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Islam
People (15)
Islam is a religious tradition stressing submission to God according to the revelations to the prophet Muhammad (570/571-632 CE), whom Muslims hold to be the last in a line of prophets including Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. Muhammad's revelations are recorded in the Qur'an, the sacred scripture of Islam, and Muslims also consider hadith—reports of Muhammad's sayings and actions—to be authoritative guides for moral life. Divergent views on the proper leadership of the Muslim community (ummah) led to a split between Sunni and Shi'a Islam. With around 1.5 billion followers, Islam is the second largest religion in the world, predominating across the Middle East, North Africa, and many parts of Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Political Islam, often known as Islamism, is currently widespread in many Muslim-majority countries; most Islamist groups identify with the ideals of democracy, while a small minority support terrorism.
Abd-al-Wahhab was born in the village of Uyayna in the Arabian Peninsula. He became an influential Islamic scholar, working within the framework of the Hanbali school of jurisprudence. In 1740, he formed an alliance with Muhammad ibn Saud, whereby the latter committed to implementing and spreading Abd-al-Wahhab's vision of Islam. The political success of the Saud family paved the way for the increasing influence of Abd-al-Wahhab's teachings. These stressed the importance of following the...
Mohammad Abduh was an Egyptian Muslim theologian, journalist, jurist, and reformer. He was born in the Nile Delta in 1849 and studied in Cairo under Jamal al-Din Afghani. His opposition to colonialism and desire to modernize Islamic society on its own terms led to his involvement in an uprising against Egypt’s European-backed ruler, for which he was exiled in 1882. He joined Afghani in Paris to publish an anti-British Islamic revolutionary journal, then returned to Egypt in 1888 and became a...
Hassan al-Banna was the founder and first General Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood. He was born in Egypt in 1906, became a schoolteacher, and founded the Society of the Muslim Brothers in 1928. Preaching a return to Qur’anic principles and a rejection of Westernization as the cure to society’s ills, the Brotherhood expanded to every Egyptian province within ten years, penetrating every facet of society. As it grew, al-Banna’s movement became politically active on issues across the spectrum and...
Yusuf al-Qaradawi is an Egyptian Sunni Muslim scholar and preacher known for using television and the internet to spread his message. He was born in Egypt in 1926 and became a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. He was jailed several times for his teachings, leading him to move to Qatar, where he resides to this day. He hosts the popular Al Jazeera program ash-Shariah wal-Hayat (“Shariah and Life”), and he founded IslamOnline.net, one of the most visited Islamic websites on the internet....
Ayatollah al-Faqih Seyyed Hussein Ismail al-Sadr is the most senior Shi'a cleric in Baghdad, Iraq. He heads the Ayatollah Seyyed Hussein Ismail al-Sadr Foundation Trust, which runs humanitarian, development, and peace and reconciliation projects in Iraq. In particular, the organization promotes dialogue across ethnic lines. Heavily involved in development projects, Al-Sadr has worked to build numerous training centers, orphanages, and hospitals within Iraq. Al-Sadr founded the Humanitarian...
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is the head of the Shi'a seminary of Najaf and Iraq's highest ranking religious scholar. He was born to a family of religious scholars in northeastern Iran in 1930 and went to Najaf in 1951 to study under Grand Ayatollah Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei, whose followers Sistani would inherit upon Khoei's death in 1992. Though he survived the persecution under Saddam Hussein that led to the death of many Shi'a clerics, his mosque was shut down in 1994, only reopening after...
Muhammad Sayyid al-Tantawi was the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Mosque and Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar University until his death in March 2010. He was one of the senior Islamic authorities for Sunni Muslims worldwide. Born in Upper Egypt in 1928, he was educated at the Faculty of Theology at Al-Azhar, worked for Egypt's Ministry of Religious Endowments, and studied and taught in various countries and institutions. He was appointed Grand Mufti of Egypt in 1986, a position he held until 1996. He was...
Dr. Mustafa Çağrıcı is the Mufti of Istanbul. He was born in central Turkey in 1950 and went on to become a professor of Islamic theology. As mufti, Çağrıcı accompanied Pope Benedict XVI during his historic visit to the Blue Mosque in 2006, and met with President Barack Obama during the American leader's April 2009 trip to Turkey. He is known as a progressive scholar who is supportive of the secular Turkish government, and he has presided over a period of increasing religiosity in Turkish...
Fethullah Gülen is a Turkish Muslim preacher and the leader of the Gülen Movement. He was born in eastern Turkey in 1941 and developed a strong following as a preacher in the late 1960s, encouraging Muslim openness to science and other modern academic fields while focusing on engaging students. He founded the Gülen Movement at the end of the 1970s to spread his progressive Islamic ideas, and the organization expanded over the following decades to run hundreds of schools worldwide. The...
A Muslim televangelist or "tele-imam," Amr Khaled is one of the Muslim world's most popular lay preachers. Born in Egypt, Khaled began preaching in 1990 after spending years studying accounting. In 1998, he became a full-time imam, airing his lectures on satellite television. Since then, his popularity has skyrocketed in the greater Muslim world, including among Muslim communities in Europe. Known for his moderate interpretation of Islam, Khaled encourages dialogue, both within the Muslim...
Mohammad Khatami was the fifth president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, from 1997 to 2005. A reforming moderate, Khatami argued in favor of a "Dialogue of Civilizations" with the West and oversaw social and political liberalization in Iran. Educated at a traditional Islamic madrasa, he went on to earn a BA in Western philosophy at Isfahan and studied Educational Sciences at Tehran University, but maintained his status as a Muslim cleric. Khatami was elected in 1997 with 70 percent of the...
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was the political and religious leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and the first Supreme Leader of Iran. Born in central Iran in 1902, he became an Islamic scholar and made his first major foray into politics in 1963 when he organized opposition to the Shah’s Westernizing and secularizing initiatives. He was exiled in 1964 and refused to return until the Shah left. Under mounting pressure, the Shah left in 1979 and Khomeini returned, quickly becoming Supreme...
Sayyid Abul A’la Mawdudi was a Sunni Pakistani Islamist philosopher and political activist. He was born in India in 1903 and worked as a journalist and newspaper editor before founding the Islamic political movement Jamaat-e-Islami in 1941. He opposed the Partition of India but, after it came to pass in 1947, he and the Jamaat-e-Islami moved to Pakistan and advocated the establishment of an Islamic government, which was accepted in 1949. He was jailed for incendiary writings against...
Sayyid Qutb was an influential Egyptian author. Born in 1906, he started off as a secular reformist but became an Islamist in the early 1950s when he joined the Muslim Brotherhood. Qutb initially supported Gamal Abdel Nasser’s overthrow of Egypt’s pro-Western government in 1952, but he turned against the new regime when it remained secular. Qutb was arrested for his subversive writings in 1954, tortured, and imprisoned for a decade, during which time he wrote his influential Qur’anic...
Tariq Ramadan is professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University and president of the European Muslim Network. A Swiss citizen of Egyptian descent, he holds degrees in Philosophy and French Literature and a Ph.D. in Arabic and Islamic Studies from the University of Geneva. He has also studied at al-Azhar. He advocates a self-confident Islam that both engages and critiques Western ideas and institutions. His works include Western Muslims and the Future of Islam (2003) and ...