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It’s good to know Muslims can still create, not just destroy. What’s great about this endeavor is that it’s Muslims creating for Muslims, not Muslims outsourcing.

Reading the Qur’ān as a Resident Alien

A friend from Harvard has a new article out on reading the Qur’an. If you can get your hands on it, you should read it. Excerpts are below, with citation information. Whitney Bodman, “Reading the Qurān as a Resident Alien,” Muslim World 99, no. 4 (2009): 689 – 706. — Many will read the Qur’ān casually, out of curiosity. Some will read it with more academic intent and some with polemical intent (a purpose that the Qur’ān condemns, Q 2:176). All of these readers are, in the words of Paul Griffiths, consumers of the Qur’ān. These readers are less likely…

immanence & transcendence (& shirk) [update]

[updated for clarity] I have been thinking a bit lately about how people practice their faiths. One of the issues that keeps coming back to me is of one’s vision of God, which should be the defining part of any religious understanding in my opinion. I would categorize the understanding of God into two, not mutually exclusive, categories – the imminent and the transcendent. I personally consider God’s presence to be one of imminence, which in turn feed my God consciousness (taqwa), and that helps me to realize God’s transcendence. I understand there are people who feel humbled by God’s…