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Remembering the Heroism and Ethic of Hazrat Ali (a.s.) in the Persian New Year «

Remembering the Heroism and Ethic of Hazrat Ali (a.s.) in the Persian New Year «. Some months ago when I first wrote this piece, I was thinking about the beginning of Ramadan. Today, a few months on I am thinking about the beginning of Navroz, the Persian New Year. There are beginnings everywhere. The Qur’an begins with the fatihah. There is a tradition that the entirety of the knowledge of the Qur’an can be found in the fatihah; the entire fatihah is contained in the first line, bismillah ir-rahman ir-rahim, everything in that phrase is found in bismillah; all of that knowledge is…

Karen Armstrong Interview

She talks a lot about religion and politics in this particular piece. I think her history of the Sunni-Shi’ah political divide is a bit off. Arguably the first empires fighting about this were in the 11th century (Fatimids and Abbasids), but I would argue the political division goes back to the time of the Prophet. However, that doesn’t mean that they didn’t live well together. Karen Armstrong