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
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 [...]
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 [...]
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
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 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 [...]
Our Prophet 2007-04-06 09:32:25 The Qur’an’s verses contain open, apparent meanings and simultaneous inner, deeper meanings - the inner allusions layer one upon the other all simultaneously combined and concealed in the external arrangement of words upon a page. The words enter the mind and begin to come to life, displaying refractions of nuance and purport, showing the concealed [...] Read more:Prophet
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 [...]
Polarization is not dialog 2007-04-08 09:26:20 A while back, a right-wing Christian blog featured several posts which purported to be an attempt to understand Muslims and the Muslim “mindset” by linking to videos depicting a fundamentalist, extremist, political interpretation of Islam. Then the “extremist Islam” interpretive net was cast over Muslims in general - if it wasn’t Muslims’ actions (as depicted [...]
Into dust 2007-04-07 07:42:57 We play at religion, intoning seriously the most achingly beautiful verses of the Qur’an, reciting with serious faces and careful pronunciation - the verses drop from our lips like honey but they slip past our hearts and spill instead upon the earth, vanishing into the dust…and the attributes of our nafs rise like obscuring vapor [...]
The Qur’an is not words on a page 2007-04-09 09:25:56 A book is not simply words on a page - it is one mind crafting an effect upon other minds - it does not assume its true form unless through the action of reading, by this it creates a world of image and story within our minds.
The Qur’an is not words on a page - [...]
Jesus - “I and the Father are one” 2007-04-11 08:21:31 This was in response to a question from a Christian (writing in a comments forum) on how Islam could possibly deal with Jesus
’ claim that he is God as manifested in the statement “I and the Father
are one.”
It’s a fair question because it is a feature of every religion, every set of doctrinal beliefs, [...] Read more:ldquo
, rdquo
The measure of two bows 2007-04-11 00:02:47 The Prophet’s internal reality is connected to the source from which the revelation descended - to seek him only in history and circumstance is to neglect his metaphysical nature, to give little weight to his “sublime character”. (Qur’an 68:4) The revelation is the indicator, both clear and encoded, that points to the source. It is [...]
Unseen reality 2007-04-12 08:14:48 Since the dominant paradigms of our time are scientific, rationalist, technology based ones, it is natural for us to seek out the how of any process, to seek to learn the technology behind it, the mechanics which govern it. But with metaphysical realities we can only attempt to align the mechanisms and observable processes glimpsed [...] Read more:reality
Photos from Central Asia 2007-04-11 20:57:05 Go here and take a look at Canadian photographer Christopher Herwig’s amazing images of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. Read more:Central
, Asia
And so it goes….suicide bombing 2007-04-14 17:18:40 And so it goes….
“Saturday, 14 April 2007: About 40 people have been killed and more than 100 hurt in a suicide car bomb attack in Iraq’s holy city of Karbala, police and doctors say. The attacker detonated explosives at a crowded bus station in the city close to a shrine holy to Shia Muslims, at [...] Read more:hellip
Information environment 2007-04-14 15:00:09 People look to the world around them and derive a significant portion of their concepts of value and worth, benefit and harm, from their interaction with society and from the images of their society and the wider world that are endlessly paraded before them through all the various forms of media by which they draw [...]
Media filters 2007-04-13 15:51:09 In times of conflict, language and image are spun to shape perceptions of reality and it is through the characterizations and emotional coloring of the media’s visual language and their choice of terminology that events are interpreted, explained, and experienced. Just as symbolic religious language gives meaning and an interpretation to the world, so also [...]
Mocking the prophets 2007-04-13 06:56:29 “Alas for the servants! there comes not to them an apostle but they mock at him.” (Qur’an 36:30)
According to the Christian gospels, when Jesus was arrested the Roman soldiers charged with his capture were at once amused by and spiteful towards him. Their spite was tinged with a sense of the superiority they felt through [...] Read more:prophets
Unseen reality 2007-04-12 08:14:48 Since the dominant paradigms of our time are scientific, rationalist, technology based ones, it is natural for us to seek out the how of any process, to seek to learn the technology behind it, the mechanics which govern it. But with metaphysical realities we can only attempt to align the mechanisms and observable processes glimpsed [...] Read more:reality
Photos from Central Asia 2007-04-11 20:57:05 Go here and take a look at Canadian photographer Christopher Herwig’s amazing images of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. Read more:Central
, Asia
Jesus - “I and the Father are one” 2007-04-11 08:21:31 This was in response to a question from a Christian (writing in a comments forum) on how Islam could possibly deal with Jesus
’ claim that he is God as manifested in the statement “I and the Father
are one.”
It’s a fair question because it is a feature of every religion, every set of doctrinal beliefs, [...] Read more:ldquo
, rdquo
The measure of two bows 2007-04-11 00:02:47 The Prophet’s internal reality is connected to the source from which the revelation descended - to seek him only in history and circumstance is to neglect his metaphysical nature, to give little weight to his “sublime character”. (Qur’an 68:4) The revelation is the indicator, both clear and encoded, that points to the source. It is [...]
The Qur’an is not words on a page 2007-04-09 09:25:56 A book is not simply words on a page - it is one mind crafting an effect upon other minds - it does not assume its true form unless through the action of reading, by this it creates a world of image and story within our minds.
The Qur’an is not words on a page - [...]
Polarization is not dialog 2007-04-08 09:26:20 A while back, a right-wing Christian blog featured several posts which purported to be an attempt to understand Muslims and the Muslim “mindset” by linking to videos depicting a fundamentalist, extremist, political interpretation of Islam. Then the “extremist Islam” interpretive net was cast over Muslims in general - if it wasn’t Muslims’ actions (as depicted [...]
Into dust 2007-04-07 07:42:57 We play at religion, intoning seriously the most achingly beautiful verses of the Qur’an, reciting with serious faces and careful pronunciation - the verses drop from our lips like honey but they slip past our hearts and spill instead upon the earth, vanishing into the dust…and the attributes of our nafs rise like obscuring vapor [...]
Our Prophet 2007-04-06 09:32:25 The Qur’an’s verses contain open, apparent meanings and simultaneous inner, deeper meanings - the inner allusions layer one upon the other all simultaneously combined and concealed in the external arrangement of words upon a page. The words enter the mind and begin to come to life, displaying refractions of nuance and purport, showing the concealed [...] Read more:Prophet
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