Abstract:

Since the birth of Islam, Muslims have been in a constant struggle for quantity and quality with non-Muslims. In this process, while sometimes Muslims were quantitatively forming the majority, other times they remained in the minority. This situation sometimes occurred in non-Muslim countries and some other times in their native homeland. While the existence of Muslims in the non-Muslim societies or countries did not cause such problems in previous periods, the increase of their presence in non-Muslim countries in the last two centuries caused them to encounter many linguistic, ethnic, and religious problems. Most of the problems of the religious field are related to the field of fiqh, which is an indispensable part of religious and social life. In the face of this situation, Muslims started to use the concept of "minority", which emerged as a result of the legal quests of the masses who are fewer in number in terms of language, race, and religion in the world, as a remedy for their own problems and to describe themselves as "Muslim minority" in the non-Muslim societies they live in. As a result of all these, the term "Muslim minority", which is believed to fit the definition of "... fiqh", which Islamic law has frequently used for sub-disciplines in recent years, emerged as a new branch of fiqh, which was created to seek solutions to the problems of Muslims in the West in half a century, with the name of Muslim minorities fiqh. In our study, we will try to make the conceptual analysis of Muslim minority fiqh by revealing its formation and development processes and to define and interpret this new branch of fiqh.

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