islam

They need a deen that's not your uncle's deen.

I remembered the malangs of Shah Jamal, the dirty, shirtless renouncers with ratty beards and dreads and bare chests covered in necklaces of prayer beads, throwing around their arms in Charlie Manson dances and whipping out their old ID cards to say look, I used to be someone and now I'm no one, I'm so lost in Allah that I've thrown away the whole world. Would that qualify them as Sufis? I didin't know how to measure it. Whether the malangs were Sufi saints or just drugged-out bums didn't really matter. The lesson I took from them was that you're never disqualified from loving Allah, never. And I could see again that what I went through was nothing new, not even anything special in the history of Islam, not a clashing of East and West; it was always there. And that made me feel more Muslim than ever, because fuck it all, CNN, this is Islam too.

The jamaat was an almost silly mish-mash of people: Rude Dawud__ pork-pie hat poking up here, a jalab-and-turban there, Jehangir__ big Mohawk rising from a sea of kufis, Amazing Ayyub still with no shirt, girls scattered throughout _ some in hejab, some not and Rabeya in punk-patched burqa doing her thing. But in its randomness it was gorgeous, reflecting an Islam I felt could not happen anywhere else ... If Islam was to be saved, it would be saved by the crazy ones: Jehangir and Rabeya and Fasiq and Dawud and Ayyub and even Umar.

You claim to love God, and yet you disobey GodThis is a bizarre way of reasoningSurely, the lover, if his love is true,Is most obedient to the one he loves.

The enduring life is the one that begins once we awaken from this world. And it is in that awakening that we realize_ It was only a dream

During this time I came to understand a lot about myself, human beings, faith and the meaning of marriage and friendship. The world is not black and white, nothing is what it seems, and we are not cartoon characters that can be divided into goodies and baddies, but complex and multi-faceted beings with many weaknesses. Human beings will always disappoint. But God is there. He sometimes speaks through others and we would be wise to listen to those we trust and to our own inner voice, God__ voice. No matter how difficult or painful life sometimes becomes, we must never lose faith.We may not always find justice in this world, but compassion and forgiveness are such important qualities. They help us to dissolve so much of the negativity that we hold. Practising them mostly benefits ourselves.

On a day when secrets shall be outThe man shall have no power nor any helper.

Over a billion people believe in Allah without truly knowing what Allah supposedly stands for or what he really demands of them. And the minority that do understand continue to be Moslems because they have redefined their morality and ethics to fit within the teachings of Islam, which are floridly lacking in morality. They therefore redefine what is good and evil in order to fit their lives into what is preached by Islam, instead of examining Islam to see if it fits within the good life. Backwards thinking, imposed by a backward religion.

A Muslim just follows Allah. Sunni-Shiah? That's farga, the groups__llah discourages this in the Quran, you know, never ever form the groups.

It is of the extraordinary insights of Imam Malik that the first section of his Muwatta'*, which precedes even the section on ritual purity, is on the times of the prayer. It is the times of prayer that obligate purity. Observing the times of prayer is the first thing we do when we wake and the last thing we do before retiring to bed; it is done in the middle of the day and in its decline. It is an unrelenting reminder of to whom we belong, why we are here, and where we are going.

The tongue is like a lion, if you let it loose, it will wound someone.

This was an infidel country, whose way of life we Muslims were supposed to oppose and reject. Why was it, then, so much better run, better led, and made for such better lives than the places we came from? Shouldn't the places where Allah was worshipped and His laws obeyed have been at peace and wealthy, and the unbelievers' countries ignorant, poor, and at war?

It is much easier to condemn Islam and 'oppressive Muslim men' than to unpack the intricate relationships between global politics related to empire building and capitalist expansion as well as regional and national struggles revolving around political and economic power and resources.

Now how does all this relate to Islamic jihad? Islam sees violence as a means of propagating the Muslim faith. Islam divides the world into two camps: the dar al-Islam (House of Submission) and the dar al-harb (House of War). The former are those lands which have been brought into submission to Islam; the latter are those nations which have not yet been brought into submission. This is how Islam actually views the world!By contrast, the conquest of Canaan represented God__ just judgement upon those peoples. The purpose was not at all to get them to convert to Judaism! War was not being used as an instrument of propagating the Jewish faith. Moreover, the slaughter of the Canaanites represented an unusual historical circumstance, not a regular means of behavior.The problem with Islam, then, is not that it has got the wrong moral theory; it__ that it has got the wrong God. If the Muslim thinks that our moral duties are constituted by God__ commands, then I agree with him. But Muslims and Christians differ radically over God__ nature. Muslims believe that God loves only Muslims. Allah has no love for unbelievers and sinners. Therefore, they can be killed indiscriminately. Moreover, in Islam God__ omnipotence trumps everything, even His own nature. He is therefore utterly arbitrary in His dealing with mankind.

The words of the Quran all seemed strangely familiar yet so unlike anything I had ever read before,_ he told us. He embraced Islam in 1977, and changed his name to Yusuf, the Arabic for Joseph. __ identified with the story of Joseph in the Quran,_ he said. __is brothers sold him like goods in the market place._ Yusuf felt the music business had treated him not like an artist but as a commodity.

I can very well understand your frustration, but you must stick to your dreams. Try Harder!

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities _ but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.

A Christian might be tired of the Christianity, but certainly he is scared of the Islam.