Deen

Deen: Start Here

Every Deen article in one place. Search them, filter by topic, or follow a reading path from the Qur'an and the Prophet ﷺ through hadith and the schools to money and Islam in Australia.

Mohammad Siddiqui

— 22 min read
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Interior of the Qatar National Library in Doha: tiers of pale shelving and reading terraces under a wide, light-filled roof
Photo: En Merker, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Deen · Start here

These are the Deen pages: 32 long articles, each written to answer one question about Islam properly and with its sources on show. They lean on each other. The Qur'an, the life of the Prophet ﷺ and the Companions sit underneath everything else; the pieces on the pillars and daily practice, belief and the afterlife, hadith, the schools, Sunni and Shia, money and Islam in Australia build on top of them. You can search the whole lot below, pick a topic, or follow one of the reading paths further down.

Everything here is meant to be checkable. If you find a claim that doesn't hold up, or a source I've misread, email me at mohammad.siddiqui@icloud.com with the source and I'll correct it.

All articles

Showing all 32 articles.

Reading paths

If you'd rather be told what to read next, these are the orders I'd suggest. Some articles sit in more than one path, because a piece like the schools tree is useful from several directions.

Start here

The three foundation pieces, then the pillars. If you only have time for one, make it the Qur'an.

  1. The Qur'an: What It Is, How It Came Down, and How It Was Kept
  2. Muhammad ﷺ: A Life
  3. The People Around Muhammad ﷺ: Companions, Wives and Family
  4. The Five Pillars and the Six Articles of Faith

The Qur'an and the Prophet ﷺ

The book, the man who received it and the people around him, then the long argument over his birthday.

  1. The Qur'an: What It Is, How It Came Down, and How It Was Kept
  2. Muhammad ﷺ: A Life
  3. The People Around Muhammad ﷺ: Companions, Wives and Family
  4. مسألة المولد النبوي (The Mawlid, Session by Session)
  5. The Mawlid Sourcebook

Practice: the pillars

What a Muslim actually does: the pillars, then prayer, fasting, zakat and Hajj, and the calendar that times them.

  1. The Five Pillars and the Six Articles of Faith
  2. Prayer (ṣalāh): How and Why
  3. Ramadan and Fasting in Australia
  4. Zakat in Practice
  5. Hajj and ʿUmra
  6. The Islamic Calendar and Its Sacred Days

Belief

What Muslims believe about God, the unseen and the hereafter, and the book and the life those beliefs rest on.

  1. Belief in God, the Prophets and the Unseen
  2. Death, the Grave and the Afterlife
  3. The Qur'an: What It Is, How It Came Down, and How It Was Kept
  4. Muhammad ﷺ: A Life

Hadith: how we know what he said

Most disagreements end at a hadith and its grade. These four explain how reports were sorted, and how to check one.

  1. How a Hadith Is Judged
  2. The People Behind the Hadith: Narrators, Chains and How They Were Judged
  3. The Hadith Collections: A Complete Tree
  4. Every Hadith on This Site: An Index

Sunni and Shia

Start with the series hub, then read the three parts in order. Keep the schools tree open in another tab for when the names pile up.

  1. Sunni and Shia
  2. How Sunni and Shia Came to Be
  3. The House and the Schools
  4. How Islam Travelled
  5. Islamic Schools of Thought: The Complete Tree

Law, schools and practice

How a layperson follows scholarship, then where that gets tested: Salafism, Sufism, mid-Shaʿbān and the Mawlid.

  1. Following a Madhhab: Taqlīd, Ijtihād and Mixing Schools
  2. Salafism: Origins, Beliefs and the Arguments Around It
  3. Sufism: Origins, Orders and Critiques
  4. Islamic Schools of Thought: The Complete Tree
  5. The 15th of Shaʿbān: What the Texts Say
  6. مسألة المولد النبوي (The Mawlid, Session by Session)

Daily life

Where the texts meet an ordinary week: everyday Sunna, food, the verses on women, and super.

  1. The Sunna in Daily Life
  2. Halal Food in Australia
  3. Women in Islam: Texts and Interpretations
  4. Halal Super in Australia: A Checklist for 2026

Money and modern life

Two pieces for people making real decisions about loans, interest and super in Australia. Research, not financial advice.

  1. Riba: A study in evidence
  2. Halal Super in Australia: A Checklist for 2026

Islam in Australia

Some local history and one very local decision. A short list for now.

  1. How Islam Came to Australia
  2. Halal Super in Australia: A Checklist for 2026

How the pieces connect

A rough map. The three pieces at the top are the foundation; each group underneath depends on them in its own way. Every name is a link.

The foundation

  1. The Qur'anthe revelation
  2. Muhammad ﷺthe life that explains it
  3. The Companionsthe people who carried it

Built on top of it

How these pages are written

The rules are the same on every page. Qur'an references are checked against quran.com, and quotations use Mustafa Khattab's translation as shown there, with the Arabic word added in brackets where his English takes a side the article discusses. Every hadith is checked on sunnah.com where it appears there (and otherwise on dorar.net or in a printed edition, which the article names), with its collection, number and grade, and the name of whoever gave that grade; where a report is weak I say so, even when the weak report is the popular one. Beyond the primary texts I lean on the classical scholars in their own words and on academic reference works such as the Encyclopaedia of Islam, Encyclopaedia Iranica and Britannica, and each article lists its sources at the end.

Each article starts from what the Qur'an and sound hadith establish, and labels everything else for what it is: a school's position, a scholar's reasoning, a claim of consensus, a weak report. Where Muslims disagree, I try to give each side its strongest case in its own terms. Where the dispute is over a devotional practice, such as the Mawlid or the night of mid-Shaʿbān, the article sets out who holds which view and on what evidence rather than ruling on it, and it says plainly when the evidence runs out.

Research, not fatwa. These are research articles, not religious rulings, and the money pieces are not financial advice. For a decision about your own worship, marriage or money, please speak to a qualified scholar you trust.

Corrections. Found a mistake? Email mohammad.siddiqui@icloud.com and include the source that shows it.

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