The Muslim ritual prayer (Salah) has been described as: The Pillar of the Religion; The Discriminator between Faith and Infidelity. The Ascension of the Believer; The “coolness of my eyes”… how is it all these and more?
Salah: The Believer’s Ascension – Part One
October 21st, 2008
Salah: The Believer’s Ascension – Part Two
October 20th, 2008The Muslim ritual prayer (Salah) has been described as: The Pillar of the Religion; The Discriminator between Faith and Infidelity. The Ascension of the Believer; The “coolness of my eyes”… how is it all these and more?
How Hijab? Part One
October 20th, 2008This lecture is a follow up on the “Why Hijab” lecture. It will address the specific Quranic verses, relevant hadith and scholarly opinions about the issue of women’s public attire. This second event will allow for more directed attention to the ‘fiqh’ isses of hijab and hopefully answer some fo the lingering questions from the ‘Why Hijab’ lecture.
How Hijab? Part Two
October 20th, 2008This lecture is a follow up on the “Why Hijab” lecture. It will address the specific Quranic verses, relevant hadith and scholarly opinions about the issue of women’s public attire. This second event will allow for more directed attention to the ‘fiqh’ isses of hijab and hopefully answer some fo the lingering questions from the ‘Why Hijab’ lecture.
Why Hijab?
October 20th, 2008The issue of veiling (hijab) is becoming more and more controversial in today’s society. Questions arise on its’ appropriateness in today’s society and the Islamic sources of its requirement. Women who wear the veil are at the frontline of discrimination and misunderstanding. This free event is intended to shed some light on the issue of hijab in Islam, its purpose and wisdom.
Modernity and Islam
June 4th, 2008All of us are children of modernity and the thought under which it is hinged, a world view fashioned by the most pervasive intellectual and moral influences of recent European history, an outlook in conformity with the Zeitgeist of the times. Seyyed Hossein Nasr has noted that modernist tendencies fall under four general marks:
a) Anthropomorphism (and by extension, secularism), or homocentrism
b) Evolutionist progressivism
c) The absence of any sense of the sacred; and
d) An unrelieved ignorance of meta-physical principles
“No Monasticism in Islam”…
June 3rd, 2008is a popular statement we quote to delineate that in Islam there is no withdrawal from the world. There is no unnaturalness and synthetic in Islam but only the organic and primordial. True, in the Christian and Buddhist expressions, indeed this may be so, but what this statement does mean is that contemplatives (dhakirun/dhakirat) must not withdraw from the world, but that the world must be withdrawn from them, the intrinsic idea of asceticism and meditative contemplation upon Allah is in no way affected.
Jesus and Muhammad: Brothers in Faith
April 1st, 2008©2005
“If you would trust in God as is His right to be trusted He would give you your provision as He gives it to the birds, they leave their roosts hungry and return satiated”, said the final universal Messenger, Muhammad. Similarly the author of the Gospel of Mathew has his closest brother, Jesus saying to the crowds around him, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” A little later he addressed them as, “O you of little faith?”
Salvation of God
January 24th, 2008Salvation/Salus of God
Confusion exists with those who out of ignorance or ill intent to the true nature of God’s activity in the salus of humanity via muhammadi. Those who are in this confusion hold that those of faith in the descent of the Word of God and the prophetic office of Muhammad can have no certainty of the salvation extended by God, and that those of faith are securing their own salvation, that the gratia of God has no place in via muhammadi. The effort of this work is to show that it is only from God, by God and in God that the Muslim is in a station of amn , or security, that it is faithful fidelity and trust in God which is the foundation of all salvation, and that Muhammad is the means to this, that God has responded in kind to false doctrines projected upon Him, thus removing the falsity of idols, whether as objects of adoration or as false doctrine. The following need exposition: