Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, is often labeled as a pedophile because of the age of his bride, Aisha. Critics allege that when Aisha was just six years old, she was promised as a bride to Muhammad, who was in his 50s. Later, when she was only nine, the marriage was consummated according to ahadith found in Al-Bukhari (Volume 5, book 58, number 234) and Muslim (book 8, number 3309). In seventh-century Arabia, adulthood was considered to begin at the onset of puberty. Puberty

Located in the eastern corner of the Kaaba is the Black Stone of Mecca, whose now-broken pieces are surrounded by a ring of stone and held together by a heavy silver band. According to tradition, this stone was given to Adam on his expulsion from paradise to forgive his sins. In another account, it is believed the angel Gabriel gave the stone to Abraham while he was building the Kaaba, according to Oxford Islamic Studies Online. Non-Muslims may remember that the Kaaba is the

Last week in my posting “Marketing to Muslims, Part 2 of 2”, I mentioned that Muslims would find products to buy that are halal or sharia-compliant. Along those lines, a blog that I follow is called Practical Islamic Finance, run by Rakaan Kayali. Mr. Kayali has impressive credentials, and if you conduct an internet search, you will find he has several Web sites with many engaging articles. He conducts interviews with notable Islamic bankers and financiers. While I don’t thin

To sell products to Muslims, vendors must ensure the products are either halal (permissible or lawful) or sharia-compliant. The very first step for a non-Muslim is to make their product meet these standards. You can have the best product globally, but if it is not halal or sharia-compliant, Muslims will not buy it. On the other hand, if you have a lousy product and it is halal or sharia-compliant, Muslims still won't purchase it because they are discriminating consumers like

Many of my readers are non-Muslim business-people. In the West, marketing is an assumed business function, and many business leaders are always looking for new markets to sell products. In this week's blog and next week's blog, I thought I would break down one issue that non-Muslims need to know about when they sell to a Muslim market. While product quality, function, brand, cost, and distribution are important to Muslims, the number one hurdle is a product must be sharia-com