“As you are, so you will have put in authority over you.” So when you have taqwa of Allah and fear His punishment, you will have put in authority over you those who fear Him with respect to [their treatment of] you, and vice-versa. In one of the revealed books there is: “I am Allah …
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Sura al-Baqara
We might not need anything but the Opening of the Noble Book, the Fatiha, and another sura or two, particularly that on the Divine Unity, the sura called Ihklas – Sincerity. If we do go further, we start with the first sura of the Qur’an after the Opening, Sura al-Baqara.
‘Tradition’
The deeply incautious use of the word ‘tradition’ in the Western context by some people actually points to something appropriated by the Roman Empire, a religion founded by a Pharisaic rabbi from a Hellenic background, and propagated among other Hellenes, a man who never met the Prophet of his time, peace be upon him, and …
An ijtihad
I who am entirely unqualified to do so had today to make an ijtihad. Fortunately, it was only for myself.
“GOING VIRAL”
CELEBRITY & TECHNOLOGY One ought to pay attention to the vehicle of the metaphor “going viral”, for this is contagion, infection, and plague, and yet, entranced by media, people lust after it. Celebrity is as old as history and probably older, but tools change it, the pen for example. Caesar’s pen in writing the Gallic …
Do ‘they’ really ‘live’?
The –onomy of the oikos –onomy is, of course, from nomos – which, as much as it is law, is custom. Astronomy is thus the observation of the customary behaviour of the heavenly bodies. It became a regular science with Isaac Newton and others who expressed that customary behaviour in terms of the mathematical relations …
Bits and pieces, parts and wholes
“The piece [das Stück] is something other than the part [der Teil]. The part shares itself with parts in a whole. It takes part in the whole, belongs to it. The piece on the contrary is separated and indeed, as the piece, is even isolated from the other pieces. It never shares itself with these …
Khutbah Eid al-Fitr – Norbury Park, London – 2024
The month of Ramadan is the one in which the Qur’an was sent down as guidance for mankind, with Clear Signs containing guidance and discrimination. Any of you who are resident for the month should fast it. But any of you who are ill or on a journey should fast a number of other days. …
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Americanism
My oh my, America! Not so much a place but a state of mind – manifest destiny perhaps, something that everyone on both sides of that deeply divided psychic condition subscribes to, whether explicitly or implicitly – and because of the looking glass world in which we live, much of the world too has …
Unity and Equality
Unrecognised powerful religious forces are at work in the world, particularly the “modern” world. The first, particularly for Americans who religiously and sanctimoniously export it, is equality: “all men are created equal”, which is patently false. Neither by genetic nor familial inheritance is it true, nor in terms of wealth and social advantage is this …