humans astray since the time of Abraham through the practices of paganism, Christianity, and Judaism.

Muslims believe Islam is the ultimate religious evolution and that only Islam offers Allah's salvation to humankind.

Note: The nature of most organized religions is the personal acceptance of two things:

1. The belief that their chosen doctrine represents the true word of God, and;
   
   
2. The obligation of believers to spread their version of the truth.

Examples:

• Many Catholics believe that, in 1917, in the midst of World War I, the Virgin Mary appeared to three Portuguese children (Our Lady of Fatima), exhorting them to pray for the conversion of the world to Christianity, and specifically revealing to them how to convert the Soviet Union to Christianity.
  


• The Baha'i doctrine - which is partially derived from Islam - calls for its own inevitable spiritual conquest of the world.