Prayer & Discovery
Discover Islam
Eight topics, written in plain English. No assumed knowledge, no leaflet voice, and no attempt to convert you.
01 — Discover Islam
Introduction to Islam
The shortest honest summary, before any of the detail.
Islam is the belief that there is one God, and that God has communicated with humanity through a long line of prophets ending with Muhammad ﷺ in seventh-century Arabia. The word itself means submission — the deliberate act of aligning your life with what God has asked of it.
Around two billion people are Muslim. They live everywhere, look like everyone, and disagree with each other about a great deal. Indonesia has more Muslims than the entire Arab world. In Wales the figure is around 46,000, most of them born here.
What holds that variety together is small and specific: a single God with no partners, a scripture Muslims believe to be God's own words, and a set of practices — prayer, fasting, charity, pilgrimage — done in recognisably the same way from Swansea to Jakarta.
- The Qur'an
- The scripture, revealed over 23 years and preserved in Arabic. Muslims regard it as God's speech rather than a record of it.
- The Prophet ﷺ
- Muhammad is understood as the final prophet, not a divine figure. Muslims do not worship him and would consider doing so a serious error.
- The Sunnah
- His recorded sayings and practice, used alongside the Qur'an to work out how belief translates into a Tuesday.
02 — Discover Islam
What Muslims believe
The six articles of faith, and what each entails.
Muslim belief is usually set out as six articles. They are deliberately few — the tradition has always been more expansive about practice than about doctrine.
None of them require you to switch off a part of your mind. Classical Islamic scholarship spent centuries arguing about all six, in public, in writing, and the arguments are still studied.
- One God
- Absolutely one, without partners, parents or children, and not resembling anything created. This is the article everything else hangs from.
- Angels
- Created beings without free will who carry out God's commands. Not intermediaries you pray to.
- Scriptures
- The Torah, the Psalms, the Gospel and the Qur'an are all held to be revelations. Muslims believe the Qur'an is preserved as revealed.
- Prophets
- Around 124,000 by tradition, from Adam to Muhammad ﷺ, all carrying the same core message to different peoples.
- The Day of Judgement
- Life is finite and accountable. What you did is weighed, and God's mercy is understood to outweigh His justice.
- Divine decree
- God knows what will happen. Muslims still hold that human choice is real, and have argued about how both are true for fourteen centuries.
03 — Discover Islam
The Five Pillars
The practices that turn belief into a working week.
The pillars are the five acts every Muslim is expected to perform. They are physical, repetitive and public in a way that belief alone is not — which is rather the point.
Four of the five are adjustable. The pregnant, the ill, the travelling, the elderly and the poor are exempted or given lighter obligations, and this is written into the rules rather than granted as a favour.
- Shahadah — testimony
- Stating that there is no god but God and Muhammad is His messenger. Said sincerely, it makes a person Muslim.
- Salah — prayer
- Five times daily at set windows, taking five to ten minutes each. It is why the timetable on this website exists.
- Zakat — obligatory charity
- 2.5% of accumulated wealth annually, paid by those above a threshold to those below it. A tax on savings, not on income.
- Sawm — fasting
- No food, drink or intimacy from dawn to sunset through Ramadan. Children, the ill, the travelling and the pregnant are exempt.
- Hajj — pilgrimage
- The journey to Mecca once in a lifetime, for those who can afford it and are physically able. Around two million people a year.
04 — Discover Islam
Prophets in Islam
Most of the names will already be familiar.
Muslims believe God sent prophets to every people, carrying the same essential message. Twenty-five are named in the Qur'an, and the overlap with the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament is substantial.
Adam, Noah, Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David, Solomon, John the Baptist and Jesus are all prophets in Islam. Muslims are required to believe in them, and to name them with respect.
The differences matter and are worth being straight about. Muslims hold that Jesus was a prophet, born of a virgin, who performed miracles — but not that he was God or the son of God, and not that he was crucified. That is a real theological divide, not a misunderstanding to be smoothed over.
- Ibrahim — Abraham
- The shared ancestor of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and the figure the Hajj rites commemorate.
- Musa — Moses
- Named more often in the Qur'an than any other prophet, with the exodus narrative told at length.
- Isa — Jesus
- Honoured as a prophet and messiah, born of Mary, who is the only woman named in the Qur'an and has a chapter named after her.
- Muhammad ﷺ
- The final prophet, whose life is documented in unusual biographical detail for the period.
05 — Discover Islam
Islamic etiquette
Guidance for visitors, and what is and is not expected.
Almost none of this is required of visitors, and no one will correct you. It is written down here so you can decide in advance rather than guess at the door.
The general principle: the prayer hall is treated as a clean, quiet space, and everything else in the building is ordinary.
- Shoes
- Removed before entering the prayer hall, kept on everywhere else. There are racks at the entrance.
- Dress
- Modest clothing covering shoulders and knees is appreciated. Women entering the prayer hall are asked to cover their hair; scarves are available to borrow.
- Photography
- Fine in the exhibition and the courtyard. Please ask before photographing anyone praying.
- During prayer
- You are welcome to watch from the side. Walking directly in front of someone praying is what people would rather you avoided.
- Greetings
- As-salamu alaykum means peace be upon you. Wa alaykum as-salam is the reply. Neither is expected of you.
- Shaking hands
- Some Muslims do not shake hands with the opposite sex. A hand on the heart is the usual alternative and carries no offence in either direction.
06 — Discover Islam
Women in Islam
The question asked most often, answered without a leaflet.
There is a gap between what Islamic law grants women and how Muslim women are treated in some Muslim societies. Pretending that gap does not exist is the reason so many of these conversations go nowhere.
On the textual side: women in Islam have held independent property rights, the right to contract their own marriage, the right to divorce, the right to keep their own name and the right to their own earnings since the seventh century. British women got most of that in the nineteenth and twentieth.
On the lived side, culture frequently overrides text. Forced marriage, denial of inheritance and restrictions on education are practised in some Muslim communities and are contrary to Islamic law in every case. Calling that out is not a criticism of Islam; it is what the tradition itself requires.
The headscarf is worn by choice by the overwhelming majority of women who wear it, including in this building. Where it is compelled — by a state or a family — that compulsion is itself a violation of a Qur'anic principle that there is no compulsion in religion.
- Property and earnings
- A woman's wealth is hers. Marriage does not merge it, and a husband has no claim on her income.
- Scholarship
- Women transmitted hadith, taught in mosques and issued legal opinions throughout Islamic history. Around 8,000 female scholars are documented by name.
- Marriage
- A contract requiring her consent, with conditions she can set. A marriage contracted without it is invalid.
- In this building
- The women's prayer hall has the same sightlines as the men's rather than being a back room, and the Studio runs the largest women's-only programme in Cardiff.
07 — Discover Islam
Common questions
Including those most often asked anonymously.
These come up at the welcome desk, in school visits and in the exhibition's question wall. They are answered here in the same terms we would use in person.
- Is jihad holy war?
- The word means struggle. Its primary use in the Qur'an and in classical scholarship is the struggle against your own worse impulses. It does have a military meaning, hedged with strict conditions — declared by legitimate authority, defensive, no harm to civilians, crops or places of worship. Groups that ignore all four are condemned by mainstream scholarship, comprehensively and in writing.
- What about terrorism?
- Killing civilians is forbidden in Islamic law without qualification, and the scholarly consensus against it is one of the least contested positions in the tradition. That has not stopped it being done in Islam's name, and Muslims are its most frequent victims worldwide.
- Do Muslims and Christians worship the same God?
- Muslims would say yes — the God of Abraham. Christians differ among themselves on the answer, and the disagreement is about the nature of God rather than the identity.
- Why can't Muslims draw the Prophet ﷺ?
- To prevent veneration of images sliding into worship. It is a rule Muslims apply to themselves. Non-Muslims are not bound by it, and the response to someone breaking it is a matter of ordinary law like anything else.
- Why is alcohol forbidden?
- Because of what it does to judgement and to families. The prohibition is total, which is why this building is alcohol-free throughout — including at weddings and corporate events.
- Can I convert? Should I?
- You can, by saying the shahadah sincerely. Nobody here will push you towards it, and the exhibition is not a recruitment exercise. If you want to know more, ask; if you want to look around and leave, that is the more common outcome and entirely fine.
08 — Discover Islam
Islamic contributions to civilisation
A few centuries that are missing from most school curricula.
Between roughly the eighth and fifteenth centuries, the Islamic world ran the most productive scientific and scholarly enterprise on earth. Much of it reached Europe through translation in Toledo and Sicily, and a good deal of it is still in the vocabulary.
Algebra, algorithm, alchemy, alkali, zero, cipher, admiral, average, sugar, cotton, magazine, sofa and coffee all arrived in English from Arabic. So did the numerals used on this page.
- Mathematics
- Al-Khwarizmi's ninth-century work gave algebra its name and gave 'algorithm' its. Indian numerals, including zero, reached Europe through Arabic transmission.
- Medicine
- Ibn Sina's Canon of Medicine was a standard European medical text for six hundred years. Al-Zahrawi's surgical treatise described instruments still recognisable today.
- Optics
- Ibn al-Haytham established that vision works by light entering the eye, and set out an experimental method three centuries before Bacon.
- Hospitals
- The bimaristan — free at the point of use, treating all comers regardless of faith or means, with separate wards and trained staff — predates the European hospital.
- Universities
- Al-Qarawiyyin in Fez, founded in 859 by Fatima al-Fihri, is recognised by UNESCO as the oldest continuously operating degree-granting institution in the world.
- Preservation
- Greek philosophy and science survived largely because it was translated into Arabic, studied, argued with, and eventually translated onward into Latin.
Still have a question
Ask it in person, or ask it anonymously.
Send a question through the form, with or without your name. When Prayer & Discovery opens there will also be a staffed welcome desk and a question wall in the discovery area. Every question is answered in the same terms as this page.