1) Determine the Key concepts of your topic
2) Define your key words / search terms.
3) Choose your databases and resources
4) Formulate the search statement
5) Refine and focus your results
6) Evaluate and manage the results
7) Locate the full articles
(see the finding articles tab above)
Start with the keyword Islam and add other terms to narrow your topic - string your words together with "and" - for example:
Islam
Islam and Christianity
Islam and History
Islam and Muslims
Terms and names:
Ahmed, Giasuddin
Al-Ghazali, Abu Hamid Muhammad
Al-Rumi, Jalal al-Din
Allah
Allah (hu) akbar
amal
Anno Hegirae
Armenian Genocide
Caliph
Crusades
dervish,
Dome of the Rock
Eid al-Adha
Eid al-Fitr
faqir (fakir)
five pillars
Hadith
hajj
haq
Hasbuna Allah
hijra
ihsan
iman
Injil
Islam
Jibril
jihad, greater
jihad, lesser
Kaabah
Karbala
Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan
Khudai Kitmatgars
Mecca
Medina
Mernissi, Fatima
minaret
muezzin
Muhaiyaddeen, M. R. Bawa
Muhammad
mujahid
mumin
Muslim
Muslim Brotherhood
Muzaffar, Chandra
Night Journey
Quran
Qutb, Sayyid
Rabia of Basra
Ramadan
rasul
sadaqa
salaam
salat
saum
shahada
Sharia
Shia
shirk
Sufiam
Sunna
Sunni
sura
umma
Wahhabi
zakat
What is the meaning of the common phrase
Allah (hu) akbar? Of the phrase Hasbuna Allah?
Was Muhammad an orphan? Explain.
How did Muhammad get to know his first wife Khadijah?
How did Muhammad come to know Islam?
How did Meccan leaders respond at first to Muhammad's preaching based on his visions?
Why did Muhammad go to Medina? What did he do there?
What is the principal disagreement between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims?
Why do Muslims insist on reading the Qur'an in Arabic rather than in a translation?
Learn the Five pillars of Islam. For each pillar, What do Muslims do? When? How?
African American Muslims
African Americans—religion—history
Black Muslims
Farrakhan, Louis
Muhammad, Elijah, 1897-1975
Nation of Islam (Chicago, Ill.)
X, Malcolm, 1925-1965
One of the challenges in doing research on Islam is the fact that there are often several spellings for the same word. Transliteration is a term that means changing words from one writing system (in this case Arabic script) into another (in this case the Roman alphabet). Over the years there have been a number of ways that Arabic words have been rendered into English.
Here are some common variations that you should be aware of in developing your Search Strategy:
Suggested Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) to use as search terms for this topic include: