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Abdal Hakim Murad - European Perspective on Muslim Influences...
[audio http://www.filefreak.com/pfiles/71387/Abdal%20Hakim%20Murad/Abdul%20Hakim%20Murad%20-%20European%20Perspective%20on%20Muslim%20Influences.mp3|bgcolor=#1b1b1b]
Excerpts to come...

Feel free to comment highlight excerpts from these speeches...

More on Al-Andalus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Andalus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Spain

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhambra

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/history/spain_1.shtml

http://www.islamicspain.tv/

"The Moors brought many innovations such as a complex irrigation system and glass making, and new crops such as citrus fruits, rice, cotton, sugar and date palms"

More on Abdal Hakim Murad...

http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/ahm/default.htm

http://www.islamfortoday.com/murad.htm

http://www.mereislam.info/labels/Abdal%20Hakim%20Murad.html

The Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology

Part 1 [audio http://www.filefreak.com/pfiles/71387/Abdal%20Hakim%20Murad/Timothy%20Winter%20-%20Understanding%20Islam%201.mp3|bgcolor=#1b1b1b]
"One of the great cliches of comparative religion is that the higher aspects of religious experience can not be conveyed in human languages"

"It's not sufficiently acknowledged, between the 8th and 16th century Islam was the dominant civilization"

"More than 38% of the world Muslims live as minorities, China 40 million, India 100 million, America 15 million"

Part 2 [audio http://www.filefreak.com/pfiles/71387/Abdal%20Hakim%20Murad/Timothy%20Winter%20-%20Understanding%20Islam%202.mp3|bgcolor=#1b1b1b]

"...the tahajjud (Night Vigil Prayers) is when the real spiritual work is traditionally done"

"If you turn up like 3 in the morning (in Mecca) during Ramadan, you'll see perhaps 3 million people doing Tahajjud (Night Vigil Prayers) together"

"...and I saw that the floor was wet, I thought it's been raining, it's pretty wierd for Mecca, after 5 minutes or so I realized it's because so many people were crying"

Part 3 [audio http://www.filefreak.com/pfiles/71387/Abdal%20Hakim%20Murad/Timothy%20Winter%20-%20Understanding%20Islam%203.mp3|bgcolor=#1b1b1b]
"We need to be reminded all the time, in fact it's said that the Arabic word for man, Insan is connected etymologically to the word for forgetfullness which is misyan."

"We know that the Prophet used a particular type of tooth brush from Arak wood"

Quotes the Prophet ﷺ
"Whoever shows no love and compassion, can be shown no Love and Compassion by Allah"

"In England, until the begining of the present century and in France until 1938, a woman lost her seperate legal status when she married and it was assimilated into her husband's, so she no longer had authority over her own wealth In Islamic Law, in all schools of Islamic Law, a woman has absolute rights over her own property, wheter she's married or not"

Part 4 [audio http://www.filefreak.com/pfiles/71387/Abdal%20Hakim%20Murad/Timothy%20Winter%20-%20Understanding%20Islam%204.mp3|bgcolor=#1b1b1b]

"Sunni Islam doesn't have a hierarchy, doesn't like hierarchies, it's against the mentality..."

"Despite the absence of a hierarchy Islam has been less subject to schism than Christianity"

"... for this reason smoking has aspects which in the eyes of the shari'a require that it be prevented and not permitted"

Women's rights: Women keeps their rights as individuals and their property unlike likes of France and Britian who until as recent as a century ago removed rights of women's property rights and gave it to their husbands.

Abortion: General position, it's ok before 16th week at which point it is believed that soul is breathed in.

Contraceptive: Allowed, both male and female sperm/eggs take part in conception ir reality and Hadith, seperate termination doesn't mean destroying a "miniture human" as Aristotalian view does.

More on Abdal Hakim Murad...

http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/ahm/default.htm

http://www.islamfortoday.com/murad.htm

http://www.mereislam.info/labels/Abdal%20Hakim%20Murad.html

The Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology

Murad discusses economic dimensions of the sirah or life of Nabi Muhammad (peace be upon him). He conceives of the sirah as a tale of two cities: Mecca and Medina and explores how the hijra or migration of the Nabi from Mecca to Medina can be understood not only in terms of a theological and political shift but an economic shift as well. I think Murad's talk is an insightful comment on a much neglected aspect of the biography of the Nabi. The way he links his point to the greater consequences of modern economics is creative. One of the most difficult aspects of this lecture for me is Murad's observation about why more relatively wealthy white people do not become Muslim as frequently as poor black and brown people in Europe and other parts of the world, especially North America. Acknowledging factors like racism as barriers, he goes further to suggest that since God is with the broken-hearted, people who tend to come from socio-economic backgrounds that encourage complacency and maintenance of the status-quo of the establishment are less receptive to embracing the transformative path that Islam represents because doing so would threaten to burst their bubbles of advantage: economic, intellectual, and otherwise. This lecture also features one of Murad's lighter moments as he mischievously imitates the accent of an Indian telemarketer before a crowd of predominantly younger British professionals (many of South Asian heritage), evoking laughter as he tries to drive home the point that we live in a society in which the evidence of the great (and increasing) socio-economic disparity between the wealthy north and poor south is often thinly concealed but just enough so that we do not bother to examine it or actually do anything about it.

Watch the lecture at the Radical Middle Way website here.

Abdal-Hakim Murad, Contentions 12, no. 86.

Blandt de lærde der sidder i rådet og udsteder fatawa er Egyptens Stormufti Dr. Ali Gomaa og Shaykh al-Azhar Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi.

En af de interessante nyskabelser på hjemmesiden er muligheden for at ringe ind og stille spørgsmål:

What is the phone fatwa service?

The phone fatwa service enables people to obtain answers to their questions using the phone.

What are the goals of the service?
The goals of the service are to simplify things for people whose questions do not require them to come to the Dar in person by enabling them to ask them using the phone, and to offer the service to local and international callers alike.
How much does the service cost?
The service is free of charge.

Dar al-Ifta's phone fatwa service.

Til de der ikke måtte vide det. En fatwa er et religiøst dekret, og ikke en dødsdom som mange tror. Efter Khomeinis fatwa angående Salman Rushdie, har mange fået den opfattelse at fatwa betyder dødsdom.

I øvrigt var det kun shi'a-muslimer Khomeinis fatwa henvendte sig til og sunni-muslimernes højeste religiøse autoritet, shaykh al-Azhar, udstedte faktisk en fatwa imod Khomeinis standpunkt. Hør Shaykh Dr. Abdal Hakim Murad, må Allah belønne og bevare ham og gavne os ved ham, forklare det i nedenstående korte klip om Salman Rushdie, frafald og Khomeinis fatwa:

Må Allah velsigne denne verden med flere storslåede mennesker som Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad.

Sheikh Abdal-Hakim Murad (T.J. Winter), Lecturer at Cambridge University, speaking on Islamic Finance at the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme, Univeristy of Cambridge, 4th of July 2007.

[audio http://download.sms.csx.cam.ac.uk/csf2007/CU-CIP-ERT07-4_Winter-DL_MP3_32_audio_v04.mp3]

... The Orient came as a revelation. Later in life he wrote, “When I read The Arabian Nights, I see the daily life of Damascus, Jerusalem, Aleppo, Cairo, and the other cities as I found it in the early nineties of last century. What struck me, even in its decay and poverty, was the joyousness of that life compared with anything that I had seen in Europe. The people seemed quite independent of our cares of life, our anxious clutching after wealth, our fear of death.” He found a khoja to teach him more Arabic, and armed with a rapidly increasing fluency took ship for Jaffa, where, to the horror of European residents and missionaries, he donned native garb and disappeared into the depths of the Palestinian hinterland.

Some of his experiences in the twilight of that exotic world may be re-read in his travelogue, Oriental Encounters. He had found, as he explains, a world of freedom unimaginable to a public schoolboy raised on an almost idolatrous passion for The State. Most Palestinians never set eyes on a policeman, and lived for decades without engaging with government in any way. Islamic law was administered in its time-honored fashion, by qadis who, with the exception of the Sahn and Ayasofya graduates in the cities, were local scholars. Villages chose their own headmen, or inherited them, and the same was true for the Bedouin tribes. The population revered and loved the Sultan-Caliph in faraway Istanbul but understood that it was not his place to interfere with their lives.

It was this freedom, as much as intellectual assent, which set Marmaduke on the long pilgrimage which was to lead him to Islam. He saw the Muslim world before Westernization had contaminated the lives of the masses and long before it had infected Muslim political thought and produced the modern vision of the Islamic State, with its “ideology,” its centralized bureaucracy, its secret police, its Pasdaran and its Basij. That totalitarian nightmare he would not have recognized as Muslim. The deep faith of the Levantine peasantry which so amazed him was sustained by the sincerity that can only come when men are free, not forced, in the practice of religion. For the state to compel compliance is to spread vice and disbelief; as the Arab proverb which he well knew says, “If camel-dung were to be prohibited, people would seek it out.” Throughout his life, Pickthall saw Islam as radical freedom, a freedom from the encroachments of the State as much as from the claws of the ego. It also offered freedom from narrow fanaticism and sectarian bigotry. Late Ottoman Palestine was teeming with missionaries of every Christian sect, each convinced, in those pre-ecumenical days, of its own solitary rightness. He was appalled by the hate-filled rivalry of the sects, which, he thought, should at least be united in the land holy to their faith. But Christian Jerusalem was a maze of rival shrines and liturgies, where punches were frequently thrown in churches, while the Jerusalem of Islam was gloriously united under the Dome, the physical crown of the city and of her complex history...

From Marmaduke Pickthall--A Brief Biography, by Sh. Abdal Hakim Murad

The Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology

Synopsis

This series of critical reflections on the evolution and major themes of pre-modern Muslim theology begins with the revelation of the Koran, and extends to the beginnings of modernity in the eighteenth century. The significance of Islamic theology reflects the immense importance of Islam in the history of monotheism, to which it has brought a unique approach and style, and a range of solutions which are of abiding interest. Devoting especial attention to questions of rationality, scriptural fidelity, and the construction of 'orthodoxy', this volume introduces key Muslim theories of revelation, creation, ethics, scriptural interpretation, law, mysticism, and eschatology. Throughout the treatment is firmly set in the historical, social and political context in which Islam's distinctive understanding of God evolved. Despite its importance, Islamic theology has been neglected in recent scholarship, and this book provides a unique, scholarly but accessible introduction.

I actually had the privilege of escorting Sh. Abdal Hakim while in Dublin. One of the things I felt, in his presence, was my dumb ignorance. I didn't know his academic background fully, but I knew I was in the presence of someone who knows in the full sense of the word. Similar to the relationship us med students have with our consultants, if I can use that analogy. Although without the authoritarianism of (some) consultants. Sh. Abdal Hakim showed nothing but humility and patience with us students. It was an important experience for myself and one that I'm very grateful for.

One way, if I can advice, to become literate -- to increase your brain cells -- is to read and reflect on his essays. Looking back, I think I owe him a lot for my literacy. His essays, in combination with other books and resources, has (probably) shaped my thinking forever.

Okay. That's enough praising Sh. Abdal Hakim. Err... one last praise if I may. My favorite essay on the net is his essay, Forgiveness and Justice: meditations on some hadiths (pdf file), which is a mixture of politics and theology. Very cool and very interesting. I highly recommend it for those who know theology and contemplate about politics.

from "UNDERSTANDING THE FOUR MADHHABS: the problem with anti-madhhabism" by Abdal Hakim Murad

Of course, sitting alone, we are laughing out loud.

----> Note: Any comments are just thoughts that went through my head and definitely not a qualified commentary. And some of this goes way beyond the superficial first glance and really makes you ponder. SubhanAllah.

1. Activism will only succeed when it remembers that history is in good hands.

--> So true! History is something that has happened in the past. We cannot alter it not solely rely on it to propel us forward. Allah has decreed what has happened and the status of a people will not change until they change themselves. We have a great legacy and of course there are periods in time where people will criticize the Muslims. But we should not make the same mistakes that others did, nor can we dwell on them. We must move forward and create new projects and endeavors to build on that history and not depend solely on the acts of our predecessors.

2 We must not overestimate the calamities of our age. A misplaced rigorism is less dangerous than an improper liberalism.

3. This sin of the Muslim world: menefregismo.

4. In senescence, religions have two possibilities: Alzheimers (the amnesiac option of the secular elites) and manic-depressive (the false Salafism).

5. Aid for ‘moderate’ Middle Eastern regimes is meals on wheels, because it does not expect to rejuvenate.

6. Postmodernism is Jahiliyya. Each tribe has its own story.

7. The modern West shows that without a Shari‘a there can only be scattered hunafa’.

8. ‘There is no God at all, and Atatürk is His prophet."

---> Secularism is often seen as man's created religion. Often it abandons the existence of God or at least takes a more Deist perspective. Regardless, Ataturk was the father of secularism in Turkey. He spread the outward abandonment of Islam at least in terms of banning hijabs and now we can see how deep seated this secularism is with the controversy brewing in Turkey right now.

9. The Umma without its Law is like a man without his Prayer.

10. The East is content without form; the West is form without content.

See Sidi Yursil's personal commentary on them.