The Modern Muslim World
Reform, colonialism and the contemporary period
The nineteenth and twentieth centuries confronted Muslim societies with European imperial power, the collapse of the Ottoman caliphate, and the task of building nation-states from its remnants. Responses ranged from state-led modernisation to intellectual reform movements seeking to recover what reformers regarded as an authentic and rational Islam, and to armed resistance against occupation.
This collection gathers the encyclopaedia's modern coverage: general accounts of modern Islamic history and the fall of the Ottoman Empire; reformist thinkers including Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Muhammad Abduh, and Allama Iqbal; the modernising statesman Muhammad Ali Pasha and the resistance leader Omar al-Mukhtar; contemporary institutional developments in Islamic banking, finance, and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation; Muslim communities in Europe, North America, and Southeast Asia; and regional articles on Egypt, Iran, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In This Collection
Modern Islamic History (1800-2024)
Islamic history from 1800 to the present: the weakening of the Ottoman and other Muslim empires, the period of European colonial rule, the independence movement…
Muhammad Ali Pasha - Founder of Modern Egypt
Muhammad Ali Pasha (1769-1849 CE) transformed Egypt into a regional power through military, economic, and administrative reforms. Founder of modern Egypt, he es…
Sir Syed Ahmed Khan: Reformer, Educator, and Architect of Muslim Modernity in India
Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (1817-1898) was an Indian Muslim reformer and educator who founded the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh in 1875, which became Al…
Abdulmecid I: The Sultan of the Tanzimat
Abdulmecid I (1823-1861) became Ottoman sultan at sixteen and presided over the Tanzimat, the empire's most sweeping programme of legal and administrative refor…
Jamal al-Din al-Afghani: The Revolutionary Pan-Islamist
Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838-1897 CE) was a revolutionary Islamic thinker and Pan-Islamist who advocated for Islamic unity, anti-colonialism, and reform. His i…
Abdulhamid II: The Last Sultan to Rule
Abdulhamid II (1842-1918) ruled the Ottoman Empire from 1876 to 1909, the last sultan to exercise real power. He promulgated the empire's first constitution, su…
Mehmed V Resad: The Constitutional Sultan
Mehmed V (1844-1918) reigned as Ottoman sultan from 1909 to 1918 as a constitutional figurehead while the Committee of Union and Progress governed. His reign sa…
Muhammad Abduh: Pioneer of Islamic Modernism
Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905 CE) was an Egyptian Islamic scholar and reformer who pioneered Islamic modernism. As Grand Mufti of Egypt, he reconciled Islamic teach…
Rashid Rida: The Editor of al-Manar
Sayyid Muhammad Rashid Rida (1865-1935) was an Islamic scholar of Ottoman Syria who settled in Egypt and founded the journal al-Manar in 1898, editing it until …
Omar al-Mukhtar: The Lion of the Desert
Omar al-Mukhtar (1858-1931) was a Libyan resistance leader who fought Italian colonization for over twenty years. Known as the 'Lion of the Desert,' he became a…
Amin al-Husseini: Grand Mufti of Jerusalem
Mohammed Amin al-Husseini (born c. 1895-97, died 1974) was appointed grand mufti of Jerusalem and president of the Supreme Muslim Council in 1921. This article …
Yasser Arafat: Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization
Yasser Arafat (1929-2004) co-founded Fatah in the late 1950s, chaired the Palestine Liberation Organization from 1969 until his death, and was president of the …
Ali Musliyar: Religious Leader of the Malabar Rebellion
Ali Musliyar (c. 1861-1922) was an Islamic religious leader in Malabar, imam of the Tirurangadi mosque from 1907 and the principal religious authority of the Ma…
Mehmed VI Vahideddin: The Last Ottoman Sultan
Mehmed VI Vahideddin (1861-1926) was the thirty-sixth and last Ottoman sultan, reigning from 1918 to 1922. He governed under Allied occupation, his government s…
Nyai Ahmad Dahlan: Founder of Aisyiyah and Pioneer of Indonesian Women's Education
Nyai Ahmad Dahlan (born Siti Walidah, 1872-1946) was an Indonesian Islamic reformer who founded Aisyiyah, the women's wing of Muhammadiyah, pioneering girls' ed…
Variyankunnath Kunjahammad Haji: Military Leader of the Malabar Rebellion
Variyankunnath Kunjahammad Haji (c. 1875-1922) was the military leader of the Malabar Rebellion of 1921-22, establishing a short-lived parallel government in th…
Allama Iqbal: The Poet-Philosopher of the East
Allama Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938 CE) was a poet-philosopher and political leader considered the spiritual father of Pakistan. His poetry, philosophical works, a…
Fall of the Ottoman Empire
Comprehensive history of the decline and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire from the 19th century through World War I to the establishment of the Turkish Republi…
Abul A'la Maududi
A journalist, Qur'anic commentator and political thinker who founded the Jamaat-e-Islami in 1941. His six-volume Urdu commentary Tafhim al-Qur'an and his writin…
Abd al-Fattah Abu Ghudda
A Syrian Hanafi scholar and editor whose critical editions of works of law and hadith brought many neglected texts into print. He introduced modern South Asian …
The Tablighi Jamaat
A movement of lay religious preaching founded by Muhammad Ilyas Kandhlawi in the Mewat region of northern India in the 1920s. Built on short preaching tours und…
Shah Ahmad Shafi
A Bangladeshi scholar of hadith who led the seminary at Hathazari in Chittagong for more than three decades and chaired the country's Qawmi madrasa education bo…
Muhammad Rafi Usmani
A Pakistani Hanafi jurist who led Darul Uloom Karachi as its president from 1986 until his death in 2022. Titled Grand Mufti, he served on Pakistan's Council of…
Ali Khamenei
An Iranian Shia cleric who was the second Supreme Leader of Iran, holding the office from 1989 until his death in 2026. He had earlier served as Tehran's Friday…
The Jamaat-e-Islami
An organisation founded by Abul A'la Maududi in 1941 to form a disciplined body of Muslims trained to lead society according to Islamic norms. After the partiti…
Muhammad Taqi Usmani
A Pakistani Hanafi jurist and writer on Islamic law, trained at Darul Uloom Karachi and in economics and law at Karachi and Punjab. He served on Pakistan's high…
Islamic Education in the Modern Era
Islamic learning from the nineteenth century to the present. The classical pattern of mosque school, madrasa and scholarly circle met colonial and state educati…
Islamic Banking and Financial Systems: Evolution and Principles
Islamic banking represents a comprehensive approach to finance based on Sharia principles, emphasizing ethical finance, risk-sharing, and asset-backed transacti…
Growth of Islamic Finance
Banking and financial services conducted according to Islamic law, which forbids interest and requires risk to be shared. From institutional beginnings in the 1…
Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC)
An intergovernmental body of 57 member states across four continents, second in size only to the United Nations. Founded in 1969 after the arson attack on the A…
Islam in Europe
Islam has been part of European history since the eighth century through three main pathways: the civilization of Al-Andalus in Iberia, the Arab and Norman peri…
Islam in Southeast Asia
Islam reached Southeast Asia through Indian Ocean trade from the thirteenth century, spreading via Muslim merchants, Sufi teachers, and converting rulers. Today…
Islam in North America - Historical and Contemporary Overview
Islam has been present in North America for more than four centuries, beginning with enslaved West African Muslims. Some 3.45 million Muslims now live in the Un…
Bosnia and Herzegovina: Islamic Heritage in the Balkans
The westernmost region of sustained Muslim presence in Europe. Ottoman rule from 1463 until the Austro-Hungarian occupation of 1878 produced a distinctive Bosni…
Egypt: From Pharaonic Civilization to Modern Islamic State
Egypt's transformation from Pharaonic civilization through Islamic conquest to become a center of Islamic learning and modern Arab leadership, with Al-Azhar's e…
Iran (Persia): From Ancient Empire to Islamic Republic
Historically Persia, the one major region taken by the early Muslim armies that kept its own language and culture while reshaping Islamic civilisation. Its Shi'…