Salaam, brother. I want to ask you if Islam is considered an ideology? Thank you.
Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,
An ideology is a man-made belief system that claims to explain certain aspects of the world and that makes recommendations for appropriate behavior.
Islam is also a belief system that claims to explain certain aspects of the world and makes recommendations for appropriate behavior. So it has everything an ideology has, but it is incorrect to call it an ideology because it is much more than that.
Ideologies are intellectually much smaller than religions (have much fewer concepts), are generally not generationally transmittable (it is often difficult to raise one’s children in the same ideology as oneself, while raising children in the same religion is relatively easy), and they expire quickly (while a religion may last for thousands of years, ideologies go through a short period when they are fashionable then they go out of fashion to be replaced by newer ideologies).