The Daily Reviewer | Islam from inside

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

This is from a recording made by a close friend at a recent public 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...

Al-Taqrib: a Journal of Islamic Unity

PDFs of Al-Taqrib, a journal devoted to dialogue that seeks to open avenues towards Islamic unity, are available for download from the home page. The journal features a variety of perspectives both on interfaith dialogue as well as inter-madhab dialogue. A very partial listing of contents is: "Civilizational Dialogue and Mysticism"...

Remembrance (dhikr) and the path of mercy

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

....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

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...

Dreams in Sura Yusuf

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...

Words on a page

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...

We have adorned for each society their acts

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...

(Sura 11: verse 7) Six days of creation

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

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...

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

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...

Climbing the ascending pathways

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...

Tafsir Sura 11:5-6 Transparency before God

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...

What is truth?

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?",...

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

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 hermeneutics of takfir

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...

Rules of political misdirection

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...

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

(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...

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

....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...

Tafsir (Sura 9: 102 to 106) On Repentance

"....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

"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...

Raising Children

"....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...

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

"....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...

Power and Hegemony

"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...

Shards of Knowledge

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...

Tafsir 10:30 - The living from the dead

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.)...

Podcast - Fall of Adam

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...

What do we know?

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...

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

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.......

The Concept of Intellect in Islam

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.......

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

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 33: verse 67) - Prisoners of thought

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 8: verse 11 to 18) - Battle of Badr

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...

Man and Ecology: An Islamic Perspective

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.......

History and Perception

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.......

A Children's Story

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...

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

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.......

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

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.......

Jesus: An Islamic Perspective

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...

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

"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...

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

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...

Tafsir (Sura 10: verse 30) - on the barzakh

The qur'an speaks of two resurrections that take place after death ? the first is in the barzakh and the second is at the final judgment. A person?s life is likened to a book ? with each thought, word, and action, they are writing on the pages of their soul.......

Time in the Qur'an

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.......

Marriage (Nikah) in Islam

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...

Going around the Kaaba

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...

1st Annual Wommyn's conference (Humor)

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...

Cellphone usage in Mecca out of control (Humor)

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...

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

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...

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