While Muslims throughout the world emphasize the unity of Islam, they also recognize the impressive diversity of cultural and historical contexts in which Islamic civilization has been elaborated and expressed. Because of this diversity, rites of passage in the Islamic world draw equally upon ritual forms and metaphors specific to local cultural contexts and upon the more universal elements of the Islamic tradition. Some of these ritual and expressive forms existed prior to the advent of Islam in the seventh century CE and were incorporated with appropriate shifts in context and meaning into the Islamic tradition. Others developed concurrently with the Islamic tradition.

Some transitions marked by rites of passage, including birth, naming, circumcision, social puberty, betrothal, marriage, pregnancy, motherhood, fatherhood, death, and mourning, are not specific to the Islamic world. These rites show an especially wide diversity of form and content because they incorporate major...