The 15 Characteristics of Salafist Discourse
FROM ITS HISTORICAL origins in the 8th century CE Salafism had a broad connotation embracing all the schools that proceeded…
Is Islam the reason for Muslim backwardness? (Part 2)
SO LET US duly make the comparison. At a time when the world speaks of the separation of powers, our…
Is Islam the reason for Muslim backwardness? (Part 1)
THE PURPOSE of any answer to the question is neither to rally to the aid of Islam, nor to disparage…
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…
Letters from London: Al-Turabi and western civilisation – 2
AL-TURABI CONTINUES to describe his travails with English society, especially the women, whom he described as “the key to corruption.”…
Letters from London: Al-Turabi and western civilisation – 1
AL-TURABI’S LETTERS included many topics, including his personal feelings about self-fighting, supplication, and not being in a hurry to win…
Intellectuals and their assassination over the centuries
THAT IS WHAT they said, literally. They did not say that they killed him because he is for the regime…
The Return of the Caliphate – and the Three Fallacies
PARALLEL TO THIS political Islam attempted to establish a salvific vision comprised of two miraculous scenarios: The scenario of the…
Fetishism in politicised Islamic thought: history as an example
AND THE FACT is they have been remarkably successful over the last few decades in embedding the belief among Salafists,…
Arkoun and the defeat of reason in Islam – 2
THE FIRST IS that there was no single intellectual school of thought either in Basra or later in Baghdad that…