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The Muslim world is a term given to the world-wide community of those who adhere to the religion of Islam. This community, who are known as Muslims, number approximately 1.1 - 1.2 billion people. This community does not constitute a distinct race, but are spread across every race; the world's Muslims are connected only by the heritage of adhering to a common religion.

When believers in Islam co-operate as Muslims, they are known as the "ummah", which means "all of the believers". The faith emphasizes unity and defense of fellow Muslims, so it should be common for Muslim nations to co-operate; however, Muslim politics, particularly Arab politics, has tended to divide rather than unite the Islamic world.

Geographic spread

Many Muslims not only live in, but also have an official status in the following regions:

The countries of Southwest Asia, and many in Northern Africa are considered part of the Middle East.

Also worthy of mention are provinces of Kosovo in the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Chechnya in the Russian Federation, where Muslims are in the majority.

Some definitions would also include the sizable Muslim minorities in:

Demographics

One fifth of the world population share Islam as an ethical tradition. Muslims are the majority in 52 nations. They speak about 60 languages and come from diverse ethnic backgrounds.

  • 284 million Muslims in the Arab League including Iraq (with about 15 million Shia, 60% of the population in Iraq)

  • 67 million Muslims (90% of them Shia) in Iran

  • 420 million Muslims in South Asia

  • 289 million Muslims in East Asia
    • 30 million Muslims in China
    • 209 million Muslims in Indonesia (the largest National Muslim community in the world)
    • 30 million Muslims in the rest of South-East Asia, especially Malaysia and Brunei.
    • Small populations in Japan, Mongolia, North Korea or the South Pacific

  • close to 1.5 billion in total

Important organizations

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries includes many nations that are also in the Arab League. Although most oil sources on Earth are not in nations with Muslim majorities, the fully developed exporting regions are.

A politically motivated oil embargo in 1974 (to support Egypt and Syria in their 1973 war against Israel after US secretly re-equipped Israel with armaments) had drastic economic and political consequences in the United States and Europe. Although such a move would have less impact today, it demonstrates the power of the Muslim World acting in concert, and the key role of religion and ethnicity in the politics of oil regions, with which the Muslim world intersects.

As oil sources in Indonesia, Central Asia and southern regions of Russia become more developed, oil politics may be less dependent on the Arab World but more dependent on the Muslim World as a whole. Activities of Islamists seem destined to play a larger role, as they seek unified policies and support for unified fronts against non-Muslim peoples who control Muslim oil resources.

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

Main denominations of Islam

The two main denominations of Islam are the Sunni and Shia sects. The difference between them is primarily in terms of how the life of the ummah ("faithful") should be governed, and the role of the imam.

The overwhelming majority of Muslims in the world are Sunni.

The Shi'a are a majority in Iraq (60%) and in Iran (89%), and Azerbaijan (75%). A more strictly traditional Shia regime maintains power in Iran, although a nominally Sunni minority held political power in Iraq up until the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

There are other differences in how Muslims practice their faith; notable polarities are the Islamists who are fundamentalist and the liberal reformists.

Islam in law and ethics

In some nations, Muslim ethnic groups enjoy considerable autonomy.

In some places, Muslims implement a form of Islamic law, called shariah in Arabic. The Islamic law exists in many variations, but the main forms are the five (four Sunni and one Shia) schools of jurisprudence (fiqh):

All five are centuries old and many Muslims feel a new fiqh must be created for modern society. Islam has a method for doing this, al-urf and ijtihad are the words to describe this method, but they have not been used in a long time, and few people are trusted enough to use them to make new laws.

So, in most of the Muslim world, people are socially conservative.

Muslim women often dress extremely modestly, and many do so by choice. Thus, in some countries an interpretation of the Islamic law requires women to cover either just legs, shoulders and head or the whole body apart from the face. In strictest forms, the face as well must be covered leaving just a mesh to see through. These rules for dressing are one of the things that cause tension between the Western World and that of Muslims, concerning particularly Muslims living in western countries.

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

Civil and political freedoms remain to be a source of controversy. The recent cartoon controversy has been a serious blow to development of freedom of expression in the Muslim world.

Islam in politics

Many people in Islamic countries also see Islam manifested politically as Islamism. In democratic countries there 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 these movements call themselves Islamists, which also sometimes describes more militant Islamic groups. The relationships between these groups and their views of democracy are complex.

Some of these groups practice terrorism. According to US President George W. Bush, they all have a single common agenda:

"The militants believe that controlling one country will rally the Muslim masses, enabling them to overthrow all moderate governments in the region, and establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia," Bush asserted in an October 2005 speech.

Conflicts with Israel

Israel is very unpopular in the Muslim world, due to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the way that the state of Israel came into being in 1948 which many Arabs rejected as unfair.

Some, but not all Muslims see this as a fight against Judaism or Jews. Most Muslims, in fact, make a clear distinction between Judaism and Zionism. In Morocco for instance, the Islamists recently invited Jews to join the party. Other hardline countries, such as Iran, grant Jews exceptional political rights, though social and political discrimination very much exists (see Persian Jews). Prior to the Iranian Revolution, Iran and Israel maintained a strong political frienship (see Iran-Israel relations). Today, Turkey is Israel's closest Muslim friend; and some other Muslim countries, such as Egypt and Jordan, have developed diplomatic relations and signed peace treaties with Israel, an act opposed by the Palestinian Authority. Jewish groups also cooperate with Arabs in the West Bank, where Neturei Karta (anti-Zionist orthodox Jewish) leader Rabbi Mosche Hirsch served as the Minister for Jewish Affairs in the Fatah before there was a Palestinian Authority. Like many Arabs, this small group of Jews oppose Israel's existence.

Nuclear capabilities

The other conflict Muslims have with the West is regarding nuclear capabilities and weapons. Pakistan's testing of nuclear weapons in 1998 earned it American-imposed sanctions. Following the Gulf War, the United Nations put in place sanctions against Iraq, to keep it from developing weapons of mass destruction. The sanctions were, reportedly, the cause of death for 500,000 Iraqi children. The widely criticized 2003 Invasion of Iraq was justified as an attempt to rid Iraq of Weapons of Mass Destruction (These weapons were never found). The current U.S./Iranian tension is also related to Iran's nuclear programme.

Recent history

1979 was a critical year in the Muslim world's relationship with the rest of the world. In that year, Egypt made peace with Israel, Iran became an Islamic state after the Iranian Revolution, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan occurred.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War Muslim/Non-Muslim relations have been dominated by the "War on Terrorism". Some of the events pivotal in this relationship are:

The United States approach to dealing with the threat of terrorism (the "War on Terrorism") has been seen as a War on Islam by many Muslims.

In many Muslim countries Islamic parties have won more seats in elections since 2001, and a majority of Muslims polled in many nations expressed support for Osama bin Laden and said he would "do the right thing".

Olivier Roy is a French scholar who thinks that this does not express support for Al Qaeda or militant Islam but opposes colonialism and possible racism - favourable treatment for Jews especially those living in West Bank settlements.

Growing polarization

In Pakistan, nominally a US ally, Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal - a virulently Anti-American Islamist political party - won local elections in two out of four of the country's provinces and became in mid-2003 the third largest party in the national parliament, their best showing ever. For the first time, their support comes not just from the areas bordering Afghanistan, but even from urban areas. (See Politics of Pakistan)

In Kuwait, elections in July 2003 returned Islamic traditionalists and supporters of the royal family, while liberals suffered a severe defeat. (See Elections in Kuwait)

In Indonesia, the growth of various groups allied to those seemingly responsible for the Bali Bombing most of which have previously been invisible, has been marked. It is expected that executions of perpetrators of that attack, which hit mostly citizens of Australia, will polarize that nation further.

Future

Some believe that the Muslim World is destined to democratize and replace constitutional monarchy and military dictatorship with representative democracy. G. E. Jansen in 1979, in his book Militant Islam, postulated that Islamist movements were themselves the most likely path to democratization.

Turkey as the only country in the Islamic World with a strong tradition of secularism and democracy as state policy, Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia and Algeria may represent the examples of a movement towards democracy. They enjoy substantial local democracy and have active political life.

Many believe that the Muslim World is fated to come into deeper conflict with the western world. At least one Islamic nation, Pakistan, has developed nuclear weapons. Weapons of mass destruction are likely to become easier to construct given the modernizing and fast-developing economies of the Muslim World.

See also

External links

Islam

جهان اسلام | Dar-al-Islam | העולם המוסלמי | イスラム世界 | Islamic world

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Muslim world".

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