The fall of Jerusalem was the price paid by the Muslims for the continued civil wars brought on by competing Sunni and Shi’a visions of Islamic history. The Crusades, declared in 996, were an intercontinental invasion across a front line extending more than 3,000 miles from Spain to Palestine. At the time, the house of Islam was divided into three households. The Turks championed the...

The historian and geographer, Abul Hasan Ali Ibn Hussain Ibn Ali Al Masudi (895-957 CE) was a scion of an age when Islamic scholarship had overcome the challenge of Greek rationalism, and having thrown off the yoke of deductive absurdity, found its own expression in the inductive empiricism of the Qur’an. The history of this challenge and the aftermath of ensuing battles has defined the...

For millions of Muslims around the world, the pilgrimage to Mecca is a lifelong dream. It is a journey of the heart, a physical and spiritual migration towards the House of Allah. While Hajj is the obligatory pilgrimage performed at a specific time of the year, Umrah serves as a voluntary act of worship that can be undertaken at almost any time. It offers a unique opportunity to cleanse the...

The Rise of England Contributed by Prof. Dr. Nazeer Ahmed, PhD If a businessman was searching for one word that would describe the emergence of England from its feudal past, it has to be wool. And if he was searching for a second word to explain the rise of the British Empire, which dominated much of the Islamic world for two hundred years, it has to be trade. Along the road, England...

The Portuguese Devastations in the Indian Ocean Contributed by Prof. Dr. Nazeer Ahmed, PhD The discovery of America and the circumnavigation of Africa were logical consequences of the religious-political rivalry between the Christian powers of Iberia and the Muslim powers of North Africa. As the Maghrib disintegrated, the Christian powers of Iberia, with the cooperation of the maritime...