Preliminary Discourse

"One must have chaos within oneself to give birth to a dancing star." -- Friedrich Nietzsche

If you wish for a tree, plant a seed today. But if you dream of a garden, plant first the seeds of patience, hope and trust in Allah SWT.

The greatest thinkers of the Islamic intellectual tradition invariably insist on the inadequacy of discursive reasoning or rational faculty to attain to transcendent truths. For that a higher faculty of intellect is needed to arrive at intuition (ilham), kashf (unveiling) or dhawq (tasting). But the question remains this - have we indeed exhausted all the possibilities of rational faculty, this "al-'aql al-juz'i" as some scholars have dubbed it, that we need to transcend it and go beyond rational consciousness? In fact the rational heritage of 'ilm al-kalam offers tremendous reservoir that has yet to be thoroughly appreciated and explored in the modern world. Let's start thinking about this first before we venture into the regions of the unknown, which in any case are reserved for the 'elect', a state which exceptionally few can attain.

"Gender harmony, not gender equality," counselled my esteemed teacher, Shaykh (Dr) 'Uthman el-Muhammady once.

The liberal project frequently invokes state neutrality as the argument against ‘moral policing’ presumably on the ground that morality is a private matter. This claim is weak on several fronts. The state cannot possibly be morally neutral. Nor does it make sense to argue that the secular state model is the best example for the negotiation of ‘competing’ claims. One should aspire towards a state based on shared values. The slogan is often quoted that in a plural society, the secular state represents the best model for society. The issue is especially relevant in the context of countries with significant Muslim minorities. Philosophically speaking, the neutrality argument represents a challenge to the Aristotelian view. The liberal philosopher Joseph Raz even questioned its basic postulate. Raz affirms the view that … Perhaps deeper than this is much more epistemological and spiritual: no believer can ever think of doing anything to be outside religion. The qur’anic sacralisati...

A number of contemporary writers have noted that one of the strengths of Islamic law is the fact that it is able to develop coherently and effectively independently of the state and outside the political-juridical framework. This has been so for the most part of its history and indeed, the first state-sponsored systematic codification of the law came quite late, in the 19 th century with the Ottoman Mejelle. Of course, much earlier than this, Imam Malik ibn Anas was asked if his Muwatta could be the official state law—an offer which he naturally refused as befit the humility of any traditional scholar. The essential spirit of the law has been pragmatic: to follow Shah Wali Allah’s analogy, the Shari’ah is like the colorless drops of rain which when reaching the soil partakes of the color of the earth. This element of flexibility and pragmatism of this ethico-legal tradition was made possible thanks to the fact that it is entrusted chiefly in the hands of scholars rather than politic...