Almuslih

Arab Islamic societies experienced the difficulties of opening up to a contemporary human-focused culture following a near total isolation that lasted virtually nine centuries, without...

After emerging from the long tunnel of time in the aftermath of the First World War, Arab Muslim societies now find themselves standing before two...

It is important that we make a distinction between Islam as a set of teachings, values, principles and legislations and between the reality of Muslims...

The features of contemporary Islamic thought began to take shape about three centuries following the rise of Islam, that is, roundabout the 10th or 11th...

The youth should deepen their reading and culture and at the same time subject all they read and hear to critical evaluation and the application...

There is no doubt that Orientalism filled a scientific and intellectual void with regard to the study of Islam. It applied the philological and historical...

Progress depends on Arabs and Muslims endowing themselves with civilizational values, accepting the Other, having faith in pluralism, and realizing that countries are constructed on...

Right up to the present day, speculation for the Muslims consequently turned into an effective weapon to be wielded against political opponents. One cannot understand...

If we examine the condition of most Arab Islamic societies at the present day we find that the gap between theory and application, between words...

The Qur'an, as a civilisational text, intended to turn the Arabs from oral communities to literate communities. But the collective discourse of these communities expressed...

Definition of Salafism: Linguistically the term ‘salaf’ means ‘what has passed’. Technically speaking it is a Golden Age which represents the pure understanding and application...

In the first part of this essay we presented the main roots that led to the emergence of extremism and terrorism not being attributed to...

Of all the problems that the Islamist textualist trend faces with respect to modernity, one of the most thorny is their constant systematic recourse to...

The world has got it wrong in analyzing the causes of its emergence and both qualitative and quantitative expansion. Any in-depth analysis of the hundreds...

ISIS has invented nothing for it to be qualified in any sense as ‘sectarian’. Other than its extreme brutality, this group is simply applying to...

The Mauretanian Association for Human Rights’ burnt some books of Mālikī fiqh which they saw as extolling the virtue of servitude and calling for it...

The fifth verse of the Sūrat al-Tawba is considered to be the verse that presents the most problems in understanding the thinking on Jihad in...

The lack of interest in the outside world, and exaggerated admiration for the image of one’s august self is a symptom of narcissistic affliction. The...

In 2015 the Carnegie Center for the Middle East published a study entitled Market for Jihad: Radicalization in Tunisia, by the researchers Georges Fahmi and...

The predominant Islamic discourse is not suitable to the nature of knowledge and the challenges of contemporary life. It is, instead, a discourse that lies...

The terms ‘Islamic state’ and ‘Islamic law’ are modern political terms fashioned by ordinary folk and do not have any religious sanctity to them. The...

The social component and society's culture that drives it play a great role in the building of a contemporary civilisation. Financial resources from oil may...

Democracy is a social right for societies who know how to deal with it and understand its laws. But in these societies democracy – much...

In these current circumstances in which the argument of the Islamic caliphate has come to the fore, we may usefully cast our minds back to...

It is evident that the violent ideology - the best examples being the army of the Ikhwan, Juhayman and ISIS - didn't just fall from...

“Why did the Westerners advance and why did we fall behind? Where does the defect lie? How can we undertake reform and advance?” Questions like...

Reform is the realization of a radical upheaval. It means the change of mindsets and the cultural frames through which the world is perceived. A...

The call to reform something is itself an implicit acknowledgement of a fault which has prevented it, or well-nigh prevented it, from carrying out its...

Among us, the insignificant has become great, while the great is laid low, defeat has become victory, the means has become the end, the ignorant...

‘Modernization from within’ is simply counter-productive and as part of the process of reforming Islam is an epistemological impossibility. Contemporary religious studies have been formed...

Wherever it could, the Qur’ān attempted to break down these fixed immutables among the Arabs. At times it failed and at other times it succeeded,...

What is the purpose of the division of the Qur'an into Meccan and Medinan suras? Is this a matter of geography, of the place where...

Islamists have a curious tendency to write off alternative interpretations to theirs as constituting evidence of 'Isrā’īliyāt'. They argue that the purpose of these is...

There are many definitions attempting to summarise the essence of being human: a ’thinking animal’, a ‘speaking animal’ and so on. And here it would...

It is my long-held view that the Qur’ānic text is an interpretation of divine directives which the Prophet of Quraysh received through his mind and...

The strange and fantastic tale of the Isra' and the Mi'raj is one that is very similar to the tales and legends of the Thousand...

The Sunni jurisprudential field in general accepts the possibility of the Prophets committing venial, not mortal, sins and that they may have omitted or forgotten...

The question of divine infallibility in the prophets (and in the imams as well in Shi'ite doctrine) is considered to be a highly controversial issue...

The texts of the Prophet’s sīra (biography) contain within them a multiplicity of problems. These related to their late date of composition, lax editorial criteria,...

The biography (sīra) of the Prophet Muhammad represents something intuitive for most Muslims in the world today, at least within the general framework of this...