November16
“… Moreover, no one can be sure, apart from faith, whether he is sleeping or waking, because when we are asleep we are just as firmly convinced that we are awake as we are now. As we often dream we are dreaming, piling up one dream on another, is it not possible that this half of our life is itself just a dream, on to which the others are grafted, and which we shall awake when we die? That while it lasts we are as little in possession of the principles of truth and goodness as during normal sleep? All this passage of time, of life, all these different bodies which we feel, the different thoughts which stir us, may be no more than illusions like the passage of time and vain phantoms of our dreams. We think we are seeing space, shape, movement, we feel time pass, we measure it, in fact we behave just as we do when we are awake. As a result, since half our life is spent in sleep, on our own admission and despite appearances we have no idea of the truth because all our intuitions are simple illusions during that time. Who knows whether the other half of our lives, when we think we are awake, is not another sleep slightly different from the first, on to which our dreams are grafted as our sleep appears, and from which we awake when we think we are sleeping? And who can doubt that, if we dreamed in the company of others and our dreams happened to agree, which is common enough, and if we were alone when awake, we should think things had been turned upside-down?…”
by Blaise Pascal.
September3
Q: What is Ramadan?
A: Ramadan is the name of the ninth Islamic lunar month. It is the month Allah (The one God), ordered the Muslims to fast since it was the month He revealed the Qur’an (the Muslims’ holy scripture) to Muhammad (the final Prophet of Allah). Muslims abstain from eating, drinking and intimate relations with their spouse during the daylight hours of the blessed month. It is a time for Muslims to contemplate on their belief and increase their faith by actively increasing in worship, prayer and receiting the Qur’an. It is an opportunity for spiritual as well as physical purification.
Q: Do Muslims not eat and drink for a whole month?
A: No. Muslims are ordered to abstain from food, drink and sensual pleasures from the break of dawn until sunset throughout the whole month. That means, that after sunset until the break of dawn of the following day, Muslims may eat and drink as they please. Many Muslims take this opportunity to invite friends and family over to share in the spirit of Ramadan
Q: What do Muslims do during Ramadan?
A: Muslims usually wake before dawn to take a small meal called “suhoor”. They abstain from eating, drinking and sensual pleasures during the daylight hours of the blessed month. Muslims exert more effort in worship, praying, contemplating, helping others, giving charity, reciting the Quran (the holy book of the Muslims); many Muslims endeavour to complete the Qur’an’s recitation at least once during the month. At sunset, Muslims break their fast, usually with a big meal with family and friends. Many Muslims also attend the mosque at night, to engage in special night prayers called “taraweeh”.
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August26
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The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State
Author: Noah Feldman
A CFR Book. Princeton University Press
April 2008
200 pages
ISBN 978-0-691-12045-4
$22.95
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Overview:
Perhaps no other Western writer has more deeply probed the bitter struggle in the Muslim world between the forces of religion and law and those of violence and lawlessness than Noah Feldman.
His scholarship has defined the stakes in the Middle East today. Now, in this penetrating book, Feldman tells the story behind the increasingly popular call for the establishment of the sharia—the law of the traditional Islamic state—in the modern Muslim world.
Western powers call it a threat to democracy. Islamist movements are winning elections on it. Terrorists use it to justify their crimes. What, then, is the sharia? Given the severity of some of its provisions, why is it popular among Muslims? Can the Islamic state succeed—should it?
“Scholarly and sophisticated yet highly accessible … an extremely important contribution.”
—Muhammad Qasim Zaman, author of The Ulama in Contemporary Islam
Feldman reveals how the classical Islamic constitution governed through and was legitimated by law. He shows how executive power was balanced by the scholars who interpreted and administered the sharia, and how this balance of power was finally destroyed by the tragically incomplete reforms of the modern era. The result has been the unchecked executive dominance that now distorts politics in so many Muslim states. Feldman argues that a modern Islamic state could provide political and legal justice to today’s Muslims, but only if new institutions emerge that restore this constitutional balance of power.
The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State gives us the sweeping history of the traditional Islamic constitution—its noble beginnings, its downfall, and the renewed promise it could hold for Muslims and Westerners alike.