The term Muslim world (also known as the Ummah world ) has several meanings. In a religious sense, it refers to those who adhere to the teachings of Islam, referred to as Muslims. In a cultural sense, it refers to Islamic civilization, inclusive of non-Muslims living in that civilization. In a modern geopolitical sense, the term usually refers collectively to Muslim-majority countries, states, districts, or towns.
Islam emphasizes unity and defense of fellow Muslims, although many schools and branches (see Shi'a–Sunni relations, for example) exist. In the past both Pan-Islamism and nationalist currents have influenced the status of the Muslim world.
As of 2009, over 1.5 billion or about 23% of the world population are Muslims.[1] Of these, around 62% live in Asia-Pacific, 20% in the Middle East and North Africa, 15% in Sub-Saharan Africa and around 2% in Europe & Americas.[2][3][4][5]
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Muslim history involves the history of the Islamic faith as a religion and as a social institution. The history of Islam began in Arabia with the Islamic prophet Muhammad's first recitations of the Qur'an in the 7th century. Under the Rashidun and Umayyads, the Caliphate grew rapidly geographically expansion of Muslim power well beyond the Arabian Peninsula in the form of a vast Muslim Empire with an area of influence that stretched from northwest India, across Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, southern Italy, and the Iberian Peninsula, to the Pyrenees.
During much of the twentieth century, the Islamic identity and the dominance of Islam on political issues have arguably increased during the early twenty-first century. The fast-growing Western interests in Islamic regions, international conflicts and globalization have changed the influence of Islam on the world in contemporary history.[6]
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The Islamic Golden Age, also sometimes known as the Islamic Renaissance,[7] is traditionally dated from the 7th to 13th centuries C.E.,[8] but has been extended to the 15th and 16th[9] centuries by more recent scholarship.
The term "Islamic art and architecture" denotes the works of art and architecture produced from the 7th century onwards by people who lived within the territory that was inhabited by culturally Islamic populations.[10][11]
No Islamic visual images or depictions of God are meant to exist because it is believed that such artistic depictions may lead to idolatry. Moreover, Muslims believe that God is incorporeal, making any two- or three- dimensional depictions impossible. Instead, Muslims describe God by the names and attributes that, according to Islam, he revealed to his creation. All but one sura of the Qur'an begins with the phrase "In the name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful". Images of Mohammed are likewise prohibited. Such aniconism and iconoclasm[12] can also be found in Jewish and some Christian theology.
Islamic art frequently adopts the use of geometrical floral or vegetal designs in a repetition known as arabesque. Such designs are highly nonrepresentational, as Islam forbids representational depictions as found in pre-Islamic pagan religions. Despite this, there is a presence of depictional art in some Muslim societies, notably the miniature style made famous in Persia and under the Ottoman Empire which featured not only paintings of people and animals but also depictions of Qur'anic stories and Islamic traditional narratives. Another reason why Islamic art is usually abstract is to symbolize the transcendence, indivisible and infinite nature of God, an objective achieved by arabesque.[13] Islamic calligraphy is an omnipresent decoration in Islamic art, and is usually expressed in the form of Qur'anic verses. Two of the main scripts involved are the symbolic kufic and naskh scripts, which can be found adorning the walls and domes of mosques, the sides of minbars, and so on.[13]
Distinguishing motifs of Islamic architecture have always been ordered repetition, radiating structures, and rhythmic, metric patterns. In this respect, fractal geometry has been a key utility, especially for mosques and palaces. Other significant features employed as motifs include columns, piers and arches, organized and interwoven with alternating sequences of niches and colonnettes.[14] The role of domes in Islamic architecture has been considerable. Its usage spans centuries, first appearing in 691 with the construction of the Dome of the Rock mosque, and recurring even up until the 17th century with the Taj Mahal. And as late as the 19th century, Islamic domes had been incorporated into Western architecture.[15]
Between the 8th and 18th centuries, the use of glazed ceramics was prevalent in Islamic art, usually assuming the form of elaborate pottery.[16] Tin-opacified glazing was one of the earliest new technologies developed by the Islamic potters. The first Islamic opaque glazes can be found as blue-painted ware in Basra, dating to around the 8th century. Another significant contribution was the development of stone-paste ceramics, originating from 9th century Iraq.[17] Other centers for innovative ceramic pottery in the Old world included Fustat (from 975 to 1075), Damascus (from 1100 to around 1600) and Tabriz (from 1470 to 1550).[18]
Perhaps the most important expression of Islamic art is architecture, particularly that of the mosque.[19] Through it the effect of varying cultures within Islamic civilization can be illustrated. The North African and Iberian Islamic architecture, for example, has Roman-Byzantine elements, as seen in the Great Mosque of Kairouan which contains marble columns from Roman and Byzantine buildings,[20] in the Alhambra palace at Granada, or in the Great Mosque of Cordoba. Persian-style mosques are characterized by their tapered brick pillars, large arcades, and arches supported each by several pillars. In South Asia, elements of Hindu architecture were employed, but were later superseded by Persian designs. The most numerous and largest of mosques exist in Turkey, which obtained influence from Byzantine, Persian and Syrian designs, although Turkish architects managed to implement their own style of cupola domes.[19]
The best known work of fiction from the Islamic world is One Thousand and One Nights or (Arabian Nights), which is a compilation of folk tales. The original concept is derived from a pre-Islamic Persian prototype that probably relied partly on Indian elements.[21] It reached its final form by the 14th century; the number and type of tales have varied from one manuscript to another.[22] All Arabian fantasy tales tend to be called Arabian Nights stories when translated into English, regardless of whether they appear in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights or not.[22] This work has been very influential in the West since it was translated in the 18th century, first by Antoine Galland.[23] Many imitations were written, especially in France.[24] Various characters from this epic have themselves become cultural icons in Western culture, such as Aladdin, Sinbad the Sailor and Ali Baba.
A famous example of Arabic poetry and Persian poetry on romance (love) is Layla and Majnun, dating back to the Umayyad era in the 7th century. It is a tragic story of undying love much like the later Romeo and Juliet, which was itself said to have been inspired by a Latin version of Layla and Majnun to an extent.[25] Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, the national epic of Iran, is a mythical and heroic retelling of Persian history. Amir Arsalan was also a popular mythical Persian story, which has influenced some modern works of fantasy fiction, such as The Heroic Legend of Arslan.
Ibn Tufail (Abubacer) and Ibn al-Nafis were pioneers of the philosophical novel. Ibn Tufail wrote the first Arabic novel Hayy ibn Yaqdhan (Philosophus Autodidactus) as a response to Ghazali's The Incoherence of the Philosophers, and then Ibn al-Nafis also wrote a novel Theologus Autodidactus as a response to Ibn Tufail's Philosophus Autodidactus. Both of these narratives had protagonists (Hayy in Philosophus Autodidactus and Kamil in Theologus Autodidactus) who were autodidactic feral children living in seclusion on a desert island, both being the earliest examples of a desert island story. However, while Hayy lives alone with animals on the desert island for the rest of the story in Philosophus Autodidactus, the story of Kamil extends beyond the desert island setting in Theologus Autodidactus, developing into the earliest known coming of age plot and eventually becoming the first example of a science fiction novel.[26][27]
Theologus Autodidactus, written by the Arabian polymath Ibn al-Nafis (1213–1288), is the first example of a science fiction novel. It deals with various science fiction elements such as spontaneous generation, futurology, the end of the world and doomsday, resurrection, and the afterlife. Rather than giving supernatural or mythological explanations for these events, Ibn al-Nafis attempted to explain these plot elements using the scientific knowledge of biology, astronomy, cosmology and geology known in his time. His main purpose behind this science fiction work was to explain Islamic religious teachings in terms of science and philosophy through the use of fiction.[28]
A Latin translation of Ibn Tufail's work, Philosophus Autodidactus, first appeared in 1671, prepared by Edward Pococke the Younger, followed by an English translation by Simon Ockley in 1708, as well as German and Dutch translations. These translations later inspired Daniel Defoe to write Robinson Crusoe, regarded as the first novel in English.[29][30][31][32] Philosophus Autodidactus also inspired Robert Boyle to write his own philosophical novel set on an island, The Aspiring Naturalist.[33] The story also anticipated Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile: or, On Education in some ways, and is also similar to Mowgli's story in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book as well as Tarzan's story, in that a baby is abandoned but taken care of and fed by a mother wolf.[34]
Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, considered the greatest epic of Italian literature, derived many features of and episodes about the hereafter directly or indirectly from Arabic works on Islamic eschatology: the Hadith and the Kitab al-Miraj (translated into Latin in 1264 or shortly before[35] as Liber Scale Machometi, "The Book of Muhammad's Ladder") concerning Muhammad's ascension to Heaven, and the spiritual writings of Ibn Arabi. The Moors also had a noticeable influence on the works of George Peele and William Shakespeare. Some of their works featured Moorish characters, such as Peele's The Battle of Alcazar and Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Titus Andronicus and Othello, which featured a Moorish Othello as its title character. These works are said to have been inspired by several Moorish delegations from Morocco to Elizabethan England at the beginning of the 17th century.[36]
One of the common definitions for "Islamic philosophy" is "the style of philosophy produced within the framework of Islamic culture."[37] Islamic philosophy, in this definition is neither necessarily concerned with religious issues, nor is exclusively produced by Muslims.[37] The Persian scholar Ibn Sina (Avicenna) (980-1037) had more than 450 books attributed to him. His writings were concerned with many subjects, most notably philosophy and medicine. His medical textbook The Canon of Medicine was used as the standard text in European universities for centuries. His works on Aristotle was a key step in the transmission of learning from Ancient Greece to the Islamic world and the West. He often corrected the philosopher, encouraging a lively debate in the spirit of ijtihad. He also wrote The Book of Healing, an influential scientific and philosophical encyclopedia. His thinking and that of his follower Ibn Rushd (Averroes) was incorporated into Christian philosophy during the Middle Ages, notably by Thomas Aquinas.
One of the most influential Muslim philosophers in the West was Averroes (Ibn Rushd), founder of the Averroism school of philosophy, whose works and commentaries had an impact on the rise of secular thought in Western Europe.[38] He also developed the concept of "existence precedes essence".[39] Avicenna also founded his own Avicennism school of philosophy, which was influential in both Islamic and Christian lands. He was also a critic of Aristotelian logic and founder of Avicennian logic, and he developed the concepts of empiricism and tabula rasa, and distinguished between essence and existence.
Another influential philosopher who had a significant influence on modern philosophy was Ibn Tufail. His philosophical novel, Hayy ibn Yaqdha, translated into Latin as Philosophus Autodidactus in 1671, developed the themes of empiricism, tabula rasa, nature versus nurture,[40] condition of possibility, materialism,[41] and Molyneux's Problem.[42] European scholars and writers influenced by this novel include John Locke,[43] Gottfried Leibniz,[32] Melchisédech Thévenot, John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens,[44] George Keith, Robert Barclay, the Quakers,[45] and Samuel Hartlib.[33]
Islamic philosophers continued making advances in philosophy through to the 17th century, when Mulla Sadra founded his school of Transcendent theosophy and developed the concept of existentialism.[46]
Other influential Muslim philosophers include al-Jahiz, a pioneer in evolutionary thought; Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), a pioneer of phenomenology and the philosophy of science and a critic of Aristotelian natural philosophy and Aristotle's concept of place (topos); Abu Rayhan Biruni, a critic of Aristotelian natural philosophy; Ibn Tufail and Ibn al-Nafis, pioneers of the philosophical novel; Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi, founder of Illuminationist philosophy; Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, a critic of Aristotelian logic and a pioneer of inductive logic; and Ibn Khaldun, a pioneer in the philosophy of history[47] and social philosophy.
Muslim scientists made significant advances in the sciences. They placed far greater emphasis on experiment than had the Greeks. This led to an early scientific method being developed in the Muslim world, where significant progress in methodology was made, beginning with the experiments of Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) on optics from circa 1000, in his Book of Optics. The most important development of the scientific method was the use of experiments to distinguish between competing scientific theories set within a generally empirical orientation, which began among Muslim scientists. Ibn al-Haytham is also regarded as the father of optics, especially for his empirical proof of the intromission theory of light. Some have also described Ibn al-Haytham as the "first scientist" for his development of the modern scientific method.[48][49][50] The mathematician al-Khwārizmī, from whose name the word algorithm derives, is considered to be the father of algebra (which is named after his book, kitab al-jabr).[51] Recent studies show that it is very likely that the Medieval Muslim artists were aware of advanced decagonal quasicrystal geometry (discovered half a millennium later in 1970s and 1980s in West) and used it in intricate decorative tilework in the architecture.[52] Muslim mathematicians also made several refinements to the Arabic numerals, such as the introduction of decimal point notation.
Muslim physicians contributed significantly to the field of medicine, including the subjects of anatomy and physiology: such as in the 15th century Persian work by Mansur ibn Muhammad ibn al-Faqih Ilyas entitled Tashrih al-badan (Anatomy of the body) which contained comprehensive diagrams of the body's structural, nervous and circulatory systems; or in the work of the Egyptian physician Ibn al-Nafis, who proposed the theory of pulmonary circulation. Avicenna's The Canon of Medicine remained an authoritative medical textbook in Europe until the 18th century. Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi (also known as Abulcasis) contributed to the discipline of medical surgery with his Kitab al-Tasrif ("Book of Concessions"), a medical encyclopedia which was later translated to Latin and used in European and Muslim medical schools for centuries. Other medical advancements came in the fields of pharmacology and pharmacy.[53]
In astronomy, Muhammad ibn Jābir al-Harrānī al-Battānī improved the precision of the measurement of the precession of the Earth's axis. The corrections made to the geocentric model by al-Battani, Averroes, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, Mo'ayyeduddin Urdi and Ibn al-Shatir were later incorporated into the Copernican heliocentric model. Heliocentric theories were also discussed by several other Muslim astronomers such as Abu Rayhan Biruni, Sijzi, Qotb al-Din Shirazi, and Najm al-Dīn al-Qazwīnī al-Kātibī. The astrolabe, though originally developed by the Greeks, was perfected by Islamic astronomers and engineers, and was subsequently brought to Europe.
Muslim chemists and alchemists played an important role in the foundation of modern chemistry. Scholars such as Will Durant and Alexander von Humboldt regard Muslim chemists to be the founders of chemistry. In particular, Jābir ibn Hayyān is regarded as the "father of chemistry". The works of Arab chemists influenced Roger Bacon (who introduced the empirical method to Europe, strongly influenced by his reading of Arabic writers), and later Isaac Newton. A number of chemical processes (particularly in alchemy) and distillation techniques (such as the production of alcohol) were developed in the Muslim world and then spread to Europe.
Some of the most famous scientists from the Islamic world include Jābir ibn Hayyān (polymath, father of chemistry), al-Farabi (polymath), Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi (father of modern surgery),[54] Ibn al-Haytham (universal genius, father of optics, founder of psychophysics and experimental psychology,[55] pioneer of scientific method, "first scientist"), Abu Rayhan Biruni (universal genius, father of Indology[56] and geodesy, "first anthropologist"),[57] Avicenna (universal genius, father of momentum[58] and modern medicine),[59] Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (polymath), and Ibn Khaldun (father of demography,[60] cultural history,[61] historiography,[62] the philosophy of history, sociology,[47] and the social sciences),[63] among many others.
In technology, the Muslim world adopted papermaking from China.[64] The knowledge of gunpowder was also transmitted from China via Islamic countries, where the formulas for pure potassium nitrate and an explosive gunpowder effect were first developed.[65][66]
Advances were made in irrigation and farming, using new technology such as the windmill. Crops such as almonds and citrus fruit were brought to Europe through al-Andalus, and sugar cultivation was gradually adopted by the Europeans. Arab merchants dominated trade in the Indian Ocean until the arrival of the Portuguese in the 16th century. Hormuz was an important center for this trade. There was also a dense network of trade routes in the Mediterranean, along which Muslim countries traded with each other and with European powers such as Venice, Genoa and Catalonia. The Silk Road crossing Central Asia passed through Muslim states between China and Europe.
Muslim engineers in the Islamic world made a number of innovative industrial uses of hydropower, and early industrial uses of tidal power, wind power, steam power,[67] fossil fuels such as petroleum, and early large factory complexes (tiraz in Arabic).[68] The industrial uses of watermills in the Islamic world date back to the 7th century, while horizontal-wheeled and vertical-wheeled water mills were both in widespread use since at least the 9th century. A variety of industrial mills were being employed in the Islamic world, including early fulling mills, gristmills, hullers, sawmills, ship mills, stamp mills, steel mills, sugar mills, tide mills and windmills. By the 11th century, every province throughout the Islamic world had these industrial mills in operation, from al-Andalus and North Africa to the Middle East and Central Asia.[64] Muslim engineers also invented crankshafts and water turbines, employed gears in mills and water-raising machines, and pioneered the use of dams as a source of water power, used to provide additional power to watermills and water-raising machines.[69] Such advances made it possible for many industrial tasks that were previously driven by manual labour in ancient times to be mechanized and driven by machinery instead in the medieval Islamic world. The transfer of these technologies to medieval Europe had an influence on the Industrial Revolution.[70]
A number of industries were active during the Arab Agricultural Revolution, producing goods including astronomical instruments, ceramics, chemicals, clocks, glass, matting, pulp and paper, perfume, petroleum, pharmaceuticals, rope, silk, sugar, textiles, and weapons. Also important to the economy of the period were the use of mechanical hydropower and wind power, shipbuilding, and the mining of minerals such as sulfur, lead and iron. Early factories (tiraz) were built for many of these industries, and knowledge of these industries was later transmitted to medieval Europe, especially during the Latin translations of the 12th century. For example, the first glass factories in Europe were founded in the 11th century by Egyptian craftsmen in Greece.[71] The agricultural and handicraft industries also experienced high levels of growth during this period.[72]
With the exception of India, Ethiopia, China and Russia the majority of the population in the following countries are Muslim.[1]
Many Muslims not only live in, but also have an official status in the following regions:
The countries of Southwest Asia, and many in Northern and Northeastern Africa are considered part of the Greater Middle East.
In Chechnya, Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia, Ingushetia, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan in Russia, Muslims are in the majority.
Some definitions would also include the sizable Muslim minorities in:
Approximately 23% of the world's population is Muslim.[75] Current estimates conclude that the number of Muslims in the world is around 1.57 billion.[1] Muslims are the majority in 57 countries, they speak about 60 languages and come from diverse ethnic backgrounds. Arabic is the most spoken language of Muslims, and is spoken by 20% of Muslims. Bengali is the second most commonly spoken language, spoken by around 10% of the total population, and Punjabi is the third most spoken language (spoken by around 5% of Muslim world). Other major languages spoken by the Muslims are Javanese, Turkish, Urdu, Persian, Pashto and Sindhi.
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is an inter-governmental organization grouping fifty-seven States. The Organisation is the collective voice of the Muslim world to safeguard the interest and ensure the progress and well-being of their peoples and those of other Muslims in the world over.
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) includes many nations that are also in the Arab League.
A politically motivated oil embargo in 1974 (to support Egypt and Syria in the 1973 Yom Kippur War against Israel after the US re-equipped Israel with armaments) had drastic economic and political consequences in the United States and Europe.
Islamic law does not distinguish between "matters of church" and "matters of state"; the ulama function as both jurists and theologians. In practice, Islamic rulers frequently bypassed the Sharia courts with a parallel system of so-called "Grievance courts" over which they had sole control.
As the Muslim world came into contact with Western secular ideals, Muslim societies responded in different ways. Azerbaijan was the first secular republic in the Muslim world, between 1918 and 1920, when it was incorporated into the Soviet Union.[76][77][78] Turkey has been governed as a secular state since the reforms of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. By contrast, the 1979 Iranian Revolution replaced a mostly secular regime with an Islamic republic led by the Ayatollah, Ruhollah Khomeini.[79]
Many Muslim countries have implemented some form of Sharia law or otherwise have Islam as the official state religion. Consequently, in those countries, areas of society ranging from politics to law to schooling, among others, have been affected. However, other states in the Muslim world remain officially secular.
Countries in the Muslim world sorted by state religion:
Islamic states have adopted Islam as the ideological foundation for their political institution.
State religion are religious body or creed officially endorsed by the state.
Secular states are officially neutral in matters of religion, neither supporting nor opposing any particular religions.
In some nations, Muslim ethnic groups enjoy considerable autonomy.
In some places, Muslims implement Islamic law, called sharia in Arabic. The Islamic law exists in many variations, but the main forms are the five (four Sunni and one Shia) and Salafi & Ibadi schools of jurisprudence (fiqh)
Muslim women dress modestly to show their high characters. Thus, in some countries, the Islamic law requires women to cover either just legs, shoulders and head or the whole body apart from the face. In strictest forms, the face as well must be covered leaving just a mesh to see through. These rules for dressing cause tension between the Western world and the Muslim, concerning particularly Muslims living in western countries, since many in the Western World consider these restrictions both sexist and oppressive. Many Muslims oppose this charge, and instead declare that the media-fuelled world of the West forces women to reveal too much in order to be deemed attractive, and that this is itself oppressive.
Islamic economics bans interest or Riba (Usury) but in most Muslim countries Western banking is allowed.
Many people in Islamic countries also see Islam manifested politically as Islamism. Political Islam is powerful in all Muslim-majority countries. Islamic parties in Turkey, Pakistan and Algeria have taken power at the provincial level. Many in these movements call themselves Islamists, which also sometimes describes more militant Islamic groups. The relationships between these groups (in democratic countries there is usually at least one Islamic party) and their views of democracy are complex.
Some of these groups are accused of practicing Islamic terrorism.
There has been conflict between Iran and the Arab states as well. While Iran and Iraq resolved their conflicts in a 1975 agreement, following the Iranian revolution, Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in 1980. The resulting war, one of the deadliest since World War II, ended in 1988. Saddam then invaded Kuwait, sparking the 1991 Gulf war ending in the restoration of Kuwait by a coalition of countries. In 2001, the United States invaded Afghanistan and in 2003 it invaded Iraq as part of the war on terror.
The Arab-Israeli conflict began in the 20th century in response to the attempt and successful creation of Israel on the territory of the mandate of Palestine. Hostilities turned to war in 1948, 1967, and 1973. Following the 1973 war, Egypt negotiated peace with Israel in 1979. Israel also participated in the Lebanese Civil War. Following the first intifada, Israelis and Palestinians signed the Oslo Accords and the following year Jordan and Israel also made peace. But the failure to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resulted in the second intifada. War re-erupted between Israel and Lebanon in 2006 and Israel and Gaza in 2009.
Turkey was the first Muslim-majority state to recognize Israel, just one year after its founding, and they have the longest shared close military and economic ties. Prior to the Iranian Revolution, Iran and Israel maintained a strong political friendship, however the current Iranian government is strongly anti-Israeli and has repeatedly called for Israel's destruction. Once at war, both Egypt and Jordan have established diplomatic relations and signed peace treaties with Israel, and attempts to resolve the conflict with Palestinians have produced a number of interim agreements. Nine non-Arab Muslim states maintain diplomatic ties with Israel, and since 1994, the Persian Gulf states have lessened their enforcement of the Arab boycott, with Saudi Arabia even declaring its end in 2005, though it has yet to cancel its sanctions. States like Morocco that have large Jewish populations have generally had less hostile relations with Israel.
1979 was a critical year in the Muslim world's relationship with the rest of the world. In that year, Egypt made peace with Israel, the monarchy of Iran was overthrown in the Iranian Revolution, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan began.
Some of the events pivotal in the Muslim world's relationship with the outside world in the post-Soviet era were:
The two main denominations of Islam are the Sunni and Shia sects. They differ primarily upon of how the life of the ummah ("faithful") should be governed, and the role of the imam. These two main differences stem from the understanding of which hadith are to interpret the Qur'an. The Shia minority believes that the Family of the Prophet's traditions are exclusively to be followed, whereas the Sunni majority believes in traditions from the Companions of the Prophet and other common people to be followed.
The overwhelming majority of Muslims in the world, approximately 85%, are Sunni.
Shias and other (Ibadiyyas-Ismailis) make up the rest, about 15% of overall Muslim population. Among the countries with Shia majority or substantial population are Iran (80%), Azerbaijan (85%), Iraq (60%–65%), Bahrain (60%), Kuwait (40%), Pakistan (25-33%), India 25-31% of Muslim Population and (3-4%) of entire population of India and Lebanon (35-40%).
The Kharijite Muslims, who are less known, have their own stronghold in the country of Oman holding about 75% of the population. The rest of the population being 15% Shia and the rest Sunni.
What we call science arose as a result of new methods of experiment, observation, and measurement, which were introduced into Europe by the Arabs. [...] Science is the most momentous contribution of Arab civilization to the modern world, but its fruits were slow in ripening. [...] The debt of our science to that of the Arabs does not consist in startling discoveries or revolutionary theories; science owes a great deal more to Arab culture, it owes its existence....The ancient world was, as we saw, pre-scientific. [...] The Greeks systematized, generalized and theorized, but the patient ways of investigations, the accumulation of positive knowledge, the minute methods of science, detailed and prolonged observation and experimental inquiry were altogether alien to the Greek temperament.