The Society of the Muslim Brothers, better known as the Muslim Brotherhood, is a transnational Sunni Islamist organization founded in Egypt by Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna in 1928. Al-Banna's teachings spread far beyond Egypt, influencing today various Islamist movements from charitable organizations to political parties.
The history of Saudi Arabia as a nation state began with the emergence of the Al Saud dynasty in central Arabia in 1727 and the subsequent establishment of the Emirate of Diriyah. Pre-Islamic Arabia, the territory that constitutes modern Saudi Arabia, was the site of several ancient cultures and civilizations; the prehistory of Saudi Arabia shows some of the earliest traces of human activity in the world.
The Arabian Peninsula, or Arabia, is a peninsula in West Asia, situated northeast of Africa on the Arabian Plate. At 3,237,500 km2 (1,250,000 sq mi), the Arabian Peninsula is the largest peninsula in the world.
The United Arab Emirates, or simply the Emirates, is a country in West Asia, in the Middle East. It is located at the eastern end of the Arabian Peninsula and shares borders with Oman and Saudi Arabia, while also having maritime borders in the Persian Gulf with Qatar and Iran. Abu Dhabi is the country's capital, while Dubai, the most populous city, is an international hub.
The Arab world, formally the Arab homeland, also known as the Arab nation, the Arabsphere, or the Arab states, comprises a vast group of countries, mainly located in Western Asia and Northern Africa. While the majority of people in the Arab world are ethnically Arab, there are also significant populations of other ethnic groups such as Berbers, Kurds, Somalis and Nubians, among other groups. Arabic is used as the lingua franca throughout the Arab world.
Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in West Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula and has a land area of about 2150000 km2, making it the fifth-largest country in Asia and the largest in the Middle East. It is bordered by the Red Sea to the west; Jordan, Iraq, and Kuwait to the north; the Persian Gulf, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to the east; Oman to the southeast; and Yemen to the south. Bahrain is an island country off its east coast. The Gulf of Aqaba in the northwest separates Saudi Arabia from Egypt and Israel. Saudi Arabia is the only country with a coastline along both the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, and most of its terrain consists of arid desert, lowland, steppe, and mountains. Saudi Arabia's capital and largest city is Riyadh; the kingdom is also the location of Islam's two holiest cities of Mecca and Medina.
The Salafi movement or Salafism is a revival movement within Sunni Islam, which was formed as a socio-religious resistance to European imperialism during the late 19th century and has remained influential in the Islamic World for over a century. The name "Salafiyya" refers to advocacy of a return to the traditions of the "pious predecessors", the first three generations of Muslims, who are believed to exemplify the pure form of Islam. In practice, Salafis maintain that Muslims ought to rely on the Qur'an, the Sunnah and the 'Ijma (consensus) of the salaf, giving these writings precedence over later religious interpretations. The Salafi movement aimed to achieve a renewal of Muslim life and had a major influence on many Muslim thinkers and movements across the Islamic world.
Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan was an Emirati royal, politician, philanthropist and the founder of the United Arab Emirates. Zayed served as the governor of Eastern Region from 1946 until he succeeded Sheikh Shakhbut as the ruler of Abu Dhabi in 1966, and then as the first president of the United Arab Emirates while he retained his position as Abu Dhabi's ruler from 1971 until his death in 2004. He is revered in the United Arab Emirates as the Waalid al-Ummah, credited for being the principal driving force behind uniting seven emirates.
The Islamic Development Bank is a multilateral development finance institution that is focused on Islamic finance for infrastructure development and located in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. There are 57 shareholding member states with the largest single shareholder being Saudi Arabia.
Islam is the official religion of the United Arab Emirates. Of the total population, 76.9% are Muslims as of a 2010 estimate by the Pew Research Center. Although no official statistics are available for the breakdown between Sunni and Shia Muslims among noncitizen residents, media estimates suggest less than 20 percent of the noncitizen Muslim population are Shia.
The Persian Gulf naming dispute concerns the gulf known historically and internationally as the Persian Gulf, after Persia is involved in an ongoing naming dispute. In connection with the emergence of pan-Arabism and Arab nationalism in the 1960s, the usage of the toponym "Arabian Gulf" as well as just "Gulf" increased.
The Arab states of the Persian Gulf refers to a group of Arab states bordering the Persian Gulf. There are seven member states of the Arab League in the region: Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Yemen is bound to the six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, based on history and culture.
The experiences of Muslim women vary widely between and within different societies. At the same time, their adherence to Islam is a shared factor that affects their lives to a varying degree and gives them a common identity that may serve to bridge the wide cultural, social, and economic differences between them.
Diya in Islamic law, is the financial compensation paid to the victim or heirs of a victim in the cases of murder, bodily harm or property damage by mistake. It is an alternative punishment to qisas. In Arabic, the word means both blood money and ransom, and it is spelled sometimes as diyah or diyeh.
Al Buraimi Governorate is one of the 11 governorates of Oman. Until October 2006, the area was part of Ad Dhahirah Region. At this time, the new governorate was created from the Wilayats (Provinces) of Al Buraymi and Mahdah. A third wilayat, As-Sunaynah, was created from parts of the two. Sayyid Saud bin Hilal bin Hamad al-Busaidi has been governor since 2020.
The Unification of Saudi Arabia was a military and political campaign in which the various tribes, sheikhdoms, city-states, emirates, and kingdoms of most of the central Arabian Peninsula were conquered by the House of Saud, or Al Saud. Unification started in 1902 and continued until 1932, when the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was proclaimed under the leadership of Abdulaziz, known in the West as Ibn Saud, creating what is sometimes referred to as the Third Saudi State, to differentiate it from the Emirate of Diriyah, the First Saudi State and the Emirate of Nejd, the Second Saudi State, also House of Saud states.
According to the 2005 census, Christians accounted for 9 percent of the total population of the United Arab Emirates; estimates in 2010 suggested a figure of 12.6%.
Battoulah, also called Gulf Burqa, is a metallic-looking fashion mask traditionally worn by Muslim Arab women. The mask is mainly worn in the Persian Gulf region, including Bahrain, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Iraq and Qatar, as well as in southern Iran. The mask usually indicates that the wearer is married. Historically, it was also used to fool enemies into thinking that the women they spied from a distance were actually men.
Polygamous marriages are legally recognized for men in Saudi Arabia, in accordance with Islamic Sharia law, which allows for Muslim men to marry up to four wives, provided that he treats them equally and shares all his wealth equally. However, attitudes towards polygamy in Saudi Arabia have changed in recent decades and became very rare to practice it in the present times.
Starting in the mid-1970s and 1980s, Salafism and Wahhabism — along with other Sunni interpretations of Islam favored by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies — achieved a "preeminent position of strength in the global expression of Islam."
