More than 23% of the world’s population is Muslim, making Islam the second-largest religion globally, after Christianity. As of today, Indonesia has the highest number of Muslims; Islam is also widespread in South Asia, the Middle East, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Many Muslims also reside in Europe, China, the United States, and Russia.
The Quran is the central sacred text, and Muhammad is considered the last prophet (following Jesus, who is also revered as a prophet in Islam).
For Muslims, the mosque serves as a place of prayer as well as a community meeting space. Mosques do not contain depictions of humans or animals; instead, geometry characterizes their spaces. Indeed, Muslim architects developed mathematical knowledge well before their Western counterparts, due to the close relationship between geometry and theology.
Like Judaism and Christianity, Islam is an Abrahamic religion. Muhammad is regarded as the lord of the prophets.
The term “Islam” signifies obedience to Allah, submission, and abandonment. There is no “clergy” among Muslims, nor any hierarchy, so there is no intermediary between the Divinity and His creatures. Imams are reference points for the faithful due to their deep theological knowledge. Those who profess the Islamic faith are Muslims (not “Islamic”), and an Islamist is a scholar of the religion and the Quran. A good Muslim is one who fully and unreservedly trusts in the Lord.
These are just a few brief notions to accompany you through the geometries of this journey that I would like to dedicate to the understanding of Muslim women.
In an increasingly global world, where the female figure is at the center of debates advocating for gender equality (with many so-called glass ceilings shattered and many more yet to be broken…), I wish to turn our attention to the Muslim female world, past and present, to dispel some common misconceptions and pique the curiosity of those eager to learn about the stories and legends, customs and rights, fashion and opinions of this often misrepresented female universe by media around the world.
The Islamic (or Muslim) religion is also widespread outside Arab countries: the largest Muslim country, as previously mentioned, is Indonesia, where over 200 million out of 270 million inhabitants are Muslims.
All Arab countries are predominantly Islamic, but not all Islamic countries are Arab.
By “Arab countries,” we mean countries of Arab language and culture (in other words, a country is defined as “Arab” when Arabic is its official language, and Islam is the state religion). In many predominantly Islamic countries, Arabic is not the official language (for example, Persian is spoken in Iran), and therefore they cannot be classified as “Arab”: for instance, a Syrian is both Muslim and Arab; a Turk, on the other hand, is Muslim (because Islam is the state religion in Turkey) but not Arab (since Arabic is not spoken in Turkey but Turkish).
Before analyzing the theological movement among women, it is useful to clarify some concepts and terminological issues. The term ISLAM derives from ASLAMA, meaning TO SUBMIT.
SHARI’A, the divine law, is the right path to follow. It encompasses not only religious law but also political law. Crimes punished by Shari’a include theft, murder, personal injury, illicit sexual relations or slander on the same topic, banditry, and the consumption of alcoholic beverages. It doesn’t originate from a ready-to-use revealed law corpus but is formed through the study of sources, the Quran and Sunna (fundamental).
The sources of Islam are the QURAN, the SUNNA, the IJMA’, and the QIYĀS
The QURAN, the supreme source of religion and law, is considered by Muslims the direct and literal word of God, revealed to the prophet Muhammad through the Archangel Gabriel. It is written in Arabic and consists of 114 Suras and 6,236 verses. The revelation took place between 610 and 623 AD.
The SUNNA, which means Tradition, comprises the reports or sayings or actions attributed to Muhammad; it can thus be defined as a set of rules based on the words, actions, and tacit approvals of Muhammad, envoy of God, but at the same time a human being and not divine. As a political and military leader, social guide, the Prophet is a model for all the faithful who are required to follow his footsteps.
The third source of law is the IJMA, meaning “consensus”. It refers to the theses of great jurists, doctors of law to be consulted for every controversial issue; QIYĀS (reasoning by analogy) is the fourth source of law after the Quran, Sunna, and Ijma’ and represents the analogical reasoning based on the premise that there is a similarity between two cases, making it logical to apply the same rule to the new case as was applied to the original case. Defining the position that Islamic women have assumed and hold over the centuries within society is not easy. Indeed, the Quran is interpreted in many of its passages differently by modernists, traditionalists, and fundamentalists. Not all Islamic countries conform to the same school of thought, so the condition of women varies from country to country. Moreover, it varies depending on social status, depending on the environment from which the woman comes or lives. It must be considered that often some ethnic groups or “GROUPS” are still tied to the pre-Islamic period where popular traditions prevail, which in many cases predate the birth of Islam
All Arab countries are (predominantly) Islamic, but not all Islamic countries are Arab
By “Arab countries,” we mean countries of Arab language and culture (in other terms, a country is defined as “Arab” when Arabic is its official language and Islam the state religion). In many countries with a predominant Islamic religion, on the other hand, Arabic is not the official language (in Iran, for example, Persian is spoken) and therefore they cannot be qualified as “Arab”: for example, a Syrian is both Muslim and Arab; a Turk, conversely, is Muslim (because in Turkey, Islam is the state religion) but not Arab (since in Turkey, Arabic is not spoken but Turkish).
Map of Islamic countries
Thank you Simona Travaglini for the content
Click here ➡️ http://www.simonatravaglini.it
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