Enlightenment Islam is the path to salvation
THE ARAB-ISLAMIC HERITAGE has its great treasures but they are obscured by dark currents. What is needed is an enlightenment…
Their women and our women – 2
RELIGIOUS LEADERS have continued their intransigence towards women’s education to this day. The Saudi Shaykh ibn Ḥumayd issued the following fatwā:…
Their women and our women – 1
SINCE EDUCATION THROUGH THE AGES was forbidden to women (even in Europe up until the end of the eighteenth century),…
Mankind has annulled the laws of the Qur’an
BUT WITH THE PROGRESS of time and civilization, mankind has developed laws that are much more merciful than the legislation…
Why are we getting more backward? – 2
AL-AZHAR FORMED a ‘Scientific Research Academy’ which specialized in confiscating books critical of Islam or the Companions, instead of actually…
Why are we getting more backward? – 1
THE ARABS THROUGHOUT their known history, have relied on the oral transmission of their experiences, and did not care at…
Mu‘tazila rationalism between past failure and present need
AMONG THE MOST FAMOUS Mu‘tazilites were Wāṣil ibn ‘Aṭā’, ‘Amr ibn ‘Ubayd, Ibrāhīm al-Naẓẓām, Hishām ibn ‘Amr al-Fūṭī, Al-Zamakhsharī the…
Popular Islam and ideological Islam
HOW IS POPULAR ISLAM different from ideological Islam? If the former was a historical development, the latter takes its origin from secret movements,…
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…
Taha Hussein – On science and dogma – 1
IN THE FACE of a project for scientific enlightenment, a wasted, unrealized possibility persisted. If one of the axioms of…