Seeking Perfection: Wajahat Ali | Spiritual Appetite

L.I.-Bred Muslim Convert Challenges Stereotypes – NYTimes.com. Peter Casey, or AbdulMalik as he is known online, often rides a skateboard to the mosque and rarely thinks twice about performing his prostrations at a Starbucks. Mr. Casey, a 23-year-old recent Queens College graduate, does not do it out of a rebellious impulse to defy Muslim orthodoxy. Rather, he says he seeks to “challenge stereotypes and misconceptions” others have about his faith.  As a convert to Islam with a suburban upbringing and a Judeo-Christian background, Mr. Casey is in a rare position to do so. His boyish looks, clear blue eyes and…

“Whoever says, ‘What good is the Imam? God without an intermediary is enough for me’ plainly forgets that, in speaking of this God who is immediate for him, he can never speak save of the God who reveals Himself to him, of God as he knows Him, in and through the form in which God reveals Himself to him.  Even if he speaks of God as of something impersonal or transpersonal, he does so only of the form shown to him or withheld from him.  Without this mazhar, without this ‘theophanic form’ in which God manifests Himself – in the…