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MOROCCO

MOROCCO. The population of Morocco, about 27 million (26,345,000 in mid-1991), is more than 99 percent Sunni Muslim. There is a small Jewish minority of […]

MONARCHY

MONARCHY. Islam’s expansion faced the ummah (community) with the issue of mulk (royal authority). This term was already used, sometimes pejoratively, under the Umayyads (661-750), […]

MODESTY

MODESTY. Freedom from vanity (al-tawadu`) is a central concept in Islam, directly connected to the concept of tawhid. According to the Qur’an, Satan’s fall from […]

MODERNISM

MODERNISM. Islamic modernists advocate flexible, continuous reinterpretation of Islam so that Muslims may develop institutions of education, law, and politics suitable to modern conditions. Modernizing […]

MI`RAJ

MI`RAJ. Muhammad’s ascent to God and return to the world is known as the mi`raj, literally, “ladder.” This specialized term is sometimes used synonymously with […]

MINORITIES

MINORITIES. [This entry comprises two articles. The first is a historical survey of the status and treatment of nonMuslim minorities (principally Jews and Christians) in […]

MILLET

MILLET. This term is most commonly used in Islamic history to mean “religious community.” It is derived from the Arabic word millah, which was employed […]

MEVLEVI

MEVLEVI. This Turkish/Ottoman Sufi order, known also by its Arabic name Mawlawiyah, takes its name from the epithet of its founder Muhammad Jalal al-Din Rumi […]

METALWORK

METALWORK. Traditional Islamic metalwork techniques, shapes, decorations, hardstones, and gems continued into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with the same conservative styles of the Ottoman, […]

MESSIANISM

MESSIANISM. In the sense of divine intervention in human history-through the appointment of a mahdi (rightly guided person) to deliver the people from tyranny and […]