Category Archives: Islam: Introduction

Move Over, You Tube

Film and Video, Islam and Christianity, Islam in America, Islam in Europe, Islam: Introduction, Qur'an, YouTube Watch

You Tube boasts one of the largest audiences on the web. There are plenty of videos put up by Muslims and many of these are in languages other than English. On July 11 there were 643,000 hits for the search “Islam” on You Tube. But move over, You Tube, and make room for Islamic tube, which has carefully selected videos on Islamic themes. You can find Quranic recitation, debates, numerous sermons and lectures and some rather raw anti-Zionist (and decidedly anti-Semitic) diatribes. This is a significant resource, but like all websites, should be consulted with caution.

A Timely Lesson from Ibn Yaqzan

Ethics, Islam: Introduction, Sufism

[In a recent and provocatively stimulating book. Bill Chittick examines the relevance of centuries of intellectual pursuit of Islamic cosmology for Muslims in the modern world. This is a fascinating book that is worth reading by Muslims and non-Muslims alike. It is a welcome relief from the constant drumbeat of Islam and politics. Order a copy today… Webshaykh.]

by William C. Chittick

It is commonly imagined that if our ancestors could be brought from the past in a time machine, they would be amazed and dumbfounded by the feats of modern science and civilization. But how would a Muslim intellectual of the past react to the modern world, and in particular to its intellectual ambiance? What would an al-Farabi, or an Avicenna, or a Mulla Sadra think of contemporary science and scholarship?

For the purpose of this experiment, I will borrow the name of our time-traveler from the famous philosophical novel of Ibn Tufayl, Hayy ibn Yaqzan, “Alive, son of Awake.” The name refers to the soul that has been reborn by actualizing the intellect. I will simply call him Ibn Yaqzan.

No doubt Ibn Yaqzan would be astonished by the ready availability of an enormous amount of information. However, he would be much more astonished by the fact that people have no idea that all this information is irrelevant to the goals of human life. He would see that people’s understanding of their true situation has decreased roughly in proportion to the amount of information they have gathered. The more “facts” they know, the less they grasp the significance of the facts and the nature of their own selves and the world around them. Continue reading A Timely Lesson from Ibn Yaqzan →

Opening the Quran

Islam: Introduction, Qur'an


Note: The Qur’an can be divided into thirty equal parts. One part takes only twenty-four reading minutes, and the whole Book requires 12 reading hours. There are 114 chapters, and 6,236 Arabic verses (Abu ‘Amr Al-Dani in his book Al-Bayan), containing 77,439 Arabic words (reported by Al-Fadl bin Shadhan) made up of 371,180 Arabic letters (Abdullah b. Kathir reporting Mujahid, although there are different accounts). By contrast the King James Version of the Christian Bible (OT and NT) has 783,137 words and 3,566,480 letters. Muslims believe the Quran in Arabic is the actual Word of God given to Muhammad through a series of revelations from 610-632 C.E. and not written down as a “book” until after Muhammad died.

Given the general ignorance in American society of Islam, especially the theology based on the teachings in the Quran, it is important to go back to the beginning, the essence, the opening, the words that are by definition significant to all Muslims. This eloquent key is the opening (fatiha) of the text, a set of verses as repeated by Muslims daily as the Lord’s Prayer is by Christians. Continue reading Opening the Quran →

Don’t Debate, Rehabilitate.

Ethics, Islam: Introduction, Saudi Arabia, Terrorism Issue

“Don’t debate religion with fundamentalists: what they need is rehabilitation”

by Saad A Sowayan

Fundamentalism is a cultural phenomenon, though it dons religious garbs. It is a mode of consciousness shaped by cultural values, not religious principles. Thus we can understand it only if we examine it in its cultural context as a sociological rather than a theological question.

So, I will begin by taking a close look at the social incubators most likely to hatch fundamentalism.

I understand by fundamentalism strong adherence to an archetypal point of view and a fierce conviction of its fundamental truth, to the exclusion of any other alternate idea. Any alternative is resisted by a fundamentalist and treated not as a legitimate substitute stemming from a rational free choice, but as a detrimental antithesis of the fundamental truth of the archetype. The archetype is a model to be emulated and reproduced, not dissected or scrutinized. Continue reading Don’t Debate, Rehabilitate. →

Islam Obscured

Anthropology/Sociology, Books You Should Read, Islam and Christianity, Islam: Introduction


“Interior of the Amron Mosque,” Henry Bechard, ca. 1870

[Note: the following excerpt is from the introduction to my recent book on the ways in which anthropologists study and represent Islam.]

What the world does not need is yet another book which assumes Islam can be abstracted out of evolving cultural contexts and neatly essentialized into print without repeating the obvious or glossing over the obtuse. This is–I believe and I hope–not such a book. I have no interest in telling you what Islam is, what it really must be, or even what it should be. In what follows I am more attuned to what Islam hopefully is not, at least not for someone who approaches it seriously as an anthropologist and historian. I bare no obvious axe to grind as either a determined detractor against the religion or an over-anxious advocate for it. Personally, as well as academically, I consider Islam a fascinatingly diverse faith, a force in history that must be reckoned with in the present. The offensive tool I do choose to wield, if my figurative pen can stand a militant symbol, is that of a critical hammer, an iconoclastic smashing of the rhetoric that represents, over-represents and misrepresents Islam from all sides. By avoiding judgment on the sacred truth of this vibrant faith, I shift intention towards an I-view that takes no summary representation of Islam as sacred. Continue reading Islam Obscured →

Wisdom from a Half Century Ago

Books You Should Read, Islam: Introduction


Wilfred Cantwell Smith

For those of us who have been reading about Islam for decades, it is somewhat of a shock that one of the classic studies, Islam in Modern History, by the noted historian of religion Wilfred Cantwell Smith, is now half a century old. Based on personal experience in Pakistan in addition to masterful knowledge of sources, Smith put “modern” Islam on the intellectual map. For a book written so long ago by a humble scholar aware of the pitfalls of political prophecy, you might wonder why such an obviously out-of-date analysis is worth reading and re-reading. I suggest that despite the spate of recent books on Islam, many of them well worth reading and rereading in their own right, a return to Smith’s penchant reading of Islam is well worth the time and effort, no matter how you view the infinitely debatable notion of the divine. Continue reading Wisdom from a Half Century Ago →