…if only I had a more of it. Then I’d sit and watch everything on the newly re-designed Radical Middle Way website. I’m hoping that they’ll put up videos of all the Habib al Jifri events from earlier this month. From what I’ve heard, they were awesome and increadibly beneficial to those who went.
To watch when I get home from work:
Clip from SunniPath Answers Live event. This answer addresses the issue of Ashari vs. the Maturidi tenets of belief. Answered by Shaykh Hamza Karamali.
Iqra!
The first word revealed to our beloved Prophet 
was a command - iqra - to read, to recite. As I’ve mentioned in the past, the Quran was what drew me to Islam. I read it voraciously at first, and sought to own as many copies as I could afford. I’m reluctant to admit, but now more often than not, my extensive Qur’an collection sits and gathers dust. Rarely have I picked them from their place of honor on the top shelf of my religious books collection and engaged with them.
Every once in awhile, I’ll vow that I’ll read the entire quran. But, inevitably I’ll fail. I’m a fast reader, and over the years, I’ve perfected a form of skim reading that allows me to get the gist of a novel or textbook without actually having to read each word. However, this method does not translate well into Iqra or into understanding. I’ll turn page after page, only to realize later that I have no clue what my eyes just passed over. I’m aware of the problem and will conciously try to slow down, but the habit dies hard. Eventually, I get frustrated and quit.
In an effort to break the slump, I’ve decided to WRITE! while I read. Everyday, inshaAllah, I’m dedicating 20 minutes to the Qur’an. Half of that time, I will read x number of ayat, first in the Muhammad Asad translation with commentary, then in one or 2 other translations. I have a journal I bought specifically to become my quran diary, and in it, I’ll write about those ayat. Questions, thoughts, reflections, how these ayat relate to my life, it just has to be something related to the verses. The second 10 minutes will be dedicated to reading the ayat in arabic.
I know 20 minutes isn’t a terribly long period of time. Heck, I spend more time each night watching television. But, I figure that if I set a larger block of time out, like an hour, that when things get busy, I’ll just shuffle quran reading time down to the bottom of the list and skip it. By chosing a shorter period of time, it’s more managable and inshaAllah that means I will be more likely to do it every day.
The goal then, will be to read the entire quran in english and arabic, AND to understand it. What good is it if I skim through, and when I’m finished I gain nothing? inshaAllah with this endevour, I’ll develop my relationship with the book and with it’s author, Allah 
.
Want to take this journey for yourself? Here are some resources that may help you along the way:
Dear readers, please share any resources you have or any thoughts on how you engage with the Qur’an, and how you seek to understand it better.
Definately a worthy place to wile away the hours online. Their online exhibition of Iraq is particularly awesome.
[IMG]img.photobucket.com/albums/v211/rahma/islamic%20salutations/bismillah.gif[/IMG]
I never went to a new muslim class. Come to think of it, I’ve been to very few real life based classes. One of the reasons is because the teachers rarely state their biases outright. One has to have a certain level of sophistication in order to detect the leaning of the materials. At least from what I’ve seen, many classes aimed at new muslims or that cover the basics, have a strong salafi leaning. But do they tell you that? Noooo.
For example, I went to an aqidah class a few months back. Everything was chugging along when wham, “there are several groups who have very similar aqidahs to ahl al sunnah wa jamaah, but they are deviant. Asharis, maturidis…” Argh! *pulls hair out from under hijab*
If you’re going to teach an aqidah class, you have two choices. One, teach the basics that all the different aqidah schools agree on. They agree on most. Why dwell on disputed points like the literality of Allah’s [IMG]img.photobucket.com/albums/v211/rahma/islamic%20salutations/allah.gif[/IMG] hand and foot? Why declare a large portion of the sunni muslim ummah to be outside of ahl al sunnah wa jamaah?
The second choice is to state right out from the front - this is an aqidah class from x perspective. Don’t pretend that your point of view is the be all and end all of islam. Muslims have been disagreeing about this for centuries, and those differing points of view have survived through to this day.
These two choices hold true for all classes. Welcome to Islam 101. Now that we’ve gone over the 5 pillars and the 6 articles of faith, we’re going to go into some fiqh issues. One thing you all should know is that although Islam is based on the book of Allah [IMG]img.photobucket.com/albums/v211/rahma/islamic%20salutations/allah.gif[/IMG], and on the example of His beloved Messenger [IMG]img.photobucket.com/albums/v211/rahma/islamic%20salutations/pbuh.gif[/IMG], muslims do differ on certain points. Don’t worry yourself about these differences at this point in time, but do realize that over the centuries, the greatest scholars of this ummah have disagreed, but did so in a polite manner without declaring their opponents kufar. In this class, we’ll be teaching from x perspective. If you hear something that contradicts what you’ve learned here, don’t be scared, don’t try to argue. Note that different view point, and bring it up in the next class. inshaAllah we’ll discuss it then, and inshaAllah it will help you understand.
Ah, someday…
That’s why I love Sunnipath. You know where they’re coming from. You know their biases. Their Islam 101 classes are Essentials of Islam (Hanafi, Maliki or Shafi’i). You know what you’re getting right up from.
Ok, with that ramble out of the way, here’s the NPR story.
From Lampost Productions via islamica
by Dr. Abdul Hakim Jackson
They came in fact to Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal who used to say that if your nose bleeds then you have to renew your wudu. Imam Malik said that if your nose bleeds you do not have to renew your wudu. So they went to Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal and they said what if you were praying behind somebody and they have a nose bleed and they don’t renew there wudu, do you continue to pray behind them? And Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal said, “How can I refuse to pray behind somebody like Imam Malik? I have daleel (evidence), he has daleel; I have solid daleel, he has solid daleel.” The companions of the Prophet (s) took different things from him and went out to the various parts of the Muslim world and they taught those different things in those various parts. All of them got what they taught from the Prophet (s) so Imam Malik has his point of view and Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal has his point of view. This was the spirit of our pious ancestors, and this is what we have to get back to.
Just when I thought I had exhausted the (decent portions) of the islam section at my local library, I turned the corner, and low and behold, there’s a whole bunch more on the other side of the shelves! I grabbed as many as I could comfortably carry to the office, and now instead of mindlessly staring at the tv, I can shove my nose deep between the pages.
 My reading list:
 Desperately Seeking Paradise: Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim - I really enjoyed this memoir that read like a romp through the last 40 years of muslim history. The movements Ziauddin Sardar was involved in (FOSIS, the Pre-Murabitun sufi group), the people he met (Anwar Ibrahim, Sheikh Nazim) and the places he traveled (Revolutionary Iran, KSA, Malaysia, Pakistan) made this particularly fascinating for me as someone interested in the diversity of the modern muslim ummah. Also, being married to one of the only ibn Hazm fans I know (actually, now that I think about it, he’s the only ibn Hazm fan I know), it was comforting to know that ibn Hazm is not only of interest to modern day salafis, but that Zia finds him fascinating as well.
Coincidentally, via Deenport, I found that he’s starting a new blogging the quran project that looks like something to watch.Â
My Father’s Notebook  - a novel by an Iranian leftist in exile in the Netherlands, it tels the story of a boy and his deaf-mute father from the time of Reza Shah through the Revolution.  While not an Islamic novel, Islam does play a role.  The Qur’an is quoted throughout, the father is a practicing muslim, and the book begins and ends with the story of the people of the cave.  It was an easy read, and there wasn’t anything offensive or anti-islam about it.
The Qur’an: A User’s Guide - Farid Esack’s On Being Muslim was one of the books I picked up when I began to seriously consider Islam. I don’t remember much about it (which isn’t suprising, seeing as how I managed to cram it in while studying for midterms), but I do remember that it soothed many of the doubts and put my mind at ease. I guess I should probably look for it next time I’m at the library.Â
Anways, I’ve only started reading it this afternoon but already this book is fascinating. In the introduction, Farid divides those with a relationship with the Qur’an into 6 categories: The uncritical lover (ordinary muslims), the scholarly lover (confessional/orthodox/practicing scholars), the critical lover (skeptical, but still muslim scholars), the friend of the lover (participant observers who, while not muslim, still appreciate the beauty of the book and respect muslims’ relationship to it), the voyeur (revisionist scholars) and the polemicist (who seem to be everywhere these days).
While Farid probably falls in the critical lover category, he pledges to present ideas from all perspectives. I enjoyed what I’ve read so far, partially because he references a ton of different scholars of the quran. When I come across these references, I mention the name to the husband and we can have a little chat about them. In particular, just in the first few pages, he mentions two female egyptian scholars, ‘Aishah ‘Abd al-Rahman and Zaynab al-Ghazali al-Hubayli that have gone on my list of people to investigate.
Al-Ghazali on Invocations and Supplications - I can’t tell you how excited I was to find this book.  The section on salat in Inner Dimensions of Islamic Worship have been increadibly beneficial to my salat, so I can’t wait to see what benefits await in this section of Ihya’ ‘Ulum al-Din
The Removal of Cares - I’m a little hesitant to read this, as I’ve heard time and time again that sufi texts are meant to be taught, not mass produced and sold for students to muddle through on their own. I’m saving it for last, and may just return it without reading.
How do I love Sunnipath? Let me count the ways…
1. Free courses from time to time
   Â
In the special free 3-week course The Hadith Jibril: Exploring the Core of Prophetic Guidance, learn how the meanings and lessons of the Hadith Jibril relate to your life. Understand how the three dimensions of the religion—Islam, Iman, and Ihsan—interconnect and define the true believer.
I tried to register this morning, but alas, the registration page kept processing…processing…processing…inshaAllah I’ll try again later today. I’m so excited to see courses like this offered. I had briefly flirted with writing something up based on the Hadith Jibril to give to new muslims, as it provides all the basics a newbie needs. But, alhamdulilah, people with more knowledge than I are already doing it, so I’m off the hook for now. I recently inquired with my masjid about helping with the new convert program, so inshaAllah I’ll be taking notes for things that I could use if they need my assistance.
Via Seeker’s Digest:
 How spiffy is this?  Definately something that would be more worthwhile than television, don’t ya think? Islam related courses include:
Al-Wasatiyyah: The Lost Middle Path
Bearing in mind this concept of the whole totality of a Muslim character, we can realize that a true Muslim is not rigid nor too progressive, not a rejectionist nor an extremist. Rather, he is the middle in between these because he treads in the middle path for which he is created and to which he is supposed to stick in order to realize the commands of Allah and fulfill his mission as a vicegerent on earth.
Monty has blocked 23390 access attempts.