Islam is highly significant in contemporary life, but describing it as “the oldest religion in the world” confuses two different questions. The historical emergence of the Muslim community belongs to seventh-century Arabia. The Islamic belief that submission to God reaches back through earlier prophets is a theological account of continuity, rather than a historical claim that the community formed around Muhammad preceded every other religious tradition.
Islam’s relevance does not depend on winning a contest of antiquity. It concerns the lives of Muslims, the influence of religious practices and institutions, cultural and intellectual history, and shared questions about justice, belonging and public life.
Historical origins and religious continuity
The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s introduction to the birth of Islam places Muhammad’s first revelation in 610 CE and the migration from Mecca to Medina in 622. Muslims understand the revelations as God’s words communicated through Gabriel and preserved in the Quran.
The distinction between history and belief is essential. A historian can investigate the growth of the community and the transmission of texts; identifying revelation as divine is an affirmation within the faith.
Quran 3:67 describes Abraham as a person who submitted to God. This helps explain how Muslims can use “Islam” in the broad religious sense of submission extending through earlier prophetic history.
That use is different from dating the emergence of a historically identifiable community. It does not make seventh-century Arabia chronologically earlier than Judaism, Christianity or Buddhism.
The hijrah and the formation of a community
Harvard’s Pluralism Project explains the hijrah as Muhammad’s migration from Mecca to Medina in 622, following persecution in Mecca and an invitation from people in Medina. The event marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar.
Its importance concerns community formation as well as movement between places. Religious teaching, leadership and the organisation of a shared life became closely connected. The term ummah refers to community and has continuing importance in Muslim self-understanding.
The Pluralism Project’s account of Muhammad also distinguishes the Quranic revelations from later collections of reports about his words and actions. Those reports, or hadith, contribute to the understanding of the Prophet’s Sunnah, his example and practice.
The Quran and hadith are consequently related sources with different forms and histories. Explaining Islam through one undifferentiated category of “holy books” conceals how Muslims study and interpret them.
A worldwide population with many cultural settings
Pew Research Center’s June 2025 demographic study estimates that there were about two billion Muslims in 2020, roughly 26% of the world’s population. These are estimates for 2020, not a live population count for the present year.
The same study places 59% of Muslims in the Asia-Pacific region and identifies Indonesia, Pakistan and India as the countries with the largest Muslim populations. Islam cannot therefore be understood as only a Middle Eastern or Arabic-speaking religion.
This geographical breadth has practical implications. Languages, local histories, migration and institutions shape the settings in which Muslims live. Shared religious references can coexist with different marriage customs, educational arrangements, artistic traditions and relationships with the state.
Population size explains why knowledge of Islam matters, but it cannot establish what any individual believes or how observant that person is. Religious affiliation and daily practice answer different questions.
The five pillars: a recurring structure of practice
The Hadith of Gabriel in Sahih Muslim 8a sets out testimony of faith, prayer, zakat, fasting in Ramadan and pilgrimage for those able to undertake it. These are the familiar five pillars, especially prominent in Sunni teaching.
The shahada affirms God’s oneness and Muhammad’s messengerhood. Salah establishes regular prayer; zakat concerns obligatory giving under its religious rules; sawm refers here to Ramadan fasting; and hajj is the pilgrimage to Mecca for those able to perform it.
Dhikr, remembrance of God, is an important religious practice, but it does not replace hajj in this list. The distinction matters because an incorrect list obscures the structure it is supposed to explain.
These practices connect religious life with time, resources and community. Prayer structures a day; Ramadan reshapes patterns of eating and worship; giving concerns the use of wealth; pilgrimage involves travel and a shared sacred place. Their significance extends beyond a collection of private opinions.
Ethical teaching and practical institutions
Islamic sources address relationships with other people as well as devotional duties. Quran 4:135 calls for justice even when testimony concerns oneself or close relatives. The demand challenges the temptation to protect one’s own interests at someone else’s expense.
Such an ideal does not by itself show how every Muslim institution behaves. To understand present-day activity, it is useful to examine specific organisations and their documented work.
Islamic Relief Worldwide’s report for 2025, for example, describes emergency relief, food and livelihoods work, water and sanitation projects, and Ramadan distributions. These are the organisation’s reports of its own activities, not a description of everything Muslims do worldwide.
The example shows how religious giving can become part of an organised response to material needs. Questions about governance, effectiveness and accountability remain meaningful alongside the organisation’s religious motivation.
Science and culture: a specific object tells more than a slogan
Connections between Muslim religious life, scientific work and craftsmanship can be examined through surviving objects. The Metropolitan Museum’s astrolabe made by Umar ibn Yusuf is dated 690 AH/1291 CE and attributed by inscription to a Rasulid prince of Yemen.
The museum connects it with his scientific writings, including a treatise on constructing astrolabes. Its curators explain uses involving the stars, time and orientation toward Mecca for prayer.
The instrument makes several relationships concrete: astronomical calculation, skilled metalwork, learned authorship and religious requirements could intersect in one object. It also illustrates why the history is more interesting than the general claim that a religion either created science or opposed it.
The Met’s account of early Islamic art similarly describes the importance of Arabic writing and calligraphy in transmitting and honouring the Quran. Cultural history includes particular materials, patrons and makers, rather than a single artistic style shared identically across every Muslim society.
Religious diversity and efforts to address division
Muslim communities differ over authority, jurisprudence and interpretation. Those differences should neither be erased nor treated as evidence that no shared references exist.
The Three Points of the Amman Message provide an example of an initiative seeking recognition across several legal traditions. The declaration names four Sunni schools, the Jafari and Zaydi Shia schools, the Ibadi school and the Zahiri school, and rejects declaring their adherents apostates.
It also argues that issuing religious rulings requires qualifications and a recognised method. These are the declaration’s normative commitments, not proof that every Muslim accepts the initiative or that disagreements have disappeared.
The example is relevant to contemporary public discussion because it shows a specific attempt to address exclusion and claims of religious authority. A general statement that Islam “promotes unity” gives less information about what people are actually trying to achieve.
Public life includes discrimination as well as religious debate
Understanding Islam also means taking Muslim people’s social circumstances seriously. The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights’ 2024 report Being Muslim in the EU draws on the experiences of almost ten thousand Muslim respondents in thirteen EU countries.
In its 2022 survey findings, 47% reported racial discrimination during the preceding five years. The report discusses experiences involving employment, housing and other settings. These findings concern the surveyed populations and period, rather than every Muslim worldwide.
Evidence about discrimination is different from agreement with a religious doctrine. It is possible to examine beliefs critically while also investigating whether people receive fair treatment in work, education and public services.
Conclusion
Islam’s historical origins lie in seventh-century Arabia, while Muslim accounts of submission to God connect the faith with earlier prophets. Keeping those meanings distinct corrects the “oldest religion” claim without diminishing the tradition’s historical depth.
Its contemporary significance becomes clear through practice, global communities, charitable institutions, cultural objects and debates over authority and belonging. Specific sources and examples explain that significance more reliably than claims that one faith guarantees harmony or offers one uniform answer to every modern problem.
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