Opening up ijtihād – opening up the mind – 2
FUNDAMENTALIST REVIVALISTS have been exaggerating and emphasizing their claims to the point that you now see and hear people who…
Opening up ijtihād – opening up the mind – 1
THE SCHOLARS OF THE PRINCIPLES of jurisprudence also made important efforts here to specify what the forms of analogy were…
The concept and pillars of renewal
IN MY CONCEPTION of renewal, I mean a new understanding of religion and its central role in life, a reconstruction…
Vatican II as a model for Islamic reform
THIS WAS THE TRANSFORMATION from a paradigm of the sovereignty of the divine intellect – predominating in the Middle Ages…
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…
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…
Mosques of Mischief – 1
THIS IS IN ADDITION to a number of rare Hadīths such as ‘the finest soldiers are from Egypt” and the…
Reform: a discourse of intellectuals or a rehabilitation?
YET ARAB AND ISLAMIC history did experience a renaissance prior to that which took place in the West, although it…
Abū Zayd on the intellectual premises of religious discourse
THE DIFFERENCE between them is one of degree, not of type. This is how Dr. Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd[1] characterised…
The danger of the dissolving individual
THIS RECONCILIATION can be carried out by situating the revelation process within the history that the revelation process practiced on…