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Excerpts from Maryam Jameelah’s “Islam Versus the West”
“From my Jewish textbooks I learned that Abraham was the father of the Arabs as well as the Jews. In these same books I read how centuries later when in medieval Europe, Christian persecution made lives intolerable, the Jews were welcomed in Muslim Spain, and it was this same Arabic-Islamic civilization which stimulated Hebrew culture to reach its highest peak of achievement.” (Islam Versus The West, Page 5) “Sayed Qutb points out that while the teaching of Christianity are confined to individual spiritual salvation and while Communism looks at human needs from a purely economic angle, Islam maintains that the soul cannot be seperated from the body and that spiritual…
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Seeking Knowledge
Knowledge seeking is to be done with dedication and pains. It can’t be gained to its optimum levels otherwise, nor is depth in understanding ever gained without pains and dedication. Knowledge once acquired is to be spread into masses, that is how teachers are born and that is how knowledge grows. Xuan Zang was one of the Chinese Buddhist pilgrims who visited India some 1300-1400 years ago. Though we can’t be certain about the purpose of the visit, but we can be fairly sure that the purpose was seeking knowledge and education. His stay at the Nalanda Buddhist Monastery and taking with himself almost half a thousand Sanskrit manuscripts speaks…
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Culture, Religion and the Modern Muslim Man
The rising influence of the Western ways, visible through minuscule injections in our society of foreign conceptions like materialism, skepticism, modernism, feminism, agnosticism, invariably ending in atheism, hedonism and nihilism, has to be seen as a common Muslim’s revenge on the conception of religion and culture amongst us which has, in many ways, moved away from the realities of life. When hurdles are placed in the path of the natural conception of life, a conception of the life in line with fitrah, life rebels, seeks revenge. When the natural desires and legitimate endeavors of man are suppressed, his nature puts up a resistance that invariably ends up in defiance. This…
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Building a Progressive Society
The world today stands at that vulnerable point where Fascism and its parallel ideologies are being appreciated. Politicians, political parties, reformers, modernists, conservatives, traditionalists are all equally riding waves of propaganda and are winning elections or public support. Humanity is being manipulated to accept as reality what may be poles apart from actually being so. Myths are taken as truths, fake news and propaganda make rounds on social media networks like Facebook and Whatsapp every day. What is more worrying is that people with “understanding” having undergone proper modern education from schools and colleges and Universities are being part of it. What then is wrong with the society, or the…
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Instruction of the Student – Imam Zarnuji
Burhan al-Din al-Zarnuji (d. 620 AH/1223 CE), a Muslim scholar, is the author of the celebrated pedagogical work Ta’līm al-Muta’allim-Ṭarīq at-Ta’-allum (Instruction of the Student: The Method of Learning). We took the book for our reading sessions. The following summary would be helpful for the ones who have read the text or joined us in the sessions. These bullets can help in reminding what is already learned, this cannot replace a teacher or the text. Foreword by Hamza Yusuf: Islamic Community is Rooted in Adab. Adab is knowing ones place in hierarchy. Argument for hierarchy “Are they the same – those who know and those who do not” (39:9). “I…
Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment
