"Spanning the Islamic world, from ninth-century Baghdad to nineteenth-century Iran, this book tells the story of the key Muslim map-makers and the art of Islamic cartography. Muslims were uniquely ...
Within a single century armies from Arabia transformed entire regions of the world. Muslim forces defeated powerful empires and expanded across three continents. This episode explores the military ...
To become a Muslim and to convert to Islam, it is essential to say the Shahada in front of Muslim witnesses, [81] one of the Five Pillars of Islam, a declaration of faith and trust that professes that there is only one God (Allah) and that Muhammad is God's messenger. [82]
The faith of Islam helped various Muslim peoples in their struggle to gain political freedom in the mid-20th century, and the unity of Islam contributed to later political solidarity.
While the majority of Muslims are Sunnis, estimated to constitute 75-90% of the global Muslim population, the Shi’a community, making up about 10-20%, experiences different socio-political dynamics and sometimes discrimination from other Muslim groups.
A series of Muslim leaders, known as caliphs, became successors to Muhammad as spiritual and civil heads. This system of leadership became known as a caliphate.
(The word Muslim means “one who submits to the will of God,” and both Muslim and Islam come from the same Arabic root s-l-m, which means “submission” or “peace.”)
These tribes needed to be united in the interests of stability, and Islam became the means of binding them together. After the death of Prophet Muhammad in 632 CE, the leadership of the Muslim Ummah (community) was taken by Abu Bakr, who assumed the title of caliph (successor of the Prophet).