9781422281130

10 M USLIM H EROES AND H OLY P LACES

especially daunting task. The difficulties of picking just a few heroes of Islam for inclusion in this book should be readily apparent. After all, Islamic civ- ilization has a history that extends back more than 1,400 years. And today over 50 coun- tries have Muslim-majority populations, to say nothing of the large number of countries with significant Muslim minorities, including Russia, India, China, and several European nations. Geographically, the Islamic

The American civil rights leader Malcolm X is a hero to many Muslims, who admire him for publicizing orthodox Islam in the United States and fighting for social justice.

world spans the globe from Morocco to Indonesia, and Islam claims nearly 2 billion adherents in all. Perhaps no other religion can claim such geographical and cultural diversity. It should also be noted that modern Muslims, like adherents of other faiths, vary in their level of religious commitment, and in the way they interpret some of their religion’s tenets and traditions. Thus an ideologically secular Muslim and a traditional, devout Muslim would probably list different figures from Islamic history as heroes. The same might be expected from a more liberal Muslim and a member of the fundamentalist Wahhabi sect. caliph— a successor of the prophet Muhammad as leader of the Islamic community. mausoleum— a large, usually stone building where the dead are entombed above ground. Shiite— a follower of Shiism, Islam’s second-largest sect worldwide. Sufi— a practitioner of Sufism, a Muslim mystical tradition. Words to Understand in This Chapter