Islam

Size

Islam has about 2 billion adherents (Pew, 2020 data) 22 and, on Pew's earlier projections, is expected to be nearly as large as Christianity by 2050 and larger after about 2070 42. ACADEMIC SOURCE · Pew

Who's in charge

The Grand Imam of al-Azhar (the mosque and university in Cairo that is Sunni Islam's most-cited seat of learning) is Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, in office since 2010.

Chosen by

Appointed by presidential decree in 2010; since 2012 the post has been filled by election by al-Azhar's Council of Senior Scholars, confirmed by presidential decree.

Removable by

Nobody — Egypt's 2014 Constitution makes the Grand Imam irremovable.

Money in one line

The money comes from zakat (2.5% obligatory alms), sadaqa (voluntary charity), waqf endowments (historically enormous property trusts), the hajj economy (the pilgrimage to Mecca), halal certification fees (for certifying goods as religiously permitted) and mosque fundraising.

Leaving in one line

Apostasy (leaving Islam) carries criminal penalties in a number of states, up to death in several, and severe social and family consequences far more widely. OFFICIAL POLICY · national penal codes — nine states, per Humanists International

Evidence

None of the 30 techniques is sourced to a named document. The grades are Contested 17, Cultural 8, Codified 2 and Taught 3.

The unanswered question

If there is no compulsion in religion, why do apostasy statutes still stand — and who benefits from keeping them on the books?

Disclosure scorecard

• P
  Accounts publishedPartial
• N
  Leaders' payNo
• P
  Safeguarding policyPartial
• P
  Police firstPartial
• P
  Removal procedurePartial
• P
  Replies on recordPartial

Y Yes — established from a public source · P Partial — true of some parts of the tradition, or true in some jurisdictions · N No — not established from any public source · ? Not assessable — no institutional apex exists to assess

Aliyah · A Tuesday in Ramadan · A European city, a diaspora community

Suhoor (the meal before the day's fast) at 4:10, eating standing up at the counter so as not to wake her sister. Then Fajr (the dawn prayer), and the particular clarity of the early prayer in a quiet flat, which is the best thing in her week and which she would defend against anyone.

On the tram at eight a man looks at her scarf for slightly too long. This is Tuesday. This is also Monday and Thursday. At work nobody says anything and everybody is careful, and the carefulness is its own kind of weather.

Her uncle calls at eleven, which is unusual. He has heard from someone that she was seen at a café with a colleague. He does not accuse her of anything; he says only that people talk and that her mother has enough to worry about. Aliyah says she understands. She says it twice. After she hangs up she sits in the stairwell for four minutes.

At lunch her cousin sends a voice note about the community centre — something about the new imam, and a family that has stopped attending, and a boy, and then the note ends with anyway don't say anything, they'll make it about the mosque and you know how people are right now. Aliyah listens to it twice and does not reply.

Iftar (the meal that breaks the fast) at her parents' flat, twenty-one people, three generations, food that no restaurant has ever matched. Her nephew falls asleep against her arm. She thinks, as she does every year, that whatever else is true, this is what she would fight for.

Later her mother asks, gently, in the kitchen, whether she has thought about Tariq's proposal. Aliyah says she is thinking. Her mother says that a woman's situation changes after thirty, and that she says this only because she loves her. Aliyah dries a plate. She is thinking that she does not know how to explain that she wants the iftar and not the arrangement, and that there may be nobody in the flat she can say that to.

The unanswered question

The widest gap between word and record

One cost of leaving, beside its denial

The strongest objection, answered

The objection. You are feeding people who already want Muslims surveilled and excluded.

What is true in it. That hostility is real, documented, and dangerous, and Muslims in the West bear it daily while being asked to answer for a quarter of humanity. This codex says so plainly in the profile itself.

The answer. And a rule making internal harm unspeakable protects the person who caused it, not the community. The claims here rest on penal codes, ministry regulations, and inquiry findings — and the reformers cited are Muslims.

The tradition has its own anti-clericalism. No intermediary stands between the believer and God, and for centuries scholars refused state payroll to preserve their independence.

Healthy practice here looks like reformist and feminist scholarship from within, in the revival of ijtihad (independent legal reasoning from the sources), and like mosques with elected boards and financial transparency.

Qur’an 2:256, “there is no compulsion in religion”, is the tradition’s own standard, and it is the one this page measures the institutions against.

Some of that standard is already on the record. Musawah, the global movement for equality in Muslim family law, was launched in Kuala Lumpur in 2009 by the Malaysian group Sisters in Islam 3435. Nahdlatul Ulama, the world's largest Muslim organization, chose its chair in a contested vote in 2021 25. Morocco's 2004 family code set the marriage age at 18 and opened divorce to wives 6. Indonesia raised the marriage age to 19 for both sexes in 2019 3, and Tunisia repealed its ban on Muslim women marrying non-Muslim men in 2017 7. In India a Muslim woman, Shayara Bano, won the case that struck down instant triple talaq (divorce by a husband pronouncing it three times at once) 2. Each is a place where members or institutions met the standard this page applies, and each is recorded here as credit.

Islam began in 7th-century Arabia, with Muhammad's prophetic movement in Mecca and Medina (610–632 CE). Rapid expansion under the caliphates (the states ruled by the Prophet's successors) fused religious and political authority. The classical legal schools (madhhabs) crystallized interpretation. There is no central 'church', and authority is distributed among scholars, states and communities.

Timeline

1. 610–622 CEMuhammad's prophetic mission in Mecca; persecution of early followersA movement without a state, defined against elite power.
2. 622–632Hijra (the emigration of the Prophet and his followers) to Medina; community becomes a polityReligion and governance fuse in the founding generation itself — a durable template.
3. 632–661Rashidun caliphate; succession disputes; Qur'an compiledPolitical succession and religious authority become inseparable questions.
4. 661–1258Umayyad and Abbasid empires; legal schools (madhhabs) form; the sciences of hadith (reports of the Prophet's words and deeds) developScholars build interpretive authority independent of rulers — a genuine check on power.
5. 900–1500Sufi (mystical) orders, madrasas (religious schools), vast waqf endowmentsEnormous religious wealth accumulates in trusts with named administrators.
6. 1500–1900Ottoman, Safavid, Mughal empires; state-appointed clerical hierarchiesReligious offices become civil service posts.
7. 1800s–1924Colonial rule; waqf and sharia (Islamic law) courts absorbed by colonial states; caliphate abolishedClassical scholarly independence is dismantled and never rebuilt.
8. 1920s–1970sIslamic revival movements; state religious ministries establishedGovernments become the largest employers of clergy — endorsement for salary.
9. 1970s–2000sOil wealth funds global religious infrastructure; satellite preachersInterpretation becomes an export market. ACADEMIC SOURCE
10. 2001–presentSecuritization of Muslims globally; online authority fragmentation; reform and feminist scholarshipExternal persecution and internal control operate simultaneously — both must be named honestly. GOVERNMENT REPORT

Moments in the room

The main branches are Sunni (~87–90%) and Shia (~10–13%). Most Shia are Twelvers, who recognize a line of twelve imams after the Prophet; the Ismaili and Zaydi branches follow other lines of succession. There are also the Ibadi (Oman), the Ahmadi (persecuted, declared non-Muslim by Pakistan's law and restricted in Indonesia 448) and Turkey’s Alevis (a distinct tradition centered on devotion to Ali), and Sufi orders cross all of these lines.

Size and shape

Authority

• Islam has no clergy in the sacramental sense, but effective authority rests with scholars (ulama), mosque institutions, state religious ministries, and enforcement by family and community.
• In Muslim-majority states, governments license imams, control sermon content, and administer religious law — state capture of religion is the norm, not the exception. OFFICIAL POLICY · e.g., ministries of religious affairs across the region

The top of the chain

Who holds what

What Muslims everywhere share is a set of legal questions each state answers differently.

Who can compel an answer

National charity regulators can compel an answer from mosque and foundation trusts, and the Charity Commission (the regulator of charities in England and Wales) has acted repeatedly. Civil courts can too. For the state-appointed offices, the appointing ministries themselves can, and they answer to whatever their governments answer to.

Where it comes from

• The money comes from zakat (2.5% obligatory alms), sadaqa, waqf endowments (historically enormous property trusts), the hajj economy, halal certification fees and mosque fundraising.
• State-administered zakat and waqf boards concentrate assets under government-appointed managers with recurring corruption findings. GOVERNMENT REPORT · e.g., Karnataka State Minorities Commission, 2012, on waqf land
• The hajj is a major revenue channel for Saudi Arabia and a licensing economy for agents worldwide. FINANCIAL RECORD

Follow the money

Pipelines this tradition shares

Money in numbers

Zakat, sadaqa and waqf — the obligatory and voluntary giving every branch shares — mostly move without a public ledger. Where a state runs the flow, there are numbers.

• Turkey's Diyanet: It received ₺91.8bn in the 2024 state budget, against ₺35.9bn in the 2023 budget law, about 2.6 times as much 2450; the full series is on the Sunni Islam page.
• Waqf land: a 2012 Karnataka commission report on waqf-board land is one of the few official audits of Islamic endowments anywhere 21.

Information

• In many Muslim-majority states, sermon content is written or approved by a government ministry — information control by the state, wearing clerical dress. OFFICIAL POLICY
• Blasphemy and apostasy laws criminalize religious speech in a number of jurisdictions, with documented use against minorities, reformers, and personal enemies. OFFICIAL POLICY / COURT JUDGMENT · e.g., Pakistan Penal Code §295-C; the Supreme Court of Pakistan's 2018 acquittal of a Christian woman after eight years on death row
• Community-level pressure discourages engagement with critical scholarship of the Qur'an and hadith; 'orientalist' functions in some settings as a thought-terminating label. PATTERN OBSERVED

Children

• Children are Muslim by birth in the standard legal framing; Qur'an memorization (hifz) schooling begins very young and can substitute for general education in some madrasa systems. ACADEMIC SOURCE
• Abuse in religious settings, including mosques and madrasahs, is documented. England and Wales's national inquiry into child sexual abuse found significant under-reporting and no compulsory minimum standards for supplementary schools 49. INVESTIGATIVE REPORT
• Modesty rules and gender segregation begin at puberty or earlier, initiating sexual surveillance of girls specifically. PATTERN OBSERVED

Bodies

• Guardianship (wilayah) systems and, in Saudi law until recent reforms, male-guardian requirements for major life decisions gave men legal authority over adult women. OFFICIAL POLICY
• Divorce is asymmetric: talaq is easier for husbands than khula (divorce initiated by the wife, usually by returning her dower) is for wives in most classical and codified frameworks; custody and inheritance rules are also asymmetric. OFFICIAL POLICY
• Compulsory hijab enforced by state police (Iran; Afghanistan under the Taliban) is the extreme end — enforcement by morality police is coercion by definition, not modesty. GOVERNMENT REPORT
• Same-sex relations are criminalized in numerous Muslim-majority states, with capital penalties in a few. OFFICIAL POLICY / GOVERNMENT REPORT
• 'Honor'-based violence against women is culturally rather than doctrinally grounded, and is frequently defended in religious language — the outsourcing is itself the tactic. GOVERNMENT REPORT

Thirty named techniques from domestic-abuse and social-psychology research, applied to institutions, in the eight stages of the cycle. Each carries an evidence grade for this tradition.

All thirty at a glance

Stage 1 · Idealize

Stage 2 · Hook

Stage 3 · Devalue

Stage 4 · Confuse

Stage 5 · Isolate

Stage 6 · Extract

Stage 7 · Discard

Stage 8 · Replace

What they say, what the record shows

Accountability or theatre?

Last time the chair ran. No single case is named on this page. The pattern observed in religious schools is that abuse is handled as a community matter and the teacher relocated rather than reported. PATTERN OBSERVED

Who holds the chair now. Mosque committees and state religious ministries hold it. In England and Wales the trustees of a mosque registered as a charity have legal safeguarding duties 53, but supplementary schools, including madrasahs, are not subject to compulsory minimum standards 49. This page records no equivalent rule for unregistered mosque committees or for state ministries.

Prediction. The next case will surface through a secular journalist, the community will divide over the reporting rather than the abuse, and no policy will change.

Words used here

What leaving costs

• Apostasy carries criminal penalties in a number of states — up to death in several — and severe social and family consequences far more widely. OFFICIAL POLICY · national penal codes — nine states, per Humanists International
• Marriage, custody, and inheritance law in many jurisdictions is conditioned on religious status.

The ledger of exit

How the cost is denied

Who benefits

• States that rule through religious legitimacy benefit: official clerical establishments trade endorsement for funding and monopoly (the Saudi religious establishment; Egypt's Al-Azhar and its relationship with the state; Iran, covered on the Shia Islam page). ACADEMIC SOURCE
• Government religious ministries benefit, employing very large numbers of clergy (Turkey's Diyanet alone had more than 140,000 personnel in 2023 51) and controlling sermon content.
• Certification and compliance industries (halal, Islamic finance) benefit, because their gatekeeping generates fees. FINANCIAL RECORD

Money out, leverage back

• Gulf states have funded mosques, schools, and translated literature across the world for decades. The buildings are real and needed. The doctrinal strings mean local communities receive infrastructure alongside an interpretation they did not choose — aid as curriculum. ACADEMIC SOURCE
• Zakat administered by state boards becomes political patronage: the obligatory charity of ordinary Muslims is distributed by government appointees, making the poor's access conditional on the state's goodwill. GOVERNMENT REPORT
• The hajj is a religious obligation and a national revenue stream, licensed through agents and priced by monopoly. A duty God imposed became a market someone owns. FINANCIAL RECORD
• Halal and Islamic-finance certification generate fees at every point in ordinary commerce, with scholars on advisory boards paid by the firms they certify. Compliance became an industry. FINANCIAL RECORD

Who pays

• Women pay, under guardianship, divorce asymmetry, and compulsory dress enforcement.
• LGBTQ Muslims pay, facing criminal penalties in many jurisdictions.
• Religious minorities and dissenters pay, prosecuted under blasphemy statutes.
• Ahmadis pay — declared non-Muslim by Pakistan’s 1974 Second Amendment and criminalized for “posing as Muslims” by Ordinance XX (1984) — and so do other groups legally excluded from their own religious identity. OFFICIAL POLICY
• Children in unregulated residential religious schools pay.
• Muslims in the West pay too. They bear surveillance and hostility from outside while internal critique is treated as betrayal — a double bind this codex names explicitly.

Where the weight lands

The costs in section 15 do not fall evenly. They fall hardest where a person has the least power inside the community and the fewest places to go outside it, and where the state enforces religious law there may be no outside at all. The table names who carries the most, how, and what makes it worse.

Most of the tradition's institutional work is done below the ministries and boards, by people who see decisions without making them. Imams, mosque committees, madrasa teachers, certification supervisors and the women who organize women's sections each carry part of the load, and each stands at one point where the next decision could be declined. The table sets out what each tier does, what it sees, what it is asked to do and where it could refuse.

It has been broken before

What would change this page

Repeal of the remaining apostasy statutes by the states that maintain them would revise this page's compulsion findings at their strongest point, and the page says so in advance.

• Musawah and Sisters in Islam. Musawah is the global movement for equality in Muslim family law, launched in Kuala Lumpur in 2009, and Sisters in Islam is the Malaysian group that started it 3435.
• Shayara Bano. A Muslim woman, she took her divorce to India's Supreme Court and won 2.
• Loujain al-Hathloul. A Saudi women's-rights activist, she was imprisoned after campaigning to end the driving ban and the guardianship system, and released in 2021 18.
• Nahdlatul Ulama. The world's largest Muslim organization, it replaced its chair in a contested vote in 2021 25. In November 2025 its supreme council declared the elected chair dismissed, which he refused to accept 41. In 2026 its congress voted 401 to 150 to have a council of nine senior scholars choose the chair instead of a delegate vote 40.
• Tunisia's reformers. They won the 2017 repeal of the ban on Muslim women marrying non-Muslims 7.

In closing

Your tradition's own structure is unusually well-equipped for this: no priesthood, no intercessor, no church that owns access to God. Classical scholarship's proudest achievement was independence from rulers. Every mechanism in this profile represents a departure from that inheritance, not a fulfillment of it — which means demanding accountability is not Westernization. It is a return.

You can be devout and refuse a salaried cleric's political ruling. You can pray on time and still ask what happened to the child at the school. Holding both is not weak iman. It is the only version of this that survives contact with the truth — and Islam's own texts insist that truth is not the enemy of faith.

Practical guidance, not legal advice. See the country tables on Sunni Islam and Shia Islam.

1. Check your jurisdiction. Leaving Islam can carry the death penalty in nine states, and no penalty in most others 19.
2. Do not announce, and be careful online. The laws that punish leaving usually punish saying so.
3. Know your family-law exposure. Marriage, divorce and custody often follow religion; a religious-only marriage may leave you without legal protection 8.
4. Secure documents and money in your own name first.
5. If honour or forced marriage is invoked, use specialist help 2938.
6. Find your people quietly 3031, or a Muslim helpline if you are staying 2836.

Checked 2026-09-27.

Law, courts and official records

1. Supreme Court of Pakistan, Mst. Asia Bibi v. The State, Criminal Appeal No. 39-L of 2015, judgment of 31 Oct 2018 (acquittal). https://www.supremecourt.gov.pk/downloads_judgements/Crl.A._39_L_2015.pdf
2. Supreme Court of India, Shayara Bano v. Union of India (2017), 3:2 Constitution Bench ruling that instant triple talaq is unconstitutional. https://indiankanoon.org/doc/115701246/
3. Indonesia, Law No. 16 of 2019 amending the 1974 Marriage Law (minimum age 19 for both sexes). https://peraturan.bpk.go.id/Home/Details/122740/
4. Indonesia, Joint Ministerial Decree No. 3/2008, KEP-033/A/JA/6/2008 and 199/2008 on Jemaah Ahmadiyah Indonesia (9 June 2008) — International Crisis Group briefing on its effect. https://www.crisisgroup.org/brf/asia-pacific/indonesia/b078-indonesia-implications-ahmadiyah-decree
5. Library of Congress Global Legal Monitor, "Saudi Arabia: Law on Passports Amended to Allow Women to Travel Abroad Without a Male Guardian" (23 Aug 2019; Royal Decree M/134). https://www.loc.gov/item/global-legal-monitor/2019-08-23/saudi-arabia-law-on-passports-amended-to-allow-women-to-travel-abroad-without-a-male-guardian/
6. Morocco, Family Code (Moudawana) of 5 Feb 2004 — summary of its provisions (minimum age 18, joint responsibility of spouses, judicial divorce for wives, restricted polygamy). https://hrea.org/programs/gender-equality-and-womens-empowerment/moudawana/
7. Tunisia: repeal in September 2017 of the 1973 circular barring Muslim women from marrying non-Muslim men — Euronews report. https://www.euronews.com/2017/09/15/tunisia-overturns-decades-old-ban-on-women-marrying-non-muslims
8. UK Home Office, The Independent Review into the Application of Sharia Law in England and Wales (chair: Prof. Mona Siddiqui), Feb 2018 — ministerial statement HLWS432. https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-statements/detail/2018-02-01/HLWS432
9. UK House of Commons Library, Sharia law courts in the UK (debate pack CDP-2019-0102) — summary of the review's recommendations on civil registration of marriage. https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CDP-2019-0102/CDP-2019-0102.pdf
10. Charity Commission for England and Wales, statutory inquiry report, Brighton Mosque and Muslim Community Centre (trustee disqualified 2024). https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/charity-inquiry-brighton-mosque-muslim-community-centre/charity-inquiry-brighton-mosque-muslim-community-centre
11. UK Forced Marriage Unit (joint Home Office / FCDO unit, set up 2005), official statistics 2025. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/forced-marriage-unit-statistics-2025/forced-marriage-unit-statistics-2025
12. Saudi Press Agency — royal order appointing Sheikh Saleh al-Fawzan Grand Mufti and head of the Council of Senior Scholars (22 Oct 2025). https://www.spa.gov.sa/en/N2426644
13. Egypt, Constitution of 2014 (rev. 2019), Article 7 — al-Azhar independent; its Grand Imam "independent and may not be dismissed", chosen from the Council of Senior Scholars. https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Egypt_2019
14. Aceh's Islamic criminal code (Qanun Jinayat, 2014; in force 23 Oct 2015) — Library of Congress Global Legal Monitor. https://www.loc.gov/item/global-legal-monitor/2015-10-28/indonesia-aceh-province-law-expands-caning-punishment-to-adultery-and-homosexual-acts/

Inquiries, UN and human-rights reporting

15. UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran — finding that Jina Mahsa Amini's death in morality-police custody (Sept 2022) was unlawful and the state responsible (report to the Human Rights Council, March 2024). https://media.un.org/unifeed/en/asset/d335/d3350946
16. Human Rights Watch, "Saudi Arabia: Prominent Clerics Arrested" (15 Sept 2017). https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/09/15/saudi-arabia-prominent-clerics-arrested
17. Human Rights Watch, "Saudi Arabia: A Move to Curb Religious Police Abuses" (18 Apr 2016). https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/04/18/saudi-arabia-move-curb-religious-police-abuses-0
18. Human Rights Watch, "Saudi Arabia: Prominent Women's Rights Activist Released" (Loujain al-Hathloul, 10 Feb 2021). https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/02/10/saudi-arabia-prominent-womens-rights-activist-released
19. Humanists International, Freedom of Thought Report — countries where apostasy can carry the death penalty. https://fot.humanists.international/general-introduction/
20. ILGA World, Laws on Us (2024) — the death penalty for consensual same-sex acts is legally prescribed in 7 UN member states and possible in 5 more. https://ilga.org/news/laws-on-us-2024-lgbti-human-rights/
21. Karnataka State Minorities Commission report on Waqf Board land (A. Manippady, March 2012) — Deccan Herald report on the report being tabled. https://www.deccanherald.com/india/karnataka/report-wakf-properties-tabled-council-2052857

Demography and scholarship

22. Pew Research Center, How the Global Religious Landscape Changed From 2010 to 2020 (9 June 2025) — Muslims 2.0 billion in 2020, 25.6% of the world; fastest-growing religion 2010–2020. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/06/09/how-the-global-religious-landscape-changed-from-2010-to-2020/
23. Pew Research Center, Mapping the Global Muslim Population (2009) — Sunni 87–90%, Shia 10–13%. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2009/10/07/mapping-the-global-muslim-population/
24. Duvar English, "Turkish Religious Affairs Directorate's 2024 budget increases by 151 pct" (Diyanet budget line in the state budget). https://www.duvarenglish.com/turkish-religious-affairs-directorys-2024-budget-increases-by-151-pct-news-63391
25. Tempo, "Nahdlatul Ulama Congress Elects Yahya Cholil Staquf as Chairperson" (24 Dec 2021; 337 votes to the incumbent's 210). https://en.tempo.co/read/1542799/nahdlatul-ulama-congress-elects-yahya-cholil-staquf-as-chairperson
26. Egyptian Streets, "Egypt's Al-Azhar Criticizes Gender Equality in Inheritance, Unlike Tunisia" (Aug 2017 — al-Azhar's deputy on the Tunisian reforms). https://egyptianstreets.com/2017/08/16/egypts-al-azhar-criticizes-gender-equality-in-inheritance-unlike-tunisia/
27. TIMEP, "The Moudawana: Morocco's Nearly 20-Year Old Family Code" (2023) — judges approved 81% of 32,000 underage-marriage requests in 2019. https://timep.org/2023/07/07/the-moudawana-moroccos-nearly-20-year-old-family-code/

Where to get help (vetted 2026-09-27; UK numbers unless stated)

28. Muslim Women's Network Helpline — 0800 999 5786 (freephone; Mon–Fri 10am–4pm). https://www.mwnuk.co.uk/mwn-helpline
29. Karma Nirvana (forced marriage and honour-based abuse) — 0800 5999 247. https://karmanirvana.org.uk/
30. Faith to Faithless (Humanists UK), helpline for people leaving high-control religious groups — helpline 0800 448 0748 (freephone; Monday 10:00–13:00, Wednesday 10:00–13:00, Thursday 16:00–19:00 UK time). https://humanists.uk/faith-to-faithless/helpline/
31. Ex-Muslims of North America (US/Canada; 501(c)(3), founded 2013). https://exmuslims.org/about-us/

Further sources

32. Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Ibāḍīyyah" (Oman's majority; over 2.5 million). https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ibadiyyah
33. Saudipedia, "Timeline of the Number of Pilgrims from 1970 to 2025" (GASTAT); GASTAT, Hajj 2026 (1,707,301). https://saudipedia.com/en/timeline-of-the-number-of-pilgrims-from-1970-to-2025 · https://www.stats.gov.sa/en/w/news/194
34. Musawah, "Where Musawah Began" (Kuala Lumpur, Feb 2009). https://www.musawah.org/advocacy-toolkit/where-musawah-began/
35. Sisters in Islam, "Who We Are". https://sistersinislam.org/who-we-are/
36. Naseeha Mental Health, "Helpline & Textline". https://www.naseeha.org/helpline-textline
37. Humanists International, "Humanists at Risk". https://humanists.international/what-we-do/humanists-at-risk/
38. Dubai Foundation for Women and Children, "Helpline" (800111). https://www.dfwac.ae/helpline
39. Constitution of Morocco (2011), Article 41 — the King as Amir al-Mu'minin. https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Morocco_2011
40. RCTI+, "Muktamar ke-35 NU: pemilihan ketum disepakati lewat mekanisme AHWA" (30 Aug 2026; 401 of 552 votes for the council method, 150 against, 1 invalid) · Metro TV, "KH Abdul Hakim Mahfudz resmi terpilih jadi Ketum PBNU 2026–2031" (nine AHWA members chose him by consensus). https://www.rctiplus.com/news/detail/inews/5462048/muktamar-ke-35-nu--pemilihan-ketum-disepakati-lewat-mekanisme-ahwa · https://www.metrotvnews.com/play/kqYCdePx-kh-abdul-hakim-mahfudz-resmi-terpilih-jadi-ketum-pbnu-2026-2031
41. Fulcrum, "Indonesia's Nahdlatul Ulama in Turmoil" (Dec 2025) — the Supreme Council (Syuriyah) ousted chair Yahya Cholil Staquf in late November 2025; he refused to step down. https://fulcrum.sg/article/commentaries/indonesias-nahdlatul-ulama-in-turmoil/
42. Pew Research Center, "7 key changes in the global religious landscape" (2 Apr 2015) — Muslims near parity with Christians by 2050 · Anadolu Agency on Pew's 2017 update — Muslims projected to outnumber Christians after 2070. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2015/04/02/7-key-changes-in-the-global-religious-landscape/ · https://aa.com.tr/en/world/muslims-projected-to-outnumber-christians-after-2070/61027
43. Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Saud dynasty" — the 1744 alliance between Muhammad ibn Saud and Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab at Diriyah. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Saud-dynasty
44. Abdullah Saeed and Hassan Saeed, Freedom of Religion, Apostasy and Islam (Ashgate, 2004). https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ecclesiastical-law-journal/article/freedom-of-religion-apostasy-and-islam-by-abdullah-saeed-and-hassan-saeed-ashgate-publishing-ltd-2004-v-227pp-1750-paperback-isbn-0754630838/53CB90ECA742A648C1D59AE94DEADBF4
45. Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Mulki Al-Sharmani and Jana Rumminger (eds), Men in Charge? Rethinking Authority in Muslim Legal Tradition (Oneworld, 2015) — qiwamah and wilayah. https://www.musawah.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/A-Feminist-Readers-Guide-MIC-Print.pdf
46. Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen, Defining Islam for the Egyptian State: Muftis and Fatwas of the Dar al-Ifta (Brill, 1997). https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-middle-east-studies/article/jakob-skovgaardpetersen-defining-islam-for-the-egyptian-state-muftis-and-fatwas-of-the-dar-alifta-social-economic-and-political-studies-of-the-middle-east-and-asia-leiden-e-j-brill-1997-pp-431/D224929D77CE59BA7C3054F52A1024DB
47. Hamideh Sedghi, Women and Politics in Iran: Veiling, Unveiling, and Reveiling (Cambridge University Press, 2007). https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/9780511510380/type/book
48. Pakistan, Constitution (Second Amendment) Act 1974 — Ahmadis not Muslims for the purposes of the Constitution and law. https://pakistani.org/pakistan/constitution/amendments/2amendment.html
49. Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, Child protection in religious organisations and settings: Investigation Report (Sept 2021) — abuse confirmed in mosques and madrasahs; under-reporting; supplementary schools not subject to compulsory minimum standards. https://www.iicsa.org.uk/reports-recommendations/publications/investigation/cp-religious-organisations-settings/executive-summary
50. Doğruluk Payı, Diyanet 2023 budget ₺35.91bn (initial budget-law allocation). https://www.dogrulukpayi.com/dogruluk-kontrolu/diyanet-isleri-baskanligi-nin-2023-icin-ongorulen-butcesi-35-milyar-910-milyon-653-bin-tl-mi
51. BirGün, "Diyanet'in ordusu büyüyor" — Diyanet personnel 140,185 in 2023; over 140,000 in December 2024. https://www.birgun.net/haber/diyanetin-ordusu-buyuyor-2025te-personele-110-milyarlik-kaynak-585663
52. Morocco World News, "Approved reforms in Morocco's Family Code" (Dec 2024) · lesmre.com, "Moudawana reform 2026: 8 key changes" — marriage age stays 18, exceptions at 17 with judicial approval; as of 28 Sept 2026 the text had not been published in the Official Bulletin and the 2004 code remains in force. https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2024/12/367184/approved-reforms-in-moroccos-family-code-whats-changing · https://www.lesmre.com/en/actualites/moudawana-reform-2026-8-key-changes-mre
53. UK Government, "Safeguarding and protecting people for charities and trustees" (Charity Commission; updated 1 June 2022) — trustees must take reasonable steps to protect from harm people who come into contact with the charity. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/safeguarding-duties-for-charity-trustees
54. Charity Commission, "Regulator disqualifies trustee after finding Brighton Mosque poorly managed" — inquiry opened 3 Aug 2022 after a former trustee's terrorism conviction over a speech at the mosque (Nov 2020); Dr Karim Aboutayab disqualified for 4 years 6 months from 10 July 2024. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/regulator-disqualifies-trustee-after-finding-brighton-mosque-poorly-managed
55. Wikipedia, "Ahmed el-Tayeb" — Grand Imam since 10 March 2010, appointed by presidential decree. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_el-Tayeb

• 2026-10-03: Updated the Nahdlatul Ulama entry: its 2026 congress moved the choice of chair to a council of nine senior scholars. Corrected the count of states where apostasy can carry death to nine and named them; made the al-Azhar entry say its Grand Imam was appointed in 2010; fixed the size of the Muslim population (a quarter of humanity, two billion) and the Sunni share; and added the pending Moroccan family-code reform. Removed a sentence about critics that had no source, softened claims about scholars and about safeguarding that the record did not support, marked the typical denials as paraphrase, named the Brighton Mosque case's background, dropped an aid-to-influence card the page could not support, rewrote three loop summaries to match their steps, regraded three techniques, removed the unsupported "sourced" marks, and added 16 sources and opening hours for two help lines.
• 2026-09-27: Checked against the sources and corrected: al-Azhar's Grand Imam is elected and irremovable; the Saudi Grand Mufti's appointment date confirmed; the apostasy and waqf labels now cite sources; population corrected to about 2 billion.
• 2026-09-27: Added Branches, Law & state, Money in numbers, four documented cases, Voices from inside, two regional cards, Leaving safely and Where to get help.