- published: 16 Jan 2013
- views: 820171
Sunni Islam ( /ˈsuːni/ or /ˈsʊni/) is the largest branch of Islam. Sunni Muslims are referred to in Arabic as ʾAhlu-s-Sunnati wa-l-Jamāʿah (Arabic: أهل السنة والجماعة), "people of the tradition of Muhammad and the consensus of the Ummah" or ʾAhlu-s-Sunnah (Arabic: أهل السنة) for short; in English, they are known as Sunni Muslims, Sunnis or Sunnites.
Sunni Islam is sometimes referred to as the orthodox version of the religion. The word "Sunni" comes from the term Sunnah (Arabic: سنة), which refers to the sayings and actions of Muhammad that are recorded in hadiths (collections of narrations regarding Muhammad).
The primary hadiths Al-Kutub Al-Sittah, in conjunction with the Quran, form the basis of all jurisprudence methodologies within Sunni Islam. Laws are derived from the text of the Quran and the hadith, in addition to using methods of juristic reasoning (like qiyas) and consensus (ijma). There is a multitude of scholarly opinions in each field; however, these can be summarised as either derived from the four major schools of thought (Madh'hab) or from an expert scholar who exercises independent derivation of Islamic Law (ijtihad). Both are considered valid as differences of opinion were present at the time of the early Muslims (the Salaf).
Zakir Abdul Karim Naik (Urdu: ذاکر عبدالکریم نائیک; born 18 October 1965) is an Indian public speaker on the subject of Islam and comparative religion. He is the founder and president of the Islamic Research Foundation (IRF), a non-profit organisation that owns the Peace TV channel based in Dubai, UAE. He is sometimes referred to as a televangelist. Before becoming a public speaker, he trained as a doctor. He has written two booklets on Islam and comparative religion. He is regarded as an exponent of the Salafi ideology; he places a strong emphasis on individual scholarship and the rejection of "blind Taqlid", which has led him to repudiate the relevance of sectarian or Madh'hab designations, all the while reaffirming their importance.
Zakir Abdul Karim Naik was born on 18 October 1965 in Mumbai, India. He attended St. Peter's High School in Mumbai. Later he enrolled at Kishinchand Chellaram College, before studying medicine at Topiwala National Medical College and Nair Hospital and later the University of Mumbai, where he obtained a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery (MBBS). His wife, Farhat Naik, works for the women's section of the IRF.
Barack Hussein Obama II (i/bəˈrɑːk huːˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/; born August 4, 1961) is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. In January 2005, Obama was sworn in as a U.S. Senator in the state of Illinois. He would hold this office until November 2008, when he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.
Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004.
Following an unsuccessful bid against the Democratic incumbent for a seat in the United States House of Representatives in 2000, Obama ran for the United States Senate in 2004. Several events brought him to national attention during the campaign, including his victory in the March 2004 Illinois Democratic primary for the Senate election and his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He won election to the U.S. Senate in Illinois in November 2004. His presidential campaign began in February 2007, and after a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party's nomination. In the 2008 presidential election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain, and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. Nine months later, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. In April 2011, he announced that he would be running for re-election in 2012.