Each time a high profile act of violence is committed by a Muslim or in the name of Islam, the fear of reprisal attacks rises acutely in Muslim communities. It has become almost par for the course, and the statistics prove the threat is real. Often, women who are visibly Muslim find themselves the […]
What I’ve been compelled to convey to my non-Muslim family members out in Southern California: Our hearts are with all who are suffering tonight in California. We suffer with you. There is no excuse for the taking of innocent lives. Our beautiful and gentle Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) is certainly turning in his […]
A collective obligation for the Muslim community is establishing the Friday Prayer (Ṣalāt Al-Jumuʿah). Because of its great importance in the religion, we should take particular care in properly establishing it. God the Exalted says in the Qurʾān, “Believers! When the call to prayer is made on the Day of Congregation (Jumuʿah), hurry towards the […]
The Study Quran is a 2000 page discussion of the Qur’an, by 15 contributors led by renowned scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Containing maps, annotations, timelines and indices, it is said to offer a rigorous analysis of the Qur’an’s theological, metaphysical, historical, and geographical teachings and backgrounds. Scholars and commentators from around the world have lauded […]
Allah Most High says, “I am near – I answer the call of the one who calls upon me (2:186).” Yet, many of us wonder: Are my du’as being answered? Is there a certain du’a I have to read for each of my concerns? Do my du’as have to be in Arabic? In this series of short […]
Death. Dying. Bereavement. Afterlife. Not subjects we particularly want to think about. But sometimes, it’s the things we are most avoiding, that are, in reality, the closest to us. As the first snowflakes of the year fell to the street outside the Hub, burying out the autumn leaves that had fallen just days earlier, I was […]
The Ornamented Ladder into the Science of Logic (“Al-Sullam Al-Munawraq”) is a highly popular didactic poem by Imam ʻAbd al-Rahman al-Akhdari (1514 – 1546). Shaykh Ahmed Saad Al-Azhari, Founder and Director of the Ihsan Institute has made a full recording for students of knowledge who are striving to memorise this text. The 144-line poem outlines the principles of Aristotelian […]
The Soliloquy of the Full Moon is the first English mawlid work ever written. An 1000 line panegyric, it is a fully metered, rhyming, epic poem celebrating the virtues of the Prophet (peace be upon him), the signs preceding his advent, the wonders of his birth and nursing, the first revelations and his night journey […]
Imagine this… Omar Gonzalez, an 18 year old boy from Argentina, discovers that his great grandfather, who had migrated to the country from Lebanon, was a Muslim. Omar doesn’t know much about Islam. And the little he does know is informed by what he reads on Facebook (which is mostly the bad stuff). He can’t imagine his […]
Back in the late 1990’s, I gave up a $20 bill to buy a video cassette that featured a keynote speech by a world-famous Muslim scholar whom I had recently started admiring and subsequently learning from. After his talk was over, I was pleasantly surprised to see the familiar figure of Dr. Ahmad Sakr coming up […]
