Abu Hamid Ghazali, in his work, Mizanal Amal (The Scales of Action) commented on the place of madhhabs (of differing schools of Islamic thought) within the larger context of religious belief and knowledge. In it Ghazali outlines three levels of madhhab which, in a sense, parallel the three primary levels which the human soul (nafs) […]
This essay was written by my (sixteen year old) daughter Zainab for an Aboriginal studies University class she took with Professor Georges Sioui, a very unique and knowledgeable First Nations teacher and a dignified and compassionate man. The directions in which he took the class (mixing spirituality and history) meshed beautifully with independent readings on […]
This was left as a comment (by Shuja Mirza) on the article “Danish cartoons and the sacred” at Islam from inside. However, being such a comprehensive (traditionalist) comment and conveying so expressively the fall away from metaphysical connectedness that the article only touches upon, I felt it deserved to be highlighted in a separate forum. […]
A number of readers, both of this blog and of “Islam from inside” have requested information on the availability of “Existence and the Fall” by Hamid Parsania - snippets from the book appear scattered through many of the “Islam from inside” articles. The full book title is: Existence and the Fall: Spiritual anthropology of Islam”. […]
Symbols, texts, iconic personages, and rituals are the architecture, the geometry, the symbolic worldly aspect, the formalized representation of metaphysical realities and of the human connection to these realities. For Muslims, the Prophet is the human representation of the writing of the Divine pen. He is the one on whose heart God wrote His revelation […]
“Unlike the traditional ulama, who never go beyond the texts that they read, the modern intellectual will be able to read deeper into the text in a critical, imaginative manner.” (AbdolKarim Soroush)
Actually, among the traditional ulama there are many who “read deeper into the text” albeit more cautiously and using different tools than “modern intellectuals” […]
“Modernity is characterized by the questioning of everything, of all that we once held dear and inviolable. It opens the way to plurality and diversity, but it can also be seen as a challenge to the worldview of the past.” (AbdolKarim Soroush)
I wish there were some truth in this definition - if there truly were […]
Islam from inside (recent posts)