Tag Archives: Sunnah

The Phase of Aesthetic Islam

۞ يَسْـَٔلُونَكَ عَنِ ٱلْأَهِلَّةِ ۖ قُلْ هِىَ مَوَٰقِيتُ لِلنَّاسِ وَٱلْحَجِّ ۗ وَلَيْسَ ٱلْبِرُّ بِأَن تَأْتُوا۟ ٱلْبُيُوتَ مِن ظُهُورِهَا وَلَـٰكِنَّ ٱلْبِرَّ مَنِ ٱتَّقَىٰ ۗ وَأْتُوا۟ ٱلْبُيُوتَ مِنْ أَبْوَٰبِهَا ۚ وَٱتَّقُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ لَعَلَّكُمْ تُفْلِحُونَ “They ask you ˹O Prophet˺ about the phases of the moon. Say, ‘They are a means for people to determine time and pilgrimage.’ […]

Ep 87. Faith for the Occasion: Are We Putting Islam in a Box?

I was invited on November 14th, 2020 by Northwestern University’s MSA to give a talk to their cohort. Given the current travel restrictions, we had to do it over Zoom. Topics addressed in this talk include Cartesian dualism contrasted with Islamic dualism, building a stronger connection with Allah, and spiritual cultivation through everyday tasks and […]

Ep 82. Antidote (Part 4 of 4) | Refinement of the Souls

This is a recording of the third and final session of an intensive held at Mīzan Avenue in Sydney, Australia on October 27th, 2019 covering Ibn ‘Atā’illah’s as-Sakandarī’s Taj al-‘Arūs al-Hawī li-Tahthīb an-Nufūs or Refinement of Souls. This is a concise manual consisting of spiritual instructions, aphorisms and private discourses with the Divine. The author […]

Ep 81. Antidote (Part 3 of 4) | Refinement of the Souls

This is a recording of the second session of an intensive held at Mīzan Avenue in Sydney, Australia on October 27th, 2019 covering Ibn ‘Atā’illah’s as-Sakandarī’s Taj al-‘Arūs al-Hawī li-Tahthīb an-Nufūs or Refinement of Souls. This is a concise manual consisting of spiritual instructions, aphorisms and private discourses with the Divine. The author has included […]

Ep 80. Antidote (Part 2 of 4) | Refinement of the Souls

This is a recording of the first session of an intensive held at Mīzan Avenue in Sydney, Australia on October 27th, 2019 covering Ibn ‘Atā’illah’s as-Sakandarī’s Taj al-‘Arūs al-Hawī li-Tahthīb an-Nufūs or Refinement of Souls. This is a concise manual consisting of spiritual instructions, aphorisms and private discourses with the Divine. The author has included […]

Ep 79. Antidote (Part 1 of 4) | Fiqh of the Signs of the Hour

The Beloved ﷺ told us that a time will come when confusion will reign supreme and believers will be bewildered. It seems we can’t go a week without Muslims online jumping into another moshpit that adds to the chaos and further obscures matters rather than bringing any clarity or benefit to the actions of the […]

Ep 75. Prohibitions of the Tongue (محارم اللسان) Part 5 of 6

A heavy emphasis is placed in Islam on the dangers of the tongue. The Beloved ﷺ warned against heedlessness over speech and guaranteed Paradise to the one who is watchful over their words, which indicates the difficulty of attaining that level of consciousness. Indeed, the most difficult fast during Ramadan is not that of the stomach, […]

Ep 76. Prohibitions of the Tongue (محارم اللسان) Part 5 of 6

A heavy emphasis is placed in Islam on the dangers of the tongue. The Beloved ﷺ warned against heedlessness over speech and guaranteed Paradise to the one who is watchful over their words, which indicates the difficulty of attaining that level of consciousness. Indeed, the most difficult fast during Ramadan is not that of the stomach, […]

Ep 73. Prohibitions of the Tongue (محارم اللسان) Part 2 of 6

A heavy emphasis is placed in Islam on the dangers of the tongue. The Beloved ﷺ warned against heedlessness over speech and guaranteed Paradise to the one who is watchful over their words, which indicates the difficulty of attaining that level of consciousness. Indeed, the most difficult fast during Ramadan is not that of the stomach, […]

Ep 72. Prohibitions of the Tongue (محارم اللسان) Part 1 of 6

A heavy emphasis is placed in Islam on the dangers of the tongue. The Beloved ﷺ warned against heedlessness over speech and guaranteed Paradise to the one who is watchful over their words, which indicates the difficulty of attaining that level of consciousness. Indeed, the most difficult fast during Ramadan is not that of the stomach, […]

Ep 65. Radical Skin, Moderate Masks – Book Analysis

I usually reserve book discussions and reviews for Andalus Book Club. However, in this episode, I chose to go through a particular book, “Radical Skin, Moderate Masks” by Yassir Morsi, because it’s a good representation of how a new generation of Muslim activists and Muslims in academia are thinking about the world and our place […]

Ep 62. Romanticizing Islam: Arabic, Sufism, and Hadras

The approach to the Islamic Tradition in general and to Sufism in specific that is adopted by Western Muslims drives many to partake in practices and in some cases life-altering life decisions that make one fall victim to a classic deception of Iblees packaged as a spiritual calling. The previous episode garnered a polarized reaction […]

Ep 61. Tariqa or Cult? When Spirituality is Pathology

The religious drive and desire for spiritual attainment can be exploited if one doesn’t know how to distinguish between the pursuit of Truth and the pursuit of experiencing a high. In this episode, the issue of pledging allegiance to a shaykh and a tariqa is discussed within the context of psychology and Islamic learning. Articles […]

The Sunnah: The Only Path to God

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 […]

Ep 35. What Does Being Religious in Islam Mean?

The idea of being religious often conjures up to the mind the image of one being divorced from the material world to engage in ritual practice with the purpose of attaining nearness to God. However, from an Islamic point of view this is an extremely narrow understanding that limits the scope of what Islam is […]

EP 15. The Dilemma of Being a Muslim Vegetarian on Eid al-Ad’ha

This past May I wrote an article that garnered quite the storm from a good number of Muslims. The Halal Bubble and the Sunnah Imperative to Go Vegan was a treatise in which I went through relevant references from the Quran and Sunnah regarding what features a diet built on a foundation of Islamic ethics would look like […]

Ep 14. Would the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ Be Vegan Today?

Episode Transcript This is episode 14 of Mohamed Ghilan’s podcast with yours truly as your host. I really do appreciate you listening and if you haven’t subscribed yet I invite you to do so. It really does go along way in helping improve the ranking of this podcast. Also, I started turning my attention to […]

Ep 13. The Halal Bubble and the Sunnah Imperative to Go Vegan

This article originally appeared in ImanWire The popular conception of religion seems to be that of a set of rules and regulations that one adheres to. It is a handbook of what to do and what not to do without much attention given to what it all means and what it is about. For many […]

The Halal Bubble and the Sunnah Imperative to Go Vegan

This article originally appeared in ImanWire The popular conception of religion seems to be that of a set of rules and regulations that one adheres to. It is a handbook of what to do and what not to do without much attention given to what it all means and what it is about. For many Muslims, […]

Desacralizing Arabic & Alienating Non-Arabs

Arabic is a beautiful language. The nature of its ways of expression, which carry many multitudes of depths of meaning that can be derived from each word, makes one only grow in love and appreciation of it once they learn it. This is best demonstrated in pre-Islamic poetry and ultimately in the Qur’an where the […]

Are You One of those Sufis?

  This article originally appeared in ImanWire Imam Abū Hāmid Al-Ghazzāli in his Deliverance from Error talks about having investigated all the intellectual discourses in order to find certainty. The only discourse he couldn’t intellectually comprehend was that of the Sufīs. He read their books and tried to figure it out, but eventually acknowledged that this was […]

Why Are Muslims So Serious About Their Prophet?

One of the most bewildering things for non-Muslims, especially in the West, is the utter less than zero tolerance of Muslims for anything that could be deemed as disrespectful towards the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. What makes it more puzzling is the generally somber reaction a non-Muslim would receive if they made fun of a Muslim’s […]