Mullah

Mullah (ˈmʌlə,_ˈmʊlə,_ˈmuːlə; Mollā) is an honorific title for Shia and Sunni Muslim clergy or a Muslim mosque leader. The term is also sometimes used for a person who has higher education in Islamic theology and sharia law. The title has also been used in some Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewish communities to refer to the community's leadership, especially religious leadership. The word mullah is derived from the Arabic word mawlā (مَوْلَى), meaning "vicar", "master" and "guardian". The term has also been used among Persian Jews, Bukharan Jews, Afghan Jews, and other Central Asian Jews to refer to the community's religious and/or secular leadership. In Kaifeng, China, the historic Chinese Jews who managed the synagogue were called "mullahs". It is the term commonly used for village or neighborhood mosque leaders, who may not have high levels of religious education, in large parts of the Muslim world, particularly Iran, Turkey, Central Asia, West Asia, South Asia, Eastern Arabia, the Balkans and the Horn of Africa. In other regions a different term may be used, such as imam in the Maghreb. In Afghanistan and Pakistan the title is given to graduates of a madrasa or Islamic school, who are then able to become a mosque leader, a teacher at a religious school, a local judge in a village or town, or to perform religious rituals. A person who is still a student at a madrasa and yet to graduate is a talib. The Afghan Taliban was formed in 1994 by men who had graduated from, or at least attended, madrasas. They called themselves taliban, the plural of talib, or "students". Many of the leaders of the Taliban were titled Mullah, although not all had completed their madrasa education. Someone who goes on to complete postgraduate religious education receives the higher title of Mawlawi. Mullah and its variation mulla have also degenerated into a derogatory term for a Muslim priest that connotes a semiliterate, backward, often bigoted village imam.