Download or read book Sense and Sensibility in Islam written by Abdul Elah Nazer and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2012-04-28 with total page 815 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Islam, more than 1400 years after its revival by Prophet Muhammad is still misunderstood today. The traditional Islam practised today, is not the Islam of the Prophets, Abraham and Muhammad. It has been acutely syncretized with alien concepts of Paganism, Zoroastrian and Judeo-Christian. This book will attempt to explain some of the misunderstood verses using linguistics within its various contexts. Resorting to reason, Sense and Sensibility in Islam “sieves” out words and expressions of literalism from historicity. The resulting exegesis closely mirrors the message of the Quran as understood by the Pagan, Persian and the Judeo-Christian weltanschauung of the days of the Prophet Muhammad. The use of logic and context of the message is paramount. Arabic lexicons are frequently consulted and ancient metaphors revealed. Myths, legends, dogmas, miracles, superstitions, and historicity will be examined in the light of modern disciplines of archaeology and it sub-discipline of epigraphy, anthropology, cosmology and other scientifi c disciplines in deciphering and “teasing” out the message to its “original” rational intent. Contrary to popular perception, Islam is not a religion. It is in fact opposed to it, states Nazer. Traditional Islam today is a syncretic medley of traditions from Zoroastrian, Jewish and Christian traditions. While Nazer attempts to separate Original Islam from this syncretism, he asks various pertinent questions on the origins of Prophet Muhammad; the rituals perpetuated in the name of Islam by the Pagan Meccans of the Omayyad Period and later Abbasside Zoroastrian Persians and question their authenticity through linguistics, common sense and unveiled metaphors from Arabic Lexicons. Like separating wheat from chaff, Nazer “teases” out ancient words and metaphors from commonly translated rituals in today’s Islam. What was the essence of the ancient faith, he asks? Did Abraham travel all the way to Mecca to found a faith on the ritual of prayers, or did he found a system of socio-economic reforms, which Muhammad followed, for later generations? Did Abraham build the Kaaba in Mecca? Did Mecca exist during Abraham’s time? What do the words Kaaba and Bakkah really mean? Was Bakkah the Mecca of today, or was it the Baca or Bekah of the Judaic religion? Nazer explains these words through linguistics from context and the answer may surprise many, including the followers of traditional Islam today. Finally, Sense and Sensibility in Islam examines whether Islam is compatible with Western democracy. Is Islam a democracy or an autocracy, allied to patristic bondage as practiced in Iran and Saudi Arabia? He comes to the conclusions that Islam is a set of social reforms that lead to peace, security and human rights for all.
Download or read book Being Muslim written by Asad Tarsin and published by . This book was released on 2015-07-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brief manual designed to help Muslims learn how to live and practice their faith. Different from theoretical treatments of Islam, this book gives readers practical and useful knowledge that can help them understand what it means to be Muslim.
Download or read book Political Islam Iran and the Enlightenment written by Ali Mirsepassi and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-12-06 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ali Mirsepassi's book presents a powerful challenge to the dominant media and scholarly construction of radical Islamist politics, and their anti-Western ideology, as a purely Islamic phenomenon derived from insular, traditional and monolithic religious 'foundations'. It argues that the discourse of political Islam has strong connections to important and disturbing currents in Western philosophy and modern Western intellectual trends. The work demonstrates this by establishing links between important contemporary Iranian intellectuals and the central influence of Martin Heidegger's philosophy. We are also introduced to new democratic narratives of modernity linked to diverse intellectual trends in the West and in non-Western societies, notably in India, where the ideas of John Dewey have influenced important democratic social movements. As the first book to make such connections, it promises to be an important contribution to the field and will do much to overturn some pervasive assumptions about the dichotomy between East and West.
Download or read book Islam Observed written by Clifford Geertz and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1971-08-15 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In four brief chapters," writes Clifford Geertz in his preface, "I have attempted both to lay out a general framework for the comparative analysis of religion and to apply it to a study of the development of a supposedly single creed, Islam, in two quite contrasting civilizations, the Indonesian and the Moroccan." Mr. Geertz begins his argument by outlining the problem conceptually and providing an overview of the two countries. He then traces the evolution of their classical religious styles which, with disparate settings and unique histories, produced strikingly different spiritual climates. So in Morocco, the Islamic conception of life came to mean activism, moralism, and intense individuality, while in Indonesia the same concept emphasized aestheticism, inwardness, and the radical dissolution of personality. In order to assess the significance of these interesting developments, Mr. Geertz sets forth a series of theoretical observations concerning the social role of religion.
Download or read book The Trouble with Islam written by Irshad Manji and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I have to be honest with you. Islam is on very thin ice with me....Through our screaming self-pity and our conspicuous silences, we Muslims are conspiring against ourselves. We're in crisis and we're dragging the rest of the world with us. If ever there was a moment for an Islamic reformation, it's now. For the love of God, what are we doing about it?" In blunt, provocative, and deeply personal terms, Irshad Manji unearths the troubling cornerstones of mainstream Islam today: tribal insularity, deep-seated anti-Semitism, and an uncritical acceptance of the Koran as the final, and therefore superior, manifesto of God. In this open letter to Muslims and non-Muslims alike, Manji asks arresting questions. "Who is the real colonizer of Muslims - America or Arabia? Why are we all being held hostage by what's happening between the Palestinians and the Israelis? Why are we squandering the talents of women, fully half of God's creation? What's our excuse for reading the Koran literally when it's so contradictory and ambiguous? Is that a heart attack you're having? Make it fast. Because if more of us don't speak out against the imperialists within Islam, these guys will walk away with the show." Manji offers a practical vision of how the United States and its allies can help Muslims undertake a reformation that empowers women, promotes respect for religious minorities, and fosters a competition of ideas. Her vision revives Islam's lost tradition of independent thinking. This book will inspire struggling Muslims worldwide to revisit the foundations of their faith. It will also compel non-Muslims to start posing the important questions without fear of being deemed "racists." In more ways than one, The Trouble with Islam is a clarion call for a fatwa-free future.
Download or read book Na ar Vision Belief and Perception in Islamic Cultures written by Samer Akkach and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-12-13 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Naẓar: Vision, Belief, and Perception in Islamic Cultures offers multiple perspectives on how the Islamic visual culture and aesthetic sensibility have been enabled and shaped by common conceptual tools, consistent socio-spatial practices, and unifying beliefs and moral parameters.
Download or read book Sacred Scents in Early Christianity and Islam written by Mary Thurlkill and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-07-26 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Medieval scholars and cultural historians have recently turned their attention to the question of “smells” and what olfactory sensations reveal about society in general and holiness in particular. Sacred Scents in Early Christianity and Islam contributes to that conversation, explaining how early Christians and Muslims linked the “sweet smell of sanctity” with ideals of the body and sexuality; created boundaries and sacred space; and imagined their emerging communal identity. Most importantly, scent—itself transgressive and difficult to control—signaled transition and transformation between categories of meaning. Christian and Islamic authors distinguished their own fragrant ethical and theological ideals against the stench of oppositional heresy and moral depravity. Orthodox Christians ridiculed their ‘stinking’ Arian neighbors, and Muslims denounced the ‘reeking’ corruption of Umayyad and Abbasid decadence. Through the mouths of saints and prophets, patriarchal authors labeled perfumed women as existential threats to vulnerable men and consigned them to enclosed, private space for their protection as well as society’s. At the same time, theologians praised both men and women who purified and transformed their bodies into aromatic offerings to God. Both Christian and Muslim pilgrims venerated sainted men and women with perfumed offerings at tombstones; indeed, Christians and Muslims often worshipped together, honoring common heroes such as Abraham, Moses, and Jonah. Sacred Scents begins by surveying aroma’s quotidian functions in Roman and pre-Islamic cultural milieus within homes, temples, poetry, kitchens, and medicines. Existing scholarship tends to frame ‘scent’ as something available only to the wealthy or elite; however, perfumes, spices, and incense wafted through the lives of most early Christians and Muslims. It ends by examining both traditions’ views of Paradise, identified as the archetypal Garden and source of all perfumes and sweet smells. Both Christian and Islamic texts explain Adam and Eve’s profound grief at losing access to these heavenly aromas and celebrate God’s mercy in allowing earthly remembrances. Sacred scent thus prompts humanity’s grief for what was lost and the yearning for paradisiacal transformation still to come.
Download or read book Journey to the End of Islam written by Michael Muhammad Knight and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2009-12-10 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Journey to the End of Islam, Michael Muhammad Knight — whose work has led to him being hailed as both the Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson of American Islam — wanders through Muslim countries, navigating between conflicting visions of his religion. Visiting holy sites in Pakistan, Syria, Egypt, and Ethiopia, Knight engages both the puritanical Islam promoted by Saudi globalization and the heretical strands of popular folk Islam: shrines, magic, music, and drugs. The conflict of “global” and “local” Islam speaks to Knight’s own experience approaching the Islamic world as a uniquely American Muslim with his own sources: the modern mythologies of the Nation of Islam and Five Percenters, as well as the arguments of Progressive Muslim thinkers for feminism and reform. Knight’s travels conclude at Islam’s spiritual center, the holy city of Mecca, where he performs the hajj required of every Muslim. During the rites of pilgrimage, he watches as all variations of Islam converge in one place, under the supervision of Saudi Arabia’s religious police. What results is a struggle to separate the spiritual from the political, Knight searching for a personal relationship to Islam in the context of how it's defined by the external world.
Download or read book The Common Sense Muslim written by Zaynab Abdullah and published by Page Publishing Inc. This book was released on 2022-01-06 with total page 58 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Commonsense Muslim: Treatises on Islamic Justice, Muslim Unity, and the State of Islamic Affairs in the West postulates the rise and fall of human civilizations, which occurs when Islamic monotheism is present or absent. A society’s level of morality predicts the cycles of human advancement or decline. When human nature and the prophetic systems align or misalign, civilizations rise and fall. The impetus for this collection of essays is to draw a correlation between Muslim unity, Islamic monotheism, Islamic State sovereignty, and the increase or decrease of morality in human rights affairs, especially as it is relevant to enjoining the good, forbidding the evil—justice and injustice. The treatise calls to warn Muslims that unity is key to solve the prevailing oppression currently afflicting humanity worldwide.
Download or read book Contested Conversions to Islam written by Tijana Krstic and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2011-05-13 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the role of conversion to Islam in the emergence of the Ottoman Empire, its imperial ideology and Sunni identity, and its relationship with its Muslim and non-Muslim subjects, in the context of the early modern Mediterranean.
Download or read book Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam written by Samer Akkach and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fascinating interdisciplinary study reveals connections between architecture, cosmology, and mysticism. Samer Akkach demonstrates how space ordering in premodern Islamic architecture reflects the transcendental and the sublime. The book features many new translations, a number from unpublished sources, and several illustrations. Referencing a wide range of mystical texts, and with a special focus on the works of the great Sufi master Ibn Arabi, Akkach introduces a notion of spatial sensibility that is shaped by religious conceptions of time and space. Religious beliefs about the cosmos, geography, the human body, and constructed forms are all underpinned by a consistent spatial sensibility anchored in medieval geocentrism. Within this geometrically defined and ordered universe, nothing stands in isolation or ambiguity; everything is interrelated and carefully positioned in an intricate hierarchy. Through detailed mapping of this intricate order, the book shows the significance of this mode of seeing the world for those who lived in the premodern Islamic era and how cosmological ideas became manifest in the buildings and spaces of their everyday lives. This is a highly original work that provides important insights on Islamic aesthetics and culture, on the history of architecture, and on the relationship of art and religion, creativity and spirituality.
Download or read book Islamic Spirituality written by Seyyed Hossein Nasr and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published 1987. The first part of the volume is concerned with "The Roots of the Islamic Tradition and Spirituality". These are seen to include the Qu’ran as the central theophany of Islam, the Prophet who received the word of God and made it known to mankind and the rites of Islam. The second part examines the divisions of the Islamic community with their distinctive pieties and emphases: Sunnism and Shi’ism and female spirituality. Part III is devoted to Sufism – its nature and origin, its early development, its various spiritual practices and its science of the soul.
Download or read book Islam in Focus written by Dr. Hammudah Abdalati and published by American Trust Publications. This book was released on 1993-06-01 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This popular book is an attempt to respond to the needs of both Muslims and non-Muslims in North America. Its purpose is simply to acquaint the average reader with the basic teachings of Islam; not intended to present the depth or breadth of Islam. It guides Muslims to the median way in all matters of life, rejects fanaticism and narrow mindedness. It provides truth about Islam, a spiritual insight and a moral approach to the human condition. The author hopes that "it will make them responsible citizens of their respective countries, honorable members of the human race, and above all else, God-minded people"
Download or read book The Search for Beauty in Islam written by Khaled Abou El Fadl and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2006 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Khaled Abou El Fadl is a classically-trained Islamic jurist, an American lawyer and law professor, and one of the most important Islamic thinkers today. In this updated and expanded edition of The Search for Beauty in Islam, Abou El Fadl offers eye-opening and enlightening insights into the contemporary realities of the current state of Islam and the West. Through a "conference of the books," an imagined conference of Muslim intellects from centuries past, Abou El Fadl examines the ugliness that has come to plague Muslim realities and attempts to reclaim what he maintains is a core moral value in Islam-the value of beauty. Does Islamic law allow, or even call for, the gruesome acts of ugliness that have become so commonly associated with Islam today? Has Islam become a religion devoid of beauty, compassion and love? Based on actual cases, this book tackles different issues and problems in each chapter through a post-9/11 lens, discussing such topics as marriage, divorce, parental rights, the position of women, the veil, sexual abuse, wife-beating, terrorism, bigotry, morality, law, and the role of tradition. Abou El Fadl argues that the rekindling of the forgotten value of beauty is essential for Muslims today to take back what has been lost to the fundamentalist forces that have denigrated their religion.
Download or read book Islam written by Feisal Abdul Rauf and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lastly, the author links knowledge to love as poles that, although exoterically appearing as opposites, esoterically define the global human reality vis-a-vis the Divine mandate. Throughout this book the author is concerned not only with the philosophical and logical basis of Islam in isolation, but with the nature of this basis as it establishes the intellectual, religious and spiritual foundations of the modern Muslim, enabling him, at a personal level, to shed the mysteries and paradoxes of the human condition.
Download or read book A Young Muslim s Guide to Religions in the World written by Syed Sajjad Husain and published by IIIT. This book was released on 1992 with total page 12 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first in a projected series of books which the Institute of Islamic Thought in Bangladesh intends to publish as educational aids to the young who have to rely on publications by non-Muslims for knowledge about culture and civilisation. These publications discuss matters from an angle which is often anti-Islamic and sometimes distort history, by suppressing facts about Islamic society in order to justify their assertions. A Muslim student who reads them unthinkingly is apt to develop attitudes towards his own culture which at best can be described as apologetic.The programme that we have embarked upon in concert with the International Institute of Islamic Thought in the USA, is designed to provide an alternative. What Dr Syed Sajjad Husain has attempted in the present book is to analyse different religious cultures in an Islamic perspective, focusing on the differences and affinities, if any, between Islam and other religions. We hope the book will prove a useful primer to those interested in comparative religion and help correct many errors.
Download or read book Islamic Art and Spirituality written by Seyyed Hossein Nasr and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1987-02-12 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book in the English language to deal with the spiritual significance of Islamic art including not only the plastic arts, but also literature and music. Rather than only dealing with the history of the various arts of Islam or their description, the author relates the form, content, symbolic language, meaning, and presence of these arts to the very sources of the Islamic revelation. Relying upon his extensive knowledge of the Islamic religion in both its exoteric and esoteric dimensions as well as the various Islamic sciences, the author relates Islamic art to the inner dimensions of the Islamic revelation and the spirituality which has issued from it. He brings out the spiritual significance of the Islamic arts ranging from architecture to music as seen, heard, and experienced by one living within the universe of the Islamic tradition. In this work the reader is made to understand the meaning of Islamic art for those living within the civilization which created it.
