وَٱللَّهُ فَضَّلَ بَعْضَكُمْ عَلَىٰ بَعْضٍ فِى ٱلرِّزْقِ ۚ فَمَا ٱلَّذِينَ فُضِّلُوا۟ بِرَآدِّى رِزْقِهِمْ عَلَىٰ مَا مَلَكَتْ أَيْمَـٰنُهُمْ فَهُمْ فِيهِ سَوَآءٌ ۚ أَفَبِنِعْمَةِ ٱللَّهِ يَجْحَدُونَ God has given some of you more provision than others. Those who have been given more are unwilling to pass their provision on to the slaves they possess so that they […]
Category Archives: Vignettes
29
Mar
Mar
The following excerpt comes from William Cavanagh’s The Myth of Religious Violence. We covered this book as part of the 2018 booklist at Al-Andalus Book Club. I found myself thinking about this book recently as I go through Syed Naquib al-Attas’ Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islam for this year’s booklist. Cavanaugh’s remarks on the historical development […]
01
Mar
Mar
The following excerpt comes from Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. When I first read it I found myself thinking of the Beloved ﷺ’s invocation, “O Allah, I seek refuge with You from knowledge that does not benefit. _ _ _ _ _ Only four years after […]
22
Jan
Jan
The following excerpts come from the introduction chapter to Syed Naquib al-Attas’ Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islam. He defines the term adab and explains how it manifests in the life of the Muslim who observes it in their internal and external engagements. Unlike most major religions of the world, Islam is not named after a particular person. […]
01
Dec
Dec
‘Abd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī (1162-1231) was a major figure in medicine when the Islamic civilization was leading the world in the production of knowledge about…well, everything. Among the many books he wrote in a variety of fields is one titled al-Ifada wal I’tibar fil Umūr al-Mushahada wal Hawadith al-Mu’ayana bi-Arḍi Misr, which in English was boringly […]
28
Sep
Sep
The collective Muslim psyche has yet to properly come to terms with the trauma of the destruction of Baghdad in 1258, the loss of Al-Andalus in 1492, or the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924. Part of our inability to engage in a healthy critical self-reflection to understand how and why we are in […]
18
Sep
Sep
Vaccination certificate in the Ottoman Empire against a pandemic during the period of Sultan Abdul Hamid-ll in 1908 (1326 AH) Infectious diseases and pandemics leading to mass deaths are a reminder of how intimately connected we are. Even with those who we have no social relationships, the simple act of being present in relatively close […]
08
Feb
Feb
Illustrations from a 1460 adaptation, printed by Schneider Ausgabe XII. On the left, the dying person is tempted by pride, and on the right they find salvation through humility. __________________________________________________________________________ I read Atul Gawande’s 2014 book Being Mortal just before I started medical school. I was really struck by Gawande’s vivid description of the way […]
01
Dec
Dec
It doesn’t take long for one sitting on the sidelines observing the state of Muslim scholarship and its engagement in the political arena to note the widening abyss between two camps. On the one side, are scholars wedded to the state’s apparatus, issuing edicts that align with visions of the ruling (dictator) class and maintenance […]
17
Sep
Sep
The following is an excerpt from The End of Education by the culture critic Neil Postman (1931-2003). We covered other works by Postman in Al-Andalus Book Club, including Amusing Ourselves to Death and Technopoly. In this particular book, Postman reflects on the state of public education in the United States, which can arguably apply across the world […]
15
Sep
Sep
The following is an excerpt from The Death of Expertise by Tom Nichols, which was published in 2017. We covered this book in Al-Andalus Book Club in 2018. I found myself thinking about this work again recently. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues with various forms of lockdowns and restrictions in different major cities around the world, many are […]
07
Jun
Jun
Malek Bennabi (1905-1973) was an Algerian sociologist and philosopher. His incisive writing on the sociological conditions of the Muslim world made him into a second coming of sorts of the Twelfth Century Muslim scholars and pioneer in sociology Ibn Khaldūn (1332-1406). In a series of publications under the title The Problems of Civilization, Bennabi examines the […]
14
Mar
Mar
We’re such an anxious bunch, aren’t we? We tend to focus far too much on the specifics of how we die, forgetting that ultimately, it doesn’t really matter because we all will die. Whether it’s the coronavirus, SARS, political violence, or whatever else that tomorrow brings, we have to remember that this life is just a […]
13
Feb
Feb
It is truly difficult to give a single descriptor for Muhammad Asad (1900-1992). He was a journalist, a writer, a diplomat, a traveller, and the author of an English translation of the Quran. Born Leopold Weiss to a Jewish family in what is today Ukraine, Asad comes from a lineage of rabbis. Although his father […]
08
Jul
Jul
The following is an excerpt from Islam and the Destiny of Man by Charles Le Gai Eaton (1921–2010), which was first published in 1985. Besides Gai Eaton, there are only two other Muslim writers who bring forth a synthesis between Eastern and Western thought in their presentation of Islam in a nuanced way that does not undermine its […]
27
Jun
Jun
A feature of the modern approach to Islam is to historicize rulings and limit their applications to the imagined context in which they arose. This goes beyond recognition of the particularities surrounding a ruling to the degree that allows one to extract the principles upon which it stands in order to properly apply it today […]
24
Jan
Jan
The cultural critic and educator Neil Postman published in 1985 an important work that continues to have relevance, if not more of it, in fact, today. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business is an argument that our reliance on visual media at the expense of print has been to […]
26
Dec
Dec
In his book The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss, the American Christian theologian and philosopher David Bentley Hart provides an account for what traditional theology has put forth on what the term God means and what it entails. It is interesting to note that this work can arguably be considered to be more directed at […]
12
Oct
Oct
“My ancestors were Brahmins. They spent their lives in search of god. I am spending my life in search of man.” – Muhammad Iqbal The following is a transcript of an address Muhammad Iqbal gave on January 1st, 1938 to mark the beginning of the new year, and it was broadcast over the All India […]
21
Apr
Apr
Note: A version of this vignette originally appeared as a topic of discussion in Andalus Book Club. Those born into Muslim families who had some connection to the tradition have been told from a young age stories about our past glories. Even today, whenever the subject of science and religion comes up, many are very quick […]
20
Jan
Jan
The topic of Islamic reform is of great importance to those who wish to see Islam have as little conflict as possible with secular liberal ideals. In this view, secular liberalism is the transcendent arbiter of Truth, and it represents an assumed moral progress towards an imagined utopia of human flourishing. This notion is founded […]
16
Dec
Dec
The spectrum of human experience entails different modes of examination to gain an understanding of what makes us human and how to lead and live a life worth living. Appreciating this point sheds light on the essential futility of the debate between science and religion, which assumes a fundamental incommensurability between them. However, rather than an either/or dichotomy, recognizing what type of […]
07
Dec
Dec
Note: This vignette originally appeared as a topic of discussion in Andalus Book Club. The Western mind has been intellectually conditioned through the education system to by and large equate science with rationality and religion with mythology and superstition. The appeal of this set up lies in the idea that science deals with tangible material objects, whereas religion […]
28
Nov
Nov
The “Science vs. Religion” debate appears to be more of an issue for monotheistic religions than it is for those of the Far East. The claim that the universe was created by a God who is beyond the universe, coupled with what appears to be at times scientifically irreconcilable claims in sacred scriptures about the natural world, including human beings […]
18
Nov
Nov
In his short 1976 treatise Metaphor and Myth in Science and Religion Earl R. MacCormac undertakes a study on how language is used in science and religion. The idea he was tackling is the claim that scientific language is purely descriptive and factual, while religious language is neither. Where science provides an objective expression of the material […]
28
Oct
Oct
The ability to explain current events requires an essential ability to properly reference history if one is to offer a rational analysis for how we got here. One of the most frustrating things about this, however, is the far too prevalent tendency to oversimplify the factors contributing to the state of the present, and the comic book level […]
20
Oct
Oct
With their rise to the forefront of the social justice movement LGBTQ activists have done much work to assert their civil rights and individual freedom to live as equals to everyone else in a way that they believe to be an authentic to their sexual identities. As a necessary part of this effort was a […]
18
Oct
Oct
Books dealing with the social dynamics of colonization in general and those in African American studies in particular can offer an extremely informative perspective for Muslims today. One such example is the 1933 publication titled The Miseducation of the Negro by African American historian Carter Godwin Woodson. In this book Woodson dissects why despite having become “free” from […]
05
Oct
Oct
One of the most often cited reasons for leaving religion appeals to science. More specifically, Pew Research Center reports that many American “nones” lost their faith after they went away to college and learned about evolution. Contrary to the fields of physics and chemistry, biology stands apart in its impact on religious belief. This may […]
25
Sep
Sep
Sachiko Murata is not a widely known figure among Muslims. But she should be. Currently a professor of religion and Asian studies at Stony Brook University, where she teaches Islam, Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, she holds a PhD in Persian literature on the role of women in the Haft paykar, a poetical work by Nizami Ganjavi (1141-1209). […]
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