Muslim world
[5] The history of the Muslim world spans about 1,400 years and includes a variety of socio-political developments, as well as advances in the arts, science, medicine, philosophy, law, economics and technology during the Islamic Golden Age.
The nation states that emerged in the post-colonial era have adopted a variety of political and economic models, and they have been affected by secular as well as religious trends.
By the time of his death, Muhammad had become the political and spiritual leader of Medina, Mecca, the surrounding region, and numerous other tribes in the Arabian Peninsula.
Meanwhile, the Muslim community tore itself apart into the rivalling Sunni and Shia sects since the killing of caliph Uthman in 656, resulting in a succession crisis that has never been resolved.
[62][63][page needed] Qutb ud-Din Aibak conquered Delhi in 1206 and began the reign of the Delhi Sultanate,[64] a successive series of dynasties that synthesized Indian civilization with the wider commercial and cultural networks of Africa and Eurasia, greatly increased demographic and economic growth in India and deterred Mongol incursion into the prosperous Indo-Gangetic Plain and enthroned one of the few female Muslim rulers, Razia Sultana.
[71] Beginning with the 15th century, colonialism by European powers profoundly affected Muslim-majority societies in Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
[72] The Times first documented the term "Muslim world" in 1912 when describing Pan-Islamism as a movement with power importance and cohesion born in Paris where Turks, Arabs and Persians congregated.
[citation needed] In the 21st century, after the September 11 attacks (2001) coordinated by the Wahhabi Islamist[76] terrorist group[77] Al-Qaeda[77][78][79][80] against the United States, scholars considered the ramifications of seeking to understand Muslim experience through the framework of secular Enlightenment principles.
[154] Islamism is generally considered anti-Zionist, anti-capitalist, anti-colonialist and anti-communist; Islamists support family values, sharia, the reformation of interest-based finance, and the broad Quranic command of 'enjoining goodness and forbidding evil.
[162][163][164][165] According to at least one observer (author Robin Wright), Islamist movements have "arguably altered the Middle East more than any trend since the modern states gained independence", redefining "politics and even borders".
[173] Riḍā's Salafi-Arabist synthesis and Islamist ideals greatly influenced his disciples like Hasan al-Banna,[174][175] an Egyptian schoolteacher who founded the Muslim Brotherhood movement, and Hajji Amin al-Husayni, the anti-Zionist Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.
[181] In public and academic contexts,[182] the term "Islamism" has been criticized as having been given connotations of violence, extremism, and violations of human rights, by the Western mass media, leading to Islamophobia and stereotyping.
[193] Jones (2005) defines a "large minority" as being between 30% and 50%, which described nine countries in 2000, namely Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, North Macedonia, and Tanzania.
Shia, on the other hand, believe that Muhammad designated his son-in-law Ali ibn Abi Talib as his true political as well as religious successor.
The countries with the highest concentration of Shia populations are: Iran – 89%,[199] Azerbaijan – 65%,[200] Iraq – 60%,[201] Bahrain – 60%, Yemen – 35%,[202] Turkey – 10%,[203][204] Lebanon – 27%, Syria – 13%, Afghanistan – 10%, Pakistan – 10%,[205][206][207][208][209][210][211][212][213] and India – 10%.
Among these numerous branches, only Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, Hanbali, Imamiyyah-Ja'fari-Usuli, Nizārī Ismā'īlī, Alevi,[224] Zaydi, Ibadi, Zahiri, Alawite,[citation needed] Druze and Taiyabi communities have survived.
There are sizeable non-Muslim minorities in many Muslim-majority countries, includes, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Baháʼís, Druzes, Yazidis, Mandaeans, Yarsanis and Zoroastrians.
The Pew Forum study finds that Indonesia (21.1 million) has the largest Christian population in the Muslim world, followed by Egypt, Chad and Kazakhstan.
[258] The term "Islamic Golden Age" has been attributed to a period in history during which science, economic development and cultural works in most of the Muslim-dominated world flourished.
The major Islamic capital cities of Baghdad, Cairo, and Córdoba became the main intellectual centers for science, philosophy, medicine, and education.
[264] During this period, the Muslim world was a collection of cultures; they drew together and advanced the knowledge gained from the ancient Greek, Roman, Persian, Chinese, Vedic, Egyptian, and Phoenician civilizations.
[274][275] Theologus Autodidactus,[276][277] written by the Arabian polymath Ibn al-Nafis (1213–1288),[278] deals with various science fiction elements such as spontaneous generation, futurology, the end of the world and doomsday, resurrection, and the afterlife.
Rather than giving supernatural or mythological explanations for these events, Ibn al-Nafis attempted to explain these plot elements using the scientific knowledge of biology, astronomy, cosmology and geology known in his time.
His philosophical novel, Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, translated into Latin as Philosophus Autodidactus in 1671, developed the themes of empiricism, tabula rasa, nature versus nurture,[284] condition of possibility, materialism,[285] and Molyneux's problem.
[281] Islamic philosophers continued making advances in philosophy through to the 17th century, when Mulla Sadra founded his school of Transcendent theosophy and developed the concept of existentialism.
[294] Recent studies show that it is very likely that the Medieval Muslim artists were aware of advanced decagonal quasicrystal geometry (discovered half a millennium later in the 1970s and 1980s in the West) and used it in intricate decorative tilework in the architecture.
By the 11th century, every province throughout the Islamic world had these industrial mills in operation, from al-Andalus and North Africa to the Middle East and Central Asia.
The transfer of these technologies to medieval Europe had an influence on the Industrial Revolution, particularly from the proto-industrialised Mughal Bengal and Tipu Sultan's Kingdom, through the conquests of the East India Company.
In the ancient world, though, artists sometimes circumvented aniconic prohibitions by creating intricate calligraphic compositions that formed shapes and figures using tiny script.
[341] According to Asma Barlas, patriarchal behaviour among Muslims is based in an ideology which jumbles sexual and biological differences with gender dualisms and inequality.
