Imam al-Ghazali (d.1111), known as the ‘Proof of Islam’, authored over a hundred books on all the Islamic scholarly disciplines. But he is most celebrated for his Revival of the Religious Sciences (Ihya’ Ulum al-Din), a compendium of spiritual guidance which he wrote to revive the flagging fortunes of the Islamic world in his age. Covering every aspect of the religion, from belief, to worship, to daily life, to vice, virtue, and the final encounter with God, this text is regarded as one of the masterpieces of world sacred literature.
This DVD introduces four of the most important of the forty ‘books’ which comprise this massive work. They relate to ‘Saving Practices’ (munjiyat).
[From: Cambridge New Mosque Project Online Store. All proceeds go to the moving and construction of the Cambridge Mosque. For more information about the mosque, please click here.
The Minneapolis congressman describes his journey to the holy city of Mecca with 3 million other Muslim pilgrims.
There was no fanfare, no press release when Keith Ellison made the pilgrimage to the Muslim holy city of Mecca last week.
“We weren’t really trying to turn this into a political thing,” said the Democratic congressman from Minneapolis. “This is just me trying to be the best person I can be.”
Downplaying his role as the first member of Congress to make the Hajj, as the pilgrimage is known, Ellison called the experience “transformative.”
PBS NEWS HOUR Interview with Nassim Nicholas Taleb, famous economist
and author of “The Black Swan” and Dr. Mandelbrot, professor of
Mathematics. Both say that the present economy more serious than the
Great Depression, and the economy during the American Revolution.
Malcolm Gladwell asks why we equate genius with precocity. Here Gladwell talks about how artistic prodigies differ from late bloomers and the kinds of support over decades that some artists need to realize their gifts. Listen to the mp3 on the player above, or right-click here to download.
Editor’s Note: Arsalan Iftikhar is an international human rights lawyer and contributing editor for Islamica Magazine in Washington. He is the founder of TheMuslimGuy.com, a Web site focused on Islamic issues, and is former national legal director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Not since Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s famous footwear pounded into a table at an October 1960 United Nations session have we seen a shoe create such a global political firestorm.
Alas, we now have an Iraqi journalist entering into the annals of political history with his contribution to the ongoing historical saga entitled “Shoes Heard Around the World.”
Some regional TV channels in the Mideast have aired the footage from the “shoe” press conference “more than a dozen times in several hours,” according to The Associated Press. The infamous scene has now bounced around Internet networking sites like YouTube and Facebook, showing Iraqi journalist Muntadhar Al-Zaidi standing, hurling both his shoes at President George W. Bush and shouting in Arabic: “This is a farewell kiss, you dog….This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.”
I honestly don’t see how throwing shoes at another human being is a dignified action, or something our Beloved Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) would have approved of, even against someone one was at enmity with.
The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) himself was attacked, abused, wronged, and opposed in the worst of ways, but he never responded with anything but the most beautiful, most dignified, and most restrained for conduct.
The growing Muslim presence in Europe has become a central issue for all European countries, east and west. The numerous debates that have been breaking out across the continent about “multiculturalism,” “secularity,” or even “identity” are almost always connected to this “Islamic” factor.
This link is not necessarily bigoted, because there is a fundamental relationship between “values” and “laws” on the one hand, and “culture” and “diversity” on the other. Indeed, more than a debate over “Islam” and the “Muslims,” Europe needs a serious dialogue with itself over this relationship, for it is facing a crisis.
Islam has never become rooted in a particular land until that land began producing its own religious scholars. During its twelve-year history in the San Francisco Bay Area, Zaytuna Institute has helped a generation of American Muslims appreciate the enduring legacy of Islamic scholarship. Now, Zaytuna has arrived at a new chapter in its history—and, God willing, in the history of Islam in America.
Please join Imam Zaid Shakir and Shaykh Hamza Yusuf during this special evening as they introduce Zaytuna College, discuss the need for establishing an accredited institution of higher learning, describe the details of the Bachelor’s degree programs the College will offer, and introduce the Bay Area Muslims who will help make it a reality.
Finally, they will invite you to support Zaytuna College, where future generations of Muslims can begin to shape the land in which they live.
The ancient proverb of finding opportunity in crisis sounds wonderful, but the follow-through can be problematic. Transition staff working for US President-elect Barack Obama hope to enact health care reform and a clean-energy policy. But an economic crisis may not be the time to take on grand new initiatives, suggests Clive Crook, in an essay for the Financial Times. The Obama administration will encounter harsh and immediate demands from all sides, including members of his own party in US Congress. Such is democracy: “It would be wrong for a health or energy plan, the consequences of which the country might have to live with for decades, to go through on the nod because it is part of an emergency stimulus,” Crook notes. An effective economic stimulus package, needed to jumpstart the global economy, requires general rather than specific spending that targets a few sectors. After a series of bailouts and stimulus packages, Crook also questions whether the US will achieve the self-discipline to control a massive deficit. Obama supporters and global onlookers alike could be surprised by the next president’s early steps. – YaleGlobal
Click here
to read the article in the Financial Times.
In the Name of Allah, Most Merciful and Compassionate
All praise is to Allah, Lord of the Worlds. And the blessings and peace of Allah be upon His Chosen Messenger, the Prophet Muhammad, his family, companions, and followers
Islam has two major holidays, Eid al-Fitr (Post-Fasting Festival) and Eid al-Adha.
The word Eid itself is an Arabic word, whose root meaning is
‘that which comes back, time after time, and rejoicing.’ This term is used for the two major holidays of Islam because these two days
are meant to be days of rejoicing.[1]
