The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1105 page)

Isis and Osiris
:

see
DYING AND RISING GODS
.

 
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ISKCON
:

see
INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR KRISHNA CONSCIOUSNESS
.

 
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Islam
(Isl
m)
.

The religion of allegiance to God and to his
prophet
Mu
ammad
, the religion (
d
n
) which God always intended for his creation, but which is derived in its present form from the prophetic ministry of Mu
ammad (
c.
570–632 CE), and from the
revelation
mediated through him, the
Qur’
n
. The verbal noun
isl
m
appears eight times in the Qur’
n: derived from the same Semitic root as Heb.
sh
lom
(peace), it means ‘entering into a condition of peace and security with God through allegiance or surrender to him’.
Islam began historically in the quest of Mu
ammad to find the absolute truth of God in the midst of the many conflicting claims which he encountered in his environment about the nature of God. Mu
ammad went off for periods of increasing isolation during which he struggled in prayer to find
al-Haqq
, the true One; and in a cave on Mount
ir
’, there came to him the overwhelming sense of that reality pressing upon him, and the first of the utterances that later became the Qur’
n were spoken through him (96. 1). From this absolute sense of God,
All
h
, derived the insistence which is characteristic of Islam, that if God is indeed God, then there can only be what God is, the One who is the source of all creation and the disposer of all events and lives within it. The life of Mu