Muslim world

The terms Muslim world and Islamic world commonly refer to the unified Islamic community (Ummah), consisting of all those who adhere to the religion of Islam.

Quotes

• When the Imam said that "the relations with the America are like the relations between a wolf and a sheep," he meant that the tension in these relations would continue until America renounces its imperialist essence — and it is not about to do so for the time being. The Imam was talking about the struggle between Islam and America, not about compromising with America. He said: "We will not allow you to have interests in the world of Islam."
  • Hasan Rahimpur Azghadi, in an televised address Iranian leader: "We Are Stronger Than America and the West (June 2006).

• I think there is a massive gulf in the understanding and knowledge between Muslims and non-Muslims — I mean particularly the West and the Islamic world. What we are talking about in reality is a strong minority of people committed to their own particular interpretation of Islam, who seek to impose it on others. I do not believe that the totality of the Islamic world recognizes the Taliban interpretation of the faith as being representative of its own view. There is no unanimity in Islam with regard to this interpretation. Generally you will see as much diversity in the Islam as you do in the Christian world today. But the West does not really understand the pluralism of the Islamic world.
  • Aga Khan IV‎‎, in an interview with Robert Ivy (FAIA), in Architectural Record (31 August 2001).

• If we judge from Islamic history, there is much to encourage us. For century after century, the Arabs, the Persians, the Turks and many other Islamic societies achieved powerful leadership roles in the world — not only politically and economically but also intellectually... The fundamental reason for the pre-eminence of Islamic civilizations lay neither in accidents of history nor in acts of war, but rather in their ability to discover new knowledge, to make it their own, and to build constructively upon it. They became the Knowledge Societies of their time.
  • Aga Khan IV‎‎, in an address to the 2006 Convocation of the Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan (2 December 2006).

• The Muslim world, with its history and cultures, and indeed its different interpretations of Islam, is still little known in the West… The two worlds, Muslim and non-Muslim, Eastern and Western, must, as a matter of urgency, make a real effort to get to know one another, for I fear that what we have is not a clash of civilisations, but a clash of ignorance on both sides.
  • Aga Khan IV‎‎, in his Closing Address by His Highness the Aga Khan at the "Musée-Musées" Round Table Louvre Museum, (17 October 2007).

• If there is much misunderstanding in the West about the nature of Islam, there is also much ignorance about the debt our own culture and civilization owe to the Islamic world. It is a failure, which stems, I think, from the straight-jacket of history, which we have inherited. The medieval Islamic world, from central Asia to the shores of the Atlantic, was a world where scholars and men of learning flourished. But because we have tended to see Islam as the enemy of the West, as an alien culture, society and system of belief, we have tended to ignore or erase its great relevance to our own history.
  • Charles, Prince of Wales, "Islam and the West" at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (27 October 1993).

• Islam has been one of the main targets in the Chinese government’s campaign against the Uyghurs, and Islamophobia is being tacitly encouraged by Communist party authorities. Students, peaceful academics and even ordinary people for the simple reason for being Muslims are being jailed, with a massive high-tech surveillance state that monitors and judges every movement, subjecting the widely marginalised Uyghur people to a brutal siege. Internment camps have been set up with up to a million prisoners being indoctrinated and ‘re-educated’, leading to empty neighbourhoods, with major mosques in the major cities of Kashgar and Urumqi standing deserted. Prisoners in the camps are also being compelled to renounce God and embrace the Chinese Communist Party doctrines and prayers, religious education, and the fasting in the month of Ramadan being increasingly restricted or banned. Those who disobey are reportedly subject to torture such as solitary confinement, deprivation of food, water and sleep, and even waterboarding. The reason that so many are being held is because most are arrested for no discernible reason, other than to curb religious practice and erase Uyghur culture.
  • Lukman Harees, Why The Muslim World Is Silent Over China's Repression of Uyghurs, World Uyghur Congress, 2 January 2019

• It’s not as if Muslim countries haven’t spoken out about human rights in the past. As Myanmar’s military ramped up its violence against Rohingya Muslims late last year, citizens in Jordan and Iran staged multiple protests in solidarity with the Rohingya. Saudi Arabia’s mission to the UN also condemned the situation online. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, an international consortium which calls itself “the collective voice of the Muslim world,” also pledged this May to set up a “proper investigation” into the Rohingya crisis. So why hasn’t anyone said anything about China’s Uighur issue?
  • Alexandra Ma, Why the Muslim world isn't saying anything about China’s repression and 'cultural cleansing' of its downtrodden Muslim minority, Business Insider, 27 August 2018

• The extinction of race consciousness as between Muslims is one of the outstanding moral achievements of Islam, and in the contemporary world there is, as it happens, a crying need for the propagation of this Islamic virtue; for, although the record of history would seem on the whole to show that race consciousness has been the exception and not the rule in the constant interbreeding of the human species, it is a fatality of the present situation that this consciousness is felt -and felt strongly- by the very peoples which, in the competition of the last four centuries between several Western powers, have won at least for the moment the lion’s share of the inheritance of the Earth.
  • Arnold Joseph Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, Oxford University Press, 1948, p. 205.

• The Arab contribution to Islamic culture has been unduly magnified, and that of the civilized peoples of Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Persia, later converted to Islam, has been sadly belittled.
  • William Montgomery Watt in Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman (1961), p. 239

• This year’s slogan was “Mera Jism, Meri Marzi” (my body, my choice), and yet not only such simple, plain words fell deaf upon many ears,..Something as basic and benign as consent, and the right of anyone over their own body, was labelled and hailed in many quarters as a “western agenda” to unravel the fabrics of our Islamic society...The cries for equal treatment of women, protection against harassment, protection against rape, protection against any form or face of force, economic and physical security, religious freedom were drowned under criticism of people whose only skin in the game were their patriarchal beliefs which felt vulnerable....The episode unveiled the misogynist face of the society, where a female is discriminated against on the basis of her gender. Her body is everyone’s property except hers. Stigmatized, she is a reduced identity fit only for procreation, preservation of culture and continuity of social norms. The family honor rests in her “chaddar and char dewari”(veil and four walls of a house).
  • ZARMEENA NAYYAR

External links

• The Islamic World to 1600 an online tutorial at the University of Calgary.
• Islamic world travel guide from Wikivoyage