1. Ninian Smart - The 7 Dimensions of Religion
Ritual
Repeated actions
Material
Items + places
Social
People + roles
Experiential
Experience
Mythological
Stories
Ethical
Rules + Guidelines
All religions include 7 common ideas
Doctrinal
Beliefs + Meanings

2. Memorisation and Recitation…
Task
Can you memorise and recite this paragraph?
How can you make it stick?
"Allah: there is no true God but Him.  The Ever-Living, the Eternal Master of all.  Neither drowsiness nor sleep overtakes Him.  His is all that is in the heavens and all that is on earth…  He is the Most High, the Most Great." (Quran 2:255)
Source:
Give the pupils 2-3 minutes to try and memorise this verse from the Qur’an. Can they do it? If not, how much can they manage? How can they make this stick in their memories?
This task is set because the word “Qur’an” means “recitation”. Muhammad merely listened, memorised and recited the words of the Qur’an from the angel Jibril (Gabriel) and today Muslims aspire to memorise and recite the entire Qur’an. Muslims really admire people called “Hafiz” – those that have memorised the entire Qur’an! The entire Qur’an is about 80,000 words! This quote above is only part of one verse from the Qur’an and there are 6236 verses in the entire Qur’an! = =
80,000 words
6236 verses
The Qur’an

3. Ninian Smart - The 7 Dimensions of Religion
All
All
Learning Objective
To enquire into what the Qur’an is.
All religions include 7 common ideas

4. The Book of all Books Remember this?! Repeated actions Items + places
As Ninian Smart said religions have common features. One particular similarity is that they all have holy books, sacred texts and scriptures; the writings that teach what the religion is about.
Repeated actions
Items + places
Holy books include all of the Ninian’s Dimensions as they outline the rituals believers should follow. They highlight the important objects, clothing or places people should honour. They speak about the key people, about the community of believers and the various roles people can fulfil. Believers tell of experiencing God when reading, meditating or reciting the holy words, or the writings include accounts of people experiencing God. They are full of stories, historical or allegorical. They are packed with rules and guidelines on how to live. And, of course, give instruction for what people are to believe and on how to make sense of life.
People + roles
Experience
Link back to the previous lesson when we briefly went through this. If you class would appreciate it then you could always briefly read it again.
Stories
Rules + Guidelines
Beliefs + Meanings

5. Ninian Smart - The 7 Dimensions of Religion
Islamic Clothing
Read through the text on the Qur’an. Then turn it over once you have read it through and begin to fill in the gaps on the sheet from memory.
Then, once you have had a go at all of the gaps, turn the text on the Qur’an back over and hunt for the answers you missed.
You could do the first task twice if you want to push your memory more. Memory is a muscle; it needs a work out to strengthen.
Cloze sheet copy here (small)
What might be a positive or negative about living your life based on a book?

6. Make your own… You are now going to…
Put together your own holy book creating the following:
Religion name – you need to come up with a name for your religion (if you have not done so already!)
Holy book name – your holy book needs a name that is meaningful for your religion
Front cover – you need to design a front cover for your holy book – this should include the name of the holy book with some kind of design that represents something from your religion