Islam in South Asia in the context of "Muslim"

Islam in Asia began in the 7th century during the lifetime of Muhammad. In 2020, the total number of Muslims in Asia was about 1.3 billion, making it the largest religion in Asia. Asia constitutes in absolute terms the world's largest Muslim population, and about 62% of the world's Muslims live in Asia, with Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Malaysia having the largest Muslim populations in the world. Asia is home to the largest Muslim population, with West Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia being particularly important regions. A number of adherents of Islam have lived in Asia especially in West Asia and South Asia since the beginning of Islamic history.

The McMahon–Hussein correspondence is a series of letters that were exchanged during World War I, in which the government of the United Kingdom agreed to recognize Arab independence in a large region after the war in exchange for the Sharif of Mecca launching the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire. The correspondence had a significant influence on Middle Eastern history during and after the war; a dispute over Palestine continued thereafter.

The correspondence is composed of ten letters that were exchanged from July 1915 to March 1916 between Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca and Lieutenant Colonel Sir Henry McMahon, British High Commissioner to Egypt. Whilst there was some military value in the Arab manpower and local knowledge alongside the British Army, the primary reason for the arrangement was to counteract the Ottoman declaration of jihad ("holy war") against the Allies, and to maintain the support of the 70 million Muslims in British India (particularly those in the Indian Army that had been deployed in all major theatres of the wider war). The area of Arab independence was defined to be "in the limits and boundaries proposed by the Sherif of Mecca" with the exception of "portions of Syria" lying to the west of "the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo"; conflicting interpretations of this description were to cause great controversy in subsequent years. One particular dispute, which continues to the present, is the extent of the coastal exclusion.

The Pakistan Movement was a nationalist political and social movement, emerging in the early 20th century, that advocated the formation of Pakistan as a separate Muslim homeland in the Muslim-majority parts of what was then the British Raj. It was rooted in the two-nation theory, which asserted that Muslims of the subcontinent were fundamentally and irreconcilably distinct from Hindus of the subcontinent (who formed the demographic majority) and would therefore require separate self-determination upon the Decolonisation of the subcontinent. The idea was largely realised when the All-India Muslim League ratified the Lahore Resolution on 23 March 1940, calling for the Muslim-majority regions of the Indian subcontinent to be "grouped to constitute independent states" that would be "autonomous and sovereign" with the aim of securing Muslim socio-political interests vis-à-vis the Hindu majority. It was in the aftermath of the Lahore Resolution that, under the aegis of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the cause of "Pakistan" (though the name was not used in the text itself) became widely popular among the Muslims of South Asia.

Instrumental in establishing a base for the Pakistan Movement was the Aligarh Movement, which consisted of several reforms by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan that ultimately promoted a system of Western-style scientific education among the subcontinent's Muslims, seeking to enrich and vitalise their society, culture, and religious thought as well as protect it. Khan's efforts fostered Muslim nationalism in South Asia and went on to provide both the Pakistan Movement and later the country that it would yield with its leadership.

Dr. Israr Ahmad (26 April 1932 – 14 April 2010) was a Pakistani Islamic scholar, orator and theologian. He developed a following in Pakistan and the rest of South Asia and also among some South Asian Muslims in the Middle East, Western Europe, and North America.

He has written around 60 books in Urdu on Islam and Pakistan, of which twenty-nine have been translated into several other languages, including in English, as of 2017.

The Khilafat movement (1919–1922) was a political campaign launched by South Asian Muslims in British India over British policy against Turkey and the planned dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire after World War I by Allied forces.

Leaders participating in the movement included Ahmad Sagheer Haji Variyami, Maulana Shaukat Ali, Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar, Hakim Ajmal Khan, and Abul Kalam Azad who organised the movement to redress the grievances of Turkey.

Unani or Yunani medicine (Urdu: طب یونانی tibb yūnānī) is Perso-Arabic traditional medicine as practiced in Muslim culture in South Asia and modern day Central Asia. Unani medicine is pseudoscientific.

The term Yūnānī means 'Greek', referring to the fact that the Perso-Arabic system of medicine was based on the teachings of the Greek physicians Hippocrates and Galen.