Saudi AramcoSaudi Aramco (أرامكو السعودية DIN), officially the Saudi Arabian Oil Group or simply Aramco, is a Saudi Arabian public petroleum and natural gas company based in Dhahran. , it is one of the largest companies in the world by revenue and has repeatedly achieved the largest annual profits in global corporate history. Saudi Aramco has both the world's second-largest proven crude oil reserves, at more than , and largest daily oil production of all oil-producing companies.
Islam and democracyThere exist a number of perspectives on the relationship of Islam and democracy among Islamic political theorists, the general Muslim public, and Western authors. Today, a number of Muslim-majority countries are Islamic yet secular democracies. Many Muslim scholars have argued that traditional Islamic notions such as shura (consultation), maslaha (public interest), and ʿadl (justice) justify representative government institutions which are similar to Western democracy, but reflect Islamic rather than Western liberal values.
History of the Middle EastThe Middle East, also known as the Near East, is home to one of the Cradles of Civilization and has seen many of the world's oldest cultures and civilizations. The region's history started from the earliest human settlements and continues through several major pre- and post-Islamic Empires to today's nation-states of the Middle East. The Sumerians became the first people to develop complex systems that were to be called "civilization" as far back as the 5th millennium BC.
Islam and secularismSecularism—that is, the separation of religion from civic affairs and the state—has been a controversial concept in Islamic political thought, owing in part to historical factors and in part to the ambiguity of the concept itself. In the Muslim world, the notion has acquired strong negative connotations due to its association with removal of Islamic influences from the legal and political spheres under foreign colonial domination, as well as attempts to restrict public religious expression by some secularist nation states.
Islamic religious policeIslamic religious police (also sometimes known as morality police or sharia police) are official Islamic vice squad police agencies, often in Islamic countries, which enforce religious observance and public morality on behalf of national or regional authorities based on its interpretation of sharia. Modern Islamic religious police forces were first established in the late-1970s amidst the Iranian Revolution and the Islamic revival the revolution brought; prior, the administration of public morality in most Islamic countries was considered a socioreligious matter, and was enforced through application of civil laws or through more informal means.
