Abd Allah ibn Abi Quhafa, commonly known by his kunyaAbu Bakr, was the first caliph, ruling from 632 until his death in 634. As a senior companion of Muhammad and, through his daughter Aisha, also his father-in-law, Abu Bakr is referred to with the honorific title al-Siddiq by Sunni Muslims.
Muhammad 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 monotheistic teachings of Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets. He is believed to be the Seal of the Prophets within Islam, with the Quran as well as his teachings and practices forming the basis for Islamic religious belief.
Medina, officially Al-Madinah al-Munawwarah and also commonly simplified as Madīnah or Madinah, is the capital of Medina Province in the Hejaz region of western Saudi Arabia. It is one of the oldest and most important places in Islamic history. One of the most sacred cities in Islam, the population as of 2022 is 1,411,599, making it the fourth-most populous city in the country. Around 58.5% of the population are Saudi citizens and 41.5% are foreigners. Located at the core of the Medina Province in the western reaches of the country, the city is distributed over 589 km2 (227 sq mi), of which 293 km2 (113 sq mi) constitutes the city's urban area, while the rest is occupied by the Hejaz Mountains, empty valleys, agricultural spaces and older dormant volcanoes.
A heretic is a person who commits heresy.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Lady Ferguson is a Somali-born, Dutch-American writer, activist and former politician. She is a critic of Islam and advocate for the rights and self-determination of Muslim women, opposing forced marriage, honour killing, child marriage, and female genital mutilation. At the age of five, following local traditions in Somalia, Ali underwent female genital mutilation organized by her grandmother. Her father—a scholar, intellectual, and a devout Muslim—was against the procedure but could not stop it from happening because he was imprisoned by the Communist government of Somalia at the time. Her family moved across various countries in Africa and the Middle East, and at 23, she received political asylum in the Netherlands, gaining Dutch citizenship five years later. In her early 30s, Hirsi Ali renounced the Islamic faith of her childhood, began identifying as an atheist, and became involved in Dutch centre-right politics, joining the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD).
Submission is a 2004 English-language Dutch short drama film produced and directed by Theo van Gogh, and written by Ayaan Hirsi Ali ; it was shown on NPO 3, a Dutch public broadcasting network, on 29 August 2004. The film's title is one of the possible translations of the Arabic word "Islam". A Islamist reacted to the film by assassinating Van Gogh.
Al-Mujādilah is the 58th chapter (sūrah) of the Qur'an with 22 verses (ayat). Revealed in Medina, the chapter first addresses the legality of pre-Islamic method of divorce called zihar. The name "she who disputes" refers to the woman who petitioned Muhammad about the unjustness of this method, and the chapter's first verses outlaw it and prescribe how to deal with past cases of zihar. The chapter also discusses public assemblies and prescribes manners associated with it. The chapter ends by contrasting what it calls "the confederates of God" and "the confederates of Satan", and promising rewards for the former.
The Caged Virgin: A Muslim Woman's Cry for Reason, also published as The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam, is a 2004 book by the former Dutch parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The Caged Virgin was first published in English in 2006.
In Islam, Muḥammad is venerated as the Seal of the Prophets and earthly manifestation of primordial divine light (Nūr), who transmitted the eternal word of God (Qur'ān) from the angel Gabriel (Jabrāʾīl) to humans and jinn. Muslims believe that the Quran, the central religious text of Islam, was revealed to Muhammad by God, and that Muhammad was sent to guide people to Islam, which is believed not to be a separate religion, but the unaltered original faith of mankind (fiṭrah), and believed to have been shared by previous prophets including Adam, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. The religious, social, and political tenets that Muhammad established with the Quran became the foundation of Islam and the Muslim world.
The first Islamic State or the State of Medina was the political entity established by Muhammad in Medina in 622 CE under the Constitution of Medina. It represented the political unity of the Muslim Ummah (nation). It was subsequently transformed into the caliphate by Muhammad's disciples, who were known as the Rightly Guided (Rashidun) Caliphs. The Islamic State significantly expanded under the Umayyad Caliphate (661–750) and consequently the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258).
Muhammad, the final Islamic prophet, was born and lived in Mecca for the first 53 years of his life until the Hijra. This period of his life is characterized by his proclamation of prophethood. Muhammad's father, Abdullah ibn Abd al-Muttalib, died before he was born. His mother would raise him until he was six years old, before her death around 577 CE at Abwa'. Subsequently raised by his grandfather, Abd al-Muttalib, and then his uncle, Abu Talib ibn ‘Abd al-Muttalib, Muhammad's early career involved being a shepherd and merchant. Muhammad married Khadija bint Khuwaylid after a successful trading endeavour in Syria. After the death of Khadija and Abu Talib in the Year of Sorrow, Muhammad married Sawda bint Zam'a and Aisha.
The holiest sites in Islam are located in the Arabian Peninsula. While the significance of most places typically varies depending on the Islamic sect, there is a consensus across all mainstream branches of the religion that affirms two cities as having the highest degree of holiness, in descending order: Mecca, and Medina. Mecca's Al-Masjid al-Haram, Al-Masjid an-Nabawi in Medina are all revered by Muslims as sites of great importance.
Infidel is a 2006 autobiography of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-Dutch activist and politician. Hirsi Ali has attracted controversy and death threats were made against Ali in the early 2000s over the publication of the book.
This is a bibliography of literature treating the topic of criticism of Islam, sorted by source publication and the author's last name.
The secular movement refers to a social and political trend in the United States, beginning in the early years of the 20th century, with the founding of the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism in 1925 and the American Humanist Association in 1941, in which atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, freethinkers, and other nonreligious and nontheistic Americans have grown in both numbers and visibility. There has been a sharp increase in the number of Americans who identify as religiously unaffiliated, from under 10 percent in the 1990s to 20 percent in 2013. The trend is especially pronounced among young people, with about one in three Americans younger than 30 identifying as religiously unaffiliated, a figure that has nearly tripled since the 1990s.
Laylat al-mabit refers to the night in 622 CE in which the Islamic prophet Muhammad fled Mecca for Yathrib, apparently to foil an assassination plan. His escape from Mecca followed the exodus of his persecuted followers to the safe haven of Yathrib, a city that was later renamed Medina in his honor. Laylat al-mabit is often associated in Islamic literature with the reports that Muhammad's cousin Ali ibn Abi Talib risked his life to facilitate Muhammad's safe escape from Mecca.
Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue is a 2015 book collaboration between American author Sam Harris and British activist Maajid Nawaz. The book has been subsequently adapted into a documentary film of the same title.
De zoontjesfabriek. Over vrouwen, islam en integratie is the title of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's first book, which was published in Dutch in December 2002. It is a collection of all articles that Hirsi Ali had published up till then, and an interview with Dutch feminist author Colet van der Ven.
