Tag Archives: United States

The Enlightenment and modern-day “Islamic terror”

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بِسْمِ اللَّـهِ الرَّحْمَـٰنِ الرَّحِيم

I decided to write a few brief comments about the topic of the Enlightenment and the topic of so-called “Islamic terrorism”, even though the connection between the Enlightenment and what is termed as “Islamic terror” may not even occur to most people.

The reason why I believe this topic is important is because the enlightenment and its secularist offspring intervened in the Muslim world in a manner that cannot merely be cast aside when mentioning anything about “Islamic terrorism”.

In order to understand this issue, we have to understand that Islam is a system of life where its teachings are passed from chest-to-chest. The books written by the scholars have their relevance, but we cannot say that the primary means of transmitting knowledge in Islam is through the written material. Thus, the teacher-student relationship is paramount in traditional Islamic scholarship. Continue reading →

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Some comments on an article about the mother of the Boston bomb suspects

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بِسْمِ اللَّـهِ الرَّحْمَـٰنِ الرَّحِيم

I came across a report concerning the mother (her name is given as Zubeidat) of those accused of the Boston bombings (the article may be accessed here) [1]. There are a number of things that caught my attention concerning the manner in which the report was presented, and I thought that instead of inserting this article as a link in a footnote of some larger work, it was better to see exactly what is going on in a report on Muslims in the West. I will not really mention the “investigation-related” excerpts in here, since there is no direct relevance to this discussion, and since there is still a lot in this respect that is ongoing. Continue reading →

Evolution, “Conservatives”, and Modern Western Society

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بِسْمِ اللَّـهِ الرَّحْمَـٰنِ الرَّحِيم

At times and in certain instances, we hear “conservative” politicians from Western countries saying that the “controversy regarding evolution should be taught”. The former President of the United States, George W. Bush was a famous proponent of such a position, and it is still propounded by certain other public figures and politicians. Of course, this is mostly met by ridicule and sarcasm from the formal science field, who outright reject such proposals as quackery.

As a Muslim, I can see why such a request or suggestion would be met with such scorn: These “conservatives” are, at the end of the day, “conservatives” only in their perception of what should be done within the confines of one’s home (i.e. what religion one should adhere to, what standards of morality one should adopt, and so on). Continue reading →

Again, statements on Muhammad’s ﷺ and his marriage to Ayesha (Radhia Allahu Anha)

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بِسْمِ اللَّـهِ الرَّحْمَـٰنِ الرَّحِيم

It is very depressing when we still see the totally mindless comment coming from non-Muslims, right of the bat, of the type “What about Mohammad, who raped a six year old girl?” In whichever context it comes, it is very lamentable, because the objector has not made any attempt to make a difference between “age of marriage” and “age of moving to live with one’s husband”.

They have also failed to note that early marriage for women has been the norm throughout most of human history, and is in fact still operative in many places of the world. What I suspect is in fact happening is an application of the “unstoppable human advancement” hypothesis, were people move from barbarism towards ever higher civility. Continue reading →