Owner: irshaad.net URL:http://www.irshaad.net/ Join Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2007 14:16:29 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Looking at Islam from inside Islam. Site statistics:Click here
Matter asserts itself 2007-04-06 04:31:37 Here religion is viewed as irrelevant - church, mosque, and temple may exist as physical buildings but their metaphysical structure is crumbling, decaying - matter is powerfully asserting itself and spirit is obscured, veiled, eclipsed. It is not that the ties between heaven and earth have been cut, so that religion decays into either fanaticism [...]
Ideology trumps knowledge 2007-04-04 23:56:28 By it’s nature an ideological approach is a reductionist approach since the wide sweeping panorama of reality is reduced to fit set ideological directions. The ideology becomes the filter through which reality is viewed and it reduces vastly complex interactions to simplified statements and judgments that are more reflective of the mental state of the [...]
A transformative document 2007-04-04 06:29:25 The Qur’an is a transformative document
- its power evident in the fact that it impacts significantly all who come across it - whether they consider it in a negative or positive light, whether they are hostile to it or devoted to it. And so it also becomes a battlefield, it’s words a vast, expansive [...]
And when the Qur’an is recited…. 2007-04-04 00:38:45 We quote verses to display the Qur’an’s relevance to what we do, to how we see the world, and in defense of the specific direction of our particular beliefs, our leanings, our ways and methods - and we quote to justify to ourselves and to justify ourselves to others. We take our own limited perspectives [...] Read more:hellip
Bending the Qur’an 2007-04-03 08:58:54 Some quote Qur’anic verses to correct or inspire or admonish. Some quote them as ammunition for their viewpoints, as support for cherished philosophies, some as adornments for vague sentiments, as buttresses for ideological perspectives, or as crutches on which to hang ferocious politics. Some wield verses as weapons to counter disliked viewpoints, to punish or [...]
Flotsam in a flood 2007-04-03 03:33:39 Like flotsam in a flood
we are too frequently carried along by the overpowering flow of ideological currents, modalities of thought and expression of our times. Those who play at politics with deadly earnest, act, and the rest of us only react. Without firm and deep knowledge and connection with higher principles, our environments will [...]
Ideology overthrows ethics 2007-04-02 06:35:46 Political instability and turmoil, war, conflict, oppression - all contribute to shape individuals who act and react in desperate ways and who in that desperation are susceptible to the manipulation and influence of those who see, in conflict, an excuse and opportunity to pursue suppressed ambitions - sometimes through unbalanced (one-sided), tilted, slanted interpretations [...]
Ideological ciphers 2007-04-01 07:48:21 Wrapping oneself snugly in the garments of a particular ideology allows one to be uncritical of their own assumptions. While a person, group, or nation may be enviably efficient and rational about process and instrumental, technical knowledge and methods, they could simultaneously be blind and unreasoning about inhuman ideological methods and goals. Witness the holocaust, [...] Read more:Ideological
Playing at religion 2007-03-31 09:05:01 Whether we adhere to a religious tradition or a secular one, it is possible to fall prey to the allure of raising political ideology (and doctrine based on that ideology) to a position and level that is hierarchically above the truths encoded into the source documents of the tradition. Such a situation is most likely [...]
About this blog 2007-03-29 20:03:37 For those who are interested, my main website is Islam from inside. This current blog is, for now, a scratchpad, a storyboard, an online notebook, a place where I can jot down unpolished thoughts and explorations on a variety of subjects and interests. Because of this it is likely that I will post here more [...]
Artist in a coal-mine 2007-04-15 15:14:41 The artists of a society are often an early indicator of the direction and values that the society as a whole will adopt and reflect - they’re the social equivalent of a canary in a coal-mine - setting trends, extrapolating into the future through art, testing boundaries. And art has the potential to push into [...] Read more:Artist
Virginia Tech gunman identified 2007-04-17 15:41:05 From the Virginia
Tech website:
Gunman identified; BALLISTICS MATCH AT BOTH CRIME SCENES
Updated at 9:15 a.m., Tuesday, 04.17.2007
“The Virginia Tech
Police Department has confirmed the identification of the gunman responsible for the multiple fatalities at Norris Hall on the Virginia Tech campus Monday.
The individual has been identified as Cho Seung-Hui, 23. Cho was enrolled as an [...]
We are Qur’anic tourists 2007-04-16 15:31:04 The Qur’an is composed of words and some approach it as words like other words - but some approach it as “a revelation from the Lord of all worlds” (Qur’an 26:192) - as God’s commanding and guiding words that entered in substance into the heart of the Prophet, expressed themselves encoded into the form of [...] Read more:tourists
Comments will (unfortunately) be moderated 2007-04-19 06:10:39 This site was just hit with a huge number of malicious and sleazy comment bombs (following a slew of hits from Reddit and Digg) - and in fact they’re still coming in at a fairly rapid rate…so until it stops I’m turning moderation on for all comments. I apologize to anyone who subscribes to comments [...] Read more:Comments
We lifted the dead… 2007-04-18 16:59:44 At least 200 people have been killed in a string of attacks in Iraq’s capital, Baghdad, security officials say. In the deadliest incident, some 115 people were killed in a car bombing in a food market in Sadriya district. An attack on a police checkpoint in Sadr City and several other explosions left at [...] Read more:lifted
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Abba/Father 2007-04-18 15:50:58 When I wrote the post “Jesus - I and the father are one“, Yunis from the website Katib raised an interesting question concerning the use of the word “Father
” in the text of the Gospels. He wanted to know the original Aramaic term which is translated as father. The ensuing discussion in turn led [...]
Travel - Jaisalmer, India 2007-04-20 16:38:58 These are pictures I took during a three month family trip to India
a while back (part of a longer trip which included a little over two weeks in Mecca and Medina and almost a month in Iran. During the trip we did a 15 day whirlwind sweep through Rajasthan. I’ll post the occasional photo [...] Read more:Travel
Politics of domination 2007-04-19 20:53:39 Relationships of political and economic expediency, hierarchies of power and dominance dominate international relationships. Tensions exist because injustice, imbalance, and unfair advantage are the natural outcome of such relationships. Conflict occurs when players in this game seek to strengthen their positions and undermine others - expansion and gain for one often spells loss, instability, and [...] Read more:domination
Sculpt yourself 2007-04-22 16:55:31 The shell of a seed protects its kernel so that it may have an opportunity to gestate and grow. So too thoughts need to gestate and grow. In this manner we can perhaps create and shape an inner world of depth and texture arising from a struggle to acquire real understanding, to truly expand and [...]
Reflection 2007-04-21 16:43:22 Reflection is the domain of a mind at rest, it requires stillness and an outer fortification against worldly din, media, worries, anxieties, interruptions, distractions - a temporary quelling of the desire to pronounce our opinions - a silencing of our inner fountain of preset habits, thoughts, assumptions, suppositions, attitudes, inferences, conjectures, and interpretations. With a [...]
In His own form 2007-04-23 16:19:57 “God created Adam in His own form (surah).” (Hadith)
Not the material form, not this body of matter driven by chemical interactions and electrical impulses. Not this form which changes with time and circumstance falling finally into decay and ruin, into death and dust, into its elemental components. Not this animal form so similar to that [...]
Cultivating literacy 2007-04-28 13:22:21 Literacy that goes beyond the simple ability to read and write, that is connected with the ability to comprehend a text, involves hermeneutics. It involves decoding the symbol world of texts to gain access to the source meanings which underlie the text - of which there may be many, multiple, layered meanings.
Literacy, in this sense, [...] Read more:literacy
“We have adorned for each society their acts.” 2007-04-27 13:44:40 People have multiple existences, multiple levels of dealing and interacting with the world. The foremost level is an individual level - the level of a single person or single self (nafs) and the moral and ethical life and behavior of that person within the milieu of small scale interactions. This is the level at which [...] Read more:ldquo
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We prefer the idea of God to God in actuality 2007-04-26 14:54:15 We prefer the idea of God to God in actuality. The idea generated in our own mind bends and conforms to our wishes - then what need is there for us to bend our own selves. We remain unbowed, unbent, unchanged, unaffected, and so…untransformed….
Jesus - “No one approaches the Father but through me” 2007-04-25 08:57:30 This was my response (in a discussion forum) to a statement claiming Christianity’s exclusive access to truth and the negation of all other alternative religious paths as indicated by Jesus
’ apparently “clear and unequivocal” statement that he is the only way to God: “No one approaches the Father
but through me.” (John 14:6)
For Muslims, the [...] Read more:ldquo
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Seek your religion 2007-04-24 16:40:26 If you seek your religion,
Lower your forehead into dust (in prayer).
If you seek to witness Him,
Place your forehead in the dust (in sajdah)
And distance yourself from your low nafs,
And erase yourself in salat.
Then witness the presence of God in prayer,
And like Husayn at Karbala make your sacrifice -
Lose your head (lose your self, your nafs) [...]
Modernity, Ulama, and intellectuals 2007-05-01 14:30:43 “Unlike the traditional ulama, who never go beyond the texts that they read, the modern intellectual will be able to read deeper into the text in a critical, imaginative manner.” (AbdolKarim Soroush)
Actually, among the traditional ulama there are many who “read deeper into the text” albeit more cautiously and using different tools than “modern intellectuals” [...]
Questioning all that we once held dear and inviolable 2007-04-30 14:49:22 “Modernity is characterized by the questioning of everything, of all that we once held dear and inviolable. It opens the way to plurality and diversity, but it can also be seen as a challenge to the worldview of the past.” (AbdolKarim Soroush)
I wish there were some truth in this definition - if there truly were [...]
Travel - View of Half-Dome from near Glacier point 2007-04-29 15:14:37 This was taken on a trip to Yosemite National Park. It’s a view of Half-Dome from high up on the Glacier Point side of the valley - a truly spectacular view - that’s my daughter in full hiking gear taking in the view. Read more:Travel
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Paradox for a modern world - a god-eat-god world 2007-05-04 14:47:14 Here is a paradox for a modern age which seeks to do away with the Divine, to remove it from their frame of reference and erase it from the public sphere. “Those who have no belief set up rivals to their Lord” (Qur’an 6:1). But how can those who disbelieve in God set up rivals [...] Read more:Paradox
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