Muawiyah I (602-680) was a deeply controversial figure in Islam. He was the nephew of Uthman, and founded the Umayyad dynasty. He was also the rival of Ali.
Bell tower
A bell tower (also belfry or campanile) is a tower which contains one or more bells, or which is designed to hold bells, even if it has none. They are usually built at a height that allows the sound to be heard at some distance.
There are different ways to make the bells in a bell tower ring. In many cases, the bell is rung by pulling on a rope that is joined to the bell, making it swing on a hinge and the clapper hit the bell. Another way is to use a keyboard called a carillon. Sometimes, the bells are controlled by a clock mechanism or a computer. This lets them ring at certain times without the need for a human to do it.
There are no examples of bell towers in antiquity. The first to use a bell tower in a church was Paulinus of Nola, about the start of the 5th century. Bell towers in Italy have almost always been plain vertical towers not attached to a building (). From the beginning, bell towers in northern Europe have been attached to churches. They were known of in England at least by the time of Bede. When Hilda, Abbess of Whitby died (680 AD), a nun reported hearing the sound of a bell. Bell towers are repeatedly mentioned during the 8th century. One was the campanile of St. Peter's Basilica at Rome.
Gian Lorenzo Bernini was Pope Urban XIII's choice to design and build twin bell towers on the front of St. Peter's. His first tower shifted and large cracks appeared. Work on the second tower stopped. Bernini was blamed and called incompetent. When Pope Urban died in 1644 it was not decided what to do about the tower disaster. It was a major setback for Bernini's career and for the future of church bell towers. It was later discovered the ground under the towers was not stable. The towers were torn down. Bernini went on to have an otherwise brilliant career.
Muezzin
A muezzin is a man who calls muslims to prayer from the minaret of a mosque.
He leads the call ("adhan") to Friday service and the five daily prayers (also known as the salat) from one of the mosque's minarets. Blind people often got the position; this is so that they could not see the places where women gathered. Today, many mosques have electronic amplification, and the muezzin no longer needs to be on the minaret.
In the city of Abu Dhabi, the call to prayer is coordinated, all mosques transmit the call of the muezzin of Sheikh Zayed Mosque. The idea for a similar system in Cairo failed in 2004.
Iqama
Iqama () is the second call to Islamic Prayer. It is given immediately before the prayer begins.
Aleppo
Aleppo ( ['ħalab], , ) is a city in northern Syria. From 2012 to 2016 it was a battlefield in the Syrian civil war.
In 2010 it had an official population of 4.6 million. Then, Aleppo was the largest Syrian city. After 2010, however, Aleppo is probably the second-largest city in Syria after the capital Damascus.
Aleppo is one of the oldest continuously lived in (lived in all the time) cities in the world. People may have arrived in the 6th millennium BC.
There was a large earthquake near Aleppo in 1138.
Mihrab
The Mihrab () is a niche in the wall of a mosque. It indicates the "qibla" (the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca, the direction that Muslims should face when praying). The wall in which a "mihrab" appears is the ""qibla" wall."
Culver City, California
Culver City is a city in western Los Angeles County, California.
Majority rule
Majority rule is a way of making decisions in government or in voting. A decision is made if it gets more than half of the votes. Majority rule is often used in referendums, which is when voters decide if they want to make a law by voting yes or no.
Majority rule is not the same as a plurality vote. In Plurality voting, which is often used in elections, whoever gets the most votes wins. With a plurality vote, the winner can have fewer than half of the votes if there are more than two choices. Elections for the house of Commons and many similar parliamentary bodies are done by plurality.
The U.S uses a plurality rule in their presidential elections.
Some people have criticized majority rule because it can lead to the tyranny of the majority which is not true democracy, where people who are the majority might vote for something that helps them but hurts the people in the minority or may even cause the negation of universal human rights, like Enabling Act. To prevent them, limit of constitutionalism and rule of law are established by German Constitution, as well as Council of Europe and European Union. This was also used in Greek voting.
Jama Masjid
The Masjid-i Jahān-Numā (, the 'World-reflecting Mosque'), commonly known as the Jama Masjid of Delhi, is the principal mosque of Old Delhi in India.
2006 Jama Masjid explosions
The 2006 Jama Masjid explosions were two explosions that occurred in the courtyard of Jama Masjid, a 17th-century mosque in Old Delhi (India) on April 14, 2006.
Babri Mosque
The Babri Mosque (, ), or Mosque of Babur was a mosque in Ayodhya, India. It was constructed by order of the first Mughal emperor of India, Babur, in Ayodhya in the 16th century.
Statues of Hindu deities were kept in the mosque overnight and claimed by hindus as the birth place of lord Rama.
Later, the site was declared disputed by the court. The mosque i destroyed in 1992 when a Rally of Hindus entered to the Ayodhya.
After the demolition of the Babri Mosque there was violence between Muslims and Hindus. On 27 September 2010 an Indian High Court (Allahabad High Court) decided that the Mosque was built on the Shri Ramlala Temple which was destroyed by Babar. Allahabad High Court decided to split the site into three parts.
Wudu
Wudu ( al-wuū', "ābdast", , wazū') is the Islamic act of washing parts of the body using water. It is necessary to do this before one prays.
7 July 2005 London bombings
The 7 July 2005 London bombings (also called 7/7) were suicide bomb attacks on London's public transport system during the morning rush hour. They were carried out by British Muslim extremists.
At 08:50, three bombs exploded within fifty seconds of each other on three London Underground trains. A fourth exploded an hour later at 09:47 on a bus in Tavistock Square. The explosions were caused by home-made bombs. The bombs were packed into rucksacks and set off by the bombers themselves.
There were many memorials across the United Kingdom and the world remembering the victims of the attacks, including a memorial in Hyde Park. There were 52 victims in total, and over 700 people hurt in the attack.
After this attack there was a police reform in the UK. Many police in London are authorised to carry firearms. London is always on high alert for terrorism. The police are supported by the Serious Organised Crime Agency and MI6.
At 8:49am, on Thursday 7 July 2005, three bombs were set off on board London Underground trains within 50 seconds of each other:
Early on, there had been confusion around what happened in the explosions Police changed what they thought the timings of the tube blasts as they learnt more: the earliest reports had suggested that they happened during a period of almost half an hour. This was due to early confusion at London Underground (LU), where the explosions were originally believed to have been caused by power surges. An early report, made in the first few minutes after the explosions, involved a person under a train, while another described a derailment (both of which did happen, but only as a result of the explosions). A code amber alert was declared by LU at 9:19am, and LU began to stop the network's operations, ordering trains to continue only to the next station and stopping all services.
The effects of the explosions were different in some explosions due to the differing designs of the tunnels in which each happened: