Muslim Arabs and their isolation from the march of civilisation
I WILL LIST some of the things that cast some light on the above statement, and bring in some other…
Ibn Rushd and the problem of the rational and the transmitted
THE READER OF THE ABOVE three texts will observe some important features that can be summarized as follows: These texts…
Halal and Haram and the culture of collective stupidity – 2
ABU BAKR MUHAMMAD ibn al-Walid al-Tartushi al-Maliki (ob. 520/1126), took for his subject a question posed by some Alexandrians concerning…
Halal and Haram and the culture of collective stupidity – 1
THIS DILEMMA BECOMES all the more acute and intense when deviation and contradiction become an integral part of the essence…
One reason for backwardness: prohibiting comparative religion
TO ILLUSTRATE THIS, let us take one example: Is the study of comparative religion allowed in our universities? Religious phenomenology…
Problems in the ‘Arab Renaissance’ – 3
HISTORY, FOR MUSLIMS, proceeds from unity to diversity, “from perfection to imperfection, from pinnacle to base, and from faith to…
A backward Islam – Part 2
ASK THOSE CROWDS the same question: have you read the writings of Muḥammad Iqbal, one of the spiritual fathers of…
A backward Islam – Part 1
THE GROWTH OF religious extremism and its transformation in many cases into acts of terrorism, the suffocation it has caused…
Is religious reform possible?
ALL SECULARISTS RAISING the issue of religious reform as a means to overturn the three decade-long domination of fundamentalism are…
When fatwās turn on science – 2
TUNISIA SUFFERED in the year 1818 from a huge epidemic. Historians report that a doctor of European origin alerted the…