Criticism of Islam is broadly defined as criticism of the

Islam Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God (or '' Allah'') as it was revealed to Muhammad, the ...

ic religion in its beliefs, principles, and/or any other ideas attributed to Islam. Criticism of Islam has existed since Islam's formative stages. Early written disapprovals came from

Christians Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι� ...

and

Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

s as well as from some former Muslims such as

Ibn al-Rawandi Abu al-Hasan Ahmad ibn Yahya ibn Ishaq al-Rawandi ( ar, أبو الحسن أحمد بن يحيى بن إسحاق الراوندي), commonly known as Ibn al-Rawandi ( ar, ابن الراوندي;‎ 827–911 CEAl-Zandaqa Wal Zanadiqa, by Moham ...

.De Haeresibus by John of Damascus. See

Migne Jacques Paul Migne (; 25 October 1800 – 24 October 1875) was a French priest who published inexpensive and widely distributed editions of theological works, encyclopedias, and the texts of the Church Fathers, with the goal of providing a u ...

. ''

Patrologia Graeca The ''Patrologia Graeca'' (or ''Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Graeca'') is an edited collection of writings by the Christian Church Fathers and various secular writers, in the Greek language. It consists of 161 volumes produced in 1857–1 ...

'', vol. 94, 1864, cols 763–73. An English translation by the Reverend John W Voorhis appeared in ''The Moslem World'' for October 1954, pp. 392–98. Later the

Muslim world The terms Muslim world and Islamic world commonly refer to the Islamic community, which is also known as the Ummah. This consists of all those who adhere to the religious beliefs and laws of Islam or to societies in which Islam is practiced. In ...

itself received criticism.Ibn Kammuna, ''Examination of the Three Faiths'', trans. Moshe Perlmann (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1971), pp. 148–49 Western criticism of

grew after the September 11 attacks and other terrorist incidents, in regard to its scriptures and teachings, which were claimed to be a significant source of terrorism and terrorist ideology. Objects of criticism include the morality of the life of

Muhammad Muhammad ( ar, مُحَمَّد; 570 – 8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet divinely inspired to preach and confirm the monot ...

, the founder of Islam, in both his public and personal lives.Ibn Warraq, The Quest for Historical Muhammad (Amherst, Mass.:Prometheus, 2000), 103. Issues relating to the authenticity and morality of the scriptures of Islam, both the

Quran The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is organized in 114 chapters (pl.: , sing. ...

and the

hadith Ḥadīth ( or ; ar, حديث, , , , , , , literally "talk" or "discourse") or Athar ( ar, أثر, , literally "remnant"/"effect") refers to what the majority of Muslims believe to be a record of the words, actions, and the silent approval ...

s, are also discussed by critics.Bible in Mohammedian Literature.
by Kaufmann Kohler Duncan B. McDonald, ''Jewish Encyclopedia''. Retrieved 22 April 2006. Islam has also been viewed as a form of Arab imperialism and has received criticism by figures from

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

and

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

for the destruction of indigenous cultures. Islam's recognition of slavery as an institution,Brunschvig. 'Abd; ''

Encyclopedia of Islam The ''Encyclopaedia of Islam'' (''EI'') is an encyclopaedia of the academic discipline of Islamic studies published by Brill. It is considered to be the standard reference work in the field of Islamic studies. The first edition was published i ...

'' which led to Muslim traders exporting as many as 17 million slaves to the coast of the

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by t ...

, the

Middle East The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Province), East Thrace (Europea ...

, and

North Africa North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in ...

, has also been criticized. The

Shafi'i The Shafii ( ar, شَافِعِي, translit=Shāfiʿī, also spelled Shafei) school, also known as Madhhab al-Shāfiʿī, is one of the four major traditional schools of religious law (madhhab) in the Sunnī branch of Islam. It was founded by ...

version of

has received criticism for advocating

female genital mutilation Female genital mutilation (FGM), also known as female genital cutting, female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) and female circumcision, is the ritual cutting or removal of some or all of the external female genitalia. The practice is found ...

and introducing this practice to

Southeast Asia Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, south-eastern region of Asia, consistin ...

, where it was previously nonexistent. More recently, Islamic beliefs regarding human origins,

predestination Predestination, in theology, is the doctrine that all events have been willed by God, usually with reference to the eventual fate of the individual soul. Explanations of predestination often seek to address the paradox of free will, whereby Go ...

God's existence The existence of God (or more generally, the existence of deities) is a subject of debate in theology, philosophy of religion and popular culture. A wide variety of arguments for and against the existence of God or deities can be categorized ...

and

nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are p ...

, have received criticism for their apparent

philosophical Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some s ...

and scientific inconsistencies. Another criticism focuses on the question of human rights in the Islamic world, both historically and in modern Islamic nations, including the treatment of women,

LGBT ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term is a ...

people, and religious and ethnic minorities, as shown in

Islamic law Sharia (; ar, شريعة, sharīʿa ) is a body of religious law that forms a part of the Islamic tradition. It is derived from the religious precepts of Islam and is based on the sacred scriptures of Islam, particularly the Quran and the H ...

and practice. As of 2014, about a quarter of the world's countries and territories (26%) had anti-blasphemy and (13%) had anti-

apostasy Apostasy (; grc-gre, ἀποστασία , 'a defection or revolt') is the formal disaffiliation from, abandonment of, or renunciation of a religion by a person. It can also be defined within the broader context of embracing an opinion that i ...

laws or policies. In 2017, 13 nations, all of which were Muslim majority nations, had the death penalty for apostasy or blasphemy. In the wake of the recent

multiculturalism The term multiculturalism has a range of meanings within the contexts of sociology, political philosophy, and colloquial use. In sociology and in everyday usage, it is a synonym for " ethnic pluralism", with the two terms often used interchang ...

trend, Islam's influence on the ability or willingness of Muslim immigrants to assimilate in the host nations has been criticized. Assimilationist arguments have also been made in other countries where Muslims are a substantial minority, such as China,

and

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eight ...

History

Early Islam

The earliest surviving written criticisms of Islam are to be found in the writings of

who came under the early dominion of the Islamic

Caliphate A caliphate or khilāfah ( ar, خِلَافَة, ) is an institution or public office under the leadership of an Islamic steward with the title of caliph (; ar, خَلِيفَة , ), a person considered a political-religious successor to th ...

. One such Christian was John of Damascus (c. 676–748 AD), who was familiar with Islam and

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...

. The second chapter of his book, ''The Fountain of Wisdom'', titled "Concerning Heresies", presents a series of discussions between Christians and Muslims. John claimed an

Arian Arianism ( grc-x-koine, Ἀρειανισμός, ) is a Christological doctrine first attributed to Arius (), a Christian presbyter from Alexandria, Egypt. Arian theology holds that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, who was begotten by God t ...

monk A monk (, from el, μοναχός, ''monachos'', "single, solitary" via Latin ) is a person who practices religious asceticism by monastic living, either alone or with any number of other monks. A monk may be a person who decides to dedicat ...

(who he did not know was

Bahira Bahira ( ar, بَحِيرَىٰ, syc, ܒܚܝܪܐ) was an Assyrian, likely Nestorian monk from the tribe of Abd al-Qays who, according to Islamic religion, foretold to the adolescent Muhammad his future as a prophet.Abel, A.Baḥīrā. ''Encyc ...

) influenced Muhammad and viewed the Islamic doctrines as nothing more than a hodgepodge culled from the Bible. Writing on Islam's claim of Abrahamic ancestry, John explained that the

Arabs The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, No ...

were called "

Saracen upright 1.5, Late 15th-century German woodcut depicting Saracens Saracen ( ) was a term used in the early centuries, both in Greek and Latin writings, to refer to the people who lived in and near what was designated by the Romans as Arabia Pe ...

s" (Greek Σαρακενοί, Sarakenoi) because they were "empty" (κενός, kenos, in Greek) "of

Sarah Sarah (born Sarai) is a biblical matriarch and prophetess, a major figure in Abrahamic religions. While different Abrahamic faiths portray her differently, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all depict her character similarly, as that of a pio ...

". They were called "

Hagarenes Hagarenes ( grc, Ἀγαρηνοί , syc, ܗܓܪܝܐ or , arm, Հագարացի), is a term widely used by early Syriac, Greek, Coptic and Armenian sources to describe the early Arab conquerors of Mesopotamia, Syria and Egypt. The name was us ...

" because they were "the descendants of the slave-girl

Hagar Hagar, of uncertain origin; ar, هَاجَر, Hājar; grc, Ἁγάρ, Hagár; la, Agar is a biblical woman. According to the Book of Genesis, she was an Egyptian slave, a handmaiden of Sarah (then known as ''Sarai''), whom Sarah gave to he ...

". In the early formative stage, criticism on Islam was usually hidden, because openly questioning Muhammad or the Quran was punishable not only for the critic but also for the critic's entire community. Jews, for example, passed on criticism on Muhammad by oral-traditions. Although it is hard to verify oral traditions, certain tales and statements could be found of independent communities. According to one narrative, some Jews included hidden messages in the Quran, like the '' Muqatta'at'' (Mysterious Letters), which allegedly refers to certain parts of the

Tanakh The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
''

false Prophet In religion, a false prophet is a person who falsely claims the gift of prophecy or divine inspiration, or to speak for God, or who makes such claims for evil ends. Often, someone who is considered a "true prophet" by some people is simultaneous ...

. Other notable early critics of Islam included: * Abu Isa al-Warraq, a 9th-century scholar and critic of Islam. *

, a 9th-century atheist, who repudiated Islam and criticised religion in general. *

al-Ma'arri Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī ( ar, أبو العلاء المعري, full name , also known under his Latin name Abulola Moarrensis; December 973 – May 1057) was an Arab philosopher, poet, and writer. Despite holding a controversially irrel ...

, an 11th-century Arab poet and critic of Islam and all other religions. Also known for his

veganism Veganism is the practice of abstaining from the use of animal product—particularly in diet—and an associated philosophy that rejects the commodity status of animals. An individual who follows the diet or philosophy is known as a vegan. D ...

and

antinatalism Antinatalism or anti-natalism is the view that procreation is wrong. Antinatalists argue that humans should abstain from procreation because it is morally wrong. In scholarly and literary writings, various ethical arguments have been put forth i ...

.Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, 1962, ''A Literary History of the Arabs'', p. 319. Routledge *

Abu Bakr al-Razi Abū Bakr al-Rāzī (full name: ar, أبو بکر محمد بن زکریاء الرازي, translit=Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakariyyāʾ al-Rāzī, label=none), () rather than ar, زکریاء, label=none (), as for example in , or in . In m ...

, a Persian

physician A physician (American English), medical practitioner ( Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through t ...

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

and

alchemist Alchemy (from Arabic: ''al-kīmiyā''; from Ancient Greek: χυμεία, ''khumeía'') is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practiced in China, India, the Muslim world ...

who lived during the

Islamic Golden Age The Islamic Golden Age was a period of cultural, economic, and scientific flourishing in the history of Islam, traditionally dated from the 8th century to the 14th century. This period is traditionally understood to have begun during the reign ...

. He criticized the concepts of

prophethood In religion, a prophet or prophetess is an individual who is regarded as being in contact with a divine being and is said to speak on behalf of that being, serving as an intermediary with humanity by delivering messages or teachings from the s ...

and

revelation In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing of some form of truth or knowledge through communication with a deity or other supernatural entity or entities. Background Inspiration – such as that bestowed by God on ...

in Islam.

Medieval world

Medieval Islamic world

In the early centuries of the Islamic

allowed citizens to freely express their views, including criticism of Islam and religious authorities, without fear of persecution. Accordingly, there have been several notable critics and skeptics of Islam that arose from within the Islamic world itself. One eminent critic, living in the tenth and eleventh-century

Syria Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...

was the blind poet

Al-Ma'arri Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī ( ar, أبو العلاء المعري, full name , also known under his Latin name Abulola Moarrensis; December 973 – May 1057) was an Arab philosopher, poet, and writer. Despite holding a controversially irrel ...

. He became well known for a poetry that was affected by a "pervasive pessimism". He labeled religions in general as "noxious weeds" and said that Islam does not have a monopoly on truth. He had particular contempt for the ''

ulema In Islam, the ''ulama'' (; ar, علماء ', singular ', "scholar", literally "the learned ones", also spelled ''ulema''; feminine: ''alimah'' ingularand ''aalimath'' lural are the guardians, transmitters, and interpreters of religious ...

'', writing that: In 1280, the

Jewish philosopher Jewish philosophy () includes all philosophy carried out by Jews, or in relation to the religion of Judaism. Until modern ''Haskalah'' (Jewish Enlightenment) and Jewish emancipation, Jewish philosophy was preoccupied with attempts to reconcile ...

, Ibn Kammuna, criticized Islam in his book ''Examination of the Three Faiths''. He reasoned that the

Sharia Sharia (; ar, شريعة, sharīʿa ) is a body of religious law that forms a part of the Islamic tradition. It is derived from the religious precepts of Islam and is based on the sacred scriptures of Islam, particularly the Quran and the H ...

was incompatible with the principles of justice, and that this undercut the notion of Muhammad being the perfect man: "there is no proof that Muhammad attained perfection and the ability to perfect others as claimed." The philosopher thus claimed that people converted to Islam from ulterior motives: According to

Bernard Lewis Bernard Lewis, (31 May 1916 – 19 May 2018) was a British American historian specialized in Oriental studies. He was also known as a public intellectual and political commentator. Lewis was the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near ...

, just as it is natural for a Muslim to assume that the converts to his religion are attracted by its truth, it is equally natural for the convert's former coreligionists to look for baser motives and Ibn Kammuna's list seems to cover most of such nonreligious motives.

Maimonides Musa ibn Maimon (1138–1204), commonly known as Maimonides (); la, Moses Maimonides and also referred to by the acronym Rambam ( he, רמב״ם), was a Sephardic Jewish philosopher who became one of the most prolific and influential Torah s ...

, one of the foremost 12th-century

rabbi A rabbi () is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism. One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi – known as ''semikha'' – following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form of ...

nical arbiters and philosophers, sees the relation of Islam to Judaism as primarily theoretical. Maimonides has no quarrel with the strict monotheism of Islam, but finds fault with the practical politics of Muslim regimes. He also considered

Islamic ethics Islamic ethics (أخلاق إسلامية) is the "philosophical reflection upon moral conduct" with a view to defining "good character" and attaining the "pleasure of God" (''raza-e Ilahi''). It is distinguished from "Islamic morality", which per ...

and politics to be inferior to their Jewish counterparts. Maimonides criticised what he perceived as the lack of virtue in the way Muslims rule their societies and relate to one another.The Mind of Maimonides
by David Novak. Retrieved 29 April 2006. In his Epistle to Yemenite Jewry, he refers to Mohammad, as "''hameshuga''" – "that madman".

Apologetic Apologetics (from Greek , "speaking in defense") is the religious discipline of defending religious doctrines through systematic argumentation and discourse. Early Christian writers (c. 120–220) who defended their beliefs against critics and ...

writings, attributed to

Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa Abū Muhammad ʿAbd Allāh Rūzbih ibn Dādūya ( ar, ابو محمد عبدالله روزبه ابن دادويه), born Rōzbih pūr-i Dādōē ( fa, روزبه پور دادویه), more commonly known as Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ ( ar, ابن الم� ...

, not only defended

Manichaeism Manichaeism (; in New Persian ; ) is a former major religionR. van den Broek, Wouter J. Hanegraaff ''Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times''SUNY Press, 1998 p. 37 founded in the 3rd century AD by the Parthian prophet Mani (A ...

against Islam, but also criticized the Islamic concept of God. Accordingly, the Quranic deity was disregarded as an unjust, tyrannic, irrational and malevolent ''

demon A demon is a malevolent supernatural entity. Historically, belief in demons, or stories about demons, occurs in religion, occultism, literature, fiction, mythology, and folklore; as well as in media such as comics, video games, movies, anime, ...

ic entity'', who "fights with humans and boasts about His victories" and "sitting on a throne, from which He descends". Such anthropomorphic descriptions of God were at odds with the Manichaean understanding of

Divinity Divinity or the divine are things that are either related to, devoted to, or proceeding from a deity.divine

. Further, according to Manichaeism, it would be impossible that good and evil originate from the same source, therefore the Islamic deity could not be the true god.

Medieval Christianity

Early criticism came from Christian authors, many of whom viewed Islam as a Christian

heresy Heresy is any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs, in particular the accepted beliefs of a church or religious organization. The term is usually used in reference to violations of important religi ...

or a form of idolatry and often explained it in apocalyptic terms. Islamic salvation optimism and its carnality was criticized by Christian writers. Islam's sensual descriptions of paradise led many Christians to conclude that Islam was not a spiritual religion, but a material one. Although sensual pleasure was also present in early Christianity, as seen in the writings of

Irenaeus Irenaeus (; grc-gre, Εἰρηναῖος ''Eirēnaios''; c. 130 – c. 202 AD) was a Greek bishop noted for his role in guiding and expanding Christian communities in the southern regions of present-day France and, more widely, for the dev ...

, the doctrines of the former

Manichaean Manichaeism (; in New Persian ; ) is a former major religionR. van den Broek, Wouter J. Hanegraaff ''Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times''SUNY Press, 1998 p. 37 founded in the 3rd century AD by the Parthian prophet Mani (A ...

Augustine of Hippo Augustine of Hippo ( , ; la, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430), also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Afr ...

led to broad repudiation of bodily pleasure in both life and the afterlife.

Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari ( fa, علی ابن سهل ربن طبری ) (c. 838 – c. 870 CE; also given as 810–855 or 808–864 also 783–858), was a Persian Muslim scholar, physician and psychologist, who produced one of t ...

defended the Quranic description of paradise by asserting that the Bible also implies such ideas, such as drinking wine in

Gospel of Matthew The Gospel of Matthew), or simply Matthew. It is most commonly abbreviated as "Matt." is the first book of the New Testament of the Bible and one of the three synoptic Gospels. It tells how Israel's Messiah, Jesus, comes to his people and for ...

. During the

Fifth Crusade The Fifth Crusade (1217–1221) was a campaign in a series of Crusades by Western Europeans to reacquire Jerusalem and the rest of the Holy Land by first conquering Egypt, ruled by the powerful Ayyubid sultanate, led by al-Adil, brother of Salad ...

Pope Innocent III Pope Innocent III ( la, Innocentius III; 1160 or 1161 – 16 July 1216), born Lotario dei Conti di Segni (anglicized as Lothar of Segni), was the head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 8 January 1198 to his death in 16 ...

declared that many men had been seduced by Muhammad for the pleasure of flesh. Dante Domenico di Michelino Duomo Florence

Defamatory images of

, derived from early 7th century depictions of Byzantine Church,Minou Reeves, P. J. Stewart ''Muhammad in Europe: A Thousand Years of Western Myth-Making'' NYU Press, 2003 p. 93–96 appear in the 14th-century

epic poem An epic poem, or simply an epic, is a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters who, in dealings with gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants. ...

Divine Comedy The ''Divine Comedy'' ( it, Divina Commedia ) is an Italian narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun 1308 and completed in around 1321, shortly before the author's death. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature a ...

by Dante Alighieri.G. Stone ''Dante's Pluralism and the Islamic Philosophy of Religion'' Springer, 12 May 2006 p. 132 Here, Muhammad appears in the eighth circle of hell, along with Ali. Dante does not blame Islam as a whole, but accuses Muhammad of

schism A schism ( , , or, less commonly, ) is a division between people, usually belonging to an organization, movement, or religious denomination. The word is most frequently applied to a split in what had previously been a single religious body, suc ...

, by establishing another religion after Christianity. Some medieval ecclesiastical writers portrayed Muhammad as possessed by

Satan Satan,, ; grc, ὁ σατανᾶς or , ; ar, شيطانالخَنَّاس , also known as the Devil, and sometimes also called Lucifer in Christianity, is an entity in the Abrahamic religions that seduces humans into sin or falsehood. ...

, a "precursor of the

Antichrist In Christian eschatology, the Antichrist refers to people prophesied by the Bible to oppose Jesus Christ and substitute themselves in Christ's place before the Second Coming. The term Antichrist (including one plural form)1 John ; . 2 John . i ...

" or the Antichrist himself.Mohammed and Mohammedanism
by Gabriel Oussani, ''Catholic Encyclopedia''. Retrieved 16 April 2006. The '' Tultusceptru de libro domni Metobii'', an Andalusian

manuscript A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand – or, once practical typewriters became available, typewritten – as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in ...

with unknown dating, shows how Muhammad (called Ozim, from

Hashim Hashim ( ar, هاشم) is a common male Arabic given name. Hashim may also refer to: * Hashim Amir Ali * Hashim (poet) * Hashim Amla *Hashim Thaçi * Hashim Khan * Hashim Qureshi * Mir Hashim Ali Khan *Hashim al-Atassi *Hashim ibn Abd Manaf *Hashi ...

) was tricked by

into adulterating an originally pure divine revelation. The story argues God was concerned about the spiritual fate of the Arabs and wanted to correct their deviation from the faith. He then sends an angel to the monk Osius who orders him to preach to the Arabs. Osius however is in ill-health and orders a young monk, Ozim, to carry out the angel's orders instead. Ozim sets out to follow his orders, but gets stopped by an evil angel on the way. The ignorant Ozim believes him to be the same angel that spoke to Osius before. The evil angel modifies and corrupts the original message given to Ozim by Osius, and renames Ozim Muhammad. From this followed the erroneous teachings of Islam, according to the ''Tultusceptru''. According to the monk

Bede Bede ( ; ang, Bǣda , ; 672/326 May 735), also known as Saint Bede, The Venerable Bede, and Bede the Venerable ( la, Beda Venerabilis), was an English monk at the monastery of St Peter and its companion monastery of St Paul in the Kingdom o ...

Muhammad was foretold in

Genesis Genesis may refer to: Bible * Book of Genesis, the first book of the biblical scriptures of both Judaism and Christianity, describing the creation of the Earth and of mankind * Genesis creation narrative, the first several chapters of the Book of ...

16:12, which describes

Ishmael Ishmael ''Ismaḗl''; Classical/Qur'anic Arabic: إِسْمَٰعِيْل; Modern Standard Arabic: إِسْمَاعِيْل ''ʾIsmāʿīl''; la, Ismael was the first son of Abraham, the common patriarch of the Abrahamic religions; and is cons ...

as "a wild man" whose "hand will be against every man". Bede says about Muhammad: "Now how great is his hand against all and all hands against him; as they impose his authority upon the whole length of Africa and hold both the greater part of Asia and some of Europe, hating and opposing all." In 1391 a dialogue was believed to have occurred between Byzantine Emperor

Manuel II Palaiologos Manuel II Palaiologos or Palaeologus ( gr, Μανουὴλ Παλαιολόγος, Manouēl Palaiológos; 27 June 1350 – 21 July 1425) was Byzantine emperor from 1391 to 1425. Shortly before his death he was tonsured a monk and received the na ...

and a Persian scholar in which the Emperor stated: Otherwise the

Greek Orthodox The term Greek Orthodox Church (Greek: Ἑλληνορθόδοξη Ἐκκλησία, ''Ellinorthódoxi Ekklisía'', ) has two meanings. The broader meaning designates "the entire body of Orthodox (Chalcedonian) Christianity, sometimes also call ...

Bishop A bishop is an ordained clergy member who is entrusted with a position of authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance of dioceses. The role or office of bishop is ca ...

Paul of Antioch accepts Muhammed as a prophet, but not that his mission was universal. Since the law of Christ is superior to the law of Islam, Muhammad was only ordered to the Arabs, whom a prophet was not sent yet.

Denis the Carthusian Denis the Carthusian (1402–1471), also known as Denys van Leeuwen, Denis Ryckel, Dionysius van Rijkel, Denys le Chartreux (or other combinations of these terms), was a Roman Catholic theologian and mystic. Life Denis was born in 1402 in that ...

wrote two treatises to refute Islam at the request of

Nicholas of Cusa Nicholas of Cusa (1401 – 11 August 1464), also referred to as Nicholas of Kues and Nicolaus Cusanus (), was a German Catholic cardinal, philosopher, theologian, jurist, mathematician, and astronomer. One of the first German proponents of Renai ...

, ''Contra perfidiam Mahometi, et contra multa dicta Sarracenorum libri quattuor'' and ''Dialogus disputationis inter Christianum et Sarracenum de lege Christi et contra perfidiam Mahometi''.

Enlightenment Europe

David Hume David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment philo ...

was critical of traditional religion and scholars generally agree that Hume was both a naturalist and a

sceptic Skepticism, also spelled scepticism, is a questioning attitude or doubt toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma. For example, if a person is skeptical about claims made by their government about an ongoing war then the pe ...

, though he considered

monotheistic Monotheism is the belief that there is only one deity, an all-supreme being that is universally referred to as God. Cross, F.L.; Livingstone, E.A., eds. (1974). "Monotheism". The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (2 ed.). Oxford: Oxfor ...

religions to be more "comfortable to sound reason" than

polytheism Polytheism is the belief in multiple deities, which are usually assembled into a pantheon of gods and goddesses, along with their own religious sects and rituals. Polytheism is a type of theism. Within theism, it contrasts with monotheism, the ...

and found Islam to be more "ruthless" than Christianity. In '' Of the Standard of Taste'', an essay by Hume, the Quran is described as an "absurd performance" of a "pretended prophet" who lacked "a just sentiment of morals". Attending to the narration, Hume says, "we shall soon find, that uhammadbestows praise on such instances of treachery, inhumanity, cruelty, revenge, bigotry, as are utterly incompatible with civilized society. No steady rule of right seems there to be attended to; and every action is blamed or praised, so far as it is beneficial or hurtful to the true believers." The commonly held view in Europe during the Enlightenment was that Islam, then synonymous with the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...

, was a bloody, ruthless and intolerant religion. In the European view, Islam lacked divine authority and regarded the sword as the route to heaven. Hume appears to represent this view in his reference to the "bloody principles" of Islam, though he also makes similar critical comments about the "bloody designs" characterizing the conflict between

Catholics The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

and

Protestants Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...

during the

Reformation The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and i ...

. Many contemporary works about Islam were available to influence Hume's opinions by authors such as

Isaac Barrow Isaac Barrow (October 1630 – 4 May 1677) was an English Christian theologian and mathematician who is generally given credit for his early role in the development of infinitesimal calculus; in particular, for proof of the fundamental theorem ...

Humphrey Prideaux Humphrey Prideaux (3 May 1648 – 1 November 1724) was a Cornish churchman and orientalist, Dean of Norwich from 1702. His sympathies inclined to Low Churchism in religion and to Whiggism in politics. Life The third son of Edmond Prideaux, he wa ...

, John Jackson, Charles Wolseley,

Hugo Grotius Hugo Grotius (; 10 April 1583 – 28 August 1645), also known as Huig de Groot () and Hugo de Groot (), was a Dutch humanist, diplomat, lawyer, theologian, jurist, poet and playwright. A teenage intellectual prodigy, he was born in Delft ...

Paul Rycaut Paul may refer to: * Paul (given name), a given name (includes a list of people with that name) * Paul (surname), a list of people People Christianity *Paul the Apostle (AD c.5–c.64/65), also known as Saul of Tarsus or Saint Paul, early Chr ...

Thomas Hyde Thomas Hyde (29 June 163618 February 1703) was an English linguist, historian, librarian, classicist, and orientalist. His chief work was the 1700 'On the Ancient Religion of the Persians'' the first attempt to use Arab and Persian sources ...

Pierre Bayle Pierre Bayle (; 18 November 1647 – 28 December 1706) was a French philosopher, author, and lexicographer. A Huguenot, Bayle fled to the Dutch Republic in 1681 because of religious persecution in France. He is best known for his '' Historica ...

, and

Blaise Pascal Blaise Pascal ( , , ; ; 19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, and Catholic writer. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen. Pascal's earliest m ...

. The writers of this period were also influenced by

George Sale George Sale (1697–1736) was a British Orientalist scholar and practising solicitor, best known for his 1734 translation of the Quran into English. In 1748, after having read Sale's translation, Voltaire wrote his own essay "De l'Alcoran ...

who, in 1743, had translated the Quran into

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

Modern era

Western authors

In the early 20th century, the prevailing view among Europeans was that Islam was the root cause of Arab and Berber "backwardness". They saw Islam as an obstacle to assimilation, a view that was expressed by a writer in colonial

French Algeria French Algeria (french: Alger to 1839, then afterwards; unofficially , ar, الجزائر المستعمرة), also known as Colonial Algeria, was the period of French colonisation of Algeria. French rule in the region began in 1830 with the ...

named

André Servier André Servier was an historian who lived in French Algeria at the beginning of the 20th century. Career He was chief editor of La Dépêche de Constantine, a newspaper from the city of Constantine in northeastern Algeria. Servier studied well t ...

. In his book, titled ''Islam and the Psychology of the Musulman'', Servier wrote that, "The only thing Arabs ever invented was their religion. And this religion is, precisely, the main obstacle between them and us." Servier describes Islam as a "religious nationalism in which every Muslim brain is steeped". According to Servier, the only reason this nationalism has not "been able to pose a threat to humanity" was that the "rigid dogma" of Islam had rendered the Arabs "incapable of fighting against the material forces placed at the disposal of Western civilization by science and progress". The Victorian orientalist scholar Sir

William Muir Sir William Muir (27 April 1819 – 11 July 1905) was a Scottish Orientalist, and colonial administrator, Principal of the University of Edinburgh and Lieutenant Governor of the North-West Provinces of British India. Life He was born at Gl ...

criticised Islam for what he perceived to be an inflexible nature, which he held responsible for stifling progress and impeding social advancement in Muslim countries. The following sentences are taken from the

Rede Lecture The Sir Robert Rede's Lecturer is an annual appointment to give a public lecture, the Sir Robert Rede's Lecture (usually Rede Lecture) at the University of Cambridge. It is named for Sir Robert Rede, who was Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in th ...

he delivered at

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge becam ...

in 1881: The

church historian Church Historian and Recorder (usually shortened to Church Historian) is a priesthood calling in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The role of the Church Historian and Recorder is to keep an accurate and comprehensive record of th ...

Philip Schaff Philip Schaff (January 1, 1819 – October 20, 1893) was a Swiss-born, German-educated Protestant theologian and ecclesiastical historian, who spent most of his adult life living and teaching in the United States. Biography Schaff was born ...

described Islam as spread by violence and fanaticism, and producing a variety of social ills in the regions it conquered.Schaff, P., & Schaff, D. S. (1910). ''History of the Christian church''. Third edition. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Volume 4, Chapter III, section 40 "Position of Mohammedanism in Church History" John Mason Neale

Schaff also described Islam as a derivative religion based on an amalgamation of "heathenism, Judaism and Christianity".Schaff, P., & Schaff, D. S. (1910). ''History of the Christian church''. Third edition. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Volume 4, Chapter III, section 45 "The Mohammedanism Religion" J. M. Neale criticized Islam in terms similar to those of Schaff, arguing that it was made up of a mixture of beliefs that provided something for everyone. Neale, J. M. (1847). A History of the Holy Eastern Church: The Patriarchate of Alexandria. London: Joseph Masters. Volume II, Section I "Rise of Mahometanism" (p. 68)

James Fitzjames Stephen Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, 1st Baronet, KCSI (3 March 1829 – 11 March 1894) was an English lawyer, judge, writer, and philosopher. One of the most famous critics of John Stuart Mill, Stephen achieved prominence as a philosopher, law re ...

, describing what he understood to be the Islamic conception of the ideal society, wrote the following:

G. K. Chesterton Gilbert Keith Chesterton (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was an English writer, philosopher, Christian apologist, and literary and art critic. He has been referred to as the "prince of paradox". Of his writing style, '' Time'' observed: " ...

criticized Islam as a derivative from Christianity. He described it as a heresy or parody of Christianity. In ''

The Everlasting Man ''The Everlasting Man'' is a Christian apologetics book written by G. K. Chesterton, published in 1925. It is, to some extent, a deliberate rebuttal of H. G. Wells' ''The Outline of History'', disputing Wells' portrayals of human life and civil ...

'' he says:

Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from 1 ...

criticized what he alleged to be the effects Islam had on its believers, which he described as fanatical frenzy combined with fatalistic apathy, enslavement of women, and militant proselytizing.Winston S. Churchill, from The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pp. 248–50 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899) In his 1899 book ''

The River War ''The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan'' (1899), by Winston Churchill. It is a history of the conquest of the Sudan between 1896 and 1899 by Anglo-Egyptian forces led by Lord Kitchener. He defeated the Sudanese ...

'' he says: Wc0042-3b13159r

According to historian Warren Dockter, Churchill wrote this during a time of a fundamentalist revolt in Sudan and this statement does not reflect his full view of Islam, which were "often paradoxical and complex". He could be critical but at times "romanticized" the Islamic world; he exhibited great "respect, understanding and magnanimity". Churchill had a fascination of Islam and Islamic civilization. Winston Churchill's future sister-in-law expressed concerns about his fascination by stating, " ease don't become converted to Islam; I have noticed in your disposition a tendency to orientalism." According to historian Warren Dockter, however, he "never seriously considered converting". He primarily admired its martial aspects, the "Ottoman Empire's history of territorial expansion and military acumen", to the extent that in 1897 he wished to fight for the Ottoman Empire. According to Dockter, this was largely for his "lust for glory". Based on Churchill's letters, he seemed to regard Islam and Christianity as equals. During a

lecture A lecture (from Latin ''lēctūra'' “reading” ) is an oral presentation intended to present information or teach people about a particular subject, for example by a university or college teacher. Lectures are used to convey critical inform ...

given at the

University of Regensburg The University of Regensburg (german: link=no, Universität Regensburg) is a public research university located in the medieval city of Regensburg, Bavaria, a city that is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university was founded on 18 ...

in 2006,

Pope Benedict XVI Pope Benedict XVI ( la, Benedictus XVI; it, Benedetto XVI; german: link=no, Benedikt XVI.; born Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, , on 16 April 1927) is a retired prelate of the Catholic church who served as the head of the Church and the sovereig ...

quoted an unfavorable remark about

made at the end of the 14th century by

, the

Byzantine emperor This is a list of the Byzantine emperors from the foundation of Constantinople in 330 AD, which marks the conventional start of the Eastern Roman Empire, to its fall to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 AD. Only the emperors who were recognized as le ...

: As the English translation of the Pope's lecture was disseminated across the world, many Muslim politicians and religious leaders protested against what they saw as an insulting mischaracterization of Islam. Mass street protests were mounted in many Islamic countries, the '' Majlis-e-Shoora'' (

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 243 million people, and has the world's second-lar ...

i parliament) unanimously called on the Pope to retract "this objectionable statement".

South Asian authors

The

Hindu Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism.Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...

philosopher

Vivekananda Swami Vivekananda (; ; 12 January 1863 – 4 July 1902), born Narendranath Datta (), was an Indian Hindu monk, philosopher, author, religious teacher, and the chief disciple of the Indian mystic Ramakrishna. He was a key figure in the intr ...

commented on Islam:

Dayanand Saraswati Dayanand Saraswati () (born Mool Shankar Tiwari; 2 February 1824 – 30 October 1883) also known as Maharshi Dayanand is an Indian philosopher, social leader and founder of the Arya Samaj, a Hindu reform movement. His Magnum Opus is the book ...

calls the concept of Islam to be highly offensive, and doubted that there is any connection of Islam with God:

Pandit Lekh Ram Pandit Lekh Ram (1858 – 6 March 1897) was the leader of the Arya Samaj, an Indian Hindu reform movement, and was also active as a writer and publicist. He is known particularly for his encounters with Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of the ...

regarded that Islam was grown through the violence and desire for wealth. He further asserted that Muslims deny the entire Islamic prescribed violence and atrocities, and will continue doing so. He wrote:

Mahatma Gandhi Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (; ; 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948), popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi, was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist Quote: "... marks Gandhi as a hybrid cosmopolitan figure who transformed ... anti- ...

, the moral leader of the 20th-century Indian independence movement, found the history of Muslims to be aggressive, while he claimed that Hindus have passed that stage of societal evolution:

Jawaharlal Nehru Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (; ; ; 14 November 1889 – 27 May 1964) was an Indian anti-colonial nationalist, secular humanist, social democrat— * * * * and author who was a central figure in India during the middle of the 2 ...

, the first

Prime Minister of India The prime minister of India (IAST: ) is the head of government of the Republic of India. Executive authority is vested in the prime minister and their chosen Council of Ministers, despite the president of India being the nominal head of the ...

, in his book ''Discovery of India'', describes Islam to have been a faith for military conquests. He wrote "Islam had become a more rigid faith suited more to military conquests rather than the conquests of the mind", and that Muslims brought nothing new to his country.

Other authors

Iranian writer

Sadegh Hedayat Sadegh Hedayat ( fa, صادق هدایت ; 17 February 1903 – 9 April 1951) was an Iranian writer and translator. Best known for his novel '' The Blind Owl'', he was one of the earliest Iranian writers to adopt literary modernism in their car ...

regarded Islam as the corrupter of

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkme ...

, he said:

Nobel prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...

-winning novelist

V. S. Naipaul Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (; 17 August 1932 – 11 August 2018) was a Trinidadian-born British writer of works of fiction and nonfiction in English. He is known for his comic early novels set in Trinidad, his bleaker novels of alienati ...

stated that Islam requires its adherents to destroy everything which is not related to it. He described it as having a:

-winning playwright

Wole Soyinka Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka ( Yoruba: ''Akínwándé Olúwọlé Babátúndé Ṣóyíinká''; born 13 July 1934), known as Wole Soyinka (), is a Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist in the English language. He was awarded ...

stated that Islam had a role in denigrating African spiritual traditions. He criticized attempts to whitewash what he sees as the destructive and coercive history of Islam on the continent: Soyinka also regarded Islam as "superstition", and said that it does not belong to Africa. He stated that it is mainly spread with violence and force.

Tatar The Tatars ()Tatar
in the Collins English Dictionary is an umbrella term for different

Tengrist Tengrism (also known as Tengriism, Tengerism, or Tengrianism) is an ethnic and old state Turkic peoples, Turko-Mongolic peoples, Mongolic religion originating in the Eurasian Steppe, Eurasian steppes, based on folk shamanism, animism and general ...

s criticize Islam as a semitic religion, which forced

Turks Turk or Turks may refer to: Communities and ethnic groups * Turkic peoples, a collection of ethnic groups who speak Turkic languages * Turkish people, or the Turks, a Turkic ethnic group and nation * Turkish citizen, a citizen of the Republic o ...

to submission to an alien culture. Submission and humility, two significant components of Islamic spirituality, are disregarded as major failings of Islam, not as virtues. Further, since Islam mentions semitic history as if it were the history of all mankind, but disregards components of other cultures and spirituality, the international approach of Islam is seen as a threat. It additionally gives Imams an opportunity to march against their own people under the banner of international Islam.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, or Mustafa Kemal Pasha until 1921, and Ghazi Mustafa Kemal from 1921 until 1934 ( 1881 – 10 November 1938) was a Turkish field marshal, revolutionary statesman, author, and the founding father of the Repub ...

, founder of the

Turkish Republic Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula in ...

, described Islam as the religion of the

in his own work titled ''Vatandaş için Medeni Bilgiler'' by his own critical and

nationalist Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the State (polity), state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a in-group and out-group, group of peo ...

views: Sami Aldeeb, Palestinian-born Swiss lawyer and author of many books and articles on Arab and

, expressed various positions critical of Islam, for example, he positioned himself for a ban on the erection of minarets in

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

, since in his opinion the constitution allows prayer, but not shouting.

Scripture

Criticism of the Quran

Originality of Quranic manuscripts. According to traditional Islamic scholarship, all of the Quran was written down by Muhammad's companions while he was alive (during 610–632 CE), but it was primarily an orally related document. The written compilation of the whole Quran in its definite form as we have it now was not completed until many years after the death of Muhammad.

John Wansbrough John Edward Wansbrough (February 19, 1928 – June 10, 2002) was an American historian who taught at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), where he was vice chancellor from 1985 to 1992. Wansbrough is credit ...

Patricia Crone Patricia Crone (March 28, 1945July 11, 2015) was a Danish historian specializing in early Islamic history. Crone was a member of the Revisionist school of Islamic studies and questioned the historicity of the Islamic traditions about the beginni ...

and Yehuda D. Nevo argue that all the primary sources which exist are from 150 to 300 years after the events which they describe, and thus are chronologically far removed from those events. Imperfections in the Quran. Critics reject the idea that the Quran is miraculously perfect and impossible to imitate as asserted in the Quran itself. The 1901–1906 ''

Jewish Encyclopedia ''The Jewish Encyclopedia: A Descriptive Record of the History, Religion, Literature, and Customs of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day'' is an English-language encyclopedia containing over 15,000 articles on th ...

'', for example, writes: "The language of the Koran is held by the Mohammedans to be a peerless model of perfection. Critics, however, argue that peculiarities can be found in the text. For example, critics note that a sentence in which something is said concerning Allah is sometimes followed immediately by another in which Allah is the speaker (examples of this are suras xvi. 81, xxvii. 61, xxxi. 9, and xliii. 10). Many peculiarities in the positions of words are due to the necessities of rhyme ( lxix. 31, lxxiv. 3), while the use of many rare words and new forms may be traced to the same cause (comp. especially xix. 8, 9, 11, 16).""Koran"
From the ''Jewish Encyclopedia''. Retrieved 21 January 2008. Judaism and the Quran. According to the ''Jewish Encyclopedia'', "The dependence of Mohammed upon his Jewish teachers or upon what he heard of the Jewish Haggadah and Jewish practices is now generally conceded."

believes that the Quran is a

redaction Redaction is a form of editing in which multiple sources of texts are combined and altered slightly to make a single document. Often this is a method of collecting a series of writings on a similar theme and creating a definitive and coherent wo ...

in part of other sacred scriptures, in particular the

Judaeo-Christian The term Judeo-Christian is used to group Christianity and Judaism together, either in reference to Christianity's derivation from Judaism, Christianity's borrowing of Jewish Scripture to constitute the "Old Testament" of the Christian Bible, or ...

scriptures.Wansbrough, John (1978). ''The Sectarian Milieu: Content and Composition of Islamic Salvation History''. Herbert Berg writes that "Despite John Wansbrough's very cautious and careful inclusion of qualifications such as "conjectural," and "tentative and emphatically provisional", his work is condemned by some. Some of this negative reaction is undoubtedly due to its radicalness... Wansbrough's work has been embraced wholeheartedly by few and has been employed in a piecemeal fashion by many. Many praise his insights and methods, if not all of his conclusions." Early jurists and theologians of Islam mentioned some Jewish influence but they also say where it is seen and recognized as such, it is perceived as a debasement or a dilution of the authentic message.

describes this as "something like what in Christian history was called a Judaizing heresy." According to

Moshe Sharon Moshe Sharon ( he, משה שָׁרוֹן; born December 18, 1937) is an Israeli historian of Islam. He is currently Professor Emeritus of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where he serves as Chair in Bah� ...

, the story of Muhammad having Jewish teachers is a legend developed in the 10th century CE.

described the Quran as having "many passages of poetic beauty, religious fervor, and wise counsel, but mixed with absurdities, bombast, unmeaning images, low sensuality."Schaff, P., & Schaff, D. S. (1910). History of the Christian church. Third edition. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Volume 4, Chapter III, section 44 "The Koran, And The Bible" Mohammed and God as speakers. According to

Ibn Warraq Ibn Warraq is the pen name of an anonymous author critical of Islam. He is the founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society and used to be a senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry, focusing on Quranic criticism. ...

, the Iranian rationalist

Ali Dashti Ali Dashti ( fa, علی دشتی, pronounced ; 31 March 1897 – January 16, 1982) was an Iranian rationalist of the twentieth century. Dashti was also an Iranian senator. Life Born into a Persian family in Dashti in Bushehr Province, Ira ...

criticized the Quran on the basis that for some passages, "the speaker cannot have been God." Warraq gives Surah

Al-Fatiha Al-Fatiha (alternatively transliterated Al-Fātiḥa or Al-Fātiḥah; ar, ألْفَاتِحَة, ; ), is the first '' surah'' (chapter) of the Quran. It consists of 7 '' ayah'' (verses) which are a prayer for guidance and mercy. Al-Fatiha ...

as an example of a passage which is "clearly addressed to God, in the form of a prayer." He says that by only adding the word "say" in front of the passage, this difficulty could have been removed. Furthermore, it is also known that one of the companions of Muhammad,

Ibn Masud Abdullah ibn Masūd, or Abdullah ibn Masood, or Abdullah Ben Messaoud ( ar, عبد الله بن مسعود, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Masʽūd; c.594-c.653), was a companion of the Islamic prophet Muhammad who he is regarded the greatest mufassir of Q ...

, rejected Surah Fatihah as being part of the Quran; these kind of disagreements are, in fact, common among the companions of Muhammad who could not decide which surahs were part of the Quran and which not. Other criticism: * The Quran contains verses which are difficult to understand or contradictory. * Some accounts of the history of Islam say there were two verses of the Quran that were allegedly added by

when he was tricked by Satan (in an incident known as the "Story of the Cranes", later referred to as the "

Satanic Verses The Satanic Verses are words of "satanic suggestion" which the Islamic prophet Muhammad is alleged to have mistaken for divine revelation. The verses praise the three pagan Meccan goddesses: al-Lāt, al-'Uzzá, and Manāt and can be read in ea ...

"). These verses were then retracted at angel Gabriel's behest. * The author of the '' Apology of al-Kindy'' Abd al-Masih ibn Ishaq al-Kindi (not to be confused with the famed philosopher

al-Kindi Abū Yūsuf Yaʻqūb ibn ʼIsḥāq aṣ-Ṣabbāḥ al-Kindī (; ar, أبو يوسف يعقوب بن إسحاق الصبّاح الكندي; la, Alkindus; c. 801–873 AD) was an Arab Muslim philosopher, polymath, mathematician, physician ...

) claimed that the narratives in the Quran were "all jumbled together and intermingled" and that this was "an evidence that many different hands have been at work therein, and caused discrepancies, adding or cutting out whatever they liked or disliked". * The companions of Muhammad could not agree on which surahs were part of the Quran and which not. Two of the most famous companions being

and

Ubay ibn Ka'b Ubayy ibn Ka'b ( ar, أُبَيّ ٱبْن كَعْب, ') (died 649), also known as Abu Mundhir, was a companion of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and a person of high esteem in the early Muslim community. Biography Ubayy was born in Medina ...

Pre-existing sources

Critics point to various pre-existing sources to argue against the traditional narrative of revelation from God. Some scholars have calculated that one third of the Quran has pre-Islamic Christian origins. Aside from the Bible, the Quran relies on several

Apocrypha Apocrypha are works, usually written, of unknown authorship or of doubtful origin. The word ''apocryphal'' (ἀπόκρυφος) was first applied to writings which were kept secret because they were the vehicles of esoteric knowledge considered ...

l and legendary sources, like the

Protoevangelium of James The Gospel of James (or the Protoevangelium of James) is a second-century infancy gospel telling of the miraculous conception of the Virgin Mary, her upbringing and marriage to Joseph, the journey of the couple to Bethlehem, the birth of Jesus, ...

,Leirvik 2010, pp. 33–34.

Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew (or The Infancy Gospel of Matthew) is a part of the New Testament apocrypha. In antiquity the text was called The Book About the Origin of the Blessed Mary and the Childhood of the Savior. Pseudo-Matthew is one of a g ...

, and several infancy gospels. Several narratives rely on Jewish

Midrash Tanhuma Midrash Tanhuma ( he, מִדְרָשׁ תַּנְחוּמָא) is the name given to three different collections of Pentateuch aggadot; two are extant, while the third is known only through citations. These midrashim, although bearing the name of ...

legends, like the narrative of Cain learning to bury the body of Abel in Quran 5:31.

Norman Geisler Norman Leo Geisler (July 21, 1932 – July 1, 2019) was an American Christian systematic theologian and philosopher. He was the co-founder of two non-denominational evangelical seminaries ( Veritas International University and Southern Evan ...

argues that the dependence of the Quran on preexisting sources is one evidence of a purely human origin.

Richard Carrier Richard Cevantis Carrier (born December 1, 1969) is an American historian, author, and activist, whose work focuses on empiricism, atheism, and the historicity of Jesus. A long-time contributor to skeptical web sites, including The Secular We ...

regards this reliance on pre-Islamic Christian sources as evidence that Islam derived from a Torah-observant sect of Christianity.

Criticism of the Hadith

Hadith Ḥadīth ( or ; ar, حديث, , , , , , , literally "talk" or "discourse") or Athar ( ar, أثر, , literally "remnant"/"effect") refers to what the majority of Muslims believe to be a record of the words, actions, and the silent approval ...

are Muslim traditions relating to the ''

Sunnah In Islam, , also spelled ( ar, سنة), are the traditions and practices of the Islamic prophet Muhammad that constitute a model for Muslims to follow. The sunnah is what all the Muslims of Muhammad's time evidently saw and followed and passed ...

'' (words and deeds) of Muhammad. They are drawn from the writings of scholars writing between 844 and 874 CE, more than 200 years after the death of Mohammed in 632 CE. Within Islam, different schools and sects have different opinions on the proper selection and use of Hadith. The four schools of Sunni Islam all consider Hadith second only to the Quran, although they differ on how much freedom of interpretation should be allowed to legal scholars. Shi'i scholars disagree with Sunni scholars as to which Hadith should be considered reliable. The Shi'as accept the Sunnah of Ali and the Imams as authoritative in addition to the Sunnah of Muhammad, and as a consequence they maintain their own, different, collections of Hadith. It has been suggested that there exists around the Hadith three major sources of corruption: political conflicts, sectarian prejudice, and the desire to translate the underlying meaning, rather than the original words verbatim.Brown, Daniel W. "Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought", 1999. pp. 113, 134 Muslim critics of the hadith,

Quranists Quranism ( ar, القرآنية, translit=al-Qurʾāniyya'';'' also known as Quran-only Islam) Brown, ''Rethinking tradition in modern Islamic thought'', 1996: p.38-42 is a movement within Islam. It holds the belief that traditional religious cl ...

, reject the authority of hadith on theological grounds, pointing to verses in the Quran itself: "''Nothing have We omitted from the Book''", declaring that all necessary instruction can be found within the Quran, without reference to the Hadith. They claim that following the Hadith has led to people straying from the original purpose of God's revelation to Muhammad, adherence to the Quran alone.

Ghulam Ahmed Pervez Ghulam Ahmad Parwez ( pa, ; 1903–1985), widely known as Allama Parwez, was a pioneer of Quranic doctrine from pre-Independence India and later Pakistan. He attempted to rationally interpret Quranic themes, by challenging the established Sun ...

(1903–1985) was a noted critic of the Hadith and believed that the Quran alone was all that was necessary to discern God's will and our obligations. A

fatwa A fatwā ( ; ar, فتوى; plural ''fatāwā'' ) is a legal ruling on a point of Islamic law (''sharia'') given by a qualified '' Faqih'' (Islamic jurist) in response to a question posed by a private individual, judge or government. A jurist i ...

, ruling, signed by more than a thousand orthodox clerics, denounced him as a 'kafir', a non-believer. His seminal work, ''Maqam-e Hadith'' argued that the Hadith were composed of "the garbled words of previous centuries", but suggests that he is not against the ''idea'' of collected sayings of the Prophet, only that he would consider any hadith that goes against the teachings of Quran to have been falsely attributed to the Prophet. The 1986 Malaysian book "Hadith: A Re-evaluation" by

Kassim Ahmad Kassim Ahmad (9 September 1933 – 10 October 2017) was a Malaysian Muslim philosopher, intellectual, writer, poet and an educator. He was also a socialist politician in the early days of Malaya and later Malaysia and was detained without trial f ...

was met with controversy and some scholars declared him an

apostate Apostasy (; grc-gre, ἀποστασία , 'a defection or revolt') is the formal disaffiliation from, abandonment of, or renunciation of a religion by a person. It can also be defined within the broader context of embracing an opinion that is ...

from Islam for suggesting that "the hadith are sectarian, anti-science, anti-reason and anti-women."Latif, Abu Ruqayyah Farasat
The Quraniyun of the Twentieth Century
Masters Assertion, September 2006Ahmad, Kassim. "Hadith: A Re-evaluation", 1986. English translation 1997

John Esposito John Louis Esposito (born May 19, 1940) is an Italian-American academic, professor of Middle Eastern and religious studies, and scholar of Islamic studies, who serves as Professor of Religion, International Affairs, and Islamic Studies at Geor ...

notes that "Modern Western scholarship has seriously questioned the historicity and authenticity of the ''hadith''", maintaining that "the bulk of traditions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad were actually written much later." He mentions

Joseph Schacht Joseph Franz Schacht (, 15 March 1902 – 1 August 1969) was a British-German professor of Arabic and Islam at Columbia University in New York. He was the leading Western scholar on Islamic law, whose ''Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence'' (195 ...

, considered the father of the revisionist movement, as one scholar who argues this, claiming that Schacht "found no evidence of legal traditions before 722," from which Schacht concluded that "the Sunna of the Prophet is not the words and deeds of the Prophet, but apocryphal material" dating from later. Other scholars, however, such as

Wilferd Madelung Wilferd Ferdinand Madelung FBA (b. December 26, 1930 in Stuttgart) is a German-British author and scholar of Islamic history. Life After World War II, the adolescent Wilferd accompanied his parents to the USA where his father Georg Hans Mad ...

, have argued that "wholesale rejection as late fiction is unjustified". Orthodox Muslims do not deny the existence of false hadith, but believe that through the scholars' work, these false hadith have been largely eliminated.

Lack of secondary evidence

The traditional view of Islam has also been criticised for the lack of supporting evidence consistent with that view, such as the lack of archaeological evidence, and discrepancies with non-Muslim literary sources. In the 1970s, what has been described as a "wave of sceptical scholars" challenged a great deal of the received wisdom in Islamic studies.Donner, Fred ''Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing'', Darwin Press, 1998 They argued that the Islamic historical tradition had been greatly corrupted in transmission. They tried to correct or reconstruct the early history of Islam from other, presumably more reliable, sources such as coins, inscriptions, and non-Islamic sources. The oldest of this group was

(1928–2002). Wansbrough's works were widely noted, but perhaps not widely read. In 1972 a cache of ancient Qurans in a mosque in Sana'a, Yemen was discovered – commonly known as the

Sana'a manuscripts The Sanaa palimpsest (also Ṣanʽā’ 1 or DAM 01-27.1) or Sanaa Quran is one of the oldest Quranic manuscripts in existence. Part of a sizable cache of Quranic and non-Quranic fragments discovered in Yemen during a 1972 restoration of the ...

. The German scholar

Gerd R. Puin Gerd Rüdiger Puin (born 1940) is a German scholar of Oriental studies, specializing in Quranic palaeography, Arabic calligraphy and orthography. He was a lecturer of Arabic language and literature at Saarland University in Saarbrücken, Germany ...

has been investigating these Quran fragments for years. His research team made 35,000 microfilm photographs of the manuscripts, which he dated to early part of the 8th century. Puin has not published the entirety of his work, but noted unconventional verse orderings, minor textual variations, and rare styles of orthography. He also suggested that some of the parchments were

palimpsest In textual studies, a palimpsest () is a manuscript page, either from a scroll or a book, from which the text has been scraped or washed off so that the page can be reused for another document. Parchment was made of lamb, calf, or kid skin an ...

s which had been reused. Puin believed that this implied a text that changed over time as opposed to one that remained the same.

Kaaba

The

Kaaba The Kaaba (, ), also spelled Ka'bah or Kabah, sometimes referred to as al-Kaʿbah al-Musharrafah ( ar, ٱلْكَعْبَة ٱلْمُشَرَّفَة, lit=Honored Ka'bah, links=no, translit=al-Kaʿbah al-Musharrafah), is a building at the c ...

is the most sacred site in Islam. Criticism has centered on the origins of the Kaaba. In her book, ''Islam: A Short History'',

Karen Armstrong Karen Armstrong (born 14 November 1944) is a British author and commentator of Irish Catholic descent known for her books on comparative religion. A former Roman Catholic religious sister, she went from a conservative to a more liberal and m ...

asserts that the ''Kaaba'' was officially dedicated to

Hubal In Arabian mythology, Hubal ( ar, هُبَل) was a god worshipped in pre-Islamic Arabia, notably by the Quraysh at the Kaaba in Mecca. The god's idol was a human figure believed to control acts of divination, which was performed by tossing ar ...

, a

Nabatean The Nabataeans or Nabateans (; Nabataean Aramaic: , , vocalized as ; Arabic: , , singular , ; compare grc, Ναβαταῖος, translit=Nabataîos; la, Nabataeus) were an ancient Arab people who inhabited northern Arabia and the southern Lev ...

deity, and contained 360 idols that probably represented the days of the year. Imoti contends that there were numerous such ''Kaaba'' sanctuaries in Arabia at one time, but this was the only one built of stone. The others also allegedly had counterparts of the Black Stone. There was a "red stone", the deity of the south Arabian city of Ghaiman, and the "white stone" in the ''Kaaba'' of al-Abalat (near the city of Tabala, south of Mecca). Grunebaum in ''Classical Islam'' points out that the experience of divinity of that period was often associated with stone fetishes, mountains, special rock formations, or "trees of strange growth". According to Sarwar, about 400 years before the birth of Muhammad, a man named "Amr bin Lahyo bin Harath bin Amr ul-Qais bin Thalaba bin Azd bin Khalan bin Babalyun bin Saba", who was descended from

Qahtan The terms Qahtanite and Qahtani ( ar, قَحْطَانِي; transliterated: Qaḥṭānī) refer to Arabs who originate from South Arabia. The term "Qahtan" is mentioned in multiple ancient Arabian inscriptions found in Yemen. Arab traditions be ...

and was the king of

Hijaz The Hejaz (, also ; ar, ٱلْحِجَاز, al-Ḥijāz, lit=the Barrier, ) is a region in the west of Saudi Arabia. It includes the cities of Mecca, Medina, Jeddah, Tabuk, Yanbu, Taif, and Baljurashi. It is also known as the "Western Provi ...

had placed a Hubal idol onto the roof of the Kaaba. This idol was one of the chief deities of the ruling tribe

Quraysh The Quraysh ( ar, قُرَيْشٌ) were a grouping of Arab clans that historically inhabited and controlled the city of Mecca and its Kaaba. The Islamic prophet Muhammad was born into the Hashim clan of the tribe. Despite this, many of the Qur ...

. The idol was made of red agate and shaped like a human, but with the right hand broken off and replaced with a golden hand. When the idol was moved inside the Kaaba, it had seven arrows in front of it, which were used for

divination Divination (from Latin ''divinare'', 'to foresee, to foretell, to predict, to prophesy') is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic, standardized process or ritual. Used in various forms throughout history ...

. According to the ''

Encyclopædia Britannica The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various time ...

'', "before the rise of Islam it was revered as a sacred sanctuary and was a site of pilgrimage." Many Muslim and academic historians stress the power and importance of the pre-Islamic

Mecca Mecca (; officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, commonly shortened to Makkah ()) is a city and administrative center of the Mecca Province of Saudi Arabia, and the holiest city in Islam. It is inland from Jeddah on the Red Sea, in a narrow valle ...

. They depict it as a city grown rich on the proceeds of the spice trade.

believes that this is an exaggeration and that Mecca may only have been an outpost trading with nomads for leather, cloth, and camel butter. Crone argues that if Mecca had been a well-known center of trade, it would have been mentioned by later authors such as

Procopius Procopius of Caesarea ( grc-gre, Προκόπιος ὁ Καισαρεύς ''Prokópios ho Kaisareús''; la, Procopius Caesariensis; – after 565) was a prominent late antique Greek scholar from Caesarea Maritima. Accompanying the Roman gener ...

Nonnosus Saint Nonnosus ( 500 – 560 AD), also ''Nonosius'', was a prior at the San Silvestre monastery on Monte Soratte north of Rome and later a monk at Suppentonia, near Civita Castellana. He was a contemporary of Saint Benedict of Nursia. Alban But ...

, or the Syrian church chroniclers writing in Syriac. The town is absent, however, from any geographies or histories written in the three centuries before the rise of Islam.

Ethics

Muhammad

is considered one of the

prophets in Islam Prophets in Islam ( ar, الأنبياء في الإسلام, translit=al-ʾAnbiyāʾ fī al-ʾIslām) are individuals in Islam who are believed to spread God's message on Earth and to serve as models of ideal human behaviour. Some prophets ar ...

and as a model for followers. Critics such as

Sigismund Koelle Sigismund Wilhelm Koelle or Kölle (July 14, 1823 – February 18, 1902) was a German missionary working on behalf of the London-based Church Missionary Society, at first in Sierra Leone, where he became a pioneer scholar of the languages of Africa ...

and former Muslim

see some of Muhammad's actions as immoral.

Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf ( ar, كعب بن الأشرف; died ) was, according Islamic texts, a Jewish leader and poet in Medina. Biography Ka'b was born to a father from the Arab Tayy tribe and a mother from the Jewish Banu Nadir tribe. His fathe ...

wrote a poetic eulogy commemorating the slain Quraish notables; later, he had traveled to Mecca and provoked the Quraish to fight Muhammad. He also wrote

erotic Eroticism () is a quality that causes sexual feelings, as well as a philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual desire, sensuality, and romantic love. That quality may be found in any form of artwork, including painting, scul ...

poetry about Muslim women, which offended the Muslims there. This poetry influenced so many that this too was considered directly against the

Constitution of Medina The Constitution of Medina (, ''Dustūr al-Madīna''), also known as the Charter of Medina ( ar, صحيفة المدينة, ''Ṣaḥīfat al-Madīnah''; or: , ''Mīthāq al-Madina'' "Covenant of Medina"), is the modern name given to a document be ...

which states, ''loyalty gives protection against treachery'' and ''this document will not (be employed to) protect one who is unjust or commits a crime.'' Other sources also state that he was plotting to assassinate Muhammad.Uri Rubin, The Assassination of Kaʿb b. al-Ashraf, Oriens, Vol. 32. (1990), pp. 65–71. Muhammad called upon his followers to kill Ka'b. Muhammad ibn Maslama offered his services, collecting four others. By pretending to have turned against Muhammad, Muhammad ibn Maslama and the others enticed Ka'b out of his fortress on a moonlit night, and killed him in spite of his vigorous resistance. The Jews were terrified at his assassination, and as the historian

Ibn Ishaq Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq ibn Yasār ibn Khiyār (; according to some sources, ibn Khabbār, or Kūmān, or Kūtān, ar, محمد بن إسحاق بن يسار بن خيار, or simply ibn Isḥaq, , meaning "the son of Isaac"; died 767) was an 8 ...

put it "...there was not a Jew who did not fear for his life".

Age of Muhammad's wife Aisha

According to scriptural Sunni's

sources, Aisha was six or seven years old when she was married to Muhammad and nine when the marriage was consummated., , , , , , , , ,

Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari ( ar, أبو جعفر محمد بن جرير بن يزيد الطبري), more commonly known as al-Ṭabarī (), was a Muslim historian and scholar from Amol, Tabaristan. Among the most prominent figures of the Islamic Golden Age, al-Tabari i ...

, born in Persia 200 years after Muhammmad's death, suggested that she was ten years old. Six hundred years after Muhammad,

Ibn Khallikan Aḥmad bin Muḥammad bin Ibrāhīm bin Abū Bakr ibn Khallikān) ( ar, أحمد بن محمد بن إبراهيم بن أبي بكر ابن خلكان; 1211 – 1282), better known as Ibn Khallikān, was a 13th century Shafi'i Islamic scholar w ...

recorded that she was nine years old at marriage, and twelve at consummation.

Ibn Sa'd al-Baghdadi Abū ‘Abd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Sa‘d ibn Manī‘ al-Baṣrī al-Hāshimī or simply Ibn Sa'd ( ar, ابن سعد) and nicknamed ''Scribe of Waqidi'' (''Katib al-Waqidi''), was a scholar and Arabian biographer. Ibn Sa'd was born in 784/785 C ...

, born about 150 years after Muhammad's death, cited

Hisham ibn Urwah Hishām ibn ʿUrwah ( ar, هشام بن عروة, ) was a prominent narrator of hadith. He was born in Medina in the year 61 A.H. (680 C.E.).Ibn Hajar, Tahdhib, xi, 51: see also Al-Dhahabi, Mīzān al-I'tidāl. His father was Urwah ibn al-Zubay ...

as saying that she was nine years old at marriage, and twelve at consummation, but

's original source is otherwise unknown, and Ibn Sa'd al-Baghdadi's work does not have the high religious status of the

. In the twentieth century, Indian writer

Muhammad Ali Muhammad Ali (; born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr.; January 17, 1942 – June 3, 2016) was an American professional boxer and activist. Nicknamed "The Greatest", he is regarded as one of the most significant sports figures of the 20th century, a ...

challenged the Hadith showing that Aisha was not as young as the traditional sources claim, arguing that instead, a new interpretation of the Hadith compiled by

Mishkat al-Masabih ''Mishkāt al-Maṣābīḥ'' ( ar, مشكاة المصابيح, lit=The Niche of Lanterns) by Walī ad-Dīn Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Khaṭīb at-Tibrīzī (d.1248) is an expanded and revised version of al-Baghawī's '' ...

, Wali-ud-Din Muhammad ibn Abdullah Al-Khatib, could indicate that Aisha would have been nineteen years old around the time of her marriage. Colin Turner, a UK professor of

Islamic studies Islamic studies refers to the academic study of Islam, and generally to academic multidisciplinary "studies" programs—programs similar to others that focus on the history, texts and theologies of other religious traditions, such as Easter ...

, states that since such marriages between an older man and a young girl were customary among the

Bedouin The Bedouin, Beduin, or Bedu (; , singular ) are nomadic Arab tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia. The Bedouin originated in the Syrian Desert and Ar ...

s, Muhammad's marriage would not have been considered improper by his contemporaries.

, the British author on comparative religion, has affirmed that "There was no impropriety in Muhammad's marriage to Aisha. Marriages conducted in absentia to seal an alliance were often contracted at this time between adults and minors who were even younger than Aisha."Karen Armstrong, ''Muhammad: Prophet for Our Time'', HarperPress, 2006, p. 167

Ethics in the Quran

According to some critics, the morality of the Quran appears to be a moral regression when judged by the standards of the moral traditions of Judaism and Christianity it says that it builds upon. The ''

Catholic Encyclopedia The ''Catholic Encyclopedia: An International Work of Reference on the Constitution, Doctrine, Discipline, and History of the Catholic Church'' (also referred to as the ''Old Catholic Encyclopedia'' and the ''Original Catholic Encyclopedia'') i ...

'', for example, states that "the ethics of Islam are far inferior to those of

Judaism Judaism ( he, ''Yahăḏūṯ'') is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion comprising the collective religious, cultural, and legal tradition and civilization of the Jewish people. It has its roots as an organized religion in the ...

and even more inferior to those of the New Testament" and "that in the ethics of Islam there is a great deal to admire and to approve, is beyond dispute; but of originality or superiority, there is none." * Critics stated that the Quran 4:34 allows Muslim men to discipline their wives by striking them. There is however confusion amongst translations of Quran with the original Arabic term "wadribuhunna" being translated as "to go away from them", "beat", "strike lightly" and "separate". The film ''

Submission Deference (also called submission or passivity) is the condition of submitting to the espoused, legitimate influence of one's superior or superiors. Deference implies a yielding or submitting to the judgment of a recognized superior, out of re ...

'', which rose to fame after the murder of its director Theo van Gogh, critiqued this and similar verses of the Quran by displaying them painted on the bodies of abused Muslim women.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali Ayaan Hirsi Ali (; ; Somali: ''Ayaan Xirsi Cali'':'' Ayān Ḥirsī 'Alī;'' born Ayaan Hirsi Magan, ar, أيان حرسي علي / ALA-LC: ''Ayān Ḥirsī 'Alī'' 13 November 1969) is a Somali-born Dutch-American activist and former politi ...

, the film's writer, said "it is written in the Koran a woman may be slapped if she is disobedient. This is one of the evils I wish to point out in the film". * Some critics argue that the Quran is incompatible with other religious scriptures as it attacks and advocates hate against people of other religions. For instance,

Sam Harris Samuel Benjamin Harris (born April 9, 1967) is an American philosopher, neuroscientist, author, and podcast host. His work touches on a range of topics, including rationality, religion, ethics, free will, neuroscience, meditation, psychedelics ...

interprets certain verses of the Quran as sanctioning military action against unbelievers as a whole both during the lifetime of Muhammad and after. The Quran said "Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture – ightuntil they give the jizyah willingly while they are humbled."( Quran 9:29) Sam Harri
Who Are the Moderate Muslims?
/ref>

Jizya Jizya ( ar, جِزْيَة / ) is a per capita yearly taxation historically levied in the form of financial charge on dhimmis, that is, permanent non-Muslim subjects of a state governed by Islamic law. The jizya tax has been understood in Isl ...

is a tax for "protection" paid by non-Muslims to a Muslim ruler, for the exemption from military service for non-Muslims, and for the permission to practice a non-Muslim faith with some communal autonomy in a Muslim state.Anver M. Emon, Religious Pluralism and Islamic Law: Dhimmis and Others in the Empire of Law, Oxford University Press, , pp. 99–109.
online
In ''

The End of Faith ''The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason'' is a 2004 book by Sam Harris, concerning organized religion, the clash between religious faith and rational thought, and the problem of intolerance that correlates with religious fun ...

'' Harris argues that Muslim extremism is simply a consequence of taking the Quran literally, and is skeptical that moderate Islam is possible. Various calls to arms were identified in the Quran by US citizen Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, all of which were cited as "most relevant to my actions on March 3, 2006" ( Q9:44, 9:19, 57:10–11, 8:72–73, 9:120, 3:167–75, 4:66, 4:104, 9:81, 9:93–94, 9:100, 16:110, 61:11–12, 47:35). * Max I. Dimont interprets that the

Houri In Islamic religious belief, houris (Pronounced ; from ar, حُـورِيَّـة ,حُورِيّ, ḥūriyy, ḥūrīya), "literally means having eyes with marked contrast of black and white", group=Note are women with beautiful eyes describe ...

s described in the Quran are specifically dedicated to "male pleasure". However, according to Pakistani Islamic scholar Maulana Umar Ahmed Usmani "it is a misconception that hurun (Houri) means the females of paradise who will be reserved for good men. He says that "'hur' or 'hurun' is the plural of both 'ahwaro', which is the masculine form as well as 'haurao', which is feminine. It means both pure males and pure females. He says that basically the word 'hurun' means white." Henry Martyn claims that the concept of the Houris was chosen to satisfy Muhammad's followers.

Views on slavery

Slaves Zadib Yemen 13th century BNF Paris

Bernard Lewis writes: "In one of the sad paradoxes of

human history Human history, also called world history, is the narrative of humanity's past. It is understood and studied through anthropology, archaeology, genetics, and linguistics. Since the invention of writing, human history has been studied through ...

, it was the humanitarian reforms brought by Islam that resulted in a vast development of the

slave trade Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

inside, and still more outside, the Islamic empire." He notes that the Islamic injunctions against the enslavement of Muslims led to massive importation of slaves from the outside. According to

Patrick Manning Patrick Augustus Mervyn Manning (17 August 1946 – 2 July 2016) was a Trinidadian politician who was the fourth Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago; his terms ran from 17 December 1991 to 9 November 1995 and from 24 December 2001 to 26 Ma ...

, Islam by recognizing and codifying the slavery seems to have done more to protect and expand slavery than the reverse. According to Brockopp, on the other hand, the idea of using alms for the manumission of slaves appears to be unique to the Quran, assuming the traditional interpretation of verses and . Similarly, the practice of freeing slaves in atonement for certain sins appears to be introduced by the Quran (but compare Exod 21:26-7). The forced prostitution of female slaves, a Near Eastern custom of great antiquity, is condemned in the Quran.John L Esposito (1998) p. 79 Murray Gordon notes that this ban is "of no small significance". Brockopp writes: "Other cultures limit a master's right to harm a slave but few exhort masters to treat their slaves kindly, and the placement of slaves in the same category as other weak members of society who deserve protection is unknown outside the Qur'an. The unique contribution of the Qur'an, then, is to be found in its emphasis on the place of slaves in society and society's responsibility toward the slave, perhaps the most progressive legislation on slavery in its time."

Encyclopedia of the Qur'an An encyclopedia (American English) or encyclopædia (British English) is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge either general or special to a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into articles ...

, ''Slaves and Slavery'' Critics argue unlike Western societies which in their opposition to slavery spawned anti-slavery movements whose numbers and enthusiasm often grew out of church groups, no such grass-roots organizations ever developed in Muslim societies. In Muslim politics the state unquestioningly accepted the teachings of Islam and applied them as law. Islam, by sanctioning slavery, also extended legitimacy to the traffic in slaves. According to Maurice Middleberg, however, " Sura 90 in the Quran states that the righteous path involves 'the freeing of slaves. Murray Gordon characterizes Muhammad's approach to slavery as reformist rather than revolutionary. He did not set out to abolish slavery, but rather to improve the conditions of slaves by urging his followers to treat their slaves humanely and free them as a way of expiating one's sins which some modern Muslim authors have interpreted as indication that Muhammad envisioned a gradual abolition of slavery. Critics say it was only in the early 20th century (post World War I) that slavery gradually became outlawed and suppressed in Muslim lands, largely due to pressure exerted by Western nations such as

Britain Britain most often refers to: * The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands * Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...

and France. Gordon describes the lack of homegrown Islamic abolition movements as owing much to the fact that it was deeply anchored in Islamic law. By legitimizing slavery and – by extension – traffic in slaves, Islam elevated those practices to an unassailable moral plane. As a result, in no part of the Muslim world was an ideological challenge ever mounted against slavery. The political and

social system In sociology, a social system is the patterned network of relationships constituting a coherent whole that exist between individuals, groups, and institutions. It is the formal structure of role and status that can form in a small, stable group. A ...

in Muslim society would have taken a dim view of such a challenge. However, In

Islamic jurisprudence ''Fiqh'' (; ar, فقه ) is Islamic jurisprudence. Muhammad-> Companions-> Followers-> Fiqh. The commands and prohibitions chosen by God were revealed through the agency of the Prophet in both the Quran and the Sunnah (words, deeds, and ex ...

, slavery was theoretically an exceptional condition under the dictum ''The basic principle is liberty'' (''al-'asl huwa 'l-hurriya''), so that for a foundling or another person whose status was unknown freedom was presumed and enslavement forbidden. The issue of slavery in the Islamic world in modern times is controversial. Critics argue there is hard evidence of its existence and destructive effects. Others maintain slavery in central Islamic lands has been virtually extinct since mid-twentieth century, and that reports from Sudan and Somalia showing practice of slavery is in border areas as a result of continuing war and not Islamic belief. In recent years, according to some scholars, there has been a "worrying trend" of "reopening" of the issue of slavery by some conservative

Salafi The Salafi movement or Salafism () is a reform branch movement within Sunni Islam that originated during the nineteenth century. The name refers to advocacy of a return to the traditions of the "pious predecessors" (), the first three generati ...

Islamic scholars after its "closing" earlier in the 20th century when

Muslim countries The terms Muslim world and Islamic world commonly refer to the Islamic community, which is also known as the Ummah. This consists of all those who adhere to the religious beliefs and laws of Islam or to societies in which Islam is practiced. In ...

banned slavery and "most Muslim scholars" found the practice "inconsistent with Qur'anic morality". Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri of

Karbala Karbala or Kerbala ( ar, كَرْبَلَاء, Karbalāʾ , , also ;) is a city in central Iraq, located about southwest of Baghdad, and a few miles east of Lake Milh, also known as Razzaza Lake. Karbala is the capital of Karbala Governorat ...

expressed the view in 1993 that the enforcement of servitude can occur but is restricted to war captives and those born of slaves. In a 2014 issue of their digital magazine '' Dabiq'', the

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant An Islamic state is a state that has a form of government based on Islamic law (sharia). As a term, it has been used to describe various historical polities and theories of governance in the Islamic world. As a translation of the Arabic term ' ...

explicitly claimed religious justification for enslaving

Yazidi Yazidis or Yezidis (; ku, ئێزیدی, translit=Êzidî) are a Kurmanji-speaking endogamous minority group who are indigenous to Kurdistan, a geographical region in Western Asia that includes parts of Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran. The majo ...

women.

Apostasy

Execution of a Moroccan Jewess by Alfred Dehodencq

According to

is identified by a list of actions such as conversion to another religion, denying the existence of

God In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 1995. God is typically ...

, rejecting the

prophets In religion, a prophet or prophetess is an individual who is regarded as being in contact with a divine being and is said to speak on behalf of that being, serving as an intermediary with humanity by delivering messages or teachings from the s ...

, mocking God or the prophets, idol worship, rejecting the

sharia Sharia (; ar, شريعة, sharīʿa ) is a body of religious law that forms a part of the Islamic tradition. It is derived from the religious precepts of Islam and is based on the sacred scriptures of Islam, particularly the Quran and the H ...

, or permitting behavior that is forbidden by the sharia, such as

adultery Adultery (from Latin ''adulterium'') is extramarital sex that is considered objectionable on social, religious, moral, or legal grounds. Although the sexual activities that constitute adultery vary, as well as the social, religious, and legal ...

or the eating of forbidden foods or drinking of alcoholic beverages. The majority of Muslim scholars hold to the traditional view that apostasy is

punishable by death Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...

or imprisonment until repentance, at least for adult men of sound mind. The kind of apostasy which the jurists generally deemed punishable was of the political kind, although there were considerable legal differences of opinion on this matter. Asma Afsaruddin (2013), ''Striving in the Path of God: Jihad and Martyrdom in Islamic Thought'', p. 242.

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

. .

Wael Hallaq Wael B. Hallaq is the Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, where he has been teaching ethics, law, and political thought since 2009. He is considered a leading scholar in the field of Islamic legal studies, and has ...

states that " na culture whose lynchpin is religion, religious principles and religious morality, apostasy is in some way equivalent to high treason in the modern nation-state". Laws prohibiting

religious conversion Religious conversion is the adoption of a set of beliefs identified with one particular religious denomination to the exclusion of others. Thus "religious conversion" would describe the abandoning of adherence to one denomination and affiliatin ...

run contrary to Article 18 of the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN committee chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, ...

, which states that " eryone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance." The English historian

C. E. Bosworth Clifford Edmund Bosworth FBA (29 December 1928 – 28 February 2015) was an English historian and Orientalist, specialising in Arabic and Iranian studies. Life Bosworth was born on 29 December 1928 in Sheffield, West Riding of Yorkshire (now ...

suggests the traditional view of apostasy hampered the development of Islamic learning, arguing that while the organizational form of the Christian university allowed them to develop and flourish into the modern university, "the Muslim ones remained constricted by the doctrine of

waqf A waqf ( ar, وَقْف; ), also known as hubous () or '' mortmain'' property is an inalienable charitable endowment under Islamic law. It typically involves donating a building, plot of land or other assets for Muslim religious or charitabl ...

alone, with their physical plant often deteriorating hopelessly and their curricula narrowed by the exclusion of the non-traditional religious sciences like philosophy and natural science," out of fear that these could evolve into potential toe-holds for

kufr Kafir ( ar, كافر '; plural ', ' or '; feminine '; feminine plural ' or ') is an Arabic and Islamic term which, in the Islamic tradition, refers to a person who disbelieves in God as per Islam, or denies his authority, or rejects ...

, those people who reject God." At a 2009 human rights conference at Mofid University in

Qom Qom (also spelled as "Ghom", "Ghum", or "Qum") ( fa, قم ) is the seventh largest metropolis and also the seventh largest city in Iran. Qom is the capital of Qom Province. It is located to the south of Tehran. At the 2016 census, its popul ...

, Araki stated that "if an individual doubts Islam, he does not become the subject of punishment, but if the doubt is openly ''expressed'', this is not permissible." As one observer (

Sadakat Kadri Sadakat Kadri (born 1964 in London) is a lawyer, author, travel writer and journalist. One of his foremost roles as a barrister was to assist in the prosecution of former Malawian president Hastings Banda. As a member of the New York Bar he has w ...

) noted, this "freedom" has the advantage that "state officials could not punish an unmanifested belief even if they wanted to". In 13 Muslim-majority countries atheism is punishable by death. However, according to legal historian

, while apostasy was traditionally punished by death, executions were rare because "it was widely believed" that any accused apostate "who repented by articulating the ''

shahada The ''Shahada'' (Arabic: ٱلشَّهَادَةُ , "the testimony"), also transliterated as ''Shahadah'', is an Islamic oath and creed, and one of the Five Pillars of Islam and part of the Adhan. It reads: "I bear witness that there is n ...

''" (''LA ILAHA ILLALLAH'' "There is no God but God") "had to be forgiven" and their punishment delayed until after Judgement Day. This principle was upheld "even in extreme situations", such as when an offender adopts Islam "only for fear of death", based on the hadith that Muhammad had upbraided a follower for killing a raider who had uttered the shahada.

Islamic law

summarizes: The four

Sunni Sunni Islam () is the largest branch of Islam, followed by 85–90% of the world's Muslims. Its name comes from the word ''Sunnah'', referring to the tradition of Muhammad. The differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims arose from a disagree ...

schools of

, as well as Shi'a scholars, agree on the difference of punishment between male and female. A sane adult male apostate may be executed. A female apostate may be put to death, according to the majority view, or imprisoned until she repents, according to others. The

threatens apostates with punishment in the next world only, the historian W. Heffening states, the traditions however contain the element of death penalty. Muslim scholar Shafi'i interprets verse Quran 2:217 as adducing the main evidence for the death penalty in Quran. The historian Wael Hallaq states the later addition of death penalty "reflects a later reality and does not stand in accord with the deeds of the Prophet." He further states that "nothing in the law governing apostate and apostasy derives from the letter of the holy text."

William Montgomery Watt William Montgomery Watt (14 March 1909 – 24 October 2006) was a Scottish Orientalist, historian, academic and Anglican priest. From 1964 to 1979, he was Professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Edinburgh. Watt was one of ...

, in response to a question about Western views of the Islamic Law as being cruel, states that "In Islamic teaching, such penalties may have been suitable for the age in which Muhammad lived. However, as societies have since progressed and become more peaceful and ordered, they are not suitable any longer." Some contemporary Islamic jurists from both the Sunni and Shia denominations together with Quran only Muslims have argued or issued

s that state that either the changing of religion is not punishable or is only punishable under restricted circumstances. For example, Grand Ayatollah

Hussein-Ali Montazeri Grand Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri ( fa, حسینعلی منتظری‎ ; 24 September 1922 – 19 December 2009) was an Iranian Shia Islamic theologian, Islamic democracy advocate, writer and human rights activist. He was one of the leade ...

argues that no Quranic verse prescribes an earthly penalty for apostasy and adds that it is not improbable that the punishment was prescribed by Muhammad at early Islam due to political conspiracies against Islam and Muslims and not only because of changing the belief or expressing it. Montazeri defines different types of apostasy. He does not hold that a reversion of belief because of investigation and research is punishable by death but prescribes capital punishment for a desertion of Islam out of malice and enmity towards the Muslim. According to

Yohanan Friedmann Yohanan Friedmann (born 1936) is an Israeli scholar of Islamic studies. Biography Friedmann was born in Zákamenné, Czechoslovakia and immigrated to Israel with his parents in 1949. He attended high school at the Reali School in Haifa (1945-1 ...

, an Israeli Islamic Studies scholar, a Muslim may stress tolerant elements of Islam (by for instance adopting the broadest interpretation of Quran 2:256 ("No compulsion is there in religion...") or the humanist approach attributed to Ibrahim al-Nakha'i), without necessarily denying the existence of other ideas in the Medieval Islamic tradition but rather discussing them in their historical context (by for example arguing that "civilizations comparable with the Islamic one, such as the Sassanids and the Byzantines, also punished apostasy with death. Similarly neither Judaism nor Christianity treated apostasy and apostates with any particular kindness").Yohanan Friedmann, ''Tolerance and Coercion in Islam'', Cambridge University Press, p. 5 Friedmann continues:

Human rights conventions

Some widely held interpretations of Islam are inconsistent with Human Rights conventions that recognize the right to change religion. In particular article 18 of the

states: To implement this, Article 18 (2) of the

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) is a multilateral treaty that commits nations to respect the civil and political rights of individuals, including the right to life, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom ...

states: The right for Muslims to change their religion is not afforded by the Iranian Shari'ah law, which specifically forbids it. In 1981, the Iranian representative to the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmonizi ...

, Said Rajaie-Khorassani, articulated the position of his country regarding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, by saying that the UDHR was "a

secular Secularity, also the secular or secularness (from Latin ''saeculum'', "worldly" or "of a generation"), is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religion. Anything that does not have an explicit reference to religion, either negativ ...

understanding of the

Judeo-Christian The term Judeo-Christian is used to group Christianity and Judaism together, either in reference to Christianity's derivation from Judaism, Christianity's borrowing of Jewish Scripture to constitute the "Old Testament" of the Christian Bible, o ...

tradition", which could not be implemented by Muslims without trespassing the Islamic law. As a matter of law, on the basis of its obligations as a state party to the ICCPR, Iran is obliged to uphold the right of individuals to practice the religion of their choice and to change religions, including converting from Islam. The prosecution of converts from Islam on the basis of religious edicts that identify apostasy as an offense punishable by death is clearly at variance with this obligation.''Sharia as traditionally understood runs counter to the ideas expressed in Article 18'
Religious freedom under Islam
By Henrik Ertner Rasmussen, General Secretary, Danish European Mission Muslim countries such as

Sudan Sudan ( or ; ar, السودان, as-Sūdān, officially the Republic of the Sudan ( ar, جمهورية السودان, link=no, Jumhūriyyat as-Sūdān), is a country in Northeast Africa. It shares borders with the Central African Republic ...

and

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the List of Asian countries by area, fifth-largest country in Asia ...

, have the death penalty for apostasy from Islam. These countries have criticized the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for its perceived failure to take into account the cultural and religious context of non-

Western Western may refer to: Places *Western, Nebraska, a village in the US *Western, New York, a town in the US *Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western world, countries that id ...

countries. In 1990, the

Organisation of Islamic Cooperation An organization or organisation (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), is an entity—such as a company, an institution, or an association—comprising one or more people and having a particular purpose. The word is derived from ...

published a separate

Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (CDHRI) is a declaration of the member states of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) first adopted in Cairo, Egypt, on 5 August 1990, (Conference of Foreign Ministers, 9–14 Muharram 141 ...

compliant with Shari'ah. Although granting many of the rights in the UN declaration, it does not grant Muslims the right to convert to other religions, and restricts

freedom of speech Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The right to freedom of expression has been recogn ...

to those expressions of it that are not in contravention of the Islamic law.

Abul Ala Maududi Abul A'la al-Maududi ( ur, , translit=Abū al-Aʿlā al-Mawdūdī; – ) was an Islamic scholar, Islamist ideologue, Muslim philosopher, jurist, historian, journalist, activist and scholar active in British India and later, following the parti ...

, the founder of

Jamaat-e-Islami Jamaat-e-Islami ( ur, ) () is an Islamic movement founded in 1941 in British India by the Islamic theologian and socio-political philosopher, Syed Abul Ala Maududi.van der Veer P. and Munshi S. (eds.''Media, War, and Terrorism: Responses fro ...

, wrote a book called Human Rights in Islam, in which he argues that respect for

human right Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of hum ...

s has always been enshrined in

law (indeed that the roots of these rights are to be found in Islamic doctrine) and criticizes Western notions that there is an inherent contradiction between the two. Western scholars have, for the most part, rejected Maududi's analysis.Bielefeldt (2000), p. 104.

Islam and Violence

North face south tower after plane strike 9-11

The September 11 attacks on the United States, and various other acts of

Islamic terrorism Islamic terrorism (also known as Islamist terrorism or radical Islamic terrorism) refers to terrorist acts with religious motivations carried out by fundamentalist militant Islamists and Islamic extremists. Incidents and fatalities f ...

over the 21st century, have resulted in many non-Muslims' indictment of Islam as a violent religion. In particular, the Quran's teachings on matters of war and peace have become topics of heated discussion in recent years. On the one hand, some critics claim that certain verses of the Quran sanction military action against unbelievers as a whole both during the lifetime of Muhammad and after. The Quran says, "Fight in the name of your religion with those who fight against you." On the other hand, most Muslim scholars, including Ahmadiyya, argue that such verses of the Quran are interpreted out of context,Sohail H. Hashmi, David Miller, ''Boundaries and Justice: diverse ethical perspectives'', Princeton University Press, p. 197 and argue that when the verses are read in context it clearly appears that the Quran prohibits aggression,Ali, Maulana Muhammad
The Religion of Islam
(6th Edition), Ch V "Jihad" p. 414 "When shall war cease". Published by '' The Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement'' and allows fighting only in self-defense.The Qur'anic Commandments Regarding War/Jihad
An English rendering of an Urdu article appearing in Basharat-e-Ahmadiyya Vol. I, pp. 228–32, by Dr. Basharat Ahmad; published by the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement for the Propagation of Islam Orientalist David Margoliouth described the

Battle of Khaybar The Battle of Khaybar ( ar, غَزْوَة خَيْبَر, label=Arabic) was fought in 628 CE between the early Muslims led by Muhammad and Jews living in Khaybar, an oasis located 150 km from Medina in the northwestern Arabian Peninsul ...

as the "stage at which Islam became a menace to the whole world." Margoliouth, D. S. (1905). Mohammed and the Rise of Islam (Third Edition., pp. 362–63). New York; London: G. P. Putnam's Sons; The Knickerbocker Press. According to Margoliouth, earlier attacks on the Meccans and the Jewish tribes of Medina (e.g., the

invasion of Banu Qurayza The Invasion of Banu Qurayza took place in Dhul Qa‘dah during January of CE 627 ( AH 5) and followed on from the Battle of the Trench (Muir, 1861). The Banu Qurayza initially told the Muslims that they were allied to them during the Battle ...

) could be at least plausibly be ascribed to wrongs done to Muhammad or the Islamic community. Margoliouth argues that the Jews of Khaybar had done nothing to harm Muhammad or his followers, and ascribes the attack to a desire for

plunder Looting is the act of stealing, or the taking of goods by force, typically in the midst of a military, political, or other social crisis, such as war, natural disasters (where law and civil enforcement are temporarily ineffective), or rioting. ...

. Montgomery Watt mentions another reason for the battle. He believes Jews' intriguing and use of their wealth to incite tribes against Muhammad left him no choice but to attack. Vaglieri concurs that one reason for attack was that the Jews of Khaybar were responsible for the Confederates that attacked Muslims during the

Battle of the Trench The Battle of the Trench ( ar, غزوة الخندق, Ghazwat al-Khandaq), also known as the Battle of Khandaq ( ar, معركة الخندق, Ma’rakah al-Khandaq) and the Battle of the Confederates ( ar, غزوة الاحزاب, Ghazwat al- ...

.Veccia Vaglieri, L. "Khaybar",

Encyclopaedia of Islam The ''Encyclopaedia of Islam'' (''EI'') is an encyclopaedia of the academic discipline of Islamic studies published by Brill. It is considered to be the standard reference work in the field of Islamic studies. The first edition was published i ...

Shibli Numani also sees Khaybar's actions during the

, and draws particular attention to Banu Nadir's leader

Huyayy ibn Akhtab Huyayy ibn Akhtab ( ar, حيي بن أخطب; he, חי בן אחיטוב) was a chief of the Banu Nadir, a Jewish tribe of Medina in pre-Islamic Arabia. Biography Family His ancestry was Huyayy ibn Akhtab ibn Sa‘yah ibn Tha‘labah ibn ‘Ubay ...

, who had gone to the

Banu Qurayza The Banu Qurayza ( ar, بنو قريظة, he, בני קוריט'ה; alternate spellings include Quraiza, Qurayzah, Quraytha, and the archaic Koreiza) were a Jewish tribe which lived in northern Arabia, at the oasis of Yathrib (now known as M ...

during the battle to instigate them to attack Muhammad.Nomani (1979), vol. II, pg. 156 ''

Jihad Jihad (; ar, جهاد, jihād ) is an Arabic word which literally means "striving" or "struggling", especially with a praiseworthy aim. In an Islamic context, it can refer to almost any effort to make personal and social life conform with G ...

'', an

Islamic term The following list consists of notable concepts that are derived from Islamic and associated cultural (Arab, Persian, Turkish) traditions, which are expressed as words in Arabic or Persian language. The main purpose of this list is to disambig ...

, is a religious duty of

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abraha ...

s. In

, the word ''jihād'' translates as a noun meaning "struggle". ''Jihad'' appears 41 times in the

and frequently in the idiomatic expression "striving for the sake of God ''(al-jihad fi sabil

Allah Allah (; ar, الله, translit=Allāh, ) is the common Arabic word for God. In the English language, the word generally refers to God in Islam. The word is thought to be derived by contraction from '' al- ilāh'', which means "the god", a ...

)''"., ''Jihad'', p. 571, ''Jihad'', p. 419 Jihad is an important religious duty for several sects in Islam. A minority among the Sunni scholars sometimes refer to this duty as the sixth pillar of Islam, though it occupies no such official status.

(2005), ''Islam: The Straight Path,'' p. 93 In

Twelver Twelver Shīʿīsm ( ar, ٱثْنَا عَشَرِيَّة; '), also known as Imāmīyyah ( ar, إِمَامِيَّة), is the largest branch of Shīʿa Islam, comprising about 85 percent of all Shīʿa Muslims. The term ''Twelver'' refers t ...

Shi'a Islam Shīʿa Islam or Shīʿīsm is the second-largest branch of Islam. It holds that the Islamic prophet Muhammad designated ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib as his successor (''khalīfa'') and the Imam (spiritual and political leader) after him, most n ...

, however, Jihad is one of the 10 Practices of the Religion. The Quran calls repeatedly for jihad, or holy struggle, resistance, against unbelievers, including, at times, Jews and Christians. Middle East historian

argues that "the overwhelming majority of classical theologians, jurists, and traditionalists (specialists in the hadith) understood the obligation of jihad in a military sense." Furthermore, Lewis maintains that for most of the recorded history of Islam, from the lifetime of

onward, the word jihad was used in a primarily military sense. The Quran: (8:12): "...cast terror in their hearts and strike upon their necks."''Warrant for terror: fatwās of radical Islam and the duty of jihād'', p. 68, Shmuel Bar, 2006 The phrase that they have been "commanded to terrorize the disbelievers" has been cited in motivation of Jihadi terror. One Jihadi cleric has said:

Another aim and objective of jihad is to drive terror in the hearts of the nfidels To terrorize them. Did you know that we were commanded in the Qur'an with terrorism? ...Allah said, and prepare for them to the best of your ability with power, and with horses of war. To drive terror in the hearts of my enemies, Allah's enemies, and your enemies. And other enemies which you don't know, only Allah knows them... So we were commanded to drive terror into the hearts of the nfidels to prepare for them with the best of our abilities with power. Then the Prophet said, nay, the power is your ability to shoot. The power which you are commanded with here, is your ability to shoot. Another aim and objective of jihad is to kill the nfidels to lessen the population of the nfidels.. it is not right for a Prophet to have captives until he makes the Earth warm with blood... so, you should always seek to lessen the population of the nfidels

David Cook, author of ''Understanding Jihad'', said "In reading Muslim literature – both contemporary and classical – one can see that the evidence for the primacy of spiritual jihad is negligible. Today it is certain that no Muslim, writing in a non-Western language (such as Arabic, Persian, Urdu), would ever make claims that jihad is primarily nonviolent or has been superseded by the spiritual jihad. Such claims are made solely by Western scholars, primarily those who study Sufism and/or work in interfaith dialogue, and by Muslim apologists who are trying to present Islam in the most innocuous manner possible."Cook, David. ''Understanding Jihad''.

University of California Press The University of California Press, otherwise known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish scholarly and scientific works by faculty ...

, 2005. Retrieved from

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...

on 27 November 2011. , . Cook argued that "Presentations along these lines are ideological in tone and should be discounted for their bias and deliberate ignorance of the subject" and that " is no longer acceptable for Western scholars or Muslim apologists writing in non-Muslim languages to make flat, unsupported statements concerning the prevalence – either from a historical point of view or within contemporary Islam o f the spiritual jihad."

Magdi Allam Magdi Cristiano Allam ( ar, مجدي علام Majdī ʿAllām; born 22 April 1952), is an Egyptian-Italian journalist and politician, noted for his criticism of Islam and his articles on the relations between Western culture and the Islamic worl ...

, an outspoken Egyptian-born Italian journalist, has described Islam as intrinsically violent and characterized by "hate and intolerance". According to Fawzy Abdelmalek, "many Muslim scholars speak of Islam as a religion of peace and not of violence. They say that the non-Muslims misunderstand the Quran verses about Jihad and the conduct of war in Islam."

Dennis Prager Dennis Mark Prager (; born August 2, 1948) is an American conservative radio talk show host and writer. He is the host of the nationally syndicated radio talk show ''The Dennis Prager Show''. In 2009, he co-founded PragerU, which creates five- ...

, columnist and author, in responding to a movement that contends that Islam is "a religion of peace", wrote: "Now, Islam has never been a religion of peace. It began as a warlike religion and throughout its history, whenever possible, made war on non-Muslims – from the polytheists of North Africa to the Hindus of India, about 60 to 80 million of whom Muslims killed during their thousand-year rule there." John R. Neuman, a scholar on religion, describes Islam as "a perfect anti-religion" and "the antithesis of Buddhism". Charles Mathewes characterizes the peace verses as saying that "if others want peace, you can accept them as peaceful even if they are not Muslim." As an example, Mathewes cites the second sura, which commands believers not to transgress limits in warfare: "fight in God's cause against those who fight you, but do not transgress limits n aggression God does not love transgressors" (2:190).

Lawrence Wright Lawrence Wright (born August 2, 1947) is an American writer and journalist, who is a staff writer for ''The New Yorker'' magazine, and fellow at the Center for Law and Security at the New York University School of Law. Wright is best known as ...

, author of a Pulitzer-prize-winning book, argued that role of

Wahhabi Wahhabism ( ar, ٱلْوَهَّابِيَةُ, translit=al-Wahhābiyyah) is a Sunni Islamic revivalist and fundamentalist movement associated with the reformist doctrines of the 18th-century Arabian Islamic scholar, theologian, preacher, an ...

literature in Saudi schools contributing suspicion and hate violence against non-Muslims as non-believers or infidels and anyone who "disagrees with Wahhabism is either an infidel or a deviant, who should repent or be killed." Andrew Bostom states that a number of jihads have targeted

Hindus Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism.Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...

, and

Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

Beheadings

Beheading was a standard method of execution in pre-modern

. Though a formerly widespread

execution Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...

method, its use had been abandoned in most countries by the end of the 20th century. Currently, it is used only in Saudi Arabia. It also remains a legal method of execution in Iran, Qatar and Yemen, where it is no longer in use. Muhammad's beheading of 600-900 Jewish men and boys has also been criticised (Abu Dawud 4390, Quran 33:26, Q8:55–58, Sahih al-Bukhari 5:59:447, Sahih al-Bukhari 5:58:148, Ibn Kathir V.3. P.170, Ibn Ishaq p. 464).)

Homosexuality

Critics such as lesbian activist

Irshad Manji Irshad Manji (born 1968) is a Ugandan-born Canadian educator. She is the author of '' The Trouble with Islam Today'' (2004) and ''Allah, Liberty and Love'' (2011), both of which have been banned in several Muslim countries. She also produced a P ...

, former Muslims Ehsan Jami and the former Dutch politician

, have criticized Islam's attitudes towards homosexuals. Most international human rights organizations, such as

Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human ri ...

and

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and sup ...

, condemn Islamic laws that make homosexual relations between consenting adults a crime. Since 1994 the

United Nations Human Rights Committee The United Nations Human Rights Committee is a treaty body composed of 18 experts, established by a 1966 human rights treaty, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The Committee meets for three four-week sessions per y ...

has also ruled that such laws violated the right to privacy guaranteed in the

and the

. In May 2008, the sexual rights lobby group

Lambda Istanbul Lambda Istanbul is a Turkish LGBT organization. It was founded in 1993 as a cultural space for the LGBT community, and became an official organization in 2006. Clandestine Pride events were held in Turkey starting in 1993, and with Lambda Istan ...

(based in

Istanbul ) , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = 34000 to 34990 , area_code = +90 212 (European side) +90 216 (Asian side) , registration_plate = 34 , blank_name_sec2 = GeoTLD , blank_in ...

, Turkey) was banned by court order for violating a constitutional provision on the protection of the family and an article banning bodies with objectives that violate law and morality. This decision was then taken to the

Court of Cassation A court of cassation is a high-instance court that exists in some judicial systems. Courts of cassation do not re-examine the facts of a case, they only interpret the relevant law. In this they are appellate courts of the highest instance. In t ...

and the ban lifted. In 10 Muslim-majority countries homosexual acts may be punishable by death, though in some the punishment has never been carried out. The ex-Muslim

states that the Quran's condemnation of homosexuality has frequently been ignored in practice, and that Islamic countries were much more tolerant of homosexuality than Christian ones until fairly recently.

Short-term and limited marriages

Short-term marriage

( ar, نكاح المتعة literally ''pleasure marriage'') is a fixed-term or short-term contractual

marriage Marriage, also called matrimony or wedlock, is a culturally and often legally recognized union between people called spouses. It establishes rights and obligations between them, as well as between them and their children, and between ...

Shia Islam Shīʿa Islam or Shīʿīsm is the second-largest branch of Islam. It holds that the Islamic prophet Muhammad designated ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib as his successor (''khalīfa'') and the Imam (spiritual and political leader) after him, most n ...

. The duration of this type of marriage is fixed at its inception and is then automatically dissolved upon completion of its term. For this reason, nikah mut'ah has been widely criticised as the religious cover and legalization of

prostitution Prostitution is the business or practice of engaging in sexual activity in exchange for payment. The definition of "sexual activity" varies, and is often defined as an activity requiring physical contact (e.g., sexual intercourse, non-penet ...

. The

Christian mission A Christian mission is an organized effort for the propagation of the Christian faith. Missions involve sending individuals and groups across boundaries, most commonly geographical boundaries, to carry on evangelism or other activities, such a ...

ary

Thomas Patrick Hughes Thomas Patrick Hughes, (26 March 1838 - 8 August 1911) was a British Anglican missionary who served under the auspices of the Church Mission Society (CMS) in Peshawar in British India (now Pakistan) for 20 years. Noted for his facility with lang ...

criticized Mut'ah as allowing the continuation of "one of the abominable practices of ancient Arabia." Shi'a and Sunnis agree that Mut'ah was legal in early times, but Sunnis consider that it was abrogated.

Ibn Kathir Abū al-Fiḍā’ ‘Imād ad-Dīn Ismā‘īl ibn ‘Umar ibn Kathīr al-Qurashī al-Damishqī (Arabic: إسماعيل بن عمر بن كثير القرشي الدمشقي أبو الفداء عماد; – 1373), known as Ibn Kathīr (, was ...

writes that " ere's no doubt that in the outset of Islam, Mut'ah was allowed under the Shari'ah". Currently, however, mut'ah is one of the distinctive features of

Ja'fari jurisprudence Jaʿfarī jurisprudence ( ar, الفقه الجعفري; also called Jafarite in English), Jaʿfarī school or Jaʿfarī fiqh, is the school of jurisprudence (''fiqh'') in Twelver and Ismaili (including Nizari) Shia Islam, named after the sixth ...

. No other school of

allows it. According to

Imam Imam (; ar, إمام '; plural: ') is an Islamic leadership position. For Sunni Muslims, Imam is most commonly used as the title of a worship leader of a mosque. In this context, imams may lead Islamic worship services, lead prayers, serv ...

Jafar as Sadiq, "One of the matters about which I shall never keep precautionary silence (

taqiyya In Shi'ism, ''Taqiya'' or ''Taqiyya'' ( ar, تقیة ', literally "prudence, fear")R. STROTHMANN, MOKTAR DJEBLI. Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed, Brill. "TAKIYYA", vol. 10, p. 134. Quote: "TAKIYYA "prudence, fear" ..denotes dispensing with th ...

) is the matter of mu'tah."

Allameh Tabatabaei Muhammad Husayn Tabataba'i or Sayyid Mohammad Hossein Tabataba'i (16 March 1903 – 15 November 1981) was an Iranian scholar, theorist, philosopher and one of the most prominent thinkers of modern Shia Islam. He is perhaps best known for his '' ...

defends the Shia view in Tafsir al-Mizan, arguing that there are ''

mutawatir Hadith terminology ( ar, مصطلح الحديث, muṣṭalaḥu l-ḥadīth) is the body of terminology in Islam which specifies the acceptability of the sayings (''hadith'') attributed to the Islamic prophet Muhammad by other early Islamic f ...

'' or nearly ''mutawatir'' traditions narrated from the

Shia Imams In Shia Islam, the Imamah ( ar, إمامة) is a doctrine which asserts that certain individuals from the lineage of the Islamic prophet Muhammad are to be accepted as leaders and guides of the ummah after the death of Muhammad. Imamah further ...

that Mut'ah is permitted. For example, it has been narrated from

Muhammad al-Baqir Muḥammad al-Bāqir ( ar, مُحَمَّد ٱلْبَاقِر), with the full name Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, also known as Abū Jaʿfar or simply al-Bāqir () was the fifth Imam in Shia Islam, succee ...

and

Ja'far al-Sadiq Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Ṣādiq ( ar, جعفر بن محمد الصادق; 702 – 765 CE), commonly known as Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (), was an 8th-century Shia Muslim scholar, jurist, and theologian.. He was the founder of th ...

that they said "regarding the

bove Bove is a surname. Notable people with the name include: * Carol Bove (born 1971), American artist * Davide Bove (born 1998), Italian footballer * Edward Bove, American surgeon * Linda Bove (born 1945), deaf American actress * Raphael Bove (bo ...

verse, and there is no blame on you about what you mutually agree after what is appointed." It means that he increases her dowry or she increases his (fixed) period.

s believe that Muhammad later abolished this type of marriage at several different large events, the most accepted being at Khaybar in 7 AH (629 CE
Bukhari 059.527
and at the Victory of Mecca in 8 AH (630 CE). Most Sunnis believe that Umar later was merely enforcing a prohibition that was established during Muhammad's time. Shia contest the criticism that nikah mut'ah is a cover for prostitution, and argue that the unique legal nature of temporary marriage distinguishes Mut'ah ideologically from prostitution.Temporary marriage
''

Encyclopædia Iranica ''Encyclopædia Iranica'' is a project whose goal is to create a comprehensive and authoritative English language encyclopedia about the history, culture, and civilization of Iranian peoples from prehistory to modern times. Scope The ''Encyc ...

'' Children born of temporary marriages are considered legitimate, and have equal status in law with their siblings born of permanent marriages, and do inherit from both parents. Women must observe a period of celibacy (idda) to allow for the identification of a child's legitimate father, and a woman can only be married to one person at a time, be it temporary or permanent. Some Shia scholars also view Mut'ah as a means of eradicating prostitution from society.

Contractually limited marriage

Nikah Misyar ( ar, المسيار) is a type of

Nikah In Islam, nikah is a contract between two people. Both the groom and the bride are to consent to the marriage of their own free wills. A formal, binding contract – verbal or on paper – is considered integral to a religiously valid Islamic ...

(marriage) in Sunni Islam only carried out through the normal contractual procedure, with the provision that the husband and wife give up several rights by their own free will, such as living together, equal division of nights between wives in cases of

polygamy Crimes Polygamy (from Late Greek (') "state of marriage to many spouses") is the practice of marrying multiple spouses. When a man is married to more than one wife at the same time, sociologists call this polygyny. When a woman is married ...

, the wife's rights to housing, and maintenance money (''"

nafaqa Nafaqah ( ar, نَفَقَة) or nafkah is the Islamic legal term for the financial support a husband must provide for his wife during marriage and for a time after divorce. Under an Islamic marriage agreement, the husband is obliged to pay for his ...

"''), and the husband's right of homekeeping and access. Essentially the couple continue to live separately from each other, as before their contract, and see each other to fulfil their needs in a legally permissible (

halal ''Halal'' (; ar, حلال, ) is an Arabic word that translates to "permissible" in English. In the Quran, the word ''halal'' is contrasted with ''haram'' (forbidden). This binary opposition was elaborated into a more complex classification kn ...

) manner when they please. Misyar has been suggested by some western authors to be a comparable marriage with

Nikah mut'ah ''Nikah mut'ah'' ar, نكاح المتعة, nikāḥ al-mutʿah, literally "pleasure marriage"; temporary marriage or Sigheh ( fa, صیغه ، ازدواج موقت) is a private and verbal temporary marriage contract that is practiced in T ...

and that they find it for the sole purpose of "sexual gratification in a licit manner" According to Florian Pohl, assistant professor of religion at Oxford College, Misyar marriage is a controversial issue in the Muslim world, as many see it as practice that encourages marriages for purely sexual purposes, or that it is used as a cover for a form of prostitutuion. Professor

Yusuf Al-Qaradawi Yusuf al-Qaradawi ( ar, يوسف القرضاوي, translit=Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī; or ''Yusuf al-Qardawi''; 9 September 1926 – 26 September 2022) was an Egyptian Islamic scholar based in Doha, Qatar, and chairman of the International Union of ...

observes that he does not promote this type of marriage, although he has to recognise that it is legal, since it fulfils all the requirements of the usual marriage contract. He states his preference that the clause of renunciation be not included within the marriage contract, but be the subject of a simple verbal agreement between the parties. Islamic scholars like Ibn Uthaimeen or

Al-Albani Muhammad b. al-Haj Nuh b. Nijati b. Adam al-Ishqudri al-Albani al-Arnauti ( ar, مُحَمَّد نَاصِر ٱلدِّيْن ٱلْأَلْبَانِي الأرنؤوط), better known simply as Al-Albani (August 16, 1914 – October 2, 1999), ...

claim, for their part, that misyar marriage may be legal, but not moral. They agree that the wife can at any time, reclaim the rights which she gave up at the time of contract.Bin Menie, Abdullah bin Sulaïman : fatwa concerning the misyar marriage (and opinions by Ibn Uthaymeen
Al-albany) (in Arabic
Yet another marriage with no strings – fatwa committee of al azhar against misyar
/ref> But, they are opposed to this type of marriage on the grounds that it contradicts the spirit of the Islamic law of marriage and that it has perverse effects on the woman, the family and the community in general. For

, misyar marriage may even be considered illicit, because it runs counter to the objectives and the spirit of marriage in Islam, as described in the Quran: "And among His signs is this, that He created for you mates from among yourselves, that ye may dwell in tranquility with them, and He has put love and mercy between your (hearts)…" Al-Albani also underlines the social problems which result from the "misyar" marriage, particularly in the event that children are born from this union. The children raised by their mother in a home from which the father is always absent, without reason, may suffer difficulties. The situation becomes even worse if the wife is abandoned or repudiated by her husband "misyar", with no means of subsistence, as usually happens. Ibn Uthaymeen recognized the legality of "misyar" marriage under

Shariah Sharia (; ar, شريعة, sharīʿa ) is a body of religious law that forms a part of the Islamic tradition. It is derived from the religious precepts of Islam and is based on the sacred scriptures of Islam, particularly the Quran and the H ...

, but came to oppose it due to what he considered to be its harmful effects.

Women in Islam

Domestic violence

Many scholarsHajjar, Lisa. "Religion, state power, and domestic violence in Muslim societies: A framework for comparative analysis." Law & Social Inquiry 29.1 (2004); see pp. 1–38 claim Shari'a law encourages domestic violence against women, when a husband suspects '' nushuz'' (disobedience, disloyalty, rebellion, ill conduct) in his wife. One of the verses of the Quran relating to permissibility of domestic violence is Surah 4:34. In deference to Surah 4:34, many nations with Shari'a law have refused to consider or prosecute cases of domestic abuse. Shari'a has been criticized for ignoring women's rights in domestic abuse cases. Musawah, CEDAW, KAFA and other organizations have proposed ways to modify Shari'a-inspired laws to improve women's rights in Islamic nations, including women's rights in domestic abuse cases. On the other hand, scholars and commentators have stated that

directed men not to hit their wives' faces, he said in Farewell Sermon not to beat their wives in such a way as would leave marks on their body.

Personal status laws and child marriage

Shari'a is the basis for personal status laws in most Islamic majority nations. These personal status laws determine rights of women in matters of marriage, divorce and child custody. A 2011

UNICEF UNICEF (), originally called the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund in full, now officially United Nations Children's Fund, is an agency of the United Nations responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental aid to c ...

report concludes that Shari'a law provisions are discriminatory against women from a human rights perspective. In legal proceedings under Shari'a law, a woman's testimony is worth half of a man's before a court. Except for Iran, Lebanon and Bahrain, which allow child marriages, the civil code in Islamic majority countries do not allow child marriage of girls. However, with Shari'a personal status laws, Shari'a courts in all these nations have the power to override the civil code. The religious courts permit girls less than 18 years old to marry. As of 2011, child marriages are common in a few Middle Eastern countries, accounting for 1 in 6 of all marriages in Egypt and 1 in 3 marriages in Yemen. However, the average age at marriage in most Middle Eastern countries is steadily rising and is generally in the low to mid 20s for women. Rape is considered a crime in all countries, but laws in Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, Syria and Tunisia in some cases allow a rapist to escape punishment by marrying his victim, while in other cases the victim who complains is often prosecuted with the crime of ''

Zina ''Zināʾ'' () or ''zinā'' ( or ) is an Islamic legal term referring to unlawful sexual intercourse. According to traditional jurisprudence, ''zina'' can include adultery, fornication, prostitution, rape, sodomy, incest, and bestiality. ' ...

'' (adultery).

Women's right to property and consent

Sharia grants women the right to inherit property from other family members, and these rights are written in detail. According to the Quran, The status of women in classical Islamic law compared favorably to their status under laws of other contemporaneous cultures such those of pre-modern Europe, both in terms of financial independence and access to divorce, but the situation is different if it is evaluated against modern conceptions. Furthermore, slave women were not granted the same legal rights. Sharia recognizes the basic inequality between master and women slave, between free women and slave women, between believers and non-believers, as well as their unequal rights. * Bernard Lewis (2002), What Went Wrong?, , pp. 82–83; * Brunschvig. 'Abd; Encyclopedia of Islam, Brill, 2nd Edition, Vol 1, pp. 13–40. Sharia authorized the institution of slavery, using the words ''abd'' (slave) and the phrase ''ma malakat aymanukum'' ("that which your right hand owns") to refer to women slaves, seized as captives of war. Under classical Islamic law, Muslim men could have sexual relations with female captives and slaves without their consent.Ali, K. (2010). Marriage and slavery in early Islam. Harvard University Press. Slave women under sharia did not have a right to own property, right to free movement or right to consent. Sharia, in Islam's history, provided religious foundation for enslaving non-Muslim women (and men), as well as encouraged slave's

manumission Manumission, or enfranchisement, is the act of freeing enslaved people by their enslavers. Different approaches to manumission were developed, each specific to the time and place of a particular society. Historian Verene Shepherd states that ...

. However, manumission required that the non-Muslim slave first convert to Islam. Non-Muslim slave women who bore children to their Muslim masters became legally free upon their master's death, and their children were presumed to be Muslims as their father, in Africa, and elsewhere. Starting with the 20th century, Western legal systems evolved to expand women's rights, but women's rights under Islamic law have remained tied to Quran, hadiths and their faithful interpretation as sharia by Islamic jurists.

José Policarpo advice controversy

On 14 January 2009, the Catholic Portuguese cardinal

José Policarpo José da Cruz Policarpo, GCC (; 26 February 1936 – 12 March 2014), officially referred to as José IV, Patriarch of Lisbon, though usually referred to as "D. José Policarpo", was Patriarch of Lisbon from 24 March 1998 to 18 May 2013. Po ...

directed a warning to young women to "think twice" before marrying Muslim men: Christians should learn more about

and respect Muslims, but marrying a Muslim man is getting into a lot of trouble, that not even

knows where it would end, if the couple moved to an Islamic country. He also said that dialogue "with our Muslim brothers" is difficult, because it is possible to dialogue only with those who want to have dialogue. Human rights group

criticized Policarpo for inciting "discrimination" and "intolerance", and a representative of the Muslim community in Portugal said they were hurt and surprised by his words, but remarked that his words could be interpreted as a call to respect differences and get to know the other religion. A spokesman for the Portuguese Episcopal Conference said the cardinal had offered "realistic advice" rather than "discrimination" or "contempt for another culture or religion".

Criticism of Muslim immigrants and immigration

The extent of negative attitudes towards Muslims varies across different parts of Europe. The immigration of Muslims to Europe has increased in recent decades. Friction has developed between their new neighbours. Conservative Muslim social attitudes on modern issues have caused controversy in Europe and elsewhere. Scholars argue about how much these attitudes are a result of Islamic beliefs. Some critics consider Islam to be incompatible with secular Western society, and that, unlike other religions, Islam positively commands its adherents to impose its

religious law Religious law includes ethical and moral codes taught by religious traditions. Different religious systems hold sacred law in a greater or lesser degree of importance to their belief systems, with some being explicitly antinomian whereas others ...

on all peoples, believers and unbelievers alike, whenever possible and by any means necessary. Their criticism has been partly influenced by a stance against

advocated by recent philosophers, closely linked to the heritage of New Philosophers. Statements by proponents like

Pascal Bruckner Pascal Bruckner (; born 15 December 1948, in Paris) is a French writer, one of the " New Philosophers" who came to prominence in the 1970s and 1980s. Much of his work has been devoted to critiques of French society and culture. Biography Bruckne ...

describe multiculturalism as an invention of an "enlightened" elite who deny the benefits of democratic rights to non-Westerners by chaining them to their roots. They believe this allows Islam free rein to propagate what they state are abuses, such as the mistreatment of women and

homosexuals Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to peop ...

, and in some countries

slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

. They also state that multiculturalism allows a degree of religious freedom that exceeds what is needed for personal religious freedom and is conducive to the creation of organizations aimed at undermining European secular or Christian values. Emigrants from nearly every predominantly Muslim country have immigrated to Canada. According to a 2013 poll, 54% of Canadians had an unfavourable view of Islam, which was higher than for any other religion (Hinduism, Sikhism etc.). In the United States, after the

Boston Marathon bombing The Boston Marathon bombing was a domestic terrorist attack that took place during the annual Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. Two terrorists, brothers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, planted two homemade pressure cooker bombs, whi ...

, the immigration processes in the country are assumed to be harder. Far-right commentator Bryan Fischer asked that no more visas be granted to Muslims, and no more mosques built; his opinion received support, most notably by the former presidential candidate

Pat Buchanan Patrick Joseph Buchanan (; born November 2, 1938) is an American paleoconservative political commentator, columnist, politician, and broadcaster. Buchanan was an assistant and special consultant to U.S. Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, ...

. Following the San Bernardino attack in 2015,

Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...

, then a candidate for President, proposed "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States, until we can figure out what the hell is going on". Throughout the campaign, Trump repeatedly described Islam and Muslim immigrants and refugees as a threat to the West, and condemned current President

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...

for not referring to

Islamic State An Islamic state is a state that has a form of government based on Islamic law (sharia). As a term, it has been used to describe various historical polities and theories of governance in the Islamic world. As a translation of the Arabic term ' ...

militants as "Islamic terrorists" or "radical Muslims", accusing Obama of cowardice in the face of radical Islam and claiming that Obama had "founded ISIS" through his foreign policy. Trump's rhetoric was condemned by his opponent,

Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States senat ...

, as well as numerous Muslim advocacy groups and activists, and became a focal issue in the

2016 United States presidential election The 2016 United States presidential election was the 58th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 8, 2016. The Republican ticket of businessman Donald Trump and Indiana governor Mike Pence defeated the Democratic ticke ...

Comparison to communist and fascist ideologies

In 2004, speaking to the

Acton Institute The Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty is an American research and educational institution, or think tank, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, (with an office in Rome) whose stated mission is "to promote a free and virtuous society ...

on the problems of "secular democracy", Cardinal

George Pell George Pell (born 8 June 1941) is an Australian cardinal of the Catholic Church. He served as the inaugural prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy between 2014 and 2019, and was a member of the Council of Cardinal Advisers between 2013 an ...

drew a parallel between Islam and communism: "Islam may provide in the 21st century, the attraction that communism provided in the 20th, both for those that are alienated and embittered on the one hand and for those who seek order or justice on the other." Pell also agrees in another speech that its capacity for far-reaching renovation is severely limited. An Australian Islamist spokesman, Keysar Trad, responded to the criticism: "Communism is a godless system, a system that in fact persecutes faith".

Geert Wilders Geert Wilders (; born 6 September 1963) is a Dutch politician who has led the Party for Freedom (''Partij voor de Vrijheid'' – PVV) since he founded it in 2006. He is also the party's leader in the House of Representatives (''Tweede Kamer ...

, a

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People ...

member of parliament and leader of the

Party for Freedom The Party for Freedom ( nl, Partij voor de Vrijheid, PVV) is a nationalist, right-wing populist political party in the Netherlands. Founded in 2006 as the successor to Geert Wilders' one-man faction in the House of Representatives, it won nine ...

, has also compared Islam to fascism and communism. ;Islamism Writers such as Stephen Suleyman Schwartz and

Christopher Hitchens Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was a British-American author and journalist who wrote or edited over 30 books (including five essay collections) on culture, politics, and literature. Born and educated in England, ...

,Hitchens, Christopher
Defending Islamofascism: It's a valid term. Here's why
Slate, 22 October 2007 find some elements of Islamism fascistic.

Malise Ruthven Malise Walter Maitland Knox Hore-Ruthven (born 14 May 1942) is an Anglo-Irish academic and writer. Born in Dublin in 1942, he earned an M.A. in English literature at the University of Cambridge, before working as a scriptwriter with the BBC Ar ...

, a

Scottish Scottish usually refers to something of, from, or related to Scotland, including: *Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family native to Scotland *Scottish English *Scottish national identity, the Scottish ide ...

writer and historian who writes on religion and Islamic affairs, opposes redefining Islamism as "

Islamofascism "Islamofascism", first described as "Islamic fascism" in 1933, is a term popularized in the 1990s drawing an analogical comparison between the ideological characteristics of specific Islamist or Islamic fundamentalist movements and short-lived E ...

", but also finds the resemblances between the two ideologies "compelling". French philosopher Alexandre del Valle compared Islamism with fascism and communism in his '' Red-green-brown alliance'' theory.

Responses to criticism

has written a number of introductory texts on Islam and the Islamic world. He has addressed issues including the rise of

militant Islam Jihadism is a neologism which is used in reference to "militant Islamic movements that are perceived as existentially threatening to the West" and "rooted in political Islam."Compare: Appearing earlier in the Pakistani and Indian media, Wes ...

, the veiling of women, and democracy. Esposito emphatically argues against what he calls the "pan-Islamic myth". He thinks that "too often coverage of Islam and the Muslim world assumes the existence of a monolithic Islam in which all Muslims are the same." To him, such a view is naive and unjustifiably obscures important divisions and differences in the Muslim world.

in his book ''Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman'' addresses Muhammad's alleged moral failings. Watt argues on a basis of

moral relativism Moral relativism or ethical relativism (often reformulated as relativist ethics or relativist morality) is used to describe several philosophical positions concerned with the differences in moral judgments across different peoples and cultures. ...

that Muhammad should be judged by the standards of his own time and country rather than "by those of the most enlightened opinion in the West today."

, tracing what she believes to be the West's long history of hostility toward Islam, finds in Muhammad's teachings a theology of peace and tolerance. Armstrong holds that the "holy war" urged by the Quran alludes to each Muslim's duty to fight for a just, decent society.

Edward Said Edward Wadie Said (; , ; 1 November 1935 – 24 September 2003) was a Palestinian-American professor of literature at Columbia University, a public intellectual, and a founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies.Robert Young, ''Whi ...

, in his essay ''Islam Through Western Eyes'', writes that the general basis of Orientalist thought forms a study structure in which Islam is placed in an inferior position as an object of study. He argues the existence of a very considerable bias in Orientalist writings as a consequence of the scholars' cultural make-up. He states that Islam has been looked at with a particular hostility and fear due to many obvious religious, psychological and political reasons, all deriving from a sense "that so far as the West is concerned, Islam represents not only a formidable competitor but also a late-coming challenge to Christianity."

Cathy Young Catherine Alicia Young (born Yekaterina Jung russian: Екатерина Юнг; born February 10, 1963) is a Russian-born American journalist. Young is primarily known for her writing about feminism and other cultural issues, as well as about R ...

of ''Reason Magazine'' writes that "criticism of the religion is enmeshed with cultural and ethnic hostility" often painting the Muslim world as monolithic. While stating that the terms "

Islamophobia Islamophobia is the fear of, hatred of, or prejudice against the religion of Islam or Muslims in general, especially when seen as a geopolitical force or a source of terrorism. The scope and precise definition of the term ''Islamophobia' ...

" and "anti-Muslim bigotry" are often used in response to legitimate criticism of fundamentalist Islam and problems within Muslim culture, she argues that "the real thing does exist, and it frequently takes the cover of anti-jihadism." In contrast to the widespread Western belief that women in Muslim societies are oppressed and denied opportunities to realize their full potential, most Muslims believe their faith to be liberating or fair to women, and some find it offensive that Westerners criticize it without fully understanding the historical and contemporary realities of Muslim women's lives. Conservative Muslims in particular (in common with some Christians and Jews) see women in the West as being economically exploited for their labor, sexually abused, and commodified through the media's fixation on the female body.

maintains that though slaves often suffered on the way before reaching their destination, they received good treatment and some degree of acceptance as members of their owners' households.

References

Citations

Sources

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

External links

* {{Authority control

Islam-related controversies

History

Early Islam

Medieval world

Medieval Islamic world

Medieval Christianity

Enlightenment Europe

Modern era

Western authors

South Asian authors

Other authors

Scripture

Criticism of the Quran

Pre-existing sources

Criticism of the Hadith

Lack of secondary evidence

Kaaba

Ethics

Muhammad

Age of Muhammad's wife Aisha

Ethics in the Quran

Views on slavery

Apostasy

Islamic law

Human rights conventions

Islam and Violence

Beheadings

Homosexuality

Short-term and limited marriages

Short-term marriage

Contractually limited marriage

Women in Islam

Domestic violence

Personal status laws and child marriage

Women's right to property and consent

José Policarpo advice controversy

Criticism of Muslim immigrants and immigration

Comparison to communist and fascist ideologies

Responses to criticism

See also

References

Citations

Sources

Further reading

External links