MAHMUD, MUSTAFA (25 December 1921 – 31 October 2009), leading Egyptian Islamist philosopher, author, and scientist. Many scholars argue that Islamism in the Middle East is, among other things, a reaction against Marxism and that ex-Marxists have turned increasingly to Islam as an antimodernist ideology. Egypt’s Mustafa Mahmud, a widely known and generally respected figure,
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MAHKAMAH. Meaning a “place of judgment,” the term mahkamah has come to refer to all forms of law court in the Arabic-speaking world. In traditional Islamic settings, emphasis was placed on the individual judge, for instance the gads or the amir, rather than on the institution. Often there was no specialized building which might be
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MAHDIYAH. In the last twenty years of the nineteenth century, the northern territories of the presentday Democratic Republic of the Sudan were dominated by a politico-religious movement that aimed initially to reform worldwide Islam, but that was ultimately realized in the formation of a territorial state along the Nile. Although its fortunes and ideals changed
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MAHDI, AL-SADIQ AL- (December 25, 1935), Sudanese Islamic-Mahdist theologian and contemporary political leader. As great-grandson of the Sudanese Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad ibn `Abdallah (d. 1885), Sadiq was born into a leading Islamic family and trained for his leadership role from birth. [See Mahdi; Mahdiyah.] He received a broad traditional Muslim education and later a modern
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MAHDI. The term mahdi (“divinely guided one”) has come to denote an eschatological figure whose presence will usher in an era of justice and true belief prior to the end of time. The origin of the word cannot be traced to the Qur’an, where in fact it is never mentioned, but rather to a strictly
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MAGIC AND SORCERY. According to Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss (“Esquisse d’une theorie generale de la magic,” in Mauss’s Sociologie et anthropologie, Paris, 1950, pp. 1-141), magic must be distinguished from religion. While religious rites and prayers are conducted by special clergies for the sake of the community, magic is usually practiced privately for individual
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MADRASAH. An establishment of learning where the Islamic sciences are taught, the madrasah is a college for higher studies. During the tenth and eleventh centuries, the madrasah was devoted primarily to teaching law, and the other Islamic sciences and literary philosophical subjects were optionally taught. Today, however, the designation madrasah is ambiguous. Although originally the
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MADINAH AL-FADILAH, AL-. The term almadinah al fadilah (“virtuous city”) reminds one first, and most properly, of the famous book written by the illustrious Abu Nasr Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Tarkhan al-Farabi (AH 257-339/870-950. CE). Designated as “the second teacher”-second, that is, after Aristotle-al-Farabi may also be called the founder of Islamic political philosophy. He
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ABBASI MADANI(MADANI, `ABBASI) (b. 1931), Algerian Islamic activist and political leader. `Abbasi Madani was born in Sidi `Ugbah, in southeastern Algeria. The son of a religious teacher and imam, Madani committed the Qur’an to memory at an early age. He then received his Arabic and Islamic education in Biskra at one of the schools of the
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Modern Legal Reform Reforms affecting Islamic law in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were more far-reaching than any undertaken previously. The impetus for reform came both from within the Islamic tradition, as specialists in Islamic law sought to reform laws in the face of changing attitudes and social needs, and from without, as political leaders
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