The apologetic mindset – techniques of evasion – 1
THIS SLIPPERY REVERENTIAL, justificatory mentality has been obsessed with searching for ways out of embarrassing dilemmas – a process that…
Deconstructing the Islamic narrative
AS THESE HAVE accumulated, the problems have become all the more convoluted and the threads of argument confused, to the point…
The quicksilver, reverential, justificatory mentality – 2
WHAT GOVERNED, and still governs, the quicksilver, reverential, justifying mentality, is the assumption of divine intervention in the course of historical events. The course…
The quicksilver, reverential, justificatory mentality – 1
AS LONG AS ORDINARY Muslims swallowed these uncritically and without applying reason, any contradiction that emerged in the Qur’ān or…
Van Ess on the beginnings of Islamic theology
LATER ISLAMIC SOURCES considered the sects that appeared in distant and scattered cities as deviant or heretical. But when they…
What is the Sharīʻa?
BUT WHAT, FIRST OF ALL, is the Sharīʻa? I should say, at the outset, that Sharīʻa is not what the…
Josef van Ess and the diagnosis of the Islamic problem – 2
THIS CURRENT PREVAILING image, however, should not deceive us, as we labour under the illusion that the entire history of…
Josef van Ess and the diagnosis of the Islamic problem – 1
THERE IS A DIFFERENCE between two disciplines: the ‘ilm al-kalām, and the ‘ilm al-fiqh. They are not the same thing,…
Islam between fiqh and hadith – which comes first?
DISAGREEMENT AMONG the hadith narrators was a constant and at times reached the point of mutual insults and takfīr.[2] The…
The Penal Code – between religious and positive law – 2
POSITIVE LAW, on the other hand, eliminates the ingenious techniques for torturing men or denigrating his status on earth in…