The Encyclopedia of World Religions

Amish S 11

At that time God will welcome the righteous into the gardens of paradise. Allah is not the only designation for God in Islam. Muslims also recognize 99 “most beautiful names.” One of them, al-Rahman, occurs at the beginning of almost every sura or section of the Q UR ’ AN : “In the name of God, al-Rahman [the mer ciful], al-Rahim [the compassionate].” The highest form of art in Islam is calligraphy, artistic writing. Ideal subjects for this art include verses from the Qur’an about God and his most beautiful names. altar A place, usually elevated, on which peo ple offer SACRIFICES . Altars vary greatly. There are home altars, public altars, portable altars, station ary altars, freestanding altars, and altars associ ated with temples. Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and some Protestant Christians call the table on which the E UCHARIST is celebrated an altar, too. At times this altar has been shaped like a sarcophagus and required to hold a RELIC . Many altars have been quite simple. The first Greek altars were simply piles of ash from previous sacrifices. Other altars have been great works of art. The Pergamum Altar to Z EUS (164–156 B . C . E .), now in a Berlin museum, measures roughly 100 by 100 feet wide by 30 feet tall; its seven-foot-tall marble frieze shows the battle of the gods and the giants. Some classic early European paintings are altarpieces. A good example is the Isenheim altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald ( c. 1455–1580). Vedic Hindus constructed elaborate altars, too ( see V EDA ). The scholar Stella Kramrisch once sug gested that piled Vedic altars provided the models for Hindu temples. al-Qaeda See Q AEDA , AL -.

she once hid in a heavenly cave as protest against her brother Susanoo, a storm god, when he des ecrated her celebration of the harvest festival. She was enticed out when another GODDESS did a comic dance and the gods laughed uproariously, making her curious. Amaterasu’s primary place of WORSHIP is the Grand Shrine of I SE , where her chief symbol, an ancient mirror, is enshrined. Amida Japanese name of Amitabha, a cosmic B UDDHA . Amida is best known as the principal fig ure in the form of B UDDHISM known as P URE L AND B UDDHISM (Jodo in Japanese), which is very popu lar in East Asia. It tells us that many aeons ago on becoming a buddha, Amida vowed that, out of compassion, he would bring all who called upon his name in simple faith to his HEAVEN or Pure Land, also known as the Western Paradise, after death. Temples in the Pure Land tradition generally have an image of Amida in MEDITATION as a central object of WORSHIP , and often works of gold and jewels to suggest the wonders of the Pure Land. Amish Particular groups of M ENNONITE Chris tians. The most traditional Amish are the Old Order Amish. They are probably the most visible and best known Mennonites. That is because, par adoxically, they are so assiduous in avoiding the ways of the world. The Amish split off from other Mennonites in the 1690s. The issue was discipline. All of the “plain people”—conservative Mennonites, Amish, and Brethren—observe a strict discipline. It cov ers many areas of life, such as dress and the use of modern inventions. In observing the discipline they claim to practice what the B IBLE teaches, espe cially Romans 12.2: “Do not be conformed to this world.” In the 1690s Jakob Amman ( c. 1675–1725), a Mennonite elder, disagreed with other elders over how to enforce the discipline. Following certain verses in the Bible, he taught that those who vio lated the discipline should be shunned. That is, no member of the community should associate

Amaterasu S HINTO goddess associated with the sun and believed to be the ancestress of the Japanese imperial house. In mythology, she is said to inhabit the High Plain of HEAVEN . There