Islam from inside

Playing at religion (Wearing ideological blinders)

Irshaad

While ostensibly upholding and defending religion, a strongly ideological approach tends to undermine the deepest most profound aspects of religion. It binds men to specific ways of filtering and judging reality instead of doing what religion is meant to do - to bind men to God and thus unfold for them a perspicacious and penetrating insight....

The Water of Creation (His Throne upon the Water)

Irshaad

It is the perennial, foundational substance out of which the physical universe is created. It is described as water - fluid, liquid, able to be poured into any form, as yet formless, but able to flow into any form...As a �liquid� it is unified, one substance, and not yet articulated into separate creations. But it contains the ability to give birth to myriad creations....

Be and it is (Creation and Evolution)

Irshaad

Since God is beyond time and place (being the creator of time and place), His command enters from beyond these limited realms and manifests itself in this world of time, place, and form in the best, most appropriate manner. His creative command takes a shape, a form when it enters this universe we live in. It can enter into this world in multiple places and times (since His presence encompasses it all) as necessary to create what needs to be created....What we witness in time is simply the mechanics of the process of creation (the chains of cause and effect) - what we cannot witness is the invisible command that undergirds it all - the metaphysics behind it....

Relating the Narrative

Irshaad

There are in every generation those who betray a double trust. They betray the bonds of humanity to which Ali ibn Abu Talib alluded when he said "people are of two kinds, either they are your partners in faith, or they are your partners in humanity, so behave accordingly. And they betray the archetypal "trust" infused (in potentia) in human nature at the beginning of creation, the turning away from which results in the spreading of injustice and unnecessary bloodshed, repeated in an ever compounding generational loop as new technologies emerge that exponentially allow us to leverage our reach and killing power....

Sculpt Yourself

Irshaad

We become the sculptor rather than the sculpture, the shaper rather than the shaped, creating and modifying our own internal configuration rather than allowing the external world and its ever shifting attitudes and perspectives to impose a configuration on us....

Al-Taqrib

Irshaad

A scholarly journal of meditations on the theme of Islamic Unity....

On A Straight Path (Sura 11 verse 56)

Irshaad

While all the Divine Names point in different ways to His Essence, the name Allah is an all-encompassing pointer. As such, it is rare to use this name (Allah) for anything but God. It is the primary referent we have for the all-encompassing Essence of God....

Beyond_Similitudes: Tafsir (Qur'an Sura 13 verse 16)

Irshaad

Differing Orthodoxies: Inherited Beliefs / Experiential Awareness

Irshaad

The differing orthodoxies of the various schools are...localized illuminations, beams of light that reveal a useful and beneficial section of reality, not the whole, immeasurable infinitude of the ocean. They provide a template and a guideline which provides shape and form and boundaries so that one is not lost immediately in bewildering depths and diversity....

On Karbala

Irshaad

Meditations on Muharram gatherings, on the event of Karbala, the day of Ashura, and the martyrdom of Husayn ibn Ali....

Podcast - The Role of Love in the Qur'anic Worldview

Irshaad

This is from a recording made at lecture given by William Chittick at Carleton University. The subject of the lecture was love in the Qur'anic worldview and is based on material Chittick has collected for a new book he is working on. The lecture centers around a ubiquitously well known verse in the Qur'an, a verse described by Sam'ani as a "body-melting, heart-burning" verse.... You can listen to it here or subscribe/listen to it as a podcast in iTunes....

Remembrance (dhikr) and the path of mercy

Irshaad

When remembrance (dhikr) of Allah is connected with the aspect of His mercy, that quality of mercy begins to manifest within one's own character - it gains a real, living presence and the heart expands with it's growth....

This Israel

Irshaad

....Today Israel capitalizes on a name and a difficult history, but this Israel of our era has not within it the character of a promised land....

(Sura 12: verse 99 - 101) - The Fulfillment of Yusuf's dream - the sun, the moon, and eleven stars

Irshaad

Although in a narrative sense the sura of Joseph (Yusuf) is one of the most accessible and straightforward chapters of the Qur'an, describing in chronological order the story of Joseph's betrayal by his brothers, his rise to prominence in Egypt, and his reunion with his family, it is simultaneously a narrative whose surface conceals immense depths of meaning....

Dreams in Sura Yusuf

Irshaad

Since the language of dreams is a cloaked, symbolic language - a language of ideas, concepts, and truths embodied into various forms, into bodies and events that symbolize the true meaning - because of this it remains opaque to most. They do not know how to interpret so they shake their heads and say "confused dreams"....

Words on a page

Irshaad

The Qur'an is not words on a page - the Qur'an is not the Qur'an until its verses take shape in the mind, connect and confirm one another, and its unfolding contents settle into the heart - only then does it begin to speak its magic within us. It speaks its content not with words and sounds but with a transformative alchemy....

A Guard and a Guide

Irshaad

Through revelation He lifts our perspective to a higher level, to a viewpoint above the physical world - to one where we can begin to develop some minute awareness of the infinitude of intersecting and interacting complex systems that operate within our world....

We have adorned for each society their acts

Irshaad

People encompass multiple existences, multiple levels of dealing and interacting with the world. The foremost level is an individual level - the level of a single person or single self (nafs) and the moral and ethical life and behavior of that person within the milieu of small scale interactions. This is the level at which most people relate to religion and ethical life - they see religion as an individual spiritual quest, morals and ethics as an individual's responsibility, religious life as an individual struggle within their own nafs (soul) and characterized by their own behavior....

(Sura 11: verse 7) Six days of creation

Irshaad

Time has a mysterious existence, a nature that is, as yet, unfathomable to us. It does not have any immediately evident, firmly graspable reality such as that found in material objects (and even our understanding of matter succumbs to mystery as we peer deeper into its innermost structures)....

(Sura 11: verse 49-50) Messages from the unseen

Irshaad

The prophet's knowledge of past events and histories was deep, his ability to read and perceive the minute invisible traces that connect a place to it's spiritual history was through the connection of his own being to the plane of the unseen. The Qur'an relates the essentials of the story of Hud - whatever is required for guidance, but the prophet's own link with higher levels of existence enabled him to perceive with clarity the detail and richness of events that had transpired - down to their minute individual elements....

Paradox for a modern age: a god-eat-god world - no metaphysics required

Irshaad

Here is a paradox for a modern age which seeks to do away with the Divine, to remove it from their frame of reference and erase it from the public sphere. "Those who have no belief set up rivals to their Lord" (Qur'an 6:1). But how can those who disbelieve in God set up rivals to their God?....

The ascending pathways

Irshaad

Like the mystical alchemists who used the chemical transmutations of the elements as a symbolic representation of an inner transmutation of their heart and soul, the ascent of a mountain, the rise above the forest line into the rarefied atmosphere and stunning beauty of its heights, the sweeping, arcing view of the earth below - these are representative of a parallel ascent within the nafs (the soul)....

Tafsir Sura 11:5-6 Transparency before God

Irshaad

While the Qur'an points out that existence is absolutely transparent before God, it also points out that God has drawn many veils over his creation and that some of these veils are veils of privacy placed as a mercy and as a token of dignity and respect between people. These are veils which it is an injustice and a violation to remove - levels of privacy which are to be upheld....

What is truth?

Irshaad

Jesus said, "To this end was I born, and for this came I into the world, to bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth hears my voice. Pilate then said unto him, What is truth?" (John 18:37-38) Pilate's response is a fascinating one. "What is truth?", he says, but he does not voice the question as a genuine query - it is a rhetorical question, a statement describing reality as Pilate observes it - there is no truth, there are only constructed ideologies and practical necessities and people act based upon these and function within the social/economic/political realms generated by these constructs. Right and wrong, truth and justice exist only within the relativistic confines and context of these constructs....

And that you fast is better for you

Irshaad

There is a self that stands beyond and above the conglomeration of attributes that comprise a person - that is the self capable of truly bowing before God....

And Fast until the onset of night (Fasting in Ramadan)

Irshaad

And so the qur'anic command is issued: "...fast until the night...." (Qur'an 2:187) Fast from what the nafs needs and desires. Let the nafs know that there is a truer aspect of yourself, a center capable of overseeing and stabilizing all the intersecting mental systems of the mind and all the material/chemical/habitual/hormonal systems of the body. Proclaim to it that there is a guardian and owner and ruler over the nafs and over the physical form with which it is integrally co-mingled. Let it know that the form and the stirrings of need and desire within the nafs have to submit to this guardian in seeking their satisfaction. The wants, needs, and desires that spring from the material form must submit to the governance and tutelage of a higher form - to the spiritual form indicated by the hadith that states: "God created Adam in His own form...." (hadith)....

The hermeneutics of takfir

Irshaad

The myriad facets of intellectual expression historically inspired by the Qur'an and the profound and deep hermeneutics that flowered in various historical forms and in various schools of thought stands in stark contrast to the vicious tail-swallowing vision of an ideology of takfir. For most of Muslim history, the ideology of takfir was a troubling but well-contained side-issue. In recent times, in a strange historical aberration wrought by vast global political changes, it has come into a position of destructive prominence....

Rules of political misdirection

Irshaad

Like a magician working his sleight-of-hand deceptions to deceive and misdirect the eye, political sleight-of-hand artists work their deceptions to deceive and misdirect a society's collective mind and attention. The mass media provide the stage on which the theatre of deception unfolds and on which the audience's rapt attention remains focused. It's large scale spectacle, full of drama and emotion, fear and prejudice, ideological politics and dubious aims, but ultimately hollow and bitter as these magicians are not working a benign entertainment but applying deceit and duplicity with devastating mendacity.....

Index of Qur'anic and Biblical verses (Updated May 03, 2007)

Irshaad

(Updated this index to include recently added articles) Here is a compiled reference list of all the Qur'anic and Biblical verses referenced on the Islam from inside website, as well as links to the specific articles in which those verses appear. The Qur'anic verses are listed in sura and verse order....

Tafsir (Sura 39: 42) To die/to sleep (the soul/nafs)

Irshaad

....It is not only the thing seen that is of importance but the vision and the perspicacity of the one doing the seeing. God always has a relation of nearness to us - "He is nearer to you than your life- vein" (Qur'an 50:16) But for us to draw nearer to Him, we have to embark on a journey of knowledge of what is configured within our own selves. This becomes possible through the substantive bond we have with God through our nafs.....

Tafsir (Sura 9: 102 to 106) On Repentance

Irshaad

"....We all have inner convictions and determinations, we all have intentions and aims that are beneficial to ourselves and to those around us. For many of us these convictions and determinations and intentions often live and die within us...."

Danish cartoons and the sacred

Irshaad

"The Danish cartoons which caricatured the Prophet in different ways (including depicting him wearing a headdress shaped like a bomb), has stirred up, not surprisingly, a hornet's nest of controversy. It is yet another (in this case, somewhat silly) manifestation of an ongoing process in which secular society, acting according to an internal impulse, periodically lampoons various sacred icons. The cartoons could have confined themselves to satirizing specific politically motivated actions and still made their point, but instead targeted the principal foundations of the faith (the Prophet and the Qur'an). Reversing the values and meanings traditionally associated with religious iconography, personages, and texts is a common mechanism....

Raising Children

Irshaad

"....Some time back I was involved in a series of internet discussions on raising children in which Christian scripture was quoted to emphasize the importance of using discipline and training to rigorously mold a child to a particular mindset. The concern in the discussion was with the use and application of Christian scripture in a way that did a disservice to the scripture itself....

Tafsir (Sura 7: 94 to 96) Prosperity and Humility

Irshaad

"....Any turning away from something also involves a turning towards something else. This is the nature of the world. In the hadith describing the creation of aql (intellect) and ignorance, God commands the aql and it responds by turning towards Him, He then commands ignorance and it turns away from Him. So any turning away from His Mercy, or any arrogance towards His guidance indicates the beginnings of ignorance'....

Power and Hegemony

Irshaad

"Then leading him to a height, Satan showed him in a moment of time all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor and said to him, 'I will give you all this power and glory of all these kingdoms....worship me then and it shall be all yours.' Then Jesus replied, 'Be off, Satan! For scripture says: You must worship your Lord, your God and serve him alone.'....

Shards of Knowledge

Irshaad

Knowledge shapes and defines - it lays some limits and demolishes others - it provides a template, an unfolding genome from which both individual understandings and societal forms emerge. We as individuals have control over knowledge, but so also does knowledge have a powerful control over us - impacting our consciousness and unconsciousness, affecting us both overtly and subtly. Our knowledge is not a thing apart from our selves but rather a complex ocean of interactions....

Tafsir 10:30 - The living from the dead

Irshaad

God is the author of life and death? He creates things with the capacity to receive life under certain circumstances, and sets up the systems by which physical matter organizes into complex forms and comes alive. Within these systems He also sets up the conditions and parameters (health, nourishment etc.) within which life continues, and the limits (old age, disease, injury etc.) beyond which it will be withdrawn, revealing the death eclipsed and concealed within the living....

Podcast - Fall of Adam

Irshaad

Several years ago William Chittick gave a lecture at our local university on Ahmad Sam'ani's view of Adam's fall as elaborated in Sam'ani's work, "The Ease of Spirits in Explaining the Names of the All-Conquering King" ("Rawh al-arwah fi sharh asma' al-malik al-fattah"). It's a fascinating and beautiful lecture (reflective of the excellence of Chittick's work in general) and I have wanted for some time to make it available online but did not feel right doing so without first obtaining Chittick's permission. I was recently put in contact with him and he has very graciously, granted permission. The lecture is now available as a podcast. You can listen to it here or subscribe/listen to it as a podcast in iTunes....

What do we know?

Irshaad

Each person carries within themselves their own reality-distortion field - this consists of all the layerings of experience, opinion, tendencies, habits, desires, genetic dispositions, physical structure, psychological structure, societal and parental imprintings, media influences, educational influences, religious background, information and mis-information, knowledge and ignorance, proclivities, traditions, interpretations, encounters, and internalized worldviews that have accumulated within the individual and have over time left their traces and marks and given a shape and contour to that person's outlook - this is their internal landscape and it is one that may shift and change and assume new contours over time as an interactive feedback loop occurs between the individual and all the varying layers and levels active in the societal worlds with which they interact and in the complex interworkings of their internal world....

On the barzakh

Irshaad

The nafs will dwell in a universe that is nothing but a representation, a living image of its own internal architecture, a reflection, a mirror of its true stature....

Tafsir (Sura 10: verse 105) - On being hanif

Irshaad

A hanif is one who verifies - so no matter what society or time he lives in, he arrives at the truth through awakening and cultivating the nature that God has placed within him - so the hanif does not deviate when society deviates - he does not follow where society leads....

Tafsir (Sura 10: verse 104) - Honoring the Prophet

Irshaad

The Prophet (s.a.) remains silent about his nature until he is commanded to speak - this silence and reticence in the absence of a direct command is a sign of his true servanthood....

Tafsir (Sura 7: verse 152) - false religion (the golden calf)

Irshaad

The qur'an tells the story of how Samiri deceived the people with the golden calf. When Moses departs for Sinai, his whole being is suffused with the power of the Divine attraction that calls him to Itself. Samiri notices something in the dust of the footsteps of Moses....

A Children's Story

Irshaad

There was once a King with a vast kingdom. He was a very great King, good, fair, just, merciful, loved deeply by all his subjects, by all the creatures in His kingdom. His was not an ordinary kingdom. He ruled over all of nature, the mountains, streams, skies, and the wide earth whose strength supported all of these....

History and Perception

Irshaad

At its best, our era is not graced with serenity. These are event driven times, full of motion, movement, turmoil - an antithesis to contemplation and careful consideration....

Man and Ecology: An Islamic Perspective

Irshaad

When the power of his relationship to God is applied without the temperance of the responsibility of the trust, man misuses and abuses the abilities, potentials, and rights given to him by God. Nature has been given to man as a trust and nothing more....

Tafsir (Sura 8: verse 11 to 18) - Battle of Badr

Irshaad

The verses on the first battle the Muslim's engaged in are very unique in the manner in which they combine details about the events and the physical aspects of the battle with a spiritual commentary that makes it clear that there was far more happening than simply an encounter between two opposing forces....

Tafsir (Sura 33: verse 67) - Prisoners of thought

Irshaad

This world is, in a way, a projected image of the human mind. If some characteristics are more prevalent in the world, perhaps it is because those minds, those societies with such characteristics exert greater effort, leverage more resources, and therefore exert greater influence....

Tafsir (Sura 6: verse 74 to 79) - On seeing beyond forms

Irshaad

These verses describe the spiritual vision and state of certainty granted to Abraham as a gift from Allah. In a series of revelatory or intellectual unveilings, the Reality behind existence - it's true nature - was manifested....

Tafsir (sura 6:73) - On the blowing of the trumpet

Irshaad

The blowing of the trumpet in this verse signifies the calling of everything that is in the heavens and earth to an accounting. It signifies a transformation of all existence....

Parents - The Locus of Descent

Irshaad

The parents are the conduit, the means through which a human soul descends from that other plane of existence to this world. So the parents are the means by which tanzil (descent) occurs....

Basic Commandments and the Straight Path

Irshaad

This series of verses begins by informing us that what will be recited to us will raise our level, if we pay attention to it and practise it....

Tafsir (Sura 5: verse 116 to 120 - On Jesus)

Irshaad

"Son of Mary" - This is a title that occurs only once in the New Testament in Mark 6:3 where someone asks, "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?" Mark's gospel was the earliest - the closest to the source - and the one that was used as a basis for the other gospels. It is a phrase that is used throughout the Qur'an as an honorific title for Jesus....

Jesus - A Word of God

Irshaad

Universes of knowledge exist within each person. The doors to these worlds are opened to only a few. Jesus was one who was taught by God - God Himself unfolded Jesus' potential....

Jesus: An Islamic Perspective

Irshaad

The Islamic position on Jesus can never be understood through attempts to disprove the Christian claims concerning Jesus - this method will only give one a picture of what Jesus is not. Only by placing him within the theological, ontological, and spiritual context of Islam is it possible to gain some insight into the place of Jesus in Islam....

Tauhid - Oneness of God

Irshaad

It is the fabric, the substratum from which every principle of the religion arises and which guides every aspect of the faith as it is propounded in the Qur'an....

Intellect in Islam - Microcosm and Macrocosm

Irshaad

Imagine that the computer screen and all activity on the screen represents the world of material existence. The screen is considered as the horizontal dimension of the computer. A program is running that simulates a small universe complete with simulated beings....

On the nature of the soul

Irshaad

The soul becomes the mediator, the meeting point, between the Spirit and the body. It is the junction of the two seas. The sea of the spirit and the sea of the material world....

On Justice

Irshaad

There is a strong possibility of a very easy slippage into tyranny, since a skewed judgement or a biased judgement is nothing other than a type of tyranny. Any favoritism, any partiality, any egotism is a destroyer of justice and spells the beginning of tyranny. So judgement and justice is a tremendous affair....

On Belief

Irshaad

The consciousness which the term taqwa encompasses is, in a way, like the consciousness of a student towards an admired teacher, or your consciousness towards a person whose word carries an extraordinary weight and importance for you, or one's consciousness towards someone with whom they are deeply in love....

9/11 - Collapse

Irshaad

Then the twin towers collapsed, one after another, subsiding slowly into dust and rubble like a colossus fallen in battle, buckling under dreadful wounds. At that moment the known world faded from view and an alternate universe of terrible possibility emerged....

Knowing Ali

Irshaad

There is a group of people that has reached a stage where all personal movement is renounced. Their selves (their nafs or souls) are free of the distractions, cravings and desires of one who is bound and attached to this world and its attractions. They put their trust entirely in God and movements of their ego vanish....

Time in the Qur'an - History as Memory

Irshaad

When the Qur'an talks of past events it often speaks of them as if these events exist within our own memories or in a collective human memory as an integral part of our own selves and of our human heritage and nature....

Seeking Patterns and Principles - History as Pattern

Irshaad

Why dwell on the past?... Why put time and energy into remembering events that happened centuries ago?...Why not let the past be past and put it behind us once and for all?... Why does the Qur'an admonish us constantly to remember?....

Marriage in Islam - Making Hearts Familiar

Irshaad

The term nikkah which is used for marriage is also used figuratively to describe the coming together of various aspects of creation. For example it says, in the Qur'an, that "the rain married the soil" and then it describes how, from this intimate mingling, something new springs forth - that the earth brings forth flowers and herbage, it opens to new creations, new life, new potentials....

A Most Dangerous Game

Irshaad

Some play this world like a vast, infinitely intricate strategy game. We are all resources in this game. Depending on our individual stances, we are utilized, mobilized, managed, positioned, deployed, manipulated, ignored, silenced, or removed....

Going around the Kaaba

Irshaad

From a society in which religion and religious symbolism exist tenuously, vaguely, on the periphery of daily existence, I fell headlong into a concentrated centre of piety, where religion and its most potent symbols exist with the compact density and power of a black hole humming at the core of a galaxy....

1st Annual Wommyn's conference (Humor)

Irshaad

An all male Muslim conference was forced to go co-ed when more women than men showed up for the conference's opening day. The organizing commitee for the World Organization for Male Muslim Youth in North america (WOMMYN) were startled to find that their first conference had drawn a largely female crowd of convention goers. "I don't know how a misunderstanding of this magnitude could occur, the very name of our group makes it quite clear that this is an organization only for male Muslim youth", said the executive spokesman.....

Cellphone usage in Mecca out of control (Humor)

Irshaad

We first broke the story on growing cellphone usage by religious pilgrims 3 years ago - well, not really, but we would have broken the story if we were a credible news organization...um...and if this site had actually existed 3 years ago...and...uh... if we'd actually gone to Mecca and seen some pilgrims. Well today we're making up for lost time....

Progressive 'Hip Hop' Muslims in the masjids - what the.... (Humor)

Irshaad

There's a new style of progressive Islam that's sweeping the North American Masjid scene - a style that combines the sass and cool of hip-hop with the spirituality of Islam - and this is one wave that's stirring big controversy as it washes over the Muslim community. "We like to do things our way - there's lots of room for personal expression in our deen and this is our way of expressing our own style." said amateur breakdancer and progressive Muslim spokesperson, Boogaloo Shoobadoo Afeef after praying salat at the local mosque. "Style is important my man and these masjids have to get with the flow - it's wack that they make us line up "military-like" at Jumaa - that ain't happenin...you know - it's like so...old-style." B-boy Omar Khaladoo Islam poplocks his joints like a robot as he performs his salat....