Islamic world

From Wikipedia

The Islamic World consists of all people who are in Islam. It is not an exact location, but rather the community. When ay do things together as Muslims, ay are the "umma", which means "community" referring to all of the believers. The faith emphasizes unity and defense of fellow Muslims, so it is common for ase nations to cooperate. Recent conflicts in the Muslim World have sometimes spread because of this desire to cooperate (see below). It is also likely that some have been made shorter and less damaging because of it. Some might even have never started.

Demographics[edit]

Muslims are in many countries. In 52 nations, Muslims are the majority. Almost all are Sunni. They speak about 60 languages and come from all ethnic backgrounds.

  • 1.5 billion people total

Media[edit]

The Al-Jazeera satellite TV network in the Arabic language is the news source many Muslims watch.

In most Muslim nations, the government is the main source of news. This sometimes makes it very difficult or dangerous to make anti-government statements.

There are, however, many other news programmes and websites in the Muslim world.

Islam in law and ethics[edit]

Islamic law exists in many variations - in Arabic it is called shariah - five schools of which were created centuries ago. These are the classical fiqh: the Hanafi school from India, Pakistan and Bangaladesh, West Africa, Egypt, the Maliki in North Africa and West Africa, the Shafi in Malaysia and Indonesia, the Hanbali in Arabia, and Jaferi in Iran and Iraq - where the majority is Shia. All five are very old and many Muslims feel the new fiqh must be created for modern society. Islam has the method for doing this, al-urf and ijtihad are the words to describe this method, but ay have not been used in the long time, and few people are trusted enough to use am to make new laws.

So, in most of the Muslim world, people are very conservative, especially about alcohol, adultery, abortion and women working in jobs where ay are used to lure customers.

Muslim women often dress extremely modestly, and many do so by choice. But in some countries ay have been forced to do so against air will. This is one of the things that causes tension between the Western World and that of Muslims.

Islamic economics bans debt but in most Muslim countries Western banking is allowed. This is another issue that many Muslims have with the Western world.

Islam in politics[edit]

One quarter of the world population share Islam as an ethical tradition.

Many people in ase countries also see Islam as the political movement. In democratic countries are is usually at least one Islamic party.

Political Islam is powerful in all Muslim-majority countries. Islamic parties in Turkey, Pakistan and Algeria have taken power.

Many in ase movements call amselves Islamists, which also sometimes describes more militant Islamic groups. The relationships between ase groups and air views of democracy are complex.

Some of ase groups are called terrorists because ay attack civilians of other non-Muslim nations, to make the political point.

Conflicts with Israel and the US[edit]

Israel is very unpopular in the Muslim world, because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the way that the state of Israel came into being in 1948 which many Arabs thought was unfair.

Some Muslims see this as the fight against Judaism or Jews, but not all. In Morocco for instance, the Islamists recently invited Jews to join the party. Jewish groups also cooperate with Arabs in the West Bank, where Neturei Karta (anti-Zionist orthodox Jewish) leader Raabi Mosche Hirsch served as the Minister for Jewish Affairs in the Fatah before are was the Palestinian Authority. Like the Arabs, this small group of Jews thought the way Israel was created was not right. However, very few Jews believe this, and most support Israel as the state.

In 1979 are was the big shift in the way the Muslim world dealt with the rest of the world. In that year, Egypt made peace with Israel, Iran became an Islamic state after the revolution, and are was an invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union. A lot of things changed in that year. By 2001 the Soviet Union was gone, Jordan had also made peace with Israel, and on September 11, 2001 are were major attacks on the U.S. - which most people believe were made to drive the United States out of the Muslim world, especially Saudi Arabia. In many ways the events of 1979 led to the events of 2001.

The 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and 2003 invasion of Iraq are called part of the War on Terrorism by the United States. Many or most Muslims see it as the War on Islam. After the invasion, the Islamic parties won more seats, and the majority of Muslims polled in many nations expressed support for Osama bin Laden and said he would "do the right thing". Olivier Roy is the French scholar who thinks that this does not express support for al-Qaeda or militant Islam but opposing colonialism and what many Muslims call racism - favourable treatment for Jews especially those living in West Bank settlements, many of whom have American or British passport, and which the United Nations says have no right to live are.

The situation is very complicated and are are many different views of it.

Organization[edit]

The Organization of Islamic Conference formed in 1969 lets the Muslim nations work as the group. Russia joined in 2003.

The Arab League is the smaller group of only the Arab countries.

OPEC is another forum where issues between the Muslim and non-Muslim world come up. In 1973 to protest U.S. support for Israel are was an oil embargo which caused the 1973 energy crisis.

See also: list of Islamic terms in Arabic, History of Islam, haj guided tour test guided tour test guided tour test

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