The religious prohibition of marriage between Muslim women and non-Muslim men

Dominique Avon Director of Studies at the École pratique des hautes études (EPHE), Assistant Director of the Institute of Islamic Studies and Societies of the Muslim World (IISMM) and member of IDEO icon-calendar Sunday November 3ʳᵈ, 2019   While the internal situation of the Muslim world was favorable in the early 1970s (regained independence from the colonizers, training of religious elites in the West, unity of opinions on a draft of a constitution for an Islamic state…), it was the internal divisions that dominated from the late 1970s and early 1980s (Iranian revolution, Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty, capture of the Great Mosque of Mecca, assassination of Sadat…). While it is clear that external factors partly explain the crisis in the Muslim world (Israeli occupation, successive Gulf wars…), it is also necessary to take into consideration the depth of internal divisions in the Muslim world. Three questions can illustrate these divisions: 1) the question of morals —should all Islamic laws be preserved, and if so, should they really be applied, or should we ignore preserving these laws and officially abandoning certain parts of them?; 2) the question of the ideal Islamic political regime (caliphate, royalty, republic?), and 3) the question of the relationship to the past (return to an ideal past, selection and reinterpretation?) The current strong opposition between the International Union for Muslim Scholars and the Muslim Council of Elders reflects these divisions, and only the future can tell which path Muslims will choose to take. Click here to watch the video in French…