Quicunque Vult: or, My Journey to Islam - III
PART III: "Taking Shahada Was Indeed Wittnessing to God" Stubbe himself had been part of a pro-Unitarian trend; (1) and the greatest English poet, Milton, is now known to have been a closet Unitarian. (2) John Locke, Isaac Newton, and Charles Dickens, were further examples of men who publicly rejected Trinitarian theology. In Nonconformist England, more than in any other European context, the do...

Quicunque Vult: or, My Journey to Islam - II
PART II: My journey to Islam When, in 1976, a Hayward Gallery exhibition unveiled the arts of Islam, I looked for an equivalent to the penitential moods of Christianity. Not one religious painting in the National Gallery offers a smile (unlike the pagan gods, who reappear, apparently amid much relief, at the Renaissance). But in Ottoman miniatures, of religious or profane subjects, everyone smil...

Quicunque Vult: or, My Journey to Islam - I
PART I In a former church, my heart is a mihrâb, Urging me to repent, the erasure of old but remembered sins. (Sünbülzâde Vehbî) Wild talk of a new Islamic hermeneutic hatching in the Muslim communities of the West has been with us for some years, with sadly insufficient justification. This memoir is offered, at the persistent request of some Turkish friends, by a monotheist whose fo...

Description of the Prophet Muhammad
Love (mahabba) for people arises from three characteristics: 1) their physical outward beauty, 2) their inward beautiful character, and 3) the good or the sacrifice they do for us. To increase and maintain his love for the Prophet Muhammad, upon him be peace, Hasan (the Prophet's grandson) sought descriptions of all three of these aspects of the Prophet because he wanted something to hold on to. ...

When the Social Contract is Breached in Egypt
  The Egyptian people, many for the first time in their lives tasting the inebriating wine of political freedom, are challenging their government, courageously defying the fear factor so ruthlessly cultivated in the belly of the bestial state security apparatus. Something has irreversibly changed in the land of the Pharaohs. It has to do with the basic social contract, the relationsh...

Fear of Poverty
  Excerpt from Hamza Yusuf’s Purification of the Heart  Translation and Commentary of Imam Mawlud’s Matharat al Qulub   Fear of poverty is counted as one of the diseases of the heart.   Fear of Poverty P O E M  V E R S E S 7 5 - 7 7 Fear of poverty originates in having a bad opinion of [God] the Exalted, and its cure is in having a good opinion and knowing that what God possesses is ...

Keeping the Connection to the Prophet Alive
The Prophet Muhammad is ever present in the lives of Muslims, but how often do we ask ourselves about the nature of our connection to him or how his teachings have come down to us? Certainly we know of his teachings and example from the Quran and Hadith, but there is also a living connection to the Prophet that has been cultivated and guarded by generations of Muslim scholars. The tradition of I...

Islamophobia in Italy II
The Guastalla Park in Milan, about thirty meters from the great Synagogue of the city. It is the last day of high school. Hundreds of students are playing the traditional game of throwing eggs and flour. But in a corner of the garden there is a more simple form of teasing and deceit. Two students - one in the final year, the other in the third year, 19 and 17 years old. The former is Andrea. He h...

Responsibilities for the Islamic Community
The meeting with the Turkish scholars was very interesting from many points of view. A group of Muslim intellectuals debating about Prophet Muhammad and the image of Islam in the West is something special today. We all know the problems cartoons about the Prophet which were published on September 30 2005 in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten; a  few days ago they were reprinted in the Norwegia...

In the House of Islamophobia
  There was an Arabic school in Milan, housed in an old industrial building with green walls and consisting of two floors; it was located far from the centre, in the east of the town. It was time for the children to return home; their parents were waiting for them to come from school. Among them was an old woman, nearly 50, a converted Italian, wearing the niqab. In Italy, you don't often come ac...

Could There Be a "Sirah Diary"?
Question: Is it possible to prepare a diary-like book based on the chronological order of events in the Prophet’s life? Could there be a ‘sirah diary’ in which his life can be followed day to day? Answer: (Professor Kasım Şulul - Harran University –Department of Theology): Within the framework of Islamic science, it is an ongoing tradition to accommodate the books of sirah either in a chronologic...

Abu Hurairah: From Servant of the Sun to Servant of Allah
  In history Abu Hurairah is known by his sobriquets. He is one of those people whose nicknames come to mind before their real names. He had two given names, used at different times: “Servant of the Sun” and “Servant of Allah”. In the Age of Ignorance his given name was Abd Al-Shams, Servant of the Sun  while his nickname was Abu Hurairah, Father of Cats.  The Holy Prophet continued calling him b...