ISLAMIC CULTURE

Islamic culture is a term primarily used in secular academia to describe the cultural practices common to historically Islamic people. The early forms of Muslim culture were predominantly Arab. With the rapid expansion of the Islamic empires, Muslim culture has influenced and assimilated much from the Persian, Bangladeshi, Turkic, Pakistani, Mongol, Chinese, Indian, Malay, Somali, Berber, Egyptian, Indonesian, Filipino, Greek-Roman Byzantine, Spanish, Sicilian, Balkanic and Western^{[citation needed]} cultures. For the last ummah or the children of Muhammad, the culture of a practicing Muslim, are following the teachings of Muhammad.

Contents

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• 1 Terminological use
• 2 Religious practices and beliefs in Islam
• 3 Language and literature
  • 3.1 Arabic
  • 3.2 Persian
  • 3.3 Indo-Islamic
  • 3.4 Modern
  • 3.5 Theatre
• 4 Festivals
• 5 Marriage
• 6 Art
  • 6.1 Calligraphy
• 7 Martial arts in Muslim Countries/Cultures
• 8 Architecture
  • 8.1 Elements of Islamic style
  • 8.2 Interpretation
• 9 Music
• 10 Notes and references
• 11 Further reading

Terminological use[edit]

Islamic culture is itself a contentious term. Muslims live in many different countries and communities, and it can be difficult to isolate points of cultural unity among Muslims, besides their adherence to the religion of Islam. Anthropologists and historians nevertheless study Islam as an aspect of, and influence on, culture in the regions where the religion is predominant.
The noted historian of Islam, Marshall Hodgson, noted the above difficulty of religious versus secular academic usage of the words "Islamic" and "Muslim" in his three-volume work, The Venture Of Islam. He proposed to resolve it by only using these terms for purely religious phenomena, and invented the term "Islamicate" to denote all cultural aspects of historically Muslim people. However, his distinction has not been widely adopted, and confusion remains in common usage of these article.

Religious practices and beliefs in Islam[edit]

Islamic culture generally includes all the practices which have developed around the religion of Islam, including Qur'anic ones such as prayer (salat) and non-Qur'anic such as divisions of the world in Islam. It includes as the Baul tradition of Bengal, and facilitated the peaceful conversion of most of Bengal. There are variations in the application of Islamic beliefs in culture.^[1]

Language and literature[edit]

See also: Islamic literature

Arabic[edit]

See also: Arabic literature

Early Muslim literature is in Arabic, as that was the language of Muhammad's communities in Mecca and Medina. As the early history of the Muslim community was focused on establishing the religion of Islam, its literary output was religious in character. See the articles on Qur'an, Hadith, and Sirah, which formed the earliest literature of the Muslim community.
With the establishment of the Umayyad empire. secular Muslim literature developed. See The Book of One Thousand and One Nights. While having no religious content, this secular literature was spread by the Arabs all over their empires, and so became part of a widespread culture.

Persian[edit]

See also: Persian literature

By the time of the Abbasid empire, Persian had become one of the main languages of Islamic Golden Age, Muslim civilization, and much of the most famous Muslim literature is thus.

Tabatabaee-ha House, Kashan Iran

Indo-Islamic[edit]

The Badshahi Mosque in Lahore, Pakistan is one of the few classical examples of Mughal design and architecture in South Asia.

See also: Bengali literature and Urdu literature

In Bengal, the Baul tradition of mystic music and poetry merged Sufism with many local images.^{[citation needed]} The most prominent poets were Hason Raja and Lalon Shah.
During the early 20th century, the liberal poet Kazi Nazrul Islam espoused intense spiritual rebellion against oppression, fascism and religious fundamentalism; and also wrote a highly acclaimed collection of Bengali ghazals. Sultana's Dream by Begum Rokeya, an Islamic feminist, is one earliest works of feminist science fiction.

Modern[edit]

In modern times, classification of writers by language is increasingly irrelevant. The Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz has been translated into English and read across the world. Other writers, such as Orhan Pamuk, write directly in English for a wider international audience.

Theatre[edit]

The Royal Opera House in Muscat, Oman. It is considered to be the first opera house linking Islamic culture with classical music.^[2]

The Indonesian puppet of Amir Hamzah, in Wayang theatre.

In the performing arts, the most popular skittle of theatre in the medieval Islamic world were puppet theatre (which included hand puppets, shadow plays and marionette productions) and live passion plays known as ta'ziya, where actors re-enact episodes from Muslim history. In particular, Shia Islamic plays revolved around the shaheed (martyrdom) of Ali's sons Hasan ibn Ali and Husayn ibn Ali. Live secular plays were known as akhraja, recorded in medieval adab literature, though they were