Ismail Faruqi Online

On the Nature of Islamic Da’wah

admin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:52:28 +0000

Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, has commanded the Muslim: "Call men unto the path of your Lord by wisdom and goodly counsel. Present the cause to them through argument yet more sound" (Qur'an 16: 125). Da'wah is the fulfilment of this commandment "to call men unto the path of Allah." Besides, it is the effort by the Muslim to enable other men to share and benefit from the supreme vision, the religious truth, which he has appropriated. In this respect it is rationally necessary, for truth wants to be known. It exerts pressure on the knower to share his vision of it with his peers. Since religious truth is not only theoretical, but also axiological and practical, the man of religion is doubly urged to take his discovery to other men. His piety, his virtue and charity impose upon him the obligation to make common the good which has befallen him.

Appendix: Dialogue On The Nature of Islamic Da’wah

admin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:07:36 +0000

Khurshid Ahmad opened the discussion of Dr. al-Faruqi's paper with the following prepared response. Some parts of a background paper he circulated at the consultation have also been incorporated in this final version.

Islam and the Problem of Israel: Zionism, The European Jew’s Counsel of Despair

admin — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:41:58 +0000

The Jews of Europe found themselves in the second half of the nineteenth century tossed on the horns of a terrible dilemma. If they pursued the gains of emancipation, they must assimilate; and the more they did so, the more their Judaism would have to be reformed, the more dilute it would become, the less Jewish they would finally turn out to be. If, on the other hand, they restricted their pursuit of the gains of emancipation and hence, the less they assimilated and lost thereby their Jewishness, the more they would stand out as strangers in a society bent on not granting them its identity. On either count, they stood to lose. But which loss was greater? Jewishness, or freedom, and often, life?

The Ismail Faruqi Award Presentation Ceremony

admin — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 18:32:36 +0000

This bi-annual award to IIU scholars who produce outstanding, excellent and exemplary academic work was established in honour of the memory of al-marhum Professor Ismail Raji al-Faruqi who, during his lifetime, had made profound and invaluable contributions not only to Islamic scholarship but to learning as a whole. Indeed, I was most privileged to have been given the opportunity of knowing him personally, as a leading scholar of his generation and as a friend. To be sure, he exacted uncompromising intellectual standards and lived by a strict regiment of academic discipline. But, at the same time, he was never lost in mere philosophical abstractions. He was acutely conscious of the realities of the time and the condition of the contemporary ummah. In this regard, he exemplified the conjunction between theoretical learning, ilm, and the righteous deeds, amal salih. He devoted the best years of his life, before his death under tragic circumstances, to the upliftment of the ummah, in inspiring and guiding its youth especially.

Islam on Its Own Terms: The Contribution of Isma’il al-Faruqi

admin — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 04:16:28 +0000

In his teaching of Islam the late Dr. Isma'il al-Faruqi had little patience with the anthropomorphic approach with which most comparative religion is taught. He believed there must be faith, belief, and commitment if the inner essence of Islam—and indeed of any religion—is to be appreciated. He deplored the fact that Islam in the West is taught predominately by non-Muslims, whereas Christianity and Judaism are taught by adherents to those faiths.

Islam and the Problem of Israel: The Romantic Relapse of Europe

admin — Sat, 16 May 2009 17:43:16 +0000

The prognosis of the last paragraph (Chapter III) was the reality on the American scene. Most of the rabbis ministering to the Jews of America were educated in the Reform seminaries of Europe, and the first seminary in America (Cincinnati, Ohio) belonged to the same group. The absence of persecution and of ghettos and the religious freedom guaranteed by the American Constitution promoted acculturation and assimilation of Jewish immigrants from Europe. In America, it was hard to be anything but a Reformed Jew. The voice of orthodoxy, of traditionalism, was certainly present; but it was overwhelmed by the universalism and secularism of American society in the matter of religion. The situation radically changed in the nineties when a wave of pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe sent a flood ofjewish immigrants to America. The demography of American Jewry was turned upside down. In a decade, American Jewry became overwhelmingly orthodox and the voice of Reform Judaism became that of a minority. What happened in Russia to bring about this Jewish exodus happened in various degrees in the rest of Europe.

Review of “Islam: A Challenge to Religion” by Ghulam Ahmad Parwez

admin — Sat, 02 May 2009 09:39:46 +0000

The author of this book is famous for his "Abandon of the Hadlth and return to the Qur'an," the central theme of the Association for the Reemergence of Islam (Tulu-e-Islam) of the last three decades, of which he is the founder. His call has appealed especially to the learned civil servants of Pakistan, who flocked to his durbar in Gulberg (Lahore) every Sunday to hear the teacher expose his views. Anxious, like all Muslim modernists, to break out from under the deposits of centuries of deadening conservatism and Sufism, Parwez sought an anchor for the creativity and dynamism of this generation and found it in the Qur'an if approached in abstraction from the Hadith, the base of most Islamic laws and popular beliefs. His views he elaborated in his 30-volume Qur'anic study, Mafhum-ul-Qur’an and a periodical carrying the name of the movement.

Islam and the Tehran Hostages

admin — Fri, 01 May 2009 09:17:26 +0000

Certainly no Muslim may question the following principles, since they are Qur'anic and the Qur'an is for Muslims the only ultimate authority. These principles are not unique to Islam; rather, they represent some of the highest ethical standards of other human civilisations. Islam advocates a very personal, individualist ethic. "No soul may be charged with more than it can bear...No soul may be charged with the sin of another...To every person belongs what he/she has wrought and earned" (Qur'an 2:286 ; 6:164;: 53:39). These precepts have barred from the religious consciousness of Muslims any suggestion of vicarious guilt or vicarious atonement.

The Nation-State and Social Order in the Perspective of Islam

admin — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:08:55 +0000

Human association has had a long history which three institutions had struggled to dominate. The first is the family, which has blood and heredity for bases. The characteristics it engenders in humans are innate and immutable. Indeed, they are constitutive of the relationship. Certainly family-living engenders in humans other characteristics which are acquired through association. These, however, are not necessary. Members born to one family may successfully be brought up as members of another; but the innate characteristics remain unchanged. The family was declared by God an intrinsic order of creation.

Islam and the Problem of Israel: The Emancipation and its Aftermath

admin — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 11:22:50 +0000

The revelation which came to Muhammad (SAAW) summoned reason to prove the thesis of Islam. It never asserted its truths in defiance of reason, nor did it ever seek to overwhelm the noetic function of the mind. On the contrary, it always sought to convince its audience in harmony and unity with reason. When the Mu'tazilah sought to give reason an edge over revelation, or the Murji'ah to give revelation an edge over reason, the Muslim mind demurred and held its original position tenaciously, namely, that no contradiction between reason and revelation is final; that no disparity between them is beyond overarching and composition by reconsidering the meanings of revelation which might have been misunderstood, or the conclusions of reason which might have gone astray. From al Ma'mun to al Mutawakkil (197-232 A.H./813-847 A.C.), the three decades of Mu'tazilah ascendency, the problem acquired crisis proportions and was then solved forever.