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 fewer than 8,000 people (mostly in Casablanca and other coastal cities). There is no indigenous Christian minority. There are no significant religious differences between the Berbers, found primarily in the
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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), who were criticized for betraying an ideal. Qur’an 2.247-249 cites the Hebrew prophet emphasizing that God alone made and unmade (3.26) kings, whom he endowed with knowledge and power, not
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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 grace was a direct result of his vanity. Having been ordered by God to bow to Adam, all angels complied except Satan. Satan explained his defiance as follows: “I am
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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 tendencies appeared in the last decades of the nineteenth century in response to westernizing regimes and European rule. Elite Muslim culture was evolving into separate westernized and traditional spheres that
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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 isrd’ or “night journey,” when God “carried his servant [Muhammad] by night” (Qur’an, 17.1). Qur’anic commentators take this verse, along with surahs 53.1-21 and 81.19-25, to refer to the mz’rdj.
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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 Muslim societies; the second considers the position of Muslim minorities in non-Muslim societies.] Minorities in Muslim Societies The status and treatment of minorities in Muslim societies (or, more generally, under
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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 in the Qur’an to mean “religion.” Later the Qur’anic usage was extended to include religious community and especially the community of Islam. By the time of the Ottoman Empire (1300-1918)
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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 (1207-1273). He was the son of the famed scholar Baha’ al-Din Valad, and migrated as a child with his father from Balkh (in modern Afghanistan) to Konya in Rfim (modern
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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 oppression at the End of Time-messianism is a salient feature of Islamic soteriology. Messianic expectations were part of the early Muslim belief in the prophet Muhammad as the dkhir al-zaman
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