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After the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 , strong differences arose over the method of choosing the leader of the Muslim community. These disagreements ultimately resulted in the division of Muslims into two major groups—Sunni and Shi'i.…

This brief video describes the Islamic arts of the book and book illustration in the form of miniature painting. Related primary resource: Ibn al-Nadim on the Transmission and Authorization of Books, The Qur'an on Paradise (image).

This brief video expores the effect of geometric lines and curves on ornamental design in Islamic art, and illlustrates how they also characterize the timeless, breathtaking architecture of the Muslim world. Related primary resources: Al-Wansharisi…

This brief video describes the arts of weaving, knotting, and dyeing fabrics, including patterned carpets, woven calligraphy and their uses in Muslim cultures at all levels of society. Related primary resource: A Geniza Letter Regarding Trade and…

This brief video describes the structure, architecture and decoration of mosques and other religious buildings and discusses theirvariations in Muslim societies across geography and time. Related primary sources: The Qur'an on the Qibla,…

This brief video describes the arts of Islamic calligraphy, the artistic practice of handwriting based on the Arabic script. Related primary sources: The Qur'an on Paradise,Ibn al-Nadim on the Transmission and Authorization of Books.

The foolish will now ask and say: “What has made the faithful turn away from the Qiblah towards which they used to pray?” Say: “To God belong the East and the West. He guides who so wills to the path that is…

Announce to those who believe and have done good deeds, glad tidings of gardens under which rivers flow, and where, when they eat the fruits that grow they will say, “Indeed they are the same as we were given before,” so alike in…

From Islam's inception, it has had a varied and profound relationship with Judaism. In scripture and thought, in society and politics, in culture and intellectual life, the two religious civilizations have exemplified their relations. In modern…

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the perception of Islam by Christians and non-Christians alike has been profoundly influenced by a number of terrorist events that have marked the beginning of the new millennium. There were, within a few…

Muslims participate in many types of travel that combine spiritual and mundane goals. For pious Muslims, nearly every journey has a religious dimension. Historically and currently, the most popular forms of religiously inspired travel include the…

Unique among the world's great pilgrimages, the hajj is in many ways also the most important. Even compared to the ancient and highly developed international pilgrimage systems of Christianity and Hinduism, the hajj is remarkable in its doctrinal…

Muhammad Khalil al-Hussary recites the first chapter of the Qur'an, entitled Al-Fathihah, which means "the Opening." It consists of Translated by Muhammad Asad. Transliteration from Islamicity.com.

Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi's inventive, wry, and tragic memoir of growing up in Tehran in the 1980s—the tumultuous years when the Islamic Revolution took hold in Iran and the country fought off an invasion from neighboring Iraq. Using a…

In this memoir, Eboo Patel relates his journey to faith-based activism with American youth. Patel, a native of the Chicago area who was born of Indian immigrants and raised in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, recounts the challenges he faced straddling multiple…

Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood takes place in Fez, Morocco, in the 1940s and early 1950s. The harem of this memoir’s title is a large house with its own courtyard, shared by several generations of an extended family. Fatima…