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Egypt’s present-day Shias live on Fatimid legacy « Simerg

Egypt’s present-day Shias live on Fatimid legacy « Simerg. It is hard to miss the Fatimid legacy that is apparent on the streets of Cairo. Moreover, many of this era’s traditions are still practiced. Shia practices such as celebrating Al-Mawlid Al-Nabawy (the Prophet’s birthday), Ashura (commemoration of Al-Hussein’s death), and even using lanterns during Ramadan are still common among Egyptians today.

On Being a Conservative-Liberal Muslim (or why the progressive label is bad)

Several things began to come together in my thinking at the MLT Conference in Copenhagen. To be clear, it was not a result of the planning of the MLT, but a series of amorphous thoughts that started to click from meeting people at the conference. With the Progressive Faith Blog Con coming straight after, these ideas began gaining more clarity. Coincidentally, both the good folks at Progressive Islam (1, 2, 3) and Von Aurum published pieces that further moved my thoughts forward. I had been planning on this post for some time, but as the adage goes “Man proposes, God…

(Un)Created(?) – Quran Desecration, part 2

A question for the Muslim community: why we are offended when the Qur’an is desecrated? (See previous post for details.) Echoing the grand debate most associated with the Mutazilah, the Qur’an is either created, or uncreated. If it is uncreated, then that means the Qur’an is co-eternal with God, meaning that something else exists with God. So, as a second “eternal,” I can understand why Muslims would be upset; of course, it also means that they are only superficially believers in tawhid. To be offended, is to deny what it means to be Muslim. If you argue that the Qur’an…