Fazlur Rahman (September 21, 1919 – July 26, 1988), Pakistani philosopher and educator and prominent liberal reformer of Islam. Born in what is now Pakistan in 1919, Fazlur Rahman received a master’s degree in Arabic from Punjab University, Lahore, in 1942, and a doctorate in Islamic philosophy from Oxford University in 1949 He was lecturer
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FYZEE, ASAF ALI ASGHAR (1899-1981), Indian educator, public official, and internationally known writer on Islamic law. Fyzee was born at Matheran near Bombay on 10 April 1899 into a Sulaimani Bohora family. The Bohoras are mainly concentrated in western India and are descendants of Hindu converts and Yemeni Arabs. They supported al-Musta’li’s (r. 1094-1101) claim
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FUTUWAH. Based on the word fata (“youth”) as representing an ideal of manhood and chivalry, futuwah is linked to the idealized figure of `Ali ibn Abi Talib, the prophet Muhammad’s cousin and the first youth to convert to Islam. Historically, futuwah has been associated with popular forms of revivalist Islam, Sufi orders, craft guilds, and
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FUNJ SULTANATE. In about 1500, after several turbulent centuries of transition in Nubia, a new Islamic government reunited much of the northern Nile-valley Sudan in the area bounded by Egypt, Ethiopia, the Red Sea, Darfur, and the vast swamps of the White Nile. Within this precapitalist agrarian polity, an ethnically heterogeneous class of subjects, through
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FUNERARY RITES. [To articulate religious values and traditions reflected in funerary rites in modern Islamic societies, this entry comprises two articles: Legal Foundations and Modern Practice.] Legal Foundations The Qur’anic kerygma is grounded in the fact of human mortality, and death is referred to euphemistically as “the certainty” (al yaqin). Natural death is part of
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FUNDAMENTALISM. The activist affirmation of a particular faith that defines that faith in an absolutist and literalist manner is termed fundamentalism. It involves the effort to purify or reform the beliefs and practices of adherents in accord with the self-defined fundamentals of the faith. Fundamentalist interpretation entails a self-conscious effort to avoid compromise, adaptation, or
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FRANCE. Owing to the forty years of Muslim domination of the southern part of the country during the eighth century, France came into contact with Islam at a relatively early date. Other attempts at penetration continued into the tenth century but were not successful. Throughout the Middle Ages and in spite of the prevailing spirit
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FITNAH. The Arabic root f-t-n means “burn.” It is used also of melting gold or silver with fire, to try them. Hence it is both a burning and a trial, or a temptation, and by extension a seduction or a charming-an enchantment. Thus in the Qur’an (20.40) it is said that God tested Moses; in
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The religio-political organization known as the Fida’iyan-i Islam (Devotees of Islam) was created in 1945 in Tehran by Sayyid Mujtaba Navvab Safavi. Born in 1923, Navvab claimed descent from the Prophet on his father’s side, and on his mother’s side, from the Safavid dynasty (1501-1722). Training to become a cleric, Navvab attended the ShN theological
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The city of Fez in northern Morocco is the most prominent legacy of the Islamic Idrisid Dynasty (788974 CE). The first capital and Islamic spiritual center of Morocco, it was founded in 789 by Idris ibn `Abd Allah, a descendant of the prophet Muhammad, who had fled to Morocco to escape persecution by the `Abbasids.
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