Keeping Away From the Haraam is not Sufficient
The need for the fasting person to try to keep away from all sorts of haraam is self-evident. We will not be able to experience the worldly and spiritual pleasure of our acts of worship unless what we eat and what we drink, as well as what we speak and what we listen to, are distant from the stains of haraam. This is a point also emphasized in the words of our Prophet (s.a.w). Al-Ghazali compares...

Hunger
Our only knowledge of desperate hunger comes from the war and famine stories told by family elders and the novels we read. The deprivations suffered in various parts of the world do not affect those that are well-off and comfortable in the slightest. Hunger, as told by Knut Hamsun’s stomach-pains-inducing descriptions, leads to rebellion when it is brought about by injustice in the allocation of ...

Moving Lips and Rustling Pages
One of the fundamentals of Ramadan is the muqabala,* which is a celebration of a sunnah that our Prophet (s.a.w) and Jibreel (a.s.) repeated every Ramadan. Mushafs, which would normally not be carried out in the open any other time, are pressed under the arms, people put on their skull caps and headscarves, and run to the mosques where muqabalas are taking place. Ramadan, which brings life to its...

The Opportunity of Ramadan
During the holy month of Ramadan the devils are chained, temptations of the self fade, and raw instincts become weak. Eating, drinking, and sexual activity are abandoned during the day, and one keeps oneself on guard even against a single bad word that may slip out of the mouth, hoping to keep the reward of fasting undiminished. These Ramadan days are an opportunity to elevate our soul by rescuin...

The Miraculous Nighttime Meal
Ramadan is a time during which I feel my faith in Allah (S.w.t) and my respect for Him most deeply as His slave. I am amazed by the act of fasting, which is an act of worship that has no visibility whatsoever, and the authenticity of which can thus only be known by Allah (s.w.t). Getting up from the bed in the middle of the night to prepare a meal, sometimes for an entire family, despite the exha...

Lastprophet.info Hosted Professor Tariq Ramadan
Tariq Ramadan, professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies in the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Oxford University, addressed a large audience on April 10th and laid emphasis on the centrality of presenting the Prophet Muhammad correctly to ourselves before seeking to address other audiences and the futility of trying to shape his image to attract and please other people. ...

International Seerah Symposium
From April 9th to 12th Meridyen Association and lastprophet.info hosted the Muslim American academic Jonathan A.C. Brown, scholar Joe Bradford, and one of the most popular Muslim intellectuals of our time, Professor Tariq Ramadan, for the International Seerah Symposium. At the opening of the symposium on April 9th The Prime Minister of Turkey Ahmet Davutoğlu's wife Sare Davutoğlu, Professor ...

6th Hadith and Seerah Studies Award Ceremony
The 6th Annual Hadith and Seerah Studies Award Ceremony took place on April 12th at the Cemal Reşit Rey Concert Hall as part of the Meridyen Association’s website project Lastprophet.info. The Ceremony started with the screening of a brief film introducing the projects of Meridyen Association and Lastprophet.info. Following an introduction speech by the Association’s President Saliha...

Muslims Connecting To Permaculture Design
The problem is that despite our knowledge and our vocal opposition, we are nonetheless conducting our daily lives using the technical solutions developed by the very same philosophy we denounce! We do not need to devise a new philosophy as we already have it in Islam, but rather we need to use a methodology of developing technology and improving material life in our daily lives that is not based...

Guardians Of The Natural Order
God originated humankind within his Creation, which He also originated. Humanity is then inescapably subject to God's immutable laws, as is the rest of creation. Creation cannot be changed: global warming can be seen, in this light, as the Earth's endeavor to maintain a balance in the face of the human assault against it. In our eagerness to 'progress' and 'develop' we have lost sight of the fin...

An Excerpt from Animals in the Qur'an
The following is an excerpt from the recent book, Animals in the Qur'an, by Dr. Sarra Tlili. You can read our interview with the author here. The excerpt has been reproduced here with the kind permission of Cambridge University Press. You can find more information about the book on the Cambridge University Press website. I argue that although the Qur’an – being “guidanc...

Mosque attacks in Sweden
On Thursday December 25, 2014 - Christmas Day - an arson attack was carried out on a mosque in Eskilstuna, Sweden, while a group of Muslims were gathered inside for prayer, injuring five people. The Expo Foundation, a Swedish non-profit co-founded by writer Stieg Larsson that raises awareness of discrimination, claims at least 12 mosques were attacked in Sweden this year, and as this article was ...