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 […]
Tag Archives: history
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 […]
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 […]