Muslim+Faith

This is page where students are exploring //Life of Pi// using the focus topic of the Muslim Faith and what this teaches Pi.

Please respect students' responses by leaving the comments, additions, etc. as is.

**Period 2:** Sam, Robin, Molly, Kendall, Jamie = Wild Muslim Warriors =

"So it went the first time I saw a Muslim pray - quick, necessary, physical, muttered, striking." (p.76) // Sam // - Islam prayer ensures that prayers are said five times each day and the timings are spread evenly throughout the day, so that a Muslim is constantly reminded of God and given sufficient opportunities to seek forgiveness and quidance from Him. ([]) // Sam // //Sam//

media type="youtube" key="DoNPSEWn6aY?fs=1" height="385" width="480"// Sam // "When I corrected her, I told her that in fact she was not so wrong; that Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed hairless Christians, just as Muslims, in the way they see God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians, in their devotion to God, are hat-wearing Muslims." (p. 62) "If you take two steps towards God,' he used to tell me, 'God Runs to you!" (p. 77) // Sam // What is the significance of the Muslim and Pi's atheist teacher having the same name? (Both believes in "extremes" if you will. Extremely religious, and extremely not. Coincidence?) Molly  "I love my prayer rug. Ordinary in quality though it was, it glowed with beauty in my eyes...Wherever I laid it I felt special affection for the patch of ground beneath it and the immediate surroundings, which to me is a clear indication that it was a good prayer rug because it helped me remember that the earth is the creation of God and sacred the same all over" (p96)  - The idea of a prayer rug and Pi's strong sacred attachments to it, come from the teachings of the Muslim baker Mr. Kumar Molly **Muslim**- of or pertaining to the religion, law, or civilization of Islam.

Existentialism: Ø existentialism is a philosophy concerned with finding self and the meaning of life through free will, choice, and personal responsibility Ø a religious philosopher, Nietzsche, an anti-Christian, Sartre, an atheist, and Camus an atheist are all strong believers of existentialism and all agree that human life is in no way complete and fully satisfying because of suffering and losses that occur when considering the lack of perfection, power, and control one has over their life.  ﻿  // Sam //  " **Islam** is the monotheistic religion articulated by the Qur'an, a text considered by its adherents to be the verbatim word of Gos (Allah), and by the teachings and normative example of Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam. The word //Islam// literally means "submission (to God)" and an adherent of Islam is called //Muslim//." ([]) // Sam //
 * Islam**- the religious faith of Muslims, based on the words and religious system founded by the prophet Muhammad and taught by the Koran, the basic principle of which is absolute submission to a unique and personal God Allah.   MOLLY: EXISTRNTIALISM
 * Human free will
 * Human nature is chosen through life choices
 * A person is best when struggling against their individual nature, fighting for life
 * Decisions are not without stress and consequences
 * There are things that are not rational
 * Personal responsibility and discipline is crucial
 * Society is unnatural and its traditional religious and secular rules are arbitrary
 * Worldly desire is futile

Kendall Beram-  As you look at the flow of Muslim fundamentalism, or fundamentalism in various areas and various religions, they all play on the people who have very little. [|**James Wolfensohn**]

Period 3: DOUBLE TROUBLE - Alex and Caleb
"'What's your religion about?' I asked. His eyes lit up. 'It is about the Beloved,' he replied." (p.76) - Belief in one God, Allah in Arabic, constitutes the very foundation of Islam. There is no deity except Allah. He is indivisible and absolutely transcendent. God is the Almighty, the Creator and the Sustainer of the universe, Who is similar to nothing and nothing is comparable to Him. ( [])

"Yet no mosque, church or temple felt so sacred to me"(p.78) - It seems that Mr.Kumar's hovel is another refuge for Pi and this also shows that places outside of mosques, churches, and temples can be a place for prayer. "And the more I learned about Him, the less I wanted to leave him."(p.72) - This really shows that people can change dratically as a result of what they read or what they hear.

Muslim- of or pertaining to the religion, law, or civilization of Islam.

Islam- the religious faith of Muslims, based on the words and religious system founded by the prophet Muhammad and taught by the Koran, the basic principle of which is absolute submission to a unique and personal God Allah.



Existentialism is the concern about existence and what is real and how it exists. The picture above says "existentialism is a humanis" and I agree with the statement because humanism is the study, philosophy, or practice that focuses on human values and concerns, and a major human concern is about existence, thus existentialism is a humanism.

Existentialism: A loose title for various philosophies that emphasize certain common themes: the individual, the experience of choice, and the absence of rational understanding of the universe with a consequent dread or sense of absurdity in human life. The combination suggests an emotional tone or mood rather than a set of deductively related theses, and existentialism attained its zenith in Europe following the disenchantments of the Second World War. However, the first significant thinker to stress such themes was Kierkegaard, whose work is generally regarded as the origin of existentialism. Existentialist writing both reacts against the view that the universe is a closed, coherent, intelligible system, and finds the resulting contingency a cause for lamentation. In the face of an indifferent universe we are thrown back upon our own freedom. Acting authentically becomes acting in the light of the open space of possibilities that the world allows. Different writers who united in stressing the importance of these themes nevertheless developed very different ethical and metaphysical systems as a consequence. In Heidegger existentialism turns into scholastic ontology; in Sartre into a dramatic exploration of moments of choice and stress; in the theologians Barth, Tillich, and Bultmann it becomes a device for reinventing the relationships between people and God. Existentialism never took firm root outside continental Europe, and many philosophers have voiced mistrust of particular existentialist concerns, for example with being and non-being, or with the libertarian flavour of its analysis of free will.

Existentialism does NOT support:
 * wealth, pleasure, or honor make the good life
 * social values and structure control the individual
 * accept what is and that is enough in life
 * science can and will make everything better
 * people are basically good but ruined by society or external forces
 * “I want my way, now!” or “It is not my fault!” mentality