ASHURA

`ASHURA’. The tenth day of the Muslim month of Muharram, `Ashura’ had been considered by early Muslims to be a very auspicious and joyous day, […]

ASABIYAH

ASABIYAH. Derived from the root `asab (“to bind”) and `asabah (“union”) `asabiyah refers to a sociocultural bond that can be used to measure the strength […]

ARKOUN, MOHAMMED

ARKOUN, MOHAMMED (b. 1928), Algerian Islamic scholar and writer. One of today’s leading Arab Muslim intellectuals, Arkoun is involved in the sensitive task of reinterpreting […]

ARCHITECTURE

ARCHITECTURE. [To survey the architectural forms characteristic of Islamic societies, this entry comprises two articles. The first presents an overview of the development of traditional […]

ARAB SOCIALISM

ARAB SOCIALISM. The notion of Arab socialism was never articulated precisely, but it can be taken as representing the economic and social aspirations of Nasserism […]

ARAB NATIONALISM

ARAB NATIONALISM. Like other strands of third-world nationalism, qawmiyah `arabiyah or Arab nationalism cannot be understood apart from its anticolonial ethos and its glorification of […]

ARAB LEAGUE

ARAB LEAGUE. Until the mid-twentieth century, the Arabs of modern times were under foreign domination, mainly Ottoman, British, and French. Their first opportunity to regain […]

ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT

The origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict can be traced back more than a century, when Jews, disillusioned with prospects for integration into European societies, began […]

ARABIC LITERATURE

ARABIC LITERATURE. [This entry comprises two articles on Islamic themes and values in modern Arabic literature. The first presents a general overview; the second focuses […]