State, Imperialism, and Dissident Movements

Abstract

Islam as a religion plays a central role in the daily lives of the people, defining Muslims’ obligations to God, Allah, to members of the civil society, the ummah, to the family, and their relations with followers of other religions. After the death of its founder Prophet Muhammad, the Muslim community divided into two main groups: Sunnis and Shias. The two groups subsequently developed different interpretations of the Quran and the prophet’s works that suited their interests. The Sunnis believe that there is no divinely appointed interpreter of the Quran. They recognize two main sources of law (sharia) for individual and communal life: (1) the legislation contained in the Quran and (2) the prophet’s responses in words and deeds to a wide range of events (hadith, pl. ahadith). The sunna treats these ahadith as paradigmatic for individual conduct and for the development of new laws by ulama (religious scholars), whose sincere and disciplined legal reasoning is known as ijtihad.KeywordsDissident MovementReligious LeaderPolitical DevelopmentIslamic StateRevolutionary MovementThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.