“traditionalism” hits mainstream media

Egypt’s Grand Mufti Counters the Tide of Islamic Extremism

Adapting. One thing is absolutely clear, though: Gomaa’s unshakable confidence repeated as often by his protegees as by him”that the inherent moderation and pragmatism of traditionalist Islam make it far superior to anything proposed by puritanical Salafists or Wahhabis or utopia-minded Islamists. Through the centuries and across cultures and continents, Islam spread and flourished, they all say, precisely because the principles of sharia were applied and interpreted in light of changing reality. Apart from supporting bedrock principles of the faith as set forth in the Koran and the hadith (the authoritative accounts of the words and deeds of the Prophet), Islamic jurists sought to make the lives of Muslims easier, not more difficult, through their realistic application of religious law. As Gomaa sees it, what the best Muslim jurists have always done is to focus on the intent of sharia to foster faithfulness, dignity, intellectual growth, and other core values. Called al makased, this method of seeking to apply the law through an understanding of its purposes is at the core of Gomaa’s scholarship and jurisprudence and is being spread by his scores of students and followers. 

But there have always been in Islam, as in other religions, the terrible simplifiers, the puritans who, like the 18th-century Arabian cleric Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, claim not only to streamline the faith but to return it to basic principles. Often called Salafists, such Muslims in more recent times have also presented themselves as modernizers and reformists. The more political among them, the Islamists, have additionally sought to make Islam into a political program to replace secular forms of government.

Tossing out centuries of reasoned reflection upon the meaning of sharia and discounting the importance of most schools of jurisprudence, these puritans reduce the law to selected passages from the Koran and the hadith and, as the traditionalists see it, distort the intent of sharia by taking the chaff for the wheat. “Their fast-food jurisprudence has led to great intolerance,” says Suhaib Webb, a 36-year-old American convert to Islam who came to Al-Azhar University from California precisely to learn the classical traditions of jurisprudence. “The classical discourse dealt with reality,” Webb says. “The modern discourse is utopian. Ali Gomaa is respected because he deals with reality.”

Interesting.  Rather than throw about words like “moderate muslim” without giving a coherent definition, here’s an article that actually seeks to grasp the changes in islamic jurisprudence in the last few centuries, and define these different movements. 

As for GM Gomaa, I can’t same much about him.  I have his autograph (ok, his signature) on my official al Azhar conversion papers.  That’s about it.  *Puts study the history of al-Azhar on list of things to do*

my newest obsession

As I think I’ve mentioned previously, I have a (self diagnosed) obsessive-compulsive personality.  I find something to be excited about, be it running, salat or whatnot, and fixate on it for a few weeks or months before I slowly lose interest and move on to something else.  I’m just coming off my salat high, although I’m working hard not to lose it.  Let’s see if I can keep up 3 obsessions - 1. salat, 2. running, and 3, the new one - organic, free range halal meat.

The husband and I have been eating meat from the local groccery store with a bismillah at the beginning, which according to certain scholars is ok.  With more study on the matter, and the admonishment of several scholars I respect, I’ve found that unless there’s no halal meat available, that meat is filth and should be avoided.  That makes the chicken curry look a little bit less appetizing.  If one knows that the meat was slaughtered by a christian or a jew, in the name of God, then it’s ok, but how do we know who’s slaughtering out meat in a groccery store?

That, in conjunction with the disgusting practices that take place in the american meat industry, has set me on a new mission - to find a source of meat that is both humanely raised and slaughtered in a halal manner.  It isn’t good enough for the animal to be slaughtered in a halal, humane manner, if the animal was abused during it’s life on a factory farm.

Now, does such a thing exist?  I’m not quite sure.  One of the local ME groccery stores gets their meat from Halal Price Farms.   Their website is down, but they claim the chickens are naturally raised.  inshaAllah I’ll have to go check it out.   Another good source looks to be Crescent Halal, where the chickens are raised free range and fed a vegetarian diet.

Some reading on the issue:

• If it’s not Organic, it’s not Halal
• Halal, Organic or Vegetarian?
• Assorted Articles on Organic and Halal

How did you…

…chose a madhab?  For all my blurkers out there (and I know you exist), if you follow a madhab, how did you chose it?

My development as a new muslim was rather haphazard, as I didn’t really have a single guide offering a monolythic perspective on Islam.  It seems that converts are often guided towards a particular perspective on islamic practice, based on who they hang out with and what materials they are given to study.  Oftentimes, here in the US at least, the path they’re lead on tends to be salafi in orientation.

Instead, I dabbled, reading things here and there, until I finally settled on “traditional islam,” and determined that I should pick a madhab to start getting everything right with Allah (swt).  Originally, I tended towards the hanafi madhab, because it seemed to have the most books available in english, as well as a good fatwa resource at SunniPath.

However, I now would consider myself shafi’i.  Why?  I wish I could say that it is because I studied all the madhabs in depth and found that the rulings of the shafi’is were more sound.  Alas no, I’m attracted to the shafi’i madhab because my favorite islamic scholar, Imam al Ghazali, was a shafi’i.  If it was good enough for him, then it’s good enough for me.

Of course, now that I know what I’m looking for, I’ve found a decent amount of shafi’i resources -  SunniPath, Al Maqasid, and Reliance of the Traveler - that provide enough for the seeker such as myself.