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BY: Imam Feisal Rauf
Index of Questions:
If your fiancé marries another woman and brings her to the United States she will be considered his legal wife by U.S. law. She will be protected by the state. He may love you and spend time with you as his second wife, and may support you and treat you according to the rules of Islamic law, but the state will not recognize this union, and you will not be able to enforce your rights under Islamic law.
What do the star and crescent mean?
What do the star and crescent mean in Islam? So many different opinions.
The sighting of the new crescent moon is how the Prophet and his contemporaries, the earliest Muslims, established the beginning of the new month. This was especially important for determining the first day of the fasting month of Ramadan, or the month of pilgrimage. However, there is no religious or theological significance to the crescent and star, and they still have none as such.
Some scholars believe that the crescent was introduced into Islamic symbolic consciousness as a continuation of pre-Islamic design motifs, and record its use in the minting of coins as early as the late 600s--that is, within the first century of the death of the Prophet--and was also used on pottery decorations.
Because Christians erected a cross on the dome or highest point of their churches, and as Muslims co-habited with Christians and members of other faith traditions, the need arose to distinguish their mosques from churches and other houses of worship--especially where the architectural styles were not different. The crescent and the star thus developed as symbolizing Islam. These tendencies accelerated during Ottoman times, as Muslims engaged with European nations and felt an increasing need to establish symbols that differentiated them from European and mainly Christian nations, where the cross played a prominent part as a component of many flags.
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