By General on 6/20/2009 6:01 AM

By Oleh In the common Muslim perception, human rights should be subjugated to God’s rights. Thereby they neglect the rights of people who are condemned as heretical or who threaten the religious establishment. Is there an alternative Islamic interpretation?  The conversation Novriantoni and Ramy El-Dardiry, members of the Liberal Islam Network (JIL), had with Prof. Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl, Professor of Islamic law at UCLA, could shed some more light on this matter. The discussion took place at the Hilton Hotel in Jakarta on Saturday 24/7, during Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl’s visit to Indonesia. JIL: Dr. Khaled, suicide bombing seems to be a trend among Muslim radicals nowadays. Hashem Saleh, a Syrian intellectual, said that Muslims are focusing on ‘kamikaze . What is your opinion on suicide bombing in the name of Islam? KHALED ABOU EL FADL: First, I refuse to associate this trend with the concept of Jihad. The concept of Jihad is very much different to today’s suicide bombings. Jihad also differs from the...

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By General on 6/20/2009 3:39 AM

“Probably no chapter in the history of the cosmological argument is as significant – or as universally ignored – as that of the Arabic theologians and philosophers. Although we find in them the origin and development of two of the most important versions of the cosmological argument, namely the argument from temporality and the argument from contingency, the contribution of these Islamic thinkers is virtually ignored in western anthologies and books on the subject”. William Lane Craig (1979) In Arabic “Kalām” means speech (or a collection of words). However it also means “dialogue” and this is the meaning which was intended for Islamic Kalām. In its philosophical content, “Kalām” is a collection of concepts, assumptions, principles and problems that tries to explain the relationship between God and the physical world in accordance with the basics of Islamic creed. Classically Kalām was considered to form the foundation of jurisprudence, or “Fiqh”, which constitute the base for Islamic “Shari’a”. Kalām was...

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By General on 6/20/2009 3:28 AM

Scientific work is a human activity for understanding how the natural world works and is structured. Why do human beings seek scientific knowledge? Science, by itself, cannot provide the answer. The response comes from a more comprehensive framework that defines, among other things, one’s goal for scientific activity. Traditionally there have been two major responses to this question: ’science for the sake of science’ and ’science for the sake of understanding God’s handiwork and for taking care of humanity’s lawful physical and spiritual needs’. A third view became dominant during the twentieth century, advocating science for its practical and material benefits. According to the first and third views there should be no limit on the kind of scientific research being done, but according to the second view scientific activity cannot have a free run. Due to the miseries brought about by the abuse of science and its application, especially during the twentieth century, many eminent scholars throughout the world have been crying out for a new attitude toward the goal of scientific enterprise—an attitude that seeks scientific knowledge for the purpose of enriching the spiritual dimension of human beings and for securing human welfare, i.e. seeking knowledge for the sake of humanity, rather than ignoring humanity. Unless this is done there will be no hope for the future of the human race. It is the duty of all scientific academies and institutions to engage in a ’crusade’ for realizing this change of attitude toward the goal of science....

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By General on 6/14/2009 2:01 PM

Muhammad Shahrur's work is a comprehensive attempt to reconcile the religion of Islam with modern philosophy as well as the rational worldview of the natural sciences. According to Shahrur, jurisprudence in the name of God is a farce benefiting only those wanting to maintain political power. Loay Mudhoon introduces this contentious reformist thinker.

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By AY Mol on 14-6-2009 22:06

 

 

 

I have ordered this promising book, which discusses a very important topic; the influence of the Qur'an on the creation of the modern free and tolerant world.

 

 

Nowadays it is thought that the Qur'an represents the total opposite of what the free world stands for, but this was not the idea of early Enlightenment thinkers. The contribution of the Islamic culture and the Qur'an for the creation of the Renaissance, Enlightenment and today's modern free world, is enormous. But sadly due to the economical and intellectual decline in the Muslim world after 1500 caused by bad leadership, which caused a wrong direction of Muslim interpretation and thought, and the non-acknowledgement of Western thought of their debt ot Islam; the idea of Islam being the source of the modern world is a strange idea.

 

 

But modern academics are starting to acknowledge...

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By General on 6/14/2009 12:01 PM

By Sarah-Ann Smith, Asheville Citizen-Times Dec. 11, 2004 11:10 a.m. My recent trip to Spain has prompted some thoughts about our post-Sept. 11, 2001, relationship to the Islamic world. A wonderful book, "The Ornament of the World" by Maria Rosa Menocal, had excited my interest in Spain's medieval Islamic period, and I had to see the relics of that beautiful culture for myself. The highlight of my visit was the awe-inspiring Cordoba mosque. Now a Christian cathedral, it is so vast that its mysterious Islamic flavor still dominates. This immense space, the equivalent of about four city blocks, reflects the best in the religious tradition of Spain's Islamic rulers. The structure's history symbolizes the universality of the human need to connect with the divine. The Islamic - and now once again Christian - edifice rests on and incorporates the remains of a Roman temple which had been converted into a Christian church by the Visigoths who ruled that part of Spain until they were defeated by the invading Muslims in the 8th century....

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By General on 6/5/2009 12:05 PM

From coffee to cheques and the three-course meal, the Muslim world has given us many innovations that we take for granted in daily life. As a new exhibition opens, Paul Vallely nominates 21 of the most influential- and identifies the men of genius behind them1. The story goes that an Arab named Khalid was tending his goats in the Kaffa region of southern Ethiopia, when he noticed his animals became livelier after eating a certain berry. He boiled the berries to make the first coffee. Certainly the first record of the drink is of beans exported from Ethiopia to Yemen where Sufis drank it to stay awake all night to pray o¬n special occasions. By the late 15th century it had arrived in Mecca and Turkey from where it made its way to Venice in 1645. It was brought to England in 1650 by a Turk named Pasqua Rosee who opened the first coffee house in Lombard Street in the City of London . The Arabic qahwa became the Turkish kahve then the Italian caffé and then English coffee.2. The ancient Greeks thought our eyes emitted...

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By AY Mol on 4-6-2009 21:12

By GA Parwez

 

Rough translation from the dictionary/tafir Lughat ul-Qur'an (Language of the Qur'an):

 

st1\:*{behavior:url(#default#ieooui) } Sad, laam, waw (yeh)



Since salaat is an important part of Deen, we will deliberate on it in detail:

1) As sala: the middle of the back: the place where an animal’s tail grows or the

begining of the slope of the hip: both sides of the tail are called salawaan: the

plural is salawaat or aslaa: * sala: yaslu: salwa: means to strike the sala(as

mentioned above): salautuhu:I struck him on the sala.



2) Sallal farasa tasliah is said when the number two horse in a race is running very

close to the number one horse: the horse in front is called saabiq: and the one in

second position is called almusalli:

*Taj

page 1035

thus salla means to follow behind almost touching the one in front: one of Hazrat Ali’s

tale says: sabaqa rasulul laahi...

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