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Curbing

May God rest the souls of Jack Armstrong and Jack Hensley, the two Americans recently beheaded by Zarqawi, the slave of Satan. May give God give succor to the families of the two men. What constitutes the proper response to such violence? My first response was that Abd us-Shaytan and his men need to be curbed – in both senses of the word. However, the perennial question is does violence stop violence? For a very brief moment, I thought perhaps I was becoming like them, they have taken something from me – my religion – and I am powerless to…

Somebody gets it

A Boston Globe op-ed and the variety and flexibility of shari’ah. It’s not what it’s called, it’s what it says.

A Story

During one of the conflicts of the early period of Islam, Hazrat Ali (PBUH) was on the battlefield engaged with his opponent. He had disarmed his opponent, the champion of the opposition, and was getting ready to slay him. His enemy spat upon him and Hazrat Ali sheathed his sword. His opponent asked why he did so. Hazrat Ali’s response was that “In battle, when two enemies are fighting for a cause,” in Imam Ali’s case Islam, “then the ideals of the of cause are worth dying for and have to be respected. When you spat on me, I became…