Islam and Rationality
Their women and our women – 2
A Muslim woman's task in life is to take care of, and obey, her husband and not leave her home without his permission. Therefore, there...
Their women and our women – 1
There is a law in physiology that says that any organ in the human body, if not fully used, decays. When men imprisoned women at...
Why are we getting more backward? – 2
The ‘scholars’ of Al-Azhar have occupied themselves so much with the jurisprudence of al-walā’ wal-barā’, menstruation and postpartum that Khomeini called them ‘scholars of menstruation and the...
Why are we getting more backward? – 1
The child is born with his mind a blank page devoid of letters and ideas. His parents and his community then write the first lines...
Mu‘tazila rationalism between past failure and present need
The Mu‘tazila was an Islamic theological sect that emerged in the late Umayyad period in the city of Basra and flourished during the ‘Abbāsid era. The...
Islam in History
Politics and religion in the Orthodox Caliphate – 2
Another example as amazing as transparently exhibiting the same cunning and opportunism, was that of Imām ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib before the Committee of Six...
Politics and religion in the Orthodox Caliphate – 1
When you read the history of the Rightly-Guided Caliphate looking for the relationship of religion to the world, you come across what are one hundred...
The early history of Islam and the scarcity of material artefacts – 2
If there was literature in verse-form (poetry) would there not also be prose literature? And if it did exist, why has not record of this reached us?...
The early history of Islam and the scarcity of material artefacts – 1
Many scholars consider the early history of Islam to be a ‘black hole.’ We know that the writing and recording of history relies mainly on...
Makka in history – 4
The qibla to which the Prophet of Islam turned towards is Petra, not Makka in the Hijaz. The proof of this is that all of the mosques...
Salafist Discourse
A fake Salafism – 3
Salafist thought is a ‘Bedouin viewpoint’ in the history of Islam, something which is incapable of founding a state or establishing a culture or a...
A fake Salafism – 2
Islam has known, throughout its long history, multiple interpretations from which various schools of jurisprudence and fundamentalism arose. Each school had its intellectual and actual roots...
A fake Salafism – 1
When I hear the term ‘they have been slandered’ I feel my neck, for it means that they have been added to the groups that...
Terrorism’s symphony
In the arena of the sacred, the orchestra of fundamentalist political Islam plays even now an ancient melody in auditoria designed to combat tedium, as...
Halal and Haram and the culture of collective stupidity – 2
So much of what we do now on a daily basis was in the past forbidden by Sharī‘a and much of what we see as...
Ethical Issues
Mankind has annulled the laws of the Qur’an
The god of the Qur’ān set legislation and punishments for Muhammadan Islam to apply to the people, and Muhammad and his Companions actually did apply...
Is a non-Muslim necessarily without morals? – 2
The pious Muslim jurist Yūsuf Qaraḍāwī named all non-Muslims with every moral defect that he enumerates one by one, in order to show the differences...
Is a non-Muslim necessarily without morals? – 1
Some highly stubborn psychopathic neurotic symptoms have afflicted the moral values of Muslims with death, and these are a set of assumptions whose truth is...
They have wiped out “Unto you your religion”!
The Muslim jurists have distorted the saying of the Most High:“Unto you your religion, and unto me my religion.” There is no doubt in my...
Parallel Islam and the Takfir of the ‘People of the Book’
The takfir of Christians and Jews is a traditional issue that is part of a ‘parallel religion’ of declaring others ‘infidels’ and has nothing to do with...
Islamism
The emergence of political Islam – 4
Is there an influence from 'Wahhābī Salafism' on political Islam? If the reform project advocated by the Muslim Brotherhood may be considered the dominant intellectual...
The emergence of political Islam – 3
The Politicization of the Salafists - Salafism was originally a fundamentalist current focused on preaching – tablīgh which later chose the rote of converging its doctrine...
The emergence of political Islam – 2
Islamism differs from contemporary Salafism, which is in all respects a fundamentalist current. Salafism originated in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia during the 1920s. It...
The emergence of political Islam – 1
Antoine Milot conducted a study on the origin, differences, and predictions of political Islam in the Middle East and North Africa, which I would like...
Is democracy halal or haram in Islam?
Islam is a religion. But is not just a religion, but one of the greatest religions known to humanity in history, if not qualitatively in...
Religious Reform
Enlightenment Islam is the path to salvation
“The biggest and deepest problem for Arabs and Muslims is theological. The fuqahā’ have been responsible for our closing in our ourselves and an understanding of religion...
Popular Islam and ideological Islam
If Islam is a set of spiritual and moral values that call for justice, equality, peace, righteousness, charity, mercy, compassion and symbiosis, something which we have known since...
Feminist Islam as an Islamic reform – 2
Islamic feminists believe that religion, any religion, is not as is commonly believed a source of oppression for women, and their evidence for this is...
Feminist Islam as an Islamic reform – 1
The early nineties of the twentieth century witnessed the emergence of a global feminist and Islamic movement at one and the same time. This trend...
Modernisers under the dominion of religion
It is indisputable that the collision of the Arab world's conservative Islamic heritage with Western colonial civilisation over the past two centuries, and the exposure...
The Doctrinal Dimension
Islamic myths – The torment of the grave – 2
The theme of the torture of the grave is described in the Jewish Encyclopedia under the title Hibbut ha-keber, חבּוּט הקֶּבֶר (‘the beating of the grave’)...
Islamic myths – The torment of the grave – 1
The ‘torment of the grave’ is one of the superstitions that Rabbi Ka‘b ibn Māti‘ and his associates such as Wahb ibn Munabbih, ‘Abdullah ibn...
Id al-Adha – between myth, faith and social custom – 4
Abū Bakr was known for his meticulous adherence and avoidance of any innovation, and al-Shāṭibī’s Kitāb al-I‘tiṣām records Abū Bakr’s statement: “I am not neglecting anything that...
Id al-Adha – between myth, faith and social custom – 3
Before addressing the concept of sacrifice in the Islamic religion, we have to go back to the founding text – the Holy Qur’ān – and...
Id al-Adha – between myth, faith and social custom – 2
The transition to the pastoral community imposed the practice of animal sacrifice, and before going into the story of this form of sacrifice, I should...
The Scriptural Dimension
The Qur’anic script – some clarifications – 2
Mr. Hisham argues that “as far as I know, the science of readings is related to the oral and written languages. Where the Almighty says: And...
The Qur’anic script – some clarifications – 1
Hisham Adam penned an article on the Qur’ānic script in which he raised important points about the way the Qur’ān was written down, that is, the...
The human origin of the Text – 1
There is no doubt that long before the advent of Islam writing was the primary means of preserving and documenting contracts and covenants, and what...
The human origin of the Text – 2
Whenever there was a change in the legal status of the components of the Muslim community, an equivalent amendment had to be made to reflect...
The problem of documentation, credibility and interpretation
The impact of the highly changeable, reverential, apologetic mentality, has been dangerous and devastating for the Islamic intellectual and cognitive system, due to its annihilation...